American Economic Liberties Project

William J. McGee on X: "1/22 🧵 Let's talk Sean Duffy/20th Secretary of DOT. He actively works with big airline lobbyists to eliminate what few consumer protections exist in the US. But his new call for passenger "civility"? So the fault is not in our airlines, but in ourselves? https://t.co/KBl6YwceM3" / X 1/22 🧵 Let's talk Sean Duffy/20th Secretary of DOT. He actively works with big airline lobbyists to eliminate what few consumer protections exist in the US. But his new call for passenger "civility"? So the fault is not in our airlines, but in ourselves? https://t.co/KBl6YwceM3

A detailed thread about DOT Secretary Sean Duffy from that other place.
x.com/WilliamJMcGe...

The Fair Price Fight

For more information on the Fair Price Fight campaign and to see if your state is taking on dystopian pricing schemes, go to thefairpricefight.com

6/ The good news is states are starting to fight back.

California passed a landmark bill this year to end algorithmic price collusion, New York has banned algorithmic rent-fixing, and three new states have banned junk fees.

We’re tracking this momentum:

5/ Junk fees allow companies to make prices appear lower than they actually are.

While the FTC passed a rule to make prices more transparent in ticketing and short-term lodging, junk fees can still be pervasive in other industries — from food delivery to health care and more.

4/Algorithmic price-fixing is another modern technological tactic corporations can deploy.

This tactic facilitates collusion between competitors and has been pervasive in rental markets — with programs allegedly helping landlords coordinate to set rents above competitive levels.

3/ When corporations leverage your data — from shopping history to financial status and more — to set individual costs, they’re using a tactic known as surveillance pricing.

The threat is real. Earlier this year, the FTC warned in a report companies are exploiting data to set personalized prices.

2/ Instead of being driven by competition, prices are increasingly being shaped by corporations exploiting technologies to maximize their profits.

To combat this, states must take on surveillance pricing, algorithmic price-fixing, and junk fees.

🚨NEW: With affordability top of mind for Americans, we’re launching The Fair Price Fight — a new initiative empowering state lawmakers with the tools they need to confront the next frontier of deceptive pricing tactics.

It’s time to fight for fair prices.👇🧵

Thank you @rokhanna.bsky.social for raising awareness about Trump’s lopsided America Last China “trade deal.” Yes to a Manhattan Project on rare earths. The minerals are not so rare as far as where they are located, but they require intense processing. We must improve/stand up that capacity.

Join us for a conversation with Laurel Kilgour from @econliberties.bsky.social on her paper, “Capital Crunch: How the Fall of Local Finance and the Rise of Shareholder Primacy Warped Single-Family Homebuilding in America — And What to Do About It.”

RSVP: thecapitolforum.com/events/?utm_...

Capital Crunch: How the Fall of Local Finance and the Rise of Shareholder Primacy Warped Single-Family Homebuilding in America — And What to Do About It - American Economic Liberties Project This paper examines the shift in America’s homebuilding system from decentralized abundance to financialized scarcity, why these changes have made housing unaffordable for millions of people, and what...

And check out the full paper here:
www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cap...

Six Ideas to Unlock Single-Family Home Supply Part 2 of our explainer series on Economic Liberties’ new housing paper.

Read it here:
economicpopulist.substack.com/p/six-ideas-...

"The 20th century model of housing abundance stood on many legs: decentralized lending, productive land use, and fierce competition between homebuilders, among other things."

@balancecraft.bsky.social and Kainoa Lowman break down our new paper's recommendations for how to restore it.👇

Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, has reached a settlement with nine states for $7 million.

The states sued the property management giant for using rent-setting algorithms to drive up rents.

Greystar and other landlords used RealPage software in this illegal scheme.

Wall Street Is Paywalling Your Kids’ Sports Private equity-owned Black Bear Sports Group is buying up youth hockey — and icing out parents who want to record their kids’ games.

Full story in @levernews.com : www.levernews.com/wall-street-...

And parents that do end up buying in are facing new restrictions, like recording bans.

"...parents are forced to subscribe to these companies’ exclusive recording and streaming service, which can cost many times more than the streaming costs for professional sporting events."

As private equity buys into the $40 billion youth sports industry, everyday families are being priced out.

"We have this affordability crisis, and youth sports are one of those things that’s becoming an activity only for the wealthy,”
@capitolkvd.bsky.social tells @lukewgoldstein.bsky.social

How Wall Street Killed Single-Family Home Building Our new paper sheds light on an overlooked driver of the housing supply crisis--and the soaring price of homes.

A new paper from @econliberties.bsky.social shows that the culprit is a shift in how homebuilding is financed that ultimately favored Wall Street profits over Main Street’s housing needs.

Read: economicpopulist.substack.com/p/how-wall-s....

The price of a home in America has nearly doubled in the last 10 years.

"We had several decades of elite impunity where if you... were in a C-suite, the government would go light on you."

"We were very clear that we were going to enforce the law in an even-handed way."

ICYMI: Lina Khan on her work as FTC chair holding corporate elites accountable👇

"Donald Trump is delivering on housing and affordability the way that he delivered on the Epstein files."

The housing crisis, fueled by Wall Street "is the same story we see in most industries in America: it's just extraction."

Read the full paper here for the full story:
t.co/MXDm3vVgGB

7/
➡️Expanding lending to local homebuilders
➡️Adopting a land-value tax
➡️Banning corporate ownership of single-family homes and mandating divestiture
➡️Enabling more scrutiny of homebuilding M&A
➡️Reforming excessive regulatory barriers to entry
➡️Investigating supplier price discrimination

6/As officials across the federal, state, and local level explore paths to taking on this housing crisis, here's a few recommendations for them to consider...

5/ As lead author @balancecraft.bsky.social says, “You can think of Wall Street as the ultimate NIMBY.”

“It’s impossible to solve America’s housing crisis without understanding the deep structural perversions in how homebuilding is financed.”

4/ Wall Street demands have fundamentally reoriented the industry towards maximizing margins, and away from abundant production.

Meanwhile, smaller homebuilders cannot fill the gap because they lack the reliable local financing they used to rely upon.

3/ As local lending collapsed and builders turned to capital-market financing, large publicly traded firms gained influence.

The number of single-family homebuilders fell by half from 2007–2012 — and despite partial recovery, remains far below early-2000s levels.

2/ For much of the 20th century, regulated community banks and thrifts financed local homebuilders — covering 25–50% of new single-family construction.

But from the 1970s onward, policy decisions dismantled that system and cut off small builders from credit.

🏠📄NEW: Our latest paper — "Capital Crunch" — is OUT NOW!

The paper details the policy choices that created today’s financialized homebuilding industry, which bends to the will of Wall Street, restricting single-family home supply and raising prices. 👇

Weekly Rewind 11/14/25: The FAA and the Airline Safety Crisis Edition DOT & White House have threatened a fragile system

Our weekly rewind at @econliberties.bsky.social Substack features my concerns about several key post-shutdown issues:
• DOT's mistreatment of controllers
• Effects of furloughing FAA safety inspectors
• FAA's implementation of flight cuts
More to come...
economicpopulist.substack.com/p/weekly-rew...