So...Zohran won, and congrats to the dude, I heavily prefer him over Cuomo, BUT, as I've indicated, I'm not totally sold on the guy, he has some interesting ideas, but now that he won, I would like to do a deep dive into his policies. I'm not gonna focus on everything, but I do wanna focus on the viability of various policies the guy is for.
Mamdani winning comes at a time where the cost of living is rough for New Yorkers, and he ran as a democratic socialist, trying to bring down the cost of living for New Yorkers in various ways. As such, I want to look at a few policies of his that he promised to act on.
1) $30 minimum wage
Mamdani wants to raise the minimum wage to $30, which is an extremely substantial amount. However, it is New York after all, New York has an exceptionally high cost of living and they tend to raise wages far more than most places do. I am for a higher minimum wage than we have nationally, which is $7.25, but I also realize eventually you get to a point where raising it causes cost-push inflation, and businesses just pass those costs along to consumers, which causes a wage price spiral. The highest minimum wage ever was $1.60 in 1968, which accounting for inflation is about $15. So $15 an hour is pretty much the equivalent of the highest ever national minimum wage at this point. And I'd probably be willing to push it higher given Bernie ran on $15 back in 2016 and 2020. However, I'd be inclined to keep it below $20. The fact is, we dont know at what point we'll just make more wage increases inflationary. I mean, eventually, you get too much money chasing too few goods, and the currency has to be weighed vs the actual goods and services available. Im not a free marketeer where I believe the wage should be whatever the market demands. Some increases produce a lot more benefit for workers, but beyond some point, it causes problems. In recent years, I've supported $17-18 minimum wages, and I could maybe do $18-19 now. For NYC, with its higher cost of living, I'm not sure what would be a good wage there, although I'd probably go for $20-25 before pushing $30. So it might be a bit high, I'm not entirely sure here, NYC is a much higher cost of living area. State wide, their current minimum wage is $16.20, so this is nearly double. I have a friend who lives in Binghamton who basically can raise a family working at walmart, so I am inclined to say it works. For the city though, yeah, again, idk how high it should be, but I'd probably stop below $30.
2) Rent freeze
Housing is perhaps the biggest cost of living problem New York has and largely responsible for a lot of other problems, as I'll get to later. And of course, leftists have this attitude that landlords are the problem and we need rent control. My own take is a bit more nuanced. NYC and other big cities have a supply and demand problem. Lots of people wanna live in big cities to get the best jobs and amenities, and the market responds with housing shortages and high prices. If anything, housing is one perspective where the neoliberal "abundance" movement actually makes sense, and we need policies that increase the supply of housing.
Rent control, on the other hand, has a very mixed record. It's great for renters short term and if you get a rent controlled apartment, you're living well. But...it messes up the market long term. It destroys the profit motive, which is the only reason people do anything in capitalism, and it makes building new housing unattractive as it becomes an unreliable way to make money. This leads to supply shortages being made worse over time, which leads to higher prices for new renters. So it creates a system of winners and losers. It doesn't actually solve the problems with housing long term, but makes them worse, and what we really need is more housing to bring the supply up, to meet demand, which brings prices down. This is why with my own national housing policy, I focus on a land value tax, which in itself encourages denser housing to be built, but also a housing program where the government builds more housing. I also focus on decoupling people from jobs, allowing them to settle elsewhere to reduce demand in the larger cities. Of course, Mamdani can't do that as just a mayor of one city, it has to be a national policy, but yeah, that's where my head is at with this and I'm gonna disagree with Mamdani on this policy.
Still, to be fair, Mamdani also encourages building more housing, so I'm gonna say it's not as simple as just rent control, and he does understand there's more to it than just rent control. Maybe if he can keep the supply issue alleviated, rent control can work better, but yeah, I'm skeptical on rent control. Still, his plan to build 200k new housing units is based, although I'd probably say I'd like to see more in a city like NYC over time.
3) Socialized grocery stores
So this was an idea I was originally like who does this benefit, but I did think about it some more, and I could see it working. A lot of cost of living issues in NYC are downstream from the housing issue. Property values are expensive, most business owners are renters, and because they pay high rents, they pass along costs to the customer, leading to higher prices for food and everything else. This is why everything is so fricking expensive in New York. It's all downstream from the housing issue. But if the government runs a grocery store, it doesn't pay rent, it doesn't seek a profit, so it can bring those groceries to consumers at a lower cost.
Some might associate socialism with empty shelves, but communism had that because THE ENTIRE ECONOMY was communist. It was a command economy from the top down, the government controlled every factor of production, and this led to constrained consumer choice, and often shortages as the government miscalculated how much food was needed and didn't account for famines. That and the Holodomor was basically orchestrated by the government to starve Ukrainian nationalists. True story, look it up. Either way, this is where we can say Mamdani isn't for THAT kind of socialism, so yeah.
Long term, this could be problematic for private stores though that wont be able to compete because they DO seek a profit and they DO have to pay rent to landlords, but at the same time, businesses could also innovate and provide specialized products that the government stores dont. Government stores might be a "public option", but think about it. My family shops in like 5 different stores for things. Not every store has everything, nor do they always have it at the cheapest price. So the government owned store likely won't be best at everything, and there will still be reasons to pursue private grocery stores. Especially if you live in an ethnically diverse area like NYC where you got every ethnic group having their own little enclave with their own specialized stores.
4) Baby baskets
This is another idea I found strange, but he wants to give baby baskets to new parents with stuff for their kid in them like diapers, formula, etc. Given I'm a UBI guy I'd prefer just, ya know, giving people cash, but he wants to do this, so...
Still more of a fan of cash. Cash means consumer choice, and they could just buy that stuff at one of Zohran's socialist grocery stores if they wanted.
5) Free public transportation
It's a good idea assuming Zohran can pay for it. It really comes down to fiscal viability here. Given Zohran plans on raising an additional $10 billion in revenue and he's claiming to make it work for $630 million, eh, it sounds nice on paper. He also claims that free buses would also boost economic activity leading to more revenue.
6) Free childcare
I'm not as huge on this idea since im not a jobist, but I guess if you are gonna make everyone get a job, it is nice to give them free childcare. Still, it seems weird to me that we make people go to work and then expect them to pay for someone else to watch their kids all day, or to have some state program do it. And again, whether its viable, it depends on how much it costs.
7) Speaking of which: HOW IS HE GONNA PAY FOR IT?!
*conservative screeching ensues*
Well, he does have a plan to raise $10 billion in additional revenue to pay for his policies. $5 billion comes from raising the corporate tax to 11.5% from 4.5%, which is equivalent to what NJ's currently is (meaning, the billionaires cant complain to wanna move their businesses out of NYC to avoid paying it since where are they gonna relocate to? Oh, right, New Jersey). Seriously, these corporations scream about taxes driving them out of cities but people go to NYC and pay quite a premium to live and operate there since it provides unique opportunities no other city does. They aint gonna leave if you *checks notes* raise taxes to parity with the surrounding area. And then $4 billion comes from a 2% tax on rich people. Again, not high enough to make them wanna leave. If they live in NYC, it's because they wanna live there, high cost of living and all, and they already pay quite a premium to do so that most people can't afford. So is a 2% tax on their incomes gonna drive them out? I doubt it. The last billion is said to come from efficiency savings and better tax enforcement. And then he projects an additional $2-3 billion from economic growth over his term.
So...if you wanna know how he's gonna pay for those things, that's how. And assuming his policies cost less than $10-13 billion, he should be able to fund them. Which is, btw, only like 10% of NYC's budget. All this "socialism" is only adding 10% or so to the city's budget.
Conclusion/Final Thoughts
Honestly, either he's full of crap and his numbers are off, or we're about to see an economic miracle the likes that could revolutionize the way forward for the democratic party. Seriously. We're gonna see how viable this "democratic socialism" is on the city level, for better or for worse, and either it's gonna be a disproven model, or it's gonna be a massive success that heralds in a golden age of socialism across the country.
My own honest opinion of how this will go does come down to 2 things. Can he raise the revenue to fund the programs he wants, and how bad will rent control screw people? I don't necessarily know the answer here. While I'm pretty astute on policies, a deeper analysis is beyond my expertise, so I'm just rehashing what he says and commenting on it. Again, we'll have to see whether this works, but I can see why NYC liked him enough to make him mayor, and I'm sympathetic to his vision as well. Beats another corporate democrat like Cuomo.
As for MAGA and Donny himself? Have fun coping and seething. Also, lol, you too centrist dems who backed Cuomo. This is our party now. At least in NYC.
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