Running Commentary Cont'd.

Iran, Mamdani, Election Day

June 24. Below is the polling place at 250 West 127th St, 7:40 AM. Big turnout.

Now that Derek Thompson, the co-author of Abundance, has cautiously endorsed Zohran's program(s), including the ones related to housing, the economists are piling on, joining the Clintonian types in denouncing rent control. The trouble with their argument is that it too strongly resembles the argument against raising the minimum wage, viz., that if you reduce demand at market prices, supply will dwindle, thus raising prices in the long run. There's no definitive study that proves the point, and real-world experience countermands it. Besides, the housing market is at least as broken as the labor market. As for the higher taxes that Mamdani proposes to fund free day care, etc., even conventional wisdom says it won't have the effects the economists used to cite. Here's Noah Smith at his Substack, for example:

"Studies tend to find that while corporate taxes will cause companies to move out of rural areas or small towns, they don’t cause much movement away from big cities. . . . Basically, being in NYC is so incredibly valuable for so many companies—especially in knowledge industries like banking, tech, and publishing that are concentrated in the city—that moderate changes in taxes generally won’t make them flee. Most rich individuals also don’t appear to flee from moderately higher income taxes."

My former colleague at Rutgers, David Greenberg, commented on this post by cutting and pasting headlines from the New York Post and the New York Times denouncing Mamdani as unfit to be on the ballot. I replied as follows:

David Greenberg I think you are violating the rules of polling places. having posted endorsements of the dreaded Cuomo too close to my photo of such a place. Back off. Or at least have the courage of the convictions displayed by the headlines you have pasted in here, from the deranged New York Post and the befuddled New York Times, both of which have shown utter cowardice in addressing the genocide in Gaza and the warmongering of Team Netanyahu. In other words: speak for yourself, tell us why you share the feeling of terror so poignantly expressed by the benighted business leaders of our fair city.

(I was referring to this compendium of business opinion at Andrew Ross Sorkin’s NYT DealBook: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/business/dealbook/new-york-mayor-mamdani-cuomo-business.html?)

David’s rejoinder: “James Livingston I can’t take you seriously when you use the word genocide. It’s not one. You know it’s not one. But you use the term anyway.”

My riposte: You don't have to take me seriously to know that what the IDF is doing in Gaza is genocidal. Take it from Omer Bartov, our former colleague at Rutgers, or Aryeh Neier of Amnesty International, or the ICJ. I use the term because I'm convinced that it fits the circumstance. You're a working historian who treats the relevant evidence with the respect it deserves. Why aren't you convinced in this case?

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June 23. 90% of Iran's oil exports go to China, through the Strait of Hormuz. But that's only 10% of China's oil imports. Saudi Arabia accounts for 40% of the oil exports that go through the Strait. 80% of these oil exports from the petro-states of the Middle East go to East Asia (to South Korea and Japan after China). Etc. If the Strait does close, markets go nuts. So what keeps it open? China, by diplomatic pressure on Iran, or the US, by military means. Nothing illustrates the dead end of rival imperial ambitions better than this impasse. Notice that China holds the better hand, and not just because its leadership looks more civilized than the cretinous thugs Trump has appointed at DoD and State.

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June 20. I have the utmost respect for Timothy Noah at TNR. But the Republican Senators who are willing to cut Medicaid even more than their counterparts in the House aren't stupid. The long-term goals here are to dismantle the so-called welfare state and to abolish the income tax. Why? Because these induce indolence, dependence, laziness, etc., and let the losers live off the energy, initiative--and profits--of the manly, aggressive, productive winners. Noah summarizes his argument like this: "Like the House bill, the Senate version is premised on the moronic notion that you can cut taxes by $4 trillion and make it up by throwing a bunch of people off Medicaid." It's not moronic, it's strategic.

https://newrepublic.com/article/196948/trump-budget-bill-even-worse?

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June 19. Crackpot realism at work. The NYT looks to David Petraeus for reasoned remarks on the perfect insanity of bombing Iran. Notice the part about how to avoid the charge of unprovoked aggression--we issue an ultimatum, which, when rejected, "improves our legitimacy." These people might as well be donkeys braying at us farmers. Here are the two grafs that count:

"One person who sees little similarity between the run up to Iraq and now is David H. Petraeus, the general who commanded American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and led the 101st Airborne Division in the initial invasion in Baghdad. 'This is clearly the potential run up to military action, but it’s not the invasion of a country,'" he said on Wednesday.

"Mr. Trump, he said, should deliver an ultimatum to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and order him to agree to the complete dismantlement of his nuclear program or face 'the complete destruction of your country and your regime and your people.' If the supreme leader rejects the ultimatum, Mr. Petraeus said, 'that improves our legitimacy and then reluctantly we blow them to smithereens.'”