The Case For Socialized Sidewalk Snow Removal And Mainteance

A 70 year old friend of mine writes on Facebook that she just got a new electric snowblower because her "HOA dues no longer cover snow shoveling driveway and sidewalk."

There are lots of reasons that HOAs are horrible institutions. But one of the things that they do often do well is that they make removal of snow from sidewalks a collective neighborhood function, rather than something that must be done by each individual in the neighborhood.

When are people going to wake up and realize that decentralization and private responsibility is not the solution to all problems?  We seem to understand this for roads, but not for sidewalks.

Collective neighborhood snow shoveling is much more efficient since you can mechanize it with industrial grade snow blowers and snow clearing equipment. 

Even if the work is outsourced to landscaping companies so that it can be mechanized, it is still less efficient to have many separate landscaping companies do the work in the neighborhood in a patchwork fashion, rather than having one provider do it, in addition to being more expensive per unit or for the neighborhood as a whole, despite not providing the service for everyone in the neighborhood.

Also, if the HOA bought its own snow clearing equipment and hired someone directly to do the job (as many municipal governments and school districts do), cutting out the middle man which its scale would often make feasible, it could do it more cheaply than hiring a landscaping firm to do the job, since it wouldn't have to cover the landscaping firm's profit and overhead costs (e.g. marketing, office and insurance costs that the HOA already incurs, billing and debt collection costs that the HOA already incurs, etc.). It could even provide a measure of economic relief to HOA members by preferring to hire residents to do the work (also reducing commuting times and demands on local road infrastructure, and making an inability to do the job at all or on  time due to heavy snow making roads less passable less of a concern).

Collective sidewalk snow clearance also produces much better returns because sidewalks are a network. One delayed or not done at all link in clearing snow from sidewalks dramatically reduces the value of the sidewalk system for everyone, even if everyone else does a perfect and timely job of clearing the sidewalk in front of their house. And, in real life, perfect compliance with early sidewalk cleaning by each homeowner rarely happens for understandable reasons like being out of town, or being sick or infirm, or working atypical shifts like three twelves or having to work multiple jobs, so that you are at work when it snows.

The same logic applies to maintaining sidewalks in good condition when they crack. A badly broken sidewalk in front of one house makes the entire sidewalk network less useful for everyone who uses sidewalks in the neighborhood.

Sidewalks are a good that everyone in the community benefits from, and the homeowner benefits little from having the sidewalk in front of their own home clear. Clearing sidewalks is something you do for the benefit of your neighbors. 

There is a collective action problem which HOAs solve when they correctly treat sidewalks as a common element owned by the community as a whole and managed by an entity that is responsible to the entire community.

This is less true of driveways. Mechanization from economies of scale is still present, although it can be moderated with outsourcing to landscaping companies. But the benefits of driveway snow clearing primarily inure to the homeowner whose driveway is cleared. There isn't the same network functionality problem.

But, of course, in the HOA suburbs no one cares about sidewalks because everybody drives everywhere, which also makes not only the people in the HOA less healthy, but also makes the community less vibrant.

And, then there is the issue that 70 year olds face a vastly elevated risk of serious physical harm when they try to shovel their own driveways and sidewalks. This is true for driveways as well.

The other lurking issue is that many suburbanites in HOAs are cash poor and time rich. Paying HOA dues or a more efficient landscaping company to do the job costs money which many people in these communities don't have. Doing it yourself with a cheap and inefficient snow shovel doesn't cost money, even though you are effectively valuing your own time and effort at a tiny hourly rate when comparing the time it takes you to the time it takes a professional to do it with the proper equipment.

The tradeoff between doing things in the monetary economy v. doing things in the non-monetary household or by barter or volunteering is an understudied issue in economics.

Cherry Blossoms And Climate Change

 

This is a very long data set (1213 years), that wasn't designed by anyone concerned about human created global warming.

New Almanac Data Points

I have my 2026 World Almanac now and there are some statistics I keep a close eye on.

* As of March 31, 2025, the U.S. had 1,307,679 active duty military personnel. This is as small as the U.S. military has been by that measure since before World War II. At its peak, it was more than 50% bigger. Roughly 55% of U.S. active duty military personnel are non-Hispanic white men (with significant variation from one military service to another).

* Birth rates for women in all age categories under age 25 were at their lowest for all of recorded history and prehistory in North America.

* Infant mortality has increased each year since 2020. The anti-vax movement and the impact of the ban on abortions in many states could be factors.

Trump's Misguided Battleship Program

 

The centerpiece of the Trump administration’s revamp of the U.S. Navy is the largest surface combatant America will build since World War II.

The U.S. Navy will buy two new “battleships” as part of the “Golden Fleet” effort, President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan announced Monday at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump said the Navy will start by purchasing two ships and eventually purchase 10, with a goal of 20 to 25 in total for the class with the start of construction planned for 2030.

From USNI. 

Battleships were retired from the U.S. Navy for a reason. The reason hasn't changed, although this is a "battleship" more in name than in fact. 

The last U.S. battleship, the USS Missouri (BB-63), left active service when it was decommissioned on March 31, 1992, after serving in World War II, the Korean War, and the Gulf War, and is now a museum ship in Pearl Harbor.

Battleships were large, heavily armored surface combatants built around multiple very large unguided slug throwing naval artillery guns (up to 16" diameter rounds). The problem was that they were sitting duck targets that could be defeated with modern munitions despite their heavy armor, and had only short range with low accuracy. Guided missiles which had longer range, greater accuracy, and didn't require so much bulk, replaced them.

Nuclear missiles were placed on nuclear submarines which were more stealthy and less vulnerable to counterattacks. 

Every other navy in the world, except Russia, which has one "cruiser" along these lines, has also learned this lesson and many world navies don't even see much use for larger surface combatants like destroyers and cruisers, largely limiting themselves to frigates, air independent diesel coastal submarines, and corvettes.

Trump's proposed nuclear missile carrying "battleship" with 35,000+ tons, about the same number of cruise missiles as existing destroyers and cruisers, a vaporware rail gun, two 5" naval guns, two vaporware large laser guns, four defensive laser guns, about eight air defense guns, and a helipad propelled by a diesel engine isn't what the U.S. navy needs. A price wasn't announced but it would be in the double digit billions per ship.

The last attempt to build a railgun centered ship, the USS Zumwalt destroyer, was an epic failure.

In the end, the Navy will spend lots of money over the next three years (at most) on R&D that will be abandoned when Trump leaves office or dies, if not sooner. 

This "battleship" also is ill suited for the conflicts and likely naval adversaries that the U.S. may face in the coming decades. It isn't suited for a war with China over Taiwan or the waters near the Philippines, for naval conflict with Iran near the Persian Gulf, with Russia, or with North Korea.

U.S. Health Care Spending Still Rising Because Our System Is Broken

Americans pay a huge amount for healthcare, while getting results that are below the developed world norm. Partially this is because a mixed government-private sector system leaves no one controlling costs, so we pay more to all forms of health care providers than any other health care system on Earth. And, partially, we pay much more for administrative costs. Further, the way we finance health care leaves many people either with no access to health care, or facing bankruptcy if they get seriously hurt or sick.

The best evidence we have shows that rising health spending in the United States since 1975 can explain roughly the same share of the growth in income inequality as increased trade, outsourcing or automation. It has pushed down wages, fueled inequality and left families drowning in unaffordable medical bills. Rising health care spending is killing the American dream.

Despite devastating out-of-pocket costs, Americans are generally insulated from the true cost of health care premiums. However, the expiring subsidies on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, where more than 20 million Americans get their insurance, show just how exorbitant premiums have become. Consider a 60-year-old couple earning $85,000 a year. Without subsidies, their health insurance premiums next year will approach $32,000 (akin to buying a new Toyota Camry).

Those of us who get health care insurance from our employers — some 160 million Americans — may be breathing a sigh of relief. But our health care premiums are also staggering (an average of $27,000 a year for a family of four), and the fact that our employers pay part of the tab isn’t much of a reprieve. That’s because decades’ worth of research shows that, even though employers pay most of workers’ premiums, those costs are passed on to workers in the form of lower wages and fewer jobs. That’s why the rise in health spending above the rate of inflation over the past decade has depressed wages by nearly 10 percent, according to my calculations. And because premiums are a bigger share of total pay for lower-income workers, the job cuts triggered by rising health care spending fall disproportionally on low- and middle-income workers and fuel income inequality.

Americans spend more on health care than other countries because we pay higher prices for identical goods and services, are quicker to adopt new and costly medical technology (whether or not it is cost effective) and have higher administrative costs in our complex, decentralized system. Health care markets have consolidated so much that in many regions, hospitals and other providers can charge near-monopoly prices. The fact that we pay providers per service delivered (rather than a fixed salary) also plays a role.

Next year insurance premiums will increase 10 percent for employer-sponsored plans and 18 percent for individual plans on the exchanges compared with 2025. In both markets, they’re going up because the price of medical care is rising (think hospital mergers, staffing shortages and tariffs that make drugs and devices more expensive) and Americans are increasingly using expensive weight loss and diabetes drugs known as GLP-1s. The exchange plans are seeing a sharper increase than employer plans because of the uncertainty lawmakers created over whether the Affordable Care Act subsidies would be extended. Insurers had to factor in the risk that healthier people would be less likely to buy insurance if the subsidies expired, which would lead to a sicker insurance risk pool and higher costs. . . .

One person’s health care spending is another person’s health care income — profits, jobs and paychecks for the tens of millions of people who work in the health care sector. And some higher spending does lead to better care. As long as they’re in competitive markets, higher-priced hospitals deliver higher quality care. 

. . . [A]s a result of Medicare payment rules created in the 1980s, the government program pays more (sometimes double) for care delivered in a hospital or hospital-owned doctor’s practice versus in an independent doctor-owned practice, even if the care is identical. That makes it more profitable for doctors to merge their practice with hospitals than remain independent. These mergers give doctors and hospitals bargaining power and drive up prices and insurance premiums.

From the New York Times (Opinion).

The loss of ACA subsidies will more than double premiums for people who get their health insurance on the health insurance marketplace, which is mostly made up of self-employed people and early retirees. That's an important reason that I moved back to being a W-2 employee this year after twenty years of being self-employed.

The change disproportionately hurts small businesses, including farms, and because of this, together with massive cuts to Medicaid and immigration changes that make it much harder for hospitals to hire foreign doctors (who disproportionately serve rural areas where U.S. doctors prefer not to work), rural healthcare in the U.S. is on the brink of collapse, with many rural hospitals expected to close and fewer doctors serving rural areas. Red states that banned abortion are also seeing a huge exodus of obstetrics and gynecology doctors, with new graduates also reluctant to take positions in these states.

Indeed, the MAGA base will be hit harder by GOP healthcare changes, and other Trump 2.0 policies from tariffs to reduced access to government benefits than Democrats in blue states, who tend to live in more resilient cities which are buffered by more caring state and local governments, while many of the Trump 2.0 tax cuts will help more upper middle class Democrats than working class Republicans.

Cheese Is Good, Teens Are Tame, Crime Is Down, Lot Of Americans Are Immigrants

* A study linked eating cheese to lower dementia risk.

* Teen alcohol, nicotine, and drug use in the U.S. is at record lows, and cocaine and heroin use, while not at record lows, it much lower than it was a few decades ago.

Teen use of alcohol, nicotine and marijuana remains at record lows, according to national survey results released Wednesday. . . .

Two-thirds of 12th graders this year said they hadn’t used alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes or electronic cigarettes in the previous 30 days. Thirty years ago — before the advent of e-cigarettes — the figure was closer to about one-third.

Among 10th graders, 82% said they hadn’t used any of those substances recently. Among eighth graders, 91% didn’t use any of them. Both are records for those ages in the annual survey. . . .

The new results come from the federally funded Monitoring the Future survey, run by the University of Michigan. The annual survey has been operating since 1975 and has long been considered a top source of national data on teen substance abuse. This year’s findings are based on responses from about 24,000 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 in schools across the country. It was conducted from February to June this year.

Teen drug use has been gradually declining for decades, and fell dramatically at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when students across the country were told not to go to schools and to avoid parties or other gatherings. Experts expected at least a bit of a rebound as pandemic restrictions eased, but that hasn’t happened.

The 2025 results show no increases in teens’ use of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes or nicotine vapes in any of the three grade levels. In 2024, researchers had noted an uptick in the use of nicotine pouches, but that too held steady this year, the survey found.

Energy drinks are as popular as ever, with daily consumption reported by 23% of 12th graders, 20% of 10th graders and 18% of eighth graders.

The survey also found a striking increase in heroin use. Use by 12th graders in the previous 12 months rose to 0.9% in 2025, from 0.2% the year before. Use by 10th graders hit 0.5%, up from 0.1%. And use by eighth graders also rose to 0.5%, up from 0.2%.

Cocaine use held steady for 10th graders, but rose for eighth graders — to 0.6% — and 12th graders — to 1.4%.

Teen heroin and cocaine use are “leagues below what they were decades ago,” but the increases warrant close monitoring, said Richard Miech, survey team lead at the University of Michigan.

The teen heroin and cocaine figures are small enough that they could just be mostly a statistical random sampling variation.

* Teens in the U.S. are having sex less (from an AP news story of May 13, 2023):

[A]ccording to a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . . . 30% of teens in 2021 said they had ever had sex, down from 38% in 2019 and a huge drop from three decades ago, when more than half of teens reported having sex.

Teen pregnancies and the teen birthrate are also at record lows for all of history and prehistory in North America.

* As noted in the previous post, property crime rates are at record lows. And, violent crime rates are also very low.

* Meanwhile, prior to Trump taking office, the percentage of Americans that were foreign born was at an all time high.

Quick Hits

* Property crime rates in 2024 were the lowest that they've been since 1976.

Pretty sure that the labeling of this lines is wrong.

* Immensely increased H1-B visa fees will devastate the supply of physicians in the U.S., especially in rural areas, that are already being pummeled by immense cuts to Medicaid funding and ACA health insurance subsidies used mostly by self-employed people like farmers.

* Large office properties in metropolitan Denver are selling at immense discounts. Some of them are being converted to apartments or condos.

* In a broken clock's right twice a day moment, Trump's push for American automakers to start make microcars in the Kei car and Smart car sizes wouldn't be a bad thing, although his opposition to electric vehicles is horrible policy.

Physicians' Specialties And Their Political Identity

Draw whatever conclusions you wish. I suspect that lawyers would also show wide variation based upon the nature of their practice.

Private Equity v. Local Landlorrds

Private equity is playing a larger role in the housing market. Why?

Because rapid increases in interest rates, that have increased faster than the residential real estate market has time to compensate for them with lower inflation adjusted housing prices, has made buying homes unaffordable for home buyers who rely on significant mortgage debt to buy a home (especially, but not only, first time home buyers). This has created increased demand for rental housing which private equity is filling by buying single family homes (it has been a major player in the apartment market for a long time).

But, local government limitations on new housing are still more important to tenants and prospective home owners. Private equity isn't moral, but neither are smaller landlords. The main difference is that private equity concentrates the profits more than ownership by smaller landlords (and is less likely to spend its profits locally). The proportion of landlord owners housing and rental prices are predominantly governed by market forces that affect both equally and are heavily influenced by local zoning and building codes.

How did we get in this mess?

For a long time interest rates were exceedingly low in order to stimulate the economy. Housing prices soared to adapt, but low interest rates made those higher prices affordable. 

But, for a variety of reasons, nominal housing prices are sticky. 

In the short run, listing prices, home value appraisals, and conventional wisdom about fair market value selling prices are based on historical sales prices which are necessarily retrospective and often include comparable sales that pre-date the rise in interest rates, but mortgage rates reduce buyer's ability to pay almost instantly.

In the long run, there are two factors. 

One is that sellers can afford to sell heavily leveraged homes for less than their mortgages and also need enough left over after paying off their mortgage to have a down payment for their next home. And, mortgages are in nominal dollars, not a percentage of the home price. Leverage makes a small decrease in home values disproportionately erode the seller's equity, and most younger home owners have lots of mortgage debt. 

Secondly, sellers are human and psychologically anchor on the price that they bought their home for. Selling at a loss feels like losing, and nobody wants to voluntarily be a loser.

If interest rates had increased more gradually, the fall in affordability caused by higher interest rates would have been more modest giving the housing market time to adjust, and allowing nominal housing prices to hold steady, while allowing inflation adjusted housing prices to fall.

But the economic models that decision makers like the Fed use to set interest rate policies give little or no weight to how fast interest rates change when they estimate the effect that this will have on the economy, because economic models are heavily influenced by equilibrium models even though they acknowledge that the economy is dynamic to a limited, but insufficient, extent.

In short, the main reason that private equity is playing a bigger role in the housing market is that the Fed has flawed economic models and isn't sensitive to the needs of younger middle class people in the housing market. Interest rates were too low in an objective sense. But increasing them so quickly did as much harm as it did good.

If private equity hadn't done it, smaller individual landlords would have, albeit, somewhat less rapidly and in smaller chunks per neighborhood spread out over many landlords in more neighborhoods. Private equity isn't new. It's been around for several decades as an important economic force. It's been around in the apartment market for almost as long. But, the reason we've seen the shift from smaller landlords to private equity is that the Fed created a huge imbalance in the single family home market, and private equity was able to respond more quickly to this sudden change (that created a sudden demand for rental housing which occupants couldn't afford to buy due to higher interest rates) than smaller landlords were.