07 November 2013

I am working on some technical support for my positions regarding housing in Grand Forks but I will take a moment to reiterate that position here. Nobody illustrated to my satisfaction that Grand Forks ever had a housing “crisis.” Could there be circumstances where the types of housing available did not meet the particular demands of the people in the market? Sure. Could it be that builders focused on certain types of building which meant others types did not see new construction? You bet. Does any of this mean the market outcome is bad? No!

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Anybody that knows me is aware of the importance I place on population metrics in the sphere of economics. We do not get demand without people. Supply does not just miraculously appear, people work and make goods and services. So it is not overstatement when I say there are fundamental ways that people matter for economic outcomes. Every so often though, we go into an odd place. I recently attended a presentation by a Chief Economist for a mutual fund company and he showed a graph qualitatively similar to the following,

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