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Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#111

Post by voidhorse »

ecshafer wrote: post #81
voidhorse wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#112

Post by Braxton1980 »

koolba wrote: post #65
feoren wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#113

Post by skunix »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #84
burnt-resistor wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 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.

[flagged]

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#114

Post by Braxton1980 »

Maxatar wrote: post #59
mikeyouse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#115

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nialv7 wrote: post #106
michaelbarton wrote: post #13

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…

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 h…

> 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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#116

Post by chasing »

nostrebored wrote: post #77
lateforwork wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#117

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#118

Post by tmvphil »

ecshafer wrote: post #70

I hope this turns out well for New York, but I am doubtful. Rent control is such a colossally bad idea, a rent freeze is going to be a disaster. This is going to further increase the lottery nature of New York City real estate, and reduce investment. His plans are set to drive finance and businesses out of the city in his goal to give away money to everyone, which will bankrupt the city. Socialism has a bad track rec…

Zohran isn't proposing putting any new units under rent control (really rent stabilization), only temporarily halting raises to rents for existing stabilized units. This will make it harder for the city to attract new buildings to join rent stabilization in the future, but will benefit existing habitants. It won't have any effect on the ability to profitably develop market rate units at all.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#119

Post by voidhorse »

tinyhouse wrote: post #100
voidhorse wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 thi…

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#120

Post by FireBeyond »

ecshafer wrote: post #81
voidhorse wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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.

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