Everything That’s Wrong With Zohran Mamdani’s Policy Platform

If elected, he could demonstrate to New Yorkers how ruinous socialist policies are

Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as seen in a photo provided by his campaign. Photo credit: Kara McCurdy.

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s father, Mahmoud Mamdani, is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia. Mahmoud Mamdani has celebrated Arab violence against Israelis: “Palestinians have a right to resist. This is a colonial occupation, not a conflict!” Mahmoud Mamdani has also condemned Americans, referring to us in the third-person: “Americans have learned to see themselves as immigrants rather than settlers, which suits their sense of the American nation as a historic rupture from Europe rather than a European colonial outpost,” Mahmoud Mamdani wrote in his 2020 Harvard University Press book, “Neither Settler nor Native, The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities.”

But rather than focusing on Mamdani’s father, who is outside Zohran’s control, let’s take Zohran Mamdani at his word, and focus on the policy. Zohran Mamdani has an elaborate 17-point policy platform. To judge by the polls, it seems to be seducing lots of New Yorkers. Let’s take a closer, detailed look.

On housing, Zohran Mamdani promises that he will “immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants.” That does nothing to help the many New Yorkers who live in apartments or houses that are not rent-stabilized. It could easily be undone by the state or federal government imposing a tax equal to the difference between the stabilized rent and the market rent, an idea recently promoted by the Antonin Scalia professor of law at Harvard Law School, Stephen E. Sachs. What’s more, zeroing out rent increases will reduce the taxable value of the buildings, costing the city property tax revenue. It could also hurt the tenants by making it harder for the landlords to afford to maintain the buildings in good condition.

Zohran Mamdani also proposes to build more public housing projects. Yet experience shows that concentrating poor people in government-owned housing breeds crime and long-term poverty, by isolating poor people from others with more social capital. It creates perverse incentives that encourage single-parent families and discourage people from earning more money or accumulating assets, for fear of becoming disqualified from the subsidized housing. Public housing projects have fallen into disrepair because, unlike private-sector landlords, government managers aren’t hoping to make more money by raising rents or eventually selling buildings for a profit.

Zohran Mamdani is also promising that the city will seize privately owned buildings. “When an owner demonstrates consistent neglect for their tenants, the City will decisively step in and take control of their properties,” his platform says. This sounds like a two-step recipe for a government takeover of private property. First refuse the rent increases needed to properly maintain property, then seize the property on the grounds that it isn’t properly maintained. Without secure property rights, capital for private investment in New York City real estate ventures will become scarce, and existing owners may decide that their capital is safer elsewhere. There’s no evidence that the city government will be a more responsible landlord than private owners are.

And Zohran Mamdani says he will “end the tax lien sale.” Zohran Mamdani would have the city seize property if landlords don’t meet his standards, but he apparently won’t seize it if an owner doesn’t pay taxes. Good luck collecting any taxes.

On safety, Zohran Mamdani says hardly anything about New York’s police. Instead he promises a new “department of community safety.” If ensuring something were as easy as creating a department with a name, the Department of Education would mean that all Americans were well educated, and Zohran Mamdani should create a Department of Growth and Prosperity alongside the Department of Community Safety. His proposed department seems like a government jobs-and-spending program for “outreach workers” and “transit ambassadors”—people who will become unionized public sector employees reliant on government, and taxes, for their livelihood, regardless of any impact they do or do not have on community safety.

On “affordability,” Mamdani touts his plan for city-owned grocery stores. We wrote about that here at the editors back in December—“N.Y. Mayoral Candidate Wants ‘Public Option’ for Grocery Stores”—“astounding is the level of hubris, and the lack of historical knowledge. Do these people really not remember the empty supermarket shelves in the Soviet Union under communism? And do they really believe that the government can sell groceries with better operational efficiency than master retailers such as Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Costco, and Wegmans, all of which operate in New York City?”

He also promises, “As Mayor, he’ll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus – and make them faster by rapidly building priority lanes, expanding bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones to keep double parkers out of the way.” Yet the state, not the city, controls the transit system in New York City, and Mamdani may not find support for that idea in Albany. Even if enacted, free buses might have the unintended consequence of drawing riders away from the subway system, further overcrowding the buses and making the subways more dangerous and less financially sustainable. More bus lanes can also mean slower traffic for other vehicles who are left to crowd into fewer remaining lanes.

Mamdani promises “free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years..And he will bring up wages for childcare workers…to be at parity with public school teachers.” It won’t be “free,” it will be paid for by taxpayers at significant expense, forcing childless New Yorkers to subsidize those with children.

On K-12 education, Mamdani promises “an end to mayoral control.” That means an end to political accountability for the performance of New York City schools, and instead a return to the days of corruption and unchallenged interest group control. If an “end to mayoral control” is a recipe for education success, by what principle is Mamdani proposing vast expansions of mayoral control over housing, groceries stores, transportation, “community safety,” and other services. He offers no explanation for the inconsistency.

On taxes, Mamdani proposes raising taxes on corporations and on “the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers—those earning above $1 million annually.” He says that would generate an additional $9 billion a year in tax revenue. But it could just accelerate a rush to the exits, as taxpayers flee to lower-tax jurisdictions rather than stick around and see already-high tax rates soar to new levels.

If the high taxes don’t send businesses running to leave New York, the new government mandates will. Mamdani says he “will champion a new local law bringing the NYC wage floor up to $30/hour by 2030.” Why hire a worker in New York City when they are available cheaper in other jurisdictions with governments that are less hostile to employers?

This is just the stuff Mamdani is telling voters about. Who knows what other extreme plans he may have up his sleeve for when he gets elected that he isn’t leveling with voters about?

If the consequence of the Mamdani campaign is that it gives voters a remedial education in why socialism doesn’t work, it could be a kind of public service. The alternative—in which he gets elected and actually demonstrates, by running a failed far-left experiment, how ruinous socialist policies are—would have devastating costs for New York City. One way or another, New Yorkers will learn how harmful socialism is. It will be a lot less damaging if that realization is before the mayoral election than after it.