The Price for Affordability After New York’s Elections: Jonathan Williams on American Radio Journal

When James Carville coined the phrase it’s the economy stupid during Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign for President, he captured a truism of American politics. Americans vote with their pocketbooks, and now, with the 2025 elections in the rearview mirror, results in New York City deserve some additional attention, as the cost of living is the ultimate pocketbook issue, and those costs are astronomical in places like the Big Apple. Self-described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdami has been elected mayor, but what was the general theme of his well-funded campaign? Ironically, in a word, affordability. His campaign promised a rent freeze for housing costs and government run grocery stores to lower food costs for New Yorkers burdened by record rents and taxes. It sure sounded like relief.

Yet, economics isn’t about good intentions. It’s about tradeoffs and actual outcomes. Affordability does not come from price controls in the long term. Any student of history knows that price controls lead to scarcity or other deferred consequences. Plans with slogans like freeze the rent or cap prices have a seductive simplicity, but over time, they destroy the very incentives that lead to more housing, more supply, and more competition. When landlords cannot charge market rents, fewer build supply or make improvements to their property. When grocers face price caps, shelves will empty out or stores may shut down altogether. The very cure becomes the disease.

Rent control in New York is hardly new. Decades of rent controlled and red subsidized units exist, with lotteries determining who gets the subsidy. The lottery is a stark signal. When you must draw lots to find affordable housing, something is clearly broken. Markets can’t function without price signals. We know so. When prices are artificially frozen by government, development is thwarted. When supply can’t expand in response to demand, then prices don’t moderate. They rise.

Further development, of course, is the answer. When housing prices rise, the free-market signal is to build more. That extra supply then moderates prices. But when you freeze prices and allow bureaucratic permitting rules and zoning laws to block new units, supply falls and demand remains, so then affordability goes out the window.

Mr. Mamdani’s agenda is not novel; it merely repeats the failures of the past. And while it may help a few in New York, it’s going to leave most of New Yorkers left behind. The same philosophy is clearly visible in Washington, DC, where Senate progressives insisted for weeks that reopening of government should be linked to protecting pandemic era subsidies for Obamacare, or the so-called Affordable Care Act. It does beg the important question that, if the Affordable Care Act was actually affordable, why are there even subsidies needed in the first place? When regulation mandates and government distorted markets dominate, government kills competition and innovation.

Property taxes, driven by sky high assessments by local governments, directly reduce housing and affordability. It is no wonder why property tax burdens are near the top of problems taxpayers identify in nearly every state today. That’s why the Alec model Truth in Taxation Act matters. In practice, that means that when property taxes rise, the tax rate should decline unless voters and elected officials explicitly approve more revenue through assessments. Utah, the state with the best economic outlook in America for 18 years running in Rich States, Poor States, the Truth in Taxation Law has been on the books since 1985 and has prevented many hidden tax hikes through assessment increases that fresh affordability.

Similarly, on energy affordability, the government’s reach often drives up prices. ALEC’s Energy Security ARC model, as recently adopted by Louisiana this year, addresses the need for affordable and reliable domestic energy supply.

Americans are demanding an affordability agenda, and rightly so, but the solutions will not come from grand government mandates, price freezes, or ever-growing subsidies from places like New York City or Washington, DC. Real affordability comes when we restore the mechanisms that create wealth: competition, innovation, individual choice, decentralization. Rising housing costs won’t be solved by freeze the rent. They’ll be solved by building more housing, reducing needless regulations, and enabling development. Energy costs won’t be solved by picking winners and losers by government. They’ll be solved by letting markets decide who produces, transmits, and delivers power most efficiently. Health care costs won’t be solved by ever bigger programs. They’ll be solved by empowering patients, enabling competition, and increasing transparency and price signals.

So, the lesson remains simple. It’s still the economy stupid. As Americans rightly demand an affordability agenda, let us not look to the failed promises of big government, but to free markets and ideas that empower individuals through the power of choice.