Kind: captions
Language: en
Zoron Mandani is clearly going to be the
next mayor of New York, but he is a
villain, a charming villain. But here's
what his fans are not thinking about.
>> The mayoral debate was yesterday. In the
words of Tom, who calls Mom Donnie his
uh villain? Is he like your super
villain now at this point? Like an arch
nemesis?
>> The the super villain is Marxism itself,
socialism itself. When you look at the
price of gold right now and realize how
rapidly it's going up and the price of
gold is an indication as to how stable
the market thinks your economy is and
it's saying, "Bro, you're in real
trouble. Everything that is wrong with
the economy right now is based on debt,
money printing." Money is going to make
that worse. The buses are never going to
be free. Nothing is ever going to be
free. Everything is going to be paid for
by somebody. But this all becomes
abstracted. If New York decides that
what they want is free buses, then my
only question is what aren't you going
to do to be able to pay for that? If
what we see is a measurable improvement
in something that we all care about
based on that and you don't see capital
flight because they're like, "Okay,
yeah, this is a thing that we're that's
worth paying for. Great, no problem." I
have exactly zero belief that that's how
this is going to go. I think he's doing
it from an ideological standpoint. I
think no matter what happens
economically, whether he gets the
funding or not, whether tax revenue goes
down or not, he's going to keep pushing
his agenda because he believes from an
ideological standpoint, this is what we
ought to do. The city's too expensive. I
think that housing has become too
expensive essentially ubiquitously
across all of America. I think it is one
of the most catastrophic problems. We
have tried rent freezes before in New
York. In fact, we're doing rent freezes
already in New York. It hasn't solved
the problem. We did rent freezes in the
extreme back in the 60s and 70s and it
led to the burnedout buildings in the
70s and 80s. People do not understand
that even buildings, housing is an
entrepreneurial endeavor. It is somebody
who their product is an apartment
complex. You buy that product cuz you
want to live inside of it. And what ends
up happening is imagine if I told you,
hey, you can't charge people, you can't
charge them that amount for a pair of
shoes. all of a sudden the number of
people making shoes goes down because it
has a knock-on consequence to all the
things that they can make those shoes
from.
>> And so upkeep in a building to take it
back to real estate. When you put rent
freezes, they're like, "Well, you've now
just made it impossible for me to make
money off my building. Maybe you make it
break even, which just reduces
somebody's incentive because they're
like, wait, I'm going to have to work
this hard and I'm going to have nothing
to show for it. Why would I do that?" So
people aren't going to run businesses
out of charity. What ends up happening
is people go, "Wait a second. If at
those rents I can't afford to repair the
plumbing, for instance." So they don't
and they tell you wrap a towel around
it. And so you end up in a situation,
this is real, you end up where a quarter
of all of the buildings that burned in
the Bronx were due to arson because it
was cheaper to burn the building and
collect the insurance money than it was
to try to upkeep it. When you start
mapping Marxist beliefs on somebody
who's really trying to make pe the
poor's life better, you're going to be
eternally confused because they they'll
do things that are so obviously well
doumented that it doesn't work and they
do it anyway. So, it's like why are they
doing that? If you map them as resentful
people who want to punish the wealthy,
all of a sudden all of their moves make
sense. In the cross-cultural study, what
they found was if people had the
opportunity to create a tax policy that
made the poor's lives better, but also
helped the wealthy, they won't vote for
it. Not as much as they'll vote for
something that makes the life of the
poor worse, but punishes the wealthy.
Across cultures, the thing that people
will actually vote for is the thing that
hurts the rich. They won't vote for the
thing that helps the poor. And so
helping the poor would be let the free
market stop putting so many regulations
on housing and let people go in and
build new apartments, build new
buildings, and charge whatever rent they
can get away with charging. Now, putting
some restrictions on it like we're not
going to let foreign investors buy
property. Okay, I get that. With every
additional property that a person buys,
just charge them bigger and bigger
taxes. If somebody wants to buy the
third property and you're charging them
50% tax, okay, well, that's on them. Let
them do their thing. Very simple things
like that would over, let's say, the
next 5 years make housing very, very
simple.
>> I don't think that's necessarily a fault
of the policy as opposed to a fault of
the person.
>> Of course, it's a fault policy.
>> I feel like we should be more mad at the
arsonist and not mad at the person whose
rents are lower.
>> You should be mad at the arsonist
because it's illegal. You should also
recognize that the government put them
in that position. And I would bet
dollars to donuts if I described a
scenario where let's say that your mom
had bought a house. Her whole life was
like, when I get to 65, I'm going to
retire. I'm going to move to a really
small apartment near my son. I'm
counting on the rent that I'm going to
be able to get from that house. And my
upkeep on the house with property taxes
and maintenance and all of that, let's
say, is $1,700 a month. And then the
government comes along and says, "You
can't charge more than $1,500 a month
for that apartment." Now your mom's
like, "Hold on a second. Now I'm losing
money every month with no hope of ever
making
>> or you can sell the building.
>> Who's going to buy the building?" When I
say you can't make money, you will lose
money. And so now your mom is like, "No
one's going to buy this." So, you just
tanked the value of my real estate
because anybody even considering buying
this building is going to ask, can I
make money off of maintaining it, off of
the property taxes? And if the answer is
no, she's left holding a building that
she literally can't sell. That's what
happens. And now you remember this is
your mom who for 30 years paid into this
building with a plan for how she was
going to retire. And then somebody says
you can't charge what the market is
willing to pay. And now your mom's
entire like plan for the rest of her
life is just over. She can't sell the
building. And now she's looking at it
going, I I have to get the money out of
that. Otherwise, I'm going to be working
until the day that I die. And thi this
is where people get put into desperate
situations. Now, I'm not saying that
your mom is a good person if she burns
the building down, but I am saying I get
why one day late at night, she's like,
"Well, that is an option."
>> Housing, I I think is a different bucket
here. Even the grocery store thing, I
can kind of take that point and see is
at a different bucket.
>> So, you know, the way to make housing
more affordable is to make more housing.
You come up with a narrative that we
can't build up, which I totally reject
wholeheartedly.
>> I'm just saying when we build up,
especially in New York City, you've
never seen a high-rise that's more
affordable than the unit that he
replaced.
>> So, now your beef is I don't want there
to be places like Beverly Hills that
poor people, they just can't afford this
neighborhood. Is that
>> That's all of Manhattan.
>> Fine. So, so you're saying it's fine
that they can't afford it?
>> Yes, of course I'm saying it's fine they
can't afford it.
>> But I thought the problem was housing
affordability.
>> Yes, of course. You don't have a right
to live in whatever neighborhood you
want to live in. What I'm saying is stop
artificially making it impossible for
people to live somewhere that it's the
government regulation is making it
impossible. for instance, stop freezing
rents because if building a business in
ma building a building in Manhattan was
lucrative, then a whole bunch of people
would do it. And if a whole bunch of
people were doing it and renovating
these buildings and knocking them down
and building new things with more
tenants, it's going to become more
affordable. Now, if in doing that, the
wealthiest people in America are like,
actually, I want to migrate to the city.
Yes, it is very possible that given that
that is just a fixed finite piece of
land that the wealthiest people are
going to keep pouring in. But my
instinct is that isn't going to be true.
>> It's the number one city in the in the
world arguably,
>> right? But are you trying to regulate
who can and can't come there? I don't
understand. If you are saying no
neighborhood should ever be able to be
out of reach of and I don't know if
you'd say anyone, but are you saying
every neighborhood should have lowincome
housing?
>> I have not said that. No. Perfect. Then
now you're just into what you just said
a minute ago, which is there will always
be a supply and demand problem when
Manhattan is of finite size.
>> What I'm saying is the free market is
going to lower the prices. It's not
going to take them up. Regulation is
going to take them up. It's not going to
lower them. So I'm saying, yeah, it's
possible that an area just becomes so
desirable for a whole host of reasons.
Take the Hollywood Hills for instance.
The Hollywood Hills are always going to
be more expensive because they have a
view and there's just always going to be
a certain type of person that's going to
be willing to pay for that view. So
limited amount of hills.
>> How many additional units we try to
build on Hollywood Hills, we are going
to reach the upper threshold. We ran out
of hills.
>> Right. Right. But I'm saying if you want
to lower it as much as you can, then you
would deregulate as much as is safe. I'm
not saying you take it to zero. And then
if you're going to put limitations on
it, put limitations of habitation. So I
get a regulation that says you can only
own a house here if you actually live in
it at least 51% of the time or whatever.
>> Now you're going to find out when it is
single family ownership, single family
dwellings, what becomes the price. And
then if that price is just it's too
high, there's so many people that can
afford that place and want to live in
that place. Well, Manhattan is just more
or less offlimits for anybody that's
making less than whatever $350,000 a
year.
>> I understand the A to Z of what that
laid out, but the end result of that
policy would be this is just how much it
is. Either you got it or you don't. It's
like you're at the bar. It's at the
club.
>> That's always going to be the case. You
you can't you can't own uh a house on a
minimum wage job. It's just not going to
be possible. Now enter Mam Donnie who's
saying there are people who are quote
unquote residents of New York who are
born in New York who are now getting
priced out of this same thing because
the demand is too high because the
prices are rising because New York is
number one city in the world because
people are still flooding in they are
getting priced. So what he's saying is
I'm going to artificially hold this
amount of units just so that way I can
help those specific people.
>> Yep. And if it worked I'd cheer for it.
It doesn't work. It goes the exact
opposite direction. It will make a
housing crisis. It will make it so that
nobody wants to invest in the area.
>> There's rent controlled units now.
There's people who still want to live in
New York. New York does not have a
vacancy problem. I I guess this is the
fundamental. This is a values problem.
So, I think we could talk about housing,
>> but you have to tell me what what the
end result is that you want to get to.
>> Drew personally understands how the
economics are working. The reason I'm
trying to argue Mandani's point is
because I think a lot of times when we
talk about him on this show, it becomes,
oh, that's a socialist. And we kind of
minimize like what he's trying to do.
>> Mandani's policy is full It it
is so ignorant to how economies work
that the very thing I'm screaming for is
for people to just follow the math. If
you follow the math, you realize if you
make it impossible for business to run,
then business stops running. Business is
how you get affordable homes in
anywhere. And he's breaking that
equation. We've run this scenario
before, not only here, but all over the
world. It doesn't work sometimes. It
literally never works.
>> But we're doing that now, though. And I
that's the thing that I think you
literally hear yourself. You're saying,
"Hey, New York is totally It's
totally broken and we're we're already
running as policy." That's my
point is e even now when you have some
small amount of it going on it hasn't
solved because what it does is it
tells it tells investors don't invest