SHAPIRO: What makes things affordable?

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Availability. This is the word on everyone's lips.

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Ever since self-proclaimed socialist Zohran Mamdani emerged as a front-runner in New York City's mayoral race by uttering the word “affordability” with talismanic regularity, we've been told that the key to modern politics is repeating the word. Say “availability” and watch your surveys rise.

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And yet the world is becoming increasingly inaccessible.

Why?

Because at the end of the day, there's only one way to make things more affordable: lower prices. And there are only two ways to reduce prices: reduce demand or increase supply.

But government interventionism tends to do just the opposite. Government intervention usually aims to increase demand through subsidies, which leads to higher prices; or they are designed to reduce supply through restrictions and regulations; or both.

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Here is a list of products that have increased in price since 2000: hospital services; college tuition and fees; college textbooks; medical care services; child care; food and drinks; housing. Here is a list of items whose prices have generally remained the same or decreased: new cars; household furniture; cloth; cellular communication services; software; toys; TVs. It is no coincidence that the first list includes strict government regulation and subsidies; the second list includes products that have been left to the free market. This is because free markets—through competition and the resulting drive for efficiency—generate more supply and increase efficiency.

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And yet.

Almost no politician is willing to state the obvious: to achieve accessibility, politicians need to be stripped of their power, not given more of it. It is much easier to pander to the electorate – to tell voters that if only politicians were given more power, they could solve all of the voters' problems.

This is a lie.

But this is an increasingly common lie on both sides of the aisle. And when politicians deign to speak the truth, they are quickly criticized for it.

Take H-1B visas for example. Now there are a lot of honest questions about H-1B visas: Are they properly tested for assimilation capacity? Are there really no competitive options from American workers in the jobs they're testing? Do employers use immigrant workers? Are we offering too many or too few of these visas? But the general objection to H-1B visas is broader: There is a general consensus that legal skilled immigrant labor hurts affordability.

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This is not true.

Obviously, limiting the labor supply causes wages in the protected industry to rise, making life more affordable for specific workers in those specific industries. At least temporarily. But at the other end of the production line are more expensive products. And these prices are passed on to all consumers. And if these products become uncompetitive, consumers turn to other suppliers, which impoverish the very industries that are being protected, or force businesses to go offshore or turn to technological substitutes for human labor.

Again, none of this is an argument for unfettered immigration. Mass migration harms America culturally, and unskilled mass migration also harms America economically. But if we want to tackle the affordability crisis, we have to actually solve it, rather than just repeat slogans about it and then hope that the government can magically solve the problem.

– Ben Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author.

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