Speaker 1: Kamala Harris is finally giving some actual policy proposals, and
Speaker 1: they're not very good, and she's reiterating a bunch of
Speaker 1: sort of these Democrat talking points that I always find
Speaker 1: so silly when it comes to this is just the
Speaker 1: whole Biden approach to inflation. So we've had the Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris honeymoon. It seems to be receding. The polling seems
Speaker 1: to be stabilizing again into what I think everyone expected.
Speaker 1: This is a very close, very tight race. Poles have
Speaker 1: sort of corrected themselves. And while poles had been showing
Speaker 1: Harris leading in all these swing states and Harris leading
Speaker 1: nationally by maybe two or three points, now things are
Speaker 1: sort of correcting and it's nationally looking more like a
Speaker 1: dead heat. And if it's a genuine dead heat, just
Speaker 1: because of the sort of inefficient spread of the Democrat
Speaker 1: elect across the states, it's a if it winds up being,
Speaker 1: you know, forty eight percent to forty eight percent, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump usually winds up winning in that case, just because basically,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump Democrats have such a large share of the
Speaker 1: vote in large in California basically that that skews the
Speaker 1: percentages such that Trump is more likely to win the
Speaker 1: electoral College in the event of a tied race from
Speaker 1: a popular vote perspective. So anyway, it looks like things
Speaker 1: are sort of stabilizing for Trump, and Democrats have had
Speaker 1: some bad press, a lot of bad press about Tim Walls,
Speaker 1: and Harris is finally having to actually give some policy proposals.
Speaker 1: But here's her problem is that she can't really escape
Speaker 1: the fact that she is the current sitting vice president.
Speaker 1: And you know when she says stuff like we're going
Speaker 1: to tackle inflation on day one, well it's day He's
Speaker 1: been the vice president for three and a half years.
Speaker 1: It is she could introduce these things tomorrow. What's to
Speaker 1: stop her. She could have introduced these things two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: She has to sort of engage with the fact that
Speaker 1: she is, in fact the current vice president. They're trying
Speaker 1: to sort of recreate this notion that she isn't the
Speaker 1: incumbent who should be responsible for the economic malaise in
Speaker 1: which the country finds itself. Now, one of the first
Speaker 1: things she is doing is going after high prices of groceries,
Speaker 1: and she is reiterating the same thing that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: has reiterated over the course of the last three and
Speaker 1: a half years, when gas prices shot up, Biden tried
Speaker 1: to claim, and he got a bunch of state attorneys
Speaker 1: general to acclaim, Oh, this is this is the fault
Speaker 1: of evil gas companies just gouging us at the pump.
Speaker 1: That's what's responsible. It's these companies that own gas stations
Speaker 1: that are gouging you at the pump. That's why our
Speaker 1: price of gas is going up without sort of acknowledging. Well, no,
Speaker 1: there are genuine economic factors that are leading to the
Speaker 1: cost of oil skyrocketing. Okay, it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: California liberals do this all the time, where they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: these oil companies are gouging us, wires are or why
Speaker 1: is our gas price so much more expensive here in California.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, this is not a mystery. California imposes
Speaker 1: tons of specific state taxes on gasoline. California has all
Speaker 1: kinds of mandates for the specific California mix of gasoline
Speaker 1: that we have to get at our pumps to comply
Speaker 1: with California state emissions regulations, which are a different mix
Speaker 1: than what you're pumping into your car in Texas or Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Or Nevada or something. So that requires gas companies to
Speaker 1: set up separate refinery set ups a separate refinery system
Speaker 1: just for California. So that adds on lots of additional cost.
Speaker 1: Like California having the most expensive gas in the nation
Speaker 1: is not a kuinkie dink. It's the result of a
Speaker 1: bunch of very conscious, deliberate policy choices California has made
Speaker 1: over the course of decades. It's not like gas companies
Speaker 1: are only evil price gouging monsters in California, but not
Speaker 1: in Nevada, where all of a sudden you cross the
Speaker 1: border and magically the gas is eighty cents a gallon
Speaker 1: cheaper whatever. It is a dollar a gallon cheaper. No,
Speaker 1: it's a dollar a gallon, eighty cents a gallon whatever,
Speaker 1: more expensive here for reasons, for very distinct, concrete reasons.
Speaker 1: So what Kamala Harris is trying to say is, ah,
Speaker 1: the reason, oh, inflation is so bad because because these
Speaker 1: evil supermarket chains are price gouging you. That's what's happening.
Speaker 1: Evil supermarket chains are price gouging. Now, that is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Supermarkets are not price gouging us. Okay, supermarkets in America
Speaker 1: operate on an extremely narrow profit margin. Supermarkets operate on
Speaker 1: a profit margin industry wide of about one point six percent.
Speaker 1: That's a really narrow profit margin. Right, So when a
Speaker 1: supermarket chain is increasing its prices on food, that's not
Speaker 1: price gouging. Okay, Look, if supermarket chains had a you know,
Speaker 1: five or a ten percent profit margin, okay, maybe we
Speaker 1: can talk. Maybe we can talk about whether or not
Speaker 1: they're price caudging it or if certain rest supermarket chains
Speaker 1: we're doing So that's fine. But Harris is trying to
Speaker 1: promote this idea, and she's promoting it along with the
Speaker 1: idea of price controls. Price controls for food, so putting
Speaker 1: artificial caps on food costs in ways that putting artificial
Speaker 1: caps on the costs of different kinds of food, so
Speaker 1: that the cost of food cannot fluctuate freely in response
Speaker 1: to market trends, that grocery stores supermarkets cannot price food
Speaker 1: at a way that is reflective of the market. That
Speaker 1: basically the government will come in and impose a top
Speaker 1: limit on how much you can charge for certain kinds
Speaker 1: of items. Now, I am not never have been a
Speaker 1: total laissez fair economic thinker. I don't know that the
Speaker 1: invisible hand of the market always results in the best outcome.
Speaker 1: I'm not you know, I don't believe that is true.
Speaker 1: I think that some government regulation of the economy is okay.
Speaker 1: Everyone kind of thinks that. Okay. If you think things
Speaker 1: like monopolies are things that should be broken up, you know,
Speaker 1: then you don't believe in a purely invisible hand of
Speaker 1: the market controlling everything. And we've very widely accepted a left,
Speaker 1: right and center in America that things like monopolies and
Speaker 1: anti competitive activity are things that should be resistant. But
Speaker 1: price controls are such a terrible idea. Okay, again, you've
Speaker 1: got supermarkets are operating on a one point six percent
Speaker 1: profit margin. Let's take any individual item, all right, Let's
Speaker 1: take mayonnaise. All right. We'll just use mayonnaise as an example.
Speaker 1: Let's say mayonnaise costs. The cost to the supermarket to
Speaker 1: buy the mayonnaise from the suppliers from the mayonnaise company
Speaker 1: is two dollars a jar, and they want to sell
Speaker 1: it for two dollars and twenty cents. If the government
Speaker 1: tells the supermarket chain, you can only sell your mayonnaise
Speaker 1: at two dollars a jar, there's two dollars a jar
Speaker 1: price control limit on mayonnaise. Well, the supermarket will then
Speaker 1: look at the mayonnaise say well, we have to spend
Speaker 1: two dollars just to get the mayonnaise. If we are
Speaker 1: then selling the mayonnaise for two dollars, we're making zero money.
Speaker 1: In fact, we're probably losing money. We're losing money once
Speaker 1: you account for the cost of overhead employees, air conditioning,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So we will lose money on every jar
Speaker 1: of mayonnaise we sell. What is the supermarket gonna do.
Speaker 1: They're gonna just stop selling mayonnaise, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: obviously what's gonna happen. So when you impose a price control,
Speaker 1: what tends to happen is not that the company just
Speaker 1: sort of statically says.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, okay, I guess that's the price control I
Speaker 2: will impose. I will sell the thing at that price
Speaker 2: and continue to have the same supply of this product
Speaker 2: available to consumers, even though every single jar of mayonnaise
Speaker 2: they buy, I'm losing money.
Speaker 1: No, supermarkets don't do that. They can't do that. If
Speaker 1: they keep doing that with product after product after product,
Speaker 1: their profit margin will go from one point six percent,
Speaker 1: which it is right now, to something like negative one
Speaker 1: point six percent. They will start losing money. They will
Speaker 1: start losing money and then eventually have to do things
Speaker 1: like cut costs, fire employees, shut down grocery stores. Can't
Speaker 1: they just fire their big wig executives. Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess they could do that too, But it's just not
Speaker 1: a sustainable It's inherently not a sustainable thing to just
Speaker 1: mandate an artificial some kind of artificial price control that
Speaker 1: is not reflective of the economic reality of the product
Speaker 1: that you're wanting people to sell. We want grocery stores
Speaker 1: to sell bread, meat, poultry, dairy. Okay, this is not
Speaker 1: you know, we're not talking here about you know, birthday
Speaker 1: cakes or floral arrangements. We're talking about food. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a basic staple, basic necessary products that people have
Speaker 1: to get. Okay, the cost of all of those things
Speaker 1: is going up. Bread, even just bread, like loads of
Speaker 1: sandwich bread. My wife and I have noticed how crazily
Speaker 1: more expensive bread is, bread, milk, eggs, meat, The cost
Speaker 1: of meat nowadays, even just to get like ground beef,
Speaker 1: it's absurdly expensive, absurdly more expensive than it was three
Speaker 1: years ago to an extent that it's unavoidable. But some
Speaker 1: kind of price control is not going to be the answer.
Speaker 1: Some kind of price control you're going to force eventually.
Speaker 1: What price controls do? Government imposed price controls that aren't
Speaker 1: reflective of where the market is. Usually these market realities
Speaker 1: are reflective of something real. If you accept this fiction
Speaker 1: that Harris is perpetrating or perpetuating rather that people are
Speaker 1: spending more at the grocery stores because evil Costco and
Speaker 1: Evil Walmart and evil Save Martin, Evil Vaughans and evil
Speaker 1: you know, Kroger, whatever, that they're all price gouging you.
Speaker 1: If you accept that fiction, then sure price controls make sense.
Speaker 1: But if you live in reality and see that their
Speaker 1: profit margins are very narrow and the reason they're increasing
Speaker 1: their price has to do with factors outside of their control. Inflation,
Speaker 1: too much money in the economy, the purchasing power of
Speaker 1: your money is devalued. And I guess the Harris team
Speaker 1: is just trying to continue on with this idea. Oh,
Speaker 1: we've stopped it. We've stopped aggressive inflation. Inflation's only going
Speaker 1: up by two percent each year. Okay, it went up
Speaker 1: though way more than that. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and we're still suffering the ill effects of it. It's
Speaker 1: like saying I've got my weight under control, because you know,
Speaker 1: in two thousand, I gained two pounds. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: though I gained a pounds, and in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: I gained another eight pounds. But twenty twenty three I
Speaker 1: only gained two pounds, and twenty twenty four I only
Speaker 1: gained two pounds. Yeah, I'm still way too fat. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm still put on what is that fifteen to sixteen
Speaker 1: pounds over the last four years. I'm not as healthy
Speaker 1: as I was. I'm still fat. We're not reversing inflation.
Speaker 1: We're not making those prices go down. It's gonna take
Speaker 1: a long time to smooth this out, but government enforced
Speaker 1: price controls are not gonna be the answer here. When
Speaker 1: we return, we'll talk about a couple of other insane
Speaker 1: economic ideas from the Harris Camp subsidizing home purchasing and
Speaker 1: subsidizing demand rather than supply. That is next on the
Speaker 1: John Girardi Show. One of the things that's real characteristic
Speaker 1: of the Democrat's economic policy, and we see it reflected
Speaker 1: in a recent proposal by Kamala Harris. She's talking about
Speaker 1: giving new home buyers twenty five thousand dollars for the
Speaker 1: purchase of a new home, and this seems to be
Speaker 1: directly in response to critiques from JD. Vance, who, by
Speaker 1: the way, has been absolutely killing it. And I've been
Speaker 1: really enjoying his performance, as you know, the vice presidential
Speaker 1: candidate over the last several weeks. He's been incredibly active,
Speaker 1: incredibly aggressive. He's been the best surrogate Trump has had
Speaker 1: over the last few weeks or so. After a little
Speaker 1: bit of a rough start when he was introduced, I
Speaker 1: think he's actually shown himself to be a real asset
Speaker 1: to President Trump. Vance has been continually critiquing how difficult
Speaker 1: it is to purchase a home for young first time
Speaker 1: home buyers and making the argument that the Biden Harris
Speaker 1: policies have made it harder, that inflation has made it harder.
Speaker 1: Increasing home prices have been driven by lots of economic
Speaker 1: decisions made by the Biden Harris team. Now, I would
Speaker 1: probably say he is likely painting a slightly overly simplistic
Speaker 1: picture of this. I think there have been a lot
Speaker 1: of economic forces over the last thirty years that have
Speaker 1: conspired to make new home purchasing for millennials and Gen
Speaker 1: Z incredibly difficult, if not outright impossible, certainly much more
Speaker 1: difficult than it was for Baby Boomers when they were
Speaker 1: purchasing their homes. But as far as even as far
Speaker 1: as not even talking about inflation adjusted dollars, well, yes,
Speaker 1: actually talking about inflation adjusted dollars. The cost of a
Speaker 1: new home for Baby boomers purchasing homes in the seventies
Speaker 1: was much cheaper in real dollars of inflation adjusted dollars
Speaker 1: than it is for young people today. So Harris is
Speaker 1: feeling the need to respond to this critique from Vance,
Speaker 1: and she does this classic liberal reaction, which is, well,
Speaker 1: we can't. We're not gonna fix anything that's wrong on
Speaker 1: the supply side. We're just gonna subsidize demand. Subsidizing demand
Speaker 1: the ultimate liberal answer to everything. We're not going to
Speaker 1: make the cost of goods go down. We're gonna give
Speaker 1: you extra money, you know, like like the cod during COVID. No. No,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna let you actually work. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: give you all one thousand dollars. You know, We're not
Speaker 1: gonna help you actually earn more. No, we're just gonna
Speaker 1: give you a handout. We're not gonna fix the problem
Speaker 1: on the supply side. We're not gonna do stuff to
Speaker 1: make the real dollar value cost of home of homes
Speaker 1: go down, make it easier somehow to purchase homes by
Speaker 1: whether it's helping you have more earning power or having
Speaker 1: the actual costs of homes go down. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. We're gonna subsidize the demand instead. We're not
Speaker 1: going to fix the supply. We're not gonna build more homes.
Speaker 1: We're not going to fix the supply side of it.
Speaker 1: We're going to subsidize the demand. We'll give you a
Speaker 1: handout to pay for demand. And that's the Democrat recipe
Speaker 1: for all kinds of things. In California, we have all
Speaker 1: these homeless people. We cannot build housing for them. It's
Speaker 1: way too expensive because California makes too expensive. Okay, do
Speaker 1: we amend our laws to make that less expensive. Nope,
Speaker 1: we just subsidize the demand. We'll just give you a
Speaker 1: bunch of government handouts for building quote certified California low
Speaker 1: income housing. You know, like we're we're trying to build
Speaker 1: that here in Fresno. We've got some big project that's
Speaker 1: going up near Blackstone and Shaw for a big low
Speaker 1: income housing unit. Each one of the units is going
Speaker 1: to cost four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars per
Speaker 1: unit to build. That's not low income housing. That's that's
Speaker 1: like my house costs. That probably costs around there. We
Speaker 1: bought it for less than that, but the probably that's
Speaker 1: what my house costs, you know, a nice decently sized
Speaker 1: house in Clovis. You know, we've heard stories about, like
Speaker 1: I think Riverside was building a low income housing unit
Speaker 1: cost them a million dollars per unit. And the only
Speaker 1: reason to developers can build stuff like that is because
Speaker 1: California is given them a subsidized, you know, taxpayer subsidized
Speaker 1: handout to build it. So we're not going to fix
Speaker 1: the supply side of it. We're just going to subsidize
Speaker 1: the demand. So Harris is saying, Okay, oh, we got
Speaker 1: a program for first time home buyer. We've got a
Speaker 1: program for home buyers. We'll give everyone twenty five grand,
Speaker 1: twenty five grand to buy their home. Without thinking through
Speaker 1: the idea, a twenty five thousand dollars subsidy for first
Speaker 1: time home buyers without thinking through, Hey, don't you think
Speaker 1: that maybe if you're giving a home buyer twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for a purchase of a home, that that's
Speaker 1: just going to lead to home sellers just pricing these
Speaker 1: homes more and more expensive, maybe about twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars more expensive. If the seller no ohs that the
Speaker 1: buyer has twenty five thousand in effectively free money coming
Speaker 1: to him or her, why wouldn't they just jack up
Speaker 1: the price by that much. This is what colleges and
Speaker 1: universities have done for years. Again, another classic example of
Speaker 1: Democrats subsidizing the demand rather than fixing the supply. Here's
Speaker 1: colleges and universities with high tuition costs. The democrats solution is, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just give free money. We'll just give out more
Speaker 1: and more and more funny money student loans to more
Speaker 1: and more students, and we'll just continue to make it available.
Speaker 1: And then the colleges and universities look at the federal
Speaker 1: government doing this and said, okay, well will they give
Speaker 1: out if we set our tuition at fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year? Will the federal government give them loans enough
Speaker 1: to cover that cost? Yes, we will if we set
Speaker 1: our tuition cost at sixty thousand dollars a year, Will
Speaker 1: the federal government, you know, will the federal government fund
Speaker 1: student loans to account for a sixty thousand dollars per
Speaker 1: year tuition. Of course we will. Seventy thousand, of course
Speaker 1: we will. Eighty thousand, of course we will. That's why
Speaker 1: college tuition has gone up so much, because the federal
Speaker 1: government is feeding the demand, subsidizing the demand, not doing
Speaker 1: anything to address the supply side, not doing anything to
Speaker 1: have colleges and universities charge less for tuition, not addressing
Speaker 1: that problem. So it's a classic example. Harris is just
Speaker 1: doing example after example after example of either artificially setting
Speaker 1: price controls on the supply in ways that aren't addressing
Speaker 1: the actual economic reality, or just subsidizing the demand. It's
Speaker 1: completely inept economically, and I think it's just pandering. When
Speaker 1: we return more on the different factors that are making
Speaker 1: housing costs go up and why a twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars handout is not going to fix that next on
Speaker 1: the John Girardi Show. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons why housing costs have gone up. Kamala Harris is
Speaker 1: trying to respond to jd Vance's critiques of this by
Speaker 1: talking about, well, here's a twenty five thousand dollars handout
Speaker 1: to new home buyers without thinking through, hey, don't you
Speaker 1: think home sellers are just going to price things about
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars more expensive? Now? I saw kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting post by this author, Anthony Eaeselin, whom
Speaker 1: I like to read quite a bit, and he has
Speaker 1: an interesting little post about why are housing prices more?
Speaker 1: And he gives a lot of different reasons, and I
Speaker 1: thought a lot of them were interesting, and it's tough
Speaker 1: for us to think about. And I think the problem
Speaker 1: is so much of our public policy is so hyper
Speaker 1: focused on just a few different factors and sees only
Speaker 1: a few different solutions. Okay, well, we can't address you know,
Speaker 1: various kinds of environmental law policy in California because that's
Speaker 1: kind of a sacred cow that we don't want to touch.
Speaker 1: So you know, if we do, then the Sierra Club
Speaker 1: will get mad, and big Democrat donors who fund the
Speaker 1: Zerra Club will get mad. So so we won't address that.
Speaker 1: So we'll just do something that we'll just feed the demand. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just give more you know subsidies for first time
Speaker 1: home buyers without realizing giving more subsidies to first time
Speaker 1: home buyers is just feeding the beast. That's just going
Speaker 1: to prompt people to price it up more and more
Speaker 1: and more because they know that they've got this supply
Speaker 1: of ready money. Now, here's a lot of the different
Speaker 1: factors for why people want bigger houses, why housing is
Speaker 1: so expensive. So the first is shifting trends in American
Speaker 1: social life. There's been a shift over the last thirty
Speaker 1: years of people wanting bigger, wanting houses that are bigger
Speaker 1: per person, okay, wanting a bedroom for every kid, wanting
Speaker 1: lots of bathrooms. Household sizes, though, are smaller, so you
Speaker 1: have more buyers for roughly the same population. Maybe forty
Speaker 1: years ago you had bigger family sizes, the population didn't
Speaker 1: grow that much, but the number of buyers grew tremendously,
Speaker 1: So the number of households increased, but the total population
Speaker 1: didn't increase that much. The number of buyers just increased
Speaker 1: disproportionately to the population as a whole. So you have
Speaker 1: more buyers for roughly the same amount of people, so
Speaker 1: you need more houses. So that's putting a strain on
Speaker 1: the need for more houses, more demand cost goes up.
Speaker 1: Related to that, you have more single people. You have
Speaker 1: a lot more unmarried adults today. Later and later and
Speaker 1: later on in life, people are getting married later. People
Speaker 1: are staying single at higher percentages than they were thirty
Speaker 1: years ago. More single people equals more households, more separate households. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've got you know, two thirty year old single people
Speaker 1: as opposed to a married couple who are both aged thirty. Well,
Speaker 1: the married couple age thirty would buy one house, and
Speaker 1: the two single thirty year olds they're buying two houses.
Speaker 1: Zoning laws. Zoning laws prevent a natural and healthy variety
Speaker 1: of houses and businesses to occupy a neighborhood. So all
Speaker 1: kinds of zoning regulations within American municipalities restrict the ability
Speaker 1: to build multi unit dwellings over here. That's the great
Speaker 1: bugaboo of nimbiism, not in my backyardism. We don't want
Speaker 1: to have a mixture of businesses and housing. The idea
Speaker 1: of building it's rare to see, you know, apartment complexes
Speaker 1: built on top of storefronts anymore. So we have zoning
Speaker 1: that really restricts the kinds of building we can do.
Speaker 1: It's like, Nope, this is commercial over here and this
Speaker 1: is residential over here. No, it can't be mixed commercial residential,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Social dysfunction. Social dysfunction causes generally responsible people
Speaker 1: to flee from the generally irresponsible, which makes everything worse,
Speaker 1: not just different neighborhoods, but separating themselves on the basis
Speaker 1: of school districts, et cetera. School districts play a huge
Speaker 1: part in this. So the distinctly American set up for
Speaker 1: how our public schools work. And it's so funny to
Speaker 1: me how by the way, liberals who crow about the
Speaker 1: importance of public schools and how bad homeschooling is because
Speaker 1: it's abandoning this very important public, civic institution of public schools,
Speaker 1: and they decry sort of the elitism of sending kids
Speaker 1: to private schools or fail are similarly the people most
Speaker 1: opposed to, you know, school choice measures vouchers letting families
Speaker 1: choose which school district to go to, as opposed to Nope,
Speaker 1: you geographically live in this district, you gotta go to
Speaker 1: this district. Sorry, No, if sands or butts, you're locked
Speaker 1: into this geographic location. It's the very same liberals who
Speaker 1: get upset at sort of you know, the north south
Speaker 1: economic divide that we see in Fresno. Why do you
Speaker 1: think there is a north south economic divide? It's largely
Speaker 1: because of this set up, the lack of school choice
Speaker 1: in the Fresno area. The fact that California doesn't have
Speaker 1: school choice options, doesn't have vouchers, doesn't give parents the
Speaker 1: freedom to take a voucher, take their kids education money,
Speaker 1: and use it to go to either a private school
Speaker 1: or a school in Clovis Unified versus a school in
Speaker 1: Presne Unified. That has led to the growing divergence in
Speaker 1: quality between Clovis Unified and Fresney Unified. As far as
Speaker 1: economic outcomes, that is precisely what's fed that beast. So
Speaker 1: these local liberals who get so upset about, you know,
Speaker 1: the North south econ, you know, socioeconomic divide, what do
Speaker 1: you think is fostering that? More than anything? It's public
Speaker 1: school districts. My whole life growing up, all I heard
Speaker 1: on the radio were ads from real estate developers building
Speaker 1: you know, new homes starting oh in the highly acclaimed
Speaker 1: Close Unified school district, the highly acclaimed Clovis Unified School district,
Speaker 1: the highly acclaimed Clothes Unified School District, which it became
Speaker 1: a running joke in our family that yeah, who was
Speaker 1: acclaiming it? Yeah, it was the Builders and Clothes Unified,
Speaker 1: the best of two school districts in Fresno. But again,
Speaker 1: why do we think that was happening. It's because of
Speaker 1: the setup of public school districts. So school districts lead
Speaker 1: to greater economic inequalities and lead to increased prices as
Speaker 1: more and more wealthy people self concentrate in the better
Speaker 1: school district versus the worst school district. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that is leading and that reality of
Speaker 1: you know, whether or not you are in Clovis Unified
Speaker 1: School District makes a big, noticeable, discernible dollar amount difference
Speaker 1: in the cost of a home in the greater Fresno area.
Speaker 1: If you cross the boundary line from President Unified to
Speaker 1: Clovis Unified, that house is going to cost x amount more.
Speaker 1: It just is plain and simple. If we had educational choice,
Speaker 1: if we had educational freedom, where you know, you gave
Speaker 1: the parents the student's education funding from the state and
Speaker 1: told the parents, all right, well take this money wherever
Speaker 1: you want. And I think you could see a smoothing
Speaker 1: of things between Fresno Unified and Clovis Unified. I think
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be such a massive distinction. And I think
Speaker 1: you could see more people buying more houses in central Fresno,
Speaker 1: in South Fresno rather than just all in Clovis or
Speaker 1: in North Fresno. You could see, you know, living within
Speaker 1: the Clovis Unified School district would not be something that
Speaker 1: makes the cost of living there, you know, twenty thirty
Speaker 1: forty fifty thousand dollars more expensive for the price of
Speaker 1: a home than a house than an identical house that's
Speaker 1: you know, one block over and in Fresno Unified. So
Speaker 1: there are so many fact and by the way that
Speaker 1: this is the other aspect with housing, what do we
Speaker 1: see in California. The only things you can see this
Speaker 1: in Fresno. You look around at what kinds of actual
Speaker 1: homebuilding are happening, and it's basically at the two ends
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. You see a lot of multi unit
Speaker 1: like condos, apartments or something that are clearly very high end,
Speaker 1: or you see state subsidized quote lower income housing, registered trademark.
Speaker 1: What you don't see is a lot of new construction
Speaker 1: in the middle you don't see stuff that, hey, here's
Speaker 1: a home that costs two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: that a family of four can afford with you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a median with a household income of maybe around
Speaker 1: you know, ninety thousand dollars per year that you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they could save up and afford a down payment. No,
Speaker 1: we don't have any of that. There's nothing for middle
Speaker 1: class families. Most of the new construction it's either super
Speaker 1: high end stuff or low income housing. Where we get
Speaker 1: into you know, it's going to be Section eight and
Speaker 1: there's subsidies and blah blah blah blah blah. But the
Speaker 1: middle class is just getting completely hollowed out. Why because
Speaker 1: for builders it's way too expensive to build. It's too
Speaker 1: expensive to build if you don't think you're going to
Speaker 1: get either one government subsidy, which you're only going to
Speaker 1: get government subsidies for low income housing registered trademark, or
Speaker 1: if you know you can charge really high rents or
Speaker 1: sell for a lot on the back end. Because why well,
Speaker 1: cost of construction materials has gone up, Risks of environmental
Speaker 1: lawsuits are hanging over you. You have to account for
Speaker 1: that risk zoning issues. Is this that it's really really
Speaker 1: expensive to build, and it's too expensive to build in
Speaker 1: a way that would satisfy a middle class family. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of factors that are leading to
Speaker 1: the cost of homes going up. And you can see
Speaker 1: this is the unseriousness of the Harris campaign to sort
Speaker 1: of say, oh, twenty five thousand dollars for first time
Speaker 1: home buyers. That's not gonna cut it. That's a band
Speaker 1: aid at best. It's a twenty five thousand dollars. Oh so,
Speaker 1: just to make the cost of the home increase by
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand. Again, the Democrat approach to this problem
Speaker 1: is subsidizing the demand. It's not ever anything about fixing
Speaker 1: the supply, looking at the underlying issues with the supply
Speaker 1: and correcting them. When we return, a sad farewell to
Speaker 1: Foster Freeze. The Foster Freeze in Clovis near Old Town.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John Girardi Show. A melancholy happy
Speaker 1: Trails to the Foster's Freeze, located at Clovis Avenue and
Speaker 1: Ninth Street in Clovis. Since the advent of twenty dollars
Speaker 1: per hour minimum wage, several different Foster Freeze locations in
Speaker 1: the San Joaquin Valley have gone out of business. This
Speaker 1: is the third Foster Freeze in the Greater Fresno area
Speaker 1: to have gone out of business. There was another Foster
Speaker 1: Freeze in Lamore that went out of business. This is
Speaker 1: the latest casualty and this one hurts for me. I
Speaker 1: know it hurts from my buddy Steve Darnell. This has
Speaker 1: been kind of an institution in Clovis for decades. It's
Speaker 1: been around for decades and for me just going to
Speaker 1: my church to in Clovis, basically I drive past it
Speaker 1: every single time I go to church, and it was
Speaker 1: always my landmark for Okay, I go down Close Avenue
Speaker 1: and then go to Olph and turn on to Ninth
Speaker 1: Street and then go down ninth Street to Dewitten. There
Speaker 1: I am at church. So it's a really sad thing.
Speaker 1: And I think what's happening is for these kind of
Speaker 1: franchise restaurants like Fosters Freeze, which is not a huge
Speaker 1: national franchise. I think it's kind of a California specific franchise.
Speaker 1: They can't afford a massive, you know, all FRANCHISEE wide
Speaker 1: touch screen system like Taco Bell or McDonald's can support.
Speaker 1: And basically, I think what's happening with these faster restaurants
Speaker 1: is unless you've got enough volume that you can scape by,
Speaker 1: you either fire employees and put in touch screens or
Speaker 1: you go out of business. And that seems more and
Speaker 1: more to be happening. So it's just it's tough. I think,
Speaker 1: between inflation and the twenty dollars an hour minimum wage,
Speaker 1: they just aren't They can't make money, and these businesses
Speaker 1: go out of business. And that's a sad thing. Is
Speaker 1: the twenty dollar an hour minimum wage actually helping people
Speaker 1: that'll do it For John Dirolady Show, see next time
Speaker 1: on Power Talk