Tag: socialism

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ideological culture political economy too much government

Super Under-Blown

Seattle, socialism, democratic socialism

Just 60 years ago, we were talking the end of ideology. Thirty years ago, we were talking about the end of socialism — and of history itself! — as capitalist democracies seemed triumphant after the fall of the USSR.

But here it’s A.D. 2026 and we have socialist mayors in New York and Seattle and . . . we don’t need to argue about definitions. They call themselves socialist.

While New York’s Mamdani has grabbed much of national attention, let’s not forget the Evergreen State’s Emerald City. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson showed her defiance of economic common-sense in her defenses of many anti-business, anti-rich tax and regulation policies by her city and the state.

“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are,” she asserted, “like, super overblown.”

Her notion being that, since Washington State has a sales-tax-dominated “regressive tax system,” adding a progressive layer wouldn’t matter. New high-income-focused taxes would only make things better!

Not to those targeted by the tax, though. Not with socialists in charge. After all, she’s showing her true colors, taking photos with antifa terrorists, pooh-poohing welfare fraud (and refusing to investigate), expressing solidarity with Somali immigrants accused of fraud in Washington, and pushing for non-citizen voting.

Mayor Wilson’s response to those who have exited the soviet of Washington has been a chuckle, a wave, and a cheerful “bye.”

But then a major Democratic funder in the state, Nick Hannauer, wrote a think-piece for GeekWire suggesting that both the city, Seattle, and the state, Washington, were going too far. “Making the total tax burden here 5–10 times the alternatives isn’t progressivism; it’s stupidity.” The Daddy Warbucks, who’d promoted capital gains taxes and opposed Tim Eyman’s tax limitation measures, wants to put the brakes on Evergreen State spoliation — plundering— noting that “virtually every wealthy friend I have has either left or is planning to.”

Seattlites and Washingtonians sure seem stuck with “the usual Socialist disease — they’ve run out of other people’s money.” For the “other people” are fleeing fast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE (first paragraph references): Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (1960), Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), and Robert Heilbroner, “The Triumph of Capitalism,”The New Yorker (January 23, 1989). Concluding allusion: Maggie Thatcher on socialism.

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general freedom ideological culture public opinion

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

may day, communism, socialism, capitalism

Long time ago, May Day was about celebrating Spring — for which rejoicing is appropriate. Over the last century, it has become International Workers’ Day. 

“In 1889, an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions designated May 1 as pro-workers day,” informs the Wikidates.org website, “on the anniversary of the Haymarket Riots in Chicago (1886).”

Five years later, clearly opposed to cavorting with socialists, the U.S. established Labor Day on September 1, an alternative date to honor workers.

Today, political rallies and protests are expected in major cities across the country.  “On May 1, 2026, workers, students, and families rally, march, and take action across the country to demand a nation that puts workers over billionaires, with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping,” says May Day Strong, the umbrella group organizing events.

These are the revolutionary slogans of a General Strike, intended to shut down society. Or perhaps, since the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) are big supporters, just provide teachers a day off. 

And considering Cato Institute’s graph of student performance in public education charted against tax outlays to the cause, any teachers’ union suggestion of skinflintery on the part of Mr. Moneybags The Taxpayer is obscene. 

“Workers over billionaires” is the sort of un-American class-warfare slogan that is not only divisive but also badly misguided: billionaires create jobs, without which being a worker really loses its luster. Plus, it’s ineffective: Demonizing the rich never made a society any richer.

Apter for the day? The international distress call: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture subsidy too much government

The Government Store to Nowhere

Zohran Mamdani, socialism, market failure, government store, groceries

New York City Mayor Commie Mamdani is putting into action, sort of, his plan to introduce government-run grocery stores and bring down grocery prices.

Renting a Brooklyn storefront may cost anywhere between $60,000 to $600,000 a year depending on location and square footage. And there are other costs. Investors profit when they’re right about the opportunity and revenue exceeds costs. This means that they must satisfy customers.

Or . . . taxpayers can fund everything regardless of success or failure.

One goal a city official mentioned about the government-run stores: “We will listen to the community, so the food on the shelves will reflect what people in this neighborhood eat.” Meanwhile, stores catering to ethnic-food preferences of neighborhoods abound in New York City. Mission accomplished.

“Listening to the community” means that neighborhood people have to talk. In markets, they need only buy or not buy. Money talks, businesses already listen.

When nobody buys Product X, vendors stop selling it. When many buy Product Y, more units get stocked. Of course, customers can ask a store to carry some product. And the store can either oblige or explain that unfortunately nobody else wants to buy it.

Mamdani’s government-run stores will follow practices that either emulate the market — unnecessary, as plenty of private grocery stores and supermarkets already exist — or interfere with market processes and make everything more cumbersome and expensive. But the government subsidies will make everything seems cheap to the customer waiting in the long line. 

The real costs will be the ever-suffering taxpayers’ job to pay.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

Thought Deserts

socialism, Mamdani, grocery store, economics

The U.S. is at war — a war that Trump had warned against; and UFOs/drones are again seen over New Jersey. But Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) has something else on his mind, something a little closer to home: regulating grocery store pricing and marketing.

He has co-sponsored S. 3892, dubbed the “Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2026.”

What is price gouging? Selling or offering items at a “grossly excessive price,” which the Federal Trade Commission is tasked with defining. But Luján’s real focus seems to be his distrust of surveillance in stores, which he fears will be used to adjust prices individually.

He somehow doesn’t mention why stores have increased surveillance of customers.

One word: thievery.

But Lujan isn’t alone, fecklessly fighting the food-market market. In Washington State and elsewhere, socialists and other politicians are trying to force grocers to stay open, even if their corporate owners have good reason to shut down a specific store. Seattle’s new mayor, Katie Wilson, says Seattle must not “allow giant grocery chains to stomp all over our communities, close stores at will, and leave behind food deserts.”

A south Tacoma neighborhood Safeway closed, so a state senator cooked up a bill to “give communities time to respond to grocery store closures.”

Truth is, of course, that grocery stores operate on slim margins. The more regulations piled on, and the more criminals you throw at them, the fewer groceries your community will have.

And the “liberals” who vote for such nonsense? They will not like the Mamdani stores they are left with — the subsidized product deserts that only now look good . . . 

In socialist dreams.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment fraud too much government

Oz in Fraudland

Minnesota, California, Dr. Oz, fraud, socialism

Ten days ago, I quoted Veronique de Rugy, warning that Minnesota’s day-care fraud scandal was “only the tip of the iceberg.” 

Beyond subsidized daycare? Health care, home health care, Medicaid. 

Fraud, fraud, fraud.

But it wasn’t just a lone Reason scholar saying it. “What we’re seeing in Minnesota … is dwarfed by what I saw in California,” The Epoch Times quotes Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

Minnesota, Dr. Oz said, “is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Just in California’s hospice and home health care, Oz figures, fraud rockets up to at least $4 billion.

Add a few billion here and there and soon you’re talking real money.

I titled my commentary quoting Ms. de Rugy “The Tip of the Socialism-berg.” Remember Mr. Socialism? Karl Marx? He introduced to the world a complicated, rather magical theory of exploitation in market society focusing on “surplus value.” While I have trouble making heads or tails of his theory — seems utterly nuts — I do know something about its origin. 

Marx nabbed it from classical liberal French scholars who preceded him. But they said the exploitation was through government mechanisms: it’s those who skim off of taxes who exploit the masses. 

Marx turned it upside down.

So let’s turn things right-side up: we all know that when it comes to policy, good intentions don’t make up for bad consequences. And those who de-fraud the taxpayers don’t have “good intentions.” 

They’re thieves. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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meme Thought

The Warmth of Collectivism

collectivism, poverty, socialism, freedom

“Socialism typically seeks to transfer wealth to the poor, as in the case of Marx’s formulation; but socialism does not do so by definition. The definition of socialism is collective, communal ownership of the means of production and administration for the collective benefit. Depending upon how the collective benefit is imagined, socialists may be quite willing to throw the needy under the bus, in pursuit of some aggregate good.”

–DKM

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crime and punishment ideological culture subsidy too much government

Tip of the Socialism-berg 

socialism, immigration, welfare, communism, self destruction, suicidal empathy

“In 2024 alone, state Medicaid Fraud Control Units reported more than 1,151 convictions and more than $1.4 billion in civil and criminal recoveries,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason. “Federal enforcement recovers a tiny share of what is stolen. Fraud that goes undetected never appears in the data.”

And then she makes a claim that increasing numbers of astute observers make: “That’s only the tip of the iceberg.” She goes on to suggest that Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and “many other welfare programs” constitute a huge hunk of fraud.

The solution? “If we want less fraud,” she argues, “we need less government.”

Fraud and big government seem to go hand in hand. At least this kind of big government, which resembles the biggest kind of government imaginable. For taking wealth from many productive American citizens and giving it to a small but growing population of refugees from distant lands, that’s not necessarily fraud, I suppose, but it is something close to socialism.

We see in Venezuela just how devastating rule by thieving socialists can be. (Hugo Chavez nationalized oil industry infrastructure and then ran it into the ground.) In Minnesota and in other states of the union, we see a similar ethic. When done on a limited basis, we could call it “helping the poor,” the folks who just cannot produce what they need. That’s how transfer socialism was sold to us.

And they could say, truthfully, that’s not full socialism.

But extending the beneficiary class from our most needy friends and neighbors to the less-and-less needy, and then to waves of refugees from other countries, that’s a recipe for disaster. Like socialism when “full.”

How far should Americans go to help “others”? To our own ruin?

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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