What is in "Affordability" itself?
Posted: 21 Nov 2025, 15:12
This days I hear a lot about the word "Affordability", at least more offen than I used to hear it before. It is framed in terms of a political demand, implying many Americans (and possibly others elsewhere in the world) are no more in a position to afford what they really need. It is not about lack of availability, which would be solved by increasing output, economically speaking.
Many government policies around the world used to revolve around increasing availability to make products and services accessible for all. Now it is totally a new idea revolving around affordability of the same (products and services). I think this must be a challenging task to fulfill, if I understand the idea behind this demand correctly.
How can you make products and services affordable? By increasing availability? But there is no lack of availability. You can't simply inundate the market with something that is already available sufficiently, without causing a different sort of a damage, if I may have some level of macroeconomic parameters and their interplay in the economy.
By giving more purchasing power (more money) to the affected sector of the society? But we were told by the same people that are asking for "affordability" that such a measure would amount to communism, which we were told is an evil or amounts to it.
What we knew so far in terms of balancing the market was through measures geared towards control of supply and demand, if there is a surplus in demand, then your measures are towards increasing supply and vice versa.
In the current context, as I understand it, there is enough of a supply, but still there is unmet demand. What should you do in this case as a policy maker in a context of a free market?
Can someone (perhaps gearhead) help me get to a speed ?
Many government policies around the world used to revolve around increasing availability to make products and services accessible for all. Now it is totally a new idea revolving around affordability of the same (products and services). I think this must be a challenging task to fulfill, if I understand the idea behind this demand correctly.
How can you make products and services affordable? By increasing availability? But there is no lack of availability. You can't simply inundate the market with something that is already available sufficiently, without causing a different sort of a damage, if I may have some level of macroeconomic parameters and their interplay in the economy.
By giving more purchasing power (more money) to the affected sector of the society? But we were told by the same people that are asking for "affordability" that such a measure would amount to communism, which we were told is an evil or amounts to it.
What we knew so far in terms of balancing the market was through measures geared towards control of supply and demand, if there is a surplus in demand, then your measures are towards increasing supply and vice versa.
In the current context, as I understand it, there is enough of a supply, but still there is unmet demand. What should you do in this case as a policy maker in a context of a free market?
Can someone (perhaps gearhead) help me get to a speed ?