House Rules
The Veto Nobody Will Name
My stepfather's last property tax bill was $785. On a house we sold for $1.8 million. He did nothing wrong, and neither did I, and that's the problem with letting people like us decide.
House Rules
The Excuses, Tested
Housing fatalism is the only genuinely bipartisan position in America, and it's very convenient for the two-thirds of households holding the asset. Four excuses, four countries.
House Rules
The Accident
Nowhere else on earth has the thirty-year fixed mortgage. It isn't a market product. It's a 1933 emergency measure nobody repealed, and it's still holding up the roof.
House Rules
Are You a Communist, or Can You Afford a Burrito?
Nobody was arguing about food. Chipotle is a price index, the complaint was about land, and the reply — eat ramen, and are you a communist — is a slogan from a postwar sales campaign for the thing that's now unavailable.