Recent content by Brad Sallows

Governments want more people living in smaller spaces at higher densities. Nothing about what has been permitted so far was by mistake. Development fees are a consequence of municipalities exhausting their traditional tax bases.

That would be ideal, but most of what government does is plagued by Cost Disease. If governments take the easy way out on compensation negotiations and bureaucratic bloat for long enough, eventually municipal government becomes "unsustainable" (meaning, the tax base can't keep up). This, of...

The fraction of people living in owner-occupied homes remains in the 65% to 70% range, where it has been for a long time. The US fraction is similar. It's difficult to move the number much despite wide swings in economic events. Obviously someone else has to own the remaining 30% to 35% of homes.

So there was a market demand, and governments - as governments can and sometimes do - turned on a dime and the market demand changed. Companies which initiate projects based on the information they have at the time are not responsible for future governments' fat fingers changing the facts. And...

That's still building for the market. The market is a whole bunch of different demands. Not-building-for-the-market is stuff that just doesn't sell.

What some critics (other than those dipping into the "Socialism!" well) are writing is that it has the appearance of negating the commitment by which Intel was supposed to build some fabs in the US - has money for fabs become money for stock? And will Congress do anything about it (noting that...

You can prove anything if you make up your evidence. So far the US has acquired a 10% stake in a major corporation in a major strategic industry. There isn't much point riding the Slippery Slope Express all the way to the conclusions at the bottom.

"Supply-chain reality: Chips are the new oil. Ensuring domestic capacity in leading-edge fabs is a national security problem first, a textbook market-failure second. Even critics of the Intel deal are arguing policy design, not pretending the stakes don’t exist." That should be obvious, but...

What Trump says or does is entertaining, but he isn't the moving part that matters. Pay attention to Democrats. Right now, they are doubling down on SOS even more strongly than the NDP in Canada. They're stuck in a "we weren't true enough to our principles/we didn't get our message out...

I don't think the people who seize every provocation as evidence of fascism, socialism, or any other-ism are endorsing anything. The silver lining is the humour they provide.

Is that what we're doing? I follow enough domestic news to hear (over and over) the statements of intent, but when I look for actual effort I see governments that seem to be hoping to wait out the storm so that they don't really have to up-end things for the vested interests already served by...

It is improbable that the turmoil caused by tariffs is having no effect on housing prices. People are nervous, and nervous people postpone spending. It is not obvious that people suddenly can't afford prices; they might instead be reluctant to commit. Number of buyers in a neighbourhood =...

"Well, I can't meet that timeline. I guess I'll just sit on the property until someone offers me enough." That is only one example to illustrate a point: whatever it is the handful of clever people in Ford's government think they are doing, they are going to be outguessed and outmanoeuvred by...

Surely it's relevant if the mitigation for one crisis is another crisis? What should we expect when the courts finish ruling that the executive-imposed tariffs are unconstitutional and they go away?

Not half an hour ago I provided a link to an article that puts some perspective on the situation. Did you bother to read it? The point is that governments take ownership for reasons of policy. It's completely uncontroversial. And the Canada Arts Council is about nothing else other than...