This weekend, New York Times reporter Ezra Klein published an op-ed video identifying one of the significant problems Democrats face nationwide—their reputation for being unable to effectively govern the parts of the country where they have control, the “blue states.”
He points to housing and infrastructure as the top issues and the inability of blue states to build infrastructure on time and at cost and manage the housing and affordability crisis. Klein details issues like environmental views and regulations aimed at protecting or empowering poor communities and communities of color and how they lead to delays, cost overruns, or nothing being built.
There has been a lot of discussion about why cities like my own, New York, can’t or won’t build housing. The truth is we don’t build housing because nobody wants it, and in a democracy, when there’s a consensus among the public, the government follows. Liberals don’t want to build housing, and conservatives don’t want to build housing. They each have their own “don’t build housing” solutions to the crisis, which they explore but go nowhere with. The right wants to end rent control or deport immigrants to reduce demand and increase supply. The Left wants to build only social housing to take power away from landlords whom they claim, without much concrete evidence, are artificially reducing supply to keep prices up (No one asks why they only do this here and not in, say, Texas, where this isn’t an issue).
In this video, I explore the ugly truth about our inability to build infrastructure and housing and why we were able to last century. I also detail why places like New York City are so bad at building housing and why there is probably no democratic answer to this problem. It will have to be done despite not having the general public's support.
Take a look.
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