Poverty in North Dakota oil patch

If you cap prices, there's no incentive for people to provide more supply.

In an emergency, I can understand some anti-gauging laws, but even they sometimes backfire. If prices are capped, the supply runs out -- often do to hoarding -- and there's no incentive for a business (or eager individual) to rush additional supplies/products into an affected area.

Price caps lead to shortages.

You'll notice Stitch didn't offer a solution. He just demagogued about "greed". Well, if you cap rents, who's going to build -- especially if the labor needed to build would be expensive do to the economy.?

 

Please don't apply broad ideas to a specific situation you know little about.

They can still make plenty of money with reasonable rents comparable to the rest of the country. $1300-1400 for a good size house, 700-800 for small apartment ... etc. Also, houses were being built as fast as possible before people started gauging. Why? Because their are thousands here who want to BUY a house. There is literally nothing available here. Apartments and houses are all filled (and over filled in some) and the RV dealer in town sells the RV's before he even gets them in.

The builders that are here are quite happy to build. They build a home that would sell for $100,000-150,000 in a normal market but instead easily get $300,000-400,000.

Oil companies are buying them up the moment they are done and giving them to their workers to live in.

Last summer we had "tent city." Thousands were living in tents in our parks. This year a law was passed to not all camping because parks were unusable before with them riddled with oil workers living there.

So while your idea of capping rent making owners poor is nice and all it is completely wrong.

 

You didn't understand a word I wrote.

 

"gouging".

Carry on.

 

I don't know how to spell.

 

How is it a free market dictated by supply and demand when supply is artificially restricted? In a free market, there isn't such a thing as gouging, but free markets don't exist.

 

What is artificially restricting supply in ND?

Price caps would surely restrict supply.

What is your "solution" to the "problem"?

 

Zoning regulations are a cap and getting changes approved is about who you know in the city council or county board.

A supervisor for a building company told me his company's proposed development (20 houses) wasn't approved by the county because they wanted paved roads in the development. There are several subdivisions in the county that don't have paved roads are just as densely populated.

 

LOL.

So, now you've met a regulation you don't like.

 

I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the supply-and-demand argument the free market crowd makes, even though free markets don't exist.

 

Is paving the road really that big of a deal?

How is that going to stop a project if housing is so expensive?

 

I would of asked the news side to look into that while I was there, but enterprise wasn't their forte.