How Can Democrats Possibly Run On "Affordability"?

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How Can Democrats Possibly Run On "Affordability"?

  • We are now less than a month out from the mid-term elections, and the single biggest theme that the Democrats have chosen to run on appears to be “affordability.”

  • How can this possibly be? We live in the age of immediate availability of information, let alone artificial intelligence to track down anything that might previously have been challenging to find. If you want a state-by-state comparison of costs for any particular thing, you can get it in a fraction of a second.

  • The results are in: the Democrat-run states are less “affordable.”

  • The Democrats and Republicans propose opposite strategies for dealing with the economy. The Democrats advocate for higher government spending, higher taxes, and more regulation of business; and the Republicans advocate for lower spending, lower taxes, and less regulation of business. The states are the “laboratories of democracy,” where we get to see the consequences of disparate policies play out, and to evaluate the results. Neither party is perfect in implementing what it advocates, so there are always some complexities. But in the main it is easy to collect data that give a relatively clear picture of the results of Democrat versus Republican policies.

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Update On "Homelessness" In New York

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Update On "Homelessness" In New York

  • Recently (May 2026) I did an update on the “homelessness” situation in San Francisco. The title was “The Homeless Industrial Complex Eats San Francisco For Lunch.”‍ ‍

  • I have taken a particular interest in “homelessness” in San Francisco ever since that city had a big referendum back in 2018 to pass a special payroll tax supposedly to solve the “homelessness” problem once and for all. The result in San Francisco, you will not be surprised to learn, was that the Homeless Industrial Complex has since swallowed up all the new funding and much more, while the number of people identified as “homeless” has only gone up, and then up some more.

  • But how about New York? In recent years the City hasn’t exactly been bragging about its success in this area, so data have been a little hard to come by. However, a few days ago (September 5) the New York Post had a story that gives an idea of the overall picture.

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There Are No Budget Constraints In New York City: "Coastal Resiliency" Edition

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  • I often make fun of the federal government as operating with what it thinks is an “infinite credit card,” outside and beyond any budget restraints. And thus all problems, real or imaginary, can be solved by dispensing some of the infinite federal loot. In its partial defense, the federal government does have the ability to print money, although that ability too eventually runs into limits.

  • And then we have New York City. The City has no ability to print money, but nevertheless operates as if there are no constraints on spending. The sky is the limit! Recently I wrote about how the City spends about triple the national average per student on preK-12 education, and more than double the national average per capita on Medicaid. Those are crazy excessive amounts, but at least education and healthcare are bona fide purposes for the spending of resources.

  • But how about spending huge amounts of money on pure fantasies that accomplish absolutely nothing?

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New York/Florida State Budget Comparison, FY 2027 Edition

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  • New York’s and Florida’s respective state budgets have just been finalized for what they call the 2027 “fiscal year.”

  • In New York’s case the FY runs from April 1 to March 31, so the budget is supposed to be final by April 1; but, this being New York, the budget was about 8 weeks late. In Florida the FY runs from July 1 to June 30, and the legislature has already completed its work on the FY 2027 budget.

  • Ability to meet fixed deadlines is just one of many ways in which Florida exemplifies responsible state government while New York exemplifies the irresponsible version. Over the past several years, I have had multiple posts comparing state governance in New York versus Florida, for example this post from June last year comparing the budgets of the two states.

  • With another year’s budgets now complete, it’s time for an update.

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The Homeless Industrial Complex Eats San Francisco For Lunch

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The Homeless Industrial Complex Eats San Francisco For Lunch

  • It’s been a long time since I have done an update on the homelessness situation in San Francisco. The reason is that I have avoided the issue until sufficient evidence had accumulated to make the obvious conclusion completely definitive and undeniable.

  • It was all the way back in 2018 that some of San Francisco’s foremost do-gooders, led by billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, organized a referendum to implement a new payroll tax to raise the revenue to solve the homelessness problem once and for all.

  • The referendum was designed to raise some $300 million per year, on top of San Fran’s already generous homelessness spending. All of the new spending was to be dedicated to the task of ending the homelessness crisis.

  • On October 24, 2018 — just a few days before the referendum was scheduled to take place — Benioff got an op-ed published in the New York Times advocating for its passage. The gist of the op-ed was that it was time for San Francisco’s business community to step up and get this done.

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Inside The New York City "Budget Crisis": PreK-12 Education

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  • You may have heard that New York City has a “budget crisis.” The reason you may have heard that is that our new Mayor Mamdani has been loudly proclaiming that mantra to anyone who will listen.

  • After taking office on January 1, Mamdani promptly came up with the “budget crisis” theme during his first month in office, of course blaming the supposed crisis on his predecessor Eric Adams; and he has been repeating the mantra regularly ever since.

  • From a Mamdani press release on January 28: TODAY, Mayor Zohran Mamdani outlined the “Adams Budget Crisis,” a fiscal emergency driven by years of staggering mismanagement under former Mayor Eric Adams. . . .

  • It’s not just a “crisis,” but also an “emergency.” And moving forward to two days ago, there was Mamdani once more, this time in the City Hall rotunda, harping on the same words again — and using them to demand that the state Legislature and Governor enact new taxes to provide him with additional revenue. From NBC News, April 28:

  • "New York City faces a budget crisis of historic magnitude," Mamdani said Tuesday during a joint press conference. "We've inherited a deficit larger than any since the Great Recession. Years of mismanagement and chronic under budgeting, alongside a structural imbalance between what New York City sends to the State and what we receive in return, have taken a toll. We cannot close this deficit with savings alone. We need new revenue.”

  • So has New York City actually been the subject of “chronic under-budgeting” as Mamdani asserts?

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