Here’s a video in which Reason.tv demonstrates that it’s not always easy to know what’s American — and that what’s American includes product designs and ingenuity brought to life elsewhere.  

(Quick notes: I would hope people in Whitewater patronize local merchants.  I’m opposed only to local politicians talking local but acting differently, themselves.  I also think that the best help for local merchants is a significant and permanent reduction in the size of local government, with the costs saved leading to meaningful reductions in taxes and fees. 

The longer I cover politics here, the more firmly I believe that our municipal government should be much smaller, to the benefit of merchants and residents.

Local businesses will better compete with local government no longer a significant taxing influence, literally and metaphorically.)

Here are excerpts of the description that accompanies the nine-minute film:  

Is your iPod unpatriotic? 

Its 451 parts are made in dozens of nations, and creating the little doodads employs thousands of foreigners. Final assembly is done in China—a country that right-wingers and left-wingers alike fear is an economic threat to the U.S. 

As the recession worsens, maybe patriotic Americans should be smashing foreign-made iPods in protest. Or at least hiring bikini-clad American women to do the job, which is exactly what Reason.tv did. Our patriotic, sledgehammer-wielding bikini bandits headed to California’s Venice Beach to smash some foreign-made iPods to make a political statement about saving American jobs. 

Maybe the United Steelworkers Union (USW), one of the biggest “Buy American” backers would like to hire these patriotic ladies for their next rally.

“Every other nation during this economic downturn is directing their stimulus money inward,” thunders USW’s Billy Thompson at a rally in West Virginia. “Now if they can do it, why in the hell can’t we?” 

Actually, we are. President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package came equipped with a “Buy American” provision, and more than 500 state and local governments have signed “buy American” resolutions. And that may be just the beginning of the protectionist push. 

Reason.tv went to a Washington, D.C. event where business owners and activists learned how to lobby for more protectionist laws. “If you want to sell it here, build it here,” says one participant who refers to those who ignore the “buy American” imperative as “uneducated, ignorant people.” 

And shouldn’t we be patriotic purchasers? That’s what car ads, draped with Old Glory and heartland visuals, suggest. What could be more patriotic than buying a Jeep Patriot? With American automakers hurting so badly, that’s got to help America. 

“That’s nonsense,” says George Mason University economist—and Cafe Hayek blogger—Donald Boudreaux. 

“The Jeep Patriot, despite its name is actually less American than some Toyota products. It’s literally impossible—at least in any practical sense—to ‘buy American.’” 

Boudreaux argues that Americans should buy whatever products they choose; neither guilt nor laws should push them to buy American. “The thing that is most distinctively American is freedom. To insist that Americans should not be free to buy good from foreigners that’s very anti-American.” 

And what about your iPod? 

Even though plenty of foreigners have jobs thanks to it, so do 14,000 Americans whose duties include designing and marketing the little buggers. So the iPod is a product of America and the world, and these days that describes nearly all the items we buy.

Welcome to the iPod economy, where just about everything is made everywhere…. 

Well, my first post on zoning – see immediately below — wasn’t up for long before a reader asked why I thought that California was a housing hell. (Thanks much for the speedy question, by the way, a question that I happily received from a dedicated defender of free markets.)

Tucker’s Zoning, Rent Control, and Affordable Housing establishes that case in its second chapter, and I’ll post on it tomorrow.  

For now, here’s a video from Reason.tv, about another aspect of housing hell — government’s abuse of eminent domain, in which poor people are often victimized. Here’s the description of the short film — 

Reason.tv host Drew Carey visits National City, California, where the local government is taking eminent domain abuse to new lows.

Eminent domain is the constitutionally sanctioned practice of taking land for legitimate public uses. Traditionally, that’s meant things like roads and schools. Over the past several decades, however, governments have gone hog wild with eminent domain, routinely condemning property and turning it over to well-connected private developers as a way of subsidizing economic development and increasing tax revenues (never mind that it doesn’t always work out that way).

Officials in National City, a predominantly Hispanic community near San Diego, have pushed to bulldoze a popular athletic center for struggling kids to pave the way for private developers to build new luxury condos. As tragic and absurd as this may sound, such outrageous affronts to property rights are an almost daily occurrence.

Episode 3 of The Drew Carey Project chronicles the devastating impact of eminent domain abuse on the lives of people whose property the government can threaten to take, not for public use, but for the benefit of wealthy developers.

When someone says — ‘We need to get rid of that!’, it’s worth asking, ‘Who’s is that now?’ and ‘Who benefits when government takes it?’ 

Good afternoon, Master Planners of Whitewater!  I’m sure that you’re busy today, designing a new interstate highway system, Lincoln Tunnel, Hoover Dam, etc., but I thought I’d write with comments on a fine book: Zoning, Rent Control, and Affordable Housing. 

As you’ve heard, our city administration has declared housing Whitewater’s biggest problem.  William Tucker’s work is from the Cato Institute, was published in the early 1990s, with principles that are still applicable to this very day.  

Here’s my summary of Chapter 1.  

In 1987, William Tucker, contributing of Forbes magazine and author, sought an answer to the question: what contributes to homelessness, to a lack of affordable housing?  In the Introduction to Zoning, Rent Control, and Affordable Housing, Tucker sets out a goal: 

In 1987, in search of an answer, I compiled figures on per capita homelessness in 50 cities, using mostly a 1984 report to the secretary of housing and urban development on homelessness and temporary shelters.  Using multiple regression analysis, I sought correlations between high rates of homelessness and a dozen factors that have been suggested as contributing to the problem.

 Citations omitted. 

Possible causes included median home price, rent control, rental vacancy rate, minority population [sometimes more disadvantaged or vulnerable to unlawful housing discrimination], median rent, poverty rate, average annual temperature, public housing per capita, unemployment rate, size of city, percentage growth over last 15 years, average annual rainfall [a surely false cause]. 

Of the possible correlations that Tucker considers, two showed almost absolute statistical certainty: median home price and the presence of rent control.   

This is, of course, contrary the reasoning behind conventional, government-sponsored solutions: Tucker notes that “poverty, unemployment, and lack of public housing” are typically identified as the causes of homelessness. 

He sees, however, something different — that it’s the supply of private housing that affects homelessness, rather than the presence of aid programs (public housing) or even economic conditions (unemployment).  

Tucker asks: 

The significant correlation between the median price of homes and the rate of homelessness also reinforces the suggestion that the private market is the key to understanding homelessness.  What has pushed up the price of homes in certain metropolitan regions but not others?  Is it a high demand for housing?  Is it a lack of supply?  And if supplies are at fault, what is causing the lack thereof?  Zoning efforts and “growth controls” are obvious suspects.

 
Tucker continues: 

In a market characterized by high home prices, however, young people may not be able to move up to homeownership.  They are forced to remain in the rental market where they compete with people poorer than themselves, thereby driving up rents. That would not necessarily cause a housing shortage, since the pressure on rents would cause developers to build more housing, bringing rents down again. But what if a city doesn’t let that happen?  What if it imposes rent controls or growth-control measures?

 
Tomorrow: Chapter 2 — California [or, the overly-restrictive housing hell that all America may sadly become].