“An important factor is that it's funded,” socialist mayoral wannabe Zohran Mamdani blurred at an “affordability”-themed marketing campaign occasion Monday, insisting his $10 billion “free stuff” agenda will go forward it doesn't matter what.
He'll discover the cash someplace, he vows: If not from tax hikes, then from “a better-than-expected evaluation” (which appears like property-tax hikes underneath one other title, maybe those he's mentioned imposing on “richer and whiter” 'hoods), or another shock “pot of cash” (cue the leprechaun hunt) or mysterious “financial savings” (perhaps from the NYPD finances?).
Reality is, the funding mechanism suits proper in together with his $10 billion price ticket for the goodies and the supposed per-person advantages his marketing campaign will “calculate” for you.
It's all fantasy math, as bogus as three-card monte.
Begin small: He says his free bus plan will value simply $700 million, however that doesn't contemplate what the MTA would lose from subway revenues, its bills for brand spanking new buses and drivers to deal with hovering bus ridership or a bunch of different foreseeable points.
There's a motive different cities that attempted free municipal (versus vacationer) buses gave up on the experiment.
To be honest, he doesn't want metropolis money to impose his lease freeze — however that may solely cowl roughly 1,000,000 rent-stabilized models, and imposes prices he doesn't need to face: pushing up rents on market-rate flats, making certain decay in buildings that get hit exhausting by the freeze, risking that the US Supreme Court docket will toss the lease legal guidelines altogether as soon as he's made the system so nakedly political.
In fact, his greatest freebie is no-fee common little one care, which his marketing campaign's dodgy “calculator” widget says will save dad and mom $22,000 a 12 months for only one little one.
But when it takes off, it'll value much more than the $6 billion a 12 months he estimates, since metropolis day-care already pays employees as unionized academics — which means six-figure salaries, vastly above what “regular” day care facilities pays.
And if he's dropping the ages lined beneath the present 3-Ok applications, he's inviting extra hassle: Caring for infants and toddlers nonetheless in diapers is vastly extra labor-intensive, for those who're to have any high quality requirements in any respect.
However that's simply half the story.
Zoh's fantasy math additionally ignores the grim incontrovertible fact that metropolis spending outpaces income now; the very first thing he'll need to do as mayor is shut finances gaps estimated at $17 billion over his first three years, which is bound to be exacerbated by federal cuts.
Mamdani's vowed to confront President Donald Trump, not sweet-talk him into reversing these financial savings.
Making life within the Huge Apple extra reasonably priced is a unbelievable purpose, and Mamdani confirmed actual smarts in adopting it as his marketing campaign centerpiece.
It's too unhealthy that he's put zero thought into how he can truly ship on most of his agenda, however his solely precedence now could be getting elected — and on that entrance, fantasy math is working nice up to now.
