Welcome to Axisprorata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank. Ideas Bank here. On today's show, e-sports moves into dollar stores and Apple capitulates in China.

But first, rent, it's too damn high.

So that was Jimmy McMillan, a candidate for mayor in New York City in 2005.

And since then, rents in New York and elsewhere have only gotten higher.

In San Francisco, for example, the median cost of a one-bedroom apartment is now

$3,533 per month, according to Zumper. That works out to over 42 grand per year. In New York,

it's nearly $3,000 and over $2,300 in Washington, D.C. And most importantly, it's not just on the

coasts. The single largest

monthly increase in September for one-bedroom rentals was in Lincoln, Nebraska, where it'll now

cost you $740 or nearly $9,000 annually. Nationwide, around half of all renters spend more than

30% of their income, more than 30% on housing. And that's a

threshold that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development calls a high-cost burden.

And all of that brings us to California, where Governor Gavin Newsom this week signed legislation

capping annual rent increases at 5% per year plus inflation for the next decade. There are also

some other rent of protections

in there and partial carve-outs for cities that already had their own rent control rules. But really,

this is the third, so this is part of a trend. Both Oregon and New York also have done something

similar, and we're even hearing talk of national rent control from leftist Democrats like Bernie

Sanders. Why it matters is that this could

affect over 40 million Americans, but there is deep disagreement over the efficacy of rent control.

Proponents just point to the numbers and say the free market has not worked out.

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