Ned Resnikoff

American politics has drifted towards this collective position that the country doesn’t need tax revenue to run.

And while I’ve been anti-austerity-mongering my whole adult life having grown up in the wake of the bungled response to the GFC, this stuff makes me feel like a deficit hawk lmao

A chart showing housing production pluging by nearly 50% in the two years after 1973 and 1979, respectively.

For comparison's sake, here's what happened to new housing starts in the US during and after the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979. publiccomment.blog/p/the-housin...

The Housing Angle Strait of Hormuz Edition

IMO the Iran bombing is a reminder that there's no "liberal abundance"/"dark abundance" synthesis to be had. You can't make progress on housing w/ someone who will take a wrecking ball to the market at a moment's notice, much less by doing war crimes. publiccomment.blog/p/the-housin...

Something @sgoodyear.bsky.social points out that I'm reminded of each time people post about the war, gas prices and the need to switch to EVs is that the V in EV stands for "vehicle," not "car." E-bikes are EVs and cities need to create the conditions that will allow more people to adopt them.

The Housing Angle Strait of Hormuz Edition

Wrote up a quick post on how throttling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could affect the American housing crisis. Short version: Bad! publiccomment.blog/p/the-housin...

The Housing Angle Strait of Hormuz Edition

IMO the Iran bombing is a reminder that there's no "liberal abundance"/"dark abundance" synthesis to be had. You can't make progress on housing w/ someone who will take a wrecking ball to the market at a moment's notice, much less by doing war crimes. publiccomment.blog/p/the-housin...

A chart showing housing production pluging by nearly 50% in the two years after 1973 and 1979, respectively.

For comparison's sake, here's what happened to new housing starts in the US during and after the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979. publiccomment.blog/p/the-housin...

The Housing Angle Strait of Hormuz Edition

Wrote up a quick post on how throttling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could affect the American housing crisis. Short version: Bad! publiccomment.blog/p/the-housin...

Long term too, I suspect.

Ah, well, nevertheless.

I don't know what the right answer is in this particular situation, but it is true that the conversion of multifamily to single-family properties is a scourge in cities like San Francisco.

They bought their North Beach dream home. The city says it must become four apartments Tenants rights groups are calling on San Francisco officials to make a North Beach couple fix a problem they did not create and revert their home to the four-unit complex.

Struck by the fact that some of the same groups demanding this family convert their home back into four units to help relieve the housing shortage also oppose land use reforms to encourage the production of new housing. www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/n...

If it really is the case that the median voter was just sick of the Biden economy, then congratulations, your wish has been granted

It’s not *always* the case that lighting the whole world on fire can cause a spike in rents—for one thing it can reduce demand for living in the world—but in this case I think it’s likely to cause a spike in rents

If you’re wondering what this is going to do to housing affordability, my best guess is very bad things

Why Trump’s war on Iran is definitely taking place What's it like to re-read Baudrillard as bombs fall on Tehran?

if you want to understand how trump talked himself into an war of choice to overthrow the government of iran, you have to start where all discussions of great wartime leaders start:

with french postmodernists and SUNSET BOULEVARD

this is what's so insulting about the obama bros or yglesias or grim claiming that this is just normal working class rough guy culture, it's not! i've had more wage jobs than all these dudes combined and have more tattoos than all of them combined, and i've only *ever* seen this on out-and-out nazis

The DSA (Democratic Shoupistas of America) mayor

People keep acting like Democrats need to tolerate a little dash of paranoid antisemitism if they want to reach the salt of the earth hoi polloi, but the reality is that paranoid antisemitism is more natively the politics of downwardly mobile scions of privilege, like Platner for example.

We need a complete and total moratorium on new Kennedys

CHOTINER: So I'm clear, you ate two burritos in one sitting?

ME: Absolutely not. No. I ate a burrito for lunch yesterday and another one today.

C: But you ordered them both simultaneously?

ME: Naturally I wanted the other one in reserve just in case.

C: Naturally. Just in case.

I think about this all the time. I think we'd be much further along the road to a durable autocratic regime but on the other hand we'd have dodged any number of other cataclysms.

Thank god we have the NYPD and New York Post to remind everyone that if someone in an SUV kills a child, it's definitely the child's fault.

Odds and Ends 3.6.26 Some links and other recommendations

This week in the newsletter roundup: My response to some recent anti-YIMBY papers, Henry Grabar on luxury housing, Rachel Aviv on Gisèle Pelicot and her family, and Steely Dan's lost masterpiece. publiccomment.blog/p/odds-and-e...

There Is No Housing Affordability Without Building More Housing If we make it easier to build dense housing in cities, then the resulting supply boost will ease the cost burden on renters and put homeownership within closer reach for millions of households.

Every couple of months or so, someone puts out a piece of bad social science meant to undermine the case for more housing. For Roosevelt Institute, I wrote a blog post responding to the two most recent specimens. rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/there-i...

what i think is going on w/ graham platner fwiw: a certain cohort of D pundits & self-appointed leaders, disproportionately male and gentile, have decided that in order to appeal to low-trust men (whose votes they seem to think count more) it's necessary to allow a little antisemitism, as a treat

“The fact remains that boosting supply is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for making sure everyone in the United States has decent, stable housing.”

Our fellow @resnikoff.bsky.social's new piece argues that abundant housing and affordability can—and must—go hand in hand.

His thread ⬇️ 🧵

Second suspect arrested in theft of DHS chief Kristi Noem's purse Noem’s bag was stolen by a masked man last Sunday while she was having dinner with her family in Washington, D.C.

Just remembered we never found out what she was doing walking around with $3,000 in cash. www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

I'm excited to not have to watch Noem's macabre PSA video the next time I'm in the TSA line.

As @joshtpm.bsky.social says, political power is unitary. Whatever else Noem's defenestration is, it's a sign of Trump's waning power.