In City Journal, Ramon Maislen explains that solving a housing affordability crisis – New York City’s in this case – depends on driving down the costs of bringing new units onto the market. Civic governments can’t control interest rates, but they can cut red tape, local taxes and constraints on construction companies. “If we want lower rents,” Maislen observes, “we need more housing. And if we want more housing, the math needs to add up for the people who build it.”
The Frigid Isle
Íris Erlingsdóttir shines a light on the world’s first wholly feminized state. Women, she writes in The European Conservative, run everything in Iceland: “the presidency, the prime minister’s office…[the] national state church…schools, municipalities, police…newsrooms and [the] ever-expanding public bureaucracy.” As for the men, Erlingsdóttir observes, they describe themselves ruefully as (bad-taste alert) “pussy-whipped.”
