Andy Kessler, the investor and Wall Street Journal columnist, is the perfect embodiment of what is surely the most Trump constituency in America: guys with big wallets and small brains.

Kessler’s latest Newspaper column is a rote review of Hannity-level conservative talking points about why electing Kamala Harris will kill the economy. Four more years of a Democratic presidency will kill the stock market, he claims, because “the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 3.6 percent over the entire decade of the 1970s.” (How has the stock market been TO DO under the current Democratic presidency? Kessler doesn’t say it.)

The item on his list that caught my interest was his argument on Harris’ housing policy. Harris believes that local zoning regulations have restricted the supply of housing, causing prices to spike in cities where supply fails to meet growing demand. Kessler’s position is that relaxing these regulations to allow more construction is communism:

Federal housing control. Ms. Harris wants to add three million new homes. Does this mean Soviet-style block housing for everyone? There is already a glut of housing, especially in the South. This is a progressive power grab to remove local zoning control. Ask Californians about mandatory accessory dwelling units to expand housing — especially low-income housing — in neighborhoods and near train stations. The state decides, not local zoning laws.

The Harris plan also plans to subsidize homeownership through a tax credit. There is a compelling criticism that, by subsidizing demand, the tax credit will only serve to drive up prices. Kessler could launch a judicious, market-based attack on this aspect of the Harris plan. Instead, he ignores it and focuses his anger on his proposal to increase supply by reducing regulation.

Kessler’s main confusion is that he cannot differentiate between allow the market to carry out an activity and demanding this activity. They are very different things!

Since the distinction is crucial and Kessler does not grasp it, I will explain it. In many cities, local zoning regulations prohibit developers and landowners from building the housing people want. Let’s say your city requires homes to occupy minimum lot sizes, so you can’t put three townhouses on one lot. Or the city won’t allow you to build apartments above a certain height, if at all.

Some zoning restrictions may be necessary, but the cumulative effect of all these restrictions is to make it illegal to build new housing in many cities where such housing is most sought after.

Harris proposes giving money to states that relax these local zoning regulations and allow more housing to be built. One might reasonably question the lack of clarity so far about how Harris will use these incentives to get states to ease restrictions on housing supply, but that’s not Kessler’s complaint. He is upset with the directional goal of allowing builders to build more housing on the land they own.

Kessler believes this “will mean Soviet-style block housing for everyone.” I guess it’s possible that there is a huge demand for “Soviet-style block housing” that is currently blocked by zoning regulations and that a deregulated market will lead to a large increase in the construction of these units.

If local governments allowed massive numbers of Soviet-style housing to be built, that wouldn’t mean developers would build them. They would only be built if people wanted to live there. Developers will only build these homes if they think people will pay to live in them.

Personally, I don’t think there are millions of people willing to live in the kind of cement block housing that Stalin was known to vomit about. It seems much more likely to me that if local governments allow more housing, developers will build housing that is considerably nicer than what the USSR built in the aftermath of a catastrophic war.

But suppose I’m wrong and Americans turn out to have horrible taste in housing. The free market answer to this problem would be to let them live with their choices. A less market-oriented response would be to impose limited zoning restrictions: you could maintain certain aesthetic standards to ensure that the market does not provide the massive, ugly structure that Kessler seems to think it would produce without regulation.

But Kessler’s solution, which is to allow localities to ban all construction, even in a very attractive non-Communist style, goes well beyond what is necessary to address this concern.

Kessler reinforces the impression of his own confusion when he writes: “Ask Californians about mandatory accessory dwelling units to expand housing – especially low-income housing – in neighborhoods and near train stations. » Yes, California has allowed homeowners to build accessory units in their garage or elsewhere on their property.

But it’s not OBLIGATORY. No one forces landlords to rent to poor people. The law in California allow to create housing on their own land. Kessler believes that big government should step in to ban these acts of capitalism between consenting adults, because they would lead poor people to live too close to wealthy people who would prefer not to have to endure their presence in the neighborhood.

Kessler then turns to a different concern. The problem is not Soviet housing, but that states will determine local building limits, rather than letting local governments make those decisions. Kessler believes it is a “progressive power grab” by moving the locus of decision-making from the city level to the state. He seems unaware that cities are generally very progressive.

Indeed, the cities leading the fiercest fights for deregulation of their real estate sector are almost all Democratic. Their states are also often Democratic, but the general trend is that blue cities are bluer than blue states. San Francisco — ground zero in the housing supply struggle — went for Joe Biden four years ago by 70 points, more than double his margin statewide.

One of the main reasons why progressive cities often resist housing deregulation is that progressive voters are often fooled by simplistic anti-market misconceptions, such as the idea that allowing more housing supply does not will have no effect on prices. It might seem strange that Kessler would want these deep blue cities to maintain their grip on the regulation of such an important sector of the American economy if he were not incapable of understanding the relationship between supply, demand and prices.

As confusing and confusing as this alliance between anti-market progressives and anti-market conservatives like Kessler may be, there is a level where it makes perfect sense. Overall restrictions on urban housing could impoverish the United States as a whole by driving up prices and preventing people from moving to cities with the greatest opportunities. But it enriches current owners, who control a tight supply and have seen their asset values ​​soar.

Trumpism is not about creating new wealth; it’s about protecting existing wealth. This is why Trump has attracted a circle of potential oligarchs who intend to use his favor to consolidate their current position. And it’s this belief that explains why wealthy men like Kessler find themselves both drawn to Trump and threatened by Harris’ plan to allow market forces to ease the housing supply crisis.