COMMENTARY: Nebraska Knows How to Achieve Real Affordability
by Dawson Brunswick
Online searches including the word “affordability” have skyrocketed over the past few months.
It’s no secret why: Global conflicts have driven energy costs up, while trade negotiations and supply chain problems have led to shortages and price hikes in everything from food to housing.
The good news? If there’s one state in the nation that knows how to tackle “affordability” challenges in a way that works, it’s Nebraska.
Because here in Nebraska, we know that the solution to rising prices and growing scarcity isn’t more government control.
It’s more freedom.
If you need proof, just look at what’s happening in places like Seattle and New York, where self-professed socialists have taken control.
Despite its team winning the Super Bowl earlier this year, Seattle has seen tens of thousands of jobs flee its city limits. More than a third of prime commercial real estate sits empty.
Even Starbucks has decided to move its main operations from the Pacific Northwest to Nashville, Tennessee, redirecting more than 2,000 new jobs and $100 million in local investment.
And Seattle’s socialist mayor’s reaction to this economic devastation? A bitter call for boycotting Starbucks and viral video of her jokingly saying “bye.”
Things in New York City aren’t going much better.
The supply of quality jobs has shrunk. So has the city’s population, as families across all income levels have fled both higher costs and higher taxes.
And while he promised everything from free childcare to a $30 per hour minimum wage, socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently admitted that New York is heading into a budget crisis of “historic magnitude,” with the city facing a staggering shortfall of nearly $13 billion.
It’s easy to see the cause-and-effect in both places. Socialist leaders try to assert more control over industries and opportunities, aggressively enforcing things like rent control or government-owned grocery stores.
But not only do those programs often require major tax hikes for funding, they also discourage the very thing that can actually drive prices down for people: Competition.
If homebuilders, developers, and rental companies can’t recoup the cost of building or leasing more housing, they just won’t do it. And families looking for their first home will suffer the consequences when lower housing supply causes higher prices.
Similarly, government-owned grocery stores can set arbitrarily low prices for products. That may seem good for customers, but the opposite is true. Those low prices will reduce their options by inevitably forcing privately-owned stores out of business. They’re also likely to cause shortages, as they make it impossible for farmers and distributors to cover their costs.
Unfortunately, the same logic behind these kinds of socialist policies has crept into more commonsense circles, too.
Medicare-for-all might not be as popular as it once was, but a key feature of that Bernie Sanders proposal—importing socialist price controls on pharmaceuticals—has gained steam through things like “Most Favored Nation” drug pricing.
The risks are comparable, too. Patients run the risk of never seeing new, lifesaving drugs, because American innovators are discouraged from inventing revolutionary treatments or developing groundbreaking cures.
Nebraska shouldn’t fall into the same trap. Communities from Omaha to Chadron have shown what it can look like to tackle affordability without undermining people’s freedom or restricting competition.
Just look at the progress we’ve achieved in Columbus on a seemingly impossible issue like housing.
We’ve brought together builders, developers, and government leaders to streamline permitting to get projects moving without delay. We’ve built partnerships aimed at cutting red tape to keep costs down. We’ve fine tuned our workforce initiatives to make sure folks who work here can live here, too.
The results? New housing developed from 2020 to 2024 helped bring in 1,200 new residents. An additional 1,400 housing units over the next few years is projected to draw some 3,500 new residents and adding more than $280 million in valuation.
Innovative approaches like these, which encourage partnerships while ensuring pro-consumer competition, can and should be applied to the other challenges we face.
Because only by empowering more businesses and entrepreneurs to compete more intensely for customers can we achieve real affordability for everyone.
We’ve done it in Columbus, and it’s time that state leaders in Lincoln and lawmakers in Washington, D.C., take that lesson to heart, too.
Dawson Brunswick is the president of the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce