There once was a man named Mamdani,
Who convinced voters he was their mommy.
He’ll make one percenters,
Pay for all food and renters,
‘Till the rich leave in a tsunami.
This viral internet limerick captures the absurdity of Zohran Mamdani’s smorgasbord of pie-in-the-sky socialist promises and predicts its inevitable outcome. He’s now the mayor-elect of NYC, winning a slim majority of 50.4% in a three-man race with only 2 million of NYC’s 5 million registered voters casting ballots. Mamdani calls this a “mandate.” His election-night victory speech wasn’t unifying and only selectively welcoming. Mostly to immigrants (legal or not), oppressed masses, Islamist jihadists, antisemites, and his socialist sycophants. Its tone was combative, reminiscent of the ideological oratories of his Marxist soulmates, like Vladimir Lenin and Fidel Castro promising a utopian communist future. Christening (or should I say Musliming) his “New age,” Mammy proclaimed, “We will prove there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.”
Yes, he’s a slick speaker. But it’s just a speech. His agenda is economic suicide for NYC. Pres. John F. Kennedy (or even Bill Clinton) wouldn’t recognize Mammy as a fellow Democrat.
He promises to make NYC “affordable.” In Brooklyn dialect: “fuhgeddaboudit!” He can’t. It’s a place for the rich who can afford it and the poor who live off the government dole, increasingly squeezing out the middle class. NYC’s realistic tax capacity could never raise enough revenue to put them on the dole, too.
Mammy’s ardent young supporters are leftists who, in a previous era, were known as communist “fellow travelers.” Especaiily his “barista proletariat” of young, highly educated, single, feminists who majored in women’s studies and can’t land a solid job in the Big Apple. Mammy may be the Elvis Presly heartthrob of this generation but he won’t be their savior. To make ends meet, they’ll have to find a few roommates, a rent-controlled apartment in a downscale neighborhood in Queens or the Bronx, and commute to Manhattan on the subway.
Mammy’s most bone-headed promise is to put “one” government-run grocery store in each of the city’s five boroughs. Given the city’s 8 million residents, these grocery stores need be gigantic. Imagine the lengths of the checkout lines. Perhaps he’ll invoke eminent domain and transform Yankee Stadium into the Bronx store, supplanting Babe Ruth and renaming it the “Grocery that Mammy Built.” Can all New Yorkers shop there or only the poorest, and how will that be controlled? Of course, prices would be very low or even free. But that would drive competing Latino bodegas out of business. And how about enterprising shoppers or shoplifters who clean out the shelves and resell their booty at a nice markup?
Mammy promises to “freeze” rents. When landlords who can’t keep up with their rising costs go broke, who’ll be stupid enough to buy a rent-frozen building? Mammy, of course. And the city will repurpose these properties to create an empire of public housing “projects.” We’ve seen how that turns out.
NYC cops have long been called “New York’s finest.” Mammy once condemned them as “corrupt racists” and promised to “defund the police.” Under his reign, many will quit and crime will soar, to the delight of the city’s criminal element.
Currently, corporations in NYC pay a top combined city and state income tax rate of 16.25%. Mammy would add another 4.25 points to the city tax rate, escalating the combined total to 20.5%.
The top NY state personal income tax rate is 10.9%, combined with NYC’s top rate of 3.9% it’s pushed to 14.8%, the highest of any state in the country. Mammy will up the city rate by 2 more points raising the combined rate to 16.8%. Adding that to the top federal income tax rate of 37%, means total personal income taxes in NYC would take 53.8% (16.8+37) of every additional dollar a “rich” New Yorker earns.
To that Mammy would say “Yea!” Businesses, many of the rich and even middle-income people will say “See ya,” and continue to flee the city, moving to states like Florida and Texas, depriving NYC and Mammy of their tax revenue, just as others have fled California, Illinois, and other Democrat-run cities and states.
Mammy’s foolish followers don’t understand or don’t care. The young college graduates among them, indoctrinated in the leftist ideology that dominates K-12 and higher education, know nothing of Adam Smith or Milton Friedman, nor does Mammy himself. Bernie Sanders and AOC are their economic gurus.
Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.
