I saw that New Yorkers had elected Zohran Mamdani. RW Media seems pretty rattled over here about him, crazy commie whatever else, but it doesn’t seem like anyone on social media (from people actually in the industry) really… Cares? Like it’s a few % more tax, but not an unbearable amount. Policies meh, whatever.
Does anyone know what NY people are thinking/feeling right now? I’m in London and I don’t really know anyone on the other side of the pond.
I have some friends over there and the consensus is basically “holy crap people are pathetic and envious” and also “I need to get out of New York”. Mind you people were saying this when Khan got voted in in London so pinch of salt etc.
The Elon Musk tweet about takers and makers got circled around a good bit in the last few days, too
I’m not a New Yorker anymore, but my sense is that the smart money isn’t buying the alarmism over Mamdani’s election, expecting that his most ambitious and radical initiatives will be stymied, either by NYC’s sclerotic bureaucracy or by panicky 1%ers. (Though the latter weren’t too effective in keeping him from getting elected.)
The thing is, the affordability crisis is real, especially in NYC. It’s a great place to live if you have money, but if you don’t, you’re priced out of a lot of the city’s amenities. If the people who produce and provide those amenities can’t afford to live there, the misery will eventually trickle upward. I don’t know whether Mamdani’s ideas for improving affordability are workable, but at least he’s trying something; Cuomo and Sliwa were just offering BAU. Doing nothing while quality of life deteriorates even for the wealthy seems more likely to drive a flight of capital and population than government-owned grocery stores will.
The people who’ve threatened to move or disinvest won’t because, at the end of the day, NYC will likely remain the Capital of Everything. Few will make good on their threats, either out of FOMO or inertia.
So basically same as any other populist’s election - a lot of hot air but ultimately stymied by the machine / deep state / military industrial complex whatever they consider their enemy.
It’s heartwarming to see that London’s vague cultural dystopia has been exported westward, though. Very heartwarming. “American century” my left foot - welcome to the Age of Envy, friends. Enjoy your rations, don’t forget to hide them from your neighbours.
For anyone who’s lived in NYC for an extended period, the years after covid represent a large decline in the quality of life. Shoplifting is not prosecuted. The result is that all the drug stores I once knew are closed. The ones that remain have everything locked up. And there are multiple (more than 3) guards watching people. This is a result of the ‘no bail’ state law and the lenient prosecutions by Alvin Bragg (yes, that Alvin Bragg). The city as a whole lost an enormous number of police officers. And during the time they were being actively demonized, recruitments were way down.
Mamdani represents this trajectory on steroids. Read his platform, it’s on Platform | Zohran for NYC . He has promised ‘Community Safety Officers’ to replace police. These are essentially social workers. He has promised to freeze rent. This means landlords will not buy new properties and the current ones will not be maintained well. He has promised free bus fare which means that these will become mobile homes for the homeless and others. He wants to raise taxes on corporations and the rich. Whatever you tax, you get less of, so not a good thing. He wants to raise minimum wage to $30. I’m not sure of the effects of this, but it can’t be good for any service industry like restaurants. In Manhattan, we have already seen countless restaurants go out of business because food is too expensive. On the flip side, to enact most of his agenda, the governor of New York state has to get involved as the mayor of NYC doesn’t have the authority. And then there is his language around the Jewish people and refusing to refute the words ‘globalize the intifada’. Are people concerned? You bet. Is there flight? Yes, but not in massive numbers at this point. No major corporation that I know of has threatened to move out. But even if they did, it would start more along the lines of ‘quiet quitting’.