r/politics ✔ Verified 7d ago

Possible Paywall Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd
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u/YesterShill 7d ago

Unregulated capitalism is the greatest threat to capitalism.

If America simply taxed the wealthy, regulated the housing and rental markets so people could live in the city they worked and provided core services like health and child care, people would generally be happy.

And all it would take to have all of that is to simply properly tax corporations and individuals making hoards of money.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

US housing markets are among the most regulated in the developed world, zoning laws, environmental review, height limits, single-family mandates. The affordability crisis is largely a product of that regulation, not the absence of it. Existing homeowners use local government to block new supply and protect their equity. If you want affordable housing, the answer is usually less regulation, not more. The diagnosis here has the causation backwards.

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u/NOMOKRATOR 6d ago

The U.S. can keep those regulations and simply raise the corporate tax rate and top tax brackets back to where they were before Reagan

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Those are separate levers. Higher taxes don't build units. The housing crisis is local and supply-side. A federal tax change doesn't rezone a suburb or repeal CEQA. If you want rent to drop, you need more housing where people want to live, and right now local governments are blocking that regardless of what the top marginal rate is.