The rising cost of housing, higher education, and child care was a thorn in the side of Americans long before Biden, and is worse now. Why do we have these problems, and what is the GOP proposing to do about them?
Housing costs went up dramatically during the pandemic as a result of an increased demand for additional living space. In addition, supply chain problems were an issue, the lack of construction workers slowed down building projects, and local and state land use regulations drove up costs by reducing densities and limiting the amount of land available for development. The issue with higher education is the business model of private universities, which have created large bureaucracies and built resort-like facilities in an attempt to attract wealthy students, while redistributing some of the excess to deserving poor students. With regard to child care, I honestly don’t know why the problem exists; it certainly isn’t high unit labor costs.
Simply throwing money at these problems won’t work. In some cases, deregulation could be a big part of the answer; that falls cleanly into the wheelhouse of the right. The GOP isn’t proposing any solutions to the problems, however; its “solution” is to have faith in Donald Trump, the well-known magician, who will actually make things worse by engaging in culture wars with our universities, deporting construction workers, supporting exclusionary zoning in suburbs, and cutting federal payments to parents.
Let’s hope the GOP’s lack of interest in policy is noted during the campaign, because it matters.