Virginia Postrel writes today in Bloomberg about a Harvard study that shows how restrictive land use policies in places such as California and New York erect a harmful wall of economic segregation that exacerbates income inequality by making it difficult for wage earners to respond to opportunities to earn more money.
Ms. Postrel gleans from the study that housing prices have soared far higher in states that have burdensome regulations on land use, finding that the frequency of the phrase “land use” in state appellate court cases is a reliable predictor of housing prices. Thus, government, not the free market, drives housing prices, making it more difficult for those with middle class aspirations.
Postrel concludes her piece by observing that, “They (liberal elites) may wring their hands over inequality, but in everyday life they see segregation as a feature, not a bug. It keeps out fat people with bad taste. Paul Krugman may wax nostalgic about a childhood spent in the suburbs where plumbers and middle managers lived side by side. But I doubt that many of his fervent fans would really want to live there. If so, they might try Texas.”
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