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>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
by GenerWork 11mo ago
>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.
- noobermin 11mo agoHe has moderated on the police funding issue, and the rent freeze is for already rent controlled apartments.
- GenerWork 11mo ago>He has moderated on the police funding issue So he already backtracked on a core election promise even before he got elected? Doesn’t bode well for his supporters expectations going forward.
- pkulak 11mo agoSeems like before you’re elected is the perfect time to adjust policy positions. Or, really, any time you’re presented with new facts.
- matsemann 11mo agoWhat a weird take. Isn't it better that he says it before the election? I think you just have it out for him, and no matter what he does you will find a way it's wrong.
- adrian17 11mo agoAs far as I know, “defunding the police” wasn’t a campaign promise, let alone a “core” one. It indeed was the opinion he had in the past (and you can argue about whether he still thinks that privately), but there are also many statements from the last several months that he’s explicitly _not_ running on that.
- FrontierProject 11mo agoCore election promise? It was a comment he made half a decade before running for mayor. Perhaps it's time to update your Kool-aid detectors.
- emchammer 11mo agoIt’s as if people can change their opinions about things as they become better informed.
- nobody9999 11mo ago>the rent freeze is for already rent controlled apartments. That's actually not true. The rent freeze is for rent stabilized[0] apartments. Rent control[1] is a different program and is tiny in comparison. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation_in_New_York#Rent_stabilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation_in_New_York#Re... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation_in_New_York#Rent_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation_in_New_York#Re...
- bix6 11mo ago$30 min wage sounds doable? CA took fast food min wage up to $20 and it’s been fine.
- what 11mo ago>fine A medium fries is over $4 before taxes… over $1 more expensive than the rest of the country.
- toomuchtodo 11mo agoMcDonald’s made $14 billion in profit last year. It’s not the labor driving the costs, it’s the profits. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44968997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44968997 Same with Chipotle. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762671 Who pays the profits? Like tariffs, the consumer. You pay for these billions in annual profits.
- underdeserver 11mo agoMcDonald's the corporation doesn't sell fries, they rent out real estate and franchise licenses. What you really need to look at is the cost of labor for a random McDonald's franchisee.
- toomuchtodo 11mo ago> While menu prices did increase, costs rose by an average of just 1.5% –equivalent to about 6 cents on a $4 hamburger, down from the 15-cent increase reported in the September study. Study: California's $20 fast-food minimum wage improves pay at small cost to consumers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43806608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43806608 - May 2025 https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2025/02/27/uc-berkeley-fast-food-worker-study-minimum-wage https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2025/02/27/uc-berk... https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/effects-of-the-20-california-fast-food-minimum-wage/ https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/brief/effects-of-the-...
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- ryandrake 11mo agoWhen your road is all the way to the right, then yea, none of it is middle of the road.
- GenerWork 11mo agoPlease 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.
- dboreham 11mo agoCities run all sorts of things. What's the big difference between garbage trucks and sewers and a grocery store?
- ryandrake 11mo agoAlso, several states have state-run beer and/or liquor stores. It's not some wild unheard of experiment. We've gotten so used to the acceptable political spectrum spanning from "far right" to "extreme right" that we forget what left even means. I'm almost 50 and the last president we ever saw that was even remotely towards the left was in office when I was born.
- figmert 11mo ago> several states have state-run beer and/or liquor stores Actually could not believe this, so had to look it up. I find this wild.
- kortilla 11mo agoYeah, pretty terrible outcome from prohibition designed to curtail alcohol consumption. It’s pretty the worst example to go for if you’re trying to convince people that state stores are good.
- wk_end 11mo ago
- dboreham 11mo agoThe lowest I've seen for low end jobs recently in Montana is $25/hr so $30 in NYC seems entirely reasonable.
- prpl 11mo agoThe 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.
- bluecalm 11mo agoThe 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.
- kortilla 11mo ago11-13 isn’t anywhere near 60. Anyone who has shopped a state run vs regular liquor store knows how much worse the gov version is unless your goal is higher prices, worse service, and worse selection.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 11mo agoThe minimum wage not being indexed to inflation has been theft for decades. It would take a minimum wage of almost $60/hr to maintain purchasing power from 50-60 years ago. https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wage-is-at-its-lowest-point-in-66-years/ https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wa... https://finance.yahoo.com/news/minimum-wage-york-2024-live-150040801.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/minimum-wage-york-2024-live-1... https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/ Edit: If the system of “we make asset prices go up while labor prices are inflated away” gets to the point where a living wage is unobtainable (we are here), we can change the system. The name is irrelevant, it’s fundamentally “what are you optimizing for?” This happens eventually (wage increases) due to global structural demographic working age population compression, the argument is really time horizon if we help people live better lives with dignity now vs years from now as labor supply declines. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=labor%20shortage&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- kortilla 11mo agoYou didn’t read your own link. The peak value of minimum wage was $12.12/hr in 1968 after adjusting for inflation. https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wage-is-at-its-lowest-point-in-66-years/ https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wa... You cannot with a straight face claim bringing it to $60 has anything to do with inflation when the value it would need is right in that article.
- toomuchtodo 11mo agoI misspoke by not including more detail. $66/hr to match homebuying purchasing power of Boomers in the 70s. You can get away with less per hour as a living wage assuming reasonable rent, and in NYC, that is likely $30/hr (which we will get to as older voters continue to age out, and younger voters age into the electorate, and are engaged to push wages higher [exit polls show ~75% of New Yorkers 18-29 voted for Mamdani]). https://www.epi.org/blog/a-30-by-2030-minimum-wage-in-new-york-city-is-a-bold-proposal-the-first-step-is-giving-the-city-the-freedom-to-set-its-own-wage-floor/ https://www.epi.org/blog/a-30-by-2030-minimum-wage-in-new-yo... > With the FBC cost data we can estimate a living wage that would allow workers to support their families. Table 1 shows that the living wage in 2025 is already above $30 an hour in Manhattan ($33.89), Queens ($31.31), and Staten Island ($30.68). While Brooklyn and The Bronx do not exceed this threshold, the costs facing these families will almost certainly continue to rise between today and 2030. These figures make it clear that discussions of a $30 minimum wage in New York City are not superfluous—they reflect the very real needs of working people throughout the city. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/guy-shared-just-high-minimum-165308542.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/guy-shared-just-high-min... > Someone Calculated What The Minimum Wage Should Be Today Compared To The '70s In Order To Afford A Home > Now, Chris's video isn't to suggest that minimum wage, at any point in its history, allowed people to buy homes outright. Rather, he told BuzzFeed, he wanted to highlight the ways in which "wages have decoupled from cost of living, housing prices, and broader economic growth over the last few decades." > "The original purpose of the minimum wage was to ensure that even low-wage workers could participate meaningfully in the economy. Not just survive, but live with dignity," he said.
- Izikiel43 11mo ago> wants to defund the police Ask Seattle how well that turned out
- pkulak 11mo agoWhy? They didn’t defund their police.
- Izikiel43 11mo agoThey tried, lots of people left, then backpedaled, and it's still not what it used to be.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Kephael 11mo agoSeattle upset their police force and made them quit, they then had to pay overtime to fewer remaining officers which increased their spending.
- mcdonje 11mo ago"made them quit" That's some editorializing
- whoooboyy 11mo agoSeattle has largely increased police funding, dramatically? For a dept under a consent decree until recently. The mayor also capped non police crisis response teams to 24 people. Total. For the city. 24. Seattle has done everything except defund the police, lol
- Izikiel43 11mo agoThose are recent measures. They had to increase funding because they decreased it, and shit hit the fan, and they are trying to hire people back.
- enaaem 11mo agoPrice distortions are bad because the market might not react correctly to it. But if there are too many restrictions to build housing anyway, you might as well ease the pain for social harmony.
- debtta 11mo agoI mean, if 50% of the population vote for something, arguably it is middle of the road.
- jasondigitized 11mo agoThe minimum wage needing to be $30 is just math unless you believe people shouldn't be able to live in America.