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Posted on 11/09/2025 4:36:36 AM PST by MtnClimber
With the election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York, much conversation has been made of his appeal to “affordability.”
As I’ve written previously, this is a noble conversation, but one that has been dishonestly framed (by Democrats and media) to date. I will use Mamdani’s comment in his acceptance speech to re-frame the debate.
We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.
Mamdani and the Democrat party have effectively defined a binary choice: Should government or “the market” control affordability? The Democrats are seemingly all in on expanding the size and scope of government, to the point of eventually seizing the means of production.
First let’s look at the role that government has already played and its effect on affordability. What areas in the economy have seen the greatest increase in costs for the consumer? Education, housing, healthcare, and food. Ironically, these are all areas of the economy that the government has interjected itself in the form of subsidies, regulations, government-backed loans, and transfer payments.
In the 1960s, tuition costs were a reasonable expense. The best and brightest pursued advanced degrees and had good-paying high-skilled jobs available upon graduation. Government-backed loans were buffeted by a competitive “private loan” market.
In 2010, Obama eliminated the federal guaranteed loan program, which had let private lenders offer student loans at low interest rates. Now the Department of Education is the only place to go for such loans.
Private lenders (prior to 2010) would lend money based on a risk model, where student loans could be obtained with the lender determining their degree of risk associated with repayment. It didn’t serve their interest to make loans to a large swath of students that might likely not repay
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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How much will magical thinking accomplish?
Evil criminals drive costs up as does lack of competition and BIG GOVERNMENT.
Let's see; government consumes 50% of my income, and things are unafordible.
Maybe if government takes 60% of my income things will be more afordible.
Government needs to stop playing Santa Clause. It’s the free stuff that’s making stuff unaffordable. Try to splain that to the gimmedats.
Tens of illegals have simultaneously driven the price of housing up and the pay for basic work down.
Expelling them is the only feasible way of reversing this.
Democrats are why everything is expensive. Homes, cars, energy, food EVERYTHING. It can all be laid at their feet for their policies. DEMOCRATS!
The money printer goes brrrrrr.....
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Those who want things to be “free” should move to Cuba.
Government involvement got us into this mess. It won’t get us out. De-regulation is the answer.
Because youth are frivolous spenders.
There’s nothing left after Uber Eats delivers your 37th $27.95 Avocado Toast this month.
I have been around long enough to know that RAT admins always drive up inflation and make life unaffordable for the middle class. The democrats always claim they are champions of the middle class. That is one of their big lies.
I imagine there are others around here that remember Obama proudly saying Joe Biden was his czar for the middle class. Even set a website. What a joke. Nothing ever happened on that website because it was all bogus.
The democrats always make life unaffordable and when it gets really bad, a republican gets voted in because people are feeling the pain.
The messes made by the democrats are always hard to fix and have taken time to bring about corrections. Because of that, if the corrections don’t happen over night, people forget who actually started the problems and the republican gets the blame.
As a result, the gullible fools listen to the media democrat lies and the whole cycle repeats itself. They run out and vote for democrats.
I think the damage to the economy, particularly in the last 5 years, has been so great that it can’t be fixed in any conventional manner. Hence, calling for 50 year mortgages. That is not anymore home ownership than a 30 year mortgage.
People want food prices down. I can’t remember food prices or rents ever going back down after rising like they have.
Problem is, people don’t make enough to afford it all.
This was the plan to bring the communism into America. Pretending it ain’t so won’t change it.
Amazing that the 4 areas...Education, housing ,healthcare, & food were the 4 areas listed. These do seem to be about the most problematic & look how they are handled in such a way as to continually make things worse. Strange how that works out, isn’t it? I am old, & am currently directly affected by one of these situations that I don’t see being solved within my lifetime & yet there seems to be a fairly simple solution.
This was the plan to bring the communism into America. Agree
Dems slowly make life bad enough the people , who are not accustomed to distress, cry for “Someone to do something!”’
There’s one change that will make the cost of EVERYTHING go down.
Tort reform, federal law, LOSER PAYS. Every business in the country (especially the medical industry) is choking on liability costs because of Death By A Thousand Cuts from all the ambulance-chasing attorneys.
Enact Loser Pays and 90% of all the nuisance lawsuits will dry up, and (maybe best of all) 90% of the ambulance-chasing personal injury commercials will disappear from TV and radio.
“Mamdani and the Democrat party have effectively defined a binary choice: Should government or “the market” control affordability?”
Many Republicans believe the same unfortunately.
Medical tort reform alone would provide a substantial positive jolt to the economy
The first rule in medicine today is avoid a law suit
All action and activity stems from that premise
“I can’t remember food prices or rents ever going back down after rising like they have.”
As a consumer, I was struck by how much the price of gas and food went up when Biden was President. Some restaurants closed too as wages could not compete with Covid pay to stay home.
President Trump has (at least mostly) stopped the war on CO2 and the price of gas has fallen greatly. That’s a big plus.
Food price inflation has stopped, but food prices remain high. Yes, prices are high, but that is not inflation. Inflation is when prices go up again - and that has not happened. Trump probably deserves credit but won’t get it.
Lower fuel costs should help to lower food costs. On the other hand, taking the cheap illegal worker out of agriculture could cause food prices to go up.
As for rent, I own. Taking cheap illegal laborers out of home construction may drive prices up. That’s only part of the story as employment by Americans should go up too. I’m not a builder but would not be surprised to learn that we have excess regulation that raises prices.
I have only one story on regulation and it’s from decades past. I had a railed deck in the back of the house. I hired a guy recommended to me to build a screened porch. He built up from the existing rails and started building the roof. Someone at work asked me if it was up to code. I asked the builder and he looked panicked. He said that I hadn’t mentioned building to code. Building to code would mean tearing down the existing rails instead of using them. He was about 230 pounds and stood on the roof and told me it was solid. He finished the work, and we enjoyed that screened in porch as long as we lived there.
Liability insurance is a huge expense for physicians and a big driver in the cost of medical care. Tort reform could really bring down cost of health insurance.
In other news, grass is not green, it just looks that way because of the color.
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