Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
Ekosj has already explained the ranked voting system likely to make Mamdani the next mayor and betting markets have shifted to make him a clear favorite. So here are some highlights of the administration of future NYC mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani as outlined on his platform:
- Rent control, while also going after landlords for what they already cannot afford to provide.
- Higher property taxes on the wealthier neighborhoods while curtailing tax lien sales. (No indication if the lien-sale restriction is means-tested. How will it be enforced?)
- Immediate higher taxes on “the rich.”
- Massive new $1.1 billion Community Safety Department with social workers at 100 subway stops, presumably to assist the mentally ill and counsel violent criminals to desist. (What exactly is a “gun violence interrupter”?) And a vast array of “prevention” programs, because that approach has always deterred crime and violence whenever and wherever tried.
- City-owned grocery stores will make food cheap because there will be no profit margin, no property tax, and no rent. And they will never run out of anything because shoppers will make choices as if items were priced. There will, of course, be no adverse effect on existing food retailers of all sizes. Presumably there will also be no shoplifting. And all carried out with the efficient service delivery we expect from unionized city employees. (Try to picture the DMV or MVA with a produce or seafood department. Yeah.)
- Free buses. And clearing out all the loading zones to make bus lanes which will of course have no adverse impact on stores. And even though it's free, rude young thugs will totally avoid riding those buses unless they want to avoid lectures from all the social workers on the subway.
The whole thing reads like a mock government agenda composed by an annoying girl in a suburban high school (who grew up to be the prototypical core Democratic voter with the same depth of understanding of economics and law). The plan is fiscally nuts, but if you have experience and connections for getting government contracts for generic counseling programs, violence prevention education, and hate crime education, this is a dream come true. At least for a while.
This is also the society that Alex (Clockwork Orange) had always hoped for—only fluffy social work responses to violent crime and instances of actual evil.
Fiscal insanity, the further departure of upscale taxpayers and businesses, the disproportionate increase in program-dependent persons, and all the joys of lawlessness and likely increased social dysfunction, with GOP bloggers and videographers happily recording the horror show. Go Zohran!
I think I would have preferred Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as the chosen mode of my destruction, but New Yorkers are making a very different and probably worse choice. Like Gazans who let Hamas govern their lives, they have to live with it. This is real life, so Who You Gonna Call? does not have a happy answer or a clear solution.
Discussion (128)
CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I frankly don't give a rats rectum about who NY picks for mayor. They get to live with the result. I do care who those idiots elect to Congress and the Senate however because I can't escape those incompetents.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
It seems people need a vivid lesson every 30 - 40 years on how horrible actual socialism / communism is (as opposed to the rosy-hued public fantasy view of its proponents). Without first or second-hand experience, people seem to forget what it actually is like.
So there's a (sick) part of me that looks forward to New Yorkers learning the hard way how horrible socialism is. Unfortunately, New York City is so big and important to so much commercial activity throughout the United States, the rest of us will suffer to some extent along with them.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Some city in southern California adopted many years ago a strict rent-control policy. The result was that many prospective tenants applied to rent each property offered for rent. The landlords chose to rent to the wealthiest applicants, who promised to do the improvements and updates themselves, so the landlords did not need to do updates and renovations.
Also, has no one noticed that the only housing being built in New York City is super-luxury high rises designed (and priced) to appeal to only to ultra-rich people? Where is the housing for "normal people" going to come from?
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Reminds me of the meme of a road sign with "Consequences Ahead" as a warning.
BTW, CA is experiencing more consequences:
msn.com
Open link
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Why former governor Cuomo (killer of of thousands of elderly people) looks "reasonable": Even he noted a decade ago:
that a steeply progressive tax structure depends a lot of a very few "rich" people,
that there are relatively few "rich" people,
that many of them can easily move,
it wouldn't take the movement of many of those "rich" people outside New York to seriously impact government tax revenue, and
significantly higher taxes on "the rich" is likely to prompt a non-trivial number of "rich" people to move out of New York.
That neither Mr. Mamdani nor a number of New Yorkers, can see this is illustrative of a significant lack of critical thinking.
You're seeing five of 128 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.