Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
David Limbaugh ·
Nov 1, 2010 at 3:33pm
I just received Zogby International's latest e-mail blast: "Overwhelming Majority of Americans Support Adequate and Affordable Housing for Everyone," and have a few quick questions for the esteemed pollster:
1) What would possess a self-described "independent and nonpartisan" pollster to conduct such a survey, which strikes me as a virtual push poll, mere days before the elections?
2) Would respondents have answered the same way if you told them the possible results of socialist policies designed (erroneously) to achieve that goal (affordable housing for everyone) would include a sub-prime mortgage meltdown and an overall financial collapse?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Very good questions, Mr. Limbaugh. Especially the first. I suspect he'll pick up a hefty fee from some cheesy "advocacy" group who will trumpet the results, however dubious.
Edited on Nov 1, 2010 at 3:53pmAug '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
I would be asking Mr Zogby and his family less delicate questions about who influences him and who he influences over the past years.
We just routinely discount his stuff due to other issues.
Oct '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
I'd also support food for the hungry, houses for the homeless, and less murder and rape. These types of polls are called plant seeding the left wing spin cycle.
Rush frequently berates the media about using polls as if they are news.
Aug '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
It might be interesting to see the wording of the question. For example, I am very much in favor of "affordable housing," but I understand that rent control programs -- and government programs in general -- tend to create housing shortages that result in higher housing costs overall. Add to that the fact that "projects" might be affordable, but one would be hard pressed to call them housing after any length of time.
The key to truly affordable housing is a robust and vibrant marketplace with strong enforcement of contracts.
Jul '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Zogby lost any credibility as an objective pollster when he founded the Arab American Institute.
Jul '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Affordable housing? Just reduce the amount of onerous zoning and environmental regulations in California.
It's similar to the canard of Candidate X is "Shipping jobs overseas" that people fail to understand. It is cheaper for a company to make product X in a country 5,000 miles away by a person who doesn't speak English and ship it here rather than pay the exorbitant overhead costs incurred by a union and negotiate the regulations of the EPA, OSHA, etc. and pay off the local bosses to obtain the correct permits.
Edited on Nov 1, 2010 at 4:58pmJul '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Here's the question: Who paid for the poll?
May '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
I'd be in favor of Affordable Corvettes for Everyone, so long as it didn't make my car insurance rates go up.
I'd be less irked about the housing bubble if I'd bought my house this summer, instead of mid-2008 when there was still a heap of deflating left to go. As it stands, I dearly wish for Barney Frank to lose and for the American electorate to realize "nothing" is not an amount you can pay for "something."
Oct '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Reminds me of the time Katie Couric asked someone (pre-CBS anchor days), "would you be in favor of free health care in exchange for higher taxes?" She asked the question without the slightest sense of irony (or if not irony, whatever it's called), and the person answered in the affirmative without the slightest clue that if you're paying higher taxes for it, it ain't free!!
Similarly, Zogby should've asked whether the respondents favored adequate and affordable housing for everyone "if it meant you had to pay an additional $5,000 in taxes." And then "should the government decide what's adequate and affordable?" And then "should the government decide what's adequate and affordable...for YOU?"
One way to create adequate and affordable housing would be to place people in the homes of people like...Zogby. "Here you go, John, another two people who need adequate and affordable housing under YOUR roof."
Questions like Zogby's and Couric's are asked in an information and intellectual vacuum...which isn't surprising in Couric's case, and maybe shouldn't be, either, in Zogby's.
Jul '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Yeah, but you should have clued us in to the other questions in the poll. It also turns out the vast majority of Americans are in favor of apple pie, frown on stealing candy from children, and think puppies should be treated nicely.
Actually, 2 out of those 3 are illegal in Mayor Bloomberg's New York.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs, as Thomas Sowell tells us. For some reason liberals cannot grasp that simple concept. Probably because the leftist political class has nothing else to offer but "solutions", with themselves in the role of deliverer.
Aug '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Kenneth Johnson Is Right ! Rgds, Rock Ridge City Council
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
David, I have some questions for you: What is your view of open space legislation in the suburbs and rural areas?
From the point of view of government engineering and tinkering with the free market, how is it any different than affordable housing programs?
Oct '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Well naturally everyone is in favour of affordable housing for all, but I noticed the poll didn't ask them any of the questions that necessarily follow that particular political pipe dream:
1. Are you willing to pay more out of your own pocket for these people to live in those houses?
2. Are you willing to let the government build a great big "affordable housing" (slum/project/ghetto) right next to your own neighbourhood?
3. Are you okay with the idea that your children might have to walk through this neighbourhood on the way to school? Share a classroom with those kids?
It seems to me that most people who think the government should provide "affordable" housing for all are also those who move as far into the suburbs as possible so they aren't near the slums, send their kids to private schools and think that only people who make more money than they do should pay more taxes to pay for it.
Aug '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Zombie Poll.
Why stop there? We should have guaranteed jobs, food, cars, clothing, vacations, plastic surgery, drugs, sex, and love. Dignity, respect, and honor too.
Jun '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Tommy De Seno: David, I have some questions for you: What is your view of open space legislation in the suburbs and rural areas?
From the point of view of government engineering and tinkering with the free market, how is it any different than affordable housing programs? · Nov 1 at 9:29pm
You didn't ask me, Tommy, but...
Perhaps one difference is that one is a local law and the other is federal. The individuals living in a near proximity have decided the rules they will share, not some unknown bureaucrat thousands of miles away.
Oct '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
"Overwhelming Majority of Americans Support Adequate and Affordable Housing for Everyone".
I support affordable housing, which is why I am so opposed to affordable housing programs. The result of affordable housing programs has been to make housing, well, unaffordable.
The free market and the profit incentive (and the incentive to control costs) is what makes things affordable.
Edited on Nov 2, 2010 at 6:51amRe: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Tommy De Seno: David, I have some questions for you: What is your view of open space legislation in the suburbs and rural areas?
From the point of view of government engineering and tinkering with the free market, how is it any different than affordable housing programs? · Nov 1 at 9:29pm
Tommy: Sorry, but I don't think I see the connection. Local land use and zoning laws are different in many respects from federal laws encouraging people to buy homes they can't afford. If this is a leading question, I'm not following.
Oct '10
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
David Limbaugh
Tommy De Seno: David, I have some questions for you: What is your view of open space legislation in the suburbs and rural areas?
From the point of view of government engineering and tinkering with the free market, how is it any different than affordable housing programs? · Nov 1 at 9:29pm
Tommy: Sorry, but I don't think I see the connection. Local land use and zoning laws are different in many respects from federal laws encouraging people to buy homes they can't afford. If this is a leading question, I'm not following. · Nov 2 at 7:17am
Any land use restriction will drive up prices, at least at the margin.
In Thomas Sowell's book "The Housing Boom and Bust", he pointed to land use restrictions in California from the 60's and 70's as a source of escalating home prices. States like Texas, on the hand, had no affordable housing problem because they did not have onerous land use restrictions.
So, what was essentially a local problem was addressed at a national level with one-size fits all Federal affordable housing policies - CRA, expanding the scope of Fannie/Freddie, etc.
And we all know what happened then.
Edited on Nov 2, 2010 at 1:16pmRe: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
Sorry I didn't get back here fast - distracted by the election.
The knock on affordable housing repeated by you David in your post when you called it socialist - is that it does operate against free market rules. The prices are artificially driven down. Tax money is used to do that. The people living in them are not operating under free market rules, etc. so they don't have to work hard to live in better neighborhoods like the rest of us.
I often hear righteous indignation from people in the suburbs who have affordable housing going up in their neighborhoods because they are operating as good capitalists, and the affordable housing folks are not.
But suburbanites absolutely LOVE open space initiatives. Here in NJ we amended the constitution to buy more every year, and most towns passed automatic budget items to buy and preserve more and more open spaces.
But isn't that equally socialist? Tax money is being used. It artificially drives the price of real estate up instead of down (thus keeping poorer people out).
Can one be against affordable housing initiatives and for open space initiatives and not by hypocritical?
Re: Two Questions for John Zogby on His Affordable Housing Poll
cdor
You didn't ask me, Tommy, but...
Perhaps one difference is that one is a local law and the other is federal. The individuals living in a near proximity have decided the rules they will share, not some unknown bureaucrat thousands of miles away. · Nov 2 at 4:34am
cdor the Feds own about a third of America's land mass. So open spaces is not just acheived at the local level.
Here in New Jersey - both affordable housing and open space initiatives are largely generated on the state level.