[imgabe]

What I'm saying is, raising the minimum wage does not make market forces go away. It just changes the input to those forces. Look at San Francisco. Even people who earn far, far above minimum wage have a hard time affording housing there. The existence of high incomes didn't magically make market forces go away.

The only way a market goes away is if the supply of something is so high that it is effectively worthless, because everyone can freely access all they could ever want. For instance, there is no market for breathable air. We can all breathe as much air as we want without impacting the ability of anyone else to do so. Hence, there is no reason for anyone to try to sell air to anyone else (for now, anyway...).

[mlevental]

i'm not clueless - i'm very familiar with supply/demand economics. my point is simply that saying we should raise housing supply is very convenient when none of us are real estate developers (and the developers aren't saying that). are you going to quit your job and start developing real estate at cost? no. am i? no. are the policy makers going to do it? no. so it's a completely feckless remark (increase housing supply).

my ultimate point is therefore that you have almost no other policy levers than the minimum wage.