After rejecting the ROAD to housing act, the 21st century housing act has been passed instead. It mostly arrives at the same ideas, but took away some of the democrats subsidies and government direct actions while keeping most of the deregulation principles. It appears that in exchange for the loss of some direct subsidy programs, they got a restriction limiting how many homes an investment firm can buy (If you are over 350, you can't buy more). Theoretically, there's nothing stopping one person from owning more than one company and through that owning 350 homes in each. But the deregulation on housing in itself has some popularity on the left now due to Abundance, and the limiting of private investment in single family homes got a verbal endorsement from Trump. So overall, its a centrist compromise bill of the parts that everyone had some agreement on.

New pre-print article from UC Berkeley, UToronto, Georgia Tech, and UCLA attempts to take down the abundance agenda with respect to housing.

The paper specifically calls out Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson as being "among the most influential shapers of public opinion and policy" on this topic, and then says they're wrong.

Abstract:

A popular view holds that declining housing affordability stems from regulations that restrict new supply, and that deregulation will spur sufficient market-rate construction to meaningfully improve affordability. We argue that this ‘deregulationist’ view rests upon flawed assumptions. Through empirical simulation, we show that even a dramatic, deregulation-driven supply expansion would take decades to generate widespread affordability in high-cost U.S. markets. We advance an alternative explanation of declining affordability grounded in demand structure and geography: uneven demand growth – driven by rising interpersonal and interregional inequality – is the primary driver of declining affordability in recent decades. For cost-burdened households, trickle-down benefits from deregulation will be insufficient and too slow.

Sharing to discuss, not because I agree with the study (obviously)

AI discourse has become polarized between two extreme views. On one side, you have AI boosters who confidently proclaim that AI will automate most cognitive work by 2030, and mock anyone who dares to point out the flaws or limitations of current AI tools. On the other side, you have skeptics who insist that AI all hype and snake oil, that it's merely a glorified autocomplete generating endless slop, and that anyone who insists otherwise is either scamming you or being scammed themselves.

It seems like Ezra has looked at these two views and decided he agrees with the boosters. He has only had AI boosters* on his show in recent years.

Of course, there is a wide range of other possible views between these two extremes that haven't been getting a lot of airtime in the media or on The Ezra Klein Show specifically. The tech entrepreneur Anil Dash has pointed out that the silent majority view in tech is a middle ground view that sees AI as useful and important but also rejects the messianic narratives.

The best and most rigorous advocates for this kind of middle view are Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, the authors of AI as Normal Technology. I encourage folks to read the whole thing, as I can't boil it all down into a short Reddit post. But at a high level, their thesis is that AI's impacts will be more like previous technologies than not. Diffusion into the economy will be gradual (on the order of decades), the nature of jobs will evolve but there will still be plenty of jobs, and that while there are real risks and issues introduced by the tech, the kinds of apocalyptic risks many boosters talk about are not the ones we need to focus on.

In their view, AI progress is real and AI will be a big deal for both good and ill. But the changes AI will introduce will be more gradual and manageable (if we play our cards right) than AI executives or Bay Area rationalists claim.

I hope Ezra has them on at some point in the near future. It's a perspective he hasn't even acknowledged but it seems very plausibly true.

*AI doomers like Eliezer Yudkowksy are also "boosters" in this sense, because they think AI will replace all human labor in the near future, they just also think it will likely/certainly kill us all.

Pretty interesting article on how the progressive left is coalescing around a 50/50 attitude towards tenant protections and abundance as the key to better housing. I suppose that’s better than the 80/20 message they would have probably messaged 5 years ago.

Relevance: Abundance

I still have my criticisms but they are in another thread.

There is an interim commuter rail station in Lynn Massachusetts. It will take 8 years to build the new one. RIP

Sam Sedar and Emma Vineland criticize Ezra on what he said in the episode "The Great Lie of War".

I'm just sharing it for discussion purposes I don't agree overall with the callousness, dismissiveness and flippant attitudes expressed on The Majority Report.

I do wish Ezra Klein had spoken more clearly on what the facts of the reporting are in regards to Israel's role in getting Trump to join the war versus what the conspiracies on the right are.

Regardless that seems secondary to the point Ezra makes about the possibility of rising anti-Semitism. Which itself is secondary to the actual war and people suffering in Iran and the Middle East.

I do take issue with their assertion that Ezra Klein should have done more to separate the State of Israel from Jewishness, as Ezra Klein has been evolving his mindset and view on Israel since Oct 7th. But I can imagine it's not easy for someone who holds a lot of complicated feelings for many different things and tries to balance many different principes and values.

This is a great example of how an abundance framework could help progressives accomplish progressive goals. NYC (and basically everywhere in America) has a drastic lack of public toilets, which reduces quality of life for everyone. The obvious solution is building more toilets, and the city has passed a law requiring itself to double the number of public toilets.

And yet, the city has not passed laws reducing the permitting and review process, or procurement and labor restrictions that prevent itself for accomplishing the goal that the city has mandated for itself. Therefore, it will be hugely expensive and difficult for Mamdani to accomplish his campaign promises to increase public bathrooms.

The city has the power to make it easy (or at least much easier) for itself to meet the goals of its new progressive champion mayor. But doing so may require sacrificing process restrictions (i.e. permitting, environmental review, community input, procurement restrictions) that progressives have previously fought for. The solutions of the past leading to the problems of the present. This is one of the main points discussed in Abundance. Hopefully Mamdani read it.

Two sitting heads of state, eight weeks apart.

On Saturday, February 28, the United States and Israel launched a massive military assault on Iran that resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with much of his senior command. This came less than two months after the United States military captured Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, in an overnight raid.

The president seems to believe that he can decapitate these regimes and control their successors without events spinning out of his control. Is he right?

Ben Rhodes is a New York Times Opinion contributing writer and a co-host of “Pod Save the World.” He served as a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and worked on the Iran nuclear deal.

In this conversation, we discuss the ongoing conflict in Iran, how Democrats should respond, and whether Trump’s “head on a pike” approach to foreign policy underestimates the chaos of war.

Mentioned:

“Push from Saudis, Israel helped move Trump to attack Iran” by Michael Birnbaum, John Hudson, Karen DeYoung, Natalie Allison and Souad

“Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting

Any Wars” by J.D. Vance

Book Recommendations:

From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

Travelers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Relevance to Ezra Klein: This is the simplest example I've seen yet of a basic idea getting held up in local government red-tape and layer upon layer of requirements, which ends up reducing the state's ability to build anything in reasonable time or budget. Aligns strongly with Klein's abundance agenda and would easily fit in his book.

Relevance- this was inspired by the overall discussion of the different perceptions of reality in yesterday’s episode, and specifically the segment where the subject of crime came up. One thing that was mentioned is that Americans consistently believe that crime is on the rise even when it isn’t. It seems to me that in our relentlessly negative media environment (both institutional media and especially social media) it’s incredibly hard for the public to believe that any kind of positive change is occurring in almost any area.

To be clear, I’m not claiming that things have gotten better over the last few years. But let’s imagine that it’s 2030- a new, effective Democratic administration is in office. Wage gains have outpaced inflation for 2 years, YIMBY polices have begun to increase the housing supply, some version of universal healthcare has been passed, a gang of 8 style immigration compromise has kept the border secure and created a pathway to citizenship. Things are getting better. Is there any chance that the voting public would acknowledge these positive changes, or will we remain mired in the era of national bad vibes no matter the reality or the communication strategy?

I think she has such a depth of knowledge and is a really good guest on the podcasts I've seen her on

I have never liked personal injury attorneys but I had no idea how badly they were hurting construction costs.

A.I. agents are here. Have they changed your life yet? The release of agents like Claude Code marked a new pivot point in the history of A.I. We are leaving the chatbot era and entering the agentic era — where A.I. is capable of completing all kinds of tasks on its own, and even collaborating and communicating with other A.I.

It isn’t clear yet whether these models actually make their users meaningfully more productive. But the technology is continuing to improve; there are few signs that it is close to plateauing. So what might this new era mean for our economy, our labor market and our kids?

Clark is a co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude and Claude Code. His newsletter, Import AI, has been one of my go-to reads to track the capabilities of different models over the years. In this conversation, I ask him to share how he sees this moment — how the technology is changing, whether it is leading to meaningful changes in how we work and think, and how policy needs to or can change in response to any job displacement on the horizon.

It has been harder to get insight into the dynamics of President Trump’s White House this term compared with the first one, partly because there have been fewer leaks. But after the attack on Venezuela and the administration’s actions in Minneapolis, I’ve found myself wondering: How exactly is Trump making decisions? Who is he listening to? How does this White House work?

Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer cover the Trump administration for The Atlantic and have written a series of big profiles on key figures in this administration. Parker previously won three Pulitzer Prizes for her reporting at The Washington Post.

Mentioned:

“The Wrath of Stephen Miller” by Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer

“‘I Run the Country and the World’” by Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer

“This Is the Real Reason Susie Wiles Talked to Me 11 Times” by Chris Whipple

“Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2)” by Chris Whipple

Book Recommendations:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Frankly, We Did Win This Election by Michael C. Bender

An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives

Palimpsest by Gore Vidal

Blood by Douglas Starr

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

Such dissonance. What’s next? Cargill? Koch industries?

The GLP-1 drug revolution has taken the medicine world by storm. I’ve done several episodes on the science of GLP-1s. But we’ve never done an episode like this before, where we talk to one of the most important people in charge of guiding the GLP-1 drug revolution.

Our guest is Dave Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. First we talk about what makes the GLP-1 drug category special and the science that Lilly is doing to improve these drugs. Then, we talk about the pharmaceutical industry more broadly. How it works. How it could work better. And I don’t shy away from the question that I think Pharma CEOs need to take much more seriously: If the pharmaceutical industry is theoretically more devoted than any other economic category to saving people’s lives, why do Americans distrust it more than any other industry in the entire economy?

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://

www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: David Ricks

Producer: Devon Baroldi

At the end of January, Trump’s Justice Department released what it said was the last tranche of the Epstein files: millions of pages of emails and texts, F.B.I. documents and court records. Much was redacted and millions more pages have been withheld. There is a lot we want to know that remains unclear.

But what has come into clear view is the role Epstein played as a broker of information, connections, wealth and women and girls for a slice of the global elite. This was the infrastructure of Epstein’s power — and it reveals much about the infrastructure of elite networks more generally.

Anand Giridharadas is something of a sociologist of American elites. He’s the author of, among other books, “” and the forthcoming “.” He also publishes the great newsletter .

Back in November, after the release of an earlier batch of Epstein files, Giridharadas wrote a great , taking a sociologist’s lens to the messages Epstein exchanged with his elite friends. So after the government released this latest, enormous tranche of materials, I wanted to talk to Giridharadas to help make sense of it. What do they reveal — about how Epstein operated in the world, the vulnerabilities he exploited and what that says about how power works in America today?

Note: This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Kathryn Ruemmler announced she would be resigning from her role as chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

In the most recent EK episode, Anand recommended as one of his 3 books the unpublished expose by human rights journalist Conchita Sarnoff.

The Daily Beast just posted an article featuring comments by Sarnoff and the increased threats she’s been facing since the files have been released.

Submission statement: Obama addresses conflicts around the commentary of progressives and liberals arguing about the abundance agenda and concerns about who benefits about how reform and language is addressed to achieve significant outcomes. Listen around 18 minutes.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/americans-think-everyone-is-corrupt

I think it’s hard to make political hay out of Trump’s corruption because, while it looks extraordinary to me (and probably to you if you’re reading this), many voters see it as pretty normal.

...

If there’s one thing I learned in college philosophy classes all those years ago, it’s that words are somewhat arbitrary and people can use language however they want as long as we understand each other. And what I love about this series of questions is that it indicates that most people are not using the word “corruption” in the way that I or most political practitioners or most investigative reporters would use it.

After all, the basic shape of this is that just holding an unpopular view is corrupt. I suppose you could try to plead to the voters that your support of Policy X has nothing to do with donor influence or social elites. But if you support Policy X, then of course economic and social elites who agree with you about X will contribute money to your campaign and say nice things about you. There’s no way that you’re ever going to be able to prove that your support for a ban on single-use plastic straws reflects a sincere assessment of the public interest rather than the influence of climate donors and green-minded cultural elites.

When you put it that way, it all sounds a bit insane. Do voters really believe that the mere fact that a politician disagrees with them about something is evidence of corruption? It seems that maybe they do!

This is the free slow boring article. I wanted to post it because I think it is an interesting argument, and I'm also interested in the footnote at the bottom and the discussion about it.

CarbonWaster: 'Polymarket is sponsoring this post'

Why? In particular, is that not rather in conflict with this site's long-standing concern about the harmful effects of sports betting, given that, per Gambling Insider, a plurality (39%) of Polymarket's revenue comes from gambling - sorry, 'predicting' - on sports. (This is even more obvious at other prediction markets, where 85% of Kalshi's revenue comes from sports).

I'd add that it is epistemically bad to use prediction market odds as an indicator of the likelihood of a particular thing happening, and is in particular obviously inferior to the disciplined approach to making predictions that this site has previously advocated.

Matthew Yglesias: To offer a little more information about this, Polymarket & Substack created some kind of tool where people can embed Polymarket odds in a post rather than screenshotting or whatever. In order to promote this new functionality, they offered some Substack writers money to try using the embed.

There's no editorial strings attached or anything, and making reference to midterm odds seems like a very normal thing for me to do so I sad yes.

As I think people know, advertising has been a traditional part of the media revenue model for a very long time and to the extent that publications are able to attract advertising support it is possible to do more editorial work at a lower price for readers. I don't want to do anything intrusive or that would change the basic nature of our articles but this seemed like a very light lift that would have gone totally unnoticed if not disclosed (but of course I wouldn't do it without disclosure) and that is part of a strategy to help us delivering value to our members.

Now people on twitter can write tweets like this:

Unbelievable. Matt Yglesias wrote a condescending article calling the masses too "unsophisticated" to understand elites, so they unfairly accuse them of "corruption." After insulting people for thinking politicians are motivated by greed, he announces a gambling sponsorship.

What do people here think about this? Is this article good or bad? Is the Polymarket sponsorship ethical, or unethical? Are attacks like that tweet fair or unfair?

If Ezra started taking sponsorships to mention specific things in the middle of the podcast or article in a natural way, and then disclose it was paid for at the end, would that be fine or bad? Would that just be traditional advertising as a traditional part of the media revenue model? Does it matter at all if the sponsors are paying the New York Times for ads, or Ezra directly?

A few years ago I decided to look into applying for a job with New York State. At the time, the state was facing a significant workforce shortage. When I looked into the hiring process, I was flabbergasted. Here's what the process was at the time in brief (recycled from an earlier comment of mine):

• The State's Civil Service Department announces examinations for different positions every few years. There is generally no set schedule for when exams are released, so you don't know if an exam for a job you're interested in will open up tomorrow or in 3 years.

• An exam is announced. To register, you have to apply and demonstrate that you meet the minimum qualifications. This basically means setting up a profile on a crappy website and converting your resume to discrete work and education items - not dissimilar to some private sector processes, except you're not applying for the job yet, just the exam.

• If you're approved for the exam, you can pay the exam fee and register. The exam is typically held ~3 months or so after the exam is announced. If you don't apply for the exam within the ~2 month period in which exam registration is open, you're pretty much out of luck - keep an eye out for the exam to reopen at some unknown point in the next few years.

• By this point, you've waited months or years for an examination to be announced, applied for the examination, paid to register for the examination, and waited another 3 months or so for the exam to take place. You now drive to a testing center on the weekend. Allot 6 hours for the examination (you can certainly finish more quickly, but this is the exam length). The exam is multiple choice and probably won't do a good job assessing whether or not you'd succeed in the role.

• For the state, it takes 90-120 days for the examination to be graded and for an "eligible list" to be published. You are placed on the list in the order of your score rounded to the nearest 5. If you are beneath a 70, you don't make the list. In New York City, it takes 9-12 months to grade the examination and publish an eligible list.

• Let's assume you're at the top of the list. After months or years of work and annoyance, you've made it! You can finally interview for the job! Oh wait, maybe not. There's not actually a guarantee that there's a vacant position for which you've taken the exam. All of this has just been so that your name goes on a list of candidates who can be contacted for an interview, should an opening exist or arise down the road...

Ezra touched on the the absurdity of this "Kafka-esque" system last year. Jennifer Pahlka, who has been on the show several times, writes about similar absurdities at the federal level.

Obviously this is no way to run a railroad. It drives away candidates who can't afford to pay a fee to take a test, or can't spend 6 hours on a weekend doing so, or can't wait an indeterminate amount of time for a test to be published, or who simply have other opportunities. It enfeebles government and leads to more outsourcing and contracting.

Fortunately the outrageousness of this process and the workforce crisis it contributed to prompted Governor Hochul to undertake reforms. Here's the new process as applies to many State jobs: submit a resume and cover letter, get called in for an interview. Who'd have thunk it.

The new program launched in 2023. Since then, the State has hired some 38,000 employees under the program. From January 2024 to January 2025, the State saw a net gain of about 5,000 employees.

Local jurisdictions can also participate in the program to expedite their own civil service hiring processes, and many have, hiring an addition 14,300 or so employees at the county and local government level.

One jurisdiction in particular need of civil servants is New York City. The vacancy level at city agencies is about twice what it was pre-COVID, and some housing and social agencies are seeing vacancy rates as high as 15-20%. In light of this, New York City sought to participate in the streamlined hiring program. They were promptly sued by labor unions dishonestly arguing that a non-convoluted hiring process would result in patronage. The City backed down and continues on with its testing process where the median time to grade a written test is 290 days. Ironically, the unions' wielding their political influence to thwart the implementation of faster, more sensible hiring is itself a sort of corrupt patronage.

Many of the facts and figures are from this article published this week by NY Focus.

I just think this is an interesting Abundance-related case study because it shows just how insanely inefficient bureaucracy can be, how sometimes reform can be done with relative ease once willpower to address it exists, and how groups within the liberal coalition can themselves be the primary barriers to progress.

"In his epic cover story for The Atlantic this month, staff writer Josh Tyrangiel spoke to dozens of economists, workers, tech CEOs, and AI experts about the danger that artificial intelligence might pose to the labor force. Is AI developing the capacity to automate and even replace millions of white-collar jobs, as many technologists and some economists predict? Or is this a normal technology that, like previous generations of technology, will have a much slower effect on the workforce? We cover several scenarios before asking: Why does it seem like nobody in politics is paying close enough attention to this story?"

Relevance: NYT Opinion on a moderate/left debate in Democratic politics. This both within the rules and on a common topic.

Ezra has spoken a lot about building and improving public transit. I think one of the obstacles to public transit usage growth in America is the frankly disgusting state of stations and trains in many major systems, as well as the presence of a range of people from annoying impolite people to dangerously mentally ill homeless people accosting others.

I ride public transit every day. It is plainly obvious to anyone who is on transit regularly that 1 percent (or less) of users cause 99 percent of problems. And this 1 percent almost never pays the fare. When it is incredibly easy to steal fare, someone who is willing to smoke crack on a train or who is willing to assault another person won’t think twice about it.

So much of discourse involves trying to solve for the underlying problems that impact those who have, sadly, been left to rot by society and use transit as a rolling homeless shelter or safe injection site. That is all well and good and I support doing that. But in the medium term, we cannot wait for poverty to be solved before we protect law abiding public transit users.

The goal of public transit is to provide safe, reliable, fast, and efficient transportation at a reasonably pleasant level of comfort. I am more and more convinced that hardened fare gates are a non negotiable to achieve this.

I just came across this guest opinion essay in the New York Times by Oren Cass. He’s a former guest on the show and a leading conservative/populist/some mix of both thinker through American Compass. I haven’t seen this posted yet. Thoughts on this critique of financialization? Coming from the left, a lot resonated with me, though I admittedly do not know enough to know the intricacies.

It doesnt seem like there is anything like that on the left. Its all short term, kick Trump out of office and we will figure everything out later. Thats not something that was worked out for democrats the past 10 years.

I may be ignorant, but is there anyone, group, or politician on the left that is not just talking about getting past the Trump era, but looking at the next decade and thinking how we can shift the Supreme Court to the left, reform campaign finance laws, codify minimum wage, overturn Roe v. Wade, completely reform healthcare.

The right has been building for project 2025 for decades, I would love to seem the democrats have that same focus and persistence because that is truly where the real change will come from and not the day to day grid lock of small media wins or compromises across the aisle.

When I heard Cory Doctorow describe nursing scheduling/contracting apps as paying nurses less based on how much personal debt they carry, I found the claim alarming and went looking for substantiation. What I’ve been able to find so far, however, is limited. Doctorow himself has written about this, but does not cite concrete evidence (e.g., documentation, whistleblower testimony, or regulatory findings) showing that ShiftKey or similar platforms actually incorporate individual nurses’ debt or credit histories into wage calculations. The Roosevelt Institute report often cited in this context discusses algorithmic wage discrimination and notes that financial or credit information could, in theory, be used by such platforms, but it does not demonstrate that this data is in fact being used in the specific manner Doctorow describes.

I will say that it's pretty annoying that the algorithm is opaque enough that it's theoretically possible that it might be being used as described.

If anyone has any sources with more specific facts to support the claims Doctorow makes about Shiftkey, I'd be really interested to see them.

edit: here's the link to the Roosevelt Institute study, and here's Doctorow's article with more detail of his allegations.

Hochul and Mamdani had an event today to promote amendments to SEQRA (NY's version of NEPA) that Hochul has made a priority in this year's state budget. Here's a good clip of Mamdani talking about how permitting delays stifle construction of housing and harm affordability.

I think there are some interesting lessons to be gleaned from what's going on in New York right now, many of which relate to themes discussed on the Ezra Klein Show and in this community, including but not limited to Abundance. Here are a few of my takeaways:

• Many of the most common criticisms of Abundance were just wrong. Allegations that it was too vague, Reaganism in disguise, couldn't function politically, etc., reflected misunderstandings about policy making and agenda setting, and/or were ideologically driven superficial knee jerk reactions. What Mamdani and Hochul show is that (i) policymakers didn't need a list of regulatory reforms in order to pick up the ball and run with it, (ii) Abundance is, in fact, about serving liberal and progressive goals, and (iii) it can easily be integrated into progressive or moderate platforms.

• There's ample common ground between progressive and moderate Democrats. A common argument made in response to Ezra's argument about the need to run more moderate Democrats in areas where those politics function better is that we'd end up with a coalition with no meaningful agenda or objectives and so maybe a moderate Democrat actually doesn't offer much benefit over a Republican. I think this was always a terrible argument but I think Hochul and Mamdani help illustrate its hollowness with clear areas of strong overlap: affordability, pro-housing policy, investment in infrastructure and transit, access to childcare, resisting encroachments from Trump, and so on.

• A big tent means acceptance in both directions. Hochul endorsed Mamdani before the general election. Last week, both Mamdani and AOC endorsed Hochul.

• These endorsements get to a broader theme about pragmatic politics vs. purity politics. I think the best progressive politicians (Sanders, Mamdani, AOC) are pragmatic and coalitional. They don't treat non-progressive politicians as cowards or moral monsters, a framing that's all too common from some unfortunately loud and online progressives. Likewise, Mamdani, AOC (as well as many mainstream and moderate Dems) treat conservative voters as prospective supporters rather than "irredeemable deplorables." Voters feel alienated from candidates and from the party when they think candidates and the party do not like them. Democrats have exuded this vibe for a long time in different capacities and it's been disastrous.

• Progressive politics can succeed but the claim that voters are just waiting for progressive candidates is vastly overstated. Mamdani, AOC, and Sanders all demonstrate the energy and clarity that progressive politics can bring. But there's a reason we keep talking about these three individuals and it's because they're the exceptions rather than the rule. Today, Hochul's Democratic primary challenger from the left, former congressman and current lieutenant governor, dropped out of the race after a complete failure of the campaign. He tried to flank Hochul to the left on just about every issue and...didn't catch fire at all because, as it turns out, voters aren't actually all secret progressives chomping at the bit for someone further to the left. Candidate quality matters a ton.

​

Interesting analysis from the San Fran Fed. Perhaps there is some weight to the argument "it's the billionaire's (and millionaire's) fault. Curious what people's thoughts are here! A few excerpts.

From the conclusion.

"Much of the intense interest in addressing the housing affordability crisis has focused on limitations to the housing supply. In this Letter, we argue that differences in the type of underlying labor market growth and subsequent implications for housing demand may offer a better explanation for important housing market dynamics. This suggests that the housing affordability crisis may be best addressed by understanding changes to the labor market, especially the relative distribution of economic growth across income levels and jobs in different areas."

Another Excerpt.

"House prices and income, 1975 to 2024

A large body of research has argued that housing supply constraints can explain this divergence (see Glaeser and Gyourko 2025)—particularly that policies on residential zoning and density have reduced construction and driven up prices. However, recent research has shown that supply constraints cannot account for differences in house price or supply growth across U.S. cities (Louie et al. 2025a, b).

This research indicates that regulatory reforms may have limited impact on housing affordability and that differences in housing supply constraints are not the fundamental drivers of differences in housing dynamics across metro areas. Figure 1 suggests an alternative explanation: Average income, an indicator of housing demand (green dashed line), grew essentially one-for-one with house prices from 1975 to 2024, even though median income failed to keep up. In other words, house price growth may simply reflect growth in housing demand, driven in part by growth in average income, such that questions of housing affordability may primarily be about differences in income growth at the top of the distribution relative to the middle."

One More

"Figure 3 depicts this relationship between population and housing supply growth. The data show that housing supply growth is strongly related to population growth across essentially all metro areas. Moreover, about 85% of metro areas had more growth in housing quantities than in population; this is shown by most of the data lying above the dashed red “balanced growth” line, which indicates the housing growth rate that would match population growth with no change in average household size. Moreover, Louie et al. (2025b) show that the rate at which population growth translates into house price growth is independent of measured supply constraints, all of which points to supply constraints not explaining differences in housing affordability."