Housing, healthcare, and student loans

It's the explosion in cost of those three things in particular that are the root of most Americans' economic problems. With very low unemployment, everybody should be having a good time of it right now, and in virtually every other area they are. But those three things are dragging us down.

Focus by Democrats on those issues highlights the problems, but their solutions suck - they aren't really solutions at all.

For housing, forcing developers to build low-income units and making it harder for landlords to evict existing tenants who can't pay market rents is not really addressing the problem. It's picking a few winners, and leaving everybody else to be a loser.

The real fixes to that problem are increasing property taxes to reduce land-hoarding, and fixing the issue with local bureaucracies blocking the development of appropriate-density housing.

For healthcare, keeping everything as-is and simply shifting who pays is not a real fix for healthcare having grown to consume more than 20% of US GDP, despite not really offering anything significantly more to its users.

The doctor-patient model still in use today dates back to the stone age. It's not efficient in the computer age. If the government - under pressure from your demands - were to open healthcare up to modern solutions and competion, it could finally progress and enter the modern era.

Also, expensive and extreme treatments that doctors would refuse to have performed on themselves ought to face some scrutiny - noone is going to live forever, so there isn't much value in something incredibly expensive and painful that might extend life by a few hours/days.

For student loan debt, forgiving the debt is not a solution. It would actually encourage running up even more debt by incoming students, because why not? - Uncle Sam will pick up the tab.

Public universities ought to have the interests of the public in mind, rather than their own. Just because they can get away with putting students in life-altering debt to bring in some more money for themselves doesn't mean they should. These are not private, for-profit corporations - states ought to hold their universities to account for the overall outcomes/status they leave their students with, especially because most of them will be in-state residents.

I would actually however support freezing interest on existing loans. Yes, it's still a handout, but making people who took out the loans pay back at least the principal avoids the idea that you can get ahead by being irresponsible. You borrowed; you have to pay back.