Vice President Kamala Harris has rolled out several initiatives as part of her housing plan. She wants to incentivize builders to create 3 million units of affordable housing and develop a $25,000 housing credit for first-time homebuyers. Harris’s housing goals have been widely dissected by the media, showing that the nationwide housing problem is top of mind for many people.
Harris believes that former president Trump has it all wrong when it comes to solving the housing crunch. In her Aug. 16,2024, political rally, she stated, “If his Project 2025 agenda is put into effect, it will add around $1,200 a year to the typical American mortgage. He’s got it backward. We should be doing everything we can to make it more affordable to buy a home, not less.”
No problem. Privatization has a long history of being sold to us in very positive and plausible ways. At the end of the day when private options are better than public ones there are questions that need to be asked about the public options, usually regarding if we’re funding it properly and if we’re allowing private industry to take all the profitable parts of a necessary venture and leaving the unprofitable aspects to the public options.
In general I’m much more hesitant to allow private options to compete with public ones because of the points there. That profit is coming from somewhere and while sometimes it’s innovation providing a better product, that’s rarely the case unless the public option is so chronically underfunded it can’t run efficiently, and in that case I think it needs funding.
So in short, fund Amtrak.