The Rich and the Rent Controlled

John Tierney has a great column in today's NY Times about rich New Yorkers enjoying the benefits of rent control. It ends as follows:

No matter how much you love your rent-stabilized apartment, no matter how smug you feel bragging to your friends about your deal, in your heart you know it's not fair you're paying so little. It's like buying stolen goods: you can revel in the low price, but you know it comes at someone else's expense.

And you know exactly who that someone is. You're living on his property. You're a squatter, but you don't want to admit it. So you tell yourself it's not really his property anyway, and you're more worthy of it than he is, and you couldn't survive anywhere else, and anyway this is all about something far more profound than money. But it's not.