N.Y.’s Mamdani Loss Is Florida’s Gain
Originally published at NYDailyNews.com
As Americans celebrate freedom this weekend, our greatest city threatens to reject it altogether. With Zohran Mamdani now favored to be the next mayor of New York, communism has come to the Big Apple.
And yes, Mamdani is a communist. He may fancy himself a “democratic socialist,” but Mamdani’s policy proposals come straight out of the Eastern bloc’s collectivist playbook.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Mamdani, who called for “seizing the means of production.” Or ask Reps. Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi, both New York Democrats, who consider Mamdani “too extreme to lead.” James Carville recently warned that a Mamdani victory would be “potentially damaging” for Democrats nationwide.
That much is obvious, or so I thought before Mamdani cruised to his primary victory. Apparently, the truth is not obvious to the recent college graduates who solidify Mamdani’s left-wing base.
As a Vassar College graduate, I’m not surprised by the communist sympathies that trickle out of academia. What’s surprising is the utter disregard—willfully or naively—for blatant flaws in the communist worldview, where Big Government controls our destiny at the expense of a free market that made New York prosperous and appealing to college graduates in the first place.
Let’s put aside the fact that more than 100 million deaths are attributed to 20th-century communist regimes. And let’s accept the left-wing assumption that “it would never happen here” (lest we forget the COVID-era mandates and restrictions now swept under the rug).
Let’s just talk economics. One Mamdani supporter recently explained his support, “Money is always on our mind.”
Maybe, buried in the back of it. Political promises like Mamdani’s are double-sided coins—government giveaways on one side, costs on the other. His proposals would indeed cost an estimated $10 billion in totality.
How would New York—where city debt threatens $100 billion—pay for it? A corporate tax rate increase to 11.5 percent, a two percent flat tax on high-earning city residents, and other tax hikes.
Unaffected Mamdani supporters naturally respond, “Good, the rich should pay their ‘fair share.’”
Fact check: New York’s “one percent” already accounts for more than half of all income taxes paid. And New York already leads the country in state and local taxes collected per person.
There’s another problem. The pool of individuals and households earning over $1 million, for example, is smaller than Mamdani thinks—and it could get even smaller. The heavier the tax burden gets, the more the tax base erodes, and the less money becomes available for pricey programs. To quote Margaret Thatcher, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Writing from Miami, Florida, I’m not just speculating. The COVID-19 pandemic was New York’s case study in mass exodus, with one million more people leaving the city than moving to it.
The primary beneficiaries? Lower-tax alternatives like Florida, which is the country’s fastest growing state. People vote with their feet.
Again, don’t just take my word for it. Ask New York Governor Kathy Hochul (a Democrat), who recently admitted, “I don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach. We’ve lost enough.”
For now, Florida will keep winning. Part of the reason is Florida’s strong community of Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants, who don’t need a history lesson about communism; they lived it. They suffered through it, after hearing empty promises similar to Mamdani’s.
Ignorant New Yorkers would benefit from visiting Little Havana for a better understanding of American values—patriotism and a deep sense of gratitude to live here. As an immigrant from the once-communist Balkans, I sympathize, seeing how my parents left their homeland to live an American Dream that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
The ignorant need cultural immersion at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, which tells the story of those who fled the Cuban island that went from a free, prosperous republic to an oppressive, impoverished dictatorship within a single generation.
On the eve of Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, Cuba ranked fifth in the Western Hemisphere (the U.S. and Canada included) in terms of per-capita income. The Cuban, located in the heart of Miami, shows the prison cells and execution walls where communism’s empty promises led the island. How quickly we forget—or, in Mamdani’s case, never learn in the first place.
Post-July 4th, let’s continue to celebrate the parts of America where freedom is still cherished. And let’s hope our greatest city reclaims its former glory one day soon.
