Rent Control Fever Catches Boston & Tide Unveils Most Unappetizing Detergent

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0:42I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, rent control fever sweeps the country. Then Tide just released a successor to the Tide Pod, and you better not eat this one. It's Wednesday, February 18th. Let's ride.

0:59Remember Game of Thrones? Yeah, me neither. But it might be time to head back to Westeros. HBO has released a new series set in the Game of Thrones universe, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and it's actually good. Like, historically good. The most recent episode landed a 9.8 star rating on IMDb, which makes it one of the highest rated TV episodes ever. Fun fact, the only TV episode to achieve a 10 out of 10 rating is Ozymandias on the final season of Breaking Bad. So I was scrolling through some of the top 10 episodes of all time. A lot of anime, including Vinland Saga, Heated Rivalry snuck in there as well, but I'm sort of an IMBD hater because numbers 2 through 18 are all tied at the same rating, 9.9.

1:45So any ranking system that does that probably isn't precise enough. I need to know if people think an episode of Bluey is actually better than Game of Thrones' Battle of the Bastard. Give me some nuance IMDB. That being said, it is good to see Thrones kind of get its groove back because people forget. Actually, people don't forget this. This finale was rated 4.0 on IMDB. You don't need a lot of nuance to realize that that episode kind of stunk. And now a word from our sponsor, FlavCity. Neil, smell my breath. No, never again. Not after the blue cheese incident of 2022. This time is different because I just had Flav City's new Pepperminty Shamrock All-in-One Protein Smoothie.

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3:07New England's most populous state is gearing up for a fight over rent control, which is likely to end up on the ballot in November. The proposal is pitting landlords against labor advocates, economists against policymakers, Democrats against Democrats, patriots against loyalists, and the entire country is watching. One of the reasons this rivalry is so heated is that the proposal would be the strictest rent control anywhere in the United States. It would prevent Massachusetts landlords from raising annual rents by more than the rate of inflation, or 5%, whichever is lower. In other areas like California, Oregon, and Maryland, rent control is limited to the rate of inflation, plus a little sugar on top.

3:41It's a drastic plan that even split the state's two most powerful politicians, Governor Mara Healy and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. Healy is against the rent control initiative, but Wu came out for it last week, saying, I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. What no one disagrees about is Massachusetts, and the Boston area in particular, are facing a housing affordability crisis. Rent prices are among the most expensive in the country. Statewide, a two-bedroom apartment goes for about$25.60 a month, 74 % above the national average. In Boston, that spikes to nearly$3 ,400. Toby, speaking as a Massachusetts native, can we just all come together and remember the real enemies here are Yankees fans?

4:21We will actually talk about New York in just a sec, but you said it's dividing lots of people within Massachusetts. It's even dividing Michelle Wu herself because earlier in the year, she would criticize this very same initiative. She called it quite restrictions. He said it could potentially discourage construction. And that really does drill into the economic, argument against rent control is that people say Boston rents are high because demand for housing exceeds construction. That is a simple microeconomic fundamental supply demand issues right there. And so the solution is to increase supply.

4:55The solution is to make it easier to build rather than putting caps on rents, trying to constrain pricing artificially. That is always kind of the general thrust of people's critiques of rent control initiatives. Yeah, that's what Mara Healy, the governor, has been saying. She said, if you look at the studies, you effectively halt production. And that's because if landlords don't raise rents, then they can't collect enough money and then they won't put more money into building housing or maintaining certain properties. So she points to this example in the Twin Cities, which we got over the past few years in the Twin Cities is kind of this nice natural experiment of what different policies can do to housing.

5:31I'm talking about Minneapolis. They did not have rent control. They saw a rise in permits and St. Paul right next door did have rent control. And they just and they saw permits for multifamily construction just tumble precipitously. And now they are rolling that back. So if you look at different places around the United States that have implemented this, including Massachusetts back in the 70s and 90s, which you can talk about, then they say this is just a policy that while it has great intentions to bring prices, to keep prices manageable for rents, it just simply doesn't work on the ground. Yeah, it is very funny.

6:01There literally is historical precedent in Massachusetts, as you mentioned, from 1970 to 1994. So initially it is popular because who doesn't want lower rents, especially when you're trying to get elected as a politician. But then some of the observed outcomes from that period in Massachusetts, available units declined, housing quality kind of fell. And by the mid 1980s, 11 ,000 rentals were vacant in Boston, which is just exactly what you don't want in a city with a constrained housing supply. So there are plenty of examples of people trying this, but it just happens because people are feeling extremely crunched right now in New York City, in Boston, and a lot of these places that these ballot initiatives are going to gain a lot of support.

6:42Yeah, we should just say it's not just Boston or Massachusetts that is entertaining the idea of rent control in Los Angeles. They just recently tightened rent control for the first time in four decades. decades. Zoran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, has this big campaign, plans to freeze rents for stabilized units. It looks like we'll see what happens in Massachusetts, but it does seem like there's a lot of popular support. There was a survey of 500 registered voters. Nearly 63 % would support the rent control ballot measure should it come in November. And also, this is not the only governor-mayor spat that's happening right now.

7:17Yesterday, Zoran Mamdani of New York City proposed a 9.5 % property tax hike, which goes against what New York Governor Kathy Hochul wanted because he wants to tax the wealthy and corporations. And he said that Hochul's not letting him do that. So this was a last ditch attempt to fill a$5 billion two-year budget hole. So that's a nearly 10 % property tax hike for New York City, which would be the first property tax hike in more than two decades. That got a lot of people talking. Can't we all just get along and build more housing in the process. All right, moving on. If your version of commuting to your job involves rolling out of bed and changing into your business sweatpants, then I have some advice as to which companies to work for.

7:57Newer companies are significantly more likely to allow work from home, according to a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper. Employees at companies founded after 2015 are about twice as likely to work from home compared to firms founded before 1990. Well, duh, you say. Boomers and Gen X are famously office-billed, and the data backs that up too. CEO age has just as much to do with work policies as company age. CEOs under 30 offer, on average, 1.4 work-from-home days a week, while CEOs over 60 offer just 1.1. Still, when a company was founded matters the most of all. Unsurprisingly, if you were bringing a company into the world in 2020.

8:40You were remote first by necessity, and to this day, companies founded during that year lead all cohorts with 1.74 work-from-home days per week. How does this affect you? Well, even as companies like Amazon and J.P. Morgan are waging a return-to-office battle, their older leaders will eventually retire, bringing millennials and Gen Zs into CEO roles who will potentially bring more flexible work preferences with them. So, Neil, if you want that short commute, like bed-to-desk length, then youths in the boardroom could be an important aspect to target. This has really big implications because over the past couple of years, from 2023 to 2025, these same researchers that did this study have been tracking remote work, and they found that work from home rates have been declining over that time period.

9:24But this study suggests that maybe in five to 10 years, so you're talking about as more Gen Z comes into the boardroom and they implement these remote first policies, that total remote work rates across the United States will start to rise again. So really this generational shift has huge implications for remote work, commercial real estate, everything that goes into that, huge societal shifts. So it's very interesting to see this study out. There is an ironic kind of undercurrent to this though, because there's a big narrative violation that we have to point out here. Gallup did a poll last year that found amongst baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z.

9:57Gen Z is actually the least likely to favor exclusively remote work. Only 23 % of Gen Z employees say they prefer fully remote work compared to 35 % of employees from each other generation. So even though this study is saying like, hey, yeah, work from home might come back into popularity again, maybe young people don't even want that. They love going to the office because who doesn't love going to the office? You get to hang out with your best buddies. So a lot of people do not like to go to the office. that is certainly clear. But it seems like these companies that were built from 2020 on were just remote native from the first place.

10:32And that's why we're seeing such drastic discrepancies between companies that were created after 2020 and those before 1990. Because if you started a company in 2020 or 2021 or 2022, you have Slack built in, you have Zoom built in, and probably now you have AI tools built in that all leads to maybe more asynchronous workplace. place. So even if these Gen Z bosses stare down these Gen Z workers who want to go back to the office, seems like the genie is out of the bottle and there will be at least a certain amount of days that will be remote work for the foreseeable future. And there's absolutely an argument too that new technologies with AI technologies, maybe work from home becomes even more easier to pull off.

11:13Asynchronous workflows are just becoming the norm. So there is just a real technological argument to this as well, that maybe in 10 and 20 years, it will be much easier to work from home than it even is today. Tide Pod meet the Tide Triscuit. Yesterday, Tide announced its latest attempt to change the way you do laundry, revealing that its new tile-like detergent brand will roll out nationwide in April. It's Tide's biggest laundry innovation since the Tide Pod in 2012, which has grown to a$2 billion a year business for parent company Procter & Gamble. Called Tide Evo, these tiles really do resemble a Triscuit, though you shouldn't snack on them.

11:47Each one is made up of more than 15 miles of super thin fibers stacked in six different layers of cleaning ingredients. The tile gradually dissolves when the water hits and is specifically designed to be washed cold. And the process of inventing it, talk about the laundry equivalent of the Manhattan Project. 15 PhD level chemists and engineers spent over a decade in the lab perfecting this tile, all in the hopes that Christopher Nolan will one day make a movie about them. More pressing for P &G is the question of whether the tile will make a dent in the$9.3 billion market for laundry detergent in the U.S., 70 % of which is dominated by liquids.

12:21Execs are bullish, telling Axios that Tide Evo will be, quote, big, if not bigger than Tide Pods. But of course, they're going to say that. Toby, I'm more interested in your opinion. I think it is so funny how they are persisting this product because in their marketing materials, they're saying that it triggers four out of five sentences. They say sight. It has this lovely diamond-shaped touch. It's a dense sponge, fuzzy feel. The smell, you can just smell the cleanness and even the sound that makes a little pop when you open the box. The fifth sense, though, they're saying deliberately avoided.

12:50In that sense is taste, obviously, because Tide Pods have this story history. They look like candy. People on social media did the Tide Pod Challenge. They started eating the Tide Pods, which was a PR nightmare for P &G because, unfortunately, they made a delicious-looking laundry pod. So this one, they're getting out in front of it and saying Triscuit is almost like a good way of thinking about it because this is dry and fibrous. You don't want to eat it. They're saying there's no way any of you out there could possibly find this appetizing. So I love how they're trying to get in front of people trying to put it in their mouths.

13:21What's interesting to me about this particular product is how they're trying to establish these green sustainability bona fides. They're positioning it as a way to eliminate the need for plastic bottles. And another thing is about the particular packaging, specifically very lightweight, slim packaging. And it was also – it's very much a nod to sustainability but also the fact that most people will order this online. so they're saying this is going to be a much cheaper way to get this from our fulfillment center to your door and it's going to reduce shipping costs because of how we package this in such a lightweight way.

13:52Yeah, because think about the current container you have for either your pods or for detergent. It's very heavy plastic now. It is just a light box, but I do love that Tide put so much effort into this. I mean, 10 years, it really is a Manhattan project of laundry, which is crazy. Tide is, they go so hard on laundry. They identified 55 separate steps when it comes to doing your laundry. I couldn't name more than five of them. Does that include wearing the clothes in the first place? I'm really wondering where that, because that is a literal fact that they cite in their marketing materials. It's 55 steps.

14:24And I was like, what? Am I doing something wrong here? Like, yes, I separate the whites from the colors, but that's one step. The next step is put it in. Maybe it's like bending from your waist is a step. I don't know. I got to get into that. But they do have to care about it because U.S. laundry market is$25 billion market. Any slight shift in form factor has massive repercussions. I mean, Tide Pods is a$2 billion annualized business for them. So they run the risk of cannibalizing some of that. Is this a successor? Is it going to take market share from them? But Tide execs are like, honestly, we've invented a lot of different ways to do laundry.

14:57We've gone from powder to liquid to pods, now to tiles. And people still use all of those. It really is kind of whatever you like to use to clean your clothes. So total new form factor. Excited to put it in my mouth. I'm just kidding. I would never do that. But I'm excited to try it because I like trying new laundry detergents as well. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about Norway after this. Neil, tax season is fast approaching and it's got me thinking about my finances. Yeah? Is this finally the year you're going to work with a financial professional? That is a way better idea than what I was thinking, especially since Northwestern Mutual can match you with a financial professional who will work with you to build a plan based on what's important to you and help grow your wealth and protect what you've worked so hard for.

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17:00Check out The League. Download the app and apply today. With the Winter Olympics well into their second week, if you check the medal leaderboard right now, you'll encounter a familiar sight. Norway, a nation with a population the size of Minnesota, leads in total medals and golds, just as they did last Winter Olympics, and the one before that, and the one before that. Right now, they have more than double the U.S.'s gold medals, with 2 % of the population. The question is how? And a good answer would be do everything the exact opposite of the United States. While the U.S. has a win-at-all-cost mentality, Norway prioritizes fun to such an extent that no official scorekeeping is allowed in organized sports until age 13.

17:43While the U.S. charges hefty fees to participate in sports, Norway keeps them affordable. Imagine a Norwegian's horror if they knew the extent private equity has crept into U.S. sports. Norway's official sports motto is joy for all. Meanwhile, U.S. private equity giants carve up youth sports into a$40 billion business. So, Neil, as you watch Johannes Hofslatt Klabo win one gold medal after another and Norway's medal count continue to dwarf Americas, realize it's not an accident, but a lot of little decisions that add up to create a winter powerhouse. That and the fact that they have a lot of mountains and a lot of snow probably helped too.

18:30Certainly helps, but this was a deliberate strategy. Back in 1984, Norwegian team went to Sarajevo and they only just got three golds. Four years later, they came home with no golds and they're like, we have to do something about this. And so they created a project called the Olympia Toppen, which is an organization whose only responsibility is to recruit and train Norwegian athletes to be absolutely dirty in the Winter Olympics. And that has absolutely paid off. Starting in 1994, they had the Winter Olympics at Lillehammer in Norway. And they started their run basically in 1994 by pioneering this big umbrella method for youth sports.

19:09and it's just kind of crazy for the American mind cannot comprehend the fact that they don't keep score until age 13. And a lot of people are probably rolling their eyes and saying, like, of course Norway does well because they're literal. It's a mountainous country. It's one of the most mountainous countries. People get around by skiing all the time. And, yes, that is true. But also they do really well in the Summer Olympics, too, and warm weather sports. I mean, there's Carson Warholm, who's a 400-meter hurdle champion. Christian Blumenfeld, he has the Ironman triathlon world record, also recently just recorded the highest VO2 max ever.

19:41There's Gustav Eden, Caps are rude. He's a tennis player. Viktor Hovland, a golfer, Erling Haaland. Like the Norway punches were far above its weight in terms of the size of its country. And a lot of it does have to do with just like their approach to sports as a whole. Back to the Olympics though, one thing that they do is bring all their Olympic athletes together in sort of a mini training camp a year before the Olympics where you're having, you know, the skeletoners sitting next to the cross country skiers sitting next to the athletes and all just feeling like an actual team. And that does pay dividends.

20:11Again, some of it seems like wishy-washy, but you look at the results and you say, there is something here that is happening. It is a lot of small decisions that ladder up into a bigger result. And one of those small decisions that I thought was very interesting is that they have a huge used equipment market. Now, skiing, these winter sports are very expensive, specifically the equipment. And a lot of American families might be like, well, I want to have my kid do skiing or snowboarding, But when I look at the prices for lift tickets or any of this equipment that they're getting, it's just way too expensive.

20:41But Norway has this very robust secondary market for winter sports equipment that allows families to get them at lower prices. And then when it comes to signing them up for leagues, it's also not expensive. So you can see that this is a deliberate strategy and it's absolutely paying off. And then another thing that's interesting to me is we're talking about winter sports and Norway being so good. they are not so good at hockey, which is shocking because the two other Scandinavian countries that very much resemble Norway, Sweden, and Finland are amazing at hockey. There are 95 Swedes in the NHL this season.

21:12There are 46 Finns, but there are only three Norwegian players in the NHL. And this has to do, you could go down a big rabbit hole, and I highly recommend it because it's very interesting. But here's just a reflection of that. There's just no hockey rinks in Norway. It has 54 indoor rinks in total. There are more rinks in 60 miles of Stockholm, Sweden than that. So go down the rabbit hole, figure out why Norway is not good at hockey, even though they just kind of dominate at every single other winter sport. Should I do my Nordic fun fact on the scoreboard? I'll do my Nordic fun fact. When Sweden and Denmark play each other in a team sport, the scoreboard bug on screen reads SWE versus DEN, which spells Sweden.

21:54And then the remaining letters left over from that are Den and Mark. It is very stupid, but if they ever play each other in hockey or soccer, you can bring that fun fact up. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Stephen Colbert just dropped the gloves in a spat with his employer, CBS, and FCC Chair Brendan Carr, accusing them of censoring an interview on his late night show. For Monday night's episode, Colbert was set to talk with James Tallarico, a Democrat running in a primary for the Texas Senate seat. But Colbert said that CBS lawyers told him, quote, in no uncertain terms that the network could not air the interview because of increased FCC scrutiny of a rule that requires equal airtime for political candidates on local broadcast networks.

22:33In a six minute diatribe, Colbert called out Carr and CBS, which he said had instructed him not to talk about the political pressure to scrap the interview. Colbert began, because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this. Let's talk about this. CBS disputed the version of events, saying it hadn't banned the interview from airing, but warned that the equal time rule would be triggered if it did air. CBS said it offered the show different options for keeping in line with the rule. What ended up happening is Colbert put the interview with Tallarico on YouTube, where it's racked up far more views than it would have gotten otherwise.

23:04Yeah, viewers do have a choice in today's day and age. If they don't want to watch it or can't watch it on broadcast airwaves, they can go to YouTube, and it has done extremely well It's totally a Streisand effect situation where more people and more attention have been drawn to this interview now than maybe if it had just originally aired. It has more than 1.7 million views on YouTube as of early yesterday afternoon. That is a lot, especially when you compare it to an interview from the same show with Jennifer Gardner that has just under 100 ,000 views. So no shade to Jennifer Gardner, but you see how much more significant the intention on this political interview was because of this spat.

23:44Moving on, Palantir wants a Palantan. The company is moving its HQ to Miami, Florida, as it too has been caught up in the Florida heat waves sweeping across corporate America. Palantir started life in Palo Alto, California, but outspoken CEO Alex Karp has railed against the culture of Silicon Valley, saying back in 2020, we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector's values and commitments. That preceded a move to Denver for a while before yesterday's announcement signaled It would follow the likes of Citadel down south. Neil, we've spoken about billionaires looking for some sand between their toes with Mark Zuckerberg recently purchasing a house in Miami, a migration accelerated by a proposed wealth tax in California.