OPINION:
New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s socialist agenda rests on the belief that expansive public programs can be sustained by higher taxes. However, history shows that such redistributive models collapse when their tax base erodes. Conversely, systems that encourage economic mobility through pro-growth policies thrive.
Mr. Mamdani is promising a slew of “affordable” social services ranging from government-owned grocery stores to free transportation, but nothing is ever free, even in a socialist system. These policies will be destructive not only to the economy, but also to working New Yorkers.
Higher earners will continue to flee to lower-cost jurisdictions or red states. Nearly 900,000 New Yorkers already left the state from 2020 to 2023. Therefore, the middle class may be forced to bear the financial incidence of higher taxes or fees to finance these expensive government programs once the city’s tax base flees for better business climates.
Policies that require onerous redistribution to a populace already facing over 50% income taxes at the federal, state and local levels will simply burden those responsible for employment and production in the economy. This will worsen socio-economic outcomes for all residents as jobs become scarce and production slows. In fact, New York City is experiencing a decade-low job stagnation, and subsequent net migration costs the Big Apple billions in lost tax revenue.
Mr. Mamdani’s progressive tax rates for high earners and corporations, in addition to his rhetoric inciting class warfare, only serve to antagonize the relationship between the municipal government’s authority and residents’ economic prospects. By pushing for attractive-sounding, yet historically ineffective big-government systems, Mr. Mamdani’s policies foment an environment in which low earners are provided for by the government at the expense of taxpayers, specifically middle- and high-income earners.
Unfortunately, this is precisely the unintended consequence of socialism: middle-class eradication.
The middle class is the epitome of economic mobility. Those who work hard, provide quality goods and services to their fellow citizens, and prudently steward their finances will achieve this American dream of self-sufficiency without reliance on government welfare. However, such a symbol of economic mobility and opportunity is not welcome in a tyrannical government redistribution system.
Socialist policies effectively create a two-class system, as coined in the Communist Manifesto. Mr. Mamdani’s philosophic conceptual shortcomings are amplified by practical failures: the 1917 Russian Revolution and the 1949 Chinese Revolution.
By using class warfare rhetoric, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took power and established the Soviet Union. Under this system that nationalized industries, land and banks, the professional classes were left destitute. A collectivized economy eradicated fiscal autonomy and the ability to accumulate capital, destroying the middle class and effectively forming two classes of citizens — the ruling Communist Party and poor, government-dependent citizens.
Similarly, the Chinese Communist Revolution and Mao Zedong’s path to power were an adoption of Lenin’s class-war playbook. Mao similarly nationalized industry and redistributed land, organizing the peasantry into cooperative communes led by party officials. Mismanagement and corruption led to famine and economic stagnation.
Both the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party implemented policies to nationalize industry and redistribute wealth, to the detriment of their citizenry. Mr. Mamdani’s inclination to bring this failed system to America is astonishing, considering the well-documented devastation of this ideology abroad. The mayor-elect echoes this historical sentiment with similar policy proposals that will, unfortunately, erode the middle class in New York City.
The class warfare rhetoric and unsound ideology of excessive redistributionism promoted under Mr. Mamdani’s campaign have the long-term prospect of destroying one of America’s most famous cities from the inside out. Without an Iron Curtain around New York City locking these professional and hardworking classes in, these policies will simply incentivize some of the city’s best to migrate to red states — and not because they do not love the Big Apple, but because they could not bear the socialist center it has become.
• Nicole Huyer is a senior research associate in the Roe Institute at the Heritage Foundation.
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