If you enjoy the way New York City has been run since January 1, then you’re not a socialist.
Ever since the New York Knicks won the NBA championship, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and, by extension, “democratic socialism,” have enjoyed widespread acclaim.
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In an interview with ABC News’s This Week, Mamdani offered his short tenure as proof of concept for socialism. “We don’t have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins,” he said. “I won last November, and over the course of these last six months, what we’ve delivered for working people are the very things we were told were impossible.”
After finally passing the largest budget in New York City history, Mamdani claimed that “if these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand economics as well as the capitalists who came before but that we can solve their years of mismanagement through an embrace of our principles.”
On the contrary, Mamdani’s first six months in office indicate the success of capitalism and the regular machinations of municipal government, not democratic socialism.
Socialism means public ownership of property and the means of production, redistributed by top-down mandate. While many members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) speak in precisely those terms—including, in the past, Mamdani himself—their candidates run on taxpayer-funded public benefits. Their main rallying cry is “tax the rich” to provide services for everyone else: free buses, free groceries, free health care, and free child care, along with higher wages and lower rent.
In Mamdani’s first month in office, he tried to give Governor Kathy Hochul an ultimatum: either raise taxes on the wealthy, or he would raise property taxes. No dice. The governor stood her ground, as did City Council Speaker Julie Menin, both calling Mamdani’s bluff after widespread backlash. Hochul and Menin understood that if Mamdani hiked taxes, New York would land in even deeper financial trouble. Just a few weeks earlier, California proposed a 5 percent tax increase on wealth of $1 billion or more, and the results were disastrous. An estimated $536 billion in tax revenue left the state before the idea even qualified for the ballot. California stands to lose more revenue than it would have ever brought in from the tax.
Mamdani’s next ploy was a pied-à-terre tax, an idea that had circulated for at least a decade. The levy, however, is performative. It is estimated to bring in, at most, $380 million in tax revenue—0.3 percent of the $126 billion city budget—and will likely chase away more of the tax base (already paying property taxes) and, like California’s wealth tax, cost more revenue than it generates.
Mamdani has also abandoned key campaign promises. He was forced to punt on free busing. His city-run grocery stores turned into just two—and they will cost millions of dollars to get up and running, which won’t happen until late 2027 for the first. The mayor seems to have forgotten about raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour and deploying the Department of Community Safety as an alternative to policing.
Mamdani’s most visible political win was the expansion of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s free pre-K and 3-K, still a far cry from universal child care for all. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo ran on the same promise. It’s likely that Hochul would have greenlighted the expansion anyway, regardless of who was mayor.
Last month, Mamdani did score a win by securing his rent freeze, though it’s likely to face legal challenges. Even if it survives, the policy is, at best, a short-term political victory. A rent freeze does not bring down housing prices. Mayor de Blasio also implemented a series of rent freezes in 2015, 2016, 2020, and 2021 without convincing New Yorkers that housing had become more affordable. In the long run, rent-regulation reduces incentives to build and keeps renters in place, contributing to higher market rents. Rent control “has been about as disgraced as any economic policy in the tool kit,” says Jason Furman, who chaired President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
What Mamdani’s supporters don’t admit is that, until pressured by the city council, he declined to pursue a genuinely redistributive housing policy: CityFHEPS. During the campaign, Mamdani promised to expand the CityFHEPS voucher program, a move that would have required dropping an Adams administration lawsuit that had blocked a broader expansion. Yet after taking office, he upheld the lawsuit; in March, he appealed a ruling against the prior administration before dropping that effort and finally approving a $175 million expansion of the program—far short of the roughly $500 million sought by housing advocates.
City job numbers continue to disappoint, and unemployment remains above pre-pandemic levels. Mamdani supporters continually point to pothole fillings during his first 150 days as “socialism.” But even there, his numbers are far lower than both de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg.
On the most visible statistic of all, Mamdani deserves no credit: city crime numbers stand at historic lows, not because of socialism but because of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s tough-on-crime policing, which got started under Eric Adams’s administration.
If not for Hochul, Menin, and Tisch—the remnants of the Democratic establishment from which Mamdani claims to offer a sharp break—New York would be facing higher crime, even deeper deficits, and even more reckless spending. Three cheers for democratic capitalism!