Who Says that Markets 'Fail' to Price in Externalities?

Good little vignette here that pleases me on so many levels.

1.  It is clear that house, aka land, prices suffer a reduction compared to similar locations if they are on a busy road.  That is the market is pricing in the externality.  Well.  Well.  Who'd a thunk it?

2.  DA is just another rent seeking homeownerist looking after No. 1.

3.  What's more DA appears to be using her position to further the scheme that will enhance her personal land value. Allegedly.  It cheers me up no end to see that cronyism is alive and well in JC's acolytes.


Update.


I was so gleeful at fatties cronyism and hypocrisy that I did not set out this post as well as I should have done - as MW pointed out.


Obviously the cost of the externality is not falling on the traffic using fatty's street.  But there is a lower price for living in that street.  And since that price will rise when the traffic is magiked away by said fatty's mates there is clearly some price discounting going on by the market because of the traffic blight. I call that the market succeeding, albeit not in the way that actually penalises the polluters for their externality.


Discuss?

Diane Abbott outlines plan to curb fast food shops

From the Guardian,

Local authorities should be given stronger powers to ban the spread of fried chicken shops and other fast food outlets, and end the sale of cheap alcohol from corner shops, especially near overweight black Labour MPs, according to proposals put forward by Diane Abbott, the shadow public health minister.

In a wide-ranging interview, she also calls for clearer measures to prevent black MPs that don't declare their expenses from being shaped by materialism. Abbott, one of the Labour party's most senior leftwing figures, argues that the left has to recognise that public health issues, including obesity and alcoholism, often have their roots in family breakdown, and so as a divorced woman, the government needs to keep the pies away from her.
Discussing the need to tackle obesity and alcoholism, she said: "I am looking at planning legislation to make it easier for local authorities to ban not just McDonald's, but those chicken and chip shops that cluster around my house. I certainly think as part of Labour's policy review we should make it easier for local authorities to use public health criteria in planning and to stop the proliferation of chicken and chip shops. For me, fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple."

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From today's Evening Standard:

Diane Abbot veers dangerously close to the truth...

We are by now hopefully immune to the shroud waving from every corner of the public sector and the bleating that "Tory cuts will hurt the vulnerable most"*, but Labour leadership candidate Diane Abbot raises a rather more pressing issue:

Planned spending cuts could set back race relations by a generation and risk social "instability", Labour leadership candidate Diane Abbott has warned. The cuts could hit ethnic minorities and women harder than other groups, she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

And why might that be? Do ethnic minorities and women need more schools, or more policemen..?

Ms Abbott, who is seen as the most left-wing of the five candidates, warned that a "last in, first out" approach to redundancies would hit black and female workers particularly hard.

"Black (people) and ethnic minorities are predominantly employed in the public sector, particularly women**. My concern is that the progress black and ethnic minority workers have made in employment is relatively recent*** and if there have to be big cuts, it will be 'last in, first out' and these cuts will fall disproportionately not just on women but on black and ethnic minority workers. I think the public sector cuts have the potential to set back race relations and black and ethnic minority communities by a generation."

* Interestingly, over 40% of government spending goes to private sector businesses. Do they count as 'vulnerable'?

** 'Women' are neither necesarily 'black' nor 'ethnic minority', but it is quite true that about seventy per cent of people in public sector jobs are women.

*** As any fule kno, net immigration under New Labour was nearly as much as the increase in public sector employment. Whether this is a coincidence remains to be seen.

Quick guide to Labour leadership election

UPDATE: For the benefit of JT:

Twenty Stone of Righteousness