I agree more with this critique than yesterday's. The other version of this I've seen is that Klein and Thompson are too nice -- they pull a lot of punches, for fear of losing any element of the Dem coalition, including the folks who keep raising the ceiling on what counts of middle class, for purposes of pledges to "never raise taxes on anyone making less than $X".
I still think, though, that you are making a mistake here:
<quote>
“There is pressure among liberals,” Klein and Thompson write, “to focus only on the sins of the MAGA right.” Yes, at the moment that does seem to be kind of an emergency (and not just for liberals). “But this misses the contributions that liberal governance made to the rise of Trumpism.”
Sorry, I’m not buying it. All three of these books were written before the election; their argument would be more compelling had Kamala Harris won. A Harris presidency would have created more space for a conversation about small tweaks to liberal orthodoxies. Trump’s victory doesn’t leave us that luxury.
If Democrats are to win back the working-class majority necessary to regain the White House, they’ll need to talk about how a more activist government can address demand-side problems experienced by the proletariat.
</quote>
Democrats have tremendous power over supply-side issues in places like San Francisco, and California more broadly. The fact that working class people who work in San Francisco have to commute in from Merced is not only, or even primarily, because of Republican policies in DC. Far more blame lies with people like Aaron Peskin, who prioritizes the quality of views from Telegraph Hill over the amount of housing that could be built if the flats below the hill were allowed to build 6-7 story buildings.
You definitely can blame _past_ Republicans in CA, particularly Jarvis and Gann -- as the joke goes, California is governed by living Democrats and dead Republicans. But Abundance Dems are totally onboard for breaking those fetters as well. (And in fact our previous attempt to put a dent in Prop 13, the Prop 15 Split Roll initiative, narrowly failed because we got sandbagged by NIMBY Dems.)
But in any case, Democrats need to be able to go on the campaign trail and say, "Elect us, and we'll do for the country what we've done for California." Right now, with working class people fleeing the state, that reads like a bad joke. Instead _Republicans_ are telling voters, "Elect them, and they'll do to the country what they've done to California." And they're winning on that message! There is a lot to like about California, but until we turn it back into a welcoming place for people who want to move for economic opportunity, we're going to have serious problems in national elections. The changes to the electoral college map that are bearing down on us in 2030 are _horrifying_.
So why hasn't the increase in units meant availability on the low end? I know there are new buyers joining the market, many foreign, but some must be NYers migrating from less expensive housing. I also know the amortization schedule for improvements to units has been increased by a lot, which has motivated some owners to hold apartments off market, anticipating a return to better terms from Albany. Still it's baby economics (which is all I can understand) that more supply takes pressure off the market, so?
What increase in units? A lot of high-demand cities basically stopped building net-new housing after the 1970s. There's no such thing as a housing market that builds lots of housing and becomes expensive. There are places that build lots of housing and remain affordable. Places that don't build a lot of housing but remain affordable or even see falling prices, because they've lost key industries (like Detroit), and places that don't build enough to keep up with their job growth, and become horrendously expensive.
And sure, that article is from 2016, using data that's even a few years older, but housing-focused economists have replicated that result over and over, and not just for the US. Apologies that I can't find a better discussion of this than this thread from The Bad Place:
I agree more with this critique than yesterday's. The other version of this I've seen is that Klein and Thompson are too nice -- they pull a lot of punches, for fear of losing any element of the Dem coalition, including the folks who keep raising the ceiling on what counts of middle class, for purposes of pledges to "never raise taxes on anyone making less than $X".
I still think, though, that you are making a mistake here:
<quote>
“There is pressure among liberals,” Klein and Thompson write, “to focus only on the sins of the MAGA right.” Yes, at the moment that does seem to be kind of an emergency (and not just for liberals). “But this misses the contributions that liberal governance made to the rise of Trumpism.”
Sorry, I’m not buying it. All three of these books were written before the election; their argument would be more compelling had Kamala Harris won. A Harris presidency would have created more space for a conversation about small tweaks to liberal orthodoxies. Trump’s victory doesn’t leave us that luxury.
If Democrats are to win back the working-class majority necessary to regain the White House, they’ll need to talk about how a more activist government can address demand-side problems experienced by the proletariat.
</quote>
Democrats have tremendous power over supply-side issues in places like San Francisco, and California more broadly. The fact that working class people who work in San Francisco have to commute in from Merced is not only, or even primarily, because of Republican policies in DC. Far more blame lies with people like Aaron Peskin, who prioritizes the quality of views from Telegraph Hill over the amount of housing that could be built if the flats below the hill were allowed to build 6-7 story buildings.
You definitely can blame _past_ Republicans in CA, particularly Jarvis and Gann -- as the joke goes, California is governed by living Democrats and dead Republicans. But Abundance Dems are totally onboard for breaking those fetters as well. (And in fact our previous attempt to put a dent in Prop 13, the Prop 15 Split Roll initiative, narrowly failed because we got sandbagged by NIMBY Dems.)
But in any case, Democrats need to be able to go on the campaign trail and say, "Elect us, and we'll do for the country what we've done for California." Right now, with working class people fleeing the state, that reads like a bad joke. Instead _Republicans_ are telling voters, "Elect them, and they'll do to the country what they've done to California." And they're winning on that message! There is a lot to like about California, but until we turn it back into a welcoming place for people who want to move for economic opportunity, we're going to have serious problems in national elections. The changes to the electoral college map that are bearing down on us in 2030 are _horrifying_.
So why hasn't the increase in units meant availability on the low end? I know there are new buyers joining the market, many foreign, but some must be NYers migrating from less expensive housing. I also know the amortization schedule for improvements to units has been increased by a lot, which has motivated some owners to hold apartments off market, anticipating a return to better terms from Albany. Still it's baby economics (which is all I can understand) that more supply takes pressure off the market, so?
What increase in units? A lot of high-demand cities basically stopped building net-new housing after the 1970s. There's no such thing as a housing market that builds lots of housing and becomes expensive. There are places that build lots of housing and remain affordable. Places that don't build a lot of housing but remain affordable or even see falling prices, because they've lost key industries (like Detroit), and places that don't build enough to keep up with their job growth, and become horrendously expensive.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/5/11594710/jane-jacobs-greenwich-village
And sure, that article is from 2016, using data that's even a few years older, but housing-focused economists have replicated that result over and over, and not just for the US. Apologies that I can't find a better discussion of this than this thread from The Bad Place:
https://x.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/1811478998825992690/photo/1
Nolan Gray, of California YIMBY, suggests you can think of the US as having three distinct housing crises: https://mnolangray.substack.com/p/the-united-states-doesnt-have-a-housing