To the Editor:
Justin Wilson’s latest cockamamie proclamation, which he made during a recent City Council meeting, is a demand that city government tell property owners the rents they may assess their tenants. And if the city doesn’t have the authority now to do so, then at least shame those landlords whom he believes are charging excessive rents.
Where in the world does this guy get his ideas? Marx? Lenin? Who gave him the authority not to mention the wisdom to declare the right rent for any given property? He clearly is unaware how prices are established in the free market our nation has espoused since its creation, one that goes hand in hand with representational democracy.
He is also a poor student of history. No government that has sought to allocate resources, establish prices and dictate profits has ever survived. And the few left (e. g., North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, etc.) are not prospering on any measurement scale except misery and deprivation.
I further surmise that Mr. Wilson has no idea how wealth is created without which, of course, there is nothing to tax. No tax, it follows, means no government services.
You would think Justin Wilson and his fellow travelers on City Council would instinctively know this truism and do all they could to encourage wealth creation; not impede this essential process with gratuitous meddling in the interaction between supply and demand, the mechanism that sets prices, including rents, in free market economies.
Jimm Roberts
Alexandria