The Cure for Homelessness

One of most fascinating aspects of progressives (also known as “liberals”) is the blindness they display to the adverse consequences of their very own government programs. Instead of acknowledging what their statist programs do to people and then calling for their repeal, they inevitably call for new government programs to address the ills that their government programs are causing.

A good example of this phenomenon was an article entitled “The Homelessness Crisis Continues. Maybe Libertarians Have a Solution?” which was published last June by a newsweekly in Seattle called The Stranger. The author of the piece was an associate editor at The Stranger named Eli Sanders. Sanders is no dummy. In 2012 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in featured writing. His book, “While the City Slept,” was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Yet, Sanders’ article, which mocks and ridicules libertarians, including me, for their supposed solutions to homelessness is a pathetic display of moral, political, and economic obtuseness. That’s because Sanders, like other statists, simply cannot bring himself to acknowledge and address the two root causes of homelessness, especially in Seattle — zoning and minimum-wage laws, both of which are warmly and enthusiastically embraced by both the left and the right and ardently opposed by libertarians.

What does Sanders say in his anti-libertarian screed? Ignoring libertarian calls for repeal of zoning and minimum-wage laws, he instead lists a number of other supposed libertarian solutions to homelessness, such as “giving homeless people guns,” “doing nothing,” “empowering individuals,” and “ending income taxation” (where he mentions me), all the while implicitly mocking and ridiculing libertarians for not coming up with real solutions to homelessness.

Why does Sanders choose to remain silent about libertarian opposition to zoning laws and minimum-wage laws in the context of the homelessness debate?

The answer is simple: Whether we are dealing with the drug war, the war on poverty, the forever wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on immigrants, or any other statist program, statists have a terribly difficult time acknowledging the failure and destructiveness of their own government programs. They will do everything they can to avoid taking personal responsibility for what their statism has wrought.

The fact is that Seattle is one of the most zoned cities in the country. Its zoning laws date back to 1923! It also has a mandatory minimum wage of $11.50 an hour, with it slated to increase to $15 over the next several years. Surely, Sanders realizes these things. The problem is that his mindset prevents him from connecting the dots. Given that the minimum wage and zoning are so deeply embedded within the statist mindset and within Seattle society, he is unable to bring himself to recognize that these two statist programs are the root cause of the problem he laments — homelessness — and that the solution to homelessness, especially in Seattle, lies in simply repealing the city’s zoning laws and abolishing the national, state, and local minimum-wage laws.

What is zoning? It is a government program that consists of mandatory rules, regulations, and laws that prevents or inhibits low-income housing from being built within a community. It obviously doesn’t occur to Sanders that builders cannot build low-cost housing for the poor in Seattle when zoning laws prohibit them from doing so.

The situation is aggravated by the fact that the poor are locked out of the labor market by the government’s mandatory minimum wage. Suppose, for example, that a homeless man is willing to work for $5 an hour and that an employer is willing to hire him at that price. They can’t make the deal because the law makes it illegal for them to enter into that consensual transaction.

The progressive says, “We are just trying to protect the poor from being exploited.” But that’s ridiculous because a person’s whose labor is not valued by employers at the mandatory minimum isn’t going to be hired at all. He goes unemployed, permanently. The minimum wage law is the reason why there has been a chronic, permanent unemployment rate of 30-40 percent among black teenagers for years. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, an unemployed person is prevented from earning the money he needs for a down payment on those expensive single-family homes that Seattle’s zoning laws mandate. Duh!

I grew up in Laredo, Texas, which the Census Bureau in the 1950s labeled the poorest city in the United States. Laredo did not have zoning. We had a family friend who was a builder. His specialty? Building low-income housing for the poor. He once explained to me that he would travel into Mexico (Laredo is situated on the border) and purchase low-cost building supplies, which enabled him to build low-priced housing that served poor people. His places were always super-clean, super-nice, super-maintained, and super-sold out.

Was my friend doing this out of a sense of altruism and love for the poor? On the contrary. He was doing it to make money. He was the classic example of what people on the left call a no-good, capitalist, profit-seeking, bourgeois swine. And my friend was a wealthy man because poor people loved his housing.

Among the best aspects of my friend’s low-cost housing was that residents weren’t prohibited from making too much money, as people are who live in the federal government’s public housing projects, another favorite program among statists, one that is called into existence to address the homelessness that comes with zoning laws and minimum-wage laws.

Oh, maybe I should mention something that might interest Sanders: There was never a homelessness problem in Laredo. Lots of poverty, yes. But never a homeless problem, like the one that exists in Seattle, with its statist programs of massive zoning and minimum-wage laws.

Let me conclude this article by stating that I plan to send it to Eli Sanders. I’m curious as to whether he would like to write a follow-up piece addressing the actual two main libertarian positions to end homelessness in Seattle: Repeal the city’s zoning laws and all minimum-wage laws. Don’t hold your breath. It’s easier for leftists to attack straw men than to confront the consequences of their favorite statist programs.

Originally published by the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Miracle Baby Who Should Be Dead Is Officially All Grown Up and off to College

When a baby is born prematurely, the baby’s future is checkered with some pretty serious, oftentimes scary, question marks.

How long will this child survive? What long-term difficulties will this child struggle with as she develops?

Shannon Buck, an 18-year-old from England, is bringing hope to premature babies and their families worldwide as she prepares to leave for college, with a bright future ahead.

Shannon was born 13 weeks early and weighed only 2 pounds, 2 ounces at birth. She suffered a collapsed lung, lost more than a pound, and was given a grim prognosis.

If she did survive, doctors predicted Shannon’s life would be short, and fraught with hardship and disability.

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Every premature baby’s story is different, and some certainly do end up with developmental delays or disabilities that can be managed at the child’s own pace.

But Shannon’s mother, Lisa Buck, wants families to know that babies born prematurely are special — oftentimes having a deep understanding of determination and tenacity.

“Looking at Shannon now, it is difficult to believe she was once so tiny and poorly,” Buck told the Lancashire Post. “She is the tallest out of all my girls at 5 feet, 7 inches and she has size seven or eight feet!”

Shannon, who has always loved literature, is moving to Oxford in September to study publishing media at Oxford Brookes University.

“Shannon has always excelled at reading and writing and is obsessed with books,” Buck said. “She always knew she wanted to do something in this field and is excited about going to university to study publishing.”

“We are so proud of Shannon,” Buck said. “When she had such a shaky start in life, we certainly didn’t think she would do as well as she has done.”

Buck hopes her daughter’s story will serve as a source of hope to families who have been given a grim prognosis for their premature baby.

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“I want to reassure any parents who have a baby born prematurely that things can get better despite the prognosis and in Shannon’s case, being born premature has not had any lasting effects on her life,” Buck said.

Buck credits some of Shannon’s greatest character traits to her premature birth.

“Shannon just takes everything in her stride and is very independent,” Buck explained. “I think that has a lot to do with being premature.”

“Premature babies have a lot of determination and grit and are very feisty,” she said.

Shannon knows that not all premature babies have such a successful outcome, and expressed heartfelt thanks for the medical team that surrounded her during those early months.

“I’m very excited to start the next chapter of my life later this month,” Shannon said.

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Bad Blood: Judge Kavanaugh’s Mother Foreclosed on Far Left Accuser’s Parents’ Home

Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are working overtime to delay Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

On Thursday, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) referred a mysterious letter about Kavanaugh to the FBI.
Feinstein had been holding on to the letter since earlier this year.

It turns out the woman who sent the letter to Democrat lawmakers – Christine Blasey – is a far-left activist.

Independent journalist Mike Cernovich says Christine Blasey is a far-left activist who spent all weekend deleting her social media accounts.

The only other witness to the alleged attack said it never happened and the allegations are “absolutely nuts.”

On Monday morning Judge Brett Kavanaugh responded to the allegations.
Kavanaugh refuted the 36-year-old claims by the far left activist.

And now this…
Judge Kavanaugh’s mother foreclosed on Christine Blasey Ford’s parents’ home.

Go to the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Criteria page: http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/

In the “Case Number” search column, type 156006V and click “Get Case.”