New York’s ballot may be “minor” on the calendar, but the ideas on it are anything but. We dive straight into the clash between headline promises and hard arithmetic: free buses and subways pitched as safety and access, a new 2% levy on high earners to pay for it, and a sweeping push for stricter rent control alongside massive “affordable” housing builds. It all sounds generous until you trace where the money comes from and how behavior changes when the bill lands on a small slice of taxpayers.
We pull apart the numbers behind fare-free transit, the city’s existing deficit, and the proposed tax mechanics that go beyond simply nudging incomes. Then we test the rent control narrative against decades of evidence from economists like Thomas Sowell and Henry Hazlitt: cap prices while costs climb and you get deferred maintenance, vacant units in regulated buildings, and a dwindling supply for the very people you want to help. Promises to abolish private property raise the stakes further, because property rights are the engine of financing, upgrades, and new construction. Remove those signals, and you don’t get equity; you get scarcity.
To highlight the pattern, we shift to healthcare and follow how ACA premiums rose while subsidies grew to mask the pain, funneling public dollars toward private insurers and leaving the unsubsidized middle squeezed. Across transit, housing, and health, the through line is clear: compassion without math collapses under its own weight, while targeted, tested policies that expand supply and protect the vulnerable can actually stick. If you care about safe streets, reliable transit, livable homes, and budgets that balance, this conversation cuts through the spin and goes straight to tradeoffs.
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