https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-approval-hits-new-36...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47325739

Points: 19

# Comments: 7

2. Will other tech firms consider such large layoffs in the near future?

Adyen: $29.408B right now at Yahoo Finance.

PayPal: $41.51B right now.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADYEN.AS/

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PYPL/

Comma's website links to a 7 year old reddit thread: https://comma.ai/support#will-my-insurance-cover-my-car-with...

As a driver, if in an accident, could someone reasonably assert that you were not paying attention?

Or another way to state my point: voters are getting exactly the politicians they voted for. There is no majority-constituency that seeks a different group - because majority voters already have the ballot power to select different politicians.

But lowering asset prices is a nearly politically impossible lift.

Left-wing populists will promise to deliver. But will ultimately fail. Populism ultimately is a rejection of elites. Elites who are currently failing the public. But you musn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

My objection is that left-wing populism with its rejection of economic elites, rejection of capitalism and the big-tent embrace of "all" is isomorphic to right wing populism with its rejection of science (antivax), embrace of nationalism and focus on homogeneity. Economists have good ideas. Capitalism is what built the water system that nourishes NYC. A movement embracing "all" will find itself eventually fractured by vote-bank politics as tribal affiliations will dominate in the end.

I am personally focused on thinking about how rewire the financial plumbing over succumbing to either left or right wing populist movements.

Anyway - Mamdani is a forceful, and commanding speaker. His victory speech last night was truly an American original. I think he's trying to point the vector towards a better life for more people and that is a good thing.

But the cause is deeper than rent price controls, minimum wage and worker protections.

After the 2008 financial crisis, western central banks digitally printed trillions of dollars (Quantitative Easing) to refloat our financial system. The collapse of 2008 was itself the result of perverse incentives leading to banks stuffed with bad mortgages due to speculative housing manias after the collapse of the Dotcom bubble and 9/11.

The response of flooding the financial system with trillions of printed money after 2008 for years was a political choice - supported by Democrats, Republicans and President Obama.

Wealth inequality is the result. It cannot be fixed at a local level through local policies. It cannot be fixed by Congress through policy or tax tweaks. It is a problem with the financial plumbing itself.

Second - there is no similar freeze on property taxes - or the expected inflation in maintenance costs, insurance, and so on. Again - a tax on property owners by another name.

Third - starting with a rent freeze is an indicator of a property owner unfriendly administration. Any builder would have to calculate this into their expected returns on capital investment.

https://www.nrn.com/quick-service/california-lost-16-000-res...

"It has been almost one year since California implemented a $20 minimum wage for quick-service restaurant workers, and industry experts have been debating the long-term effects the wage jump would have on the industry’s job market.

As it turns out, thus far, the 33.3% wage increase for fast-food workers in California has resulted in almost 16,000 job losses — a decline of 2.8% — across the limited-service food industry from September 2023 (when AB 1228 was signed into law) until September 2024, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Since the law went into effect in April, California’s limited-service restaurant industry has seen an employment rate decline of 2.5%."

But economists don't disagree about the effects of price controls. These are easy to observe and model. These concepts are also taught to Economics undergraduates all over the world - often in their first Microeconomics class. They are not controversial.

Here is a Khan Academy video: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2010/12/08/13190...

"Jon Stewart Busts Fed Chair Ben Bernanke On 'Printing Money' December 8, 201010:39 AM ET By

Frank James

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is so busted.

Comedy Central host Jon Stewart added his voice to others who caught the central banker contradicting himself over whether or not the Fed is "printing money" through its actions to bolster the economy.

On 60 Minutes this week, when asked by reporter Scott Pelley about the Fed's $600 billion purchase of Treasury bonds that is meant to lower interest rates further, the Fed chair said:

BERNANKE: Well, this fear of inflation, I think is way overstated. We've looked at it very, very carefully. We've analyzed it every which way. One myth that's out there is that what we're doing is printing money. We're not printing money. The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way. ...

Twenty-one months earlier on the same program and to the same reporter, Bernanke said something quite different:

Asked if it's tax money the Fed is spending, Bernanke said, "It's not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing."

"You've been printing money?" Pelley asked.

"Well, effectively," Bernanke said. "And we need to do that, because our economy is very weak and inflation is very low. When the economy begins to recover, that will be the time that we need to unwind those programs, raise interest rates, reduce the money supply, and make sure that we have a recovery that does not involve inflation." "

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

Senator Schumer (D-NY) famously said in 2012 to Ben Bernanke (Federal Reserve Chair): 'Get To Work Mr. Chairman' - encouraging him to start Quantitative Easing 3 (QE3) - a program to digitally print $40billion and eventually $85billion per month of "money" and injecting it into the financial system.

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 capital city sat at $1,645 as of December, according to Zillow — above where rents stood prior to the pandemic but below where they peaked amid the region’s red-hot growth.

Surrounding suburbs like Round Rock, Pflugerville and Georgetown, which saw rents grow by double-digit percentages amid the region’s pandemic boom, also have seen declining rents. Rents aren’t falling as quickly as they rose during the pandemic run-up in costs, but there are few places in the Austin region where rents didn’t fall sometime in the last year.

The chief reason behind Austin’s falling rents, real estate experts and housing advocates said, is a massive apartment building boom unmatched by any other major city in Texas or in the rest of the country. Apartment builders in the Austin area kicked into overdrive during the pandemic, resulting in tens of thousands of new apartments hitting the market."

https://www.curbed.com/article/zohran-mamdani-housing-rent-f... archive: https://archive.ph/hnK4Q

"The 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, effectively giving a reprieve to about 2 million stabilized tenants, was at the center of his campaign"

I'm not directly familiar with Berlin. But this story about shortages is the expected outcome:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-must-build-32...

BERLIN, March 20 (Reuters) - Germany, lagging in its building goals to alleviate a housing shortage, needs to construct 320,000 new apartments each year by 2030, a study on Thursday showed.