Ezra Klein on Brian Lehrer, Calling for Less Regulations

Ezra Klein and another guest were on the Brian Lehrer show (WNYC) this morning discussing how they think the left can go too far and needs to compromise to accomplish things. On the website it says that they are arguing that "limits placed by past generations to protect jobs and the environment are preventing solving shortages today." While I wouldn't disagree or bother arguing against some things discussed, there are a few arguments I had issue with.

They argue that rules and regulations prevent enough housing being built in NYC yet also point out that Manhattan has more housing and less people than in previous years. If that's the case, why are you arguing that housing scarcity is due to not enough housing being built? Building more housing would obviously put a downward pressure on housing prices, sure, but there seems to be other things at play that caused the scarcity, but they make no mention of it. Like, why bring up the conflicting information, but then not explain the cause.

To add to that, a caller explained her situation in which her landlord was doing construction work in such a way as to expose her and other tenants to asbestos. Are protections from something like this the type that Klein and guest are arguing against? Unless I missed it, they didn't seem to acknowledge it at all.

In addition to housing, they talked about power production and how red states like Texas are producing more clean energy than blue states like NY. They seemed to suggest that this was due to those states having laws than default to being friendly to construction... while also pointing out that those same states have politics that have been trying to shut down clean energy. One might assume that empty, flat land in the sunny southern weather might be a good reason solar and wind projects are happening there, but maybe I'm the crazy one.

Once again, there were points made that I might agree with, but not mentioning how a national housing crisis, corporate buying of housing, or other factors are driving up housing costs seemed to miss the mark. Likewise, does he not think that all the environmental protections blue states have came about for a reason? Many blue states were where rapid growth and building happened, up until they got dense and harder to build in. NY once had huge defense and manufacturing industries with fewer environmental laws to get in the way. When they found out those industries were polluting the water, boom, environmental laws to protect against it.

tl;dr: Just venting and seeing if anyone else found issue with a discussion on the Brian Lehrer show (WNYC) this morning in which Ezra Klein blamed things not getting done on liberal overreach.