New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani sat down for an interview with the New York Times on Friday. As the mayor passes six months in office, his socialist philosophy continues to misunderstand how to ensure American prosperity.
Interviewed by the New York Times‘s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Mamdani spoke his mind on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his role in the rise of socialism, and how he intends to change The Big Apple’s economic landscape.
In the interview’s most memorable moment, Garcia-Navarro asked the mayor what his definition of the “working class” is. Mamdani responded, “I haven’t sat at home and asked myself where it starts and stops.”
He continued by confusedly saying that the working class can be defined as “those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and aren’t able to do so.”
After some pressure from the interviewer, Mamdani admitted that his administration is setting the cutoff for taxing the rich at about $1 million in income a year. This cutoff, though, is not how he defines the working class.
“I’m just saying in terms of the practicality when it comes to fiscal policy, [$1 million is the line],” Mamdani said. “I think a lot of our politics has been a debate over who you leave out. And I’m more interested in debates how you bring more in.”
Mamdani’s definition of the “working class” aligns with his campaign trail rhetoric that won him the mayoralship in November. The 34-year-old often tries to answer practical questions with an appeal to big-tent politics. Mamdani is great at charismatically welcoming others into his camp, but it’s impossible to keep them there once they realize that his philosophy is inconsistent.
For the New York City mayor, working-class people are those who struggle to pay the bills. This definition is extremely inaccurate, since even high-income earners can struggle to pay the bills if they spend their money unwisely. However, Mamdani’s attempt and failure to define the working class is not due to any stupidity on his part, but rather the incoherence of socialism as a political philosophy.
Socialism and communism claim that the rich are the enemies of the poor, but the political theory never posits how to differentiate the two classes. Karl Marx tried to divide the classes into wage-workers and the owning class, but this division fails in modern capitalist societies. Americans who rent and do not own capital can still own businesses through the stock market, for instance. There are also a vast number of entrepreneurial Americans who own small businesses, which destroys the division Marx created.
Mamdani falls into the same issue as Marx: There is no fundamental way to distinguish between those allegedly doing the oppressing and the oppressed. In capitalism, every laborer is trying to improve their lot and is guaranteed equal opportunity to succeed. Socialist societies guarantee that everyone is equally at a disadvantage, rather than unequally successful.
As Margaret Thatcher famously said about a liberal Democratic member of Parliament, “He would rather the poor were poorer provided the rich were less rich.” This is also true of Mamdani’s philosophy, whether he admits it or not.
Mamdani’s interview also included another moment that shed light on his socialist approach to economic problems. When asked what he would do if he had a “magic wand” that he could wave and change anything, he responded that he would be doing “the same things that I’m doing now. It would just be a lot easier, I think.”
The mayor then followed up by specifying that he would make childcare free and universally available.
Mamdani is in charge of New York City’s record-breaking $125.8 billion budget. Based on how he’s been treating it, it appears that he believes he has a magic wand. The socialist has already started freezing rent for the city’s rent-controlled apartments; he aims to build 200,000 government-controlled housing units; and he has borrowed $4 billion from New York State to close the budget deficit.
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In all honesty, Mamdani does not need a magic wand. He has New York’s taxes and blank checks with no backing behind them at his disposal. And, when all else fails, the New York taxpayer will end up taking up the burden. After all, all of the big businesses will already be in Florida when it comes time to pay Mamdani’s bills.
The socialists interview with the New York Times stands out as the latest proof that Mamdani’s policies may frequently sound pleasing, but they can never work practically. The actual working class — every American — ends up struggling under a Socialist regime.