Mamdani Wants to Raise Taxes: I'm Shocked
Free stuff costs a lot of money.
How many times do we have to remind voters that when you hear a politician promise you “free” stuff … hang on to your wallet —because “free” stuff gets really expensive really fast.
New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is a smart guy — yet he doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that social utopias don’t come cheap, that creating a kind of Moscow on the Hudson has consequences.
Last week, Mamdani said a “painful” tax hike on millions of New Yorkers is necessary. It’s needed, he said, to close the city’s budget deficit. At least he was honest enough to call it “painful.”
During the campaign, he called for higher taxes to pay for “free” bus rides and government-run grocery stores. In office, he said he wanted a tax hike on New Yorkers to pay for “free” child care. And who would pay for all this “free” stuff? New Yorkers, Mamdani said, who live in “richer and whiter neighborhoods.”
“If he wasn’t able to soak high-earners further — the top income tax rate in the city is already nearly 15 percent — then he would punish millions of New Yorkers with property tax hikes. … The reality is that Americans may like the idea of ‘free’ stuff — it’s how socialists win elections — but they are less excited about having to pay for it.”
Where did that come from? Not the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal — but from the liberal editorial page of the Washington Post. And when liberal editorial writers are saying New York has a spending problem not a revenue problem, as the Post says, then Mamdani needs to pay attention. Odds are, he won’t.
