Culling the Library and Spring Cleaning
Sorting through four boxes of books, a high school roadmap, and Kevin Warsh’s plan to reform the Federal Reserve
Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
Updates
We’ve entered the “shoulder season” here in Leadville. Some days are beautiful and sunny, others are cold and rainy (or more likely snowy). The weather can’t quite tell whether it is spring or summer. Despite the weather’s indecisiveness, we are currently in the middle of spring cleaning – putting ski and winter gear into storage, setting up for summer business, and starting new routines.
We recently did something we haven’t done before: culled our books. I took four boxes of books to our local thrift store this week. It was a lot of books, and there is noticeably more room on many of our shelves. But it made a surprisingly small dent in our overall library….
As I said, we are busily cleaning, organizing, and planning before the summer season begins in earnest. That means the house is a wreck with everything pulled out (clothes, furniture, boxes, etc.) And we’re also trying to finish up the kids’ schooling for the year. Most of their external programming ends next week, but they will have work to do through most of May.
I’m also thinking about high school courses and subjects. I threw this together the other day just off the top of my head:
We may offer some informal classes at our church this fall – we’ll see.
AIER is hosting a virtual talk and Q&A about trade in a week and a half. One of my dissertation committee members, Don Boudreaux, will be delivering 15-20 minutes of remarks about trade and national security and then I will run the Q&A. We’d love to have you join us!
News
I had a friendly exchange in our local paper about housing policy with a former city council member, Tim Best. I’ve known Tim for several years now and have even collaborated with him. The personal connection and relationship helps humanize the exchange and encourages cordiality – something several people in town have mentioned appreciating. Here are the letters – I include all the text at the end of this newsletter for those who want it all in one spot:
PM – Leadville is taking the wrong approach to housing
TB – Housing is Essential Infrastructure
PM – Why Regulation, Not Markets, Make Housing Unaffordable
TB – How Can the Market and the Government Work Together?
Also, The Economist Next Door continues chugging along. This week we released one of our most timely episodes about Kevin Warsh’s nomination to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. I talked with two of my extremely well-informed colleagues about what this could mean for future Fed decisions. If you want the five-minute version instead of the fifty-minute version, check out these clips:
Book Review
I recently finished A Heart Aflame for God by Matthew Bingham. This is a very Protestant book about spiritual formation. Bingham is not happy about the ecumenical approach of many writers on spiritual formation (Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way are two of many examples). He is worried that some of these popular approaches to spiritual formation abandon the Protestant heritage and cut against Scripture.
Before diving in, let me say that this is a well-written and well-researched book. Bingham has done his homework and he writes very clearly. That being said, I ultimately was not persuaded or particularly sympathetic to the main thrust of the book. Bingham argues that the traditional Protestant (and Scriptural) approach to spiritual formation consists of Scripture (hearing from God), Meditation (reflecting on God), and Prayer (responding to God).
That is a solid foundation, to be sure. But how one does those things, and how one integrates them within a broader framework of life and worship, are different questions. I appreciated a nice chapter Bingham wrote asking “What about the body?” where he engages with the work of James K. Smith.
I sympathize with Smith’s work, but have had some reservations. I think Bingham captures why. He breaks Smith’s argument into two big premises. First, human beings are primarily “lovers” rather than “thinkers.” This is very Augustinian (and arguably very biblical). Second, we can learn to love rightly through embodied ritualistic practices.
Bingham accepts the first premise but rejects the second. I generally concur. Focusing on desire/love seems right to me – and it feeds into why I believe aesthetics are underappreciated in many Christian circles. People tend to be drawn to beautiful lives and communities, not argued into them. I was always struck by how having students over for dinner would often have a greater impact on them than weeks or months of class time.
That being said, I reject the idea that what we think, even what we believe, becomes a secondary matter. We need love and logic, beauty and truth, embodiment and ideas. In my church, we are thinking about how to lean into embodied rituals and practices because we have relatively few. But I attended a mass a few weeks ago and felt drawn in the opposite direction – toward more ideas, exegesis, and logic – though I did have a great conversation with the father after a talk I gave later that day. He was clearly engaged in many of our current intellectual conversations today.
I appreciate the work Bingham has done. He’s created something beautiful. But I find myself less strongly committed to a narrowly Protestant/Reformational approach to spiritual formation. It’s my tradition, but as with economics or philosophy, I believe one should read thoughtfully (and perhaps adopt ideas from) outside his tradition too.
If you want to see my brief video review - you can check it out here and below.
Stay tuned for a big announcement (or two) in next week’s newsletter!
Leadville is taking the wrong approach to housing
Dear Editor:
Leadville is taking the wrong approach to housing.
While everyone acknowledges that scarce and expensive housing is a problem, most people don’t know what to do about it. This is evident in the approach the city (and to a lesser extent the county) has taken.
The problem is simply too many zoning and historic preservation committee restrictions on building. Cities like Dallas and Houston are affordable because they have light, or even non-existent, zoning regulations. Recent Leadville ordinances that waive some zoning requirements don’t do much good because they attach other strings like deed restrictions.
We don’t want wheeling and dealing between developers and the city council (e. g. “We’ll let you have a denser development, and in exchange, you’re going to provide affordable housing.”) Affordable housing will only occur if we allow more market-driven supply.
That simply means letting people build duplexes, triplexes, or apartments on their own property without having to get approval from zoning and HPC committees or from City Hall. Are we willing to relinquish bureaucratic control and allow people to build housing, even if we don’t always “like” what gets built?
Well, how much do you really want more abundant and affordable housing?
Paul Mueller
Leadville
Housing is Essential Infrastructure
To the editor,
In the March 27 edition of the Herald Democrat, Paul Mueller writes that “affordable housing will only occur if we allow more market-driven supply,” suggesting that local regulations are the primary barrier to abundant, affordable housing. If you believe that, I have a $700,000 house at the railyard to sell you! Just kidding, I obviously don’t, because how could anyone who works locally afford that?
This far-right libertarian notion, that markets will solve all societal ills if government simply steps aside, may hold in some sectors like the mass-production of widgets and doohickies. But there are well-established areas where market forces alone fail working people. Two widely accepted examples are childcare and healthcare. Housing belongs squarely on that list.
Mueller points to Houston and Dallas as proof that loosening regulations leads to affordability. But the data tells a different story. Both cities have relatively flexible zoning and fewer land-use constraints than most U.S. metros, yet affordability remains out of reach for many. In Houston, roughly half of renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Dallas shows similar trends, with tens of thousands of households paying over half their income just to keep a roof overhead. Homelessness persists in both regions at levels comparable with other metropolitan areas.
And critically, these cities rely heavily on public investment (federal housing tax credits, local housing trust funds, vouchers, and bond programs) to produce what affordable housing they do have. The “free market” has not delivered affordability; it has required substantial subsidy to function at all.
Leadville’s housing crisis, like other small mountain communities, has different mechanics than major urban areas. Here, limited land, high construction costs, and a tourism-driven economy push prices far beyond what local wages can support. Simply deregulating our way out of this ignores the basic math: when the market rewards second homes, short-term rentals, and higher-income buyers, it will not prioritize affordable housing without intentional intervention.
This is not a failure of regulation. It is the predictable outcome of an unbalanced market behaving according to design. The market got us into this mess, and it will not get us out. If we want teachers, service workers, healthcare staff, and first responders to live in the communities they serve, we need tools beyond hope in the “invisible hand of the market.” We need smart policy, targeted investment, government subsidies, and a recognition that housing, like healthcare and childcare, is essential infrastructure and not just another commodity to be sold to the highest bidder.
Tim Best
Advocates of Lake County
Why Government, Not Markets, Make Housing Unaffordable
To the editor,
I appreciate Tim Best’s letter and his efforts to house the vulnerable, but he is wrong about how the economy works. The “unbalanced” sectors he identifies – childcare, healthcare, and housing – are precisely the industries where government red tape has supplanted market forces.
Government involvement in housing has a dismal record. In Chicago, St. Louis and Newark, affordable housing programs rapidly decayed into crime-ridden, low-quality projects. Rent control schemes in New York City created slums and led to the eventual abandonment of thousands of buildings in the 1970s.
And towns like ours across the country have used restrictive zoning and building codes to exclude affordable housing and the people who need it – including denying the Advocates of Lake County’s own attempt to provide emergency housing.
People working through markets build cities – not government agencies or government contractors. While deregulation won’t conjure an abundance of cheap housing overnight, it is an essential first step. Mountain towns undoubtedly face higher costs for labor and materials, but local politics—not geography—artificially limits buildable land.
Political red tape also raises the cost per square foot of construction. Real affordability won’t come from just a few more houses (though that won’t hurt), but through building more apartments and multifamily units.
We should stop granting special favors to individual developers through waivers. If a zoning rule prevents a multi-family unit from being built, we should abolish it for everyone. Then one or two or 10 more people can build cheaper multi-family units too.
By favoring piecemeal exemptions while adding ever-more strings, the city and county continue a self-defeating, government-controlled approach. We are living with the failed results of that strategy in Lake County. Our public officials should stop trying to manage scarcity and start permitting abundance.
Paul Mueller
Leadville
How Can the Market and the Government Work Together?
To the editor:
I appreciate Paul Mueller’s continued perspectives on our local housing crisis, and value our recent ongoing dialogue in these pages. And I acknowledge that he brings an important economic perspective to the conversation (one far more astute and refined than mine). He is absolutely right about a key point: Leadville needs more housing, including more market-rate housing, and we should think seriously about how unnecessary barriers may be constraining supply. His emphasis on permitting greater abundance, particularly of rental units, is on point.
Where we diverge is in the assumption that affordability will reliably follow from deregulation alone. Housing markets do not operate in a vacuum, and in communities like ours—small, high-cost, and shaped by tourism and second-home demand—”lower cost” and “affordable” are not the same thing. A newly built rental unit can be far less expensive than another on the market and still be entirely out of reach for a teacher, a line cook, or a nursing assistant. The question is not simply whether we build more, but who that housing is built for and whether local wages can realistically support it.
There are, in fact, many examples across the country where public investment and policy have successfully produced housing that working people can afford. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), for instance, has financed millions of affordable units nationwide and is widely regarded across the political spectrum as one of the most effective housing tools we have. Closer to home, Colorado’s own housing programs, including those administered through the Prop 123 and the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, have helped bring stable, income-qualified housing to communities that the private market alone has not served.
At the same time, I agree with Mueller that clear, predictable rules, paired with meaningful incentives, are generally better policy than one-off arrangements. But eliminating tools like deed restrictions or affordability requirements altogether would mean relinquishing any mechanism we have to ensure that at least some portion of new development serves the local workforce.
This does not have to be a choice between markets or government, but a question of how the two can work together to meet a need that neither has solved alone. If we are serious about keeping a year-round community in Leadville—one where working people can live as well as work—then we will need both: more housing of all kinds, and intentional strategies to ensure that some of it is actually affordable to the people who make our community function.
Tim Best
Advocates of Lake County