We’ve all heard the old line about socialism — eventually you run out of other people’s money. Well, New York City’s brand-new socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani just speedran the process. The man hasn’t even broken in his office chair yet, and he’s already on his knees begging Albany for a bailout to cover a $6 billion budget deficit.
Six. Billion. Dollars. The honeymoon didn’t even last through the appetizer course.
Now, for those of you who don’t follow New York City politics — and honestly, why would you, it’s like watching someone set their own house on fire and then blame the fire department — Mamdani is a proud, card-carrying socialist who ran on a platform of “free” everything. Free bus rides. Free childcare. Free, free, free. The voters of New York City heard all of this and said, “Yes please, we’d like one socialism.”
Well, congratulations. You got it.
Here’s what happened in record time. The city’s net spending ballooned by $4 billion this fiscal year alone. Next year it’s projected to hit $5 billion. And by 2028? Eight billion dollars in the hole. Mamdani burned through the rainy day fund — nearly a billion dollars, gone — and the city’s operating surplus cratered by 94 percent. It went from $3.79 billion down to $238 million.
(For the math-challenged progressives reading this: that means they obliterated $3.5 billion in surplus in basically one budget cycle. Impressive, honestly.)
So what’s Mamdani’s genius plan to fix the catastrophe he created? New taxes, of course. He floated a luxury property tax a few weeks ago — because nothing says “help the working class” like making housing more expensive in the most expensive city on Earth — and now he’s crawling to the state government demanding what he calls “new revenue” and a “structural reset.”
“We cannot close this deficit with savings alone,” Mamdani announced, which is socialist-speak for: “We spent all the money, and now we need YOUR money too.”
A “structural reset.” That’s adorable. You know what a structural reset is? It’s what normal people call “we broke everything and we want someone else to pay for the repairs.” This is the equivalent of a teenager who crashes their parents’ car and then asks for a newer, nicer one.
The beautiful part is that none of this was hard to predict. Literally every conservative in America watched this guy get elected and said, “Give it six months.” We were being generous — he didn’t even make it that far. The man campaigned on promising New Yorkers a buffet of government services and then acted shocked — SHOCKED — when the check came.
Margaret Thatcher nailed this one decades ago, and the socialists still haven’t learned the lesson. But why would they? Learning from history would require them to actually study history instead of trying to rewrite it.
Meanwhile, the city’s expenditures are outpacing revenues by $3.55 billion even with the emergency measures. They’re hemorrhaging cash on public assistance, shelters, rental assistance, and a special education system that’s expanding faster than the deficit itself. All of those are wonderful things to spend money on — if you actually have the money. Which they don’t. Because socialism.
Here’s a prediction for you: Albany is going to cave and give them some version of a bailout, because that’s what always happens. New York City breaks the piggy bank, and then the rest of the state gets to pay for the glue. Taxpayers upstate who never voted for any of this nonsense will get to subsidize “free” bus rides for Manhattan progressives who think economics is a social construct.
And then in two years, when the money runs out again — because it always runs out again — Mamdani will be back with his hand out, asking for another “structural reset.” The cycle never ends with these people.
At least he’s being honest about one thing: he can’t fix this with spending cuts alone. Of course he can’t. Cutting spending would require admitting that the spending was the problem, and admitting the spending was the problem would require admitting that socialism doesn’t work. And we all know that’s never going to happen.
So buckle up, New York. You voted for the guy who promised you everything for free, and now the bill is here. Six billion dollars. Cash or check?
