downwardly mobile gentrifier 📉

If rent control is so terrible, why are cities with rent control considered the most liveable?

This statement by Unlearning Econ is not true. The paper's conclusion ("rent control reduced rental housing supplies by 15%") is from an estimate of how many less renters a parcel has after rent control. It cannot be explained by renters still being there in a (now-)exempt unit.

I'm glad that the author of "Rent Control Is Fine, Actually" calls themself Unlearning Economics, bc it's good to just state things clearly, such as the open animosity that many left economic populists have for the field of economics and economists themselves. Economists aren't gods, and economics isn't a divine truth, but economists are good--better than most--at something critical for making public policy: They're good at identifying tradeoffs. "Rents are too high, so freeze them" is compelling politics. But in the absence of other pro-supply policies, if you make it illegal to increase rents, landlords will stop upgrading units and convert them to condos, which reduces the supply of units for rent, reduces mobility, and drives up rents for everybody else. The left econ populists have some clear, and clearly stated, policy ideas: - Rents are too high, so freeze them. - Electricity is expensive, so stop rate increases. - Homes are too expensive, so ban institutional investors. - Power prices are rising, so ban data center construction. ... All these policies feel like solutions because they're brisk, they name enemies, and they take on the most visible source of frustration. But they are much better as villain-naming exercises than they are as a complete public policy. On their own, each creates other problems: less housing built, less clean electricity built, abdicating energy policy by encouraging AI firms to build data centers abroad in unsavory countries with more emissions, etc. I can't think of a single economic populist idea that wouldn't be helped with a little dose of economics, which is why it's troubling when I see the left participating in, and even celebrating, the great unlearning of economics.

If Obama was as good of a president as you all pretend he was, Trump wouldn't have won in 2016.

Al Gore lost in 2000 as a centrist. John Kerry lost in 2004 as a centrist. Hillary lost in 2016 as a centrist. Kamala lost 2024 as a centrist. If we’re going to win the 2026 midterms, we must abandon centrism all together. If the Democratic Party is to survive we must go left

Maine Democrat Senate Candidate Graham Platner says he would "shut down the White House" by subpoenaing every single admin official everyday if Democrats gain power. Democrats don't have any plans to help the American people, they only want to stop President Trump.

Trump: "You know what it is to seethe? I seethe a lot"

Expert class libs like Matt really thought Obama had solved politics and the country would just keep doing Obamism forever. Much of the post Obama-era derangement is their psychic shock at realizing most people—outside their No Kings bubble—now regard him as an utter failure.

If rent control is so terrible, why are cities with rent control considered the most liveable?

You “need a little dose of economics,” says Derek Thompson, to a PhD economist at the London School of Economics. Behold the intellectual arrogance and incuriosity of the Abundance movement