Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’
After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/06/europe-zohran-mamdani-policies-normalOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
From a unitedstatesian:
Genuinely, thank you, European politicians and public figures, for pointing out that reasonably socialized public services are considered de rigueur by the vast majority of the rest of the developed world.
It felt so weird when Tim Walz was lauded as a “gift to progressives” when he was running on a platform of “kids deserve food”.
I live in Colorado where we just passed a resolution to pay for school lunches by a small tax on individuals making $300,000 or more.
I swear to God, there were a ton of people complaining about it. My favorite was a Facebook friend of my brother who posted "Why are we allowing people to vote on this who don't make more than $300,000 a year if it doesn't affect them? That's not how democracy works."
These people are fucking insane.
Did you point out TABOR does require a vote for all new taxes, to include ones that don't affect everyone?
No, since it was my brother's friend, I just told my brother that dude was a moron - and left it at that.
I wonder how the kids receiving school lunches would have voted and if that bloke would have liked the result. Do we have any clue how the vote was split among parents of school kids?
You suppose this guy thinks men shouldn't be able to vote on women's health issues? I bet he doesn't see even the slightest conflict there.
Hypocrisy is not a bug, it's a feature.
But I wasn't asking about a reasonable perspective, just wondering out loud how a literal interpretation of his stance would turn out.
Is he going to skip off to Galt's Gulch now? 🤣
The gift being that he was old and white with a proven political track record.
Politics isn't just about policy, you have to appeal to enough voters to get elected if you want to implement those policies. Unfortunately, right now in the US, "kids deserve food" is a wild progressive idea.
Not just the developed world as quite a lot of developing nations strive to offer these services as well.
Which is even more insane.
But at the same time, 40 or so of our states have been essentially un-developing for the last couple decades. The US is essentially a dozen first-world countries supporting a few dozen third-world countries, and the latter constantly politically attack the former. Really would be nice if those of us who live in the actually productive regions could just cut bait on the regressive states and let them find out the hard way.
and we do it without wanting a revolution or supporting terrorists
it's magic
They won’t.
TSA didn't show up to work in Houston, people are starting to protest how they can. If they're not getting paid anyway...
Edit: here's the video: https://nitter.net/Suzierizzo1/status/1985813704277991745#m
That’s great! But unless they say “we are never coming back unless…,” The rich people can hold out.
Why are you being so negative about the pushes forward Americans are doing?
The young Bernie made it to mayor in fucking NYC. There was so much money against him there, he still won.
People get complacent. They will think this one voting season means a blue trend. They are so far from wrong it’s just… you gotta laugh. We are on the cusp of martial law… if this isn’t your primary political concern, then I dunno how to help you.
The 'enemy' the Americans face today is much more comparable to the 'enemy' the Europeans faced until the 19th century and before. The power of rich families and (large corporations) diminished in Europe in the 20th century, making the push for a better lifestyle a lot easier. Slaves and peasant weren't complacent of themselves, they were made powerless by the system they were born in. If you look at history, the more powerful the US became on the world stage the more civil rights were established in less powerfull but equally developed nations. It's no coincidence that since the second world war the Europeans increasingly got better healthcare, education, pensions etc while the American progression on civil liberties slowly came to a pause. It's a complicated story, but complacency is a luxury only the well off can afford. A lot of those that are not fighting the system are busy getting by and trying to get to the end of the month.
67% living paycheck to paycheck, will be broke and dead missing work.
Theres no social safety net to fall on during protests/strike but they would have to do mass strikes/protests to get those safety nets. Hell the poor excuse of social safety nets Americans do have disappear if the government just decides to shut down.
Keeping healthcare coupled to employment will forever be the chains on the US working class. Food, child care, many social services can be absorbed through community solidarity but healthcare costs are unbreakable.
It’s almost as if that is the plan
Unions here pay you for going on strike. It's part of why you pay to be in a union, so they can leverage it this way.
You can translate this page for more information. It's a very nice summary of how strikes in my country are legally arranged (totally believe any American reading this 's eyes will pop out and jaw drop to break the floor)
https://www.liantis.be/nl/nieuws/staking-vraag-en-antwoord
That's what unions are for.
"They took some much from us that they took out our fear"
This was the situation in the late 19th century for the workers in Sweden. They somehow managed?
Mostly fear, driven by stupidity. Socialism is indistinguishable from Communism and on par with Nazism in some parts of the US. There's also the myth of American exceptionalism, that we can succeed where others have failed because 'Merica.
The interesting thing is that the myth of American exceptionalism works both ways - both that we can succeed when we use strategies that have failed elsewhere, and also that we're so unique and different that we'll fail if we try strategies that are proven successful elsewhere. Both convincing people that we should do the opposite of what's been shown to solve problems elsewhere.
What I feel more fascinating is how, at least it seems to me, the exceptionalism often stays with Americans even if they do realise how shitty the country is becoming. You can see it either in comments suggesting the USA is worse that any third world country ("we're the best at being the worst!") or, especially with tankies, where since capitalism isn't working in the USA and USA is the best at capitalism so obviously it can't work anywhere else and the Russian model is the way to go.
It's just how it looks to me as an outsider, but I can't shake the feeling that the idea of American exceptionalism is too deeply entrenched even in people who hate the country.
Someone i know on fb literally just posted that they are glad snap ended so people have to work hard like him.
Everyone commented he was an absolute idiot. So that was good.
So yes, its American individualism at work. Fuck everyone. I got mine (especially if they have kids, then theyre 1000x more selfish, as is natural).
Wish I could move.
We can succeed where others fail in all things except taking care of each other.
On par with nazism would be a good thing for MAGA wouldn't it?
Too many believe they're not Nazis at all because LALALALALALALALA! 😖
Well indoctrinated to enshitification.
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.
The problem with fighting is that there is a chance you will lose something. United States citizens still have it pretty good compared to most of the world. Yes, that’s falling fast, but I think it will take a generation or two for that to really sink in. So, it’s not bad enough to take chances just yet. (Lazy)
Also, there is quite a bit of corruption on every level, and most US citizens with any amount of power are more than willing to throw their neighbor under a bus if it will benefit themselves. This means that, should any sort of strike happen, there will be plenty of scabs and shitty rich people to squash that. (Fear)
Also, over the past many decades, public opinion has been manipulated into thinking that supporting the company is better than supporting your comrade. Quite a number of people think unions are a bad thing. And while they’re certainly can be bad unions, that does not make the concept bad. (ignorance)
For example, The huge amount of work and public support to required to entirely dismantle an industry like Health Insurance is unfathomably large. It would mean work loss for millions who won’t have skills outside that industry. The transition to socialized healthcare would undoubtedly be rocky at best—and people will die. And trillions of dollars would be “lost.” The rich would never allow it, they would sink the whole ship before caving to the people.
I’m all for it. Strike until 100% socialism. But people with kids? They are not so bloodthirsty.
Church took back its power while we were watching TV. Back to square one.
And don’t sit down next time ffs lol
50? You got these rights in the 1970s?
Yes. Thank you.
The fact that even r/democrats has banned posts about Mamdani is shocking to me. (I found out from Bluesky, went to Reddit and checked and it's true)
This dude is normal. Full stop.
EDIT: And yea, I was literally thinking these days "It's nice to see Europe influencing the US for a change"
What why haha
Because Reddit is run by billionaires like any other enshittified format.
Head over there and promote a platform of free speech where Mamdami can be discussed. Like... this one?
Talking about Lemmy will also get you banned there. It’s best to treat Reddit like the plague house it is and stay far away.
I've done it on a few subs, so it probably depends on the mods. Haven't been banned yet.
Nobody can hear you over the bots
I don't really know, to be honest. The mods there never gave off a bad vibe before. I don't know what's gotten into them.
All of the original mods got kicked during the subreddit strikes. They are all replaced by stooges.
I don't see why it's shocking. That sub is basically an enforced echo chamber for the netanyahu wing of the party.
“It’s nice to see Europe influencing the US for a change”
They're even putting roundabouts in South Carolina cities!
“Europeans recognize his vision about free public transit and universal childcare. We expect our governments to make these kinds of services accessible to all of us,” said Verbeek. “We pay higher taxes and get civilized societies in return. The debate here isn’t whether to have these programs, but how to improve them.”
Yes.
Honestly I love taxes. I don't love that billionaires don't pay enough taxes and the unequal tax burden across different social groups but I love taxes and I love the idea of taxes. My dream would be a society where I work for basically pocket money and everything else - quality staple food and fresh food, education, healthcare, adequate housing, transportation, communication, childcare - is provided to me.
Honestly, one of my biggest conspiracy theories is that US employers (which are almost universally rich conservatives) use pre-tax income specifically to garner hate for taxes. Because conservatives always want to lower taxes on the rich, so they try to poison the average person’s view on them to sway public opinion. Whenever Americans discuss their income, it is always referencing the pre-tax amount. For instance, if an American says they’re making $50k per year, they’re probably only taking home ~$42k. So they tend to see taxes as an extreme burden, because they’re always looking at their pre-tax amount when they think about their income.
The American tax code is also intentionally kept extremely confusing, to further stoke hatred for taxes. Taxes could be an automatic “hey, here’s how much you owe, and how we calculated it. Let us know if you have any deductions we missed, and we’ll amend it for you” letter from the IRS. But instead, Americans are forced to calculate their own taxes, (even though the IRS already knows how much they owe), which means every American is annually reminded of how much income they’re “losing” to taxes every year.
In contrast, the rest of the fucking world uses post-tax income, because that’s how much money you can actually plan to take home. The taxes are a consideration, but if a job advertises €50k, it means the employee is taking home €50k. The taxes are more of a given, and are handled on the backend where the employee doesn’t need to worry about it. They apply for a job that makes €50k, and they know that’s how much they’ll take home. The taxes are already calculated for them, so they don’t need to worry about it.
Same for things like sales tax. If you see an item on the shelf for $1.00, it’ll actually ring up as $1.08 (or higher, if their state also has a sales tax) at the register. So Americans are constantly reminded of how much they’re spending in taxes, because every single purchase they make is noticeably taxed and hits their bottom line. Whereas Europe just lists the post-tax amount. So Europeans don’t need to worry about sales tax, because it is already factored into the cost of the item. If they see something on the shelf for €1.00, it will only cost €1.00…
I just wanted to clarify to everyone not familiar with it that most places in the US have a combination of state and local sales taxes, but no federal sales tax.
Still, adding semi-random taxes on top of the signed price is something that strikes me as surreal as a European. We have sales taxes, too, but it is always included in the advertized price.
Absolutely! It's always a drag, especially on high-priced items, to be hit with a big amount in taxes when you check out. I'm sure that this was pushed by the anti-tax crowd in the US to keep how much people are paying in taxes front and center.
Differing from town to town, state to state.
Looks around confused in German
It's an interesting overall take still! But I am wondering now how income is handled in other European countries, I actually don't know.
I think you're missing something here; in the UK we also talk about pre-tax income.
It's important in lots of ways, for example you choose how much to pay into your pension, and you get tax relief on that.
If you just talk about post-tax income you would miss the enormous difference between someone who is on £54,350 and pays the minimum 8% into a pension (£50k taxable) and someone on £62,500 who pays 20% into a pension (£50k taxable). The second person is a lot better off overall, because they have saved £12,500 in their pension and the first person has saved £4,350, which compounds pretty quickly.
Yes, thank you! I agree taxes allow us to have nicer things than we could afford individually. The problem is how our tax money is spent, on things like those fucking private/public ventures where the municipality builds the stadium, and some jackoff gets billions from it
Yeah, taxing the rich is basically the only way to make a society work at all. Nothing else works.
You can try to just print money to pay for social programs (in other words, what the state/government is doing when it goes into debt), but that's only a patchwork solution and not a long-term solution, because eventually if you print too much money you cause hyperinflation. So, taxing the rich is the only meaningful way to run a society long-term.
Of course. Your Democrats are our conservative parties, and your Republicans are our rightwinger/neo-nazi parties. And we have parties, left of the American spectrum that are mainstream.
and dont forget to the right!
There is not much of a spectrum right of the Republicans.
As a foreigner I've been disgusted by all the American media surrounding Mamdani's campaign. Even from so called "liberal media" like the Washington post; it's been grotesque racist caricatures, overblown red scare taglines, and downright apocalyptic visions for a guy that wants, cheap fast buses and to tax the oligarchs.
I can't believe the Ideological shit show that is America and it frightens me that they think it is their duty to export these ideas to other countries.
I agree with the sentiment, but the Washington Post has not been "liberal media" since Bezos bought it. I used to have a sub, in 2017, and don't recognize the place any longer.
So it turns out Jeff Bezos hasn't been funding the Antifa super soldiers like musk said? =P I am shocked, Next you are going to tell me George Soros isn't a bastion of liberalism either!
But in all seriousness. The vibe i am getting from overall media in the Us is that some leans "liberal" and some leans "conservative" but they all protect the interests of billionaires or are downright owned by them.
This is pretty much my view on it. For the most part, the way they may lean "liberal" would be on the margins, maybe something like identity politics. Anything that might mess with oligarchs' money or question something like our relationship with Israel is usually out of bounds.
I didn't start really paying attention until the early 90s, but it's been more or less like this as far as things I've noticed. Chomsky says similar things going much further back in relation to the corporate media. Movies like Network lampoon it...
I don't think it's been getting any better - with deregulation and consolidation, it seems to be getting even worse.
Even before Bezos bought it, I don't think they were all that liberal. I'm sure it's only gotten worse, though.
Just a heads up, the Washington Post is considered the an oligarch paper over here. It's owned by Jeff Bezos and rarely is anything published which might try to push back on a finances first narrative that puts money before people. The people who still follow it are already million or multi-millionaires or believe that some day they will obtain that much money, and they might with the way inflation is going.
It's "Liberal" only in that it pushes for business liberty which I think is the simplest definition of Liberalism in Europe. As a USian I read that and think, "Why would anyone think WaPo is Liberal?"
I would consider WaPo a conservative paper. But like with the definition of conservative we used until I was 25. Meaning a tight fisted, push for no spending, fewer taxes, if YOU want your kid educated YOU have to pay for it YOURSELF, but we're cool with gays and blacks and other minorities, type of conservative.
But that type of thinking is now "Woke" according to our far right which currently controls our entire government. And that somehow makes WaPo a Liberal paper on comparison. Advertising works I guess.
If you want to know what progressives or really just what our big cities think I'd recommend googling smaller papers or magazines. I'm not saying there isn't some crazy right wing stuff out there too but here's a smattering:
Seattle: https://www.thestranger.com/
Denver: https://www.westword.com/
Chicago: https://chicagoreader.com/ https://blockclubchicago.org/
NYC: uhhh I never lived here so... Wikipedia has a list of print media! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_newspapers_and_magazines
I'm not sure Westword is the same as it once was or frankly any of these but they're all smaller than Jungle Oligarch Daddy's paper. Possibly owned by less agent oligarchs, I don't know but it's a place to start.
It frustrates me that they have been exporting these ideas for a very long time.
American exceptionalism has been an underlying assumption in Hollywood movies and US television, books and music for longer than either of us have been alive.
Yes, it's called Social Democracy and the countries that apply it always have the highest standards of life.
Don't let the billionaires bullshit you.
For you, the day free buses graced your village was the most important day in your life, but for me? It was Tuesday.
I always found it absurd that in the richest country in the world, there is no universal health insurance, no parental leave, no public holidays, that a college education costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, that there is no protection against dismissal, that people are starving or working but still homeless because they cannot afford an apartment—all of this is inhumane, uncivilized, and a disgrace to the US, not its recipe for success; it is its downfall, as the current regime is demonstrating.
It's the richest country in the history of humanity and all we did with it was oppress other nations, build a massive military, and sell the nation off to the rich. So far it's not a winning plan for anyone outside of the top 1%. Same shit, bigger piles of gold.
Well, you have produced the richest man in history, who is a Nazi and, apart from his wealth, does not seem to be particularly intelligent—but all the more greedy for it.
I agree with your general sentiment and conclusion, but wanted to point out that some of the items you mentioned are not completely accurate:
For the first two, perhaps you meant that there was no national requirement for those things. Regardless, I agree with your sentiment and conclusions.
Edit: apparently, parental leave also varies by state, with most of them not mandating paid parental leave.
Alone we go fast, together we go far. We're rich relative to other countries specifically because of how much we valued greed after ww2. Now that wave has ended and if we want to keep going we need to figure out how the second half of that statement works.
The wealthy in the US got rich by exploiting the rest of the population.
Cite your sources please, unless you mean to suggest that simply a rich person entering my house that I'm rich suddenly
There's absolutely nothing radical about Mamdani.
All of his proposed policies are favored by the vast majority of Americans and normal in actually developed nations.
Exactly. The real radical ones are like the US who don't give their own people affordable health care of all things.
Can confirm.
By the way my country has an actual Communist Party with some representatives in government (not enough for anything really).
And FYI EU politicians are learning from the US: the EU, either at top level or at countries' governments, is veering right as of late, towards the same fascism we now see in the US.
So perhaps we shouldn't be so smug, not right now at least.
Fascism is extremely well-funded and these assholes band together just look at the bailout of Argentina.
Your countries (I mean France at least) will burn themselves to the ground before they let that happen. Something I wish the Americans would do. I don’t want to be caught in a house fire, but if Temu Hitler is at my door setting it and my options are limited I’d drag him into the flames with me without a second thought.
Are EU politicians really learning from the US? Or are they just paid off pawns? Probably a mix of both, but I think it's safe to assume that the majority is caused by American meddling, until confirmed to be otherwise.
Oligarch meddling, they don't see flags (and neither should we).
They're all puppets and traitors.
They are veering right because of the blatant Russian propaganda that is trying to break up NATO and the EU by trying to make everyone more xenophobic.
Too bad for them EU countries have a much more robust political system that cuts out extremist views most of the time. We don't have a "winner takes all" system. And plenty of political parties, even right-wing ones, want nothing to do with the fascists.
I'm hopeful, but I wouldn't let my guard down.
Far-right parties are winning in Europe because the European Central Bank forces countries to adopt 'austerity' policies. These policies destroy jobs and reduce people's quality of life. So people vote for whoever promises to fix this - either the left or the far-right. But the ECB can't permit an anti-austerity government, so they crack down on the left. The far-right is tolerated as long as it only targets random Syrian refugees.
Russia is bad but blaming everything on russia is ridiculous. Xenophobia is growing everywhere with or without russian influence
It's the other way around. It's NATO propaganda that led us to the war with Russia.
The whole "it's too expensive" thing is kind of nonsense. There are billionaires. We would get something for the money. It's not like Zohran is proposing building a 500 solid gold statue of himself, or a ballroom that would only be used by a handful of people. Healthcare, buses, grocery stores, those all actually help people and will lead to more good stuff later.
People who stay healthy later go out to concerts and spend money, or whatever.
Giving money (especially in the form of services) to people who need it, immediatly injects money into the economy. Because needy people don't save big sums. When they have money to spend, they spend it. It remains in circulation, serving the economy until it reaches the hands of someone who can afford to not spend it. The very instant money reaches rich folk it could just as easily not exist anymore for all the good it does then.
The US cannot afford tax breaks for the rich, but injecting money into services and payments for the poor has a really good return on investment for a country.
Rs will say it's too expensive while at the same time giving tax breaks to businesses and millionaires/billionaires, and writing blank checks for war.
People who don't acquire a life of debt. Win-win.
FOX is pushing HARD to paint him as a communist foreigner dictator.
Its working perfectly on my parents who swear he is the anti Christ. While they worship drumpf.
Help.
I would lead with your values and ask questions like why they think childcare or public transit are bad things.
Oh, it's not that they think those things are bad, just that they want to be the arbiters of who deserves those things. They're not against social programs, they just want to put their churches in charge of them so they can police behavior.
So (their) churches should run childcare facilities and public transit? In a country founded as a secular nation, no less. That must make for some wild conversations. I'd sure love to know more about how that would be funded, never mind the implementation.
Questions like: how do we decide which churches are worthy? There are approx 45,000 denominations of Christianity and that's just Christianity....
Well, obviously that's where the US Dept of Faith comes in and starts whittling that number down a little, by their denomination declaring the other 44,999 to be heretical. And because they're with the government, they've got authority to stamp out heresy, violently, if need be. As for how it's funded? Well, since we got rid of the IRS, taxes aren't collected, but tithes are mandatory!
The actual European policies the US is in dire need of importing, not the Orbán and Putin-style dismantling of secular democracies.
As a European I'd see his policies as left wing but not as socialist, communist or whatever. And as a person who has been to New York countless times I would see anything that improves the quality of life such as public transport, childcare, food poverty as a generally good thing. Whether Mandani manages to pull it off and doesn't go to the dark side like every single other New York mayor remains to be seen.
His policies are fundamentally socialist and I'm not sure if it's possible to classify them as anything else. That said, you don't necessarily need to be a socialist to support them.
You put Mamdani, Bernie, or AOC virtually anywhere in Europe, and they're slightly left leaning moderates.
not in Poland, Hungary, Turkey and few others
I thought Italy went hard right wing a couple of years back?
Yes, the Italy is included in the "few others".
Perhaps on social issues, but economically it is true for the most part
Extreme left as defined in US falls somewhere around center-center right in EU on most issues.
Even in canada, he's considered extreme in some circles....
I overheard someone say today, "wow, don't new yorkers know they already tried communism in russia, cuba, venezuela, etc.???"
like... even in fucking canada we're calling a social democrat a communist
Shaking my fucking head.... i hate being neighbors with the US
Nah conservatives wouldnt implement mamdani's policies, definitely on the left.
lol or for some child’s play. US far left ideas is basic in most countries.
Americans live in a world where their "left" is already pretty far right. Someone who isn't that right but more centre / mildly left I indeed consider normal. It's still kilometers (miles) away from far left.
Am European; can confirm.
Hopefully this is not news to Americans, but I guess it may be. Seems the entire country is in its own bubble, separated from what Europe is doing.
We are just people, wanting mostly the same things.
When one gets to the bottom of anything, the truth is in the words you typed above. You are so right. Thank you.
Thank you, takes someone like minded to see what I meant by that. 🙂
nah, i used to think similar but i'm not so sure anymore. americans, from my perspective, really are more crazy than europeans, and it's not just because of propaganda. it's also from a learned risk-taking behavior that took centuries to build, whereas in europe that didn't happen.
Shout out to everyone who said his lofty impossible ideas are never going to happen in reality.
Somehow every country can do the impossible goals of "maybe the rich don't own every store" and "let's make it so people are paid better" but America, but somehow they're the impossibility, never the one county that refuses to try it.
COMMUNIST EUROPE
Yeah, there is very little that is "radical" about Zohran. Especially when you contrast that with what the Republican Party is actually carrying out against the American people right now and we don't even have to get into what they may or may not believe or what they want to do, in theory. We can see that with our own eyes.
That's not even getting into the completely crazy shit that their funders are influenced by: insane dumbasses like Curtis Yarvin, who is so full of Dunning-Kruger that he seemingly is convinced he's a genius and books like The Sovereign Individual.
It's also not getting into how the more overtly racist part of the party is excited by books like The Camp of the Saints....
My take has always been (regardless of living in Europe or anywhere else) that these type of issues is exactly why we have states and municipalities at all. I.e to help each other solve basic life more efficiently. Of course there’s different takes on best strategies for this but I have a hard time seeing how Mamdanis policies around infrastructure and housing are extreme in any way
It's almost as if having a central government with deciding power over nearly everything is inefficient and only leads to problems.
Because they are.
What is normality?
Not treating your populace like animals.
We’re technically all animals
But yea apart from that, it’s never been the norm in the USA, therefore it is not "normal"
You can also think it’s a basic feature that any country should have. There are many definitions of what normality is
So I’m just nitpicking
Don’t know why I’m writing this comment
Ignore me
Public transport is far from free here in the Netherlands. In fact I commute by car because it's cheaper
Username checks out :P
I was in Brussels recently and learned that the subway there is basically free as seemingly all stations have broken gates 🤭
But jokes aside, I was indeed a little bit shocked about the state of Brussels coming from Switzerland 😅 so much broken infrastructure, so much unused real estate (like fenced in but nothing done with it), so much waste and so many empty giant laughing gas bottles…
Maybe I was just in the wrong sector, but damn.. Never have seen something like this, and this is where main politics of EU takes place…
Wait, wait, let me get my best accent going:
“If you want less crime, give people less reason to crime.”
But that would involve not shooting people, so I understand that might be a bit out there.
There a socialist, here a right wing.
Wait until you get to know the European Left.
Overton window and all that.
Rent freezes are ineffective over here in Europe as well. They don’t create more housing, sometimes the opposite. There are lots of unintended side effects like having to pay bribes to get a contract at all.
There are several meta studies and studies on this, you can look up.
Rent freezes are only good for those who already have an affordable housing. It doesn’t solve the systematic issue the slightest.
They are not intended to create housing, they are intended to keep those who are already living in the area from being driven out by rising cost of rent.
That's a consequence of too little availability, not of rent freezes.
Which should be the top priority before enabling more migration into an overheated housing market.
i don't think a market can be "overheated" (except if you're referring to a bubble). what does that even mean?
https://iea.org.uk/media/rent-controls-do-far-more-harm-than-good-comprehensive-review-finds/
More migration comes either way, if you control rents or not.
You cite neoliberal garbage that has a childish strawman argument against a socialist on its main page. There are plenty of good arguments to make in favor of rent control that are biased the other way, the one that is not subservient to capitalist market forces and interests.
Jacobin has many articles in favor of rent control, written by economists that have looked at the data.
And here is another one that looks at multiple studies and finds that the negative effect on supply are mixed and marginal at best.
There's always a market with market forces.
If the legal market is completely state controlled, then the black market is still around. Corruption, bribes, and political connections then become the price to pay to even get a place to live at all.
I grew up in a socialist country with super low rent and the state owning everything. The rent was ridiculously cheap, but the housing quality was terrible. The state didn't pay for upkeep and buildings just rotted. Sure there was also new construction of commie blocks. Good luck getting one of those apartments! Also you couldn't even move to a different city without getting a state permit first. My parents had to bribe the state official with hard currency in addition to changing career, and using political favors to get an actual decent place.
yeah. the better way is city-built public housing. the city can either rent out or sell the apartments to people who personally need them, both work fine.
this way, you actually increase the amount of housing on the market, and also the city-built houses are typically rented out at-cost, instead of for-profit, which makes them a noticeable bit cheaper than housing provided by big private investors.
Agreed. City run housing should run at a low profit, so more city owned housing can be built with it.
Vienna does something like it, and it works well.
Many Americans do too. That's why he won.
This guy's hardly as radical as Jeremy Corbyn. Americans continue to astound me
Why is normal in quotes lmao
I'm getting kind of tired of Europeans thinking their stiuation is normal. They have ~350 million well-off people in a world of 8.5 billion.
Well, shouldn't it be the norm everywhere?
What nonsense. In some places, killing gays on sight is normal. It doesn't make it right.
ok so other place has free bus service, other other place murders lgbt people, therefore is it wrong for your place to have free bus service?
That's not a very good analogy. If somewhere else murders LGBT+ because it's normal, should we strive for that normalcy?
even with this... clarification? I still can't help but interpret your words as being against mamdani's policies of making life easier for the working class on the basis of them somehow also enabling lgbt violence or something
Europe is falling apart.
Any day now.... Any day.. just wait. It will fall apart..
It. Will. Fall. Apart.
... cmmmmon, now.
No: Now!
Any time now just you wait and see goddammit.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ws-YEa9ykEs
Europe will be majority foreign born and Muslim in a generation if they don't do something now. They are not your friends and want to tear down your churches and instate shariah law. Look at crime and sexual assault stats in the most heavily affected countries.
I do not fear that. Populations change over time. We will teach them to eat sausage and their skin will whiten long before they manage to outbreed the western civilization.
If they want tear down our chuches, I will only ask if they need any help.
Who told you that?
Probably even the genocide enabling zionism too!
Breaking: lemmy.ml user chimes in with breathtakingly stupid comment.
Shocking development: .world user is a liberal that supports genocide enablers
Tankie fails to convincingly mimic concern for basic human rights.
There it is, the classic TaNKiE terminating cliche haha!
It's a heuristic that slashes bullshit down to a minimum.
Now run along, and do what will surely feel like a victory lap to you.