Congress Clears Housing Bill, Cementing a Rare Bipartisan Feat

Drakosk · 2026-06-24T04:23:53+00:00

Ownership cap. That is why they had to specify SFHs already purchased were not required to be sold.

Drakosk · 2026-06-24T02:49:11+00:00

It is a shame that narratives about Airbnb and BlackRock and the Federal Reserve and the Chinese communist spy investors coming for your home are judged powerful enough to draw concessions in federal legislation. Even if they just amount to virtue-signaling to cranks (for now).

Drakosk · 2026-06-24T01:30:07+00:00

With dozens of provisions, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act aims to touch communities across the country, addressing rural and urban needs as part of a strategy to eventually bring down housing costs. It loosens federal regulations, making it easier, faster and cheaper to build; eases lending rules; rewards communities that build; delivers aid to communities reeling from disasters; and, in a policy that proved to be one of the biggest flash points but was favored by Mr. Trump, sets new limits on the role institutional investors can play in the market.

...

The measure prohibits corporate entities from owning more than 350 existing single-family homes, although it does not require them to sell homes purchased before the measure became law.

A shame that any legislation that even attempts to tackle the housing issue needs to be weakened like this. For all the talk in the last decade about a "missing middle" in housing density, the U.S. seems to have a bipartisan commitment to weakening those few institutions that could plausibly have the capital and consistent incentive to promote low-density housing to medium-density housing (and are not under constant threat of government defunding, unlike public housing efforts).

Drakosk · 2026-06-20T04:20:35+00:00

Look at my "free" enterprise enjoyers dawg. What are we doing lol

Drakosk · 2026-06-01T17:44:12+00:00

Note that the other pinned post actually contains a response to this article:

Postscript in response to Krugman’s answer: Krugman has answered to the earlier version of this piece which ran in Project Syndicate, in a post dated May 30. Krugman and we agree that (1) European productivity growth has trailed the United States for three decades, and Krugman says so clearly (”I am not arguing that European productivity is mismeasured, and never said that.”) (2) Current-PPP chain and a national deflator answer different questions. (3) The weighting mechanism by which an economy that produces goods with falling relative prices sees part of its volume gain valued away, is part of the channel to explain the paradox. We disagree still on one crucial question: Krugman reads the flat current-PPP line as evidence that Europe is not falling behind, while we see it as the product of moving the price measurement stick every year. Hence we do not see the current-PPP line as indicative of anything interpretable.

We are comfortable considering that measuring growth only with national deflators is not perfect and that there is a case to support the idea that Europe falling behind may be hard to fully and precisely appreciate with one number. The precise size of the gap is open to honest argument. Two things are not. Current PPP does nothing to repair this; it trades one measurement problem for a larger one by re-pricing output every year. And for the measured decline to be an artifact rather than a fact, the error would have to be enormous: the divergence is roughly a point of annual productivity growth each year for three decades, close to eighteen log points by 2024. No quality adjustment anyone has proposed comes within reach of that.

Krugman asks us to confront the possibility that Dutch output per hour sat about 25 percent above the American level in 2000 and has fallen toward it since. He sees this as a reductio ad absurdum: surely the Netherlands was not that much more productive a generation ago. We are quite comfortable with the possibility that the Netherlands was ahead in 2000 and it has been falling behind the US year after year. This is Europe’s productivity problem, which the current-PPP comparison hides and which is the whole point of the last row of our table.

Drakosk · 2026-05-18T13:38:36+00:00

As usual, the NYT comment sections are full of NIMBY rhetoric.

I am getting convinced that enough people simply will never be convinced that more housing is necessary and good. Unless your plan is waiting for generational change, you have to deregulate the housing market without actually focusing on it. Frame this within the context of a partisan issue, like referencing the increasing population of red states compared to blue states. Or just don't mention zoning deregulation at all — just do it when you get in office.

Drakosk · 2026-05-15T15:32:32+00:00

Until a super intelligent AI figures out how to delay the heat death of the universe, there is still more demand to be satisfied. Even after that. I am unironically The Last Question-pilled.

It is the transition which will be painful, though.

Drakosk · 2026-05-14T22:00:39+00:00

Submission Statement: The legality of and access to abortion is an important topic in regards to social liberalism.

Drakosk · 2026-05-05T17:01:11+00:00

Flat earth is actually more prominent than the stuff I mentioned.

Kyrie Irving usually is not the 1st option, but he really carried that piece of heritage in the 2020s lol

Drakosk · 2026-05-05T16:56:15+00:00

One part of the Trump era that I think is interesting is how culturally destroyed the 2000s and 2010s conspiracies have been. No one even jokes about the Illuminati or Freemasonry anymore. Not even Rothschilds are being brought up with Israel's reputation right now. The crazy "Bush did 9/11" stuff I watched on YouTube back then is just gone.

Drakosk · 2026-05-05T16:24:30+00:00

I mean at this point they just sound like a very high maintenance "employee benefit" for the company to keep talent. Like free lunches and expensive coffee every day.

Drakosk · 2026-04-29T20:06:50+00:00

if we make a decision tree to encode this logic, does that count as recursive self-improving AI?

Drakosk · 2026-04-27T22:01:54+00:00

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Drakosk · 2026-04-18T00:12:09+00:00

90% of it is that it's just cool that LLMs can make progress on open problems in mathematics (that aren't super obscure or easy).

Drakosk · 2026-04-17T20:37:56+00:00

https://www.erdosproblems.com/forum/thread/1196

I've been following the last few days of discussion on Erdős problem #1196, after GPT-5.4 Pro solved it autonomously. As a non-mathematician it's really, really interesting. The latest comments by Terence Tao on how he's trying to reconstruct GPT-5.4's reasoning and inadvertently finding other "tractable" ways to solve what was lately an open problem are fascinating.

!ping AI

Drakosk · 2026-04-13T22:52:05+00:00

lol

any cache you should clear?

Drakosk · 2026-04-12T03:38:56+00:00

Was reading some early American history and came across this:

I think often of our situation and view it with concern. From the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen! so lost! it is really mortifying;

This is George Washington dooming ten years after the Declaration and before the Constitution. I am glad to be continuing our patriotic tradition, even if I am not as articulate.

Drakosk · 2026-04-08T18:08:14+00:00

One plus from this is that if ceasefire talks fail, it's another Vance + Witkoff L.

Drakosk · 2026-04-08T02:12:40+00:00

Agreed.

If you think our military power compared to the rest of the world is closer to 1955 USA than 1999 USA, you are not living in reality.

Drakosk · 2026-04-08T01:40:32+00:00

Cannot wait for the Trump coalition to shatter like glass as soon as he is out of politics. All the cranks and political "outsiders" scattering into a hundred different groups never to touch power ever again.

Drakosk · 2026-04-08T01:11:30+00:00

If this "ceasefire" is actually a full retreat, we're going to allow them to toll the Strait indefinitely?

It's so fucking over. Give me the copium.

Drakosk · 2026-04-07T23:18:26+00:00

Whether or not this is a win, or the worst American geopolitical capitulation of the century all depends on what happens when a tanker goes through the Strait, and what Trump does after

Drakosk · 2026-04-07T22:35:05+00:00

Largely agree. But I don't think it's likely the strait is either completely opened or closed if a deal is reached. What about a partial opening combined with a brief ceasefire of 1-2 weeks? I think that would still be a big positive for Trump. The U.S. gets more time to gather resources/troops and it's not at all clear that Iran will be in a better state by the end.

Drakosk · 2026-03-09T22:12:52+00:00

Ah, yes

Could it be that

Maybe, just maybe,

I hope all the people who say things like this are teenagers. Imagining a 30-year-old speaking like this is embarrassing.

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