The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3603 - IL Primary; Cannabis Union; Housing Crisis Driven By Inequality w/ GCD Union, Max Buchholz

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Welcome to The Majority Report   On today's program:   The Illinois primaries deliver mixed results for progressives in a series of campaigns flooded with cash from AIPAC, crypto and AI.   Toni Del-Sorbo, Malik Bowers and Luca Negrino from the Gotham Williamsburg Dispensary join Sam to discuss the dispensary's unlawful terminations during their successful union organizing drive to join the Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW.   Maximillian Buchholz, assistant Professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning at UC-Berkeley on to discuss a new working paper published by the London School of Economics entitled "Inequality, Not Regulation, Drives America's Housing Affordability Crisis."   In the Fun Half:   A sexual assault survivor comes out in support of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner in light of Janet Mills unleashing an attack ad on Platner.   Alex Jones appears on Tim Pool's whilst very intoxicated.   NBC interviews some folks at a rural Pennsylvania gas station about their thoughts on the war in Iran including a triple Trump voter who feels like an idiot for supporting the president.   Senator Rand Paul clashes with Markwayne Mullin at the Senate DHS Secretary Confirmation Hearing.   all that and more   New Yorkers if you live in Senate District 27 which includes the neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, including the East Village, Tribeca, Little Italy, Chinatown, Soho, and the Financial District and Greenwich Village support Yuh-Line Niou for State Senate    To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: PROLON: ProlonLife.com/majority Get 15% off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program. NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 SUNSET LAKE:  30% off all CBD tinctures for people and pets with code Spring26 at  SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday. March 18th, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the...

industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Tony Del Sorbo, Malik Bowens, and Luca Negriino from the Gotham cannabis dispensary in Brooklyn to discuss unlawful terminations of employees during their successful unionizing organizing drive to join Local 338 of the RWDSU. then Max Buchaltz, assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, the lead author of a new working paper entitled Inequality Not Regulation Drives America's Housing Affordability Crisis. Also on the program today, Israel assassinates top Iranian officials, including what many

suggest was the best opportunity to negotiate an exit source. strategy. Meanwhile, Illinois primary Stratton wins the Illinois Democratic Senate of primary in a somewhat surprise. Meanwhile, in the Congressional 2nd, 7th, 8th, and 9th. Not a great day for progressives. Daniel Biss wins in Illinois 9th. Melissa Bean in Illinois, 8th, Lashon Ford in the 7th, and Donna Miller in the second. Sort of a split with APEC, Mark Wayne Mullen, who has zero experience associated with anything involving the DHS, has his confirmation hearings in the Senate today for DHS chief. Republican Senate split on how to proceed.

with their voter disenfranchisement bill called the SAVE Act, UK security advisor reveals that Iran had offered a deal on the table in Wyckhoff and Kushner may have well as been working for Israel. Trump regime getting desperate, stopped wind farms, looking to spend a billion dollars just to kill them. study shows tariffs undermining U.S. manufactured growth. Meanwhile, U.S. producer prices rise unexpectedly. And Trump's withholding of an endorsement has guaranteed an ugly race between Paxton and Cornyn in Texas.

And a sad story of the University of Florida College Republican chapter having to close because of rampant anti-Semitism. Too many Nazis. And lastly, the bottom falls out on CBS News's ratings. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Emma Vigland out today. Illinois primaries yesterday, not particularly great news. In, you know, we were covering basically there were four major races, like I said.

in the headlines. In District 2, the winner, Donna Miller, she was the A-PAC choice. Peters was the progressive choice. Miller got 40%. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who is a couple years out of prison

for using campaign funds illegally, got 29%. and Peter's got 12%. So not a particularly great showing in that district. In Illinois's seventh, LeShon Ford won. I think that was probably best outcome that we could anticipate there. In District 8, or I should say in District 9, Daniel Biss edged out Kat Abugzzeila, by about less than three and a half points.

Shutting out Laura Fine, who was the A-PAC candidate. I think as a shorthand, you know, from those of us from New York, that's a Bradlander over Zoran Mamdani type of win. I mean, Biss is a fairly reliable left of, Democrat, Democrat, I would say. And the one perhaps where there should have been more attention paid.

We had Janade Ahmed on the program three weeks ago, I think it was. He was also endorsed by Justice Democrats. He lost to Melissa Bean by five points, about five points. But the marginal difference in terms of ideology between Bean, who was one of the most conservative Democrats, I think, in the caucus,

she was in a different district redistricting pushed her out. She enters back in. She is a conservative Democrat. and the ideological difference between Ahmed and Bean, I would say probably much larger than between Biss and Abugzela. I think if you were to look four years down the road and had the ability to compare Abugzalas votes and Biss's votes, they'd be largely the same. I have a feeling that's not going to be the case when it comes to Bean and

in this thought experiment, Jeneid Ahmed. And so in many respects, that race was not given the resources, perhaps, by progressives that or attention that it should have warranted considering the dramatic difference between being in Ahmed. Lastly, Giuliana Stratton, Stratton, I should say, won the nomination for Illinois Senate. She is more than likely going to be the senator based upon past experience.

She beat out Representative Raja Krishna Morty, In a bit of a surprise, it was definitely a defeat for the crypto industry. APEC laid low in this race, but reportedly Stratton received some funding from APAC supporters. But, you know, at least it made more of a bank shot than even the other more obscured APEC dollars. We should say that all the winners who received a ton of money from APEC, I mean, there was just a huge amount of PAC money in this race. It's like $30 million from APEC, another 20 from crypto. Some of the losers that didn't even support APEC got spending from APEC. Well, in part because they were functioning as spoilers as we saw in the ninth race.

but across the board I don't think there was a single ad that APEC paid for that mentioned the word Israel because it is a toxic it is toxic to democratic voters and APEC realizes this and at one point the DNC

can't outlaw it of course because these are outside expenditures. But there are things that you can do that can seriously penalize a campaign that is associated with this money in any way. In the meantime, let's look at the ad that people are at least crediting in part for Stratton's victory, taking it right to Donald Trump. Fuck Trump. Vote Giuliana. Fuck Trump.

Vote Juliana. Fuck Trump. Vote Giuliana. They said it, not me. I'm Juliana Stratton, and I'm proud to have lived my whole life on the south side of Chicago. I'm not scared of a wannabe dictator. I'm running for Senate to stand up to Donald Trump. I'll abolish ICE and hold Trump accountable for the crimes he's committed.

Just like they said, fuck Trump. Fuck Trump. Fuck Trump. Vote Giuliana. That's why I approve this message. Stratton is the lieutenant governor and much of the political firepower behind her came from Pitzker, both I think in terms of like cash and in terms of operation. And so apparently this reflects well on Pritzker in terms of his.

aspirations to be president. In moneyed circles, when we are in the sort of like a dollar primary, which really begins in earnest, probably following the midterms, maybe before then, in terms of where big dollar bundlers and donors say they will give money to a specific candidate in a presidential run, Pritzker's ability to have Stratt and win when apparently my understanding about Krishna Maturi is that he is a fundraiser, fundraising juggerna. And it raised, I don't know, $30 some odd million dollars himself for just this primary. that Prisker's ability to sort of match is, I guess, giving him or providing confidence for folks as we ramp up towards the 2028 election. But the next big – and my understanding also, there was two houses in Pennsylvania that I think Democrats flipped by wide margins.

There was one in Virginia that stayed Republican by a slightly larger margin maybe than Trump had won. Next big round of primaries, I think, don't come until May. So and the only other sort of, I think, important thing to note was huge Democratic turnout relative to Republican. Now, again, you know, Illinois is largely a blue state. but nevertheless, Republicans are less than enthused by Republicans at the moment. So we'll see. In a moment, we're going to be talking to three folks, Tony Del Sorbo, Malik Bowens, and Luca Negrino. They are from the Gotham cannabis dispensary in Brooklyn at,

to discuss the unlawful terminations of employees during their successful union organizing drive to join local 338 of the RWDSU. You tend to think of dispensaries because they're selling pot or weed, as the kids call it today, that they're going to be left leaning and union friendly, not always the case. maybe rarely the case. I don't know. People have had those things, you know, you have those projections towards like even like supposed progressive podcast or YouTube shows. And that's not always the case, as we've found.

Then we will be talking to Max Buchholz, assistant professor of the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, lead author of a new working paper. and it's just it's a working paper published by the London School of Economics entitled Inequality Not Regulation Drives America's Housing Affordability Crisis Just because it's always fun to get into

Those type of arguments about housing In this era of abundance We'll be talking to those guests in just a moment First a couple of words from our sponsors Oh, I should say we got sent Neutrofall years and years ago. They wanted to sponsor the program. At the time, hadn't occurred to me that I would want to take it. And the one person we had in studio who was starting thin, he wasn't interested.

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Should check it out. We'll put the link in the podcast and YouTube description. I'm going to take quick break when we come back. we're going to be talking to donie del sorbo malik bowens and lucan negrino from the gotham cannabis dispensary on their uh on the way that the dispensary has been punishing people who are trying to unionize we're right back we are back sam cedar on the majority report emma viglin is out today i want to welcome to the program lucca negrino a union representative local 338 r w d s tis a member of the bargaining committee and then uh malik bowens gotham williamsberg employee

uh still working there and tony del sorbo who used to work at the gotham a williamsburg dispensary um let's start uh i guess um let's start with you uh tony um what how long ago did you work at the Gotham dispensary and what happened? So I was part of the opening crew. So I started with them September 17th of 2024. And I was with them about seven months. I was terminated on April 30th, 2025. And what was the nature of what did you do wrong? Did you show up late? I did not. No, I was always on time. So why did they fire you? They claimed that I, I was a gossip and a bully. Oh, all right.

Well, Malik, did you ever work with Tony? Yes, I did. Did she bully you? Never. I've never seen him bully your soul. Did she gossip a lot about you? No, no, not that I know. Okay.

So now that we've heard some of your what, Luca, from your perspective, tell us the story of how Gotham tried to first, to unionize. Sure. Thank you. And thanks for having us, Sam. So we have been speaking with workers at Gotham from early 2025, and the folks themselves had gotten together and kind of contacted us. And, you know, our local has been organizing cannabis workers for quite some time.

So they decided that their group was ready. And as we were moving through that process and building up the bargaining, committee, I'm sorry, the organizing committee at the time and getting people on board, the company decided to react in a very negative way and go after our most vocal supporters, such as Tony, terminate them for bogus reasons, and try to, you know, completely destroy what was being built and scare the workers away. from wanting to form their union. So when, what was, what was the, just walk out, work out the dates for me because there was a big

change in the National Labor Relations Board, you may be aware of, following the 2024 election. Correct. So I think, I think we started our organizing at the beginning of 2025. We started our process of filing for election probably in April, and there was so many hiccoughs because we kept getting the run around from the employer about who is the actual employer. And, you know, long story short, we finally got an election date for June 2025. And we won that election in a landslide victory. and we should have immediately or very shortly after started bargaining for the contract. And the employer went months and months. It was about six months before we could even get a concrete answer on when they'd be willing to start bargaining.

So there was just this long process of- Has that started yet? As the bargaining started? Did you guys get a contract? We have finally started bargaining. And after a very long, unnecessary delay where we never had. got a clear answer as to why there was such a delay. And it, you know, just describes and points to us how, you know, they have no interest in respecting their employee's wishes. They have no interest in

getting to a bargaining agreement. And we've been dealing with this for almost a year at this point from when organizing started and we do not, as you question, we do not have a contract yet. Okay. And I should just also say, we're talking the retail wholesale department store union that you're a local of. So, Tony, what were you doing in those months beforehand? I mean, aside from being a bully and gossiping all over the place, what were you doing in terms of like organizing your fellow workers? So for starters, Sam, I was hearing what my fellow employees were having. having problems with in the workplace. And it's after hearing repetition and noticing patterns that you get to a point where you start to look at what your rights are.

So it started with listening to what my fellow employees were having issues with, noticing what problems I was aware of from my own experience, and then making myself aware of what we could do about it. And it became very clear that joining a union was the best, if not the only answer, especially how many times can you go to HR? Right. And, you know, Malik, I opened the segment by saying, you know, I guess there's a sort of just a predisposition or a bias.

And it's just like a projection in many respects that like if it's a dispensary, you just assume that there's going to be a whole host of sort of politics that come with this. And with that host of politics, you assume like they're going to be labor friendly and the idea of punishing people who would unionize, you wouldn't expect it. But Gotham is owned by some very wealthy private equity people. And I guess I was wrong. What was some of the problems that you were having working there as well? just just management issues

you know scheduling issues issues with just direct contact to what I need to talk to there wasn't any like person I can directly contact if I needed an issue it was always just like a telephone

just telephone yeah and so just to quickly expand on that you know the cannabis workers that we've been working with for some time now have a whole host of issues, right? And there are groups that want to organize just to, you know, to lock in what they currently have some of the great benefits and have guarantees in the form of a contract. And to always make sure that they have a seat at the table to constantly negotiate and renegotiate the terms of

their employment. And then on the other spectrum, there are places that are dealing with, you know, very wild wage and hour violations and violations of the sick law. And it kind of runs the gambit in between. So, you know, there could be many reasons, but, you know, from our perspective, all workers should be fighting to have rights in a union contract. Right. And Tony, I mean, is this a, this unionizing effort, is it just restricted to Gotham dispensary or is it across all dispensaries or what? You know, the climate is showing that many, many dispensary workers are seeking union contracts. Even just in the amount of time that we've taken since our election,

other dispensaries have gotten contracts. Other dispensaries have signed their cards. So it's a new industry, and we want to make sure that we actually get it off on the right foot. We can't treat the people who are on the ground floor making cannabis happen, helping introduce people to cannabis in a recreational market. and expect them to be mistreated or devalued and okay with that. Yeah, we're working with a whole host of different workers across New York State, not only in dispensary, is also in production and cultivation sites as well.

And so what's the hope at this point in terms of like, obviously their attempt to fire employees as a way, of stalling the unionization drive has failed. They're still maybe slow walking a little bit when it comes to the contract. But what is the ask, Luca, at this point? Well, I would say it's twofold. On the one hand, we're seeking justice for all those that were, you know, illegally terminated. And on the other side, you know, we want to have a collective bargaining agreement.

that enforces workers' rights at Gotham and at other places, you know, big picture. And Malik, I mean, broadly speaking, how long have you been a, what do you call them like bud tenders? Is that what it is? Actually, I'm a delivery driver. I've been delivering there since November, but I've been in the dispensary industry since 2023. When, more or less when it started. Okay.

And is that, I mean, so they're, from your perspective on the delivery side, I imagine there's a different set of issues than if you're working in the stores. But again, they all can be reduced down to like, who do we talk to about this? Yeah, exactly. That was my main issue. There was no, it was, there was no umbrella that was, that was, we could talk to. There was no network. There was nothing set up. That's why we reached out to the union, because we knew they would, like, hear us.

out and that they would advocate for us. Yeah. And so, Luca, is there, are there questions as to, like, what the bargaining units are? Or is it just all the employees together represent the bargaining unit for these shops? There are times when we're entering into negotiations or even organizing a particular group of workers at a dispensary or a production site of who's, included and, you know, we always face the employers trying to fight us in general and not even allow organizing to take place. But on top of that, if it does, they always try to limit and

restrict who's in the bargaining unit and so that, you know, they can still have full control over as much of the staff as possible so that they're not covered and protected under a contract. So it is fights. What can, what can, what can, what can, What can I guess, A, the customers of Gotham do, or, B, the, you know, just our audience in general? I would say that the customers could let their budtenders know in the stores that they support them and that they also believe that they should have strong protections and rights at their workplace. and encourage the owners of the business to negotiate in good faith. All right.

Sounds good. Anything else you guys, do we leave on the table? I hope, Tony, that, I mean, you're out there working now. Stop you bullying. But, all right, well, I'll say. I'll just give a shout out to all the workers in the cannabis industry. other industries that are actively organizing, speaking to their coworkers, you know, getting their issues identified and fighting for equitable workplaces. You know, it takes a lot of guts and it,

and it takes a lot of hard work to make it happen. So shout out to all the workers. And if there's folks who are working in this industry in New York State, they can reach out to you if they are looking for a union? Absolutely. They could they could find us local 338 out on Instagram or New York Cannabis Union. But if you Google, if you Google Cannabis Union, New York State, you will find us. And what did people do in other states? I mean, has there been a successful unionization in other states as well? 100%.

The other part of our organization is the United Food and Commercial Workers, the UFCW. They're actively organizing cannabis workers throughout the country and have collective bargaining agreements in many, many states. All right. So folks can drop them a line and they can give them advice on how to go forward in that unionization. Tony Del Sorbo, Malik Bowens, Luca Negreno. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you. All right, folks, we're going to take quick break. When we come back, we'll be talking to Max Buckholt's assistant professor in the department of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley,

lead author of a new working paper published by the LSE, Inequality Not Regulation Drives America's Housing Affordability Crisis. We'll be right back after this. We are back, Sam Cedar on the majority report. Emma Viglin out today. I want to welcome to the program, Max Buchholz, assistant professor, the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, lead author of a new working paper with co-author,

coming from the University of California, I should say, University of Toronto, Georgia Institute of Technology, and UCLA. It was published in the London, published by the London School of Economics. It's a working paper. Inequality, not regulation drives America's housing affordability crisis. Max, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. So it's a working paper.

So it hasn't yet to be peer reviewed. And so, you know, people should, you know, take it with that knowledge that it's yet to be peer reviewed. And, you know, it's one that'll be examined. But it raises, it addresses a rather important topic, not just in the context. And, of course, you know, you do this in the context of affordability for housing. but the affordability of housing has become a broader sort of avatar for a lot of what's happening within the Democratic Party and, you know, sort of this from the center towards the left, around like the abundance, so-called abundance movement and whatnot. And so this debate is

pretty loaded in many respects. But let's just start with what the, the abundance theory is about housing? I've had a conversation with Aser Klein about it, and, but why don't you characterize what that theory is about creating affordability? Yeah, so, I mean, we're not specifically focused on abundance in the paper, but I think abundance kind of fits within this broader sort of discourse that we are critiquing, which is that housing has become so unaffordable today because of regulations on construction and land use, mostly zoning, that have made it difficult to build new housing. And because of that, we don't have enough.

We have a supply shortage. And housing has become unaffordable. And that's kind of the basic argument. Right. And that this regulation is so burdensome that it's just basically jacking. up the cost of building housing and has made, I guess, the private enterprise, and even to the extent that any of it socialized, weary of getting involved in building new housing. And one of the sort of like primary findings that you guys had in your paper is that you're not

certainly against the building of housing, but that the amount of building that must take place, it has to do with the elasticity, I guess, between the amount that is built and how sensitive rents are to having more supply on the market. Explain that dynamic because, you know, Like my first thought is, well, if you build more housing, in general, if you build it at the top, you know, people say like, okay, well, wealthy people, wealthier people will move into that and they'll vacate their lesser quality housing. And eventually it sort of like trickles down and, and there'll be more housing. And it'll be cheaper because landlords will have to compete with each other. Yeah, and I mean, at a basic level, that's not wrong. And we're not really saying that's wrong.

So let me add a couple caveats about or sort of disclaimers about what we're saying in the paper, right? So if we think about first, like just with the basic zoning and regulation question, there are undoubtedly cases where communities are using zoning to be exclusive, to exclude low-income people from living there. and that is a real problem, right? Second, like, there might be valid reasons for reforming sort of regulations on land use and construction. We just don't think that affordability is like any impact on affordability is going to be like a real drop in the bucket. And then the third thing, and this gets to the point you were just making, is that we definitely don't dispute that if, like, you could kind of just magically add a bunch of housing to a housing market, that prices will go down, right?

And that's what we're very explicitly doing in the kind of piece of the paper that you're referring to, where we're looking at, we do a simulation, and I think there's been a lot of sort of misinterpretations of what we're doing. What we're doing is essentially just a thought experiment. And we're saying, okay, let's take all the information that we have about how new supply impacts prices, right? And I think there's this kind of conception among the public that we know a lot about that. And we actually don't. We know very little about that. And the key reason is that on the one hand, if you add new supply, prices go down.

But the reason that developers add new supply in the first place is because prices are going up. Right. And so that makes it really, like empirically, it's really difficult to sort of untangle what exactly is going on there. Essentially what you need are like sort of random shocks to supply, we would call it. So instances where supply got added that kind of didn't have anything to do with what was going on in the market, just for some reason it got added. And so we look at the studies that kind of look at this, and there's only a few. And we say, okay, let's place an upper bound and a lower bound on how long it would take,

based on what we know from these different studies, for the median one-bedroom unit, these are going to be mostly apartments, because most bedrooms are apartments, in a bunch of kind of high-cost markets, so like the Bay Area, New York, D.C., Boston, L.A., right? Let's ask, how long would it take if we were building at a rate that, like,

the 90th percentile sort of labor market in the U.S. built that, right? Which would be a lot. It's a lot more than these places have been building. and let's see how long it would take for that median one-bedroom unit to become affordable to the median worker who doesn't have a college degree or any college education, which is about like 40% of the population. That's about the bottom 40% of the U.S. population in terms of income for the most part. And what we find is that in like the best case scenario, it's a few decades.

In the worst case, it's like over 100 years, right, based on what we know about how new supply impacts prices. And what I should add to that is like that is assuming that changes to regulation can get that supply added, which we actually don't think there's any evidence to suggest that anything like that is possible. Okay. So, and I need to restate it just because these type of things are not in my wheelhouse. But the idea is that, A, just because you deregulate and I'm going backwards to forwards, just because you deregulate does not mean that people are going to start to build because there have to be other factors other than maybe it might reduce the cost of building to actually encourage people to build.

They need to know that they're going to sell this. They need to know that they're going to get a return. And particularly in the private market, you need to know you're going to get a higher rate of return than you would, let's say, if a city was going to go to build it. But the other thing you're saying is that even at a rate of, of building that exceeds, far exceeds what we have today. And one that is like sort of like reasonable assumption as to what would be like a lot of building would be.

That's going to take a long time because price of one bedrooms, at least in this instance, is just not that sensitive to more supply being on the market. And then the question is, if that's the case based upon what, you know, we've teased out because, again, you said, if I understand it correctly, We just don't have the data is not, there's a lot of noise in the data that gets complicated because of the inspiration to build in certain instances and whatnot in the best sort of controlled environment is when there's sort of like some exogenous thing that impacts the building supply. Why isn't it as sensitive? Then the next question becomes, why isn't it more sensitive?

Why, like, why if we build a bunch more one bedrooms or at a relative to the rate that we build it now, would it take so long? Yeah, I mean, so what these studies are looking at is the, the, so when we, when we look at these kind of shocks to supply, these exogenous increases in supplier impacting prices, what they're actually looking at is demand. They're, in econ terms, we would say they're identifying the slope of the demand. So they're looking at how elastic demand is. And what all these studies are telling us, essentially, is that demand is probably really elastic for housing. So if you add more housing, people just consume more housing. And that's not necessarily a bad thing,

but it also tells us that adding tons and tons of housing is probably not our best path to affordability, right? And again, we just, I think we got to come back to this really important point, which is that there's really not evidence to suggest that, I would say the most cutting edge work in the field right now is suggesting that sort of changes to regulation are not capable of generating that kind of a shock, right, to supply. Right.

And so where, what were those shocks that you were able to look at to, to glean some of this sort of like real-life examples? Like, where have these studies looked at? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, what they have looked at, And again, there's only a handful.

There's one looking at like changes to rent control that like had a small reduction in supply in San Francisco. And so because of that reduction in rental supply, they then look at how that impacts prices. A couple that have looked at zoning reforms that have generated, excuse me, small shocks to supply, small increases in supply. But these are in like New Zealand and then. in Sao Paulo. Yeah, those are the ones I remember. But really, it's like four or five studies that we're drawing on here, right?

And again, our point is just to do a thought experiment to say, like, what do we know about how prices impact supply? And what we know is that, like, it's going to be pretty marginal compared to the scope of the problem. And again, so that's a function of the elasticity, is that if there is more supply than people consume more housing, is that basically what it comes to? it's a it's a function of the elasticity of prices to supply and what those studies are telling us is that demand for housing seems to be really elastic there's some studies suggesting that demand for

housing is like close to infinitely elastic like very very elastic yeah so if there's more uh apartments basically people decide like i'm gonna live alone instead of having a roommate and i'm willing to And then the question becomes, well, how do I pay for that? And that's where you get into like the wealth inequality dynamic. Is that it? Yeah. So our view, and I could give you a couple of stats on this that I think would maybe surprise a lot of people is that the housing market by historical standards actually looks

totally fine today. Like there's nothing all that surprising. I might get some grief for saying this, but I am not convinced we have a big supply shortage at all. Okay. So I'm going to be clear. When you say the housing stats, you're not talking about the cost. You're just talking about the relationship between the number of housing units and the number of people. Yeah, although kind of cost, too. So let me give you a few data points here. The vacancy rate, the overall vacancy rate for overall and rental housing just alone is higher today than it was in 1970. We have more... Is that a city to city?

city? Like, I mean, like, or is that across the board or how, like, that is across the country. But I think that even within cities, there probably aren't these sort of major differences. And the reason for that is that at least if we think that they're caused by regulation, again, the kind of cutting edge work, I would point to this study by Louis at all that came out last year if anybody wants to go look that up. And what they show, they come up with some really simple metrics to show that sort of price growth and supply growth look really similar across heavily regulated and unregulated cities over the last like 40 years. So there really aren't these differences in sort of prices and supply across areas, right? So that makes me think that

like even if we looked at individual areas, we probably wouldn't see that different of a story. Do we know like for New York City, is the vacancy rate today more or less? less the same as it's been for the past, I don't know, 40, 50 years? I can't speak to New York City. What I would say that when we're thinking about housing, supply, and prices, we need to not just think about, like, the city, but the whole metro region. And so I can't speak to New York City specifically, but what I can say is that, as a sort of general rule, supply is keeping up with demand very similarly in regular.

and unregulated places. Okay. Yeah. So a couple other stats. So we have this vacancy rate thing. We have the fact that we have more units per person than ever before. So like in 1960, I think we had about 3.1 units or sorry, a unit for every 3.1 people. Today we have a unit for like every 2.3 people.

Units are much larger on average than they have been in the past. And the key thing, and this gets to the question you were asking about before, is that mean housing prices and mean incomes have been tracking each other pretty much perfectly for like many decades now. Like at least it's like the 60s. And so what that's, that has an interesting implication, which is that the price of housing, housing today is not really expensive relative to incomes at the mean relative to the past, right? so compared to the past.

Okay. So let me just, just those last three points that you made that we have, um, smaller amount of people in bigger apartments is really those two, uh, the, the first two that you said.

Yeah. Which is gets to that notion of elasticity. Like, um, I, if, if there, if rents were to come down,

it'd be more likely that, uh, I just get a bigger apartment. than necessarily or you know the because i will fill i i i i will go to that um but the the question is like how do i how do i have how do i have that ability um and the and the last point you made in terms of like the the mean that that's not what does that suggest that the mean um that the that the the the mean rent is the same is relative to the mean income yeah so what it suggests is that i think there's this kind of idea out there that housing is like really expensive today relative to incomes

for everybody right but when we look at our best measures of income and our best measures of housing prices it looks really similar today relative to the past meaning that like um on a sort of per capita basis folks are uh uh sort of in a quite similar situation today than what they were in the past. Now, the key point that we make in the paper is that the mean is obscuring the fact that we have this huge group of people at the bottom who have had almost no income growth, right? And that like 40, maybe 50% of people is who are really struggling, right? I mean, probably 50 because even the median is diverging from the mean, right? So the mean is like that dynamic where I get into a room with Bill Gates and we start talking about like what's the

mean income or wealth, right? I mean, is that been? basically it. Yeah, but I think there's a little bit of a tendency to talk about, like to talk about our kind of housing challenges and stuff or just a lot of the inflationary challenges we have or taxes, like about this sort of the billionaires, the 1%, right? But like the top 30 to 40% of people have had really good income growths over the last 40 years, right? So it's not just them. It's this like huge group of people at the top, right? And they are sort of bidding up the price of housing, as you might expect, a very standard kind of supply and demand frameworks. But that is making it increasingly unaffordable to the folks who are below that,

who are really struggling. So when we talk about income growth and we look at it as a mean, most of that income growth has happened in the top 40%, let's say. And therefore, their ability, for them, this stuff is far more elastic, right, in the sense that like, I'm going to go for that. I'm going to go for a one, but I'm not going to have a roommate. And I want like a, you know, 800 square foot one bedroom apartment or a 1,200 square foot one bedroom apartment because I've had such, you know, my income growth is such that I can support

that. But that leaves behind about 60% of the people. Yeah. I think that's the way you can think about it, right? The demand is really elastic among that segment of. the population. And, you know, if you just think about it, like, if I own a parcel and it's like kind of a, let's call it like a low quality dwelling, right? And I see all around me, like if we think about here, I'm in the Bay Area, right? We have this huge chunk of people who are

doing really well here, right? And I own that parcel and I see or that unit and I see that those incomes are going way up, right? It kind of leaves me with two options, right? One is I raise the rent on my current tenants, right? And the other is I redeveloped into a better quality unit and I rent it to this group of people who has really strong growing incomes, right? And so that's how these price dynamics, I think, are playing out, right? Is that we have, because of that robust income growth at the top, it creates these sort of pressures across the market. And that is, it's irrelevant if somebody comes in and buys 10 more, you know, builds, I don't know, a thousand more units for a high-end, units, how does that not impact it? I mean, what's the explanation? It's not irrelevant, right?

And that's like, we're trying to be really explicit about that in the simulation that we do in the paper, right? We are saying, like, prices definitely go down if you can magically add supply, right? The key point is just it's not that much. Like, it's not enough to get us where we need to be, right? And that's telling us that there's probably something else that is making housing so unaffordable in the first place. And that is the wealth disparity, not just between the 99% and the 1%, but really the 35% and the 55% or the 40% and the 60%. I think those are probably more realistic percentages to think about, right? I mean, because again, we have this thing where it's like at the mean, housing's not really more unaffordable today than it was in the past, right? So that tells us

the mean and above, they're doing okay, right? So, yeah. And so how do we address that specific dynamic? I mean, presumably we'll keep building because we do that anyways, and we can always maybe streamline certain things. But if building alone, even in like the most sort of like favorable way that we could, at rates that we have not seen and by deregulating everything and if that's not going to be sufficient, what do we do on the other side to make things more affordable? Yeah.

So I think like we've become really like hyper-focused on supply, right? Like just adding sort of market rate supply at all costs, right? And I think that is becoming a bit problematic because, A, I think the diagnosis of the problem is wrong there. And so it's not really like the market isn't going to add all this housing that we think it's going to add. Instead, what like what I would do is I would look to other countries, right, that tend to have like a lot of countries and other high income countries, especially in like Western and Northern Europe, for example, have much lower sort of cost burdens among their like lower income populations on average. right? And when I look at those places, I see kind of three things that they're doing. The first is much more like public, a much sort of more active role for the public sector in financing, like social housing, they typically call it, right? It's like a form of public housing, right?

And it's typically available to folks across income levels, right? But it's like things like low interest loans, maybe some grants for the development of that kind of housing. The second thing is if we look at other countries, like France, for example, has national rent control. And this is where I think our focus on supply is becoming a bit problematic because people are using it as a reason to say, oh, well, we shouldn't do something like rent control because it might reduce supply. And I think, like, rent control definitely has some tradeoffs, right? There are, that, that's a real thing. But we have to think about the magnitudes and we have to think about, like, what the actual causes of our challenges are right now. And so I think there's scope for more rent control. And then the

third thing is essentially redistribution type policy. So the closest thing we have here in the U.S. is like the Section 8 voucher program, right? But what I would say is like if we think about two people, we think about a low-income household and a high-income household. For that high-income household, and I'm talking about this top like 40% of people, let's say, when their incomes go up, they might spend more on housing because to them housing is closer to something like a luxury good, It's just something that improves their quality of life, all their other basic needs are met. And so when their incomes go up, it puts an inflationary pressure on housing prices because they're going to bid up the price of housing, right?

If you're a low-income household and you spend already like 50% of your income on housing and your income goes up, you're not going to spend that on housing because you are not having your other basic needs being met, right? You're going to reduce your share of expenditure on housing and spend that on things like food and health care and all these other things that you're probably not paying for already because your housing needs are housing is a necessity for you right so I think there's a lot of scope to to be smarter about income redistribution I mean obviously the politics of that are tough right but I think if we really want to meet the challenge those are the three things that I think are

really important and so on that last one maybe I mean it could be I mean there I don't know there's probably a million different ways of doing that but I mean we went through a we went through during COVID, we expanded the child tax credit, for instance. They call it a tax credit. It's a payment. But we're so allergic to the idea of actually providing direct benefit to people that we can't even say the words. We have to pretend it's a reverse tax.

But we were able to eradicate almost. 45% of child poverty in a year. Seems like you could do something similarly if you could show that your expenditure on your rent is like a certain percentage of your income. And you could get that tax benefit. Your landlord won't know to jack up the price because they don't know what your income is necessarily. in terms of what your rent is. And so that seems to be one, just like, I'm just throwing it out there so that we can understand what could work in this instance, providing a tax benefit to people whose rent when we do this

with health care, I guess. And we know what percentage of your health care of your income is and you can get subsidized there. We could do that theoretically with housing. Yeah, yeah, something like that for sure. I mean, a key thing is that, like, if we look at like the voucher program, for example, it requires people to spend 30% of their income on housing. And so if we have something like that kind of a requirement, then this will put upward pressure on prices.

I mean, I would argue maybe we still want to do that anyways because like at higher incomes, like higher shares of your income on spent on housing are not so problematic, right? Like, if you make $200,000 a year and spend 30%, maybe we're not that worried about that person, right? but in general yeah i think that's that's kind of the spirit of what i'm talking about and again the flip side of that is that like taxing people with higher incomes could also reduce prices right um so there's their scope in both directions there because it would just limit the amount that they could spend on housing yeah especially if it were like a consumption tax like if it were uh taxing taxing their consumption.

Sounds good to me. What, what, so just tell us in terms of like, what is the process that your paper thou goes through in terms of it being peer reviewed and just so that I'm curious as to like when, you know, at what point will this be something that people have to engage in on its merits rather than say it's just a working paper. Yeah, I think, yeah, I've seen people have sent me some things online where people are like, oh, it's a working paper. So it's not even real and this, like, we shouldn't take any of this seriously.

I mean, so it's pretty standard to publish working papers online. It's kind of because the peer review process can take such a long time. It's how a lot of sort of academic research gets disseminated these days. So we post things online early as a way to actually. be able to sort of put the work out there, right? It is under review at a journal right now. Things are looking positive, but I can't say for sure. Sometimes it takes a year.

Sometimes it takes three years. So, like, you kind of just never know. So I'm hoping within the next year it'll be published in an academic journal, but that's a little uncertain. And so what's the next steps in terms of, like, trying to tease this out because this is right now this is you know this area is probably one of the most hotly contested in terms of i mean to the point where again like um it's it's not like you know the idea of income redistribution hasn't been out there uh on the left uh but it has been um

just the idea of that being helpful or that income inequality is a primary problem facing us, I would argue, not just in the context of housing, but a lot of other things. But there has been an attempt to refute that through the idea that, like, all we need to do is, or the primary thing that we need to do, I should say, is to reduce burdensome regulation so that presumably the free market and, you know, every now and then the public will build more and take care of this problem because of the the the wonderful machinations of the market like what what's the next step in building out this um this theory on on what is creating an affordability

crisis with at least 60% of of people when it comes to um housing yeah i mean that's a question. I think, you know, our paper has been getting a lot of attention, which I'm super pleased about. I will say, like, there's a lot of other work that very much is, like, in the spirit of what we're doing. Certainly a lot of work really questioning this idea that, like, regulation is the main cause of our affordability challenges. Again, I would like point to this study by some Fed economists last year that I think is a bit of a bomb shell. showing that sort of housing supply and housing prices are looking really similar across regulated and unregulated places. You know, I wish I had a better answer to this other than that I think like as from the perspective of an academic,

I think we just need to keep doing more research on this and continue making this case to the public that our core issue is really about inequality and not necessarily regulation, which again, I want to have my reiterate my caveats from the beginning. But yeah. Right. Fair enough. Well, it's fascinating study.

Max Bulkultz, assistant professor at the Department of City and Regional Planet at UC Berkeley. We will link to that new paper, inequality, not regulation, drives America's housing affordability crisis. Really appreciate you coming on and talking to us about it. Thank you for having me. All right, folks. We're going to take a little break. Head to the so-called fun half of the program.

Margo from Mass and the IMs. Sam, be honest. What you want to ask is, when will I be able to wave this in Ezra Klein's face? I literally thought the exact same thing. Like, what can I spike this in the end zone? Oh, yeah, tell me about the procedure to peer review this, yes. When can we force Ezra Klein to review it? Well, I mean, I would imagine, honestly, because this issue is obviously so hugely important to Ezra Klein.

I would imagine, I'm looking forward to the interview, I should have asked Max that, because I would imagine he's been contacted by now. I would love to see it. I would watch that New York Times set it up. He's going to call it anti-Semitic. I'm not sure that's going to fly. But I don't want to make any assumptions about the authors. But I mean, I would imagine that's got to be in the works, right?

How could it not? I hope so. I mean, I understand our crack research. team here is on the, is on the zeitgeist and thinking up on the forefront of these things. But surely they must have heard about it at the New York Times too. Our AI trained to look for anything that contradicts Ezraff. We scraped a lot of our videos to train that model. You get an immediate alarm on our phones.

All right, folks. We're going to take quick break and head to the fun app. In the meantime, you can join us. by becoming a member at join the majority report.com. When you do, you not only get the fun half, or I should say you not only get the fun half, but you get the free half, free of commercials, and you help support this program. Help us survive and thrive by becoming a member today. Join the majority report.com.

Also, just coffee. Dot co-op. Fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leck Media Universe? Yeah, left reckoning. Yesterday, we had the boys, Nathan and Alex, from Current Affairs,

talking about joining this Neustra America convoy, bringing aid to Cuba, which our country is currently seizing. And Hassan's going on that, right? I mean, there's a bunch of, we've got a bunch of friends of shows going on to that. Good chunk of people going on that. We should probably be in touch with someone and see if they can contact us. I mean, the boat ride's not that long from my way. But imagine were they going from like Key West or something?

Yeah, I'm not sure what type of, yeah, it didn't seem like it was going to be, I mean, nearly as maybe a big of a logistical nightmare is the Gaza stuff. But to Godspeed to all those people. And also Brandon Sutton of the Thursday MR crew joined us to talk about Alex Jones and Patrick Bet David and folks reacting to the Iran War. And for Alex Jones, at least it went into focus on. Joe Rogan's genitalia. So check that out. Patreon.com says Left Reckoning. We're on YouTube, folks.

All right. See you in the fun half. Left is bad. Jamie and I may have a disagreement. Yeah, you can't just say whatever you want about people just because you're rich. I have an absolute right to mock them on YouTube. He's up their buggy whipping like he's the boss. I am not your employer.

You know, I'm tired of the negativity. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. You're nervous. You're a little bit upset. You're riled up. Yeah. Maybe you should.

Rethink your defense of that, you fucking idiots. We're just going to get rid of you. All right. But dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude.

Uh, you want to smoke this joint? Yes. Do you feel like you are a dinosaur? Some good shit. Exactly. I'm happy now. It's a win, win, win. Uh, hell yeah.

Now listen to me. Two, three, four, five times. Eight, four, seven. 906. 501.447. 2.38. 56. 27. 1 half. 5.8s. 3.9 billion. Wow. He's the ultimate math, nerd. Don't you see?

Why don't you get a real job instead of steering vitriol and hatred you left wing limb? Everybody's taking their dumb juice today. Come on, Sammy. Dance, dance, dance. Ooh. My first post-coital scene with a woman. I'm hoping got more moves to my repertoire. All I have is.

The dip and the swirl. Fine, we can double dip. Yes, this is a perfect moment. No. Wait, what? You make under a million dollars a year. You're scum. You're not paying you.

Excuse me? Fuck you. You fucking liberal elite. I think you belong in jail. Thank you for saying that, Sam. You're a horrible, despicable person. All right, going to take a quick break. I want to take a moment to talk to some of the libertarians out there. Take whatever vehicle you want to drive to the library.

What you're talking about. talking about is jibber jab. Classic. I'm feeling more chill already. Donald Trump can kiss all of our asses. Hey, Sam. Hey, Andy. Are you guys ready to do some evil? Hitler was such an idiot.

You think I might be a Nazi? Agree. No. Death to America. Do. Yes. Wow. Wow, that's weird.

No way. Unbelievable. This guy's got a really good hook. Throw our hands. Wow. But, Sam, I've got to get off. No worries. I want to just flesh this out a little bit.

I mean, look, it's a free speech issue. If you don't like me. Hey, hey, hey, hey, shut up. Thank you for calling into the majority report. Sam will be with you shortly.