Archive for July, 2008
HUD
I’m a little late to this, but Mark Thoma asked yesterday, in reponse to a Times column by Sudhir Venkatesh, whether we ought to scrap HUD and build an agency focused on regional poverty and inequality issues. The short answer is that HUD’s mission should be changed, that blowing it up probably isn’t necessary, and [...]
The Best Sentence I Read Today
Comes from James Hamilton: Here’s the framework I would propose for answering the question of how much the price of oil should have risen since 2005– the price of oil needed to go up by whatever it took to persuade places like the U.S., Europe, and Japan to reduce their consumption by the amount that [...]
Pats Self on Back
Me, on April 7th: A number of econ blogs have been looking at the relationship between land-use regs and the housing bubble, suggesting that supply constraints were a key cause of the run up and subsequent collapse. I don’t really agree with that, for reasons that I explain here. In short, prices can overshoot, but [...]
Expense
So, it seems the Examiner made a big deal about the story on increased cost estimates for the Metro extension to Tysons. Several points: 1) A major reason for the cost increases is delay, and the primary source of delay has been the awful handling of the project by the FTA. That’s not Metro’s fault, [...]
NIMBYs
In the comments, Ben Ross directs us to a piece he wrote a few years ago on the roots of NIMBYism. Check it out. As much time as I’ve spent arguing in favor of better development policies, I think we probably need to look at infill development in the same way as we do climate [...]
Research Needed
Improving educational outcomes is difficult. The challenge of providing an excellent, effective, (and reasonably affordable) education to students from all over the nation and from wildly different socioeconomic backgrounds has bested lawmakers at all levels of government. It’s really hard to know what to do. So you’d think we’d have people looking into the question, [...]
Moneme Out
Emeka Moneme, head of the District DOT, has resigned. Read David Alpert’s take on Moneme’s career at DDOT and on the critical nature of the decision now facing Mayor Fenty. The District’s resurgence and high gas prices have created an incredible opportunity for the city, and the head of DDOT will have a great deal [...]
The Mind of the NIMBY, cont.
This is getting fun, now. Further comments from the Brookland listserv after the jump.
Cops
So, there’s this and this. And also this. I’m not an expert in police tactics, so most of my recommendations to help reduce crime involve long-term investments in health, education, and public services. But it does seem to me that there is something to be gained from significantly increasing the number of police officers walking [...]
Never Forget
Unfortunately, I blew my whole commemorative budget on that giant silver $20 9/11 bill. Which I promptly used to buy gas.