New York City has always been a place of big dreams, bigger ambitions, and the grittiest hustle culture imaginable. That’s at least one thing the Hamilton musical got right about the so-called “greatest city in the world.” It has been a proving ground for entrepreneurs, artists, chefs, techies, and everyday strivers who want to test themselves against one of the toughest and most productive cities on earth. But today, the city is also becoming a test case for a very different kind of ambition: the rise of unapologetic socialism in American politics.
At the center of this movement is Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist who has become a political force by tapping into the frustrations of New Yorkers struggling with sky-high rent, punishing commutes, rising grocery bills, and the crushing cost of childcare.
Zohran presents himself as the man who will make life easier by offering government solutions such as free buses… free child care (that used to be called stay-at-home parenting)... rent freezes… city-owned grocery stores.
The pitch has resonated because New Yorkers are exhausted from the squeeze.
Mamdani’s platform reveals the same old problems that socialism has leeched off of for generations in order to survive. Same old problems, and the exact same 20th-century “solutions.”
I promise you, the results will be the same too.
Why Socialism Is Winning in New York
The first thing to understand is why socialism is catching fire in New York in the first place. The city’s traditional political leadership has utterly failed. Mayor Eric Adams is uninspiring at best and corrupt at worst. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo disgraced himself during the pandemic with policies that put vulnerable nursing home residents in harm’s way, and the “grab ass” scandal finally did him in.
The so-called center-left has collapsed, leaving a void that Mamdani is all too eager to fill.
Add to that the unique frustrations of the city’s managerial class. These are not blue-collar New Yorkers or small business owners. These are mostly young professionals who graduated from elite universities, studied soft subjects, and now work in mid-level office jobs. Basically, they’re low-rent kings of the universe.
They feel cheated because, despite their degrees, they cannot afford the lifestyle they always imagined New York would provide.
They crowd into overpriced apartments with multiple roommates…
Complain at nightly rooftop dinner parties…
Decline to start families or marry before 40…
And of course, gravitate toward politicians who promise that government can fix it all for them.
“Free” Will Always Be Seductive
Mamdani’s campaign slogan might as well be “free everything.” His first big promise is free public transit, which all New Yorkers know already exists if you simply choose to ride and not pay.
He points to the Staten Island Ferry, free since 1997, as proof that it can be done. To many, this is common sense. Why should New Yorkers pay more when life is already so expensive? What are their tax dollars for?!
No politician will tell them the truth, which is that the ferry costs millions to run every year. Taxpayers cover the cost, even those who never step on it.
And most New Yorkers will never set foot on it.
Expanding that model to buses ignores a harsh reality, which is that in cities that have piloted free public transit, the trains and ferries fill up with people who have no intention of using them responsibly. Commuters get pushed aside by vagrants or loiterers. Free riders crowd out those who actually need the service.
It is the tragedy of the commons: when no one pays, everyone suffers.
Common… sense.
Meanwhile, New York’s transit system is already a catastrophe. It’s billions of dollars in debt, routinely mismanaged, and plagued with inefficiencies that fuel the ridesharing business. So naturally, the city taxes or bans those services to avoid competition.
Making it “free” will not solve this crisis. It will merely accelerate the decline. Guess what the socialists will call for after the system collapses entirely?
Yeah. More power.
City-Owned Grocery Stores
Then there’s Mamdani’s bright idea for city-owned grocery stores. He argues that with food prices climbing, the city should step in to provide a “public option” for produce. These stores, funded by redirecting money from private supermarkets, would not pay property taxes or rent. The supposed benefit is lower prices for consumers.
The problem is that grocery retail is already one of the thinnest-margin businesses in America. Profits average 1.5%. Eliminating that profit does almost nothing to lower prices. Instead, what Mamdani’s plan really means is that the government would tilt the playing field by taxing private stores while subsidizing its own operation.
Efficiency will disappear. Shelves will go empty. Quality will decline rapidly, if it ever exists in the first place.
Kansas City’s Sun Fresh experiment is a grocery store case study in failure, marked by rotting produce, barren aisles, and taxpayer bailouts. Compare that to the abundance of a well-functioning market economy.
NYC needs more Aldi and Lidl. Cut property taxes and you’ll get just that.
When Boris Yeltsin toured an American grocery store after the fall of the Soviet Union, he was stunned. He could not believe the variety, affordability, and sheer abundance. That abundance was created by competition, not bureaucracy. Past guest of the show, Daniel Di Martino of Venezuela, has a similar reaction any time he goes into an American grocery store.
The Housing Crunch Does Indeed Suck
Housing is where Zohran’s message cuts deepest. Rent in New York is brutal. When I lived there, I started out making just $500 a week. Barely scraping by. Years later, even when earning six figures as a producer, I was still living paycheck to paycheck, stuck in cramped apartments, and hustling overtime to keep up. Millions of young professionals today feel the same way.
I am sympathetic.
Nationally, the cost of housing has skyrocketed compared to wage growth. Decades ago, home prices hovered at three or four times the median income.
Today, that ratio is closer to six.
Mamdani’s answer is the same as his approach to everything else: freebies and government control of the market.
Proposals for rent freezes may sound like relief, but they only discourage developers from building new housing. The lack of units is driving New York’s problem more than anything.
Socialists view developers as being somehow locked into one area when they enact policies meant to squeeze out all their profits. They somehow forget or ignore that builders can simply take their projects to Florida or North Carolina.
The real reason housing is unaffordable is that supply is artificially constrained by centrist liberals and closeted socialists already embedded within the NYC government. Restrictive zoning laws and entrenched NIMBY political elements combine forces to choke off new construction on a daily basis.
Until those barriers are addressed, no amount of socialist tinkering will make apartments cheaper.
The common thread in all of Mamdani’s ideas is the removal of incentives. Free buses ignore the reality that people value what they pay for. City-run grocery stores remove the incentive to compete and make better shopping experiences. Rent freezes discourage new housing development. Child care “at no cost” pushes responsibility from families to the state.
Each of these policies makes people more dependent on the government, while leaving the underlying factors untouched.
New York, I promise you, this won’t set you free. Incentives are what drive a society's success or failure.
A Warning for the Rest of America
New York City is unique in its size, density, and culture, but in many ways, it is also a canary in the coal mine for the rest of America. The same frustrations that fuel socialism in New York—high rents, rising costs, and political corruption—exist everywhere else.
If New York embraces Mamdani’s socialist vision, other cities will be tempted to follow, and many will give it a try.
We can double down on government control, believing that faceless bureaucrats have the power to make life better by handing out “free” services….Or we can address the root causes of our problems, getting the rulemakers out of the way.
I believe in people.
I’m not sure Zohran Mamdani and his supporters really do.
My intellectual hero, Dr. Thomas Sowell, wrote a book called “Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One”. He makes the point that if you do something that runs counter to forces like supply and demand, the impacts may not appear immediately, but they will appear. Rent freezes are a great example.
If rent is frozen, some people who might not otherwise will keep second apartments, but will not actually live in them in any meaningful way.
Older couples, whose children are grown, and the no longer need extra rooms, will decide not to move because there is no cost to them to stay. This will prevent larger apartments from becoming available to those who need them.
Rent freezes will limit the building of new apartments because the risk of not making enough money to pay the costs is very real.
Rent freezes also mean, less maintenance in the long run. Houses will decay, maybe not on day one (stage one) but down the road (stage two).
There was a recent Wall Street Journal article “Mamdani’s Rent Freeze Would Sink New York Landlords”. It talks about other problems..
There are landlords whose property taxes have gone up, but they are not allowed to raise the rents to help cover them.
There is also the problem that NY makes it very difficult for landlords to kick people out for nonpayment. The example indicate that it can take 2 years of nonpayment to get people out.
The combination of bad rent freeze policies and bad tenant policies make being a landlord a loosing proposition. Those problems will make appear in stage two and make life bad for everyone.
Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One”
https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Economics-Thinking-Beyond-Stage/dp/0465003451
Wall Street Journal article “Mamdani’s Rent Freeze Would Sink New York Landlords”.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/mamdanis-rent-freeze-would-sink-new-york-landlords-campaign-housing-77bd45e1?mod=Searchresults&pos=2&page=1
I suspect that rents in NYC and other big blue cities are high due to the influx of illegal immigrants and other non Americans. Supply and demand.
I worked at a language school in midtown where our wealthy students were paying rent a year in advance on Manhattan apartments none of the teachers could hope to afford.
Add to this that even if working with a high credit rating a citizen still needs a guarantor in many cases in order to get a lease.
Back in the 80s society was higher trust; it was relatively easy to get apartments. Add to this discouraging family formation and landlords who make more from roommate situations that are actually less reliable than a family. With each turnover they increase the rent.
I’m trying to figure out how to move from NYC back to Chicago and can’t see how to do this without a job lined up there.