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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

#851

Post by johnnyanmac »

testfoobar wrote: post #206
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 deliv…

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.

>a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.

A builder isn't a land owner. They make contracts, negotiate a price, and build to that price. They're dealing with a government, so there's more money in the bank to spend if the government is truly focused on solving an issue.

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

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

Okay, cool. I honestly don't want an atchitect who can't think 5 years on advance (when these rent control proposals are scheduled to end, should they be enacted). That short term quarterly thinking is precisely why we have been unable to build housing.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#852

Post by array_key_first »

Ancapistani wrote: post #819
NeutralCrane wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that means is the companies charge everyone else more to subsidize the cost of those who are more at risk. Literally the purpose of insurance

Huh? The purpose of insurance is to mitigate the risk of a very costly but unlikely outcome by paying a smaller amount over time, thereby spreading that risk among those of similar risk. Not being able to consider individual risk means that insurance makes no sense for those with a low risk profiles, because they’re in the same cohort as those who will _definitely_ file claims.

Cohorts are based off of your employer, because we, inexplicably, tied health insurance to your employer. If you work for a very young and hip company then no, your cohort might not file claims.

There's levels of broken-ness to healthcare in the US. Even if you allow health insurance to discriminate based on health conditions, it will still be broken in other ways.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#853

Post by AbstractH24 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #844
AbstractH24 wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because San Francisco progressivism doesn’t win on a national stage. If the message that Democrats take from this is NY progressivism wins on a national stage, we'll certainly lose the next presidential election, and maybe even fail to gain a majority in either the House or Senate during the midterms. That's my biggest fear.

> That's my biggest fear Mamdani is a disciplined New York progressive. He’s left of the median voter. But the Mamdani that won the D primary was also left of the median NYC voter. One can take a shallow policy lesson from this election. Or a deeper political lesson in the value of pragmatism and respect for the voter (versus the holier than thou crap that has polluted the far left).

> Mamdani is a disciplined New York progressive. He’s left of the median voter. But the Mamdani that won the D primary was also left of the median NYC voter.

I hope you are right, that he is more like Obama than Trump. Time will tell.

Personally, I haven't seen any evidence to support that hypothesis. If you have, I'd love to feel more assured you are right so please share.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#854

Post by LexiMax »

mpalmer wrote: post #702
voidhorse wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> Politics in america is like entering an inverted world in which some weird internal drive actively makes people vote against their own personal interests. Because that's what the opposition, wrapped in the flag, tells voters to do.

And the voters go along with it not because they are dim, but because they understand that these things would not only benefit them, but benefit other groups of Americans that they despise.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#855

Post by AbstractH24 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #844
AbstractH24 wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because San Francisco progressivism doesn’t win on a national stage. If the message that Democrats take from this is NY progressivism wins on a national stage, we'll certainly lose the next presidential election, and maybe even fail to gain a majority in either the House or Senate during the midterms. That's my biggest fear.

> That's my biggest fear Mamdani is a disciplined New York progressive. He’s left of the median voter. But the Mamdani that won the D primary was also left of the median NYC voter. One can take a shallow policy lesson from this election. Or a deeper political lesson in the value of pragmatism and respect for the voter (versus the holier than thou crap that has polluted the far left).

>Mamdani is a disciplined New York progressive.

Also, who are these current or former elected officials that fit the description "disciplined New York progressive" you refer to?

I'm truly not sure.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#856

Post by johnnyanmac »

samdoesnothing wrote: post #555
testfoobar wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capita…

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.

There's two vectors here and people seem to not realize that, isolated from the short term suffering going on right now.

Rental control is short term relief. Obviously, using short term solutions long term is bad. This shouldn't be an enigma.

Building housing is long term. We cannot build new houses in a year. At least, not that I know of. But new houses in 4 years does not help the citizens knocked onto the streets in those times.

You need to relive those people while also securing the future. That's why rent control fails without a proper housing reform.

You can't be mad at a pipe bursting that you used duct tape to cover. But maybe that duct tape buys you time to find a plumber, who needs time to find the right size pipes. So duct tape is still really useful, just not the end all be all.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#857

Post by OkayPhysicist »

AbstractH24 wrote: post #850
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, the Democrats have done nothing but pander to people who hate them, who will never vote for them, and fucking LOVE their opposition for years now. If there is one thing to take away from the Trump campaigns, it's that pandering to an imaginary moderate is not nearly as effective as being really exciting to your base. All ceding ground to the opposition does is lead to disillusionment and apathy amongst the p…

In that case, the base of the Democrats, as you seem to define it, is destined to be a permanent minority in national elections. And maybe you are right. I'd love to see America move to 4 or more major parties. With the far-left and far-right of each separated out into their own parties. Would even settle for 3 parties.

They're really not a permanent minority, though. Obama's campaign promises (not to be confused with his actual politics once in office) demonstrate that positive, progressive change is a perfectly popular political position.

And frankly, that's all besides the point: The reason exciting candidates do so well (Trump, Obama) is because voter turnout in the US is abysmal. It's gotten better (because the Fascists are excited for Trump, and everyone else is at least a bit energized by "oh god we can't have the fascists win"), but it's still very true that if you could convince at a quarter of the nonvoters (half of the half that might vote for you) to show up to the polls, you'd have a blowout victory the likes of which haven't been seen since the Bill Clinton campaigns.

The Democrats have been playing a strategy that tries to win over the rational fringe of the Republican party, but it's becoming increasingly obvious to apparently everyone but the DNC that those people don't exist. The kind of person who can be convinced to vote for Trump (ESPECIALLY TWICE) are not the kinds of people the Democrats will ever win over without royally pissing off most of their voter base.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#858

Post by array_key_first »

testfoobar wrote: post #206
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 deliv…

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.

I think the builder builds if you pay them. I don't think they care about what the rent will be because they just build stuff.

So, just pay them, and figure it out later.

The alternative is what we're currently doing, and have been doing for the past few decades: nothing. This does not work. Our current housing situation is simply not sustainable.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#859

Post by Volundr »

marcuskane2 wrote: post #768
torginus wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of an aside, but why isn't medical tourism more popular in the US? If you could set aside a couple tens of thousands of dollars, as a rainy day fund, you could get close to the very best possible care for even serious conditions from countries that have highly developed medical tourism sectors. Granted, I acknowledge, that the US will likely still provide better care at the absolute high end, and asking…

There are a lot of misunderstandings in this post. I'll try to explain a few of them, which maybe can help realign your whole understanding. For starters, American insurance has a "maximum out-of-pocket" amount, which means the maximum you can possibly pay for healthcare costs. My plan, from just a regular unknown company doing boring things, has a maximum out of pocket of $5k for an individual. So there's no scenari…

> Declaring bankruptcy means you don't pay the debt, you wouldn't pay a lot AND declare bankruptcy. You'd see the amount was too much to pay, declare bankruptcy, and have the debt wiped out.

Bankruptcy isn't a magic get out of debt button. First you have to prove your inability to pay, which generally means not having much in the way of assets. So you probably have to spend a significant amount of money on the debt before bankruptcy is even an option. Then once you have successfully declared bankruptcy it means, aside from a few classes of protected assets (e.x. your primary residence if your sufficiently lucky to be a homeowner) your creditors get to divy up what you have left amongst themselves. THEN the debt is wiped away. It's a last resort that keeps every penny you earn for the rest of your life from going to creditors, not a way to walk away with your assets and lifestyle intact.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#860

Post by array_key_first »

samdoesnothing wrote: post #558
kelnos wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 serve…

No, that's the solution 20 years from now.

And also it does not work like this in cities. Housing is worthless to your city if the house is 1 hour outside the city. NYC can't alleviate housing costs by building more homes in Timbuktu.

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