Zohran Mamdani's policies are Very Bad
Don't vote for this clown
Who is Zohran Mamdani?
Zohran Mamdani is a 33 year old social media savvy socialist candidate that moved quickly from relative obscurity to social media fame and heavy social media support from the far left. He was born in Uganda, and moved to New York City when he was seven. He attended Bank Street School for Children, an expensive private school (current tuition is $61,239), and then test score-based administration Bronx High School of Science. He comes from a rich family, has barely worked three years out of the seven from when he graduated college to becoming a state assembly member in 2020, including his brief “rapping career” and working for his mother’s film company.
His policies are, across the board, very bad.
Rent “Freeze”
He’s promoting a plan to “freeze the rent”, according to his website “freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants”. About half of all apartments in NYC are rent stabilized. This is after rent stabilized apartments have had their rate barely raised in past years compared to inflation, despite rapid growth of all other apartments in NYC. Rent stabilized apartments are so cost prohibitive to run that about 61,000 rent-stabilized apartments sat vacant in 2021. There are many other problems with rent control, which I plan to go into in a future substack article. One large problem being it incentivizes landlords to disregard repairs until apartments are falling apart, and disincentivizes new apartments from being built because of fear of heavy regulation (see what happened in St. Louis after aggressive rent control laws). There are many many problems with rent control, which exacerbates affordability problems in the long run, in general rent control does not work. In general the problem is this, many people want to live in nyc, and there is not enough housing for them. Additionally it’s a highly desirable place to live so prices will always be high. The primary problem of nyc is inability to build new housing. This NYT article shows how 40% of existing buildings in Manhattan would be illegal to build today because of zoning.
Blatantly Racist Tax Proposals
Mamdani is calling for blatantly racist tax proposals targeting “whiter” neighborhoods with property taxes, and providing property tax relief for some people. Providing property tax relief is highly toxic, see what happened in California with prop 13, Property taxes are the best form of taxes around, since they indirectly tax the value of land heavily, and encourage efficient use of land and housing. Once again, the primary way to fix affordability of housing is to allow for far more housing to be built.
Fare-Free Buses
Fare free buses would increase the massive budget holes of the MTA. When you ask bus riders what would primarily make them more pleased with buses, it’s actually improved service not reduced fees. NYC transit is already dirt cheap, with discounts available for low income families. This also encourages adverse selection effects of antisocial individuals who do not pay are more likely to board buses and cause distress to people who need buses to get around the city. Additionally, the MTA already has a $3B budget shortfall.
City-Owned Grocery Stores
Mamdani is proposing city owned grocery stores to combat rising grocery prices. For one, his funding proposal for the grocery stores is based off of bad math. He assumed NYC FRESH received over 20x the funding it actually does. At that rate of funding it would take about 20 years just to have one city owned grocery store in each borough. In addition, groceries are one area where capitalism excels, grocery prices have vastly lowered over the decades, and profit margins on grocery stores are very small, only a few percentage points. Given the cities poor track record of doing anything in a cost efficient manner (public housing, building new subway at $4 billion per mile).
Free Childcare
Free childcare is highly unrealistic on a city level, with many second order effects. For one, the cost is prohibitively high at $5-6+ billion a year. A plan like this citywide would encourage a high influx of people with children to within city limits, which would apply pressure to rents, and further drive up prices. Additionally would require creation of far more childcare workers and likely lead to a massive childcare shortage. With pushing wage hikes for workers, and pushing for price insensitivity of a free good, demand would likely spike well above what it currently is.
Other problematic policies
Other problematic views Mamdani holds, includes raising the minimum wage $30/hr, far higher than the current $41k median personal income in NYC (assuming 40 hours a week at 48 weeks a year). This wage would lead to massive unemployment. Additionally, he holds views for eliminating test based admissions to top public schools in NYC. Test-based ranking is currently the best-known way to fight discrimination in schools, and the best way to give the smartest students with the most potential the best chances. This is unacceptable policy, despite gaining wide support over past years. Additionally, he pushing for “The Department of Community Safety“, which based on his support of the “defund the police” movement in 2020, is likely a thinly veiled way to reduce prosecution of crime, and to reduce police funding. (Note that funding the police is highly effective, and crime disproportionately affects the poor, who are less resilient to crime!). Additionally, his large hike in corporate taxes, along with other proposals would be likely to push high wealth individuals and large corporations outside of the city, leading to massive highly paid job losses, and lost tax revenue for the city.
Mamdani’s problematic personality and views
Other problems with Mamdani, he is a socialist (which has caused over a hundred million deaths worldwide), who supports “seizing the means of production” (direct quote) (which supports theft of personal property and therefore violence of the state and violation of basic human rights) He also defended the saying “globalize the intifada” which carries antisemitic sentiment, and has high associations with terrorist suicide bombings. “It's sort of like "kampf." It means struggle, but in certain contexts (mein kampf, the intifada) it instead directly refers to a specific historical event. It's not just a scary arabic or german word.” Additionally, among his many other traits, he lied about race when applying to Columbia University (where his father is a professor). He was still rejected.
Conclusion
Taken together, Zohran Mamdani’s platform would make New York City less affordable, less safe, and less competitive an would worsen life for everyday New Yorkers.
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Rich, you’re not actually offering analysis—you’re just cosplaying as a public intellectual with a borrowed worldview. Everything you wrote is just repackaged ideology from someone louder, richer, or more shameless than you.
Because I'm positive you don’t have a real opinion on any of this. Nah, what you have is a reflex. You see the word “socialist,” vomit up a history book body count, and hope no one notices you skipped the actual debate. There’s no policy critique here, no substance—just a stitched-together Frankenstein of Reddit contrarianism, Twitter culture war bait, and Substack-pilled smugness.
You write like someone trying to impress the smarter bullies in your ideological circle. That’s why you can’t help but toss in half-baked cultural references—Mein Kampf, Intifada, gulags—whether they fit or not. You desperately want people to think you’re smart, but all you’re really doing is regurgitating the same cold takes we've all seen and heard.
Btw, your AI avatar is the perfect touch: a face that looks thoughtful, brooding, maybe even principled. Except just like your arguments, it’s not real. It’s an aesthetic. A placeholder for an identity you don’t have because your entire personality is an RSS feed of someone else’s grievances.
Have a shitty day my guy.