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I hope this win signals (to both parties) that voters are receptive and will get engaged when a clear message is presented about cost of living and quality of life issues. Some of which are taken for granted in most other western countries.

I’m no political wonk, and I’m curious what others with more insight might say about his ability to fund and implement his polices.

I’m reminided of Obama and his hopeful message but he was mostly stymied on policy goals. Specifically Obamacare as an example ended up being watered down

Obama was hated by San Franciscan progressives because he came in with all of these promises and then backtracked on almost all of them. He basically turned into a Bush-lite, and he even maintained every single one of Bush's policies as well as deadlines. For example, he talked a lot about abortion and then immediately said it wasn't a priority for him once he got into office. He never closed Guantanamo and in both elections said he didn't support gay marriage.

ACA is a failure and the only thing it did was make it mandatory and unaffordable at the same time. Income inequality skyrocketed under him as well. Anyone who wasn't rich enough to afford some sort of asset like stocks or real estate was left behind and is now suffering.

I'll give you one reason, among many, it wasn't a failure. It made it illegal to deny people health insurance coverage based on pre existing conditions. That was a big step forward in a broken system to restore some humanity to the system.

I'll throw in extending parental coverage to 26. I have a sibling with type 1 diabetes and it's impossible for me to describe the positive impact those two provisions have had on their life.

Just because a piece of a legislation includes painful compromises doesn't mean we should ignore its huge wins.

That has in part become the issue in modern politics, any compromise no matter how minor is seen as a loss.

Neither sides most ardent supporters was willing to accept anything that looked like a compromise and so you end up with things as they are now, with someone where compromise shouldn’t happen because their is no practical compromise.

US politics has collapse down to the scorpion and the frog.

Obama care was not a Democratic win it was another Republican win in a long list of Republican wins, where the dems tried to work with the republicans in good faith and implemented their policies for them. Sadly they realised to late that you should never work with right wing fascists because if you give those people your hand they will take the whole arm.

Absolutely. We have this bad habit of hating policies and politicians that make things 10% as good at they tried to do, but shrugging and ignoring politicians and policies that actively make our lives worse. Perfect is ideal. Better than we started with is still better.

True (*)

They can't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions anymore, but insurers still have hundreds of other ways to avoid paying.

There's no silver lining in the U.S. healthcare system -- it's built to exhaust, confuse, and bankrupt patients. And it's only gotten worse in recent years. (Will only get worse with the addition of more AI.)

Joe Lieberman, a supposed Democrat, killed any real chance for reform we had in our generation. He then left Congress and quickly died -- his legacy is the broken healthcare system we have today, totally rigged against the very patients it's supposed to serve.

Joe Lieberman and basically every Republican ever, for decades.

And the Republicams on the Supreme Court that hobbled what the Democrats managed to narrowly get through the political process.

But sure, direct all the anger for that towards Democrats, that will result in better Healthcare any day now. I hear Trump has concepts of a plan that he's been working on for over a decade that he'll let us know about in just 2 weeks.

I'm so tired of "this plan wasn't perfect, it failed. Democrats suck".

And meanwhile the republican plan was to do nothing or actively make things worse than ignoring the problem. Why are some people seemingly hardwired to just blame democrats for any or everything? Because the plans they have don't immediately benefit them, the middle class person who was never down on their luck?

Even then, I fail to think of any policy that legitmately benefits the middle class either. Did abortion bans improve your quality of life? Do immigration raids help your 401k? Did that cut to EV credits get you better public transit?

Isn't it the same thing that made it unaffordable?

No, what made it unaffordable was scrapping the penalty on not having health insurance. If you force health insurance to cover everyone then you also need to force everyone to have health insurance to keep the system balanced. One way to do that is have everyone automatically covered in a public system: rejected. Another way is to tell people they don’t have to sign up for health insurance but they do have to pay into the system.

No that is a huge failure. That is perhaps the biggest failure of Obamacare.

That means I, as someone with healthy lifestyle habits, has to pay largely the same premium as someone who smokes, is obese, and doesn't exercise. And sure enough, life expectancy in the US immediately stalled after the law's implementation: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni.... Exactly what economics would predict would happen.

And what if you, despite being healthy, get diagnosed with cancer right one your employer fails, thus becoming uninsurable? This type of thing happened to people.

It’s nice the above can no longer happen. You could, at the same time, still allow insurers to charge a premium to smokers and obese and for other lifestyle risks within one’s control. They are not mutually exclusive.

The entire system of linking health insurance to one's current employer is bad. I should just be able to buy it with money I earn from doing anything that pays me, just like I do with my car insurance or any other type of insurance.

That decline is mostly because of Covid pandemic, no? And it looks like the life expectancy picked back up after 2022.

Similar laws existed in EU countries long before US, and EU countries also saw a decline in life expectancy during those years: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/deu/ger...

US policies wouldn’t affect the life expectancy in the UK, which has broadly the same trend: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni...

This is despite no-one paying (directly) for health care.

Would you be willing to submit to invasive investigations into how you live to identify any risk factors you have (both under your control, like choosing to drive, international travel, and not under your control, like genetic predisposition to heart disease) to ensure your premium can be accurately calculated?

Blaming people for their illnesses is something we have historically gotten wrong a lot, and regardless, it’s pretty inhuman as a society to leave people to suffer and die because they can’t afford healthcare.

I remember being denied coverage after aging out of my parent's healthcare plan. The cited reason was "pre-existing conditions", which were allergies and a congenital cleft lip and palate (I had a number of corrective procedures as a kid). I was a healthy and relatively normal young adult.

Life expectancy flatlining could be any number of things. Correlation != causation

That's the point of insurance.

How about if that is diabetes, or something else that does not depend on lifestyle choices?

Look at this Ubermensch that will never have a stroke, develop cancer, or any number of debilitating conditions. Must be nice!

It is the basic duty of every human to do their best to make sure every other living human is afforded a life of simple human dignity. Full stop. We have the resources. Let's just do it.

Sadly we do not have, and will never have, the resources to help everyone, even to a baseline of human dignity. Surely we can't give people unlimited talk therapy, MRIs, and cancer treatment for free. But some people sorely need these things.

Preventative/propylactic care is orders of magnitude cheaper than treatment once a disease has manifested. It makes sense to me to punish people for not doing this care, thereby choosing to impose more strain on an already overburdened system.

Note that GP only mentioned things we have control over -- exercise, weight, not smoking. Of course I agree that it would be cruel to disadvantage pre-existing conditions.

That's the point of insurance. It's the idea that everyone pools together money and when something bad happens to one person, its finances are mitigated by the input of others. Some will benefit more and others benefit not at all. But no one can predict who is on what end.

Yes, if everyone gets cancer at the same time then Health Care is boned. But then again, so is society. So why worry about that worst case scenario?

>Note that GP only mentioned things we have control over -- exercise, weight, not smoking.

We couldn't pass laws to help control what companies put in food, and failed to subsidize healthier food options. I wish you the best of luck with healthcare trying to pull off that endeavor with punishments for obesity. I'm guessing it wouldn't be poolitically popular.

Since when do we not have the resources? Nearly every developed country on earth manages it ok.

> That means I, as someone with healthy lifestyle habits, has to pay largely the same premium as someone who smokes, is obese, and doesn't exercise.

Do you live a healthier lifestyle than every single other person in your insurance plan or are you just a hypocrite who’s decided the line is acceptable when it includes you, but not one inch beyond that?

Yes, everyone on insurance should be young and healthy. Fuck those sick people /s

I heard this somewhere and its true of every politician:

you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.

ACA is NOT a failure. It did address some really critical pain points but left others. There is no bill that can address every single pain point in a system that is as complex as the US healthcare.

> Obama was hated by San Franciscan progressives because

Because San Francisco progressivism doesn’t win on a national stage.

Times are changing. The pendulum swing back from MAGA is going to be interesting.

Hopefully we don't add too much energy to the pendulum because eventually it will swing back again

> Times are changing. The pendulum swing back from MAGA is going to be interesting

The pendelum swings in multiple dimensions. MAGA went mainstream in a way the Tea Party and conservativism did not by abandoning policy purity in favour of, first, messaging, and later, idolatry.

The preserved component between MAGA's messaging and Mamdani's rise is populism and, to a lesser degree, divisive politics. Where MAGA failed and Mamdani may deliver is in pragmatism (and not being corrupt).

There is an opportunity to unify "abundance" policies with inclusive progressivism or villanisation of wealth. (I'm not convinced you can do both. If you want to pursue growth and cost of living, you need to turn the capital spigots. Accumulated capital facilitates that. If you want to tackle inequality and billionaires, you'll need to temporarily destabilise those capital structures. You'll also, presumably, be increasing the lower and middle classes' purchasing power, which limits how much public spending you can do without spiking inflation.)

San Francisco progressives can influence national politics. But anyone insisting on copy-paste purism is a godsend to MAGA.

>ACA is a failure and the only thing it did was make it mandatory and unaffordable at the same time.

Compared to what? Is it really better to just be uninsured and go bankrupt over an ambulance ride?

This point alone makes your entire post suspect, even though parts of it are indeed true (it's a real shame guantanomo was not closed down).

> ACA is a failure and the only thing it did was make it mandatory and unaffordable at the same time

Isn't it because Republicans spent a busy decade destroying it?

I kinda feel Obama is more of a Trojan horse. It was not he tried and failed to get what he campaigned for implemented, it was more like he did a U turn after he got elected. e.g. he called for universal health care but once he was elected he started saying it was "too radical".

I hope the same doesn't happen with Zohran. If he was going to fail after all, I wish that will at least be after he had fought as hard as he can.

> he called for universal health care but once he was elected he started saying it was "too radical"

ACA was the most radical package that could have passed, and it still cost Democrats the Congress.

This line of argument reminds of the folks who complained about Sinema and Manchin. You know what we’d have with a few more Sinemas and Manchins in the party right now? A majority.

The bill that passes is better than the ideal that doesn’t.

Manchin and Sinema shouldn't be mentioned together in the same sentence.

Manchin was genuinely the best Democrats could hope for from West Virginia. Sinema was absolutely not the best Democrats could hope for from Arizona. Manchin was also, while not perfect, more honest in much of his opposition than Sinema was, and sometimes he was actually right.

> Manchun was genuinely the best Democrats could hope for from West Virginia. Sinema was absolutely not the best Democrats could hope for from Arizona

Sure. My point is both are preferable to a MAGA enabler. If you lose perspective and start aiming for perfection at the expense of the good enough, you lose power.

Maybe, maybe not. The problem with being fine not 'losing power' but without actually doing anything that your constituents need while facing an uncompromising opposition that is trying to destroy the way of life of your constituents is that you end up losing most of the battles while losing any active support. When people only vote for you because they are afraid of the opposition and not because they think you are going to help them, then your motivations are not in line with the people who voted for you, especially if you can't even provide an effective resistance against the opposition when they blatantly do illegal things.

At least with a MAGA enabler things can get bad enough that people might realize what they have to lose.

In a country as conservative as yours, if you're culturally in line with the 'coastal elites' (forgive my use of this term), you can't expect a stable majority by being uncompromising.

Manchin was a stooge who voted how he was paid. He doesn't get a pass for not being as clear a traitor as Sinema.

He voted how his electorate would have wanted him to vote. He probably also hoodwinked some rich people to pay him some bucks while he was at it.

He's about as "shades of gray" as a politician gets.

That was always my impression of him. It was easy to feel like he was breaking ranks, but realistically he seemed to vote exactly how his electorate wanted him to.

He voted in line with Democrats when it mattered, but was enough of a visible pain in the ass to satisfy his constituents.

Without Manchin the Inflation Reduction Act would not have passed. Arguably Biden‘s biggest accomplishment.

I think people had rose colored glasses about Obama because he was, by far, the most charismatic President we've had in modern times. His speeches still give me goose bumps, even when I disagree with what he's saying! That man has the gift of gab. Him also being intelligent further, sadly, makes him an outlier in modern times.

But many of the things he did were dubious and ACA is a perfect example of this. It's little more than an subsidy for private insurance companies whose profits dramatically increased relatively shortly after adapting to it. Universal healthcare doesn't have to be adversarial towards private insurance, but it should not directly drive increases in profits because, especially once its mandated + subsidized, profits need to be controlled as the government is effectively guaranteeing them.

Medical loss ratios (insurers must pay a minimum percent of premium revenue on medical costs) are obviously insufficient since they do nothing to motivate lower costs. On the contrary, it directly incentivizes maximizing costs which is exactly what's happened. For one specific datum medicare administrative costs are around 2% - private insurance administrative costs start around 12%.

---

Basically there is no way this was even remotely close to the most socially motivated (I don't see radical as a desirable adjective) package he could get have gotten passed. And now with the country so divided, it's unlikely we'll be getting anything better anytime in the foreseeable future, because whichever side tries to pass it will simply be opposed by the other, regardless of merit. Hopefully Mamdani isn't a complete failure, because more parties in power is perhaps one way to break the divides in society.

The ACA was, I believe, a highly intentional better-done-than-perfect effort, fully cognizant of the historical cycles of political will around major healthcare policy in America. If you review in depth the efforts in the 90s under Clinton, and earlier under Johnson, I think the approach was well considered. A more ambitious policy proposal ending in failure very well may have have put the topic to bed for another twenty years. The loss of the “public option” did sting, though.

Yes, and many states blocking the Medicaid expansion also hurt it.

> there is no way this was even remotely close to the most socially motivated (I don't see radical as a desirable adjective) package he could get have gotten passed

What are you basing this on? Again, Pelosi lost her House because of ACA. Republicans shut down the government multiple times trying to repeal it. They narrowly missed, but because the compromise was powerful. Had Pelosi and Obama pushed harder on ACA, chances are high it would have never passed.

I’m not saying it was perfectly calibrated. But the problems you’re mentioning would have meant battling entire new categories of powerful interest groups. That's what, in part, sank HillaryCare.

> Obama ... was, by far, the most charismatic President we've had in modern times

Watching old Obama speeches, I find him mostly run-of-the-mill. Trump, whether or not you like him, is far more charismatic - his success is built on his charisma. Also, look up Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan speeches, by maybe that isn't what you mean by 'modern times'.

> his success is built on his charisma.

Print out one of his speeches and read them. His success is built on backlash against the shock of seeing a black president.

With 20/20 hindsight I'd say that's the wrong lesson. The actual lesson is that if you're struggling to get 40% of the legislature to make obvious improvements to your country, you should use your majority for even more radical things. If they'd used that same majority to pack the supreme court, pass a nationwide anti-gerrymandering law, break up hundreds of large corporations, and so on, we might have averted a ton of disaster. At the time perhaps it was hard to see, but in retrospect what we saw in the period 2008-2010 were early warning signs of how the flaws in our system of government were going to send us on a downward spiral.

It wasn't hard to see at the time. People just thought the West Wing was how politics should work. That somehow all the players come to play good, fair ball. Many of us were out here caucusing against Obama and Gore and Biden because they represented an obvious losing strategy in the long term.

> ACA was the most radical package that could have passed, and it still cost Democrats the Congress.

People aren’t excited by half measures that let health insurance companies generate tons of money and CONTINUOUSLY raise premiums. People still go bankrupt receiving cancer care here.

The person who gets free healthcare and cuts overall costs by destroying health insurance middle man will be massively popular and, once the effects are borne out, win congress in a landslide.

Perhaps Obama couldn't have made it happen, but he didn't try. He could have made a speech about "how we will do because not because it's easy, but because it's possible because every other western nation has this same basic thing." But here we are with a crappy compromise.

“It works in Europe” isn’t a very good American political rallying cry though; Americans generally don’t have the opinion that Europe works very well.

Only because American discourse and thinking is so utterly poisoned by the absolute bullshit that is “American exceptionalism”.

In terms of almost any possible quality of life metric you can think of Europe is ahead of the US.

That combined with just a breathtaking level of ignorance of what Europe is actually like in any meaningful sense. You saw this a lot in this NYC election where they were trying to paint Mamdani as an actual communist because well over half of the country has no idea what “democratic socialism” means let alone communism.

Yeah, but this only strengthens the parents point that "It works in europe" is not a good rallying cry in the states. It's also too easy for opponents to counter and point to random europeans who complain about their own system and win cheap debate points on that front. It might be better to just lean into the exceptionalism and say, "We're America, we're richer, we can make a better system." Or something along those lines.

Except the McMansions and that every family has at least 3 cars…

> In terms of almost any possible quality of life metric you can think of Europe is ahead of the US.

Laughable statement, considering Europeans give a leg and a arm to live in America.

> once the effects are borne out, win congress in a landslide.

There is a deep, foundational information problem that would need to be overcome for this to ever actually happen. Medicare, for example, is viewed incredibly favorably, but tons of people don’t even know it’s a government program! This survey found only 58% of people over 65 recognized that: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/medicare/medica...

We are in an information twilight zone where perception of policy outcomes is basically entirely dependent on choice of news sources.

The solution is simple. Expand Medicare. But you need to do it slowly or it will implode.

For ten years, every year, drop the eligibility age by 1 year. Then for the next ten years, every year, drop the eligibility age by 2 years. Maybe keep going at 2 years every year from there, but it should probably be adjusted over time as the effects of rising enrollment show the acheivable enrollment rate.

In the meantime, start covering all kids with Medicaid from birth to X, adding 6 months every year for the first 10 years, then 1 year per year until it overlaps with most people getting enough social security credits to be eligible for Medicare. At that point, you can probably just make Medicaid available for everyone, if you don't have 40 social security credits by age 35, you probably qualify for Medicaid under current rules. Again, it'd be helpful for Congress to supervise and adjust as needed.

A lot of Americans don't even realize that Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing -- even in 2017 it was 1/3. I believe the skew is even worse today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/upshot/one-third-dont-kno...

> Perhaps Obama couldn't have made it happen, but he didn't try.

They barely passed ACA after over a year of negotiating with the Republicans and removing lots off provisions from it. How do you expect someone to just come along and pass an even more radical reform?

> ACA was the most radical package that could have passed

And they only passed it by bypassing the fillibuster and using the budget reconciliation process.

But arguably, if they were more aggressive and offered bigger benefits, they'd get more support. The GOP has been extremely aggressive, generally. People don't vote for those hesitant and afraid of conflict.

> You know what we’d have with a few more Sinemas and Manchins in the party right now? A majority.

True, and it's also true if the Dems had a few more Sanderses and Warrens - and then they'd have a solid majority rather than one that caved like Manchin. But they'd need a bunch more to pass a healthcare bill without reconciliation.

I do think it's worth considering that FDR got elected for 4 terms (granted, congressional control went through various flows).

The push for the ideal might have locked in something generational. Maybe.

> ACA was the most radical package that could have passed, and it still cost Democrats the Congress.

Bad casual reasoning. There is so little evidence that voters care about policies years before they go into effect.

Fox News made damned sure the voters cared.

> The bill that passes is better than the ideal that doesn’t.

This is the essence of politics.

No. I think an honest attempt at doing something "radical" economically for the working class can cross the divides we have.

I think there's an argument to be made that many of the allegedly "radical" Democratic policies fall into an uncanny valley of wonkiness, where they're enough of a reach to get people riled up emotionally but not enough to have the kind of punchy, obvious benefits that would get people to be supporting on a similarly gut-level basis. Arguments about whether the minimum wage should be $X or $X+2 seem like accounting tournaments. There's no appetite for saying stuff like "we will seize $100 billion from the wealthiest individuals and give it to everyone else as cash payments".

The other problem is that the Democrats don't seem to realize that incremental change doesn't really work when the system of government is messed up like it is. Every little small-ball policy the Dems try to push through can just be undone later by administrative gimmicks as long as we have the level of ambiguity we do about executive power. Beyond that, they can be rolled back by countervailing legislation because the Republicans are focused on gaming the system. "Substantive" radical policies like universal healthcare are unlikely to be achievable without first enacting "procedural" radical policies like anti-gerrymandering rules or abolishing the senate.

> There's no appetite for saying stuff like "we will seize $100 billion from the wealthiest individuals and give it to everyone else as cash payments".

Indeed. Because anyone who is numerate enough to do the division quickly realizes that this works out to about $300 per person, and stops being excited about the Wowie Big Number.

Still better.

Radically changing healthcare works out great in people's heads, but then they immediately whine about their Ozempic no longer being covered like in socialized healthcare countries which don't use expensive cutting edge drugs as a first resort. No matter how competent the government is, which ours isn't, any radical change (besides just throwing more money at the problem) will make things worse before they are better and voters are the most fickle bunch there is.

Semaglutide isn’t exactly cutting edge, it’s 16 years since it was invented. GLP-1 drugs go back to the 90s. They are undeniably trendy but it’s odd to consider them cutting edge.

Expensive, yes.

Semaglutide was approved in 2017. By cutting edge, I suppose I mean covered by patent. Luckily for Canada, Novo Nordisk forgot to pay their for its renewal.

I was just pointing to an example of why healthcare reform is politically difficult. One relevant to the ACA was ending discrimination based on preexisting conditions, which caused a majority of people's premiums to go up to subsidize those who are chronically ill. Morally, most people agree it's the right thing to do, but it was politically disastrous since one person gets one vote.

The ACA was essentially the Republican plan for healthcare reform. They just went scorched earth on it because they were pissy that he got the credit for their plan. That's also why they haven't been able to come up with a coherent replacement.

Obama had a plan early on to be inspired by Lincoln's cabinet of rivals and to try to unite the parties. Because of that he didn't push nearly as hard on the right wing of his party early on like Lieberman, who were the holdouts who pushed for the lack of a public option to have true universal healthcare.

Republicans in Congress never wanted or proposed anything like ACA. It is weird half truth because Massachusetts, one the more liberal states, with Democratic supermajorities in both houses, passed something similar while Mitt Romney was Governor. It was the brainchild of Jonathan Gruber, MIT Economist and Democratic consultant who worked on the ACA for Obama. You can go back and read the GOP platforms of the time, there is nothing like the ACA proposed.

The 1993 HEART Act was very much like the ACA, built around the individual mandate to purchase private health insurance, primarily through your employer. Romneycare was massaged out of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Equity_and_Access_Refor...

This was the Republican alternative to the time's Hillarycare proposal, and was authored by the Heritage Foundation of Project 2025 fame.

Good point! But HEART was just a tactical response to the Clinton plan. Never a part of the party platform, not something candidates ran on, and it disappeared as support for the Clinton plan died. When Republicans won the presidency back in 2000, and held the house, and briefly the Senate, they didn't make any attempt to bring back HEART. It was never the Republican plan for health care. It is also somewhat of a mischaracterization to call it a mandate for health insurance, it was much more narrowly focused covering catastrophic events.

Some side notes. It was introduced by Lincoln Chafee, who then switched to the democratic party. Heritage itself disowned it. The author later wrote, "I headed Heritage's health work for 30 years, and make no mistake: Heritage and I actively oppose the individual mandate, including in an amicus brief filed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court." There was also never any intent to have a punitive mandate, just a tax credit would be lost if for people who didn't buy insurance - more carrot than stick.

From what I understand, the HEART act wasn't really backed by Republicans, it had only 20 or so R's on it and was actually more of a ploy to prevent other more substantive bills from passing. It was designed to obstruct not to pass, later Dole supported a more restricted bill and HEART was never even debated. The vast majority of R's didn't support it, it was basically a political maneuver.

It was straight up co-sponsored by very nearly a majority of Senate Republicans (18 out of 42 at the time). It's hard to say a "vast majority of R's didn't support it". Though recently Republicans have been trying to distance themselves from it because it doesn't make their reaction to the ACA look great. There's a lot of rewriting of history.

Yes it didn't get debated, but the formal debate stage of a bill is pretty late in the process these days. It's been theater at best for at least a century. The actual debating happens at the stage the HEART Act got to.

It got dropped because the Republicans won congress in the midterms and didn't actually want to change anything about health care; the HEART act was just what they came up with as a proposal if they were to be forced.

It got dropped because the Republicans won congress in the midterms and didn't actually want to change anything about health care;

Right? So Republicans did not support it, or want it. It was just part of the Clinton Plan politics and negotiation. When Clinton failed, HEART totally disappeared.

recently Republicans have been trying to distance themselves from it

Of the 18 Republicans who co-sponsored it, none are still in politics, 14 of the 18 are now dead. Republicans today have literally nothing to do with it. It is getting silly to say a Republican today has any connection or responsibility for this proposal that never even came close to a vote, and not one current Republican has any connection to.

> The bill that passes is better than the ideal that doesn’t.

For your resume, sure.

Sometimes reform only works when you fully commit and if half the country isn't on board, it's not better to pass some mutilated and watered down version.

No, losing ACA matters. It's a good program that's helping people afford or qualify for life insurance. I was able to get insurance because of it.

Yes, but it does not provide health care, it provides a subsidy to the health insurance companies (I.e., throwing even more money at lucrative companies that profit by denying coverage). It is sad that it is the best our government can do for us.

It is sad, agreed, but having the ACA is better than not having it.

That seems like a difficult one to provide evidence for. A major problem in the US seems to be that they've got this impenetrable thicket of legislation around healthcare, insurance and employment that makes it impossible for people to make rational decisions.

Just not having that legislation, letting employment & insurance decouple and a sane market for healthcare develop might easily be better than the ACA.

> Just not having that legislation, letting employment & insurance decouple and a sane market for healthcare develop might easily be better than the ACA.

Maybe? But what is the mechanism by which employment gets decoupled from health insurance? That would require a different law, I suppose?

But that wasn't what I suggested: I said having the ACA is better than not having it, not that having the ACA is better than other possible alternative laws. I can think of quite a lot of alternative healthcare reform laws that would be significantly better than the ACA.

And I think it's reasonably safe to say that in "ACA vs. nothing else", ACA wins, if we judge by the millions of people who will lose healthcare coverage if the ACA were to be repealed and not replaced with anything new.

I honestly don't understand why good healthcare should develop under free rational conditions. Why shouldn't a hospital charge your everything while you are in critical condition? I mean, it's a voluntary deal, take it or leave it, right?

I'm not really arguing against the ACA in particular, just the general sentiment.

I do, however, think the passage and defense of the ACA has completely stopped any kind of healthcare reform movements from Democrats and completely turned Republicans against the idea.

The ACA was more or less the GOP's healthcare reform plan[0]. They fought so hard against it because they didn't want the Democrats to get credit for it. The ongoing animosity toward it from Republicans is ridiculous, and Democrats are even further from being able to pass any more healthcare reforms than they were when the ACA was passed. The all-too-brief excitement for Medicare For All is somewhat emblematic of that.

[0] To be fair, it did go further than previous GOP proposals. They did include individual/employer mandates and a marketplace, but not stuff like the Medicaid expansion and higher taxes on high earners to help pay for it.

That's outrageously false: every Republican voted against ACA, and Republicans for years campaigned on trying to overturn it.

That's... not arguing against anything I said?

Maybe I wasn't clear. Let me try again. Many of the policies behind the ACA had long been championed by Republicans, or even originated in conservative circles. For example:

1. The individual mandate was something the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) originally came up with back in the 80s, and was presented as an alternative to Clinton's healthcare plans in the 90s.

2. The state-based exchange system was something already present in some red states like Utah, and the concept is very similar to Republican proposals (again) back in the 90s. (This shouldn't be surprising: conservatives tend to prefer that states administer programs like these. Not a criticism; just noting a tendency.)

3. Much of the ACA's framework is similar to Republican Governor Mitt Romney's healthcare reform in Massachusetts from 2006.

Sure, there are parts of the ACA that Republicans genuinely didn't support (e.g. Medicaid expansion, high-income-earner tax increases, requiring insurers to cover contraception). But big, fundamental parts of it were similar to or exactly like conservative healthcare reform plans that had been proposed over the past couple decades.

The only reason I can see to explain why Republicans so vehemently fought and voted against the ACA (and have subsequently repeatedly tried -- and failed -- to repeal it) is because they didn't want Democrats to get credit for enacting it, and once it became "blue policy", it was automatically capital-B Bad to them.

It's also telling that Republicans have failed so miserably at repealing it (though they have done it damage). That's because they have no alternative... because the ACA is more or less what they wanted in the first place.

Yep, it's basically a federal version of Romneycare. [1]

[1] https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2...

Actually come to think of it a very similar pole reversal happened in Canada with the "Trudeau/Liberal Carbon Tax" -- a program originally proposed by the British Columbia Conservative Party, first implemented in Alberta by a Conservative Party and proposed federally by Stephen Harper of the Federal Conservatives.

Yup, that's a huge reason why I think all of this is just petty bullshit from the GOP. Granted, even though Romney is a Republican, that doesn't mean that every other Republican has to agree with him.

While Romney has said a lot of mixed stuff over the years about the ACA, starting with pledging to repeal it during his 2012 presidential campaign, his more recent rhetoric has softened by orders of magnitude, voting against some of the repeal efforts, voting in favor of some modifications, expressing the need for a replacement plan before repealing it, and acknowledging that repealing it would cause millions of people to lose coverage. I don't agree with his position overall, but I think he's been a fairly "reasonable Republican" about it, including his belief that this sort of legislation belongs at the state level and not the federal level.

But there are plenty of Republicans in the House and Senate (more in the House, I suppose) that just seem rabidly, irrationally anti-ACA. Even while chanting "repeal and replace", they seem to forget the "replace" part of it.

Republican voters seem irrational as well: while opposition to it has softened since the Obama years, it's still pretty high (~70% or so), but you get weird effects. Like if you refer to it as "the ACA" instead of "Obamacare", Republicans don't hate it as much. Or if you don't mention "Obamacare"/"ACA" at all, and instead take a bunch of parts of the law and ask if they support them individually (like "do you support requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions?"), you see less opposition, and even see a majority of Republican voters supporting some of its provisions.

> For your resume, sure

No, for everyone. Some voters like politicians who pass zero legislation while holding firm to their values. Occasionally they get rewarded. Most often, they’re branded–correctly–ineffective. (And, I’d argue, unfit to lead. If you’re using millions of Americans as human shields to pass an ideologically-pure package, that’s immoral and belongs with Twitter celebrities, not leaders.)

You didn't mention the effectiveness or positive effects of the hypothetically passed legislation at all.

You're arguing that it's good for a politician's resume.

>and if half the country isn't on board

By that logic, we can never pass anything, ever. And that more or less is represented with congredd Grdidlock for the past 20 years. Is that a better outcome?

I see it as Sprint vs. Waterfall. Except Waterfall takes 8-10 years in policy to do and no one is in office long enough to finish the task. So we gotta pass in a lot of smaller tickets until we get there.

This attitude is why Trump is president. Yeah we have a terrible leader, but we could have had a mediocre leader and I guess that is somehow worse in people's minds.

That doesn't track at all. I'm talking about legislation and, hence, legislatures.

You are right in a deep way (as you often are on this site). Wins Against Replacement isn't something most people can comprehend. If you look at baseball, you'll see that a lot of what they're doing with what they think is advanced moneyball would seem like normal statistical techniques to anyone. But then you realize that what is trivial in an HFT firm is kind of black magic to anyone else. Even WAR is beyond the comprehension of the average person.

The average person wants someone who "totally dunked on the other guy, dude" and then loses the election but "never sold out, man". Part of the wisdom of supporting Rosa Parks and not just the first Black woman who was in that position is about being good at winning so your cause advances.

Our lives in America are so good that winning or advancing your cause doesn't really move the needle as much as "making a stand, dude" is. Given that life is really good and change isn't immediately to acute suffering, almost all politics for the average person is about posturing and signaling.

From closer to home, people are annoyed in San Francisco that the state speed camera laws are not permanent and the fines are not humongous for someone going 100 mph over the limit. Most people fantasize about things happening as God placing down edict from upon high, rather than the thing that can happen on the political frontier.

This line of thinking died the moment that the parties began another realignment with 2024. We are in the beginnings of the 7th party system.

Curtis Sliwa was significantly to the left of both Eric Adams and Cuomo on a whole host of issues, which is one of the many reasons why Trump refused to endorse Silwa (they hate each other). If we didn't have a Sinema or Manchin, we might have liberal republicans like a Silwa who would be objectively better if you're a liberal.

I genuinely can't believe, still, that I have to spell this out for people.

Obama did not do a U-turn. It is the worst naivete to think that what happened was "he had big ideas and he changed his mind." He had to bring up big ideas to get elected, and then he got elected the first Black president and some of you seem entirely too dense to actually grasp what that means. President. Not King.

Subject to all of those checks and balances you hear about and then some.

You people act as if he could wave a wand and just sweep away everyone and everything who was against his big ideas, when the opposite was at play.

Please, grow a better sense of politics.

There are plenty of instances in which Obama, despite campaigning on a platform of change from Bush-era policies, continued or even furthered those policies. A good example which is relevant here involves government surveillance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla...

Snowden has also spoken about this at length, saying he expected a change when Obama was elected due to his campaigning against the PATRIOT Act, but there was no change. This is only one of many policies in which Obama changed his stance after he became President.

You still don’t understand what it means to be the first BLACK President, do you? In terms of how everyone, including your own party, will treat you as though they can do what they want and you’ll get on board.

How you’ll have people who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag certain they could do better than you.

You really do not understand.

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I'm Black.

People like you utterly missing the context absolutely makes it personal.

People like me?

Just guessing, but maybe, people who use terms like "Obummer"?

You know the insinuation made by the original commenter.

Consider the framing today: "Trump is doing all these terrible things, making all of these drastic changes, exploiting the system to his will."

The Dems can no longer use the excuse that the president is handcuffed. Trump 2.0 is showing us what the president can do. The dems consistently use that excuse to prevent popular policies from being enacted. Obama even had a ~6mo super majority where he could have codified abortion rights. But instead they keep it around as an outstanding issue because it is a good fundraising issue.

I don't want my President to act like a dictator even if they're on "my side." Some things are more important than policy.

Obama understood this and respected the office. Trump took a fat dump on the office and I'm not sure if our country's values will ever recover from this race to the bottom.

> Obama understood this and respected the office

At a bare minimum, he signed into law the NDAA of 2012, which authorized the government to ignore people's civil liberties in cases where they were suspected of terrorism. On that basis I do not personally agree that he respected the office.

This is apologetic liberal tactic to keep the status quo. US president is still the most powerful political position on the planet. They can do stuff you know.

Obama is not some good hearted hero who had his hands tied. He ran on pretty progressive campaign because it polled well and when he came to office he just did what his sponsors wanted - keep status quo.

It was keeping the money in pockets of billionaires and corporations while talking about promise of potential change by the most charismatic president ever.

That's why people don't trust democrats.

>It was keeping the money in pockets of billionaires and corporations while talking about promise of potential change by the most charismatic president ever.

Are you talking about Obama or Trump?

> US president is still the most powerful political position on the planet. They can do stuff you know.

And this is why people don't trust republicans. They are all "checks and balances" and "Constitution" until the dictatorship they want is upon them.

Biden try to forgive student loans. The courts blocked him. They clearly cannot just "do stuff you know". Not without risk of impeachment for executive overreach.

To be clear Trump is also about keeping status quo. He is just much more blatantly corrupted so he will sell to highest bidder instead of honoring past allies/deals.

These limits of power were always Obamas excuse when he was supposed to push for something inconvinient. That was the narrative to not try too hard. When you start to look at what hes done… the small things, the mundane and the stuff he had clearly power over. It's not good. Biden was very different in that aspect.

>Trump 2.0 is showing us what the president can do.

If a Democrat did any of the hundreds of actions performed this year, they'd be blocked by the SCOTUS, and then impeached by the House because they ignored the SCOTUS. And probably Convicted by Senate.

A democrat has not been able to do something as bold as blasting through the courts since FDR (and for that time, the term "democrat" may not even be the correct word to use), and that was under a depression with very popular support from the people. Imagine if congress flipped and fought as hard against SS as they did against the ACA. The Silent and Boomer generations would be in shambles decades later.

It is astoundingly naive to think that the forces in America make it such that "whoever is the president has unlimited power, whether they're an old rich white billionaire or a relatively young black guy on the Dem side."

Again, I implore you all to grow a bit smarter.

People acting like the supreme court would overturn laws in favor of obama the way they do for trump...

We'll never know because RBG chose not to retire when Dems could have done anything, and every Dem after that just politely waited for GOP to take advantage of them. It's still happening with folks like Jeffries today being utterly willing to capitulate on policy if it means the institution is respected.

There was a government option in the original ACA. Dems couldn’t get the votes to overcome the filibuster in the senate to pass it. It had nothing to do Obama u turning. It was an amazing feat to get it passed in congress and get 60 votes in the senate.

The u-turn came long before that acronym existed, as I remember it. The Dems had been trying to build consensus for some kind of single payer plan for almost twenty years by that point, and practically the first thing Obama said after being elected was that as a show of good faith he would take single payer was off the table.

Maybe today the ACA is thought of as progressive, especially in the sense that the right wants it to end and the left doesn't; but in its time I think it was rightly understood as the Democrats caving to a massive transfer from the public to the private sector. I recall the private insurers' stock prices all going up 10-20% that week.

Obama was pretty timid. Especially at the beginning of his presidency he assumed that his fellow democrats like Lieberman and Baucus were rational and wanted the best for the country and not just being pawns for the insurance industry. I bet if he had pounded the table, he would have way more success. Heck, LBJ made senators cry to get things done.

Hindsight is 20/20. I recall Obama later saying he wished he was more radical because he only realised too late that the holdouts to ACA were never going to vote for it. Essentially, they negotiated in bad faith but Obama only realised this after they’d made all the requested changes and still couldn’t get the votes.

The Affordable Care Act wasn't a complete solution - and I don't get the feeling universal health care was necessarily achievable - but it is the reason that I have health care and mental health services today. So I consider it to be a meaningful - if incremental - improvement. I imagine there are quite a few people aside from myself who are happy to have it.

There will be lots of pressure to on Zohran to do the same. But hopefully the cautionary tale that is Obama will be learned from.

I feel Obama was trying to appease the Republicans as well, he appointed many of them who back stabbed him shortly after. Maybe he was trying to no be too radical just because he was black and knew how racist a part of America was and it turned out it was right, Trump mainly got elected because "Democrats" put a black person in the White House. In retrospect, yeah, maybe he should have been more radical.

Yeah, can you believe all those progressive bills he vetoed?

...I mean c'mon now. Congress passed what they could and it cost the Dems greatly. Why are we pretending Obama could have gotten more?

Run from the Left, govern from the Right. A pretty classic political electoral strategy of centrist liberals.

Why would someone do that? Especially for presidency which is the final stage of their career? They're not beholden to or reliant on anyone no more so shouldn't have to be swayed by any adverse interests.

A presidency lasts 8 years of your life, best case scenario. And the presidential salary will not make you rich. So, if your only goal is a good life, you have to use your presidency to get people to make you rich afterwards, which means favors for the wealthy.

Reelection

Look at Obama's net worth when he left office and now.

Look at Bill Clinton's net worth when he left office and now.

It wasn't the final stage of their career but only the beginning.

Not too radical to be good and effective, too radical to break through current political constraints. You have to confront the reality of what can actually be achieved within the system you’re working in.

Proper Obamacare wasn't implemented because healthcare industry interests held up legislation until the midterms at which point the Republicans took over congress.

> [Obama] called for universal health care but once he was elected he started saying it was "too radical".

He "called for" a bill that would pass (barely, as it required a filibuster-proof majority that will never happen again in our lives), and it did. It's absolutely infuriating to me the extent to which the American electorate fails to understand basic civics. Presidents take all sorts of legislative positions, but they don't run congress and never have.

And so the cycle continues. Presidential candidate says "I thinks Foo is good", electorate takes that as a promise to deliver Foo. Foo fails to appear, electorate gets mad and votes for the other guy promising to deliver Bar.

Never mind that MetaFoo actually passed, Bar is impossible, and the Barite party wants to enact hungarian notation via martial law. Electorate is still pissed off about Foo, somehow.

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Sometimes I think about what we could have had.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_Americans_Act

And 15 years before that was Hillarycare (1993):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_19...

(Fuck you Bill Kristol.)

There's a long, sad, littered history of attempts at universal care in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_...

Bill Kristol has come a long way! He would vote for Mamdani...over Cuomo and Sliwa anyway.

https://www.cmcforum.com/post/bill-kristol-says-he-would-vot...

You can hear him discussing it here:

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bill-kristol-fake-news-on-60-mi...

I'm also reminded of the time Jon Stewart got Bill Kristol to admit that a government-run health care system (the VA) was good:

https://youtu.be/rRSZiWwiBuE

Bill Kristol is the same asshole he always was.

Interestingly, the ACA can trace its roots to the Republican counter proposal to Hillarycare written by the Heritage Foundation of recent Project 2025 fame.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Equity_and_Access_Refor...

>50% of the TV ad spend in the Virginia governor election was on anti-trans ads, so no, don’t hold your breath.

I have some confrontational views about this, but in good faith I’d like to invite some discussion with it (not an American).

TLDR: You will see more Mamdanis in other cities. This is a treasure trove for MAGA. Expect at least 12 years of secure nationwide wins for whoever is championing that platform

> I’m reminided of Obama and his hopeful message

This is the gist of the PR campaign, voters fell for. It goes in line with him getting away with being “grassrootsy” when in fact he got tremendous funding from the typical NGOs (Open Society etc) and is a son of a Professor who was/is basically paid to tell American and African Top 5% why white people are bad.

His win also shows the effect migration has on elections. Immigration inherently is a deal where incumbent residents define the terms, and when the other party returns the favor by electing anti-incumbents into office some incumbents will have profound buyer’s remorse.

Fertile soil for the right.

Mamdani’s success also puts a spotlight on foundational problems of the democrats.

After all Mamdani is charismatic, yes, but more importantly he appealed on the issues. His policies will be abysmally failing to resolve the problems he criticized, yes - but that is unimportant to the voter. Important is that he believably criticized them.

How is it, that these well-established circles of the democrats, these well oiled machines, where in states like CA or NY (or most US cities) mayorships, senatorships, congressional seats, and governorships are basically handed out by the DNC, fail to win on those issues? It’s not like making life affordable is not a core branding of the party.

Well, it appears that the DNC gerrymandered itself to death. The dissolution of political contest from the public into internal primaries has stymied the platform’s vitality to a point where it can be easily hijacked by radicals.

Expect many more Mamdani-esque wins locally. Which will mean many wore wins for MAGA nationally.

>How is it, that these well-established circles of the democrats, these well oiled machines, where in states like CA or NY (or most US cities) mayorships, senatorships, congressional seats, and governorships are basically handed out by the DNC, fail to win on those issues?

You should know this better than the US, but our "democrats" are center right for the rest of the world. The goal is to sound progressive but then act in neoliberal ways to appeal to donors, after the attention isn't on them. I call these "Establshment Democrats", more concerned with keeping the status quo and being a PR machine to the people than actually making policy that benefit the people.

That's why Mamdami can cut through by saying the things that Establshment Dems hated. And early on in his campaign when he gained momentum you can see the resistance against him by the Establishment, up to Cuomo decided to run independent after the primaries. I can't speak for the common person, but those actions speak a lot louder than any words Mamdami said.

There is a rift in the US Left, but I think it's one Estblashiment Dems had coming for a while now. If absolutely nothing else, the rampant destruction of the country by the Trump admin has absolutely activated people in ways not seen since 9/11. And when people are active, words aren't enough anymore. They want action, to not see military roaming their streets and kidnapping US citizens. They want to see actual ways to fix the economy as these trade wars sap at their wealth.

The collorary here is that the MAGA movement is also causing a rift in the US Right. There's definitely Esablishment Republicans that do not like this situation either. And there's the fact that all this is propped on one obsese, Dementia-ridden, 79 year old man. If/when he passes, there's going to be a huge power vacuum, and none of the headrunners are ready to fill that.

If anything, the split on the Right will be worse than the split of the Left, when it eventually happens. At least the Left is having new blood to try and push that rift from the bottom up compared to the house of cards that is Trump and everyone who tried bundling under him.

It's propitiously on the same day as the announcement that WMD liar, war criminal, torture advocate, and domestic-surveillance mastermind Dick Cheney died.

A warmongerer dying on Election Day (when elected officials haven't voted on War in 80 years) is an interesting sort of irony.

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> who concealed that he was a warmongering, neoliberal hack

Obama pitched himself as a pragmatist. He governed as a pragmatist. It honestly looks like Mamdani has the sense to do the same.

Apples and oranges. Pragmatism without principles is still no principles. Mamdani has principles.

> Pragmatism without principles is still no principles. Mamdani has principles

Ex ante versus ex post facto.

New Yorkers aren’t idiots who vote in pie in the sky absolutist lunatics. I’m hopeful Mamdani can show new ideas are electable, even if his particular pitch is finely tuned to the deep blue.

That's one way to say Mamdani is also a plant, just like AOC imo.

> one way to say Mamdani is also a plant, just like AOC imo

He’s a candidate who won and can keep winning. I know a lot of dyed in wool democratic socialists. They’re nutjobs. Not only that, they’re clearly nutjobs from afar.

Every politician in a single-party jurisdiction has to pivot between the primary and general. Mamdani and AOC did it well. The hypothetical non-“plant” you’re looking for is a Democrat analog to Kari Lake.

You've got 170,000+ upvotes from this clown car of a web site, you are in no position to call anyone else a nutjob.

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> Nobody’s health insurance is better or cheaper than before.

Speak for yourself. Before Obamacare if you had a pre-existing condition you couldn't switch jobs. There were lots of lower-priced health insurance... but had low life-time maximums (like $50K) which means it was useful only for doctor visits.

Yes, the mechanism of this is a wealth transfer from people who likely don’t have health conditions to people who do. This hurts young people. With the added benefit of having for profit institutions as a middleman.

The distortions caused by ACA will be papers in 20 years. It is so much worse than single payer or the previous corporatist insurance oligopoly.

I wholeheartedly agree that it's significantly worse than single-payer, but to say it hurt young people simply doesn't match reality as I saw it play out.

The ACA allowed me to get insurance for the first time since I'd left home several years before. I knew lots of other freelancers at the time who were in the same boat.

Of course in the following years, insurers found plenty of loopholes to increase prices significantly year over year - and this is why leaving the middlemen in the middle was a TERRIBLE choice - but at the very least the quality of those plans still has a reasonable low bar.

I still find myself on the ACA from time to time. I can't afford it. But the plans are still significantly better and thus more affordable than what was available before.

Young people get sick and have accidents, too.

If life was perfectly predictable then, yes, insurance wouldn't have much of a point. But alas.

We all pay in a bit and those of us unlucky enough to need a huge amount of help can have access to the resources they need. Hopefully that will never be you! But as they say: The reward for a long life is to get to experience the decay of your own body. Good health is temporary for all of us.

That said, you're right: Single-payer would be a huge improvement. Let's do that.

I got to stay on my parents health care for additional years because of Obamacare - as have millions of others. That gave me flexibility to experiment and during that time I learned to program.

The people who have healthcare and didn’t before think it’s better.

For the small minority that get fully subsidized plans of course it’s great. Free stuff is always great for the receiver.

But that’s only 5M people. For everybody else it just made healthcare more expensive.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the ACA brought down costs. And hiding it behind ever increasing subsidies eventually comes to a breaking point.

> Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the ACA brought down costs.

How it possible to calculate this theory when you don't have a control group? Said differently, if everyone is subject to ACA you can't compare it to a group of people that aren't subject to ACA. Also, insurance premiums are a direct result of how many people are in the pool.

If the control group was "just use the previous year before ACA" then there was absolutely scenarios where people got cheaper healthcare after ACA even without the subsidies. Like real estate markets, insurance markets aren't national, they're local.

FWIW - I'm neither advocating nor opposing the implementation of ACA, just stating it's not easy to conclude "healthcare costs more/less now".

What about those who had pre-existing conditions who were able to get insurance? Doesn't that bring cost down for them?

High risk pools existed before the ACA.

High risk pools existed in 35 states, and almost universally refused to cover preexisting conditions for about the first year.

Bringing down costs while expanding the number of people getting healthcare was never in the cards unless someone had a magic machine to mint thousands of new doctors and not have to pay for patented medicine. Not to mention enormous tort reform.

However, the increase in costs did slow after ACA:

https://cepr.net/publications/health-care-cost-growth-slowed...

> … unless someone had a magic machine to mint thousands of new doctors.

That exists. Just buy them from overseas.

Grant special visas to doctors who commit to working at clinics for X years. Pay them some guaranteed wage that’s higher than they make in their homeland and they’ll take the deal.

That would increase the supply of providers, which shifts costs down due to basic economics.

Sure it’s not “fair” to the rest of the world, but that’s not our problem to solve. Too bad the AMA hates this idea.

>Grant special visas to doctors who commit to working at clinics for X years. Pay them some guaranteed wage that’s higher than they make in their homeland and they’ll take the deal.

Do those folks get bodyguards to keep the ICE thugs from disappearing them? If not, I'd expect they wouldn't come here for any price. Just sayin'.

That’s a ridiculous interpretation of the regime change in the graph (which is much better interpreted as raising costs to adapt to profit caps).

Which was another stupid part of the ACA. Capping profits at 12% of the gross just means the only way to increase profits is to increase your costs. It directly incentivizes raising prices!

> Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the ACA brought down costs

Source for that claim?

Given that the ACA forced insurance companies to sell insurance to people they previously found unprofitable to sell insurance to, basic economics suggests that the ACA probably raised the cost of insurance. That's not to say it makes it a bad thing. I would actually argue the opposite.

Also the ACA requires insurance companies to make a max gross margin of 20%. This looks like a cost saving measure at first glance, but it's actually the opposite. Now insurance profits are actually increased by an increase in medical costs, and therefore the insurance companies are disincentivized to control costs.

So, no source?

Source: the fucking ACA itself. Do you really need your hand held on this one?

> Do you really need your hand held on this one?

Uh, I do. Because it seems to be at least debated [1].

[1] https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-have-healthcare-c...

It’s basic economics, supply and demand. To lower prices you need to either increase supply or decrease demand. The reverse shifts the curves the other way and costs go up.

The ACA did nothing to increase supply. There were no new doctors or clinics.

And the subsidies and mandates to purchase insurance increase demand for medical care.

So it causes prices to rise.

So, no source!

He’ll have a hard time getting most of his stuff through. Rent regulation and busses are controlled by authorities that work for the governor, and she is facing an election against Sara Huckabee Part 2 - Elise Stefanik. The MAGAs will dump lots of cash into that race, and there’s plenty of dudes who will vote for her.

You’re mostly wrong on healthcare. The increased state costs are people who didn’t know they were Medicaid eligible who are now enrolled. The biggest failure imo of Obamacare is that it encouraged consolidation and creation of regional health networks, which have increased prices.

It still did a lot of good, but didn’t solve the root causes of our terrible healthcare system. It’s more of bandage on the system we have.

Dems had 6 months of 2009 to fix healthcare, with only 59 votes + Leiberman. Given the circumstances, we’re lucky to even have had ACA.

Before the ACA, insurance companies were allowed to have these things called “lifetime limits.”

Basically, once your healthcare got expensive, they could just cut you off and say they wouldn’t cover you any further. And because of pre-existing conditions (which the ACA also eliminated), you couldn’t get new health insurance. You were basically fucked.

My mom got cancer a few years before the ACA passed. So far as I’m concerned, the old insurance system killed my mom when she was only 40 years old. I lost my only surviving parent, and my little brother lost his mom when he was only 10 years old. So forgive the utterly flabbergasted look on my face as I read your comment.

This is fantasy. Obamacare slowed the rising cost of healthcare, fullstop. It helped people get coverage who could not before. It was kneecapped and could have been better, but acting like it wasn't an improvement is so far from reality it is ridiculous.

Yes, a single payer system would be better, but this was better than doing nothing.

> Nobody’s health insurance is better or cheaper than before.

It’s far better than before. You can’t be denied for pre existing conditions, there is no benefit limit, and a lot of preventative care is included.

>(before someone argues this, be aware that your state (taxes) heavily subsidizes this)

No, state taxes have nothing to do with ACA. The biggest subsidy is from young people due to the age rating factor capping highest premiums at 3x the lowest premiums. The second biggest subsidy is healthy to sick people, since pre existing conditions aren’t a factor in premium. And the federal government is what subsidized the premium tax credits for people with lower income.

If only you had free public healthcare. But you don't.

His policy proposals have been repeatedly disproven throughout recent history. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

What has been dis-proven?

Rent freezes are such a bad idea that Mamdani himself implicitly admits as such by insisting they will be temporary with no justification as to why.

No? The policy is to freeze the rent in rent-controlled units for his entire term, which is as long as he can. The long-term solution is of course to build more units.

The freeze will have the same effect that rent control has always had, for the past decades in NY and elsewhere: make the situation worse. It being "temporary for his entire term" just means that the negative consequences will be "temporary for his entire term"; is that supposed to be a selling point?

What was the definition of insanity again?

It will have the same effect it always had if we proceed to do the same thing. i.e. fail to build more affordable housing.

How about this time we actually do it and stop blaming glue for not being a welding mold? Rent controls aren't supposed to be long term. Mamdami realizing that is already a good sign. So I'll see if he can get housing projects off the ground next.

Worse for who? Better for who? I guarantee you the people who live in the rent control apartments aren't thinking they are worse off from it.

Obamacare being what it was is 1,000,000% Obama’s failure - he’ll tell you this same thing over coffee too. Just outmost disaster through and through how it was implemented.

Zohran can easily fund which is why every single GOP Senator and Congresman went publicly against him. Can’t have people get any crazy ideas that they could actually have nice things. WTF does Congresman from a some shithole county in Alabama give a fuck about who Mayor of NYC is? but GOP is a well-oiled machine so it was all-hands-on-deck to prevent these ideas from infecting the nation…

even though this seems like a victory, starting in about 10 minutes the entire GOP message for 2026 is going to be “Zohran is Democratic Party now” and it just might work

Zohran is the Democratic party now? Thank god, it's about time! :P

works in NYC but in swing states “zohran is a commie” will hum along nicely enough…

Why does Ohio care about who's mayor in New York City? Do people realize that a city mayor is one or two levels under a state govenor?

Red and swing states all voted overwhelmingly towards democrats tn though

got any tips on what to look for on how obama bumbled obamacare? not too familiar on the subject myself

Despite his public persona, I read recently Obama is actually quite aloof and didnt have the patience to charm the politicians in person.

Oh, yeah, Obama being aloof was why the white men who questioned his citizenship openly - who are now entirely complicit in or supportive of an unaccountable gestapo randomly kidnapping people from the streets wth no ID or due process based on their skin tone - weren't "charmed" by him.

Dog whistles are supposed to be subtle.

Obama took a mea culpa on parts of implementation, namely the federal marketplace website (they weren’t expected as many states to opt out of the marketplace) and the “keep your plan” narrative.

It was a compromise law that was in alignment with Bush era mainstream conservatives. The fatal flaw of Obama and Biden is they underestimated the power of the nutcase wing of the Republican Party. (Along with the institutional GOP folks)

that isn’t the fatal flaw. the fatal flaw is campaigning and staking your entire political career on something and the delivering something sooooo subpar.

the sad thing is, history will remember him as first black President and that’s really about it. and most of us cried watching that speech from lincoln park.

our current president is causing most of us to cry daily but will be remembered as one of the most influential presidents in the history of this country… sad, very sad, but all true

presidents don't pass legislation, and the original Obamacare was too radical even for all the Dem senators, not to mention needing some GOPs to get 60 votes

Maybe, if Obama had been as ruthless as Trump and used blatant lies and targeted attacks on senators to make them so fearful of re-election that they would play along, he might have gotten it passed, though probably not even then. Plus, as much as I wish we'd had the original Obamacare, I'd rather have a watered down version with balance of powers, than a tyrannical president who cowers the legislative branch into submission.

You guys have it all wrong. There was only one candidate for the dem party, Here's the list:

1) Cuomo. Sexpest who has been accused by many women of some pretty shitty stuff. Also a member of a multi-generational dynasty, which is not good.

2) Mayor Adams. Federally indicted by the Feds. They have a 99% conviction rate. Not because they're corrupt, but because they only go after people who have dome some really egregious, illegal shit.

3) Mamdani. Millennial candidate. No dirt. Other that some stupid stuff he said while he was young, his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road, and are aimed at leveling the playing field.

Gee, who should I choose? [[said all of NYC today]]

The fact that I was seeing Sliwa favourably speaks to the candidate quality in this race.

> No dirt. Other that some stupid stuff he said while he was young

Stupid stuff he credibly disavowed.

I’m still blown away that after De Blasio he was the only one, when asked a foreign policy question, who said he’d put city priorities first.

It is unfortunate that, after the Spanish Inquisition, Jewish refugees were welcome in Istanbul, but the current receptivity is so much colder.

This is exactly the point where the historic tolerance of the middle east is most direly needed, but common ground in so many contexts is absent.

I hope that we can put ourselves back together. We've seen the consequences this year of its lack.

> where the historic tolerance of the middle east is most direly needed

Sure. Broadly. But there is one correct answer a mayoral candidate could give on such an issue, and it’s the one Mamdani gave.

This is from Eisenhower's "Cross of Iron" speech:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies—in the final sense—a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities.

It is: two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand population.

It is: two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is: some fifty miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people.

This—I repeat—is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/humanity-hanging...

President Eisenhower. Not mayor. President Eisenhower’s portfolio properly contains these things. Mayors should not be travelling to foreign countries on official business outside a very narrow remit. Humanitarian activism isn’t one of them.

China found a way around this by manufacturing all their civilian ships to military standards.

Maybe guns or butter is a false dichotomy. Or perhaps the even tougher lesson: a country with an information economy ends up with neither.

As a Brit who has been exposed to the blanket coverage of this on social media: Mamdani is going to be like Sadiq Khan. Popular with people in the city, while those outside run endless weird fantasy "news" scare stories because he's a Muslim.

> his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road

Free buses and free child care are not remotely common policies in the US. Ditto for govt-run grocery stores. And freezing rent for controlled units.

From a distance it looks like Cuomo is also a generational talent when it comes to being a lazy, unmotivated campaigner.

Not to mention raising and spending money campaign money.

> Mamdani. Millennial candidate. No dirt. Other that some stupid stuff he said while he was young, his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road, and are aimed at leveling the playing field.

Look, Mamdani ran a good campaign, and if I was an NYC voter (I am not) I'd probably vote for him out of the options provided.

However, this just is not true. Many of his policies are neither "common sense" nor "middle of the road". Especially not on education and dealing with the homeless and public transit. And lots of his dumb comments were from like 2 years ago, not 12 - he was not "young" when he said them.

> And lots of his dumb comments were from like 2 years ago, not 12 - he was not "young" when he said them.

If you're talking about the "globalize the intifada" comment, he actually never even said that, but a whole lot of people (you among them, it seems like?) have been brainwashed into thinking he did through political maneuvering.

The root of that whole drummed up controversy was him refusing to blanket condemn the phrase when media people (never attributing it as something he himself had said) kept asking him to.

And he was always very clear what his reasons for that were, which were extremely reasonable to anyone who isn't a kneejerk ultra zionist.

It's so depressing that the entire Mamdani debate has become mired in Israeli politics. You can completely ignore the issue, and still have plenty of questionable stuff to talk about.

He has repeatedly talked about defunding the police. Literally, not figuratively, and not that long ago.

He said he wanted to close down Rikers Island. He said that prisons are unnecessary. He said he wants to empty jails. His comments on crime and policing, in general, are quite extreme. I could set literally every other topic to the side, and this would be a voting issue for me.

About the only response to this stuff a reasonable person can muster is "he doesn't believe that now". Yeah, OK. I guess we'll find out...

> About the only response to this stuff a reasonable person can muster is "he doesn't believe that now"

He clearly still believes in police reform. In some places that includes reducing police budgets in favor of more effective public safety programs. That's what "defund the police" means. Not "abolish", reduce funding. In NYC he's running on maintaining police funding at current levels and adding additional nonviolent peacekeeping capacity. He may personally believe that ultimately funding can be redirected further, but that's not what he's running on.

Criminal justice is majorly fucked in the US broadly. We incarcerate non-dangerous people with minor offenses way too long, and we let dangerous repeat offenders walk free. The answer isn't so simple as "lock more people up" or "let everyone go", we're in a trickier bind than a straightforward over incarceration or over lenient set of policies. Mamdani talks a lot about reducing penalties for minor nonviolent offenders, and for increasing rehabilitative capacity, but he does retreat to rehabilitation too readily (from a rhetorical efficacy perspective) when questioned about how to handle repeat offenders.

I don't think he's actually changed his values at all, he's just polished his phrasing and set more achievable near-term goals.

> Not "abolish", reduce funding.

Yeah, I understand that's what people are saying to rationalize it. And like I said: we'll find out! But see my reply to the sibling comment, where I link directly to his words:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820126

He's well-documented, saying many times, in many different variations, in many different places, that he wants to eliminate prisons, "dismantle" the police, and so on. One or two comments you might be able to brush aside, but this is a consistent pattern.

That's what people are saying when they say defund. Reduce funding for. Consistently this is what anyone who says defund the police has always meant. You gotta take off the tin foil hat, my guy.

"We'll find out" haha, you think he's going to shut down the nypd? They have an operating budget of what, $6 billion dollars annually?

He's not going to shut them down, you can't just stop a $6b organization. You can, however, defund it. Maybe they could do just fine with $5 billion. If the city has an extra billion to spend on building housing or improving transit or providing health care or services to the homeless... a billion dollars a year buys a lot of things.

Oh, the answer really is “let everyone go,” and then “get rid of all billionaires, cap wealth at $100,000,000 and tax the rest at 99%, and make sure every single person has a high-quality, safe place to live, good food, medical care, and friends.

Suddenly there will be far less crime.

> "I think that frankly, I mean, what purpose do they serve, right?” Mamdani said when asked by a co-host of “The Far Left Show” in August 2020 if prisons were obsolete.

> “I think we have to ask ourselves that … I think a lot of people who defend the carceral state, that defend the idea of it and the way it makes them feel, they’re not defending the reality of it and the practices that are part and parcel of it,” he continued.

> “Because if you actually break it down … how many people come out the prison system better than they went into the prison system?”

From the New York Post so presumably this is the worst they could find on the topic.

>He said he wanted to close down Rikers Island.

Yes. He did. Because the law[0] (the passage of which he was not involved) says Riker's Island needs to be closed by 2027 -- something Eric "how much will you pay to play?" Adams slow-walked on purpose.

The rest of your diatribe is a bunch of bullshit that doesn't pass the sniff test.

[0] https://archive.ph/eOJdK

I don't know why you're arguing at me about Eric Adams. Believe it or not, it's possible to dislike both of them, and also think that closing Rikers is an incredibly stupid idea!

> The rest of your diatribe is a bunch of bullshit that doesn't pass the sniff test.

Other than being 100% true, and extremely well-documented, you mean. But stay classy.

[1a] defund the police: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/31/politics/mamdani-defund-p...

[1b] "dismantle" the police: https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1336087694636707841

[2] prisons unnecessary: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/out-of-touch-ma...

[3] "the goal must be to abolish [prisons]" (plus multiple other variations on that theme) https://x.com/peterjhasson/status/1937682021276410317

[4] "The entire carceral system is an unreformable public health hazard. Defund & dismantle." https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1328828240757215234

[5] "what purpose do [prisons] serve?" https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1945929553274196188

I mean...come on, man. The receipts exist. The only thing you can do is say that he changed his mind or he didn't mean it in the first place.

>and also think that closing Rikers is an incredibly stupid idea!

That's as may be. And you are absolutely entitled to your opinion.

But you called Mamdani out for promising to enforce the law.

Are you not a fan of the rule of law?

> But you called Mamdani out for promising to enforce the law.

Nope. Try again.

Here's him talking about it for those that want to form their own opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggV2SeiGrVw

What "dumb comments" are you referring to? His comments to "globalize" the peaceful resistance against apartheid in the West Bank?

1) "intifada" has not historically meant "peaceful resistance". It has referred to events like October 7th, and the 1st and 2nd intifadas which killed more people than the Troubles did in about 1/3rd as much time, etc.

2) Also dumb shit like "queer liberation means defund the police" and "when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF"

True that "intifada" doesn't imply peaceful, but it simply means "uprising" in Arabic. For example, the Warsaw ghetto uprising is called the Warsaw ghetto intifada in Arabic. Its central connotation is resistance to an oppressive regime.

Why does queer liberation means defund the police sounds dumb to you?

You know that for generations the police have been beating, arresting, and accosting queer people just because they are queer, right? A practice that continues to this day? (Just this year, Seattle police raided gay bars because they were gay bars)

You know that defund is not the same as abolish, right? And that the nypd has an operating budget in the billions annually?

You know that queer health care, particularly access to prophylaxis and safe facilities is woefully under funded, resulting in high homeless, violence, and drug abuse rates in the queer population right?

And that when you put them all together you get, "taking money from the police, who have historically and contemporaneously abused queer people, and allocating those funds to the medical and social welfare of queer people would be liberatory".

That sure as shit doesn't sound dumb to me, that sounds extremely reasonable to be honest given the context, history, and needs of the queer community.

Exactly. and don't forget the Republican candidate: a thug, a clown and a reactionary. Even with all that, Sliwa was a better candidate than Cuomo or Adams.

Mamdani was the best candidate by far in the race. Will he make a good mayor? I have no idea.

But he certainly won't be worse than "handsy" Andy, "bribe me" Eric or "let's beat the darkie on the subway" Curtis.

And folks who don't live in NYC, you didn't get a vote.

well 40% still voted for Cuomo.

That 40% would have voted for a potato if it'd been wearing a red tie.

Manifestly not - Cuomo ran as an independent, and a Republican did run.

The Republicans in the Whitehouse told them to vote Cuomo

I feel that Sliwa suggested Mamdami over Cuomo.

> his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road, and are aimed at leveling the playing field.

That's not true at all. He is not even "middle of the road" in the Democratic party.

Government run grocery stores are middle of the road? What would progressive ideas look like on that spectrum?

Plenty of red states have government run liquor stores. And army bases have government run grocery stores along with government run everything else. I don't see the problem here. Progressive version presumably would be free groceries for everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_grocery_store

When I lived in Pennsylvania, the state-run liquor stores had a monopoly on selling wine and liquor. This survived Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.

Mamdani’s proposed grocery stores aren’t a monopoly. Whether they’re a good idea remains to be seen, but they’d be competing against privately owned grocery stores. As I understand them, they’re mostly intended for areas without a local grocery store (food deserts), which seems like a reasonable thing to explore.

Note that they don't have to be a monopoly to cause a problem. Usually the way things go is these state-run grocery stores get subsidies. The goal is to provide food in food deserts, not to be profitable. Over time the subsidy inevitably grows meaning higher taxes for non-gov grocery stores. This leads to a cycle where the state-run stores pushes out the corp-run stores with the thinnest margins.

Ultimately only the bougie grocery stores remain in rich neighborhoods and now you have to really hope that you can continue funding those state-run stores or you just made the food desert problem a whole lot worse.

State liquor stores are terrible, and I’ve never heard anyone say a nice word about on base grocery stores.

That’s just goal post shifting. The point is that government owned direct to consumer stores exist in areas of all political leaning.

You suggested that this is good because it is similar to a thing, and many people pointed out that thing you compared it to is bad. That is not goalpost shifting, that is you demonstrating that this is in fact bad.

That's because liquor stores originated from an earlier incarnation of the culture wars. That was a long time ago, and I don't think anyone seriously believes in that justification now, but the inertia remains.

I would say that state-run liquor stores and subsidized city-run grocery stores such as what Mamdani proposes are not at all comparable. The former is a giant cash cow - a profit center while the latter is an entitlement program i.e a mandatory budget expense. To give an idea of the amount of money involved in state-run liquor stores, consider the state of New Hampshire's report from last year:

>"In FY2024, total income before transfers was $144.7 million with the total net profit transfer of $140.0 million. Of the $140.0 million, the Liquor Commission transferred $122.0 million to the General Fund"[1]

[1] https://gov.liquorandwineoutlets.com/wp-content/uploads/2025...

Was going to say our state had government liquor stores until a couple of years ago. The sky remained in place.

Ration books for all?

"communism is when government do thing"

Communism is literally when the government owns the means of production. Owning the means of distribution is not far from that at all.

[flagged]

The open islamophobia is why a lot of people have cooled on the right since the 2024 election despite them having a more palatable opinion on crime.

California in free fall? Lol.

Yeah, didn't you know we're in free fall because of checks notes the influx of Muslim Communists? If only New York had learned this one important lesson then they too wouldn't fall as far as checks notes again the state with the largest GDP of any state.

...Said less than 51% of voters

The "said all of NYC" wasn't the best framing, but the entire post was about Democrats' choices, not everyone's.

Also not sure what value your comment has. Interpret things charitably. Your "gotcha" is not at all that.

We can call winners this early. We can’t yet call margins.

Good point; still mathematically less than 60% if you trust AP's estimated remaining vote count.

>his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road.

Rent control isn't middle of the road, it's 100% socialist. Same thing with city run grocery stores. He also wants to defund the police while replacing them with community outreach people, as well as raising the minimum wage to $30 in 5 years which is absolutely wild. None of this is middle of the road in any way, shape, or form.

The minimum wage not being indexed to inflation has been theft for decades. It would take a minimum wage of almost $60/hr to maintain purchasing power from 50-60 years ago.

https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wa...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/minimum-wage-york-2024-live-1...

https://livingwage.mit.edu/

Edit: If the system of “we make asset prices go up while labor prices are inflated away” gets to the point where a living wage is unobtainable (we are here), we can change the system. The name is irrelevant, it’s fundamentally “what are you optimizing for?”

This happens eventually (wage increases) due to global structural demographic working age population compression, the argument is really time horizon if we help people live better lives with dignity now vs years from now as labor supply declines.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

So if minimum wage was $60 in a year you'll see a bread loaf for $900

Please prove this assertion. Show your math. I can pickup a loaf of bread for $1.42 in a state with a $15/hr minimum wage, as of this comment. What does a $30 minimum wage make it? $2? $2.50? The horror. $900? I am doing my best to be polite and charitable.

You didn’t read your own link. The peak value of minimum wage was $12.12/hr in 1968 after adjusting for inflation.

https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wa...

You cannot with a straight face claim bringing it to $60 has anything to do with inflation when the value it would need is right in that article.

I misspoke by not including more detail. $66/hr to match homebuying purchasing power of Boomers in the 70s. You can get away with less per hour as a living wage assuming reasonable rent, and in NYC, that is likely $30/hr (which we will get to as older voters continue to age out, and younger voters age into the electorate, and are engaged to push wages higher [exit polls show ~75% of New Yorkers 18-29 voted for Mamdani]).

https://www.epi.org/blog/a-30-by-2030-minimum-wage-in-new-yo...

> With the FBC cost data we can estimate a living wage that would allow workers to support their families. Table 1 shows that the living wage in 2025 is already above $30 an hour in Manhattan ($33.89), Queens ($31.31), and Staten Island ($30.68). While Brooklyn and The Bronx do not exceed this threshold, the costs facing these families will almost certainly continue to rise between today and 2030. These figures make it clear that discussions of a $30 minimum wage in New York City are not superfluous—they reflect the very real needs of working people throughout the city.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/guy-shared-just-high-min...

> Someone Calculated What The Minimum Wage Should Be Today Compared To The '70s In Order To Afford A Home

> Now, Chris's video isn't to suggest that minimum wage, at any point in its history, allowed people to buy homes outright. Rather, he told BuzzFeed, he wanted to highlight the ways in which "wages have decoupled from cost of living, housing prices, and broader economic growth over the last few decades."

> "The original purpose of the minimum wage was to ensure that even low-wage workers could participate meaningfully in the economy. Not just survive, but live with dignity," he said.

That's more of an issue with housing prices drastically outpacing inflation because of dense housing construction being illegal in most of the country.

The minimum wage should easily be 11-13 by any inflation metric you use for the last 40 years, and doubling that for a high cost of living place is reasonable.

Lots of states have state-run liquor stores, even super conservative ones.

It’s a smaller delta than you think.

The reason state-run liquor stores make some sense is that we don't want to optimize alcohol sales. Neither on price nor volume. This is unlike groceries. The same reason state run monopoly on gambling makes sense but state run monopoly on car manufacturing doesn't.

11-13 isn’t anywhere near 60.

Anyone who has shopped a state run vs regular liquor store knows how much worse the gov version is unless your goal is higher prices, worse service, and worse selection.

He has moderated on the police funding issue, and the rent freeze is for already rent controlled apartments.

>He has moderated on the police funding issue

So he already backtracked on a core election promise even before he got elected? Doesn’t bode well for his supporters expectations going forward.

Seems like before you’re elected is the perfect time to adjust policy positions. Or, really, any time you’re presented with new facts.

As far as I know, “defunding the police” wasn’t a campaign promise, let alone a “core” one. It indeed was the opinion he had in the past (and you can argue about whether he still thinks that privately), but there are also many statements from the last several months that he’s explicitly _not_ running on that.

What a weird take. Isn't it better that he says it before the election? I think you just have it out for him, and no matter what he does you will find a way it's wrong.

>the rent freeze is for already rent controlled apartments.

That's actually not true. The rent freeze is for rent stabilized[0] apartments. Rent control[1] is a different program and is tiny in comparison.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation_in_New_York#Re...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation_in_New_York#Re...

When your road is all the way to the right, then yea, none of it is middle of the road.

Please explain how city run grocery stores are middle of the road politics. Perhaps they’re middle of the road when your road is all the way to the left.

I see it as a middle of the road statement to say that government should work for its constituents, and help ensure that they get basic nessesities like shelter, food, schooling and health care (yes, I know that this is already controversial).

Using the market is well and fine, but if it for some reason does not work it's the government's job to find a solution which works. Think about how things are handled in emergencies. The neutral thing is to find a solution, not be married to some ideological ball and chain saying that THAT particular necessity must be solved in one particular way no matter what.

When that is said I don't live in NYC, idk how the food desert situation is there. But I have heard enough stories from credible sources that I would be surprised if it's all made up.

The problem with the idea that it is the government's job to ensure "necessities" is that the list of what is a "necessity" only ever gets larger – it never shrinks.

I think if you go to Scandinavia or the UK you will find the opposite. Housing is an example of a field where the government was much more active pre the 80s. Idk if the US has had the same development, but it is certainly not a global truth that it only goes one way.

The state should step in and run anything that the private market cannot. I don’t live in NYC, but if there’s a market failure in groceries, do it.

There isn't a market failure in groceries in NYC. There's a huge number and diversity of stores, and profit margins are as low as anywhere else in the world. Also, of course, see the sibling comment who is complaining about grocery stores while using Amazon Fresh. There's a competitive delivery market.

Of all of his policies, I actually don't really care if he wants to try to put some grocery stores in grocery deserts. It probably won't work, but whatever.

There aren’t any food deserts in NYC?

I'm sure there are, just like everywhere else.

Sounds like the government should step in and fix that then.

The market failure in NY is due to the local government, so clearly the local government stepping in to offer a replacement is the solution. On an unrelated note, I have a bridge to sell you.

Couldn’t do worse than the grocery stores in nyc that already exist. Terrible service, horrendous price, bad inventory, etc.

I did all my groceries in nyc via Amazon fresh for the last two years because of this.

Sounds like you have a great option then, no need for the govt to open taxpayer-funded stores.

Really depends on where you are in the city; I used to shop at Whole Foods on the UWS and it was lovely, and when visiting this past summer my friend and I visited both the Bowery Whole Foods and the Wegmans near Astor Place and zero complaints with either of them.

But TBH I don't think the grocery deserts he's looking to service are going to be anywhere near where the average HN user lives.

Last I checked, if you wanted to buy more than a 12 pack of beer in the state of Pennsylvania, it had to be from a state run store. Is Pennsylvania socialist?

That's a pretty bad policy PA has, however you want to characterize it.

I'd agree, but I would also point out that a state monopoly is a much more extreme policy than a few state run stores. And considering the discussion was about where these policies sit on the ideological spectrum, an example of a more conservative state with a policy further to the left does suggest that maybe this is in fact "middle of the road".

In this regard, yes it is; the biggest reasons they keep it around are the jobs it provides and the money the state makes off of it. In return, residents get low prices but less choice, and in some areas, poor access. Most people hate it.

Only in the last decade or so has some competition been allowed.

>In this regard, yes it is;

Great, then "socialism" doesn't have to be the scary word that it is made out to be in the US! We have at least 17 socialist states already.[1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta...

I live in PA and can literally walk to a private beer distributor from my house and walk out with something larger than a 12 pack. There are no state owned beer distributors as far as I’m aware.

Most (not all) Liquor / Wine sales are somewhat monopolized by the state but it’s a remnant from prohibition and nobody except the people getting their palms greased by the system likes it.

Fair correction, I apparently merged the laws about beer and liquor/wine in my mind. Beer in quantities larger than 12 packs comes from distributors which are regulated more than bottle shops but aren't state run, while it's liquor and wine that needed to come from state shops.

No worries. It’s been in flux over the past decade. A few of the major grocery chains pushed to change the laws so they could sell beer and wine under a certain ABV. It has to be in a dedicated area and they can only sell during certain hours.

The state shops themselves aren’t all that horrible IMO but they’re nothing to write home about either. That being said It’s pretty hard to screw up liquor sales when you’re the only game in town.

The government selling food directly to it’s citizens represents the raised red fist of communism to American conservatives ?

Cities run all sorts of things. What's the big difference between garbage trucks and sewers and a grocery store?

Also, several states have state-run beer and/or liquor stores. It's not some wild unheard of experiment. We've gotten so used to the acceptable political spectrum spanning from "far right" to "extreme right" that we forget what left even means.

I'm almost 50 and the last president we ever saw that was even remotely towards the left was in office when I was born.

Whether or not public grocery stores are a good idea, the comparison to state-run liquor stores doesn't really make sense; the justification for state control of liquor sales is entirely different (arguably even kind of the opposite) as the justifications presented for public grocery stores.

> several states have state-run beer and/or liquor stores

Actually could not believe this, so had to look it up. I find this wild.

Yeah, pretty terrible outcome from prohibition designed to curtail alcohol consumption. It’s pretty the worst example to go for if you’re trying to convince people that state stores are good.

I mean, yes...but having lived in multiple states with various forms of state monopoly on alcohol sales: state-run liquor stores suck. Citing them as an argument in favor of state-run anything is sort of making the case for the other side.

I lived in a state when the state-run liquor stores were closed and it transitioned to the private sector. It was a massive improvement, a big win.

The weirdest part of the transition was the fear mongering about consequences. This despite the reality that most states don’t have state-run liquor stores.

I’ve never lived in a state where state-run liquor stores weren’t worse than what you had in states without them.

The original claim was that his policies are middle of the road. Based on the very few US cities with govt-run grocery stores, it's pretty clear that the policy is not middle of the road. It is an outlier.

$30 min wage sounds doable? CA took fast food min wage up to $20 and it’s been fine.

> CA took fast food min wage up to $20 and it’s been fine.

Reduced employment by 3% but otherwise fine, yeah.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w34033

A nationwide $30 minimum wage would have a significantly higher impact (most places have lower wages than California and $30 is more than $20).

>fine

A medium fries is over $4 before taxes… over $1 more expensive than the rest of the country.

McDonald’s made $14 billion in profit last year. It’s not the labor driving the costs, it’s the profits.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44968997

Same with Chipotle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762671

Who pays the profits? Like tariffs, the consumer. You pay for these billions in annual profits.

McDonald's the corporation doesn't sell fries, they rent out real estate and franchise licenses.

What you really need to look at is the cost of labor for a random McDonald's franchisee.

> While menu prices did increase, costs rose by an average of just 1.5% –equivalent to about 6 cents on a $4 hamburger, down from the 15-cent increase reported in the September study.

Study: California's $20 fast-food minimum wage improves pay at small cost to consumers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43806608 - May 2025

https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2025/02/27/uc-berk...

https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/effects-of-the-...

What was their revenue and what was profit as a percentage of that?

If the profit percentage hasn’t increased, “record profits” is meaningless drivel that just means it kept up with inflation.

I'm ok paying a little more for fries if it means the people making it and serving it to me are paid a living wage.

Regardless, the fries cost what the local market can bear, not what they "want" to charge for them.

Why would you expect fries to cost the same in California as in much poorer states (most of them)?

That's probably OK when the poorest workers are making the difference ten times over per hour.

In-n-out fries are 2.45 (and a burger is 4$).

Have you seen how fries are made at McDonald’s? There’s nearly zero labor involved. It’s nearly automated. You’re paying that price cause that’s what the market will bear and McDonald’s needs to see profits go up.

Price distortions are bad because the market might not react correctly to it. But if there are too many restrictions to build housing anyway, you might as well ease the pain for social harmony.

I mean, if 50% of the population vote for something, arguably it is middle of the road.

The lowest I've seen for low end jobs recently in Montana is $25/hr so $30 in NYC seems entirely reasonable.

What part?

(McDonald’s is still $17 an hour in Billings.)

> wants to defund the police

Ask Seattle how well that turned out

Seattle has largely increased police funding, dramatically? For a dept under a consent decree until recently.

The mayor also capped non police crisis response teams to 24 people. Total. For the city. 24.

Seattle has done everything except defund the police, lol

Why? They didn’t defund their police.

Seattle upset their police force and made them quit, they then had to pay overtime to fewer remaining officers which increased their spending.

What "stupid stuff he said" are you referring to? His comments to "globalize" the peaceful resistance against apartheid in the West Bank?

It's not clear to me why a multigenerational dynasty specifically is a bad thing? Presumably the kids can learn from the parents, get connected, etc.

Also, Mamdani's policies are incredibly controversial, that's why it's such big news. Lots of people predicting that Mamdani's criminal policies, economic policies, and lack of experienced staffers will lead the city to dark days.

> not clear to me why a multigenerational dynasty specifically is a bad thing?

Aristocracies are more stable but less efficient. That creates an incentive for corruption when growth inevitably stalls. Which leads to catastrophic instability.

There is minimal incentive for corruption in a hereditary aristocracy. Status is determined by birthright rather than accumulation of money. And if you are a lord and do need money, you have the power to tax it legally anyway. So what incentive is there to make or take a bribe? It won't change who your parents are.

> Status is determined by birthright rather than accumulation of money. And if you are a lord and do need money, you have the power to tax it legally anyway

Lords being unconcerned with—and constrained by—wealth characterises all (EDIT: none of the) non-market societies that I know of. In part because basic economics constrains the society as a whole, even if they’re ignorant of its principles.

Right. I'm not saying anything about economics not applying, only that the incentive for corruption is absent.

Sorry, I managed to reverse my argument with a typo.

> only that the incentive for corruption is absent

What historic civilisation are you thinking of?

Aristocracy itself is state sanctioned corruption. The law is made to privilege certain people above others instead of serving the common good.

> It's not clear to me why a multigenerational dynasty specifically is a bad thing?

Because they're undemocratic.

Concentrating political capital within a family means raises barriers to entry. People with new -- possibly better -- ideas don't get a meaningful chance to see those ideas implemented.

These sorts of setups destroy the idea that politics and elections can be a meritocracy, but instead are determined by birthright. You end up with aristocracies populated by the extended family, friends, and business partners of the family in power.

You also get stagnation. You're less likely to see other points of view represented in the political process, and that affects outcomes.

It's a tradeoff between new ideas and operational effectiveness. Yes, there are benefits to rotating out a dynasty, but there are also benefits to keeping one.

A dynasty is only undemocratic if people aren't voting for them. If they are winning elections, it's still a democracy.

You want your elected officials to "keep connections" accross generations?

You also think New York can't find someone that's at least as competent as someone in a multigenerational dynasty?

Based on what I saw in the debates, I'm sure there are lots of people in NYC more capable than anyone on the ballet.

But yes, someone with connections is going to be more operationally effective than someone without them. If the leader isn't themselves well connected, they should at least have close advisors who do.

>Mamdani's policies are incredibly controversial, that's why it's such big news.

Which policies are "incredibly controversial?" And be specific.

Here'a a direct link to his platform for your reference"

https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform

No rush. I'll wait.

His policies around being soft on crime (do you know what NYC was like in the 90's? It's not some distant history), the free bus fare, the city owned grocery stores, the rent control, are all policies that many feel threaten the economic viability and safety of the city.

If you don't think any of those policies are contentious, you are living in a bubble and greatly disconnected from huge portions of the population.

I don't feel that you're going to get a lot of engagement with this attitude. It doesn't come off like a good-faith effort to have an honest intellectual conversation, which is what this forum is about.

There are clearly policies on that page that break from the NYC status quo (like freezing the rent). Perhaps you are interested in explaining to us why you think these are economically sound ideas, rather than insisting they aren't controversial?

There is a lot of daylight between "break from the status quo" and "incredibly controversial". I am not getting much from either of you.

> NYC status quo (like freezing the rent).

The platform page points out how the status quo was recently broken: "Eric Adams has taken every opportunity to squeeze tenants, with his hand-picked appointees to the Rent Guidelines Board jacking up rents on stabilized apartments by 12.6% (and counting)–the most since a Republican ran City Hall."

Sure sounds like Adams made a controversial change to the status quo to me.

The position is "As Mayor, Zohran will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants".

I read that as want to return to status quo ante Adams.

I'm against any and all political dynasties. They fly in the face of what representative government should be about. We have many people qualified to become political leaders but they never get the chance due to how the system operates.

I'm not sure NYC knows what it is getting into with this guy, but yeah, the alternatives were lousy. Sliwa? The whole Guardian Angels thing was one hell of a marketing job, I'll say that. Does anyone really believe a bunch of former gang thugs with some martial arts training accomplished very much?

The Cuomo family is corrupt to the core. Terrible for NY State.

Good luck, NYC. You're gonna need it!

I really don't get the doom and gloom on this, NYC now has a mayor that might inadvertently fuck over the city trying to do right by working class folks instead of a mayor who does it as a matter of course. Forget policy disagreements, just the fact that we have a successful politician any side of the isle that is not currently gargling the balls of rich people and actually has some principles is so refreshing.

You are demand better of your government than "the blatant corruption you've learned to live with."

Zohran is exactly the kind of change candidate that the San Francisco machine with Grow SF would actively seek to squash.

But Zohran's not alone, today's election was a massive swing back in almost every single race. School boards, city councils, state houses and senates, all swung radically left.

It should be ringing alarm bells that the SF / YC / startup community that used to champion utilitarian, meritocratic QoL improvements as a mission, is now so deeply forked from the base that sprung today's results. Politicians like Zohran won't be bought off by Palantir money. So, what's Peter Thiel and Gary to do? Where is Marc Benioff going to park his money? Reid Hoffman, Dustin Moskovitz, Michael Moritz, Reed Hastings, Eric Schmidt, Laurene Jobs, Ben Horowitz - all of these people aren't doing the normal pay for play donations, they are interested in shaping the party in their image. Well, Zohran doesn't look like you.

You got to have a Zohran that is also going to be tough on crime and homelessness but our political separations don’t allow for that right now.

From a non-american perspective it seems to me that in the US the problem of homelessness often gets mistaken for a problem with the homeless, maybe changing that narrative is a starting point?

With drugs in the mix things get complicated. Many cities tried giving these people free homes/rooms but because drug laws were strictly enforced there the homeless chose to stay on the streets. You’re not going to get rid of the fentanyl and meth addicted homeless unless you do it by force.

That may be so, but how far do you think viral radical left wing populism is going to get you towards regaining people who voted for trump?

well Prop 50 to redraw California's district lines passed by a nearly 30% margin and counting right now. That's an absolute spanking leading up to 26 midterms.

The story tonight isn't about Trump at all though, it's about millennial DSA types beating the establishment Democratic institution - in NYC, Detroit, Mississippi. In 24 everyone was astonished at the lack of response - "what is DNC going to do about losing to Trump, twice?". This is the beginning of what will be the eventual answer.

Also it doesn't need to be said, but the mobilization of 1M+ votes for Zohran's campaign today renders the fringes meaningless. He's now automatically in the conversation for the Presidential primary for 2028.

You don't need to get them back, you just need to motivate the more normal voters and demoralize the weird ones.

There seem to be people who voted for Trump as an anti establishment candidate. Now, they're obviously completely unmoored from reality, but perhaps they'd like another anti establishment candidate?

It's already established that they swing for viral radical populism ... so, perhaps less of a challenge than you imply.

Pretty much a clean sweep for the dems today including a trashing on prop 50. In general I think only something on the fringes can draw away people attracted to the fringes.

> Zohran is exactly the kind of change candidate that the San Francisco machine with Grow SF would actively seek to squash.

GrowSF is a conservative group with a right-wing policy platform trying to pretend it's progressive, so I'm not sure why that would be surprising.

The SF tech millionaires/billionaires are not progressive. They may have claimed to be in the past, but that was either opportunism, or they lost it as they made more money and saw people like Trump and Musk gain power.

The 2010's was the moment of SV emerging as a political donor cornerstone combined with Obama's peak, when up until that point, tech had been relatively hands off (80s through to 2010's). It was then that QE and low interest rates become part of VC strategy, and so SV got comfy with its image as supporting mainstream liberal candidates and policies. They all threw money behind the Dem machine (Obama, Hillary, Biden) until they realized they weren't actually getting any decision making power for their purchases, so the ones who felt some amount of urgency switched to Trump by showing up to speak at rallies or inaugurations.

Grow SF really only exists to go after city council members or school board members who get into twitter fights with a certain someone.

Peter Thiel and Mamdani are more alike than you may think.

https://x.com/aphysicist/status/1937879912221667792

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-peter-thiel-warns...

Nobody wants to hear this because it departs from the 'billionaire bad' trope. But Thiel has been remarkably consistent in his criticism of housing being the center of all of the Millenial economic woes.

Sure, Thiel is identifying some of the same problems, but the solutions he's proposing are basically the opposite of the ones Mamdani is. Unsurprisingly, he's proposing solutions that benefit billionaires rather than everyone else (e.g. just les us build whatever wherever we want, of course we'll build cheap housing that brings property houses down! Who could ever imagine we'll build luxury mansions that keep property prices high?).

How many times must it be explained that building luxury mansions still brings property prices down. Nobody ever voluntarily builds crappy low income housing. That’s never how development works. You let people build the new fancy buildings they want to build with all the margins and high prices. Then, when a bunch of rich people move in, that’s people that are no longer chasing all the other apartments. Eventually, way down the road, these swanky apartments will be tomorrow’s old and crappy ones in the neighborhood that’s not hip anymore, and low income people can rent them. This is how things actually work, and it’s fine.

What is NOT fine is when you have banks and private equity bullshit chasing homes purely as an asset to flip. That’s the thing we need to curtail, because it’s just money laundering at the expense of the American homeowner.

More housing, regardless of type, is directly correlated to cheaper average rents [0]. So Thiel is right in that regard, the red tape for construction and opposition from NIMBYs must be curtailed.

[0] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/733977

I mean thiels policies are in effect in Austin Texas which is one of the few jurisdictions seeing decreasing rents.

Peter Thiel being pragmatic about housing to avoid the proles from getting uppity in his desired future isn't much of a flex.

Mamdani's and by extension, his voters', ignorance about the effects of price controls in markets will be an interesting real-time political experiment. When the inevitable unintended outcomes become to emerge who will be blamed?

https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/apart...

https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform

Quoting Paul Krugman (Nobel prize winner and liberal columnist at the NYT).

"The analysis of rent control is among the best-understood issues in all of economics, and -- among economists, anyway -- one of the least controversial. In 1992 a poll of the American Economic Association found 93 percent of its members agreeing that ''a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing.'' Almost every freshman-level textbook contains a case study on rent control, using its known adverse side effects to illustrate the principles of supply and demand. Sky-high rents on uncontrolled apartments, because desperate renters have nowhere to go -- and the absence of new apartment construction, despite those high rents, because landlords fear that controls will be extended? Predictable. Bitter relations between tenants and landlords, with an arms race between ever-more ingenious strategies to force tenants out -- what yesterday's article oddly described as ''free-market horror stories'' -- and constantly proliferating regulations designed to block those strategies? Predictable."

https://archive.ph/k4h7J#selection-475.0-475.1011

> Mamdani's and by extension, his voters', ignorance about the effects of price controls

Mamdani isn’t pitching widespread price controls, but rent control over a small section of New York housing twinned with abundance-style new development.

“In a 2022 paper, the political scientists Anselm Hager, Hanno Hilbig, and Robert Vief used the introduction of a 2019 rent-control law in Berlin to study how access to rent-controlled apartments influenced local attitudes toward housing development. The fact that the new law included an arbitrary cutoff date (it applied only to buildings constructed before January 1, 2014) allowed the authors to create a natural experiment, comparing otherwise-similar tenants in otherwise-similar buildings.

Heading into the experiment, the authors hypothesized that having access to a rent-controlled apartment would keep tenants in their existing units longer and therefore make them more resistant to neighborhood change. Instead, they found the opposite: Residents who lived in rent-controlled apartments were 37 percent more likely to support new local-housing construction than those living in noncontrolled units” [1].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/11/mamdani-...

Mamdani will learn that you need to be friends with the people your voters hate to get things done.

Developers are the single most important players in lowering housing costs, but they are part of the "landlord" contingent in voters minds.

If he doesn't learn that, the city is going to be in bad shape. Impossible to get an apartment unless you want to get an illegal sublet at regular old $4500/mo prices.

The market isn't going to function ideally in a place like New York.

In other cities, a significant market-based response to high rents and housing demand is to increase supply with another ring of suburbs. Is there anywhere within reasonable commute radius left to develop around NYC at scale?

Uncapping rents might trigger some refurbishment of idle or marginal space by dangling enough money in front of landlords, but you're not going to pull another 500,000 units out of your rear that way.

We can acknowledge that NYC housing is a finite and desirable resource, but we can also say that we don't want to turn it completely into an auction for the highest bidder. Rent control helps encourage diverse and vibrant communities, part of what makes the city compelling in the first place.

You build up. Which is expensive, so developers will want assurances and no "20% affordable units" bs.

There also is always going to be pain. NYC has incredible global draw, so demand runs deep. It might be that you can never build your way under $2k/mo apartments there.

A huge chunk of the plan is converting unused office space into housing in Manhattan, mostly in neighborhoods that were already mostly commercial, so there's relatively little NIMBY pushback.

It's often cheaper to just demolish and rebuild, which is still very expensive.

Office space is built totally differently than residential space, unless you want dorms with communal bathrooms and kitchens.

It's easier than most people give it credit for. A lot of the complaints are from attempts to loosen the building code. There's savings of many millions on the table per refit if they manage to pass those, but they're not as needed as people say. For instance you lay down a raised floor to run utilities, and you can push sewer away from the core for relatively cheap and without shared bath/kitchen.

That being said, a return to allowing boarding house style housing would also not be the worst thing in the world for some buildings, and would probably do a lot to reduce homelessness. Hell, if I were still in my early 20s I'd be into the idea of a room to rent with shared bath/kitchen to save some money even not necessarily requiring the reduced in unit amenities.

> unless you want dorms with communal bathrooms and kitchens.

I personally wouldn't want to live in a space like that (maybe when I was younger), but I'm not convinced this sort of thing is so bad. Some people might like it, if it would cost less than a more traditional home.

Others whose housing situation is marginal, or who are homeless, might find it much preferable to the alternative. That's not an ideal reason for doing it, but perfect is the enemy of the good.

> Others whose housing situation is marginal, or who are homeless, might find it much preferable to the alternative

I lived in an illegally-sublet room with no window when I first moved to New York. I worked on Wall Street, and could afford something better. But I preferred to save money versus having a window I would look out of given my work (on the weekdays) and party (on the weekends) schedule.

Communal bathrooms are fine. Communal kitchens are fine; I know plenty of New Yorkers who might occasionally use their hot plate. (This changed post Covid, for what it's worth.)

This is another example of a little radicalism is a dangerous thing. You don't need to be friends with landlords if you're prepared to simply seize all their property.

I…don’t think he is prepared to do that.

That’s if he wanted to, which I am yet to be convinced.

Further, I don’t think any City government (including NYC) is prepared to do that! - short of an already-occurring collapse.

My understanding is that he is proposing a 4 year freeze on about 1 million units.

https://www.curbed.com/article/zohran-mamdani-housing-rent-f... archive: https://archive.ph/hnK4Q

"The 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units, effectively giving a reprieve to about 2 million stabilized tenants, was at the center of his campaign"

I'm not directly familiar with Berlin. But this story about shortages is the expected outcome:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-must-build-32...

BERLIN, March 20 (Reuters) - Germany, lagging in its building goals to alleviate a housing shortage, needs to construct 320,000 new apartments each year by 2030, a study on Thursday showed.

> 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units

Out of 3.7mm [1].

> not directly familiar with Berlin

Not comparable. Berlin froze rents “on more than 1.5 million” apartments in 2020 [2] out of about 2mm. 25% versus 75%.

Also, Berlin’s politicians didn’t propose a construction agenda. Mamdani has. (“New York City voters on Tuesday delivered a strong message in support of building more housing, passing three proposals that pitted City Hall against the City Council in an effort to rewrite decades-old development rules” [4].)

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/content/tenantprotection/pages/fast-fact...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/world/europe/berlin-gentr...

[3] https://www.berlin.de/en/news/8283996-5559700-housing-stock-...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/nyregion/nyc-ballot-measu...

Increasing supply brings down prices. But a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.

A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.

You are ignorant of both the situation and the proposals.

None of the new housing (unless the builder takes advantage of specific tax breaks which requires them to make their housing "rent stabilized" for a limited time, and even then when the new housing goes on the market, it will be offered at "market rates) will be subject to any rent regulation at all.

The units targeted for a rent freeze are either:

1. Units in buildings with more than six dwelling units where the building was built before 1971 (the vast majority of units affected);

2. Buildings where the developer (knowing ahead of time that this was the case) took advantage of certain tax exemptions/abatements that require them to offer their units at market rates when first put on the market, but then are constrained (as are the units in 1 above) by the NY's rent stabilization laws[0].

To wit: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. Yuck!

[0] https://www.nyc.gov/site/mayorspeu/programs/rent-stabilizati...

First - a rent freeze directly transfers inflation costs to the property owners. It is a tax by another name.

Second - there is no similar freeze on property taxes - or the expected inflation in maintenance costs, insurance, and so on. Again - a tax on property owners by another name.

Third - starting with a rent freeze is an indicator of a property owner unfriendly administration. Any builder would have to calculate this into their expected returns on capital investment.

Doesn’t seem like you read the comment you are replying to.

[flagged]

It's not property-owner-unfriendly, it's landlord-unfriendly.

Which is just fine in my book.

Builders do not have to "calculate" any of this into their "expected returns", because new construction will not be subject to rent freezes or even stabilization. You're selectively ignoring a key part of what the GP said in order to further your incorrect argument, and that's not cool.

As for your first and second points... tough shit for the landlords. That's a cost of doing business. Taxes, even implicit ones like this, change all the time. And a landlord owning a rent-stabilized unit should already know that there are limits on what kind of rent increases they can push through, and that those limits could change at any time, even to zero.

> tough shit for the landlords. That's a cost of doing business

If Mamdani does this, not only is he fucked, but he might take down the national progressive movement with himself.

"Tough shit" is a good Twitter reaction. It's terrible policy. Berlin did that, and it backfired in the most predictable way possible.

New York needs more housing. New York City's public finances simply do not permit a massive public housing construction binge, and Albany can't fund a socialist mayor's public works with upstate tax dollars. That means that housing must be privately developed. New York City, just today, transferred power away from City Council and to Gracie Mansion to help facilitate new housing. That means the impediment is local opposition. The literature shows that opposition gets dampened when folks aren't afraid of gentrification; rent freezes do that.

If Mamdani takes the easy route and "tought shits" the landlords, his housing policy grinds to a halt. Market rents, covering 75% of New York apartments, will spike. The experiment will be over. He doesn't strike me as an idiot, which is why I don't suspect he'll do this.

That article says the main benefit of rent control (besides popularity) is an increase in YIMBY sentiment, but it seems it still has the downsides detractors dislike about it.

It doesn't do much to convince me it isn't a populist campaign promise.

The Atlantic had a good article on this and how it isn't the doom and gloom you lay out above:

https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/11/mamdani-...

As some of the replies note, it has been rather successful and popular in other cities like Berlin.

Rent control is always initially popular with the people who are already in apartments. But it is longer term effects on supply and quality that are corrosive.

An alternative is Austin:

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/22/austin-texas-rents-f...

"Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years. Here’s why.

Austin rents have tumbled for 19 straight months, data from Zillow show. The typical asking rent in the capital city sat at $1,645 as of December, according to Zillow — above where rents stood prior to the pandemic but below where they peaked amid the region’s red-hot growth.

Surrounding suburbs like Round Rock, Pflugerville and Georgetown, which saw rents grow by double-digit percentages amid the region’s pandemic boom, also have seen declining rents. Rents aren’t falling as quickly as they rose during the pandemic run-up in costs, but there are few places in the Austin region where rents didn’t fall sometime in the last year.

The chief reason behind Austin’s falling rents, real estate experts and housing advocates said, is a massive apartment building boom unmatched by any other major city in Texas or in the rest of the country. Apartment builders in the Austin area kicked into overdrive during the pandemic, resulting in tens of thousands of new apartments hitting the market."

I'm all for building more housing, but in places that already have an affordability problem, removing rent control before building more housing would just displace people overnight.

I live in SF and wish we would build as much and as quickly as Austin has been building. But, if we could do that, we shouldn't consider eliminating rent control until after those units are on the market.

It's kind of incredible how the obvious and true solution to rents being too high is to BUILD MORE HOUSES and yet somehow people manage to convince themselves that in fact, the real solution to rents being to high is to artificially cap their prices. Incredible stupidity.

Mamdani is doing both though, in a controlled manner. He voted to oppose NIMBYism as well and has a plan for new construction.

Extra supply is helping, but I would argue back-to-office and layoffs are the primary culprit.

You're not competing with 4+ techbros to an apartment in downtown Austin anymore.

Anecdotally, the local tech meetups are WAY off in participation since about June. About 1/3 of the people who used to regularly attend have completely left the city.

Also quoting Paul Krugman -

"“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”"

So you know, take what he says with a grain of salt, as with all economists, who pretend to be rigorous when in fact they are anything but.

Of course Krugman got that wrong. It is funny.

But economists don't disagree about the effects of price controls. These are easy to observe and model. These concepts are also taught to Economics undergraduates all over the world - often in their first Microeconomics class. They are not controversial.

Here is a Khan Academy video: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

I feel like economists (as the Krugman quote above seems to illustrate) don't consider the real world. Price controls aren't necessary when there's abundance. When housing supply meets (or slightly exceeds) demand, landlords don't jack up rents every year and displace tenants. When it doesn't, and can't, what do we do to keep people from losing their homes?

(And don't give me the usual drivel about how people who are renting should be expected to assume they'll be kicked out all the time. Compassion, please. These are humans we're talking about.)

Isn't the obvious solution to build more houses (apartments, flats, whatever)? Like, isn't it incredibly obvious that there is actually a simple solution to this problem - build more so that there is an abundance of choice? How people come to the conclusion that in a densely populated and highly desirable area, the solution isn't building more capacity but rather to artificially cap prices?

It's like a database server running out of memory and the proposed solution isn't to increase memory, but rather just reject new entries into the DB because it's full.

How does he explain Tokyo then ?

Lax zoning regulations, relatively cheap labor, low cost of materials, and depreciating home values incentivize building new real estate. That is what separates Tokyo from New York City.

There's also (relatively) strong renter protections, including effectively frozen rent.

Yes, it's possible to increase rent, but only if the surrounding areas prices have increased, and even then the renter has to agree or it otherwise goes to court and the court tends to not side with landlords.

> and depreciating home values incentivize building new real estate

Yes and no. Most housing in Tokyo is apartment complexes and/or condos, which do not depreciate very much (and in fact in the past few years have appreciated by ~30%). Standalone houses depreciate, but the land appreciates. That leads to new construction for those properties, which often then turn into apartment complexes.

Basically, it's a matter of mostly becoming more dense over time, while also restricting price increases of rents.

Or any of these:

- Vienna, Austria: About 60% of residents live in city-subsidized or cooperatively owned housing

- Berlin, Germany: Rent control has been mixed, varies by neighborhood, but seen as working

- Singapore: Not rent control in the classic sense, but government-built housing

- Montreal, Canada: Rent control applies mainly to existing tenant

Not all perfect. There are others. It can work.

Have you lived in one of those rent controlled “paradises”? In Europe, yes, there are sizeable populations living in subsidized housing, and often there are restrictions on rent increases, but new tenants pay way higher prices and have to compete for every available unit with dozens of other potential tenants. New tenants frantically overbidding each other, while old tenants pay pennies compared to today’s market prices, mmm, what a life.

“it can work” in some way of course. People are surprisingly adaptable to living in semi-dysfunctional environments. But it reality the only thing that truly works is building a lot of housing.

> new tenants pay way higher prices and have to compete for every available unit with dozens of other potential tenants.

Rent control isn't the cause of that, though, it's lack of housing supply to meet demand. If there was no rent control, competition would be just as fierce, and prices still high.

Not something I've seen in montreal

The housing situation in Vienna has benefited significantly from massive population decline. As much as the population has grown in recent years, it is only now approaching the population it had a century ago.

Some genuinely lovely so-called “rust-belt” cities in the US have enjoyed a cheap housing renaissance on the back of historical population decline that is driving population increase now.

The city with declining population growth, aggressive rezoning to create supply, that still has 30 yr high rents in 2025?

> "a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing"

To address quality first, most economists would agree that landlords are incentivized to invest the bare minimum into their property that they can; this is not so much a function of income from rent. If a tenant feels generous and starts paying more for rent, the landlord will not invest more into their unit. So I find the inverse of that to be an assumption that doesn't completely add up.

Saying rent control will affect quantity is completely beside the point. Rent controls are meant to ease the financial burden on the people currently renting in NYC, not a hypothetical newcomer looking for an apartment. Housing is already a huge pain to find for lower-income new yorkers so the threat of a more scarcity doesn't really change the equation for a lot of people.

That quote seems to ignore reality. If we look at San Francisco, where units built before 1980 are not subject to rent control, we find that building new housing has nothing to do with fears that rent control will be extended.

I agree that rents for uncontrolled apartments are high, but if we eliminated rent control for the rest, that wouldn't really fix anything. The formerly-rent-controlled apartments would cost just as much as the post-1979 housing stock.

The only thing that will fix our housing cost problem is a truly radical amount of new construction. Developers would love to build here, but the cost to build here is ridiculously high for policy reasons that have nothing to do with actually building.

If we could build enough housing to satisfy demand, then we might be ok eliminating rent control. Rent control is a response to housing scarcity, not the cause. You'd think economists would understand basic supply and demand.

About the only thing I do agree with is that rent control reduces the quality of available housing. Landlords are less incentivized to fix problems and maintain their buildings when they can't make market rate from their tenants.

Fascinating, yet rents have increased faster than inflation even as rent control has waned in NYC.

The problem with citing studies from 1992 is that you’re missing the last 25 years of war inflation hidden through various schemes of quantitative easing and capitalization. We’ve made capital so easy to get everything is fungible and inflates as everyone from families to foreign rich people looking to exfiltrate cash from their country pumps dollars into real estate.

My parents recently passed and we sold their house in Queens for a ridiculous sum - representing a 8% CAGR. Most of that increase in value has been since 2000, and that’s driven by a surplus of capital looking for a return.

The underlying cause of runaway asset price inflation is ZIRP and QE. Renters experience it as rent increases outpacing wage increases - this is socially destructive. But neither Mamdani (DSA) or Democrats or Republicans are willing to touch Federal Reserve QE.

Senator Schumer (D-NY) famously said in 2012 to Ben Bernanke (Federal Reserve Chair): 'Get To Work Mr. Chairman' - encouraging him to start Quantitative Easing 3 (QE3) - a program to digitally print $40billion and eventually $85billion per month of "money" and injecting it into the financial system.

Democrats want higher wages for workers instead of reducing the cost of living (rent, insurance, etc).

Which is a total exercise in futility.

The way you fix housing is by building new housing, and letting old housing become the affordable housing.

You can also build affordable housing directly. We powered the post war period with a huge supply of starter homes.

Other countries have also directly attacked homelessness by simply building enough public housing such that anyone who wants a roof over their head can have one regardless of their ability to pay for it.

No, it's a pretty bad idea.

We don't mandate car manufacturers to build affordable cars (although they are free to). People with lower income rely (or should rely) on the used car market. Those cars are naturally affordable.

Car manufacturers build high margin cars for people with the money, people with the money leave a trail of used cars in their wake, people without money for a new car buy those used ones.

That's a totally sensible and functional market. No mandates or compelled charity needed.

You don't have to mandate anything of landlords. Public housing is a thing.

There are very successful examples.

And on the car side, there's plenty of very cheap new options. I can literally lease a new EV for ~$100/month. Who's voluntarily building starter homes anymore? We built fleets of those in the 50s, without the song and dance that they were luxury and required time to turn into starter homes. If anything in a lot of places, the starter homes of the 50s are the relatively expensive housing of today.

Generally speaking, legal requirements for elevated wages are another form of price fixing. The results of this price fixing are that fewer people will have jobs, the poorest people will be disenfranchised because it is not profitable to pay them a full salary, and the cost of everything in the city may very well be elevated due to more people willing/able to pay for the limited housing and other necessities. If you really want to help poor people, find a way to help them be more productive, and stop damaging the industries that get people the things they need.

You can see this in California with its mandated $20/hr fast food minimum wage. Restaurants responded by cutting workers or cutting hours.

https://www.nrn.com/quick-service/california-lost-16-000-res...

"It has been almost one year since California implemented a $20 minimum wage for quick-service restaurant workers, and industry experts have been debating the long-term effects the wage jump would have on the industry’s job market.

As it turns out, thus far, the 33.3% wage increase for fast-food workers in California has resulted in almost 16,000 job losses — a decline of 2.8% — across the limited-service food industry from September 2023 (when AB 1228 was signed into law) until September 2024, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Since the law went into effect in April, California’s limited-service restaurant industry has seen an employment rate decline of 2.5%."

That article doesn't even attempt to analyze why those jobs were lost, and just parrots the "minimum wage is evil" talking points of a conservative think tank. Hard to take it seriously.

Does that compare to other similar states over the same time? It hasn’t been a great year for restaurants anywhere afaik.

No they don't. Every time somebody tries to deport an illegal they scream.

I do not believe illegal immigration is a significant suppressor of wages.

OK, then you don't believe in basic economics. I guess the reason that basically 100% of companies lobby for increased immigration is just out of the goodness of their hearts.

"a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing."

Weirdly you get the same effect without rent control.

Do those case studies include the case for expropriating landlords that don’t keep their buildings to code?

Massive building sprees don’t bring prices down, they bring favelisation.

If the effect of this policies is that housing prices tumble, and there’s potentially more housing stock on the market for people to buy (and no incentive for buying to let since rent freezes makes it unprofitable), this seems like a good effect

> If the effect of this policies is that housing prices tumble

The near-term effect will be a spike in market rates. If Mamdani delivers on new supply, rents should broadly flatten in real terms.

Oh have we thought about just seizing property at gunpoint to solve the housing prices. The Kulaks deserve it anyways.

Keeping a building rentable is a pretty reasonable criteria for… renting.

Except NYC has laws making it difficult to do. A 2019 law they passed limits the amount a unit can have its rent increased in the case of a capital improvement at a small fraction of the capital cost. Now that interest rates are higher land lords are forced to keep units vacant, since theyll lose money taking a loan to get units up to code.

> 2019 law they passed limits the amount a unit can have its rent increased in the case of a capital improvement at a small fraction of the capital cost

Source? This sounds like it only applies to stabilised apartments.

> Now that interest rates are higher land lords are forced to keep units vacant

Rental vacancies are similar to what they were in 2019 [1].

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYRVAC

30% of housing in places like Hong Kong are rent controlled. The other 70% or so are strictly not so there’s plenty of incentive for the free market.

Rent stabilization (NYC jargon) already is here and is a mess. He's probably not about to make it worse.

1992 is a long time gone and economists aren’t always right. I don’t know how much worse the housing stock could get so maybe it’s time to try something different.

One of the pieces of evidence you provided is a poll about what people thought the effects were and not the actual effects.

Isn't that odd?

Check argentina for a relative recent example of what happens when you put and then remove rent control.

Spoiler alert, the economy books and the economists are right

As if Cuomo was some economic genius. Look at all his campaign material - they were abject brain dead character smears and racism. If he was truly just trying to win by any means to supposedly save New Yorkers from economic disaster, he was a Machiavellian of the highest degree.

He used Orthodox Jewish communities with top down leaders as a core machine style voting bloc. The whole community turns out and did what the head guy says, just like the old Tammany Hall. I’m sure plenty of people “moved” from their upstate town back to Brooklyn. Usually the old style conservative Catholics vote for him too. (Oddly enough as his divorce and “living in sin” was scandalous)

The issue is that the machine stuff only works when nobody is amped up. And his broader audience is both dying off and angry at the Trump nonsense. The population is shifting, and south asian, Middle Eastern and other, less traditionally powerful blocs are voting now and Zohran activated them. That’s why the dog whistles were so important - he needed to get more republicans and Archie bunker types to turn out.

It’s kind of sad, Cuomo with the right people restraining him is a force. But his enemy is himself.

> The population is shifting, and south asian, Middle Eastern and other, less traditionally powerful blocs are voting now and Zohran activated them

I voted for Zohran, but it’s worth noting that the demographic story isn’t all that clear: current counts show him losing to Cuomo in the Eastern Queens neighborhoods where those groups are significantly represented. Mamdani’s core voting base is “classic” NYC liberal: West side Manhattan, Northern Brooklyn, and Western Queens. That’s a relatively pasty set of areas, at least by NYC standards :-)

(The story with the Orthodox is also more nuanced: many of the sects like him, at least among the candidates. They like him because he’s made the right political noises around educational freedom re: yeshivas, and they absolutely despise Cuomo for his handling of COVID.)

What's an alternative though. It's easy to be critical and not solve people's problems

> who will be blamed?

20 bucks says Trump.

The literal alternative, which is actually happening right now and not some textbook hypothetical is supply not keeping up anyway and landlords charging however much they want pretty much unbridled, not to mention major companies snapping up real estate and leveraging it as investment collateral rather than treating them and managing them as, you know, housing.

We need a change. We don't need to do rent freezes in a vacuum. Coupled with the right policy supports they can definitely work, and Mamdani's proposed freezes are limited in scope. He is freezing rents only for select controlled units, last I checked.

Before you go spreading the bs propaganda, consider what your fellow citizens actually need to survive and whether or not you want to be viewed as being on the side of a few billionaires or on the side of the vast population that is increasingly becoming impoverished.

1. New york city has rent control on 1 million units already

2. New york city has laws making it so you can only increase rent by a small fraction of the investment for renovation taking a large amount of units off the market as its economically infeasible

3. Nyc has a very strict zoning and regulation system that is reducing housing supply

(from wikipedia)

1. rent control is a specific, technical term which represents about 24k units

2. rent stabilized representing about 1M sets limits on rent increases in exchange for tax breaks for the building

3. corruption

When you have to argue semantics by defining a new term ("it's not rent control, it's rent stabilization") that's a pretty good sign that you've fucked up and you're trying to hide it.

What's next, "these people are technically not in poverty, they're income challenged"

When you have to argue semantics by defining a new term ("it's not rent control, it's rent stabilization") that's a pretty good sign that you've fucked up and you're trying to hide it.

It's not "defining a new term."

In New York City, "Rent Control" is the official name of a specific program/set of laws and "Rent Stabilization" is the official name of a different specific program/set of laws.[0]

And since we're talking about New York City housing laws/policies and that Mamdani is proposing a rent freeze for units in one of those two programs, being specific about it isn't semantics at all.

The all-encompassing term that you thought you were using a gotcha on is "rent regulation."

Please! Put some knowledge on, your ignorance is showing. Sheesh!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation_in_New_York

Two of these things are orthogonal to freezes on rent controlled units, so I don't understand your point here.

I agree that 3. Is a problem. I'm not convinced mamadani is against reconsidering zoning and regulation to increase supply. Nothing I've heard suggest he would be.

No it doesn't. There are about 25,000 rent-controlled units, less than 1% of units in the City.

You are thinking of rent stabilization, but that's not close to the same thing.

They are both price controls on rent. The eligibility criteria are different, and the terms by which rent may increase are different, but they seem pretty close to the same thing to me.

You are woefully misinformed.

Take all of 90-120 seconds to inform yourself:

https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/faqs/...

Why is it that anytime something like this comes up, ignoramouses like you crawl out from under whatever rock you've been sliming under to offer uninformed blather?

Nothing on that page contradicts anything I said.

> He is freezing rents only for select controlled units

45% of apartments in NYC

Rent-controlled units account for less than 1%. Rent-stabilized units for less than 25%.

Over 50% of rented units in New York are regulated somehow. 34% “rent stabilised pre-74”, 8% “rent stabilized post-73”, 1% rent controlled, 7% public housing, 2% other

The underlying cause of impoverishment where inflation of housing, healthcare, and education is outpacing income is an expansionist monetary policy. ZIRP (Zero interest policy) along with QE (quantitative easing) pushed ever increasing amounts of printed money into the system. No one is touching the root cause. Not Mamdani, not Democrats and not Republicans.

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2010/12/08/13190...

"Jon Stewart Busts Fed Chair Ben Bernanke On 'Printing Money' December 8, 201010:39 AM ET By

Frank James

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is so busted.

Comedy Central host Jon Stewart added his voice to others who caught the central banker contradicting himself over whether or not the Fed is "printing money" through its actions to bolster the economy.

On 60 Minutes this week, when asked by reporter Scott Pelley about the Fed's $600 billion purchase of Treasury bonds that is meant to lower interest rates further, the Fed chair said:

BERNANKE: Well, this fear of inflation, I think is way overstated. We've looked at it very, very carefully. We've analyzed it every which way. One myth that's out there is that what we're doing is printing money. We're not printing money. The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way. ...

Twenty-one months earlier on the same program and to the same reporter, Bernanke said something quite different:

Asked if it's tax money the Fed is spending, Bernanke said, "It's not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing."

"You've been printing money?" Pelley asked.

"Well, effectively," Bernanke said. "And we need to do that, because our economy is very weak and inflation is very low. When the economy begins to recover, that will be the time that we need to unwind those programs, raise interest rates, reduce the money supply, and make sure that we have a recovery that does not involve inflation." "

Making it about "sides" is exactly why politics is as toxic as it is today.

Is it inconceivable that one could look at the candidates and, without being a billionaire, decide that Mamdani is not a candidate they want to bet their chips on?

Politics is all about sides. To think it isn't is delusional.

It's uncomfortable to take sides, but that's what politics is. It's finding out what you believe is important (e.g. helping average people make ends meet, even if it require regulation, or eliminating regulation), you will end up taking sides whether you like it or not.

I think it's incredibly naive not to consider who our choices benefit. If your choices benefit people who already have massive amounts of wealth, you should acknowledge that and be aware of that and accept the consequences of that, and vice versa. Obviously in many cases it is complicated--your choices may benefit several different classes of people and undermine others. If anything the problem with politics is that many people make choices without considering what "sides" will benefit, letting ads, propaganda, and persuasion convince them instead. This leads people to actively vote against their own interests without even realizing it.

Doesn't this also apply in reverse? How many supporters of Mamdani acknowledge the groups that this choice will potentially harm? I am instead seeing people usually get defensive and downplay the potential harm on the more controversial issues. I also haven't seen anyone acknowledge that if the risk goes awry, it could end up causing even more harm to exactly those the policies were supposed to help.

If the goal is to vote for one's self interest, isn't it assuming a lot that this will always be aligned with one side? Sometimes self-interest means supporting one side on one issue, and a different side on a different issue. The act of taking a side is in of itself a form of compromise. I see nothing wrong with that, but that's not what people usually mean when they talk of sides.

Actually demand has being going down and rents have been trending down as a result. The main reason is less immigration and international students. I recall years ago every open house I would go to ended up selling above market value for cash from someone from overseas who "invests" their money on the back of locals trying to buy a house to live in for their family. The billionaires were not the ones to blame for this.

lol, going down according to who? https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/new-york...

I don't doubt that immigration has probably marginally impacted the market, that doesn't change the fact that rent in NYC is still increasing YoY and is way too expensive.

And yes, the people extracting exorbitant rent cost are in fact the ones to blame. I don't understand people who seem to occupy a fairytale land in which they feel the need to defend billionaires as though they owe some fealty to them.

I'm noticing that this election result has made a lot of people I know really hopeful. It's apparent that many people are fed up with the status quo so they're pushing towards more experimental candidates.

If anyone here is well-read on his policies and they have specific opinions I'd love to hear what you think.

Do you think Zohran will be successful with his agenda or will he get blocked by pushback from other political forces? I read some commentary that a few of his policy ideas are unfeasible without support from Albany, and I'm not sure how to evaluate that relationship.

Many online figures have become heavily invested on this mayoral election despite living hundreds or thousands of miles away, and I think that speaks to a real hunger for greater political experimentation.

As an aside, how do you evaluate the lessons that you learn or derive from what others are doing? Generalization sure is a tricky thing.

Hi

I don’t think I like several of his ideas or think he will get most of them passed. In fact I think a few like “freezing the rent” are actively bad

But I’m happy to finally have a politician who lives in and loves New York and is earnestly trying to my the city better. If he tries and fails, it will be better than our other politicians that have stopped trying

Strong agree. I think his policies are absurd but hope that more invested young people who aren’t career politicians can start trying a platform that isn’t party line and resonates with residents.

Particularly in comparison to Cuomo who by all accounts doesn’t even seem to like the city he campaigned to run. A tiny bit of joy goes a very long way.

I think I like the universal childcare and free buses. Don’t like the rent control but places like Hong Kong have been very successful doing it.

Experiments have already been done. You just need to look at history. Or you can just look at north korea and Kabul .

Why look at North Korea when NYC has had rent control forever? It makes landlords neglect maintenance. That’s about it. I don’t know that I totally agree with it, but it’s fine.

Rent control increase the rent for everyone, lowers the amount of housing stock, and reduces its quality.

Or, you know, current day European social democracies.

You can’t help but laugh at the amount of hysteria about Mamdani. No cost childcare? Free buses? Using existing rent control regulations to keep rent affordable? Oh no

I'm not sure there are many countries that actually have free childcare and free buses. Talk about it, yes. Subsidized to a degree, yes. But pretty much every municipal transport is already heavily subsidized.

There are fundamental differences between Europe and the US. The US is not magically going to become Europe by electing a "left" mayor.

Also this is a city- since when does a mayor set economic policies.

Last I checked free busses, and no cost childcare, still need someone to pay for them.

Rent control, if the rent is low, there won't be any rental property. What's the next step, forcing people to build? The city will build?

I guess we shall see. The sad thing is that people didn't vote because they considered all the ideas and the implications. The other sad thing is that maybe Mamdani was the best candidate.

> since when does a mayor set economic policies.

Childcare, buses and rent control are all under the control of the NYC mayor.

> Last I checked free busses, and no cost childcare, still need someone to pay for them.

Most places have “free” roads and public schools and survive just fine. The point in invoking Europe is to say that having a higher tax burden and getting more public services in return is not some crazy North Korean dystopia. It’s pretty common. If it’s not for you that’s absolutely fine, just don’t move to NYC.

Europe isn't just simply about taxes and services. There are many more layers to the difference between where the US sits and Europe. Hopefully this is obvious.

I believe Europe has plenty of toll roads as well ;)

I find it weird that these priorities are set at a level of a city. I mean NYC is a big city but it is part of a state and a country. There are much better economies of scale and ability to exert control at the levels of government these policies usually exist at.

NYC has a bigger population than the entire country of Ireland. It definitely has the economy of scale to operate public transport and education.

> There are many more layers to the difference between where the US sits and Europe. Hopefully this is obvious.

It is exceedingly obvious. The reason for my comparison wasn’t because I think they are the same place, I was responding to a commenter who said North Korea and Kabul were appropriate comparison points for Mamdani’s plans. My point is simply that immediately invoking North Korea is hysteria.

> NYC has a bigger population than the entire country of Ireland

New York City's economy [1], were it a country, would sit at No. 18 in the world between the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia [2].

The only EU members with economies larger than its are the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France and Germany.

(New York City's budget [3] is bigger than the military budgets of every country on the planet except for America, China and Russia's [4]. On par with the budgets of Ukraine and the Philippines [5].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City $1.3tn

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[3] https://council.nyc.gov/press/2025/06/30/2915/ $116bn

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

The people who lucked into rent-controlled suites will sublet them for a much higher rent https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20160517-this-is-one-ci...

Sure buddy, rent control is literally North Korea. I take it you have skin in this game.

The biggest takeaway to me is how ridiculous it is that the US considers Mamdani somehow "experimental" or even radical.

His campaign revolves around three policies:

1. Universal Child Care 2. Fast and Free Busses 3. Freezing Rent for certain Rent Controlled Units

In any other context these would be policies that basically every citizen, except for a handful of people making buttloads of money off the privatization of childcare, housing, and transportation would support, yet somehow in the USA this is "radical". Somehow a candidate finally proposing positive policies that directly benefit citizens is a radical socialist who needs to be stopped and we all need to vote for the disgraced former governor who resigned after killing seniors during covid and groping his employees. Even here on HN where people are generally well educated you have people arguing. that Mamdani will somehow be the ruin of new york.

Politics in america is like entering an inverted world in which some weird internal drive actively makes people vote against their own personal interests.

> Politics in america is like entering an inverted world in which some weird internal drive actively makes people vote against their own personal interests.

Nobody willingly does this. If you think they are, that should be a strong sign to you that those people and you disagree about what their best interests are, and you should seriously consider the possibility that they are right and you are wrong. You might not be wrong, but jumping to "they are voting against their own interests because they are dumb" as many do is both unhelpful and untrue.

"Free buses" is not really a thing even in the most left leaning European countries. Most experts recommend very cheap subsidized public transportation but not free.

Well Luxembourg is pretty much less a dense Staten Island, and they do more stuff than buses.

I'd love to read more on the cheap rent controlled units and free buses in Paris or London when you have a second to link them. Thanks!

Rent control in particular is an economic basket case policy, the fact that it's popular at election time should have about as much bearing on it making sense as the fact that another "experimental" candidate was considered by voters in 2024 to be "better on immigration"

As for offering free stuff, the problem that - if you look at relative population numbers - NY, CA, etc are already facing is that on the margin people he hopes will pay for it will just move away.

You can’t find another city that even approaches NYC without moving to another country. And moving to London or Paris to escape taxes doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Example: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-...

In case of the cities you don't even need to move that far. I know multiple people in Seattle who just moved to nearby towns 105-15 minutes by car, 20-45 by transit) to avoid Seattle specific issues, and some people who move just outside of king county to avoid even more nonsense. Mostly techies, but not exclusively.

It's not like American cities haven't been hollowed out before, NYC included.

It's funny that you mention moving outside the city when Zohran's tax plan is centered on bringing the corporate tax rate in-line with our neighboring state.

I'll also caveat that any parallels you might see in Seattle don't really apply to NYC. Besides the low car ownership rates, wealthy individuals choose to in NYC for it's convenience and culture, which really are unique in the US.

As further evidence to OP’s point: people paint Mamdani as an extremist for discussing rent control but it’s already the law in NYC. It’s not even remotely new. And there were 0% increases (effectively freezes) in 2014-2016 and again during COVID in 2020.

It’s been a truly exhausting election cycle for New Yorkers who have been lectured from all sides by people who don’t even understand how the city works.

> Rent control in particular is an economic basket case policy

Switzerland has had rent control for a long time, and seems to have (rather successfully) avoided this economic basket case fate.

Rent is a nonproductive component in the economy. It shouldn't even exist. If we want an economy that actually provides goods that people need we should focus on productive components like building more houses and actual shelter rather than using limited housing to extract profit, often without even improving the housing itself.

> are already facing is that on the margin people he hopes will pay for it will just move away.

This myth is promulgated constantly with no evidence to back it up. The tax increases he has proposed are a drop in the pond to the bracket he aims to tax. If those people care so little for the city, so be it, they can leave. I don't need to share communal space with people who want to live as atoms and don't actually care about the place they live beyond how it affects their bottom line. If they actually love NYC for the city it is, they will stay. The increases are not going to be untenable for those people, it all comes down to their priorities, and if they don't want to prioritize NYC, then yes, they should gtfo because they are characterless, tasteless people who only care about themselves and their money.

Rent is a nonproductive component in the economy is a ridiculous statement. People need shelter and like nice shelter. People pay for access to amenities and convenience. _incentivizing building housing in areas where people want to live or where people work is efficient_

Nothing you've said has anything to do with rent. It'd be equally possible to build and incentivize building housing and then to enable people to own homes or at least own units within multi family homes.

Rent is a predatory practice established over and above the supply of a basic need (housing) that does nothing more than extract profits for no productive contribution. If anything I'm incentivized to limit housing supply as a landlord in the limit because growing housing supply means competition for me as a landlord.

Right, and it’s a good thing that the people producing housing, legislating housing production, and in control of housing supply aren’t the same.

Why is owning a home important? I do not think that home ownership is what most people want. We have attempted to make this desirable at through state intervention by pitching housing as an investment instead of a durable good.

saying one of the many reasons rent is good “is not about rent” doesn’t mean there’s no clash in the argument.

All moving to an entirely ownership model would do is reduce elasticity of the housing market, which would be disastrous.

> I do not think that home ownership is what most people want.

I think this is a ridiculous statement. I don't know your background, but I grew up in extreme poverty (by Canadian standards). In the welfare complexes I lived in growing up, living in a home you owned seemed like an unattainable dream. The ability to choose between owning a home and renting a home is representative of a degree of economic freedom that is becoming unattainable for many, many people.

There is absolutely merit to the idea that choosing to rent is a good choice for many people, but in most cases the people who would make that choice are inclined to do so because they either desire or require mobility in terms of relocation, and frequently the reason people desire that is the opportunity to pursue better economic opportunities (jobs, investments, etc).

These are good points—I think you're right to flag rent in itself isn't the issue per se, and this points to the fact that the main crux of housing affordability is a mismatch between supply/demand and prices.

I think the issue with rent is that it just complicates the situation regardless and leads to bad power differentials, and again, I don't know how you prevent slumlords but permit renting.

The way I see it rent takes an inherently unproductive fact of life (occupancy) and makes it a profit mechanism. Now if we had something like old school English land improvement laws or something, you could have a system in which rent and home ownership are forced to be productive, but barring that, I don't see a way of doing it and thus rent mostly just seems to complicate the market and mostly drive up costs and potentially prevent the majority of people from owning.

I agree that elasticity reduction would be bad, but let's build more homes and reduce costs enough to make buying and selling homes not literally the biggest financial undertaking in life and this will be less of an issue. I just find it incredibly difficult to conceive of a scenario in which renting contributes benefits beyond those you could realize simply by solving actual demand and cost issues. If you get lucky and have a good landlord who actually takes care of home management for you, sure, but this is not the reality. I'd maybe accept a renting economy with strong regulations around what landlords must provide, reasonable caps on increases, maybe even required improvements every N years, but barring that, renting mostly just enables parasites to sit on property, scoop up more property, and prevent swaths of people from owning in neighborhoods.

> If we want an economy that actually provides goods that people need we should focus on productive components like building more houses and actual shelter

What if we built some on spec and then charged people who live in them a monthly fee to recoup the cost. That way we could build more houses immediately without having to get all the money together all at once. We could then use the extra money to build even more houses.

So if I build a building full of studios targeted at young people who would have no interest in owning one permanently, or poorer ppl who don't have money or stability to buy, how am I to be compensated/incentivised? I guess it's not being built then!

As for population e.g. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-...

Or, a public developer could construct and operate housing at cost, where rent pays off just enough to service the debt and operations.

That has been tried in the US before. Public option sucks unless like in Singapore (or USSR where it sucked only moderately) you force almost everyone into a public option. Otherwise people most capable of moving out, move out; the public option gets worse; rinse, repeat.

> Rent is a nonproductive component in the economy ... we should focus on productive components like building more houses

Through... rent?

> yet somehow in the USA this is "radical"

As they say... (often misattributed to John Steinbeck, but at best its really a rough paraphrase of something he wrote) "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

The truly wealthy have long convinced the average "middle class" American that they exist in roughly the same social class (even though this has always been an insane lie) but this illusion is quickly falling away due to current economic circumstances causing untenable concentration of wealth.

Ultimately its the absolute naked greed of the truly wealthy that is causing this realignment (that is likely to end badly for them as well) to happen. They are so dead set against making even the smallest move toward fair taxation that they are creating a situation in which the shrinking middle class have no choice but to see that they are quickly becoming an endangered species whose relative fortunes are moving rapidly down rather than slowly up.

The experimental part is that he's Brown and Muslim.

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If you actually think Mamdani is a communist, then you don't understand what communism is.

Please point to even one policy (not the stuff that his opponents disingenuously claim his policies are) that even approaches communism.

Here's a link to help you out with that:

https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform

Way too many examples to list all of them, but here is the easiest: Mamdani used the phrase "seizing the means of production" during a live streamed conference of the Young Democratic Socialists of America in February 2021.

https://www.aol.com/news/zohran-mamdani-chilling-call-seizin...

Firstly, that’s not a policy, and secondly, if seizing the means of production just means supporting labor-owned businesses, it’s not communism. The version of communism that people point at is government-controlled means of production topped with authoritarian policies. Mamdami is not even close to that.

The fact that people aren’t considering economic ideas outside of capitalism is fucking absurd. Capitalism is not fundamentally capable of incentivizing humans over money.

We have some massive problems that aren’t going to get better by bowing to monopolies and cutting taxes for the wealthy.

If you’re a capitalist upset by seeing slightly socialist preferences in voters, feel free to make capitalism work better. Which typically includes borrowing socialist policies.

It’s not rocket science, if a pretty sizable chunk of the population is getting absolutely screwed by our economic system, expect them to vote for people who want to make it better.

Voters across the political spectrum feel ignored.

For decades mainstream parties (both centre-left and centre-right) have repeatedly promised change but after getting into power somehow (re-)converged on technocratic, market-friendly "consensus politics".

If you're worried about stagnant wages, job insecurity, crumbling public infrastructure and/or the cost of housing, then you probably don't notice - or care - whether the stock markets are going up.

Nice to see someone young, charismatic, and highly energized breathing life into the decrepit democratic party. Hopefully he can accomplish a ton and repudiate the DNC.

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I found out his mom directed the movies "Monsoon Wedding" and "Mississipi Masala" with Denzel Washington.

Allegedly she was tapped to direct "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", but her then 14 year old son talked her out of it to do "The Namesake" instead

Zohran's father is a famous post-colonial scholar. A college professor in my family has had him as part of curriculum for years.

Yeah this was a surprise. Monsoon wedding is such a good movie.

TIL he is Mira Nair's son!. The namesake has a special place in my heart.

She is known for movies like Monsoon Wedding... but also Kama Sutra.

The fact that people in here (who are richer than average) disagree with his policies makes his election more hopeful

The reality, which kinda sucks and is boring, is that generally people with money understand how money works, and why things like rent control, government grocery stores, and free [expensive service], are financially brutal policies.

> is that generally people with money understand how money works,

In their favor

Could it be any other way? Are there people that understand how money works and won't apply it for their own case?!

We each do our best for us and our own - it's natural. Capitalism is ensuring the society advances and benefits disproportionally more.

The more you think you know, the more close-minded you'll be

This is stuff economists know. Why would rich people know that? How many rich people pay rent or rely on social security? Making profits is not a skill transferrable to the broader economy.

Also, what worked in the past, in different places or different demographics does not mean it will work again today.

People with money understand how to get themselves more money, often at the expense of others. And indeed, they’re very good at that.

Brutal to who? Wage theft is also brutal, but it's pretty obvious why the folk who "understand how money works" condone it. It's a tad credulous to think the billionaires donated against Mamdani out of a sense of noblesse oblige

Brutal to everyone. Society is a chain linked web, not a loose cluster.

> Society is a chain linked web, not a loose cluster.

I wish the people building bunkers, buying New Zealand citizenship, support razing social safety nets for tax cuts, and fetishize civilizational collapse (while simultaneously chipping at its foundations aggressively) realized this.

What about tax cuts for the rich, quantitative easing? Who are they brutal to? Everyone? Where in that chain linked web does it hurt the most when you distribute money to the wealthiest 10%?

Tax cuts are not distribution, in fact they are the opposite of distribution.

Appeal to authority and sweeping generalisation in a cynical dismissal package.

You’re not talking to bilionaires on this site, only a portion of bilionaires know about making money, which has no relation whatsoever to having a good grasp about political philosophy, large-scale economic principles and statesmanship.

Agreed. Thank you for pointing that out.

He is also richer then average.

Absolutely. I love it.

Why is that? I think many of us who are educated in history understand the risks of collectivism. It has never worked out anywhere. I see it as basically a marketing cover for oligarchy. The Western world should aspire to better than China. I'm not even a conservative, just read a lot. Humanity has had some pretty hellish experiences with communism and yet we keep "going there."

Greetings from western europe. Not so bad and communist around here. They call it social capitalism.

Western Europe would have been collapsing right now if daddy cold capitalist didn't show up with gas and guns to drive away the Russian bear.

Western Europe has been on vacation for 30 years. There is no future where they can stay on the path they have been on. European leaders recognize this, but how the hell do you get a generation raised with an easy life to recognize this?

Germans work 400 hours a year less than Americans, and they celebrate that. Good luck.

This is what working in a toxic working culture does to a person. "Because I only have one week of PTO a year and have to be constantly add afraid of being fired, everyone should be!"

>There is no future where they can stay on the path they have been on. European leaders recognize this, but how the hell do you get a generation raised with an easy life to recognize this?

The call is inside the house. Puritan ethics will not stop China from overtaking the US.

>Germans work 400 hours a year less than Americans, and they celebrate that. Good luck.

You have a dedicated HN work account with 15337 karma.

> Germans work 400 hours a year less than Americans, and they celebrate that. Good luck.

Yes, everyone everywhere should endeavor to... checks notes... work the maximum number of hours in a year.

Just don't commit blasphemy, which is literally a crime you can be charged with there.

"there". Where exactly? Norway's law about this was removed years ago, and for many years before that was a "sleeping" rule basically no one got convicted of.

Exciting times in New York City, I wish them the best, it probably will become a uphill battle now to do anything without media on every single thing out the wazooo

It will certainly be a lesson in economics, with hopefully some lasting effect. A decade later some will call it vaccination.

I’m not a New Yorker or even an American, but it’s interesting just how much coverage this election has gotten in social media.

I think most of his major policies are pretty bad, but I also think the reaction against him has been over the top.

He is going to need cooperation from the state legislature, if he wants to collect the taxes needed to fund his policies, and I’m not sure how successful he will be at that.

A lot of people are rooting both for and against him, so it’s going to be interesting either way.

I’m a big believer that the people elect the government they deserve. Let’s see how this plays out.

Honest, hardworking people deserve honest, hardworking government.

This hoping for a future schadenfreude is kinda nasty. Why wouldn't you want the best for people?

Who deserves Cuomo, and what did they do to deserve that?

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Best of luck to the new mayor of NYC!

Let’s go. What a great team, message, and well deserved win.

I love how much Mamdani pisses people off just because he wants to buck the status quo. I don’t think he’ll get everything implemented he wants but I respect the mission.

I'm glad he won, and I hope he succeeds, but there are going to be a lot of powerful forces out to sabotage him any way they can.

A salient factor in this election is Trump. I've been saying for years that overreach on the right creates space, then oxygen, then agency for the (far) left. This election is the natural and logical consequence of maga overreach (and vanilla skanky stupidity) and reminds economic popularism is not wholly owned by the right.

My fear is the US will cycle dumb right to stupid left, which helps absolutely nobody.

It's too early to eval mandarin... that will come ... but this under current has now got first and second derivative postive.

I wish our country was like this. A city "president" can speak against the President. A city President has the power to work without the will of the President.

https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/zohran-mamdani-third-worldism-... Zohran Mamdani, Third-Worldism, and the Algerian Revolution

Good grief, NBC runs such shitty junk ads on their front page. What a blight on a once-great brand.

Who would have thought that New Yorkers didn’t appreciate out-of-state billionaires playing “Zohran did 9/11” attack ads over and over on TV for months on end. He was the only candidate with a clear plan for the city, and voters rewarded him for it.

Left wing candidate wins in extremely Left wing city, against "Cuomo"[0], to become mayor and people are celebrating this like it's some historical achievement.

Everyday I grow more blackpilled about the balance of powers in the US if this is what the left-wing has going for it.

[0] His name alone should be a synonym for how bad of a candidate he was, there's no single label good enough (like sex offender) to cover how bad he was.

Why is this on HN.

I'm optimistic that he will actually be a positive force in reforming how the city operates. I think he is pragmatic in that he understands that efficiency in government administration is something that progressives have insufficiently prioritized. His policies are more populist than I'd prefer, but I think not the crazy socialist fever dream that Rs portray it as. The scariest thing for me is the prospect of active sabotage from the federal level, although I don't know how much they have held back.

The gov't may try to fuck with NYC using ICE or whatever, but honestly I think the fears about federal funding are overblown.

NYC generates like 2+ trillion GDP all on its own. It is the largest metropolitan economy in the world let alone the United States. I don't know how much NYC actually depends on federal money, but if there's any city that has a chance to figure out how to make it through a government funding squeeze, it's NYC.

Honestly I think the only recourse the fed has to put pressure on NYC is the actual gestapo shit they've already been pulling in Chicago.

NYC will riot french style if ICE moves in en-masse

NYC will rot if it continues down this path.

> think not the crazy socialist fever dream that Rs portray

That's because he's a democratic socialist, not a communist like they want people to think. If people really looked into the policies of the DSA they would support it. There is a reason Einstein, Keller, and more were adamant supporters.

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"Comrade" didn't begin with the USSR.

So what? It is used almost exclusively by communists, in Hollywood and in real life.

In a lighter vein, let me suggest reading the Psmith series by Wodehouse. If not the entire series then Leave It To Psmith, at least.

Comrade D'Oily Cart of the Gilbert and Sullivan Squeaky Wheels?

Total commies ... check out their patches and berets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgCAce59bbU

That's because they are kept milquetoast as a way to nullify any left-wing movement.

https://theintercept.com/2023/03/21/fbi-colorado-springs-sur...

https://jacobin.com/2018/08/fbi-infiltration-new-left-aoki-s...

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1012107432/how-a-former-spy-t...

https://indypendent.org/2019/02/lessons-from-the-fbis-secret...

https://theintercept.com/2023/02/10/deconstructed-fbi-inform...

The FBI infiltrates everything, apparently. That doesn't mean that these lunatics are all fake or insincere.

I have some thoughts on this. Mamdani is a very charismatic person, and is in touch with a large segment of modern Democrat voters. It's the sort of stuff that can carry him to the White House as VP. He won more then 50% of the vote with a large turnout. As far as mandates go it's a pretty good one.

Now for the other stuff. He is a pretty extreme socialist. He wants to raise taxes on rich guys, businesses. Make buses free, rent controls, defunding the police, city run stores and more. These are great vote winners and terrible ideas. All of that has been tried and failed many times. As a political belief system socialism is a disaster. Thatcher pointed out that no other political experiment has been run as long and has so completely failed as socialism. I think his ideas represents all of the worst excesses of the Democrat party.

Then there's the man personally. My impression of him is he's basically a spoiled rich kid who's never had to work a day in his life. That doesn't mean he's not allowed to be ambitious, but it does put into question his credentials as a genuine socialist. It's easy to hold popular opinions when they won't affect your lifestyle in any way.

Finally there's the ugly stuff. He has used the term "globalise the intifada". For any of his apologists who will claim that phrase has any peaceful connotations, imagine a populist saying "globalise National Socialism". Would you be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt? NYC is perhaps the most important city in the world. I'm worried for it.

>My impression of him is he's basically a spoiled rich kid who's never worked a day in his life. That doesn't mean he's not allowed to be ambitious, but it does put into question his credentials as a genuine socialist. It's easy to hold popular opinions when they won't affect your lifestyle in any way.

Being a basically a edgy candidate from a Green EU party doesn't require a vow of poverty, nor an actual take-the-means-of-production Socialist for that matter. He's the son of a college professor and a filmmaker with award winning movies and docs with shitty box offices. Clearly extremely comfortable, but straight humble compared to "my daddy made me campaign manager" Cuomo.

I'm sure his proposals aren't optimal for his parents home equity.

> He has used the term "globalise the intifada"

He never said it. It just the ol' reliable "Mr Candidate, do you condemn the phrase 'I love kicking puppies'? No, saying that’s not the language that you use is not valid for some reason." I recommend to expand your news diet.

It's funny how in the US, even mayors get tagged as "conservative" or "democratic socialist." I always figured their job was just to keep the city services running.

That mayor runs a city that has the GDP of multiple nations. The scale is different even if the title is the same.

Aren’t mayors in all countries politicians? In Denmark all mayors are identified with their party association when talked about in the news.

Reviewing various western democracies it looks like most mayoral candidates run affiliated with a political party. The exception is Canada where mayoral candidates run an independent campaign.

> The exception is Canada where mayoral candidates run an independent campaign.

That's not universal. The City of Vancouver for example has a party system, though the parties are largely not affiliated with provincial or federal parties. There are exceptions there as well though - the Vancouver Greens are affiliated with both the provincial and federal Green parties.

Most of the large city mayoral races in the U.S. are partisan. But I'm not sure how it breaks down by state in the U.S. for small towns.

Maybe it's the exception rather than the norm, but in Canada, municipal, provincial, and federal parties are generally separate. Montreal, for example, is currently led by Projet Montréal, which has no formal ties to any provincial party. Likewise, the current provincial party, the CAQ, has no formal affiliation with any federal party.

Canada here (Ontario really, probably varies by province) - our mayors and city councilors are politicians but they're explicitly forbidden from running as part of a party. Which I honestly think works so well it should be extended to all levels of politics.

Famously, the US founding fathers warned against the dangers of political parties, only to see them spring up in the US anyways. You really need to design your political system carefully so that there is no incentive to form political parties. I don't know if anyone has ever successfully done this. People should be thinking about it more though.

Specifically, I think a political party happens when two politicians make a bargain that they will each vote for some of the other politician's policies. They don't have to call it "the X party" for it to be a de facto political party.

There are some offices which are designated as nonpartisan here in the US too, I think they are typically offices which don't have a lot of scope for this sort of bargaining. If they did have scope for such bargaining, I wouldn't want to rely on the honor system in the long term. I would want to codify it into law somehow. But how? The best way is probably to reduce the incentive for striking bargains somehow? Again, how? Or maybe bargains are just a distraction, and the real problem lies elsewhere? As I said, people should be thinking more.

In Canada's largest city the mayor is firmly and strongly associated with the NDP. "Chow served as the New Democratic Party member of Parliament for Trinity—Spadina from 2006 to 2014."

And yet that was not the central in her run for mayor at all (I live in that city). She campaigned on policy, not on party branding, like every other candidate did.

in may places eg canada they don't have an explicit party affiliation. obviously they still have a political slant.

Well, define politician.

Some cities have non-partisan mayoral elections. For example, Miami does this under Home Rule charter.

Still, it's often clear who's who. For example, Emilio González prominently displayed a POTUS lapel pin during a debate and bragged about being able to interface with Trump and DeSantis.

There are lots of small towns in the U.S. where mayors and board members' campaigns are not partisan. That is, they don't run as members of a political party. Just candidates who campaign to "keep the city services running." There are no political parties listed on the ballot for these candidates.

I believe that in California, the political party that mayoral candidates belong to cannot be printed on the ballot next to their names.

This mayor represents more people than many state governors

You don't make yourself a name by properly managing garbage trucks and street sweeping. It's not just the US either, Australian local councils went headlong into culture wars long ago.

Counterpoint, I read this interesting article recently contrasting two progressive mayors in the USA, Brandon Johnson (~6% approval rating) and Michelle Wu (66% approval rating)

https://cityjournal.substack.com/p/big-city-progressives-kee...

LaGuardia was a democratic socialist but had to run as a Republican because of Tammany Hall's undemocratic stranglehold on the Democratic party then. NYC has a history of a lot of really shitty, corrupt mayors and political machinery. Let's hope ZM charts a new course.

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Mamdani offers nothing that will improve affordability. It's the same economic fallacies that have been proven to destroy Affordability over the long run, e.g. rent control.

The actual solution is to repeal the morass of regulatory restrictions on housing that have been put in place since 1960.

Per 1,000 residents, only 2.68 houses were built in San Francisco between 2010 and 2020, compared to 12.66 houses between 1950 and 1960.

For New York, only 2.38 houses were built per 1,000 residents between 2010 and 2020, compared to 8.88 houses between 1950 and 1960.

Regulatory restrictions imposed on housing in San Francisco and New York since 1960:

San Francisco:

- 1960: City Planning Code (Zoning Ordinance) - Established zoning districts with specific regulations on use, density, building types, minimum lot sizes (e.g., 2,500 sq ft for most, 4,000 for R-1-D), and one-for-one parking requirements per dwelling unit, restricting housing types by enforcing low-density controls and increasing development costs through compliance and parking mandates.

- 1970: California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) - State law requiring environmental impact assessments for projects, significantly lengthening permitting times (often adding years due to reviews and litigation) and increasing costs for housing development through extensive studies and potential mitigations.

- 1978: Comprehensive Rezoning and Adoption of RH (Residential House) and RM (Residential Multi-family) Districts - Reduced zoned capacity for housing on the city's West Side, making thousands of multi-family properties non-conforming, restricting allowable densities and types of housing, which limits supply expansion.

- 1979: San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization Ordinance (Rent Ordinance) - Imposed rent controls on multi-family units built before June 1979, limiting annual rent increases (typically 2% or less), which can increase overall housing costs by reducing incentives for new construction and maintenance, indirectly restricting supply.

- 1979: Condominium Conversion Ordinance - Limited annual conversions of rental units to condominiums (initially 1,000, later 200 for 2-6 unit buildings), preserving rentals under rent control but restricting ownership housing options and potentially increasing costs by limiting market flexibility.

- 1981: Residential Hotel Demolition and Conversion Ordinance - Prohibited demolition or conversion of residential hotel units without one-for-one replacement or in-lieu fees to an affordable housing fund, increasing costs and permitting times for redevelopment projects involving such properties.

- 1985: Office Housing Production Program - Required large office developments (25,000+ sq ft) to provide affordable housing, donate land, or pay fees based on new employees, linking commercial to residential mitigation, which raises costs and can lengthen approvals for mixed projects.

- 1986: Proposition M (Office Development Limit) - Capped annual office space approvals and introduced a competitive "Beauty Contest" process prioritizing affordable housing and neighborhood preservation, lengthening permitting times and increasing costs through required community benefits.

- 1992: Inclusionary Housing Policy - Mandated 10% affordable units in planned unit developments or projects needing conditional use permits outside redevelopment areas, increasing development costs by requiring set-asides.

- 2002: Inclusionary Affordable Housing Ordinance (Planning Code §§ 415, 419) - Required 15% on-site or 20% off-site affordable units (or in-lieu fees) for projects of 10+ units, directly raising building costs and potentially restricting project feasibility.

- 2010: Revisions to Inclusionary Housing Policy - Adjusted post-Palmer decision to favor fees over units, increasing costs for developers not building affordable housing on-site, which can deter middle-income projects.

- 2012: Housing Trust Fund (Proposition C) - Captured revenue for affordable housing but reduced inclusionary obligations by ~20% for some projects while capping others, potentially increasing costs for non-qualifying developments.

- 2013: Condominium Conversion Ordinance Amendment - Allowed ~2,200 TIC units to convert with fees up to $20,000 per unit to an affordable fund, but imposed a 10-year moratorium on further conversions, restricting housing type changes and adding costs.

- 2016: Amendment to Inclusionary Affordable Housing Program - Voter-approved increase from 12% to 25% on-site affordable units, deemed economically infeasible by studies, raising development costs and potentially reducing overall housing production.

- 2016: Amendment to Planning Code for Legalization Program - Required Conditional Use Authorization to remove unauthorized units, adding discretionary reviews that lengthen permitting times and increase costs.

- 2017: Executive Directive 17-02 - Mandated additional coordination and deadlines for approvals, which, while aiming to streamline, can extend permitting times for complex projects due to heightened administrative requirements.

New York City:

- 1961: New York City Zoning Resolution - Overhauled zoning to emphasize low-density districts (60% of residential lots in lowest categories, 12% single-family only), imposed parking and open space requirements, and created manufacturing zones prohibiting residences, restricting housing types, increasing costs via parking mandates, and limiting adaptive reuse.

- 1969: Rent Regulation Laws (State and City Rent Stabilization) - Instituted controls on rents and evictions, making it costly and time-consuming to demolish or redevelop regulated buildings (tenants can demand high buyouts), reducing supply and increasing development costs.

- 1974: Amendments to Rent Regulation Laws - Extended protections to post-1974 buildings under certain conditions, further complicating demolitions and renovations, raising costs by making land assemblage infeasible and limiting new housing supply.

- 1975: State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), Implemented Locally as City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) in 1976 - Required environmental reviews for discretionary projects, adding extensive analyses, potential litigation, and delays (often years), significantly lengthening permitting times and increasing costs.

- 1977: Ground Floor Use Regulations for High-Density Neighborhoods - Mandated 50% of ground floors on major streets for specific retail/restaurant uses in post-1977 buildings, restricting flexible mixed-use designs and increasing costs for housing in such areas.

- 1980s: Residential Conversion Rules for Obsolete Nonresidential Buildings - Limited conversions to pre-1961 (later extended to 1961-1977) buildings in specific areas, restricting adaptive reuse for housing and adding costs through narrow applicability.

- 1981: Retention of Stricter NYC Building Code (Non-Adoption of State Uniform Code) - Maintained unique, more stringent code requirements, increasing construction costs due to specialized materials and complex enforcement, while potentially delaying permits.

- 1987: Quality Housing Zoning Text Amendments - Imposed contextual requirements in medium/high-density zones (R6-R10), limiting density and design options, making cost-effective projects harder and restricting housing types.

- 1989: Lower Density Contextual Zoning Amendments - Reduced density by nearly 50% in R3-R5 zones, enforcing height, setback, and type limits, decreasing multi-family production and increasing costs in medium-density areas.

- 1989: Attempt to Raise Taxes on Vacant Land - Proposed higher taxes to spur development, but increased holding costs, potentially deterring or raising expenses for housing projects on such land.

- 1991: State Requirement for Residentially-Zoned Vacant Land Tax Classification - Kept lower tax rates for vacant land outside Manhattan, reducing incentives to build and indirectly increasing housing costs through delayed development.

- 1996: Local Law 37 (Third-Party Transfer Law) - Authorized city transfers of tax-delinquent properties, adding complexity to land acquisition for housing, lengthening times and costs especially with condemnation.

- 1999: Sprinkler Requirement Law - Mandated sprinklers in buildings with 4+ units or renovations costing 50%+ of value, directly increasing construction and renovation costs.

- 2002-2013: Bloomberg Administration Neighborhood Rezonings (Including Downzonings and Contextual Rezonings) - Decreased development capacity in some areas and limited potential via contextual rules, restricting types and slowing construction in high-demand neighborhoods.

- 2005: Greenpoint/Williamsburg Rezoning - Retained high retail parking requirements in parts, necessitating large garages in apartment buildings, raising costs and deterring housing.

- 2007: Increase in Minimum Size for 421-a Tax Incentive - Raised threshold from 3 to 4 units for eligibility, making smaller multifamily projects less viable and increasing relative costs.

- 2016: Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA) Update - Modernized provisions but failed to boost density significantly, maintaining restrictions on housing types in low-density zones and adding regulatory complexity that can extend permitting.

- 2018: Special Permit for New Hotels in Light Manufacturing Districts - Required permits with union conditions for hotels, deterring construction and limiting reuse of surplus hotels for housing, increasing conversion costs.

- 2019: Amendments to Rent Stabilization Laws - Applied stabilization to some market-rate units under 421-a if rents fall below thresholds, reducing developer incentives for new rentals and increasing costs in middle-income areas.

Great! Now time to get to work and see how hard it is to enact his policies.

It’s not entirely about this election but it feels like this uptick in right wing extremism might burn out far sooner than the regular 10-20 year political cycle we usually see.

I'm happy he won. It's symbolic of voter dissatisfaction. Someone's got to take billionaires on and it might as well be a 34 year old mayor of NYC. Why not?

It's honestly staggering how much older Trump is than this guy. 45 years!

Agreed. Really hoping that a conservative candidate with a pulse can run in a city with a campaign that targets younger voters. I think that a socially aware fiscally conservative YIMBY would have a real chance in a lot of cities.

The fact that Zohran won should be a wake up call to both parties, but I won’t hold my breath.

I’m just glad that it seems like people actually care, even if I think it will end up poorly. An overall win.

> socially aware fiscally conservative YIMBY

.. that's not a conservative, though. Especially not in the culture war era.

You're happy to find out dissatisfied people outnumber satisfied ones? Do you think his election is likely to make more people satisfied?

What's the issue with billionaires?

Too much power for one person

They shouldn’t exist

I left nyc a couple months ago after living there for three years. The city has so many issues and something only someone like Mamdani (with good support) could fix.

It’s been said that it’s impossible for a New York City mayor to be uncorrupt. By the nature of getting the position, you must be a corrupt individual. That’s why you see so many past mayors and potentials having such a shameful history.

Mamdani feels like a break from that tradition. I wish the Bay Area could replicate something similar. We suffer from similar issues as NYC but we are constantly getting conservative leaning officials who refuse to get law enforcement to do their job. Breed was a center politician (right leaning in any other western country), and now we have a center right mayor. I’ve not really noticed much improvement in the bay - even with the current mayor’s constant posting on TikTok. I just see him blocking housing development and congratulating developers on building more empty office space in a city that desperately needs more housing.

Not a surprise if you’ve lived here for a while. The Bay Area is incredibly conservative for all its performative wokeism.

The Bay Area is far wealthier and much more economically relevant than NYC. NYC has a very large low income population. NYC doesn't have nearly as strong of an economy, financial services and trading firms are increasingly leaving. Whereas the Bay Area, particularly the peninsula, is home to the companies shaping the future like OpenAI and Nvidia along with a huge number of quality startups.

>The Bay Area is far wealthier and much more economically relevant than NYC.

Not so much. The NY Metro Area has the highest GDP of any metro area in the US[0]. The San Francisco Bay Metro area ranks fourth, behind NYC, Los Angeles and Chicago.

But don't feel too bad about it. It could have happened to any Metro area.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_metropol...

We may have to revisit this comparison once the AI bubble pops.

edit: unsure of how to delete this, I commented on the wrong state's election oops.

We detached/collapsed this comment. You can post the comment you meant to post where it's meant to go :)

Which high speed rail projects are you referring to?

Because their federal funding will be taken away?

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While I don't 100% agree with his policies, I cannot be more excited for someone completely opposite of the corrupt establishment Republicans and Democrats.

I was sold when he was willing to back down on some of his own views publicly, admitting publicly that he was wrong on some things. That kind of admission and honesty is so refreshing.

Complete opposite of Trump, MAGA, and constant lies. Kudos NYC! Time for a new era.

> I was sold when he was willing to back down ...

Also, he deserves credit for not backing down. A major push calling you a pro-9/11 jihadist? Release an ad speaking Arabic two days before the election.

There's never been a dumber time in history to claim that Republicans and Democrats are comparable.

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The tide is turning but there’s much work ahead before midterms.

https://apps.npr.org/2025-election-results/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2025-elections/maine-ballot...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/aftab-pureval-wins-ree...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/pennsylvania-supr...

https://thehill.com/homenews/5589670-gop-incumbents-lose-sea...

(California Prop 50 returns aren’t in yet, but I’m hopeful based on turnout as of this comment)

Polling has had prop 50 passing for a long time now. Betting markets had it passing at 96% before today. Now it's already up to 99% after the blue wave being evident in other states

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If this doesn't happen, are you going to accept that you were wrong, or are you going to ignore it and be off spreading unfounded anger about some other imagined offense?

If that doesn’t happen how will he pay for all the stuff he wants to give away? The money has to come from somewhere.

Moving money from other spending?

Up by 2% (14.8% - 16.8%) for incomes over $1 million.

https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/parsing-the-impact...

I'd be pretty thrilled with taxes going way up if I got a functional social safety net out of the deal.

The mayor doesn’t set tax rates..

This is as relevant as claiming the President doesn't set taxes... it's technically true but displays a very superficial understanding of the overall political process.

The president signs bills where tax increases could come from. Trump also threatens Republican members of congress to back him so he has much more blame for laws that pass

Don't let the facts get in the way of some drive by commenting!

for people making $1M/year, yeah, I think that was one of his campaign promises that helped get him elected.

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How can not clicking on something be tiring? Coming in here to whine about it took significantly more effort.

There's no such thing as an off topic discussion on HN.

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When has Mamdani claimed Israel is to blame for NYC’s cost of living problem?

He has not. In fact Mamdani is the only candidate who has consistently sought to stop the incessant focus on Israel and talk about New York, something the media and the poster above are still incapable of doing. This is partly what got him elected.

he sought to stop the incessant focus on Israel so much that he promised to arrest netanyahu in case he arrives to new york.

according to CNN exit poll out of those voters for whom position of candidate on israel is a factor in vote, 49% voted for mamdani. And his position on Israel is known

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Republicans have completely given up on cities and without being able to even field a worthy candidate it’s the sign of a dying party longer term. You simply have to have some influence in cities. But they had none after a 20 year run where they remade NYC after decades of failure. Bloomberg went independent but he got in as a Republican after a successful Giuliani admin (yes he’s tarnished that).

But what happened? Why can’t they field a competitive candidate in cities like NYC or SF or LA or Chicago after failed admin after failed admin? Why have they given up?

You need to control cities to have any future. They need to recommit to fighting for them.

>after a successful Giuliani admin (yes he’s tarnished that).

Successful? Try again.

Rudy Guiliani was the most hated man in NYC on September 10, 2001.

I'm not really sure why that changed, he was a horror. Anti-democratic (small 'd') anti-freedom of expression and spent most of his time being a boot stomping on the faces of hard working New Yorkers.

> You need to control cities to have any future.

It seems like the strategy is to control state legislatures through extensive gerrymandering, then use state sovereignty to control the cities from without. Blue cities in otherwise red states are not able to experiment with local policies anymore, much to everyone’s detriment.

That’s not even the point though. You can always do these things but you still have no cultural power and you’ve yielded the important structures and financial capitals. That’s not a long term strategy.

And it’s not that difficult to win these things, especially when you look at how objectively poor the oppositions performance has been in them. Historically they’ve been contested.

They don't behave like a political party any more. It's not just the business of politics as usual and a generational shift, it's something different. I've been trying to coin a term for this internal takeover - I think nihilocracy, or nihilocratic populism, is the best I've come up with.

The party as a whole is uninterested in governing beyond seeking revenge and satisfying the charismatic eschatological movement that drives them. The leaders don't believe what they preach, they don't have policy goals besides "destroy what we hate", they don't have any conventional engagement with government beyond using it towards their own ends.

"Long term strategy" is a joke in this context. They're angry, they mobilize their supporters by promising revenge on a world that seems to be defying traditional structures and changing too fast. As with many reactionary movements aligned more by being "against" than "for", there's been little thought for what happens after the enemy has been defeated, and it's likely they'll continue seeking out new enemies until the movement dies from infighting or is ousted from power.