“Intellectually vapid.”
“Breathtakingly obtuse.”
“A public policy disaster.”
“No understanding of how government interventionism damages markets.”
If a local newspaper editorial extolling the virtues of taxpayers stepping in to fund the conversion of vacant downtown Pittsburgh office space into residential units were a movie, those would be just a smattering of the critics’ panning reviews.
The very lengthy editorial proclaims that “the foundation” of returning vibrancy to a Downtown besieged by a stubbornly high vacancy rate — and, now, lower property assessment valuations as a result — “will be converting emptying office building to residential properties.”
“Achieving that goal, however, will require a coordinated approach to subsidizing economic development from all levels of government and their partners in the corporate and foundation communities,” the editorial continues. “Reviving Downtown is in everyone’s interests. But it’s unclear whether Pittsburgh has the leadership to make it happen.”
The editorial even, and most audaciously, laments that other government jurisdictions are offering greater taxpayer “incentives” to supposedly solve similar problems. Apparently, Pittsburgh should up its game and jump off an even higher cliff, is that it?
Wow, what a warped view of “leadership.”
This entreaty is not unlike the clown show that worked so assiduously in the 1990s to promote the propaganda that was the “Regional Renaissance Initiative” – the “Stadiums Tax,” by any other name — but also an effort to give unelected and unaccountable officials taxing power under the perverse guise of taxing our way to prosperity.
The editorial goes on to concede that reaching this latest version of government-commanded economic Nirvana “is expensive.”
“(I)ndeed, [it is] cost-prohibitive for developers, especially given high interest rates and rising construction costs. It might feel unseemly for a cash-strapped city (and county and school district) to subsidize Downtown office-to-residential conversions, but developers will only develop if they can make the math work.”
Not only “unseemly” but wholly anathema to the corrective actions available through the free market.
When the marketplace sends such “cost-prohibitive” signals, that is not government’s cue to intervene as some kind of beneficent Leviathan “to the rescue.” It is, however, the opportunity to recognize there are market-based solutions to this challenge, as this scrivener recently detailed:
As The Wall Street Journal noted, investors who have been sitting on piles of cash now are starting to scoop up such distressed properties nationwide. Pittsburgh should be no different.
But as surely as the swallows return to Capistrano and buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio, interventionist government is filled to the brim with the hubris that it must command the marketplace to “save” it. The stripes on these tigers never change, do they?
Add onerous regulations on top of that hubris and it’s easy to see how government, instead of facilitating market-based solutions, works overtime to undermine them.
Government mandating that any such efforts include a not insignificant bolus of “affordable housing” that only makes housing less affordable for everyone else is one of myriad examples.
The local editorial goes on to conclude that its “proposals are about clearing the initial financial hurdles to a reimagined Downtown.”
“More permanent residents would enhance the market for everyday amenities that would, in turn, make living in or near Downtown more attractive. It’s the kind of creative vision for Pittsburgh’s future the city needs, because the Golden Triangle of the 1960s — or even the 2010s — is never coming back.”
No, it’s not. But neither is government-commanded taxpayer-subsidized suicide remotely any kind of “solution.” Whatever happened to the new baseball and football stadiums shoved down our throats being the surefire road to Pittsburgh’s latest “renaissance”?
Or the new convention center?
Or the new hockey arena?
Or the North Shore Connector?
Oh, just wait, the new Pittsburgh International Airport terminal will do the trick, right?
It’s the same old garbage in with the same old garbage out.
This local editorial’s imploring government to rob taxpayers, in one form or another, directly or indirectly, to “save” us all reminds us of the “need-to-prime-the-pump” philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
History shows that FDR’s pump-priming only extended the Great Depression. And Pittsburgh’s continual misguided exercise in taxpayer-financed pump-priming has resulted in exactly the same kind of thing – a Potemkin village with a stagnant population and steadfast weak job growth with the irresponsible pols and other do-gooders patting themselves on the back as they snap their braces for a job well done.
How sad that the local editorial referenced herein could be so bereft of any intellectual rigor or practicality. But that’s what has passed for critical thinking skills for scores of years ‘round these parts.
Talk about a vast wasteland.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
