Tag: New York City

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

Mamdani Attacks Workers

gig workers, freelancers, New York City, Zohran Mamdani

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is going after gig workers. To do his dirty work, the mayor is using holdovers from the Biden administration (who oppose independent contractors), reports C. Jarrett Dieterle at Reason magazine.

The boss of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Work Protection is Sam Levine, who during his tenure at the Federal Trade Commission was a follower of anti-business FTC chair Lina Khan.

The “Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice,” one Julie Su, was Acting Secretary of Labor under Biden. She has warned delivery apps — the apps that make it easier for gig workers to get jobs and get paid — that they had better “comply with worker protections.”

Su is suing delivery service Motoclick for “ignoring the minimum pay rate.” Also at issue are other sins that amount to contracting with independent contractors who, of course, use Motoclick’s app voluntarily and can stop whenever they find the terms not in their interest. She wants (a) millions in damages for the workers and (b) “to shut the company down completely.”

The Mamdani administration has also “settled with” such gig enablers as UberEats, Fantuan, and Hungry Panda for millions of dollars for not treating independent contractors as hourly workers.

Reason points out that Mamdani’s war on freelancers will be costly not only for gig workers and the companies that help them function but also for customers. “Just recently Instacart instituted a $5.99 regulatory response fee due to a recent extension of NYC’s minimum wage law to grocery deliverers.”

Who will be next to be pummeled by commie Mamdani?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling

Equality, Not Excellence

Zohran Mamdani, schools, education, New York City, egalitarianism

The really socialist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, the city’s new Handicapper General, wants to prevent the brightest children in the city’s school system from getting any extra training of their gifts and intelligence.

So he’s trying to do what one of his predecessors, the pretty socialist Bill DeBlasio, failed to do: eliminate the public school system’s Gifted and Talented programs.

What benefit could there be to students, their parents, and New Yorkers in general, in preventing gifted children from studying in schools and classrooms that give them the best chance of developing their gifts early in life? 

None whatsoever. 

Killing the more demanding academic work does not thereby improve what the average public-school classroom offers students. It also does not improve the ability of students who are not currently qualified to enter the most advanced programs. The only goal achieved is that of a nearer approach to the egalitarian “ideal,” the world of “Harrison Bergeron.”

If the concern were really to improve the average or below-average classrooms, this could be done — conceivably — by focusing on what could be improved in those classrooms. Are there bad teachers who could be fired? Disruptive students who could be better disciplined or shown the door? Vapid, unchallenging, or politically warped curriculum that could be overhauled?

Under the DeBlasio mayoralty, many parents protested his plan to erase opportunities for the Gifted and Talented, managing to thwart that plan. They’ll have to protest again if they want to stop Mamdani from stomping out excellence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture judiciary property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Who’ll Oppose the Quasi-Commie?

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, property rights

Should we expect a four-year pitched battle?

I see one brewing between the new communist mayor of New York City and those judges who respect law and the U.S. Constitution.*

Some say that Zohran Mamdani, though on record admitting his goal of seizing the means of production, is technically not a communist. Well, if allowed to fully impose all he wants on New Yorkers, maybe that would amount to going straight to a fascist model of totalitarian governance — bypassing the Maoist-Stalinist stage.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But we do know that Mamdani was quick to hire such advisors as housing czarina Cea Weaver, who has lamented home ownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” and declared property as such to be something regrettably long treated as “an individualized good” that now must be treated as a “collective good.”

If you don’t own your house as an individual and have a spare room (or half a room), and somebody needs a place to live, could a Mamdani-and-Weaver-run Big Apple compel you to give space to a stranger that you don’t want around? If property becomes a “collective good” and all must cuddle in the warm bosom of the state-managed collective, the answer must be: yes.

But New Yorkers may not be quite doomed.

Not, anyway, if there are enough judges like David Jones, who recently interfered with an attempt by the Mamdani administration to interfere in the sale of many rental properties owned by Pinnacle Group.

Mamdani’s office says they’ll keep trying. 

Of course they will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Or the New York State Constitution, for that matter: see §7 (a), which clearly states that “Private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.” 

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ideological culture property rights

Hot in New York City

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, property rights

Zohran Mamdani was not yet the new mayor of New York City when the city council signaled that it would serve as willing accomplice in his assault on fundamental property rights.

In December, the city council passed legislation that had been hanging fire for several years, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), to further limit New Yorkers’ right to use and dispose of their own stuff.

COPA would give “give certain nonprofits . . . an early shot to bid on certain residential properties that go up for sale, before they hit the wider market.” The law pertains to buildings “with poor conditions or where an affordability provision is expiring.”

COPA’s advocates contend, as if this were a response to the objection about how the new law violates property rights, that it gives nonprofits an advantage in the housing market.

What happens if quite wealthy nonprofits with enough political pull make an offer that a property owner declines? Will the property owner have the right to say “I pass” and then make the property available for anybody to bid on?

If COPA is not dead on arrival, it will depress market prices as the city strongarms owners into making deals at lower-than-market prices. And I doubt that a Mamdani administration will simply playact at eroding and destroying property rights.

Mayor Mamdani took office yesterday, on January 1, 2026, dedicated to the idea of replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” It doesn’t portend to be a very good year for New Yorkers opposed to the heat of the looters’ madness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture too much government

Memo to Mamdani Voters

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, socialism, communism

New York City is expensive. Housing is expensive, often prohibitively so. The city has crime problems. Other problems.

Answers: Unshackle the housing market? Slash regulations and taxes? Make it easier to catch and punish bad guys? No. Prevent builders from supplying more and cheaper housing. Further hobble the police. Etc. Pro-Hamas socialist Zohran Mamdani has a slew of such pseudo-solutions. 

And has a large following.

In New York’s mayoral race, decided Tuesday, the Republican candidate was excluded by the city’s heavily Democratic tilt. The incumbent mayor was also nonviable. Scandal-plagued former Governor Cuomo was the main alternative to a reputedly charming Mamdani now claiming a mandate to rob the rich.

Song Ying is a 72-year-old New Yorker who escaped the Chinese communists in 1976. She “swam for eight hours from Shenzhen, then a small fishing village, to Hong Kong,” explains  The New York Times in a report on the growing generational divide among Chinese immigrants regarding the prospect of a socialist city. Song is dismayed by the strong support among young New Yorkers for Mamdani. She says — and knows — that socialism doesn’t work.

The Times belittles her concerns, stressing that Mao’s China is not the vision that Mamdani is selling. Yet upon winning, the mayor-elect asserted that his administration would prove that “no problem [is] too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.” Sounds like a government without limits.

Mamdani will not fix things. He offers as solutions more of the policies that caused current problems: more regulations; more taxes; more spending; more government in power and scope.

If a boulder is tumbling right toward you, demanding more and heavier boulders won’t stop you from being crushed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly too much government

How Socialists Learn

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, socialism, communism

Not all socialists in mayoral runs won on Tuesday.

Sure, socialist/communist Zohran Mamdani is now Mayor Elect of New York, but Omar Fateh lost to the incumbent mayor of Minneapolis on a second counting of the city’s ranked choice vote system. The latter is a victory for old-fashioned city politics, but what is the former?

Mamdani obviously wants to take from the rich and give to the poor, with a lot of government workers shuffling the money in between rich benefactors and poor dependents. Running grocery stores, of all things: Mamdani seeks to bring the efficiency of the DMV to the food industry. 

But just how much harm can he do? 

He still has to balance city budgets, and if he wants to spend billions, he has to “raise” billions in revenue. He cannot simply spend money he’s created — Mamdani doesn’t control the money supply. After all, socialism doesn’t create wealth ex nihilo.

Further, he will face opposition on his many pipe dreams. Since he has almost no work experience, and none managing anything, he may also prove to be way over his head.

Worst case? If he pushes his dream earnestly and effectually in the Big Apple, the rich and industrious will flee. (A possibility so likely that it is worth stating multiple times: when fools vote socialist, the wise vote with their feet.) Mamdani may usher in Atlas Shrugged faster than any pro-capitalist political party ever could.

Which, though disastrous for the poor, might prove educational.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Escape from New York

New York City, Zohran Mamdani, socialism, business, middle class

People in New York City with any money and property are unhappy about the prospect of a communist mayor. They apparently see the potential of the government taking much more of their money less a politician’s promise and more a revolutionary threat.

While Zohran Mamdani might lose, it’s not looking that way. (Note the standing of his chief competitor.) Therefore, many homeowners are fleeing, without waiting for Election Day.

One destination is next-door Connecticut, site of a failed revolt in 1991 against the enactment of a state income tax. New Yorkers reasonably suppose that the taxes imposed by a Mayor Mamdani would prove worse than that — and worse than New Yorkers’ already-heavy tax burden.

Escapees are also worried about crime.

Mamdani could do much unilaterally but would need the cooperation of the state legislature and governor or the city council to impose the tax hikes he’s dreaming about. Still, these entities hardly serve as bulwarks of limited government.

We know that New Yorkers are lurching to Connecticut because, as the New York Post reports, a “bidding war frenzy and soaring prices” have hit the state’s housing market.

According to real-estate agents there, the frenzy resembles that of early pandemic times. Properties are being scooped up within days. Deals are cash on the barrelhead, even for multi-million-dollar homes. Sale prices are much higher than expected.

And the bidders are coming “out of New York City,” the agents say. Prospective buyers have been “mentioning concerns about the mayoral election. . . .”

Good news, for a while, for Connecticut home sellers and their real-estate agents. Bad news for everybody else, soon enough.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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subsidy too much government

Free Transit Isn’t Free

Mamdani, New York City, homeless, socialism, communism

If Zohran Mamdani, the Big Apple’s openly democratic-socialist, covertly communist mayoral candidate makes it into Gracie Mansion, he will try to enact many plans to improve — i.e., worsen — things.

The candidate wants to increase taxes and government spending, reduce freedom and individual responsibility. The standard Democratic agenda, but foisted bigger and faster.

One announced plan is to scrap mass transit fees.

Taxpayers would then suffer new costs. But so would riders who travel “free.” Greater crowding is one. Another is the kind of people who would be more often riding, no longer discouraged by having to pay fares or having to risk arrest for jumping a turnstile. Riders would be plagued by more bums and more criminals.

Beggars already being a common sight on NYC subways, it’s easy to project that ending financial and physical barriers to entry would only encourage more. Criminals would also be encouraged.

We might consider what happened elsewhere when this has been tried. Kansas City, Boston, Philadelphia — a “scientific socialist” would insist on a thorough study of all those cases, but Mamdani’s merely mentioned Bogotá’s, and is not pushing a study, maybe because he’s seen the mess Albuquerque’s in, after eliminating its one-dollar bus fare in 2023. Buses were soon being used as “rolling homeless shelters.” Local media also reported that they were “being used as getaway vehicles for shoplifters. . . .  The addition of security guards on buses has undoubtedly caused criminals to think twice, but it has not solved the problem.”

The author of these words, Paul Gessing, is hoping that recounting Albuquerque’s experience will convince Mamdani to scrap his free-transit proposal. Should Mamdani become mayor, he may eventually be forced do so, but probably only after first making everybody suffer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture public opinion

Bad, Worse & Communist

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, corruption, socialism, communism

After four recent commentaries showing, without hyperbole, that Democratic Party mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is a flat-out seize-the-means-of-production communist, you might wonder why anyone could possibly vote for him. 

Well, elections are a choice. And New Yorkers have a plethora of lousy choices — especially the best-known politicians running against Mamdani. 

Take former Governor Andrew Cuomo — puh-leez! He finished second to Mamdani in last month’s Democratic mayoral primary but has vowed to stay in the race on the ballot line of his recently formed Fight & Deliver Party.

The key reason for Mamdani’s victory? Voter revulsion with Mr. Cuomo. After serving ten years as governor and announcing he would seek a fourth four-year term, Cuomo was rocked by sexual harassment allegations (including “attempts to silence victims”). Facing “almost certain removal from office” by the state legislature, he resigned in 2021. 

“To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace,” responded Mamdani to Cuomo in a televised debate. “I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority]. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records. And I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo.” 

Mamdani’s other major opponent is the incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last year on five felony counts, including conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals, soliciting and accepting a bribe, and wire fraud. Though Trump’s Department of Justice dropped the prosecution, or maybe partly because of that, Adams is a pariah among the city’s supermajority of Democratic voters.

The problem is staring us in the face: When the choice is between communism and corruption, communism stands a better chance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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public opinion too much government

Vote Communist!

communism, communist, socialism, New York City

The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived!

Maybe, just sometimes, we let fools dig themselves deeper into their folly.

Take New Yorkers. The city’s government has been dysfunctional for ages. But now it’s potentially taking the starkest left turn yet, towards . . . communism.

Mayoral candidate Rep. Zorhan Mamdani may call himself a “democratic socialist” and quote Martin Luther King piously, but he also admits that seizing the means of production is the ultimate goal . . . just not politically acceptable. 

Yet.

That’s communism. Will New Yorkers vote for a commie?

Maybe running under the Democratic banner is cover enough for many voters. Seems safe. Seeking to help “the poor” by attacking “the rich” and “the whites” (as I wrote last Monday) is certainly not unfamiliar.

And neither is his reaction to rising food prices: blame something called “capitalism.” 

Then set up government-run grocery stores!

While our first instinct is to oppose him with everything we’ve got, comedian Steven Crowder counsels otherwise. “Maybe he’s exactly what New York City deserves,” says Crowder. Let Mamdani make New York an object lesson in what not to do. 

New Yorkers can vote in this “teachable moment” for the whole nation: pop the corn and watch the Big Apple rot under Mamdani — with food cheaper everywhere else, under Trump.

Or so Crowder argues.

Embrace the old motto, “mundus vult decipi” (the world wants to be deceived), and let one city run further down the length of rope . . . until they’ve done enough damage.

To learn. Finally.

If one city wants communism, let it have it. 

Good and hard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Previously on This Is Common Sense:

July 3 — The Big Decommodification — a communist housing plan for socialist NYC.
July 1 — If Mamdani Wins — the likely results of electing a socialist mayor.
June 30 — Socialist Intifada — the problematic philosophy of NYC’s political phenom.

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