Mamdani Has Already Run Out of Other People’s Money

New York City’s democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has already run out of other people’s money, and he’s only been in office for four months.

Color me shocked.

Mamdani announced in a press conference Wednesday that New York City faces a financial “crisis of historic magnitude” and asked the City Council for extended time to submit his budget. What a surprise that the young mayor is late to turn in his first big homework assignment.

Mamdani is correct that he faces a huge problem, though. The city’s budget deficit over the next few years is projected to rise to about $12 billion.

To put that number into perspective, New York City’s deficit is bigger than the entire budget of about a dozen states.

Mamdani blamed this financial calamity on his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, of course.

You can be sure that New York Democrats will return to the “blame Adams” well for some time given that they practically threw him out of the party for opposing President Joe Biden’s open border policies.

Adams does deserve some of the blame. So, does the entire New York City political apparatus—which is notably bereft of Republicans. But this reality is hardly an endorsement of Mamdani’s platform, at least for those not totally bought into the socialist flim-flam sauce he’s selling.

Mamdani never said he’d reduce his predecessor’s spending, far from it. Instead, his entire campaign was built on giving new, “free” things away. Free childcare, free buses, and government-run grocery stores were all at the top of Mamdani’s agenda. All that free stuff doesn’t come cheap.

Mamdani’s excuse for why he can’t afford to fund all these programs is that the city doesn’t collect enough money. Keep in mind, the New York City budget is larger than that of nearly every state in the union, despite having a much lower population than many.

That’s still not enough to fund Mamdani’s grandiose proposals.

“Years of mismanagement and chronic under budgeting, alongside a structural imbalance between what New York City sends to the state and what we receive in return, have taken a toll,” he said, insisting that the problem was one of “revenue.”

In a sense this was all part of the plan. Mamdani spent his first months messaging about how he was frantically searching for money to give to you, the people. Finding nothing, he’ll now seek to do more of what he spoke about gleefully on Tax Day: tax the rich. Or at least say he’s taxing the rich while actually squeezing money out of everyone.

He’s also clearly angling to get a bailout from New York State.

New York City is nearly tapped out, but surely there are more people to soak elsewhere. Unfortunately, the state is running on fumes. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has been reduced to begging rich former New Yorkers living in Florida to please come back to pay for all the fraud, er, I mean wonderful government programs.

This has created an interesting dynamic where Hochul is forced to play a push and pull game over money with a mayor who is quite popular with the Democratic base.

But even in a scenario in which Mamdani gets some kind of bailout from Albany, the future of what was once the financial capital of the U.S. is looking murky.

Mamdani is refusing to take his foot off the spending gas. His further plans put even the previous high revenue in jeopardy. And people are leaving. The “rich” certainly have been, but recent trends show that pretty much every demographic has been fleeing the state as of late (besides the hordes of Biden’s immigrant “asylum” seekers).

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit think tank, did a study on New York City and found that after the post-COVID-19 influx of immigrants the Big Apple continued its trend of population decline.

This reality is even more dire when one considers that the people leaving typically have more taxable wealth than those arriving.

“Net domestic outmigration not only affects population, but also the taxable income that stays in New York,” the Citizens Budget Commission study read. “Not all income earned by NYC residents moves when they move, but some does. Furthermore, per capita income indicates that in-movers typically earn less than out-movers.  Between 2019 and 2023, New Yorkers who moved out made $68 billion more than those who moved to New York City. This includes a shift of $14 billion to Florida, $2 billion to Texas, and $23 billion to other parts of New York State.”

That leaves Mamdani and his fellow Democrats trapped in an ongoing turf war over who they are allowed to pillage.

As New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino—one of the few Republican officials left in the city—said in an interview with talk show host Glenn Beck, Mamdani’s ideas to get more money are “insane.”

The reality for Mamdani and his friends in the city council is that their larger budget problem can’t be solved with a short- or long-term bailout or tax gimmicks to milk every last dollar out of businesses that may not be around much longer.

The problem is baked into their governing model that’s long on promises, short on examples of success. The New Era of socialism is already looking so much like the old ones. Oh well, you get what you vote for.