Read the New York Times carefully enough and it's practically a textbook of free-market economic principles. Yesterday it was explaining how unintended consequences and perverse incentives in health insurance and drug treatment regulation are contributing to an opioid epidemic. Today the newspaper explains why housing prices are soaring in Washington, D.C.:
growing demand has not been matched with a supply of new homes. A combination of zoning rules and height restrictions in the city limit the developers.
You don't have to be a free market ideologue like the editor of FutureOfCapitalism to appreciate the significance of this point. Paul Krugman (here, here, and here), Eduardo Porter (here), and Lawrence Summers (here) have also been saying this. If they eased the height restrictions and the zoning rules, more people could afford to live there.
