Innumerates In Charge

New York City’s new, smilingly socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who came into office full of promises of largess and promising to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” is being repeatedly gobsmacked by fiscal reality as he struggles to find the money to pay for all the goodies he offered. The only people surprised by this are the people who have had their eyes blindfolded and their ears plugged while the rest of us warned repeatedly about the impossibility of his agenda.

Unfortunately, those people are legion. They fell for the same snake oil that countless previous purveyors of populist progressivism peddled to previous populations.

I give myself a dubious hat-tip for that absurd amount of alliteration. Now, back to it...

At the core of all this is arrogance. Mamdani confidently informs us that he can make socialism work, in much the fashion that Obama declared “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” To that end, he appointed such intellectual heavyweights as Cea Weaver, who is now heading the city’s Office To Protect Tenants.

Give this reel a watch to the end.

She wants the government to subsidize federal housing, based on income level, to the point where someone with no income pays no rent. Setting aside the massive moral hazard of such a program, we logically ask “who pays for this?” Which the interviewer did.

I’m used to hearing “tax the rich,” but Ms. Weaver went a step beyond by blithely declaring “the federal government prints money.”

Sadly, she’s not the first public servant I’ve heard make such a colossally ignorant statement. I flash back to Congresswoman and socialist It-Girl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, when asked how to fund her $40T Green New Deal, responded “it’s like the rent, you just pay it.”

We have seen the impact of “just pay it” profligacy these last few years, as reckless federal spending devalued the dollar by 25% and counting. As the great man, Milton Friedman, pointed out, when the money supply grows faster than the economy, money loses value.

When the Feds continue to spend a couple trillion more each year than they collect in tax revenue, the inevitable result is inflation.

When socialist “print money” to pay for the things they want to give away, the result is hyperinflation. You cannot print money fast enough to keep up with its loss of value when this happens.

We have more than enough historical examples of this to know its truth and inevitability.

And, yet, we continue to hear people informing us otherwise.

George Will felt that it was a good thing Mamdani won, because people need reminding once every couple decades that socialism doesn’t work. Mamdani’s going to offer that lesson. Unfortunately, it will go unheeded. It may (may*) prompt New Yorkers to make a more responsible choice next election, but it seems that no matter how often socialism fails, its defenders refuse to learn.

Or, more accurately, the new generations that reach voting age fall for the same siren song as their predecessors, thanks to a thoroughly broken and corrupt education system that’s run by people who wouldn’t stand a chance if they had to run a competitive enterprise.