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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

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#462
post #372

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…

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?

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 predic…

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#465
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#466
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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 predic…

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

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#468

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 poli…

Experiments have already been done. You just need to look at history. Or you can just look at north korea and Kabul .

Sure buddy, rent control is literally North Korea. I take it you have skin in this game.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#469
post #394
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peo…

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.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#470
post #428
post #372

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…

> 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…

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.

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