Ok, so it looks very likely that we are going to be a very consequential housing bill out of Congress and to the President for his signature. Here’s a cheat sheet of some of the most important parts of the bill (just going through the text in order). 1/10

https://twitter.com/BrendanPedersen/status/2066959769978458196

Section 102- Point access blocks. Directs HUD to create a model code for single-stair buildings. This will be very helpful in creating more family-oriented apartments. (see this article of mine from last year on that). 2/10

This seems like a reasonable request, and I am one of the people who has made the case for Democrats moderating on culture. So let me lay out what I mean by that. Others can judge if they find this “mortifying” or common sense. 1/

https://twitter.com/keithdorejel/status/2061471145669370038

Democrats’ childcare policies should also be aimed at stay-at-home parents and home-based care, not just center-based daycare. I’ve previously referred to this as ‘all-of-the-above’ childcare policy. Leaning into pro-family rhetoric would also be helpful. 2/

I want to take Cassie's challenge here seriously because there's a lot of truth to it. So here are 10 moral principles of modern liberalism, at least as I see it.

1. The world is positive sum. You do not need to get poorer for me to get richer or vice versa.

https://twitter.com/hecubian_devil/status/2027193827539206190

2. There are a wide variety of valid, legitimate interests and understandings of “the good life.” We all need to try to be pretty pluralistic and tolerant toward one another.

Austin had an interesting question here about what Abundance can do for rural areas and small towns. As someone who writes from an Abundance framework and cares a lot about these kinds of places, I’d like to answer his question. 1/9

https://twitter.com/austinahlman/status/2003910651820102118

First, for this would-be small business owner, an Abundance orientation would help him or her out by cutting Trump’s tariffs, which are causing huge problems for small businesses. We’d also help him find workers via more liberalized immigration policies. 2/9

Earlier today, the House of Representatives passed the Housing for the 21st Century Act out of committee by a 50-1 vote.
It's the House companion to the Senate's Road to Housing Act. There are some great housing policy reforms in here. 1/4 It directs HUD to create new federal guidelines for point-access, i.e. single stair, in order facility the construction of more family style apartments. This was introduced by @RepRitchie. cc: @UrbanCourtyard @jasonc_nc 2/4

I got a good bit of pushback on this so I’d like to respond to some of that pushback. I still think the narrative that things were once great for the working class but that greatness was somehow stolen is wrong and unhelpful. 1/ First, I never said that “no one had a nice life then.” On a good salary you clearly could. But people have this habit of thinking their family was often much more working class then it was. Take for instance this person. 2/

Vermont is actually an interesting case of flood politics that not a lot of people know about. It pits rural romanticism against the realities of climate change and pragmatism about risk and public finances. Short thread. 1/10

https://twitter.com/MattZeitlin/status/1980496212613820923

When most people think of floods, they do not think of a place like Vermont. It’s inland and mountainous. But historically, Vermont developed as these little villages along rivers that created opportunities for mills. (Middlebury is a good example of this) 2/10

Democrats need a smarter approach to unions. We should support them when their interests align with the public’s but politely ignore them when they don't. Simple litmus test: "Will this raise prices or reduce service quality for the public?" (link below) 1/6 When unions are RIGHT: Building trades apprenticeship programs create skilled workers + grow the economy. Construction unions helped rebuild I-95 in Philly in just 12 days. Police, teachers, firefighters provide essential services. They deserve gratitude + goodwill. 2/6

John here has a question that I think needs answering. “How can the US have trade deficits absent other countries discriminating against us?” There are a lot of ways this can happen but I want to focus on just one here: the dollar as the global reserve currency. 1/4

https://twitter.com/carney/status/1907980093080711521

Money is for spending. Money that others won’t take isn’t money at all. Would my landlord let me pay him in Thai baht? Of course not. Because he can’t turn around and spend Thai baht. Conversely, U.S. dollars *are* money that everyone wants because everyone will take it. 2/4

Trump and his defenders have this idea that economic growth and personal freedom are expendable in the pursuit of nationalist pride and cultural purity.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day so it’s a good time to explain how Ireland’s trajectory shows the folly of that idea. Thread. ☘️ 1/12 In the 1950s, Ireland was in a deep rut economically. It was the only European country other than East German to lose population during that decade. To remedy this, Finance Minister Ken Whitaker proposed liberalizing the economy and connecting with Europe. 2/12

So this is true but there are some unique features of Vermont's tax and spending policies that someone from here might not understand. First, VT's property taxes are specifically structured to bypass lots of retirees and land hardest on working age people...1/6

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1897781694733672821

Second, there are enormous tax breaks given to farmers and to a cancerous set of hyper-NIMBY institutions known as "land trusts." So most property owners don't actually pay much if any property tax. That raises rates for those who do pay (only ~1/3 pay full freight). 2/6

To understand Trump's base regarding tariffs, you need to understand what their goal is. It is not some tangible concrete objective like increased GDP or jobs growth. Their goal is to feel that their guy has imposed his will on others to their benefits. That's it. 1/4 They genuinely believe the economy has gotten much worse over the last 50 years (it hasn't) and the reason is because Presidents did not do enough will-imposing on their behalf. They throw out all the complexities of int, economics; it's just a competition of wills to them. 2/4

Pres. Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico are going to make most of what the average American household buys more expensive. Let’s go through a family’s major purchases and look at how these tariffs affect them. A thread. 1/10 First, most people’s biggest expense is housing. Well, as the NAHB points out, Trump’s tariffs on building materials -most especially lumber- is going to make building new housing more expensive, and that translates into higher rents and higher purchase prices for homebuyers. 2/10

Since we're having a big conversation about healthcare costs, I wanted to put together a thread on certificate-of-need laws, a set of under-the-radar policies that make American healthcare more expensive and worse.
The states that have them need to repeal them. Immediately. 1/ In states with Certificate-of-Need (CON) laws, would-be new medical service providers must go before a board and prove that there is a need for their service in order to acquire a ‘certificate-of-need’ that allows them to operate. 2/

There’s a chart here on US-China trade and workers that I think would surprise a lot of people. It’s definitely worth understanding if you’ve heard of “the China Shock.” It shows that, actually, most workers benefited from increased trade with China. Let me explain it. 1/13 As you can see, the vast majority of workers are to the right of zero, meaning most workers benefited. Look too at the breakout panels. Even most manufacturing workers benefited, as did essentially all non-manufacturing workers. 2/13

There’s a question here between @arindube @ArmandDoma and @mattyglesias on whether trade liberalization costs Democrats support among the working class. The conventional wisdom is ‘yes’ but the trade politics scholarship is a lot less clear on that. 1/ So let’s start w/ the paper that Arun cites. It’s got solid methodology (you don’t get in AER for nothing) but there are nevertheless several problems I see with it. First, it can’t fully control for big culture politics events of the time. 2/

To understand the reason why inflation is so politically deadly for incumbents, you need to understand what I call it the “my raise, not my inflation” dichotomy. 1/4 When jobs are plentiful and wages are increasing, more people are getting better jobs and pay raises. People work hard; and so when they get those better jobs/raises, they attribute that to their hard work (and that’s understandable and fair by the way!) 2/4

How Democrats Got to This Point: An Autopsy Told as a Five Act Play

Act I: Bill Clinton campaigned and governed cultural moderate culturally and a market-friendly low-inflation centrist economically. He was a popular 2-term President.
Obama repeated this playbook. 1/6 Act II: Hillary Clinton campaigned on identity politics and lost. Trump governed like a chaotic maniac such that much of the electorate was exhausted of him by 2020. Biden campaigned as a return to normalcy and won. 2/6

A small but great example of this is how there’s was this huge freak out out the bee population declining but then next to no one heard about the new population recovery. 1/4

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1852471963194659213

The reason this example is on my mind is I was at a housing policy meeting recently and there was this environmentalist citing bees as why we can’t allow new neighborhoods and so I showed her charts about the bee pop recovering. You’d think she’d have loved that news but… 2/4

A story that illuminates why abundance liberals are going to struggle with some progressive activists:

In March, I gave a talk on climate tech at a senior center - they loved it! In Q&A, a woman asked “how do we get people to do their part + dry their clothes on the line?” 1/7 I explained to her that we don’t need to do that and she seemed disappointed at the possibility of that being true. She didn’t want a tech solution. She wanted people to willingly choose to live more simply and more equally out of sense of shared moral obligation. 2/7

Today, the House passed the “Building Chips in America Act” sponsored by @SenMarkKelly and @SenTedCruz in the Senate last year. It’s a really cool permitting reform bill related to semiconductors. Here's a quick explanation of what it does and why it matters. 1/ @noahpinion In 2022, through the CHIPS and Science Act, Congress allocated around $40 billion in subsidies for new semiconductor manufacturing facilities known as fabs. Semiconductors are arguably the world’s most important technology and Congress wants them made HERE. 2/ @crmiller1