From The Cuture Of Capitalism: ‘Bribery At The Buildings Dept.-Again

Regulatory capture so serious it’s rife with corruption:

‘The corruption is, along with the regulation, a contributing factor in New York City’s sky-high housing costs. Mayor de Blasio seems to want to deal with those costs by subsidizing or forcing developers to build “affordable” housing, but an alternative approach would be to eliminate the bureaucracy that makes the housing so expensive to construct.’

Related On This Site: Big cities, especially New York, tend to over-regulate business, you can hope for efficient corruption: Richard Epstein At Defining Ideas: ‘City Planners Run Amok’…Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas: ‘California’s Kafkaesque Rent Control Laws’…Josh Barro At Business Insider: ‘Dear New Yorkers: Here’s Why Your Rent Is So Ridiculously High’

Megan McArdle at Bloomberg:  ‘Up, Literally:’

In D.C, they stop many condo developers before they can start:

‘What is a pop-up, you ask? Well, in a city where lots are small and expensive, the idea is that you take a 100-year-old row house, rip off the roof and put another level on the house. Usually, this is followed by the developer dividing the place into condos, because putting on a pop-up costs well over $100,000, and developers are the folks with the ready cash to do it. Having done so, they want to make as much money as possible, so they split the house into two units that will each fetch more than a single large place.’

Repost-Megan McArdle At The Daily Beast: ‘America’s New Mandarins’…Megan McArdle At Bloomberg: ‘Piketty’s Tax Hikes Won’t Help The Middle-Class’