Call it the least surprising turn of events, but newly ensconced New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing a budget decision that will almost certainly impact those he claims to represent. In the wake of his first city budget, the mayor detailed a massive shortfall that he claimed could only be handled by following one of two “paths.”
One is the go-to socialist response: tax the wealth producers to extinction. And if that fails, the counterstrike is to tap the very folks who put him in office on a wave of “affordability.”
Someone Has to Pay
“There are two paths to bridge the city’s inherited budget gap,” Mamdani declared. “The first path is the most sustainable and fairest: raising taxes on the wealthiest and corporations, and ending the drain by fixing the imbalance between what the City provides the State and what we receive in return,” he pitched. And then came the kicker:
“If we do not go down the first path, the City will be forced to go down a second, more harmful path of property taxes and raiding our reserves — weakening our long-term fiscal footing and placing the onus for resolving this crisis on the backs of working and middle-class New Yorkers. We do not want to have to turn to such drastic measures to balance our budget. But, faced with no other choice, we will be forced to.”
If there is a surefire way to scare off the mobile middle classes, it is to make their homes unaffordable. These people have invested substantial capital to have a house in the Big Apple and are often able to pack up and move out – how else does one explain the burgeoning suburbia just outside of city limits? And then, of course, there is the lure of low-tax states that encourage folks to bring their portable income along.
It’s worth mentioning that middle-class voters broke for Mamdani with 51% – perhaps assuming that his talk of punishing only the super wealthy would leave them well insulated.
No Third Way for Mamdani
As Sunshine State Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed out, Florida has 23+ million residents and a $117 billion budget. New York City (not the state, mind you) has roughly 8 million residents and a $127 billion proposed budget. It’s clear that the city that never sleeps has a spending problem, not a revenue issue.
And yet, the idea of cutting back on spending appears not to have occurred to the city’s first democratic socialist mayor.
