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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 8m

NYC's shadow tax: block new market-rate housing → shortage → higher rents → property tax revenue soars on the tight stock. Meanwhile, pushing out low-income people cuts costs. Higher market rate rents is the goal.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 2h

The Mamdani administration is not actively creating zoning mechanisms tailored exclusively to incentivize pure market-rate housing That means higher rents, and much higher property taxes.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 9h

why hasn’t europe banned american social media already?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 9h

NYC housing politics today: deep poverty stays concentrated, new "affordable" housing leans toward higher incomes, and moving the very poor into existing rent stabilized housing gets resisted every time. Is that a revealed preference for city hall?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 22h

who’s actually researching whether WFH is making single high earners rent 2BR rent-stabilized apts in NYC just to use the second bedroom as an office? fewer roommates → more households → same housing stock → higher rents?? anyone looking into this?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Politicians use Price controls as economic weapons. 🚲 Cap bike-share fares below cost → operator bleeds money → forced exit 🏠 Cap rents below operating costs → landlords sit on vacant units → supply shrinks → market rents soar Both "solutions" create the exact crisis they claim to fix.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

About 6,800+ Class 1 NYC properties valued at $5M+ are flagged as non-primary residences by the Finance Dept for the pied-à-terre tax. That’s like 3X the total number of buildings in all of Park Slope being used as vacation homes.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Is AI is the new Dutch Disease? Like past oil booms, AI acts as a black hole, sucking up global capital, top talent, and power grids while crowding out the rest of the economy. Iran war and tariffs don’t help

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

What if every U.S. car trip under 3 miles became a bike ride? 🚴‍♂️ ⛽ ~19 billion gallons of gas saved each year That’s about 15% of all U.S. gas use 💵 At $3.75 per gallon = $71 BILLION saved We’d end up spending lots of money at local businesses

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

NYC rent stabilization is a regressive subsidy: higher earners benefit most, while the poorest stay concentrated in under-resourced neighborhoods & schools. Housing poverty, not school funding, is what hurts students, even when schools are well-funded

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

New York ranks dead last in the Tax Foundation's 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index, driven by the nation's lowest ranking (#50) for individual income tax and a #47 ranking for property tax burdens NY ranks 35th out of 50 U.S. states for its labor force participation rate.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If NYC expanded transit further out + networked it more, and upzoned outer areas for new hubs where less important single-family homes are, would that ease pressure on old Manhattan buildings facing demolition for skyscrapers? Is mass transit a historic preservation program?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I forget… did we go to war with Iraq, take over Venezuela, and go to war with Iran for solar power, wind power, or gasoline? 🤔

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Over 10 years (15,000 mi/yr), the all-electric Kia EV3 beats its vintage gas equivalent, the Kia Seltos, by about $3,150 in total ownership costs. While the Seltos is $4.9K cheaper upfront, the EV3 saves $9.4K in fuel (home charging) and $4.3K in maintenance over a decade!

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Taxing wealth addresses wealth concentration. Building market-rate multifamily housing in high cost suburbs addresses housing scarcity and the affordability crisis. Don’t confuse the two.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The BYD Seagull electric car: Price: Under $10,000 USD Range: ~190 to 250 miles Seating: 4 passengers Why can't Americans buy it? The U.S. enforces a massive 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars, doubling its cost and blocking it from the market to protect gasoline automakers

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If AI is the big box retail of brains, what happens to the Main Street of white-collar work?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Y do leftist TikTok influencers have more ideological overlap with Tucker Carlson than Barack Obama? (anti-establishment populism and rejection of institutional norms)

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Did the Apple iPhone single-handedly start the fall of American education, society, and democracy? Or just accelerate it?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Everybody in New York is pointing fingers at the schools. Bad teachers. Bad principals. More money. You're looking at the wrong end of the horse. The school problem is a housing problem. It's the housing, stupid. It’s City Hall

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

62% of all NYC high school students go to a school where less than half of the students pass basic state math and reading exams. In 503 schools, most students failed both math and reading tests at the same time

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

If self-driving cars are 5 years away, why are we still pouring concrete for garages, driveways, and parking moats that'll outlive us? We built outhouses long after indoor plumbing existed. Zoning needs a update patch

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Building "affordable" housing at Sunnyside Yard will cost about $2.15M per NYC home. By comparison, standard market-rate construction in outer Queens costs around $400K per home on traditional land. Why have taxpayers spend 5.4x more?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

GOING INTO IRAN IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY! We went to war under a false & now disproven premise, nuclear warheads. There were NONE! It’s raising prices by the trillions! www.france24.com/en/20191009-...

france24.com

Trump: US going into Middle East was 'worst decision ever' - France 24

Trump: US going into Middle East was 'worst decision ever'

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

A T-shirt drop shipper on TikTok got verified, changed its name to Kanye West, and then posted a whole bunch of wild videos acting like the rapper. Goes viral. So uh, political campaigns are going to copy this idea, and TikTokers aren’t smart enough to figure anything out

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

NYC banned plastic bags to "save the environment." But stores sell "reusable" bags for 3 cents. People take them home and throw them out anyway. Result: • More trash • Higher manufacturing costs • Food prices go up A feel-good rule that fixes nothing.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Under the Brooklyn Bridge, the transit museum has a whole bus load of vintage busses out for you to see

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

our kids and grandkids shouldn't have to pack up and move 3 states away just to find an affordable roof over their heads. building townhomes and apartments in our pricey suburbs means the next generation can actually afford to stay right where they grew up, close to family

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Would the iPhone be better if... Only local union labor could build it? No full-price models allowed? Every phone had to be "affordable"? One local official could veto any factory? And 99-unit assembly lines were the max to dodge wage rules? You'd get fewer iPhones. Same with apartments

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Knockoff bags on Canal street were the old hustle. Now it's stolen ideas sold by AI startups, and the sellers aren't human. What's the going rate for your work?

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

When the original MacBook Air launched in 2008, it was a $1,799 luxury experiment. Within 3 years, Apple dropped the entry price by 44% down to $999, niche executive novelty to mainstream laptop.

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Ack Wordle 1,916 6/6 ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨 ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

High fertilizer costs, spiked by the Iran war, are hitting developing nations hardest. Credit-starved smallholder farmers are forced to cut back on nutrients, cutting crop yields and threatening long-term food security across vulnerable regions going into 2027.

cfr.org

Hunger Warfare and a Fertilizer Crisis Are Straining Global Food Supplies | Council on Foreign Relations

Attacks on Black Sea grain infrastructure and a fertilizer shock from the Iran war are hitting global agriculture at both ends of the production cycle, notes Michael Werz. The pain will really be felt...

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The rent in NYC is high because about 30% of your rent is transferred by City Hall to single-family homeowners thru the city's property tax system. To make it worse, those same single-family homes block new multifamily housing, creating a massive housing shortage

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

1/3 of NYC public school students are chronically absent (missing 10%+ of the year). The result? Test scores are plummeting, with math and literacy proficiency down significantly. The learning crisis pushed the NY State Board of Regents to drop the exams as a graduation requirement

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

How easy is it to walk across Van Cortlandt park… I don’t think you can? Apple Maps walking directions in the Bronx are pretty ugly! Doesn’t even try to walk thru the park. It’s a six-9 lane highway in the way

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Crazy that NYC has roads going thru a public park

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Phil BuildTheFutureNow @philsustainability.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Online discourse really makes it feel like the average American has a third-grade level grasp of reality and how things work

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