Well this is embarrassing. Not only have I been four days late in posting Tom P’s Comment of the Day, I also left Tom out of last night’s comment of my own listing the “five commenters” that a bitter reader had claimed was the total commentariate here, as I counted up the names of recent commenters, missing at least three, including Tom. (The total is currently 25. You know, as in “five.” I didn’t even count EA comment bomber “A Friend,” since he’s the equivalent of an illegal immigrant here).
Here is Tom’s excellent and well-researched Comment of the Day on the post [ A COTD by Extradimensional Cephalopod] , “Comment of the Day: ‘Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Month: Zohran Mamdani’”.…
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EC’s closing observation is spot on.
“I was hoping from what I’d heard about Mamdani earlier that he was standing up for legitimate concerns of the people regarding the government and the economy, but it sounds like he’s yet another politician pandering to people’s biases to seize power.”
Whatever label you pin on Mamdani, communist or socialist, is irrelevant. It has been said that the only difference between the two ideologies is the speed and number of bodies that pile up. Both systems are anti-capitalist and have no respect for individual property rights. Mamdani is using the same playbook that the Democrats have used since FDR. Buying votes with the promise of free stuff.
Regardless of party or ideology, all governments only have three actions they can take to effect change. They can make things legal or illegal, or they can take money or resources from some individuals and give them to others.
The biggest problem with a wealth redistribution game plan is that people with money and business move to states or countries that are less confiscatory of people’s hard-earned money. Or as Margaret Thatcher put it, “the only problem with socialism is you eventually run out of people’s money”.
Another problem with buying votes is that the cost increases every election. The data below demonstrates how the population reacts to the socialist policies of NYS and NYC. I looked at population trends and budget dollars, comparing Florida and Texas to New York State and New York City for the years 2010 and 2025. For a baseline, we also included data for US national values.
From 2010 to 2025 Population increased by 11%….
- U.S.-11%
- New York (State): 1%
- New York City: 4%
- Texas- 26%
- Florida: 47%
Budgeted spending increase…. (All dollar amounts are in billions)
- US- 83%, from $3456 to $6326
- New York (State)- 89%, from $134.3 to $245.3
- New York City- 81%, from $63.4 to $115.0
- Texas- 84%, from $91.8 to $169
- Florida- 77% From $66.5 to $117.4
Per capita spending is given below. Inflation from 2010 to 2025 was 49%
- US- $11,174 to $18,498 increase…66%. Inflation-adjusted per capita spending:17% increase
- NY (State)- From $6,923 to $13,041 increase…88% Inflation-adjusted per capita spending = 39% increase
- NYC- From $7,741 to $13,561 increase…75% Inflation-adjusted per capita spending = 26% increase
- Texas- From $3,635 to $5,306 increase…46% Inflation-adjusted per capita spending = – 3% decrease
- Florida- From $4,156 to $4,996 increase …20% Inflation-adjusted per capita spending = – 29% decrease
NYS and NYC’s biggest problem is not just that their population growth trails the national population growth; it is the loss of taxable income that makes even the pre-Mamdani policies unsustainable.
If Mamdani’s promises are implemented, NYC may be left with just takers and no givers. For example, in 2024, JPMorgan Chase & Co, the NYC-centered mega-bank, has more than 30,000 employees in Texas, while in NYC it has fewer than 29,000. The NY Post notes…
“New York City’s financial services sector has grown by only 4% since 2019. In contrast, other metro areas have experienced explosive growth in banking jobs over the same period — Austin, Texas grew by 27%, Charlotte, NC up 21% and Dallas, Texas increased 11%”
This fact proves the adage that you can only fool some of the people all the time.
Ethics Alarms 
Soon, AOC will be the Senator from New York, and they won’t need taxpayers, they’ll just be able to print money.
Jack, I’ve effectively given up trying to convince my left-leaning friends that Mamdani is going to be a disaster (in addition to him being a Jew-hater). Their response is usually “Trump is worse” or “New Yorkers voted for change.” Whatever—Mencken was correct: NYers voted for him and they’re going to get what he stands for, “good and hard.”
It makes no sense, though, Steve. It appears to be extreme Cognitive Dissonance Scale stuff, but I am amazed that so many smart people can accept an obvious demagogue like Mamdani simply because he is opposed to Trump.
How can it make no sense? Were not mirror images of those exact statements given by people to explain voting for Trump? “The Left is worse.” “Trump is a change from politics as usual.” “I’m voting for Trump simply because he’ll push back against the corrupt Democratic Party.”
And, for that matter, did people on the Left not opine that Trump-supporters were accepting an obvious demagogue and that they would get what Trump stands for “good and hard”? I believe they traditionally refer to it as people voting for the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
“But that’s different. We’re objectively correct!”
Yes, that’s what they think about themselves, too. That’s what everyone thinks. It’d be weirder if they didn’t.
If you have any desire to solve the problem of people voting for bad candidates, the first step is understanding the basic concerns that influence your own decisions. The second step is to understand the experiences and positions that lead reasonable people–with the same sorts of concerns you have–to develop perspectives and make decisions that conflict with your own. The third step is to look for ways to change the situation so that you don’t have to fight over zero-sum policies.
Remember the Ender’s Game approach: To defeat your opponent, you must understand them so well that you can’t help but love them.
…That, and rethinking your assumptions about the constraints you’re operating under.
This is broken record territory. I know your ideology is that all statements and political positions no matter how loony or already proven false must be treated as reasonable, but Trump’s ideas have never been off the capitalist, democratic, historical, political norms for a US politician. Gee, enforcing borders! He must be nuts! “Cutting regulation? Never heard of doing THAT before!” Mamdani’s policies, based on his own statements, defy economic laws, the power his office will have, and evoke a system of government that has killed millions of people. The fact that people are as emotionally unhinged about a moderate conservative sort-of democrat like Trump who came to office with lost of business and management experience as other people are about a Jew-hating Communist with NO experience leading or running anything doesn’t argue that they are comparable.
This is definitely a “Comment of the Day.” I could find some things to quibble with, but Tom P. is definitely on to something.
I write as a child (now grown) of “Great Upstate,” in Rochester, where I have spent more than half my life.
New York City and most of Upstate NY have slightly different cultures, markedly different accents, and different expectations of government. No need to bore you with details. Jeff Foxworthy has a “You might be from Upstate New York” routine you can find online if you are curious. It should be possible to find the transcript if not the live version. Parts of it are pretty accurate.
OBSERVATION THE FIRST:
One observation that I can make is that New York City gets *way* too much traction in the news. New York City gets far too much traction indeed. Something that happens in Dallas is local news. Something that happens in New York City is national news.
Many of the “epistemic elites” of our country live in New York City–typically Manhattan (or increasingly Brooklyn, maybe even Queens). They take it upon themselves to tell the rest of the country what they believe is important. It’s hard to tell how grounded in reality such an elite really is. Rumor has it that many such journalists now went to the same 30 or 40 colleges and have embraced “narrative driven journalism” or “advocacy journalism.”
OBSERVATION THE SECOND
New York State and California have both become essentially one party states that are dominated by the Democratic Party. A consequence of this is that the Democratic Party in those states becomes unduly influenced by a progressive fringe because the party as a whole is unlikely to lose in general elections to Republican candicates. This general phenomenon is more intense in cities rather than rural, exurban, or solidly suburban districts. You also see it in mayoral elections.
OBSERVATION THE THIRD
The election of Mamdani is a symptom of something–but to some extent the election is a bit of a Rorschach test. “Look at this phenomenon and just tell me what comes to mind…”.
John Aziz at Quillette has a nice piece on how limited Mamdani’s options really are. The link is here–it may be paywalled.
https://quillette.com/2025/11/12/the-limits-of-american-progressivism-zohran-mamdani-new-york-mayor/
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A writer who makes sense to me personally is Joel Kotkin. He has an old-fashioned class-based analysis of Mamdani’s success. You can read him yourself, for example here:
https://joelkotkin.com/mamdanis-rise-is-fueled-by-generational-resentment/
He mentions generational resentment and also the “barista proletariat.” Definitely there is a problem of “elite overproduction,” which is a term probably coined by Peter Turchin.
thanks for reading!
charles w abbott
rochester NY
It’s 1975 all over again. While New York City didn’t officially go bankrupt, it was on the brink of financial collapse.
How long until there is simply no money left and tourism isn’t enough to replenish the resident tax base? I used to visit regularly, but have opted not to go in years.
I have the feeling that many of the voters for Mamdani and those who can be classified as Groypers have something in common, namely that they belong to Club Loser. If you have nothing, and you do not see a perspective of a well-paying job, a house, a loving relationship or even a date then it may become very tempting to vote for somebody who promises free stuff by taking it from the rich, or have a desire to burn the whole system to the ground. Resentment, envy and anger are driving factors behind such political preferences.
Great data driven comment. The comparison of change in taxpayer spending per capita is so damning. Another point that is made in Ezra Klein’s new book is housing starts. Blue states have massive barriers to building new housing in desirable areas or indeed, anywhere. But red states build more easily, and thus…easier for folks to move to, easier to find affordable housing. I’m also reading a great book by Yoni Applebaum called Stuck which praises mobility as one of the drivers of American growth since colonial days.
The one quibble I have, and it’s with your lead in post–is that Mamdani is NOT a communist. He’s a democratic socialist. He’s closer to a Swedish politician than he is Che Guevara or Mao or Lenin or even Trotsky. His policies may be disastrous (rent control, free daycare, and government grocery stores seem particularly stupid, the one I’m wondering about is free buses) but they aren’t going to be implemented without the standard checks and balances of limited government. I don’t know if this is still true, but the two most profitable stock markets from 1950 to some decades later were NY and Sweden. Even today, the Nordic countries have capitalism with a socialistic safety net. They’ve got problems and so on, but it matters that Mamdani is aiming for that and not communism.
I tend to agree with the Socialism vs. Communism distinction.
A good synonym for Communism is “Marxism-Leninism.” That denotes or at least connotes a vanguard party, central planning, and a police state that either grows from a pre-existing nucleus or a police state that is created from scratch and then grows vigorously. Generally such systems tend not to emerge until after a military conflict, typically a civil war of some sort. Political dissent tends to criminalized (a good working definition of a police state).
The worst people tend to rise to the helm of such governments, as Hayek pointed out. I think he had a chapter in _The road to serfdom_ entitled “Why the worst get on top.”
Compare that to what American idealists think of when they dream of a “nice” socialism.
The “Socialism” that most Americans want, when advocating for it, is a Social Democratic or Bismarckian Socialism with transfer payments to help the poor and things like strong worker protections, socialized health care, and old age benefits.
The problem with the “Socialism” of the Social-Democratic or Bismarckian variety is it seems to lead to a sclerotic economy in the long run. Additionally, it works best in mono-ethnic, mono-racial, mono-cultural societies that aren’t really all that large by current international standards. It’s not easily maintained with a “invite the world” mentality, to use Steve Sailer’s useful phrase.
It also helps to have a “guilt based” rather than “shame based” culture. Ideally, people won’t coast or malinger or cheat because they would feel guilty if they did so, so they simply won’t do it. Ideally, you don’t have to monitor them too closely because they monitor themselves. If the system only works when most people are industrious and conscientious, you need a certain population. Additionally, you have to be careful who moves in. You also have to socialize the next generation to be industrious and conscientious.
Someone associated with Claremont Review of Books, probably William Voegli, has noted that (to paraphrase) Wisconsin has about the same number of people as Denmark. Sweden is just a bit more populous than North Carolina. The notion that a system in Denmark or Sweden can be easily scaled up to a place like the USA is wildly optimistic.
Forgive me if I’ve shared Arnold Kling’s little essay on Switzerland before. Read it once a month and get back to me, could you?
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/swiss-watching
Thanks for reading!
charles w abbott
Rochester NY
The duck rule applies. He says the state should seize the means of production. He says government can solve all problems. He quotes Marx constantly. “Quack.”
He said that in 2021, and not in the context of his campaign. As pointed out in this Hoover analysis, it’s possible all of his ideas are terrible, but he’s not seizing the means of production in any of his proposals. It’s Democratic Socialism, like Sweden. It’s not Havana or North Korea. He strongly believes in free speech and elections, and that matters.
He’s a politician so, by definition, he only says what he thinks will get him elected. As for believing in elections, didn’t he have to say that if he wanted to participate/run? Having that point of view also helps lure in voters who would have been turned off had he said he didn’t. Your level of trust in him seems misplaced given his base nature of a politician.
“He’s a politician so, by definition, he only says what he thinks will get him elected.”
Remember Bernie saying during te 2024 campaign that Kamala hadn’t backtracked from he radical socialist positions, but was only saying what she had to to get elected?
He said it, it was only 4 years ago, he had never retracted or explained that he meant something else, and of course he didn’t campaign on it—presumably some of the idiots who voted for him would have thought, “Wait, that sounds familiar…”
Thanks, Jack, for the recognition. Leaving me off the commenter list is no big deal and understandable. While I read your blog daily, I do not comment frequently. I usually only comment if I think more could be said on a topic that interests me and that I think I can competently add to the conversation.
Responding to jdkazoo123:
I did not label Mamdani anything. You call him a Democratic Socialist, President Trump and others label him a Communist. I stated that what you called him was irrelevant. His policies are anti-capitalist. My point is that socialism and communism are both anti-capitalist. I don’t get hung up on labels. I am more concerned with policy and actions. In one of your replies to Jack, you state, “he’s not seizing the means of production in any of his proposals.” He is a little short on the details of how to implement any of his campaign promises. He excels at sophistry to gain votes.
Concerning his free-busses proposal, NYC already owns the means of production. Freezing rents and renter-centric eviction laws denies property holders the ability to price their product as they wish or at a price the market will support, or costs dictate, effectively seizing the means of production.
How Mamdani plans to have government grocery stores remains to be seen. Regarding his Government Grocery Store promise to save consumers money, the current average net margin in the grocery store industry is 2% with a margin of error of 1%. There is just not much savings to be had.
Regarding Charles Abbott’s response: I am a lifelong NYS resident. I grew up in a NYC suburb, attended Columbia University, and worked in the NY metropolitan area for a number of years with various firms. Approximately half of my life has been spent in Central New York. I have firsthand experience with the NYC and “Upstate cultures”. I agree with you that the culture resident in NYC and its suburbs is vastly different than that found in the rest of the state. While Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse city centers are all solidly Democratic strongholds, their culture does not mimic NYC.
Pure Marxism, as envisioned by Marx, is a total pie-in-the-sky pipe dream. The end goal of Marxism is the dissolution of government. Communism as practiced is Marxism-Leninism, which you accurately typify in your comments.
As you imply, NYC voters control all statewide political offices and much of the political agenda.
I also agree with your position that implementing socialism in the Nordic countries or Switzerland is vastly different than trying to do it in the United States. Until recently, the Nordic states and Switzerland were quite homogeneous in their culture. The US is anything but. It is not hard to comprehend that the greater the number of inputs and outputs, the more difficult it is to control outcomes.
Having done business in both Sweden and Switzerland, the stereotypes of risk-adverse Swedes and precision Swiss are often accurate.
Prior to retirement, I managed various Supply Chains for a Fortune 50 pharmaceutical Company. One of my more challenging responsibilities was sourcing bulk drug products from a Swiss manufacturer for compounding into dosage form at our Puerto Rican manufacturing plant. The Swiss wanted a 48-month firm demand contract and while the PR plant had difficulty projecting out more than 6 months.
About Mamdani’s rent control proposals, didn’t a lot of the South Bronx burn down in 1975-1980 because of arson, as that was cheaper than the costs of maintaining the properties under a rent control regime?
A lot of those feel good pie in the sky socialist proposals have unintended consequences that are not considered by the electorate.
A similar thing applies to make public transportation free. This will result in the homeless population taking up space in buses, making it unsafe.
Thanks for coming out to play. This was a good discussion thread.
If we band of brothers, we “thought leaders” here on Ethics Alarms could just raise the consciousness of the public, the world would be a better place. Other things being equal.
charles w abbott
rochester NY