[epistasis]

This applies with spherical cow-like assumptions for commodities.

Housing and land require further analysis due to inelastic supply of land, and huge restrictions on construction, both for political and safety reasons.

The biggest determinant of supply of housing is not the ability to charge more for it, but all the other challenges around building.

[thinkharderdev]

The supply of land is (mostly) fixed but the relationship between land and housing units is not. You can build row houses or multi-story apartment buildings instead of single-family homes, so the supply of land is almost never the binding constraint. What is a major constraint is various restrictions on building additional housing stock (and particularly building higher density housing stock) but that is a malleable constraint. Given that constraint maybe price controls on housing aren't so bad but still having an equilibrium where there is dramatically more demand for housing than supply is bad. Either you get sky-high prices or you get rationing through other means (you can only get a rent controlled apartment if you have connections or just get lucky).

[imtringued]

That's an argument for (land) taxation, not direct control of prices.

Here is an idea: Measure average rent per sqft. Put a 20% tax on rent above the average and use it to subsidize low income households. That way you tax wealthy tenants and subsidize poor tenants.

[epistasis]

Yes, I agree on all this. But rent control is about price changes on existing houses, not on new construction, at least in the US.

So it's not a "price control" as much as it is a control on rentierism, on existing rentiers taking unearned profits without working.

[da_big_ghey]

Land is not some large problem in Sweden, relatively it is a not dense country and can fit more people if needing. Better to say that demand for housing in urban areas is very inelastic. You are right that there are problems with building being slow and expensive but removing rent control make the paying off time for an investment shorter, more attractive to build houseing.

[kwhitefoot]

There really isn't a lack of land in Sweden. The population is only 10 million in a country considerably larger than the UK. Mean population density is 25 per km2, UK is 270 per km2.

What there is is a lack of accommodation where people want to live.

Ultimately people need to be persuaded or given a good reason to live elsewhere.