FORTUNE Bill Ackman: "Socialism is a disaster"

Socialism is a disaster. Why is the cost of housing so high in New York City? Because, unfortunately, left-wing mayors have made it very difficult for developers to build here. Mamdani, when he freezes rents, he's just going to make the problem worse. There are buildings in New York City, many, many buildings in New York City where half the tenants, plus or minus, are rent-stabilized apartments. And so their rent is frozen, and the other half are free market. And so what does the landlord do to generate to cover his interest expense? He has to raise rents, raise them on half the apartments. And so we can fix a lot of these problems with much better policy. Look at Florida. An incredibly well-managed state. They're talking about eliminating voted recently to eliminate real estate taxes. How are they able to do that? Just good policy. You want the Ken Griffin's of the world to locate here. You want him to spend $250 million on a $250 million purchase made that building economically viable. The construction that building created, how many jobs? How many rich people moved into that building, who are going to pay taxes? The system can work very well. You want people at the very top— you want to have of the world, Elon Musk of the world. But you don't want to discourage Elon Musk from locating his business here.