• CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The argument isn’t that this payment won’t help people in the short term, it will. The problem is that if you have an extra 25k to spend and it’s given to every first time buyer, they’ll just shop in a 25k higher price range. And if the sellers know this, they’ll adjust the market for what everyone can afford now.

    This is basic economics, you lower the quantity of available housing by allowing more people to afford it and the price will go up. There’s a reason our solution to every affordability problem works this way and breaks things. For student loans for instance, sure we can pay them off for you, but does that bring down the cost? No. It just means the government pays universities. Same thing here, the government is just letting you use your taxes to give to a real estate agent instead of addressing housing costs.