I often say that one of the problems with the internet is the number of experts it has created. Everywhere I turn, there’s another expert on politics, economics, sports or life in general. Most of these folks can’t put a comprehensible sentence together, yet they are expert on everything.
The internet is one of the greatest inventions of my lifetime, it has unlocked a door to so much information to assist humans in their everyday life. As a kid, I had to trek to the library for this information, now, it’s available at your fingertips. You would think that folks would use this tool to their advantage, most people do but as you know there is always that outlier group that uses the internet to misinform or fight with some random stranger. It truly is bizarre.
Why do I mention all this? Last week, a story was released that the Dallas Federal Reserve released a paper on the rise of median house prices and rent increases. I studies economics is school and while most of the stuff is boring as hell, I still enjoy reading the material. I know, I am an economics geek!
It didn’t take long for folks to start reposting the report with the headline that fits their narrative. Twelve times it was posted from different media outlets, all with the same headline:
“IMMIGRANTS CAUSE A 30% HIKE IN HOUSING COST AND 20% RISE IN RENT.”
President Trump also jumped on it and spoke about it. What’s the problem, you ask? The problem, that isn’t what the report stated, not even close.
Being retired, I have lots of time on my hands, so I went to the Dallas Reserve website and pulled down the report. The report is preliminary and hasn’t been peer reviewed yet but here is the part in question.
The report says on page 5:
“A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that UIWF can explain about 30%of the total growth in house prices and 20% of total growth in rents over the boom period for the average local market.”
Immigrants were 30% of the cause in median house prices and 20% of the cause of rental increases. Housing and rental cost didn’t rise by 30% & 20 % but that is the headline everyone put out.
If you read further in the report, there is a chart which tells you that, for every uptick in “unauthorized immigrant workers” equal to 1% of the local workforce, house prices grew by 2.2% and rental prices by 1.4%, that is quite a different picture than the headline and what the President and Vice-President stated.
If you are going to post something on the internet, especially something that is going to disparage a group of folks who do a lot of jobs that Americans will not do, do your goddamn homework and verify if it is true or not. Better yet, stop looking at people by their color, race or creed and start looking at them as humans who are looking for a better life.