Congratulations, Mr. De Blasio!

You have won on your populist promises, one of which is more disturbing than all others - slavery.

Yes, slavery, as your intention to provide more so-called affordable housing is nothing else than assisting the businesses by providing them with cheap labor at the expense of the taxpayers.

Let’s imagine what would happen if no subsidized housing would be available in New York, or for that matter in any municipality. As the price of property both for sale and for rent rises and many low-paid workers can no longer afford living there, they will move to the regions with lower prices. Food preparation and serving workers will leave us first; then the dishwashers will go away, and then cashiers, hosts and hostesses, followed by amusement park attendants, movie theater ushers, ticket takers, personal and home care aides, clerks and so on. 

What is going to happen? This is the question that escapes imagination of people like De Blasio and those overwhelmingly electing him to be the New York Mayor. 

When the Wall Street brokers find themselves having to spend half hour to get their lunch, they will quickly find the place where the owner pays more to his employees so they won’t move, therefore the customers receive fast and decent service. Following this example other owners will be forced to increase their workers’ wages. 

When the shoppers enter a dirty store with long lines at the registers, they won’t come back forcing the owner to either close his business or increase the wages and keep his workers.

This is how market works.

But, when the government pays the workers the difference between low wages and the decent one – which is exactly what affordable housing is – the business owners can keep their workers while paying them minimum salaries or just slightly above that. The result is poverty, inequality, despair. The consequences are high crime and low living standards in housing projects.

If you think that the gullible poor are the only people cheering deblasios into high offices you are wrong. Businesses, enormously  benefiting from sweetly sounding populist programs like “Affordable Housing”, are also among the enthusiastic voters as well. They can keep low-wage workers while the taxpayers will foot the rest of the bill.

I have sent email to the US Department for Housing and Urban Development asking them to explain what the term “affordable” means. Not surprisingly their answer was “something affordable is what someone can afford.” Then I sent another email, which was never replied to. What I asked was that based on their description, any property - that is purchased and being properly paid for without an owner/renter going bankrupt - is affordable. That includes $25K studios, $250K houses, $2.5 Million buildings, and $25 Million mansions.

This makes the “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” no more than a slogan, nonsense, and the scheme in which unscrupulous politicians save businesses’ money at the expense of taxpayers by promising the naïve poor a free lunch. 

This is how socialism works. We can do it. We actually are doing it.