Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

nbcnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#451

Post by slg »

xivzgrev wrote: post #415
reenorap wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#452

Post by miley_cyrus »

xivzgrev wrote: post #415
reenorap wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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.

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#453

Post by matsemann »

GenerWork wrote: post #225
noobermin wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#454

Post by YZF »

afavour wrote: post #411
YZF wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wil…

> 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…

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#455

Post by Eisenstein »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #416
reenorap wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> 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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#457

Post by aeternum »

moregrist wrote: post #340
throwaway81523 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#458

Post by underdeserver »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #330
what wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#459

Post by renewiltord »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #115
nialv7 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#460

Post by idle_zealot »

timr wrote: post #412
bayarearefugee wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

[flagged]

> 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.

Post reply on HN