This wont do absolutely nothing whatsoever to bring down inflation. Interest rates don't open the Straight of Hormuz, don't increase production of oil or any other commodities.
the only way interest rates affect anything is when they meaningfully decrease investment, consumption, in other words a recession or depression.
Also apparently a $5000 “dividend” for everyone if we just “do the right thing”. I thought you had to be profitable to pay a dividend, but apparently not. Oh also, that $1.5T will magically not add to the debt or come from tax dollars.
>In Brown v. Hartlage (1982), a Supreme Court case where a Kentucky county commissioner promised to reduce his salary if elected, the Court unanimously drew a line between policy promises and vote buying. “A candidate’s promise to confer some ultimate benefit on the voter, qua taxpayer, citizen, or member of the general public, does not lie beyond the pale of First Amendment protection,” Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote. Given that precedent, Trump is almost certainly within the bounds of the law (you might remember Elon Musk wasn’t charged for handing out $1 million checks to people during a campaign rally in Wisconsin in exchange for “taking the time to vote.”).
Being unsustainable isn’t the same as breaking within the lifetime of the people making the decisions. The average US senator is 66, and that’s young compared to the current Supreme Court or the sitting President.
Maybe Trump is secretly for "the green agenda" and this was all part of the plan to stop oil.
He had that big falling out with Elon so that he can't be accused of pandering to him when electric car sales go through the roof.
I have also heard that this is really "big oil's" plan, they always manage to cause a huge price spike just when green energy is about to take over the market, somehow this stops the green revolution and forces everyone to go back to using fossil fuels.
Well if that consoles you, the US government has just approved gifting mega-bombs to Israel for another $2.8 billion. Several news call it a "sale" but it's actually a gift since most of the money comes from the US government anyway.
They did not revoke "the subsidies." The ACA subsidies are still in place. What was allowed to expire was the temporarily increased COVID subsidy levels, which were sold as a temporary emergency expansion. If they had originally passed a genuine and permanent ACA expansion, rather than an expiring one, there's likely nothing that could have been done to "revoke" it by those currently in power.
Maybe you mean this, but it's important to be clear about the distinctions we don't mislead people, and then someone tells them the whole truth, and then they wonder what else we were wrong about.
But unlike in the old days, US wins from higher prices. Even consumers wins (because they make more money on average, and their imported goods are cheaper because balance of payments shifts in US favour because of oil exports).
Voters are furious because of psychological factor of gas prices (purely psychological, it has nothing to do with economy or people's purchasing power). It bites politician's asses real hard.
So, Trump undermined himself by launching that war - but others are fine.
All of that depends on the strength of the Dollar, If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar.
Secondly theres the Petro-dollar which depends on the Middle East states Reinvesting their profits in the US to keep the dollar strong I don't know if you checked but I don't think they are going to be making any money in the near term. So looks like the dollar will be falling anyway.
Further to that there is the global debt system which largely relies on buying US treasuries if countries get squeezed by the coming inflation theres the chance these get dumped on the market and if that happens I believe the term is "Well, Fuck."
> If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar.
Typo for "reindustrialize"? Is the idea to move people from well paying comfortable services jobs to uncomfortable repetitive lower paid factory work by forcibly lowering their standard of living?
Do they make more money on average? Does any additional income cover the increase in cost of living? Becoming psychologically poor is much harder than becoming psychologically rich. I doubt that balance of payments goes anywhere near your average Joe’s pocket.
It absolutely does because balance of payments = exchange rate, and average Joe is poor and consumes disproportional part of imported goods vs the rich.
The overwhelming amount of expenses is for domestic products; lumber, food, services, rent, etc. Cheaper foreign shit isn't going to be meaningfully felt by the majority.
The part where the rich come in, is that the rich will disproportionally feel the upside of selling the fuel. The people on below average wage are just going to see prices rise and meager savings dilute, long before their wages grow.
Thats not to say the US isn't going to be well of as history's largest energy producer ever, but the reshuffling is going to be extremely painful for a majority of Americans.
Eh, how is this self-inflicted, when you have a radical has-been-empire blocking a global arteries by waging relentless proxy wars. Stop it with the "only white people can be actors on the global stage"-ism, the us basically clashes with Iran once every president (directly or indirectly) - and not by choice.
I am no fan of Iran but the white people in question literally went there to wage war with the so called has-been-empire and got their butts spanked, despite EVERYBODY warning them for years this would have been an unwinnable war
It was blatantly obvious Iran would do that if attacked. This has been known for decades.
The only thing previously stopping them holding the strait "hostage" was the threat from the US of doing an "Operation Praying Mantis v2" and destroying their navy and attacking them.
And when the US did that anyway, they had nothing to lose.
This administration wants lower rates. Also this administration does everything it can to increase inflation such as tariffs and starting another endless war in the middle east.
Not that I'm a fan of this administration, but inflating away remaining our only option is not related to Trump. It was the only choice for the past administrations since at least the subprime crisis; probably even since the Iraq war. My 2c.
Can’t inflate it away for the same reason we can’t stop climate change. We would have to stop the behavior that caused the problem in the first place, and we all know that’s not going to happen. Remember during Clinton’s presidency the government ran a surplus and started paying down the debt, and there were news articles worrying about the future disappearance of treasury bonds? The party of “fiscal responsibility” took care of that problem in no time at all.
How is it failure? You use your military to force trade to occur using your tokens. You control the supply of said tokens. You leave some other loser holding the bag for your debts. You win.
You're missing choice #3 - spend more money on stupid shit, cut taxes some more, pile on more debt, blame Obama Hussein Hunter Biden for the debt as the opening salvo of the third-term run in 2028.
The way this administration works is that anyone in a decision making position has been swapped for a self-serving yes-man who will do whatever Trump wants. Anyone they can't replace who won't deliver is briefed against or investigated until they quit or can be fired. Facts that might influence the decision play no part in the process.
The easy acceptance of this authoritarian governing style has been one of the most damaging to the idea of democracy. America's democratic institutions have great marketing but many of us outside the country and not subjected daily to that marketing have long known it is an particularly weak form of democracy and open to corruption, demagoguery and populism. Americans have a susceptibility to authority and hierarchical normalisation, has left them open to this.
The yield curve has always been controlled by the Fed, and this remains the case. No one has lost control. The yield curve is the time path of short run rates, adjusted by risk. So, for example, if the market thinks inflation will rise -- for example because of a foolish war against Iran -- then they will sell the long dated bonds because they know the fed will hike rates in the future, making the long dated bonds less valuable, and they want to get ahead of that. If, on the other hand, they think inflation will be too low, they will bid up the longer dated bonds because they expect the Fed to lower rates in the future, making the long dated bonds more valuable. The entire bond market is fixated on trying to guess what the Fed will do next, so that is why they peer at the economic data and try to guess in which direction the Fed will move and when. That is the opposite of "losing control" of the yield curve.
The problem is Bessent trying to control something that he has never had any control over, by jawboning the market and doing silly things like trying to intervene. Bessent is the Treasury secretary. Treasury does not, and never has, controlled the yield curve. Whatever games he plays buy buying and selling bonds has only a short term psychological effect on the market, and soon people brush it off.
The Fed controls the yield curve, not Treasury.
Bessent is a hedge fund guy that is really not well suited to the role he is playing. Now, they want to put Bessent in charge of economic sanctions against Iran, when we shouldn't even have any sanctions against Iran. The US is sanctioning the world's top oil producers, and then complaining about oil shortages.
Sanctions against Iran play an important and justified geopolitical role. Iran has been a complete menace to the Middle East by propping their proxies and de-facto taking over at least 5 different countries and serving as one of the supporting pillars for Russia in its war. We have not seen the last of this war, too early to call the results. Trump is not backing down and we may see a Venezuela like situation at the end which would have massive geopolitical implications (of course there are other much less favorable outcomes too).
I think your phone autocorrected Israel to say Iran. Also you provided no evidence for your claim, you just kept repeating the claim over and over instead of backing it up.
Iran is the source for the Islamic justification for suicide bombing (suicide is forbidden in the Quran and thus 'innovation' was needed to justify it). That alone puts immense amounts of blood on their hands. They invented this justification for their own religious and geopolitical aims (getting the US out of the ME). They are interventionists who want to be the spiritual centre of Islam, they are the opposite of passive actors in their region.
The bigger question is whether the other Gulf states (that we ally with or support) are any better and whether or not they deserve sanctions too. The West is clearly not in a place within the ME to preach morals, but that doesn't mean countries like Iran don't deserve sanctions.
So Trump spent weeks on a fake fraud investigation into Powell to try and force him out because he would not cut the rate, fails at that, then finally gets his choice in place and the dude raises rates almost immediately?
Incoming unhinged POTUS rants and demands in 3…2…1…
But you know what, I’m glad to see that the fed is still operating independently. The doomer in me thought they’d fold to Trump, especially right before the midterms.
He didn't, oddly enough. He said he "disagreed with it" but had confidence in the central bank. Basically that he had no problem with it. This suggests to me he thinks he'll benefit from it somehow.
There appears to be more and more people throwing back against Trump; after the courts recently again said no to his need to plaster his name on the Kennedy Centre, he went a wailin' to his supposedly in pocket Kennedy Centre board:
But even that is not providing him comfort these days. Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board and the member who sued over his takeover of the center, explained to Symone Sanders-Townsend of MS NOW that Trump called into the board meeting after the court decision and “went into a tantrum.”
While most people appear to have refused to confront Trump to his face—Maine governor Janet Mills’s “We’ll see you in court” was so rare it made headlines—Beatty took him on. She recounted: “It was the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of it.” But after he called her “an obstructionist” and “dumb” and said he thought she was “incompetent,” she retorted: “I know you’re incompetent.” Beatty appealed to the chair to stop Trump’s unprofessional behavior, but when he continued to berate her, claiming it would be her fault if someone were killed at the center, she responded: “You’re already killing people, we’re at war.” And when he talked about what a great developer he was, she “reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room.”
“I mean, it really went there,” Beatty told Sanders-Townsend. “I was not going to let him bully me, intimidate me. And the facts stand for themselves.”
Indeed, these days, facts across the board are challenging Trump’s image of himself.
This is one thing that gives me a sliver of hope for our future relations as European, please keep 'civil disobedience' up to these unhinged oligarchs for better future of us all.
The only reason we have to choose between inflation and expensive loans is corporate profits can't ever go down. It's perfectly possible to freeze margins and ban increasing prices unless a business proves their costs went up, but to enforce that you would need to a) have a competent administration and b) not be scared to piss off your billionaire donors.
Allowing stock buybacks and not taxing dividends heavily is a choice. Not breaking up monopolies is a choice. Inflation comes down to high oil prices and corporate greed powered by weak competition. Starting wars is Trump's fault. Subsidizing big oil instead of setting price controls is also his choice, as is doing everything he can to slow down EV adoption that would reduce demand.
There are a lot of SKUs to regulate. The cost of the bureaucrats checking the requests for basic "my price is going up because my inputs went up" price rises would be staggering. Also it would disincentives any price drops being passed on.
This wont do absolutely nothing whatsoever to bring down inflation. Interest rates don't open the Straight of Hormuz, don't increase production of oil or any other commodities. the only way interest rates affect anything is when they meaningfully decrease investment, consumption, in other words a recession or depression.
This is basically self inflicted, as usual messing up in the Middle East always ends up with consumer paying the price for their ruler's stupidity
"Oh no, my drinking water tastes like crap after I pooped in the well"
We can’t afford healthcare because they revoked the subsidies but at least we now also can’t afford gasoline too!
> We can’t afford healthcare because they revoked the subsidies but at least we now also can’t afford gasoline too!
But we can easily affort 500+ million per day for faraway foreign wars! That, no problem.
Also apparently a $5000 “dividend” for everyone if we just “do the right thing”. I thought you had to be profitable to pay a dividend, but apparently not. Oh also, that $1.5T will magically not add to the debt or come from tax dollars.
Isn't that the textbook definition of buying votes?
Apparently not.
>In Brown v. Hartlage (1982), a Supreme Court case where a Kentucky county commissioner promised to reduce his salary if elected, the Court unanimously drew a line between policy promises and vote buying. “A candidate’s promise to confer some ultimate benefit on the voter, qua taxpayer, citizen, or member of the general public, does not lie beyond the pale of First Amendment protection,” Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote. Given that precedent, Trump is almost certainly within the bounds of the law (you might remember Elon Musk wasn’t charged for handing out $1 million checks to people during a campaign rally in Wisconsin in exchange for “taking the time to vote.”).
https://www.readtangle.com/trump-dividend-midterm-promise/
Yeah. And? :)
While this isn't the best way to address the issue, the US is way too dependent on gasoline/diesel for transportation. It's not sustainable.
Being unsustainable isn’t the same as breaking within the lifetime of the people making the decisions. The average US senator is 66, and that’s young compared to the current Supreme Court or the sitting President.
Maybe Trump is secretly for "the green agenda" and this was all part of the plan to stop oil.
He had that big falling out with Elon so that he can't be accused of pandering to him when electric car sales go through the roof.
I have also heard that this is really "big oil's" plan, they always manage to cause a huge price spike just when green energy is about to take over the market, somehow this stops the green revolution and forces everyone to go back to using fossil fuels.
Well if that consoles you, the US government has just approved gifting mega-bombs to Israel for another $2.8 billion. Several news call it a "sale" but it's actually a gift since most of the money comes from the US government anyway.
They did not revoke "the subsidies." The ACA subsidies are still in place. What was allowed to expire was the temporarily increased COVID subsidy levels, which were sold as a temporary emergency expansion. If they had originally passed a genuine and permanent ACA expansion, rather than an expiring one, there's likely nothing that could have been done to "revoke" it by those currently in power.
Maybe you mean this, but it's important to be clear about the distinctions we don't mislead people, and then someone tells them the whole truth, and then they wonder what else we were wrong about.
Except the person doing the pooping doesn't drink from the same well as he's got his own private reserve supply.
Oh, in the end, when the hoovervill goes marching- they do..
You mean he has his own private supply of poop that is involuntarily tapped into at any random moment?
"Oh no, my drinking water tastes like ~~crap~~arsenic after I ~~pooped in the well~~deregulated business interests"
But unlike in the old days, US wins from higher prices. Even consumers wins (because they make more money on average, and their imported goods are cheaper because balance of payments shifts in US favour because of oil exports).
Voters are furious because of psychological factor of gas prices (purely psychological, it has nothing to do with economy or people's purchasing power). It bites politician's asses real hard.
So, Trump undermined himself by launching that war - but others are fine.
All of that depends on the strength of the Dollar, If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar. Secondly theres the Petro-dollar which depends on the Middle East states Reinvesting their profits in the US to keep the dollar strong I don't know if you checked but I don't think they are going to be making any money in the near term. So looks like the dollar will be falling anyway. Further to that there is the global debt system which largely relies on buying US treasuries if countries get squeezed by the coming inflation theres the chance these get dumped on the market and if that happens I believe the term is "Well, Fuck."
> If the US is to deindustrialise as it aims too it needs a weak dollar.
Typo for "reindustrialize"? Is the idea to move people from well paying comfortable services jobs to uncomfortable repetitive lower paid factory work by forcibly lowering their standard of living?
Do they make more money on average? Does any additional income cover the increase in cost of living? Becoming psychologically poor is much harder than becoming psychologically rich. I doubt that balance of payments goes anywhere near your average Joe’s pocket.
It absolutely does because balance of payments = exchange rate, and average Joe is poor and consumes disproportional part of imported goods vs the rich.
This is just wrong.
The overwhelming amount of expenses is for domestic products; lumber, food, services, rent, etc. Cheaper foreign shit isn't going to be meaningfully felt by the majority.
The part where the rich come in, is that the rich will disproportionally feel the upside of selling the fuel. The people on below average wage are just going to see prices rise and meager savings dilute, long before their wages grow.
Thats not to say the US isn't going to be well of as history's largest energy producer ever, but the reshuffling is going to be extremely painful for a majority of Americans.
Imported goods which have been made more expensive by tariffs?
No, because the US are the slowest to electrify their grid and transportation.
Eh, how is this self-inflicted, when you have a radical has-been-empire blocking a global arteries by waging relentless proxy wars. Stop it with the "only white people can be actors on the global stage"-ism, the us basically clashes with Iran once every president (directly or indirectly) - and not by choice.
> when you have a radical has-been-empire blocking a global arteries by waging relentless proxy wars.
Took me a while to understand that you were not referring to the US here.
Iran is a pain in the ass, but the latest round of escalation was started by Israel and the USA.
I am no fan of Iran but the white people in question literally went there to wage war with the so called has-been-empire and got their butts spanked, despite EVERYBODY warning them for years this would have been an unwinnable war
It was blatantly obvious Iran would do that if attacked. This has been known for decades.
The only thing previously stopping them holding the strait "hostage" was the threat from the US of doing an "Operation Praying Mantis v2" and destroying their navy and attacking them.
And when the US did that anyway, they had nothing to lose.
This administration wants lower rates. Also this administration does everything it can to increase inflation such as tariffs and starting another endless war in the middle east.
The administrations choices are fairly binary now.
Inflate away the $40Trillion+ debt they can never pay back
Or
Hard default on the debt, and be the one holding the hot potato as the union breaks up.
Fed is trying to thread the needle between the two and keep the music playing as long as possible.
Not that I'm a fan of this administration, but inflating away remaining our only option is not related to Trump. It was the only choice for the past administrations since at least the subprime crisis; probably even since the Iraq war. My 2c.
You give the people in charge too much credit regarding any long term thinking or goals in general.
Or just fail for 4 years like every Republican administration since the 80s and wait for a Democrat to fix the economy...
> Fed is trying to thread the needle between the two
Not really, inflating it away is the only possible choice.
Can’t inflate it away for the same reason we can’t stop climate change. We would have to stop the behavior that caused the problem in the first place, and we all know that’s not going to happen. Remember during Clinton’s presidency the government ran a surplus and started paying down the debt, and there were news articles worrying about the future disappearance of treasury bonds? The party of “fiscal responsibility” took care of that problem in no time at all.
There is one obvious choice here, the policy is inflation and always has been.
From the adminstration
Fed independance is about tempering that policy so UST still has buyers.
Fed policy is explicitly controlled inflation (2% target).
2% inflation isn't going to inflate away the debt any time soon. It's basically as close to zero as can be realized without going under.
yet many "third world" countries managed to pay their debts just fine. some even more than once in recent history.
American exceptionalism even in failure?
How is it failure? You use your military to force trade to occur using your tokens. You control the supply of said tokens. You leave some other loser holding the bag for your debts. You win.
You're missing choice #3 - spend more money on stupid shit, cut taxes some more, pile on more debt, blame Obama Hussein Hunter Biden for the debt as the opening salvo of the third-term run in 2028.
The way this administration works is that anyone in a decision making position has been swapped for a self-serving yes-man who will do whatever Trump wants. Anyone they can't replace who won't deliver is briefed against or investigated until they quit or can be fired. Facts that might influence the decision play no part in the process.
The easy acceptance of this authoritarian governing style has been one of the most damaging to the idea of democracy. America's democratic institutions have great marketing but many of us outside the country and not subjected daily to that marketing have long known it is an particularly weak form of democracy and open to corruption, demagoguery and populism. Americans have a susceptibility to authority and hierarchical normalisation, has left them open to this.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
The government has fully lost control of the long-term Treasury yield - this is their attempt to bring it back under control.
I expect to see the president fire the Fed, nationalise it and make the rates negative, collapsing the economy.
The yield curve has always been controlled by the Fed, and this remains the case. No one has lost control. The yield curve is the time path of short run rates, adjusted by risk. So, for example, if the market thinks inflation will rise -- for example because of a foolish war against Iran -- then they will sell the long dated bonds because they know the fed will hike rates in the future, making the long dated bonds less valuable, and they want to get ahead of that. If, on the other hand, they think inflation will be too low, they will bid up the longer dated bonds because they expect the Fed to lower rates in the future, making the long dated bonds more valuable. The entire bond market is fixated on trying to guess what the Fed will do next, so that is why they peer at the economic data and try to guess in which direction the Fed will move and when. That is the opposite of "losing control" of the yield curve.
The problem is Bessent trying to control something that he has never had any control over, by jawboning the market and doing silly things like trying to intervene. Bessent is the Treasury secretary. Treasury does not, and never has, controlled the yield curve. Whatever games he plays buy buying and selling bonds has only a short term psychological effect on the market, and soon people brush it off.
The Fed controls the yield curve, not Treasury.
Bessent is a hedge fund guy that is really not well suited to the role he is playing. Now, they want to put Bessent in charge of economic sanctions against Iran, when we shouldn't even have any sanctions against Iran. The US is sanctioning the world's top oil producers, and then complaining about oil shortages.
The market controls the yield curve, at least if the Fed doesn't choose to create hyperinflation.
Sanctions against Iran play an important and justified geopolitical role. Iran has been a complete menace to the Middle East by propping their proxies and de-facto taking over at least 5 different countries and serving as one of the supporting pillars for Russia in its war. We have not seen the last of this war, too early to call the results. Trump is not backing down and we may see a Venezuela like situation at the end which would have massive geopolitical implications (of course there are other much less favorable outcomes too).
I think your phone autocorrected Israel to say Iran. Also you provided no evidence for your claim, you just kept repeating the claim over and over instead of backing it up.
Iran is the source for the Islamic justification for suicide bombing (suicide is forbidden in the Quran and thus 'innovation' was needed to justify it). That alone puts immense amounts of blood on their hands. They invented this justification for their own religious and geopolitical aims (getting the US out of the ME). They are interventionists who want to be the spiritual centre of Islam, they are the opposite of passive actors in their region.
The bigger question is whether the other Gulf states (that we ally with or support) are any better and whether or not they deserve sanctions too. The West is clearly not in a place within the ME to preach morals, but that doesn't mean countries like Iran don't deserve sanctions.
well thats one way to get out of having to pay back your loans :-|
So Trump spent weeks on a fake fraud investigation into Powell to try and force him out because he would not cut the rate, fails at that, then finally gets his choice in place and the dude raises rates almost immediately?
The rate decision is based on the FOMC votes, not the FED chair. The FOMC decides the policy, the FED implements the policy
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49731356
Meanwhile Bessent is buying long dated bonds and selling short dated, betting the yields will go down.
Dear US, try not to take the rest of the world with you when. You implode.
But if you bring everyone down with you, You don't have to pay anything to anyone.
It's not like Donald Trump didn't use this exact strategy already when he had to get out of debt from his private ventures.
And the dot plots suggest no rate decreases until 2028.
No rate decreases until a “real” recession, but yes, early 28 sounds about right.
Incoming unhinged POTUS rants and demands in 3…2…1…
But you know what, I’m glad to see that the fed is still operating independently. The doomer in me thought they’d fold to Trump, especially right before the midterms.
He didn't, oddly enough. He said he "disagreed with it" but had confidence in the central bank. Basically that he had no problem with it. This suggests to me he thinks he'll benefit from it somehow.
He did say he would be an awesome Fed Chair, can he appoint himself?
There appears to be more and more people throwing back against Trump; after the courts recently again said no to his need to plaster his name on the Kennedy Centre, he went a wailin' to his supposedly in pocket Kennedy Centre board:
~ Letters from an American (September 16, 2026) https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-16-202...At this point, people don't even care about his rants.
Some care enough to pay $100K to get them before everyone else.
This is one thing that gives me a sliver of hope for our future relations as European, please keep 'civil disobedience' up to these unhinged oligarchs for better future of us all.
Move on. When someone tells you who they are, multiple times, listen. Don’t act like you’re in an abusive relationship.
The only reason we have to choose between inflation and expensive loans is corporate profits can't ever go down. It's perfectly possible to freeze margins and ban increasing prices unless a business proves their costs went up, but to enforce that you would need to a) have a competent administration and b) not be scared to piss off your billionaire donors.
Allowing stock buybacks and not taxing dividends heavily is a choice. Not breaking up monopolies is a choice. Inflation comes down to high oil prices and corporate greed powered by weak competition. Starting wars is Trump's fault. Subsidizing big oil instead of setting price controls is also his choice, as is doing everything he can to slow down EV adoption that would reduce demand.
What you suggesting goes against the foundational and existential code of the United States of America.
There are a lot of SKUs to regulate. The cost of the bureaucrats checking the requests for basic "my price is going up because my inputs went up" price rises would be staggering. Also it would disincentives any price drops being passed on.
> It's perfectly possible to freeze margins and ban increasing prices
Americans across the political spectrum will call you a communist for this, as they do whenever rent controls are brought in.