More Marriage Can Increase Housing Stock, But Uncle Sam Shouldn't Play Cupid to Increase Marriage Rates

I am currently attending the American Enterprise Institute's housing conference right now. I got to hear about an intriguing report from AEI called Rings to Roofs. Rather than focusing solely on building more homes, the authors argue that increasing marriage rates could effectively expand housing availability by reducing the number of households seeking separate homes. Their estimate suggests that a return to 2000 marriage rates could free up approximately one million homes, which would solve 18 percent of the current housing shortage. 

Not only that, doing so would move 2.9 million Americans out of low-income jobs because they are spending less on housing. The number of Americans who could afford to buy a home in the U.S. would increase from 46 percent to 67 percent, or an increase of 21 percentage points. Even assuming these estimates are correct, does that mean the government should play Cupid and encourage Americans to marry? 

The AEI report argues that marriage rates influence housing demand because household formation determines how many homes a population needs. That makes sense because two people who marry typically live together instead of occupying two separate homes. Multiply that effect across millions of homes and it ends up freeing existing housing stock. I find this interesting because many solutions in the housing policy focus on housing supply. Looking at household composition to improve the housing stock is a clever way of going about it. But it begs the question of what society should do to increase the marriage rate because the Rings to Roofs report doesn't answer that question. 

One could think that if marriage frees up housing, perhaps subsidizing marriage is a solution to the housing problem. In January, I argued against a policy proposal from the Heritage Foundation that the government should provide a $2,500 subsidy to encourage couples to get married. As I pointed out, a government check cannot guarantee love and happiness. I argued that financial stability, long-term compatibility, and relationship readiness are much larger determinants for marriage than whether the government hands out a check or provides a tax credit. 

More fundamentally, if declining marriage rates are indicative of a cultural shift in attitudes towards commitment and family, the odds that financial incentives will move the needle on marriage rates are low. This is why I would like to briefly ask why marriage is less attractive of an arrangement than it has been in recent decades. 

There are unquestionably economic reasons to delay marriage, whether it's student debt, high rent, or medical costs. I pointed this increase in cost of living back in 2017. But I would contend that the economic arguments are made while overshadowing the cultural undercurrents that make people not want to get married. I am one for individual autonomy, but I also do realize that heavily leaning on personal fulfillment, career advancement, and emphasizing autonomy makes it more difficult to want to marry. 

Instead of viewing marriage as an arrangement in which two people live a shared life and build something together, it can look like a constraint on personal freedom. For more and more people, marriage is seen as something best achieved after acquiring financial stability, establishing a career, and fulfilling individual ambitions before settling down with someone else. Plus, the growing acceptance of cohabitation and alternative living arrangements weakens the need to marry. None of this is to say that economic obstacles are irrelevant or that everyone should get married for its own sake. But again, financial incentives cannot solve a problem that is primarily cultural or one that goes against the grain of one's personal values. 

If we as a society want marriage to regain its appeal, we need to make a persuasive cultural case for the value of commitment, partnership, and building a future together. Families, friends, and communities can make the case for marriage by demonstrating its potential rewards, whether it's companionship, mutual responsibility, and building a life together. Couples in healthy lasting marriages can serve as examples of what commitment makes possible. Families, voluntary associations, religious communities, and civic organizations can offer relationship education, mentoring, and support for couples who want to marry. 

None of this requires treating marriage as obligatory or looking down on those who remain singly. It simply means recognizing marriage as a worthwhile aspiration instead of an outdated institution or something to consider only after every other personal goal has been met. This approach is preferable to government intervention because it involves persuasion, example, and voluntary association, which is exactly what you need when talking about something like love and marriage. 

I am inclined to believe the AEI report because the economic logic of freeing up housing stock by condensing households is sound. I also believe that marriage creates benefits for the individual couples. But that doesn't mean that the government should get involved in the romantic affairs of its citizens. Perhaps the more important question here isn't how to get people to marry, but how to make marriage something more desirable for individuals. That's a challenge that no government subsidy or tax credit can solve. 

France's Riots Show the Carnage That Comes With a Massive Welfare State and Failed Integration of Immigrants

When I was taking French in college, I remember a heated discussion about what it meant to be French. Something I learned is that French nationalism has a much narrower definition of what constitutes a "true citizen" than the American concept of identity that is built on a creed. Even with France's talk about "liberté, égalité, fraternité," a "true Frenchman" apparently is a Christian person whose lineage traces back centuries. 

This goes beyond an academic debate in college because that societal definition has caused consternation with the huge influx of Muslim immigrants that have moved into France in recent years. If you are not convinced, look at the recent riots in France. What started off as student protests about overflowing classrooms, teacher shortages, and decaying buildings morphed into something much larger. There are those on the Right who believe that it is mass migration of Muslim immigrants that explains why French riots have reached a whole new level. 

I think the story is more complicated. France's expansive welfare state has failed the social harmony its proponents promise. Meanwhile, failure to integrate immigrants who reject the country's secular, liberal norms has created a different social fracture. The combination of these two is more combustible than either one of these on its own. 

If you're someone on the Far Left in the United States trying to design your ideal society, you would think that France would be a good place to start. The government spends lavishly on things like healthcare, education, and housing. The pension system is quite generous. France has some of the highest taxes in the developed world. France even has a 35-hour workweek. And where has that gotten them? With high public debt, economic stagnation, and rioting in the street. France's government largesse cannot get rid of economic scarcity or the notion that tradeoffs exist. It is a reminder that government cannot spend its way to better essential services, prosperity, or social harmony. 

Economics are only half the story. What makes this powder keg more explosive is what happens when a country fails to integrate a large cohort of its citizens. As I argued last December, immigration is not merely about letting people into a country. It is ensuring that they are integrated into its economic, civic, and legal institutions. This is especially important in a place like France where laïcité reflects a strong commitment to secular government and the supremacy of civil law over a religious authority like sharia law. 

It is not simply the fact that Muslim-majority countries throughout the world have a penchant for things like making women second class citizens, criminally punishing homosexuals, and imposing strict blasphemy, apostasy, and anti-defamation laws against Islam or their prophet Muhammad. As the polling I went through last year illustrates, a significant number of these Muslim immigrants would like to do things like declaring Islam as the official religion, imposing sharia law, making it illegal to show a picture of Mohammad, outlawing homosexuality, and making compulsory halal food in schools and hospitals. 

As I explained in 2015, my religious freedom ends where another person's religious freedom begins. There is a fine line between allowing all citizens, including Muslims, to freely practice their religion and imposing one's religion on others. It looks like a fair number of Muslim immigrants have no objection to imposing Islam onto the rest of Europe that would override secular, civil laws. A commitment to tolerance should not be so blind to ignore when individual liberties are being eroded by illiberal forces, even if it is coming from Muslims. A society that is incapable of distinguishing between religious freedom and the impulse to impose religious authority has signed its own death warrant. 

The economic and cultural problems are distinct, but they feed off one another. Rigid labor laws and barriers to employment make upward more difficult, while the bloated welfare state can leave people dependent on it. When immigrants fail to integrate into society, the shared commitment to the country's laws and civic principles weakens. France has tried to engineer prosperity through government intervention and largesse, but failed in that endeavor. As a result, it continues to erode the liberal society that the French revolutionaries over two centuries ago were aspiring towards. If France can't get its act together, it will end up a decline that could make the fall of the Roman Empire look like a cakewalk in comparison. 

Ship Happens with Protectionism: Why a Jones Act Waiver Should Lead to Repeal

Ship happens when the government tries to protect an industry, and the maritime industry is no exception. Passed in 1920, the Jones Act is a federal statute requiring all goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on ships that are built, owned, flagged, and crewed by Americans. Instead of "protecting" consumers, the Jones Act actually makes it more difficult to get goods to consumers. Unsurprisingly, the Jones Act waiver that President Trump instated in March acts as an example of what happens when protectionist rules get out of the way. 

What the waiver has accomplished in such a short time is striking. The Cato Institute shows that the waiver has enabled 300 voyages carrying 80 billion barrels of cargo. What happened with the Jones Act in the West Coast, Alaska, and Hawai'i is even more telling. Under the waiver, this region had 20.7 billion barrels arrive. This is much higher than the 7.7 billion barrels carried over the entire 2009-2025 period.  

Similarly, Puerto Rico imported 800,000 barrels of propane under the waiver, which is more than double the amount of propane imported in the last 22 years combined. Even if the waiver only covered energy and fertilizer cargoes, it offers a glimpse as to how much protectionism has suppressed domestic commerce. 

These examples show how protectionism has a predictable way of backfiring. The Jones Act protects domestic shipbuilders from competition on domestic routes, businesses and consumers pay the price. By requiring the vessels to be U.S.-owned, U.S.-flagged, and U.S.-owned, the law restricts the number of ships that can enter ports. 

The Competitive Enterprise Institute summarized research on the Jones Act. Not only can the Jones Act make shipping costs up to three times the costs of foreign shipment, but removing the Jones Act would actually increase output by 71 percent, according to a report from the OECD.

When businesses can only select from a limited number of eligible vessels, they face less competition and fewer alternatives when demand rises or ships are unavailable. That scarcity pushes freight rates higher. It's basic supply and demand. When demand remains constant, restricting supply has this tendency to raise prices. 

Those higher prices don't stop at the dock. Businesses either absorb the expense and reduce their profits, or they pass the cost onto the consumers. Regardless of the choice, these decisions ripple throughout the U.S. economy. 

By allowing for more competition, the waiver eases the artificial scarcity, expands shipping capacity, and makes previously uneconomical shipments more viable. In other words, relaxing a law intended to protect American maritime commerce can help more American businesses move more American goods to American consumers. 

The Jones Act is supposed to be protecting American shipping, maritime jobs, and national security. As CEI points out in a study about the Jones Act, the national security argument is questionable at best. What the law does a fine job of is protecting a small handful of politically connected industry players at the expense of everyone else. The current waiver demonstrates what can happen when you remove onerous restrictions: more opportunities for Americans to do business with one another. For the same of American citizens and businesses, it's long past time that we get rid of this protectionist monstrosity.

Québec Electing a Separatist Part Doesn't Mean That Québec Will Secede from Canada

Does Québec want to separate from Canada? You would think that because the Parti Québecois (PQ), Québec's separatist political party, won the provincial elections earlier this week. The PQ had been on the decline in 2012, and has not enjoyed the heyday it had in the 1970s-1990s. If anything, it was close to extinction in 2022 with winning just 3 legislative seats. But the PQ has made a comeback this week by winning 59 of the legislature's 127 seats, even thought it received 27.9 percent of the popular vote. 

Although that is quite the comeback for a political party that was on its way out, it might be too premature to say that Québec wants to secede. According to the most recent poll, which was from Research Co., 27 percent of the voters were in favor of seceding from Canada. Polling from Léger, as well as Pallas Data and Synopsis Recherche, show that a minority of Quebecers would like to separate from Canada.

So what gives? You would think that the PQ's main shtick, which is secession, would have been at the top of Quebecers' list of priorities. As we have seen in the United States and other countries, it is amazing what an unpopular incumbent can bring out in people. They were choosing a government, not answering a yes-or-no referendum about whether Québec should be a separate country. The PQ itself wasn't campaigning on that single issue, even though it is historically its bread and butter. It played on dissatisfaction with the incumbent party and how it handled housing, cost of living, homelessness, French language, immigration, and government efficiency. 

Also, the PQ isn't planning on an independence referendum before Trump leaves the White House in 2029. That might be a combination of not wanting Trump to distort the debate and making sure that the PQ gives itself enough time to govern before it makes larger strides. Regardless, it is a reminder of what such entities as Scotland and Catalonia have encountered with regard to secession. 

It's one thing to win an election. Winning a referendum for independence is another. In 2014, Scotland held its independence referendum and decided to remain in the United Kingdom. Catalonia's attempt to become independent in 2017 produces a constitutional political confrontation with Spain. Québec has tried it twice, in 1980 and 1995, and lose both times. Québec isn't the province it was in the previous century, and Quebecers very well might want to stay, even in spite of its consternation with the Canadian government. 

The PQ has won the government of Québec, but it hasn't won Québec......at least not yet. Québec went through two separatist waves last century, and it's still part of Canada. Other countries also show the complication of people who conceptually want secession and gaining the political feasibility to make it a reality. Even though Québec elected a political party that has historically been separatist, that is a far cry from actual secession. 

Rosh Hashanah and the Art of Getting Knocked Down and Back Up Again

We often imagine teshuvah, the Jewish concept of repentance, as turning around and heading in a new direction. We recognize what went wrong, resolve to change, and begin again. This happens with New Year's resolutions, too. You commit to exercising regularly, but an injury or a demanding work schedule get in the way. You want to spend more time studying Torah, but work deadlines and household responsibilities give you less time than you hoped for. You decide to become more financially responsible, but then a car breaks down or an unexpected bill that wipes out months of savings.

I'm sure we can all come up with personal examples, but the idea is the same: we want to do better, but life gets in the way. And by the time we come back and try to accomplish the goal again, the structure we began to build beforehand has already collapsed. I recently went to a shiur (class on a Torah topic) with a Jewish organization called Hadar. This class offered a different suggestion. Perhaps the metaphor isn't simply turning around or returning. Perhaps it is rebuilding. 

When Moses was at the Burning Bush, he asked G-d the deceptively simple question of "What is Your name?" G-d's answer was אהיה אשר איהי (Exodus 3:14). This phrase has been elusive. It has been translated as "I am that I am" or "I am that I will be." What is interesting is that regardless of translation, the word איהי is a verb. 

This grammatical concept can be helpful with viewing teshuvah. We tend to imagine ourselves as if we were finished things that merely need occasional fixing. But we remain works in progress, shaped by experience and capable of revision. Part of teshuva, therefore, is the recognition that becoming is part of becoming human. 

There is a Midrash (Tanhuma 11:8) that complicates the metaphor of building in a fascinating way. During the dedication of the Miskhan (Tabernacle), Moses repeatedly dismantled and reassembled the Tabernacle. That is a strange picture of construction: building something only to take it apart again. 

R. Shalom Noah Berezovsky, in his text Netivot Shalom, takes that metaphor and applies it to the spiritual work of a human being. We, too, build structures in our lives. Sometimes, they collapse. The answer he suggests is not to despair, but to rebuild. 

That means teshuvah is not just a theoretical exercise. Even after reflection, there is a point where we have to do something with that knowledge. We prepare, we build, we repair, and sometimes, we have to dismantle so we can build something better. Sometimes taking something apart is not proof that the building was a mistake, but a lesson on learning to build it properly. 

That's where the metaphor gets messier. The hardest part of teshuvah might not be recognizing what needs to change. It may be what happens that even when we put in our best efforts to try to change, it doesn't hold. Or even worse, it collapses. The old habit reemerges. A relationship or job falls apart. At that point, it is all too easy to conclude that failure proves that we cannot change for the better. 

To channel Chumbawamba, "I get knocked down, but I get up again. But you're never gonna keep me down." For me, that nostalgic line is reminiscent of better days, but it reminds us that getting back up is not easy. And it's not supposed to be. Sometimes, it can mean taking the beating of your life, accepting that something we worked towards has been decimated, and then deciding that collapse of said vision or goal will not be the end of the story. 

Teshuvah is not about not falling down. If anything, falling down at some point is inevitable because to err is to be human. It is the willingness of persevering when we do fall down. 

But rebuilding does not mean constructing something the same exact way as you did before. If something collapses, we should learn something from that collapse. Maybe the structure was too weak. Maybe it was too ambitious or the design was wrong. Maybe the building was unsustainable. 

Whatever the reason, teshuvah shows us that we should take the reason(s) seriously. But we don't necessarily return to that blueprint. We can revise it the best we can for our lives. Rebuilding is not repetition, but revision based on the new information. Teshuva doesn't ask us to build perfectly. It asks us to be better builders. 

And that brings us to the New Year. Rosh Hashanah offers us a beginning, but not a clean slate. The previous year is with us, whether it is our successes, joys, failures, emotional baggage, or whatever lessons we learned along the way. 

So we don't need to promise to ourselves "This year, I will get everything right." We can instead say something more modest and honest: "I know more than I did before. I know what some of my failures cost. I may still fall, but I am willing to build again." Starting with what we have learned might lead us to a more durable form of hope and faith.

As much of a Type-A perfectionist that I am, perhaps this year I need to ask if I can finally get everything right. Perhaps a better question may be: What am I willing to build, even if I know that some of it may eventually fall apart? 

As scary as it sounds, I don't know what will endure and what will not. None of us do. But we can choose how we respond when something collapses. We can walk away, or we can get knocked down and then we can get up again.....to build. 

Hodgepodge for Week of August 24, 2026: Deportation, Head Start, LGB v. T, Occupational Licensing

It's been a busy week for me, but there is still plenty going on in the world. I don't have the time to give it the full treatment, but I still want to get at some stuff that is going on. 

The cost of mass deportation: Earlier this month, the Left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a deportation calculator and estimated that the government is going to spend $268.9 billion. I don't see eye to eye with EPI on a lot, but I agree that money could be spent on a lot of better things than deportation. As I pointed out in 2024, mass deportation is enormously expensive, disrupts the labor force and economy, raises prices, and ultimately imposes substantial costs on everyday Americans. 

The costs of Head Start's regulatory micromanagement: The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) covered a recently proposed rule about cutting the red tape in Head Start. Head Start is the federal program that provides early education services and related services to lower-income children. HHS proposes to save as much as $2.2 billion with its deregulation. CEI covers the examples of staff-to-child ratios, family service caseloads, and mandatory bus monitors to illustrate how Washington micromanages local programs with costly rules that lack evidence that they work. 

LGB divorcing from the T: The Log Cabin Republicans, which represents the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) of the Republican Party, has announced that it will no longer advocate for transgender rights. Part of this divergence is due to such issues as radical gender ideology, biological men in women's sports, and gender reassignment surgery on minors. I find this to be a welcomed change given the extremeness of the trans activists. 

In 2024, I wrote a two-parter on this topic. The first part was about how the alliance between LGB and T did not make sense, in no small part because each group has different characteristics and goals. The second part was about how bringing the transgender activism and gender ideology are harming LGB individuals. I hope this trend extends beyond the Log Cabin Republicans. 

Occupational licensing: Back in 2014, I wrote about the perils of occupational licensing and how it is a harmful barrier to entry in multiple jobs, whether it is a florist, dentist, hair stylist, or a nanny. I also came across corresponding research in 2018 showing how costly it is and how it adversely affects the labor market. The Archbridge Institute has released its latest State Occupational Licensing Index. The bad news is that 20 percent of Americans are subject to occupational licensing. But there is some good news. One, there are fewer occupations that have occupational licensing. Two, more states are passing universal licensing recognition laws. Three, the licensing variation reminds us that this burden is not inevitable. 

New York City's Pied-à-Terre Tax: Mamdani's Heavy Foot on High-End Second Homes

If you own a multimillion-dollar apartment in New York City but don't live there full-time, prepare to pay for the "privilege." New York City's (NYC) new pied-à-terre tax imposes an additional tax on certain expensive residential properties that aren't their owners' primary homes. A recent appeals ruling has allowed the city to proceed with implementing the tax while the legal battle ensues. The targets may be wealthy enough to make the policy politically appealing, especially in this political climate of "eat the rich." But none of this answer the more important question: Is taxing pied-à-terres actually a good idea? 

At first glance, the pied-à-terre looks like just another property tax, except on high-end real estate. In the case of pied-à-terre, it asks the question of what is the primary residency of the property. A $10 million apartment in NYC, therefore, receives very different tax treatment based on whether the owner lives in NYC or another state. 

That distinction matters because it creates an incentive that doesn't exist with a regular property tax: change the property's status and you may change the tax bill. And this isn't a trivial surcharge. The NYC Comptroller's analysis estimates that the tax could increase the property tax burden on a $10-15 million home by 89 percent, and on a $25 million home by 261 percent. 

The NYC Comptroller shows how consequential the behavioral changes can also be. Once accounting for a behavioral change due to this incentive, the estimated revenue drops from $500 million per annum to as much as $340 million, or 34 percent. 

That should be a warning sign for those who thinks the pied-à-terre tax is a gold mine. The more a property tax depends on how taxpayers use, classify, or structure their property, the more opportunities it creates for behavior to change in response. 

France is a fine case study showing what happens when you do that. Since 2015, French municipalities in areas with housing shortages have been permitted to impose a purchase on the housing tax for second homes. A recent study in the Journal of Urban Economics found something interesting. While the French tax did raise revenue, there was also a substantial decline in properties categorized as second homes. 

This matters because the government incurred the administrative burden of distinguishing between the primary and secondary residences without necessarily getting the behavior it wanted in return. If the property de facto remains a second home, the tax has produced compliance costs and distorted the owner's decisions without putting another home the market. 

Even better, NYC has been down a similar path before. NYC eliminated a property-tax abatement for non primary residence in 2013, especially those worth more than $5 million. As a Tax Foundation study shows, nonresident ownership fell by 0.6 percent for every 1 percent increase in tax liability. The effect was half as large for properties worth less than 1 million than it was for properties worth more than $5 million. 

The average New Yorker might ask why they should care about rich people getting their second homes taxes. The answer is that the city does not merely tax these people. It benefits from having them here. Second-home owners pay taxes but consumer fewer public services than full-time residents. Their income and spending in New York can generate additional tax revenue, while their presence effectively spreads the cost of government across a larger tax base. This is why the Tax Foundation warns that the tax could backfire if it causes enough wealthy nonresidents to give up their second property altogether. 

The pied-à-terre tax is not simply about the rich. France and New York have already shown that taxpayers respond when government changes the incentives surrounding property ownership. Those responses aren't costless. Money spent restructuring ownership, changing how a property is classified, or making different investment decisions is money and resources diverted from other uses. 

Economists have long recognized that these avoidance, compliance, and substitution costs as real costs of taxation, not merely transfers from taxpayers to government. The average New Yorker may never see those costs on a tax bill, but they are still costs borne by the economy in which New Yorkers live.  

Mamdani has decided that distorting the housing market is an acceptable price for taxing people who are politically convenient to tax. But "Eat the Rich" is not a substitute for sound economic policy. New Yorkers deserve better.