Jeff Bezos recently appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box where he said that if Amazon were to run the way New York City runs its school system, packages would take weeks to arrive. During the same interview, the Amazon founder pushed back against claims that Airbnb is responsible for high rents in New York City. Jeff Bezos argued that the short-term rental platform is not the reason housing costs remain elevated. Instead, he said government policies that limit housing supply are the main reason rents remain expensive.
Jeff Bezos says Airbnb is not behind high rents in New York City
During a discussion about taxes, wealth and government policy during the CNBC interview, Jeff Bezos turned to the issue of housing costs and questioned the idea that Airbnb is driving rent increases. “Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blamed it on Airbnb. Okay, Airbnb is not the cause of expensive rent,” Bezos said.He added that restrictions on Airbnb in New York City have not led to lower rents. “In fact, it’s been almost, let me finish here one second. It’s already been outlawed—in New York City. And rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb isn’t causing high rents,” he said.“What’s really causing high rent is government intervention,” he said. “We subsidize demand with things like tax policy, which is fine, but at the same time, we constrain supply. We constrain supply with things like zoning and permitting.”During the interaction, Jeff Bezos also questioned why construction projects face lengthy approval processes. “Why does it take so long to get something permitted to build?” he asked.According to Bezos, the basic economics of supply and demand explain the problem.“If you want rents to come down, econ 101—really simple. You need to, you can’t sort of subsidize demand and constrain supply. If you do, prices are going to skyrocket.”He added: “But this is not anybody’s fault other than government policy. And this is fixable.”
Jeff Bezos criticizes corporate subsidies
Later in the interview, Bezos said government policies often favor specific industries and businesses. “I would say that we have way too much corporate welfare, way too much corporate subsidies,” he said. He also criticized special provisions in the tax code, saying, “This is crony capitalism. And of course, it should be fixed.”
