Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Economist Steven Landsburg made the “case for foreclosure” in Slate.com, and was featured in this CD post on Tuesday.

Writing in today’s IBD, columnist Robert Samuelson makes a convincing case for falling home prices as the solution to the country’s housing problems:

Gloom. Doom. Calamity. Home prices are tumbling. We’re bombarded by somber reports. But wait. This is actually good news, because lower home prices are the only real solution to the housing collapse.

The sooner prices fall, the better. The longer the adjustment takes, the longer the housing slump (weak sales, low construction, high numbers of unsold homes) will last.

It’s elementary economics. Pretend that houses are apples. We have 1,000 apples, priced at $1 each. They don’t sell. We can either keep the price at $1 and watch the apples rot. Or we can cut the price until people buy. Housing is no different.

Even many economists who should know better describe the present situation as an oversupply of unsold homes. True, there is about 10 months’ supply of existing homes as opposed to four a few years ago. But the real problem is insufficient demand.

There aren’t more homes than there are Americans who want homes; that would be a true surplus. There’s so much supply because many prospective customers can’t buy at today’s prices.

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