In other news

I've been waiting 45 years to see this.

I mostly get my information about what the talking heads are saying from 2+2.

There's no rent control anywhere in Milwaukee that I'm aware of, and I ask because even without a strong monetary incentive to misbehave, I still run into people who break the terms of their lease and allow unauthorized occupants to live in their units. I can send out all the breach notices I want, but there aren't any teeth behind enforcement beyond the standard eviction process. I can only imagine the aggressively dismissive courtroom encounter if we actually took it that far, though. Tenant says, "They were only visiting" and we'd immediately be told to GTFO and stop wasting the court's time. Plus, as long as someone is paying the rent, I'm not overly incentivized to follow through on enforcement anyway.

We have specific low-income housing here, but I wouldn't put that into the same category since the rent is simply a set percentage of your declared monthly income. If you make no money, you pay no rent.

Rococo is implying that the rent-controlled status follows a tenant instead of a unit, which would make more sense as to why people aren't willing to resell it at a markup.

He actually specifically went against defund the police and said they need more money and to have more specialized civilian law enforcement. I’m against defund the police as much as the next person, and I think we should give credit to people for being willing to say that.

I don't believe that it follows the tenant, but I believe you can get kicked out of your rent controlled apartment if you get caught abusing the system.

How does the council work for seats? i mean does the mayor pick a significant number of them, are they are elected in parallel with policy platform and specific local sub-constituencies they have to answer to?

This is probably much better for ones general mental health

Man, you've been missing on that octopus' action then!

In most places mayor is a separate race and gets zero say in who is on the city council. They are divided into districts based on geography. Each district votes only for their Council District. They each run on their own platform. There may or may not be a primary.

What is there to understand Right Wing Opinion Media Trump is God Left Wing Opinion Media Trump is Hitler

Interesting, that's completly different in Italy. Ok so the position is much more performative theater and the actual power is in the council?

In Italy a mayor sometimes has to keep the council in check or to make deals, but only if it has been elected by a coalition of parties. Seats are allocated 60% to the winning mayoral candidate party (or parties supporting him), unless ofc they got more than 60% of the votes.

Basically it's like a mini prime-minister with the council being a mini-parliament that has a majority that supports the prime minister.

case in point

So cordie, my worldview is that from 1890 things kept going better only inasmuch as we avoided marxism, and we actually risked everything with the existence of marxism, and very lefty policies created disasters every time they were tried , not only in actual communist countries but also in continental europe and to a lesser extent in the USA.

I just completly deny that GDP per capita growth from 1900 has been caused by "liberal policies", i am actually virtually certain a lot of liberal policies kept growth lower than it could otherwise have been.

The history of the west in the last 100-150 years is basically the history of good, decent, rightwing people on the economics in the west fighting for the destiny of humanity against everyone else: foreigners, and domestic enemies on the left.

We barely survived and that's why we grew only a little (avg or 2% or less most decades *I AM TALKING PER CAPITA*) even with tremendous technological progress that would have allowed far better prosperity if leftist rapacious hands had been kept at bay more.

Western societies are carrying SO many parasitic individuals disgourging so many resources on them , and not happy enough with doing that are now deciding en masse to carry even more parasites from the rest of the world.

We still manage because some crucial elements of prosperity still work decently even against the continous attempt at destroying them of people like karl marx in this forum, and tens of millions of others worldwide, + a few billions that get enamoured with parts of that genocidal ideology (marxism) and so destroy or attempt to destroy this or that pillar of capitalism with overtaxation, overregulation, overredistribution

They are elected by district. They are not appointed by the mayor.

My all time fav movie

Yes i am thinking about $30 minwages and city-owned supermarkets. Basically the council has to fund the supermarkets if i understand it correctly so Mamdani can't bleed infinite money on that at will, he will be in charge (or will select the people being in charge) of those supermarkets if he becomes mayor but the scale of the project will require council approval, do i get this right?

And for the $30 minwage, the council will have an up and down vote on it or even will be able to insert any exception it wants and so on?

If it wasn't for leftists and leftist ideology in general (it creeps A LOT to the right as well when you have only 2 parties and you need to win elections at the margin; i am talking if I was the median voter) we would have solved energy decades ago for all practical purposes, with a ton more nuclear for example.

That alone is more than enough to claim that a counterfactual west without leftism would be FAR richer today.

I can't speak for Italy, but in the United States, no group is more wound up about "parasitic individuals" than right-wing people without a job. Make of that what you will.

I'll give you an example. My brother has a friend from high school who hasn't worked a square job in twenty years. He fancies himself a day trader, but in fact, most of his modest income comes from slinging weed on a non-industrial scale in a state where weed remains illegal. Dude is seriously pissed about tax rates and government handouts, even though he pays virtually no income tax. He identifies as libertarian, of course.

wtf am I reading?

How big marxism was during victorian era?
I suppose you pick 1890 as the beginning of the fight against marxism?
So Victorian era and charles dickens stuff is your ideal?

For italy the group i have in mind is a huge amount of pensioners taking in more than the financial equilibrium of their previous contribution should allow, for longer.

That causes payroll taxes for pensions (which in the USA are approx 12.5% split in half between employee and employer) to be 31-33% depending on the specific jobs, for employees.

That absurd (top in the world) burden is basically a Damocle sword on the head of every working italian. And even if it's "only" employees paying them (self employed have a tad lower rates, people living on capital don't pay them ofc), that impoverishes the generations that usually would invest and plan for the future and so on.

And no it's not about Italy having more elders, because Japan has a demographic pyramid that is even worse than ours but spends half of what we spend (as a % of gdp) in public pensions (=japan had less leftism that most of the west did, which is why it's one of the best countries to live in, if you are japanese ofc).

France is in a similar situation as Italy (people being allowed to retire too early, with too high pensions, for too many years), but with a better demographic pyramid so they "only" pay 25% payroll taxes toward that.

All of this comes from leftism ofc (or attempts from the center / center-right to avoid the left autowinning elections, which is the same). The moment you open the political spigot and allow people to vote to take other people money (=leftism), you cannot avoid that outcome or variations of that outcome.

So my claim is basically that if government redistribution was completly illegal without exceptions (= no spigot existed or could exist legally) our societies would be far far better. Any costs are paid early on, then the survivors are all capable to fend for themselves (within the extended family) and everyone remaining is better off.

For the USA, it would be about canceling everything FDR and Johnson did wrt social programs and welfare.

It depends on how everything is set up in New York as I’m not an expert but yes I believe that is the case. He might be able to decide that government jobs have a 30 dollar minimum wage but probably not the city. And setting up free childcare and tax increases also seems prima facie like a city council thing, although he does have leeway to expand existing programs.

Cordie picked 1890. I presume because of the Sherman Act.

In 1890 you had disastrous worker strikes in the UK and elsewhere (=marxist violence) so i am not sure what you mean.

Well you keep saying that your side is the lifesaver of the last 100/150 years, and marxism is just here to break things.
So, either you think your side is a continuation of what was before (early 19th/18th century) and you defended society against the dreads of marxism.
...Or you don't and your side fight marxism for ?

I picked 1890 arbitrarily as a transitionary period from the (pre 1900s) world of cowboys and indians to the modern world