How do you destroy the world's foremost economic center? The residents of New York City seem hellbent on finding out, with self-described communist Zohran Mamdani a heavy favorite to become the next mayor.
The trust fund kid who has never held a real job has proposed raising taxes on the "rich" as one of his primary policies. When asked to explain that during a recent interview with Al Sharpton on MSNBC, Mamdani leaned into sniffing unicorn farts.
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MAMDANI: The top one percent of New York City earns a million dollars or more a year, and my vision is not one where they leave. It's one where they stay.
SHARPTON: How do you get them to stay?
MAMDANI: In part by showing them that asking them to pay more in taxes would increase even their quality of life because if you ask New Yorkers what is it that's making them feel uneasy about our city, you often hear about the cleanliness of our city, the safety of our city, the affordability of our city.
We are not asking to raise these taxes for the sake of it. We're asking so that we can actually make the slowest buses in the country fast and free. So that we can actually make a department of community safety that would deploy dedicated teams of mental health outreach workers to the top hundred stations of the highest levels of mental health crises and homelessness. That relationship proving that that tax dollar leads to that investment because we know that it's not just a fiscal policy that takes someone from New York City to somewhere else.
Does anyone else's skin crawl listening to this guy? Talk about a snake oil salesman. I'll give Mamdani this. He's a good public speaker, and that's what makes him so dangerous. He's able to wrap his policies in smooth talk that obscures just how nonsensical and harmful they are.
How many rich people do you know who are riding public buses? How many are going to be shopping at government-owned grocery stores? And how does raising taxes on them assuage their fears about the affordability of New York City? Mamdani is doing the socialist "common good" act while not actually addressing any of the real issues. France has already tried what the young communist wants to do. It ended in disaster, with the wealthy fleeing the country, leaving the French in a state of fiscal ruin that still exists to this day. It's even easier for those with means to leave one city and move to another within the United States.
At the end of his spiel, Mamdani claims that people won't move to Florida because they are worried about a lack of vaccine mandates. No, I'm not kidding. This guy lives in a fantasy world.
MAMDANI: Because a lot of New Yorkers, if they leave, they go to California, another high-tax state. They go to New Jersey, another high-tax state. Many people say they might go to Florida, but I have seen and heard many New Yorkers' concerns about this new elimination of vaccine mandates in Florida, that makes them question whether they would ever want to live there.
Yes, I'm sure wealthy Wall Street investors are worried about "vaccine mandates" more than their bottom line.
The problem for Mamdani is that he thinks he can sweet-talk his way out of the negative effects of bad policy. That's not surprising, given this is a guy who has had everything handed to him on a silver platter his whole life. But when the rubber meets the road, very few people care about lofty language and "dedicated teams of mental health workers." They care whether they are being screwed out of their livelihoods so some spoiled colonialist from Uganda can live out his communist dreams.
Which brings me to the last point. All of this assumes Mamdani's policies actually do make New York more affordable, livable, and safe. That's about as likely as a cheetah making friends with a gazelle. Once this disaster begins to unfold, and it will if Mamdani actually gets his way, the exodus is going to get even worse. Democrats in New York City seem content to learn that lesson the hard way, though.
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