Money has one face, the face of the boss: In this case, Cyrus McCormick, a strike at whose Reaper Works led to the Haymarket protests that gave us May Day. I apologize for lack of content on this blog-slash-newsletter lately. Among other excuses, I’ve just been elected chair of the John Jay Economics Department. Many…
TLDR: The value of corporate equity relative to GDP is at a historical high. But this does not necessarily mean there’s a bubble: profits and shareholder payouts are also very high relative to historical values. I first started thinking about economics thirty years ago, during the (first) tech boom. This was the era of “irrational…
The following is a somewhat expanded version of testimony I presented on June 23 before the New York City Commission on Government Efficiency. My name is Josh Mason. I am an associate professor and chair of the economics department at John Jay College, CUNY, and a senior fellow at the Groundwork Collaborative. It’s a pleasure…
(I had a long conversation yesterday with Eric Levitz of Vox about the New York City rent freeze and the economics of rent regulation. I have posted the interview below just as it appeared there, for my archives and in case people want to read it without dealing with the paywall.) An economist makes the…
Along with Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in last month’s elections, New York City also approved three housing-related ballot proposal. Together, these will make it somewhat easier to adjust land-use rules to allow for new housing development, by reducing the City Council’s ability to block zoning changes. I am glad the proposals passed, for reasons similar…
Readers of this blog know I have a book coming out later this spring — Against Money, officially out on May 7. Plenty of money-related content coming between now and then. But today I’m writing about a different book: Dear Mother, a collection of poems by Laura Tanenbaum, just out from Main Street Rag. Laura…
Last week, the Rent Guidelines Board voted for a freeze on the rent for New York City’s one million rent-regulated apartments, fulfilling one of Mayor Mamdani’s defining campaign promises. There has been plenty of discussion of the decision, both supportive and critical. But there’s one aspect of it, of particular interest to me, that has…
Every year, I try to write a post about books that I’ve read in the past year. This time, I found myself writing so much about some of the books, that the post was getting unmanageably large. So I’ve split it in two. This is part one; part two will follow. Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy:…
(This piece was originally published at Phenomenal World, in cooperation with the New York Policy Project.) With the failure of Eric Adams’s last-ditch effort to stack the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now in a position to fulfill his promise to freeze the rent. The nine-member RGB sets maximum rent increases for…
In the front window of McNally Jackson, one of my favorite NYC bookstores. Against Money is now out. It’s been spotted in a number of bookstores, including the Union Square Barnes and Noble, where it turns out to be shelved next to Marx’s Capital in the Business section. As my friend Suresh said to me the other…
