The affordability issues facing Americans are almost all driven by government. Taxes and fees are the fastest rising cost. Government policies raise other costs–most notably electricity costs due to renewable mandates. Look at this chart of price changes for various items. Notice all the health care items, those increases are due to government policies, like ObamaCare and to government’s failure to stop the growth of monopolistic large hospital systems. Look at all the educational items, also a government-dominated sector. Housing costs are up because of government policies restricting building of new units and the incredible fees assessed for permitting. Childcare costs rose due to extensive new regulations. On the other hand, the areas where costs are going down have little government involvement. If we want inflation to recede, governments need to cut taxes and fees and reverse policies that raise costs.
In my location of the country never mentioned by elected officials when it comes to housing affordability is real estate taxes. Biggest part of that is school taxes. My real estate tax bill comes to about $500 dollars a month on a property with a value of between 500 to 600 thousand dollars. For a home buyer who takes out a mortgage that amount usually is part of the monthly payment.
I recently read the Federal Government YTD (Federal fiscal budget year) CMS portion of the budget so far is 2.3 trillion dollars, up over %13 when compared to last year’s CMS Federal spending.
All the headlines about fraud, one would think it would show up in the monthly treasury report but have not seen it.