The Affordability Agenda for The States: Jonathan Williams on The Hugh Hewitt Show
The challenge for those of us who believe in market-based innovation is to actually come up with a competition of ideas.
Hugh Hewitt spoke with ALEC President and Chief Economist Jonathan Williams last week about what Hewitt called “the bad news”—the overwhelming support for socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani among young voters in New York. Williams described Mamdani’s campaign as a revealing case study. “We’ve got an individual who’s running as an open Marxist socialist, and yet his campaign theme centers in a word around one thing, and that was affordability,” he explained. Williams noted that in a city where many “can’t afford that $5,000 a month in the rent to live in Manhattan,” the message resonated, especially with younger voters entering the workforce.
However, Williams warned that Mamdani’s policy proposals represent failed ideas. “All those big government ideas have been tried before… and have come up far short, created a whole lot of failure,” he said. He emphasized the need for a competition of ideas, adding, “The challenge for those of us who believe in market-based innovation… is to actually come up with a competition of ideas and not just say no.”
The conversation then shifted to housing policy more broadly, with Hewitt pointing out that expanding rent control in New York will only worsen the affordability crisis. Williams agreed firmly. “Rent control is one of those boneheaded ideas that fails the basic smell test of Economics 101,” he said. “We know it doesn’t work… in cities across the country that have tried that approach.”
Williams highlighted policy successes in other states, including the ‘Montana miracle’ under Governor Gianforte, he called it, where supply-side reforms addressed high housing costs. “They actually [addressed] the root problem of high housing costs, and that is needed supply side reforms”, Williams noted.
He additionally pointed out that property taxes are a significant driver of housing costs and that model policies, such as the ALEC Truth in Taxation model policy, could serve as a solution to this problem.
“We have one of the best wins for the free market that we’ve seen in recent times, and that is our ALEC Truth in Taxation model, which we’re seeing states adopt across the country to say, let’s be honest about what’s driving property tax, and that is government spending.”