Mamdani to Hochul: fork over the money or the kulaks get hurt
Economics 101, according to Mamdani:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani introduced his $127 billion preliminary budget plan on Tuesday. …
Mamdani threatened to raise property taxes by 9.5% and raid the rainy day fund if Gov. Kathy Hochul does not implement a wealth tax.
“That’s their prerogative to look at that as an option,” Hochul responded. “He’s required to put options on the table; that does not mean that’s the final resolution.”
Hochul already promised NYC $1 billion for the 2025 fiscal year and $500 million for next year.
Not enough, Hochul.
And landlords – who do own a lot of the property in New York City – are constrained from raising some rents enough to cover the increase (rent stabilization and rent control, which affect over a million NYC rental properties, according to Google AI), unless something is done to change that, which would be highly unlikely under Mamdani. And there are plenty of actual home owners (as opposed to landlords) in the outer boroughs who are not extremely wealthy. But to Mamdani, all property owners are kulaks, and they must be sacrificed for the good of the underclass:
kulak, (Russian: “fist”), in Russian and Soviet history, a wealthy or prosperous peasant, generally characterized as one who owned a relatively large farm and several head of cattle and horses and who was financially capable of employing hired labour and leasing land. …
In 1927 the Soviet government began to shift its peasant policy by increasing the kulaks’ taxes and restricting their right to lease land; in 1929 it began a drive for rapid collectivization of agriculture. The kulaks vigorously opposed the efforts to force the peasants to give up their small privately owned farms and join large cooperative agricultural establishments. At the end of 1929 a campaign to “liquidate the kulaks as a class” (“dekulakization”) was launched by the government. By 1934, when approximately 75 percent of the farms in the Soviet Union had been collectivized, most kulaks—as well as millions of other peasants who had opposed collectivization—had been deported to remote regions of the Soviet Union or arrested and their land and property confiscated.
Was this the “affordability” the youth of NYC voted for? Of course, at the moment it’s just leverage on Hochul. But if Albany – and the rest of New York state, which did not vote for Mamdani – don’t do what they mayor says, he will blame Hochul and upstate rather than take any responsibility. Here’s the way Mamdani put it on X:
After years of fiscal mismanagement, we’re staring at a $5.4 billion budget gap — and two paths.
One: Albany can raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy and the most profitable corporations and address the fiscal imbalance between our city and state.
The other, a last resort: balance the budget on the backs of working people using the only tools at the City’s disposal. …
… [W]e look forward to partnering with Albany to protect working New Yorkers.
See how it goes? The NY Times adds:
The suggested 9.5 percent increase would affect more than 3 million single-family homes, co-ops and condos and over 100,000 commercial buildings, Mr. Mamdani said as he delivered his preliminary spending plan.
The mayor acknowledged that his proposal would not merely force the wealthy to pay more taxes, but would also be a “tax on working- and middle-class New Yorkers,” and stressed that this was not his first choice.
Hochul and those greedy up-staters made me do it.
And that NYC budget? Governor DeSantis of Florida points out that NYC’s $127 billion budget is higher than Florida’s budget of $117, and Florida has about three times as many people.
I noticed that 40% – almost $38 Billion is DOE?! Presume it means Department of Education. How is that even possible? Note CUNY is it’s own category at 2% which works out to almost $2B
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/2023848752533180536
That Florida, which is much larger infrastructure wise, at three times the population can run a well organized state is almost proof that the blue states are full of fraud.
Madmani understands that given his goals and given the backlash that will likely ensue once people wise up about them, he must do his best to destroy the city, or as much of it as he can, as quickly as possible.
(“Wise up”, you ask? Wasn’t it all crystal clear from the get-go? Apparently not, sad to say….)
Possibly, the only thing that might be able to prevent this rabid ideologue from effecting his wet dream of destruction is Trump, but he’s tied down at the moment in various arenas. (OTOH he’s indefatigable so who knows…?)
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“How is that even possible?…
Madmani KNOWS—he’s not the only one, of course—that you gotta get to ‘em when they’re young…
Yep, the warmth of collectivism…
If public policy in New York were sane, the legislature would cut two checks, one to county governments and one to school districts. These would be unrestricted grants and the local governments in question would get no more from the state in an ordinary year. Their would be a calculable guideline value for each check written into the state constitution, but the legislature would have full discretion over the sum of each check. The distributional formulae would be written into the state constitution as well, so the precise amount received by each county and each school district would not be at the discretion of the legislature. Provision would be made in the state constitution for a similar distribution by county governments to their component municipalities. Any given county and any given municipality would receive a sum directly correlated with resident population and inversely correlated with per capita income. Any given school district would receive a check directly correlated with resident population, directly correlated with its ratio of school age youth to the rest of the population, and inversely correlated with per capita income. The five boroughs of New York would be treated as a single county and a single school district. Posit that localities on average would receive 80% of their revenue from local taxation and 20% from this revenue sharing grant, with affluent localities relying entirely on local revenue and the most impecunious receiving most from above. The one specialized grant there might be would be the distribution of the proceeds of motor fuel excises and vehicle registration fees to dedicated funds in county and municipal governments devoted to road maintenance. The state government might also make payments in lieu of taxes on state government real estate to the respective local authorities in which parcels were to be found.
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Also, if public policy in New York were sane, the regulatory authority of counties and municipalities would be limited to land use planning, use of common property resources (including public thoroughfares), nuisance abatement, and adaptation to certain model codes enacted by the state government. New York City would make use of the same bloody landlord-tenant law and the same property tax law everyone else uses.
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And, of course, if public policy in New York were sane, administered prices would be limited to services vended by governments and private natural monopolies. You have controls on water, gas, and electric rates and controls on mass transit fares. You don’t regulate rents.
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And, of course, if public policy in New York were sane, local governments would be responsible for the child protective and foster care service and allied services in re the addled and infirm and would also be responsible for local schools. These would be mandated responsibilities and the performance of county governments and school districts would be audited and some local programs put under state trusteeships from time to time. Beyond that, there would be no encouragement of welfare spending by local governments, no financing thereof from the state, and impediments placed on the solicitation and receipt of federal funds for any purpose other than disaster relief.
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Of course, if federal policy were sane, the only distributions from the federal treasury to local governments would be disaster relief and payment in lieu of taxes on the federal government’s real estate.
Cutting spending is of course not being considered.
I fail to see what Trump could do about this. The government can enforce non-discrimination laws (and go to appeals courts to defend those efforts), but otherwise, the New Yorkers who bothered to vote are responsible for the Mamdani disaster.
Snake Plissken call your office
And that NYC budget? Governor DeSantis of Florida points out that NYC’s $127 billion budget is higher than Florida’s budget of $117, and Florida has about three times as many people.
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In evaluating that, you need to know the distribution of functions between state and local government in various jurisdictions. Once upon a time, when I had to take courses in such matters, local governments accounted for about 59% of all public employees and state governments just 22%. Please not also that New York City’s budget is going to include expenditures that in other jurisdictions would be apportioned between county government, municipal government, and school districts. I don’t doubt NYC government is comparatively inefficient, sticks it’s fingers in pies that are properly the work of the private sector, and tolerates more fraud, but the severity of the situation may not be as bad as those headline numbers imply.
NB, New York City receives its authority to regulate rents from state law. Would be amusing if the legislature passed a law delineating a program to dismantle the rent control regime.
I noticed that 40% – almost $38 Billion is DOE?! Presume it means Department of Education. How is that even possible?
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In other parts of the state, you have county, municipal, and school district budgets. In NYC, they’re all rolled into one.
Perhaps indeed Trump’s hands are tied, Kate.
But since I suspect that the goal of the Democratic Party, in its latest incarnation (and wisdom) is entirely destructive, and since Trump’s goal is the revival and strengthening of the country and its people—MAGA—which the Democrats MUST necessarily oppose, then Trump may decide to take this personally…and then what? Go through hell and high water to save the city? (For which it’s entirely likely that New Yorkers will never forgive him?…)
Essentially, it’s Make America Great Again vs. Make America Disappear.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens… OTOH, the speed at which the subversive perv smiling widely in City Hall is acting would seem to indicate that the wait will not be a long one.
Art Deco:
When I was writing the post, I looked up the budget of Miami, a city about one sixteenth the size of NY. Its budget is three and a half billion. Multiplied by 16 that would be a great deal less per capita than in NYC. Plus, New York state spends more per capita than Florida does.
Los Angeles budget is just under $48 Billion (up from $45B) and serves a population of around ten million.
The combined budgets of Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso comes in under $35 billion. The Texas state budget is $338 billion, which covers two years as the legislature meets biannual.
This equally applies to NYC.
“Why California is broke and Texas is not.”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0JlEzL3Trrc?feature=share
I’d like to think Mamdani is a one-term one-time disaster… But then I think of Newsom and the Black Congressional Caucus… and… well… then I get depressed.
Some voters seem to never learn.
The common people of New York City know what they want, and having voted accordingly, are now going to get what they want, good and hard. It would seem the deception has been carried out successfully for so long, that the obscene budget – without peer, nationally – has now become accepted as the norm, out of sheer longevity.
I wonder what Boston is like, as a matter of comparison. It, too, has a huge machine government system.
For Valentine’s Day, Mamdani posted cheesy “valentines” for people to send to small business owners. Like “My heart is locally-owned… by you.” When I saw that, I thought “Nobody’s told the commie that small business owners are kulaks yet?” The comments were full of young women swooning.
It’s hard to conceptualize if you haven’t spent a lot of time there, but New York City is kind of like a state unto itself. It’s over twice as populous as LA. It employs hundreds of thousands of people in its various agencies and departments.
I used to do administrative hearings against the DOE. They pay out millions every year just for special education students seeking private schools and services when the public school doesn’t offer what they need. There have been efforts to rein it in recently, but they haven’t made a lot of headway as far as I know. And that’s just one part of what they have to budget for. There are also the buildings and the teachers and the classroom equipment… and the armies of lawyers dedicated specifically to handling complaints against the DOE. It is not surprising that their budget is in the tens of billions.
I also used to work for NYC’s child welfare services (ACS), which alone employs over 7000 people. You’ve got the boots-on-the-ground caseworkers, but also the supervisors, managers, attorneys facing the judges in family court, HR, and various consultants and administrative workers behind the scenes. The scale of NYC’s government is really staggering.
I lived and was educated in New York State some decades ago, fleeing for the Southland as soon as I was able. Those people, Yankees, do not think rationally. Why else would the folks in Watertown, hundreds of miles from NYC, elect Hochul, a florid Dem, and now be taxed to support the financiallly sick Big Apple, which is full of migrant misbegottens who do not speak the language?
It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Maybe the Outer Limits. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ADJUST YOUR TV.
Holy moly.
I’m not particularly original. I do like to try to remember apt sayings and observations by others.
But I may be the first to use Cloward-Piven as a verb. :To Cloward-Piven means to ruin and institution in the purported guise of improving it, thus sparking a revolution. Generally, an exterior entity will be blamed and thus the target of the revolution.”
“To C-P….”
Permission to use without attribution.
Related:
“NYC public school teachers voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani…
“…He’s now raiding their pension fund.”—
https://instapundit.com/777354/
Key observation:
“You would need a heart of stone not to laugh.”
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BTW, dynamite verb you just verbed, Richard…
“NYC public school teachers voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani…
“…He’s now raiding their pension fund.”—
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Again, if we had sensible public policy, public employees would have a stated compensation (hourly or salaried) and benefits for them would be financed out of assessments on that compensation manifest to them as withholdings on their pay stub bar workman’s compensation and s/t disability insurance (which would be financed out of actuarially-rated charges on their employer). You would not have a pension fund to raid. Each employee would have a retirement account. A minimum of 15% of the employee’s stated compensation would be sluiced to the retirement account as a matter of course (to which the employee could add more if he cared to); if they were earning early-retirement credits, a minimum of 30% would be sluiced. (Ideally, those earning such credits would be limited to military, uniformed police, firefighters, and hands-on construction workers). By way of example, medical insurance for public employees would be obtained by having insurers place sealed bids to insure blocs of employees. The insurer would get the premium income withheld on the employee’s paycheck in return for which he would fulfill the substantive and procedural provisions of a contract. The bid would be in the form of a deductible he would require to fulfill the contract – $x for a single-person household, $2x for a two-person household, and $3x for a larger household.
I’ve read that the 2% tax for people who earn $1 million would not apply just to the amount over $1 million, but to the entire income. So someone who earns $999,999 would pay, say, $50,000 in city taxes, and someone who earns $1 more would owe $70,000. That’s how some other taxes in NY work also–the “mansion tax” for sales of homes worth $1 million or more, or the estate tax ($5 million). It’s a crazy distortion.
Los Angeles budget is just under $48 Billion (up from $45B) and serves a population of around ten million.
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You mean Los Angeles County? Again, if we want an apples-to-apples comparison between NYC and anyplace else, you have to sum the county, municipal, and school district budgets of those other places.
AD making very good points about the variety of government organizations. Eg when talking about “Los Angeles” is it city (around 3 million population) or county (over 10 million)? And in CA school districts are not only separate financial entities but the boundaries do not always coincide with city boundaries.
All I can do is laugh