Zohran Mamdani's 'revolution' isn't a socialist dream or capitalist nightmare

Mostafa Bassim/Getty Images; BI Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York City on a simple, focused economic platform: fast and free buses, universal childcare, cheaper groceries, and a rent freeze. His supporters envisioned him ushering in a fresh economic order. His critics feared the worst — a cabal of heavy-handed leftists who would plunge the city into fiscal chaos. A year after Mamdani's election, New York's economy doesn't look like the stuff of socialist dreams — or capitalist nightmares. Zohranomics is unfolding at a piecemeal pace. Unable to unilaterally raise taxes on the rich, the mayor is championing a pied-à-terre tax on wealthy residents who don't live in the city full-time (or say so on their tax filings). His municipal grocery store endeavor is a modest five-location work in progress. The city is focused on the "fast" half of the bus plan and has put the "free" part on the back burner. Like his predecessors, Mamdani is dedicating a lot of time and resources to housing. He orchestrated a rent freeze on 1 million rent-stabilized apartments — one of his most controversial and impactful moves so far, though not unique to his administration. Many of the mayor's policy moves have been administrative measures: cutting red tape for small businesses, rooting out government inefficiencies, pension maneuvering to balance the city budget. And, the administration is trumpeting small-scale wins on filling potholes and making it easier to cancel subscriptions. The list of accomplishments sounds more like a standard Democratic think-tank wish-list than a Bolshevik manifesto. Mamdani is governing like a leftist populist with the instincts of a city operations nerd — but his biggest economic bets are yet to be made. New York is an incredibly rich city, with a private wealth pool of over $3 trillion and an annual GDP of roughly $1.3 trillion. It's also a city with stark economic divides. It has a 25% poverty rate, meaning more than 2 million New Yorkers live below the poverty line. (In comparison, the national poverty rate is 10%.) From 2019 to 2024, almost two-thirds of New York City's income growth went to the top 1%, according to the city's comptroller, compared to 39% nationally. The costs of childcare, housing, and basic necessities are increasingly daunting. Those economic dynamics propelled Mamdani to the mayorship. The list of accomplishments sounds more like a standard Democratic think-tank wish-list than a Bolshevik manifesto. "A lot of people love this city, but not as many of them can live here," the mayor said in a recent podcast interview with comedian Theo Von. But the immutable truth facing any New York City mayor is that there is not much they can do to influence the economy. Much of New York's financial engine runs on its own. New York's state government sets most of the city's taxes. The national and global economies affect New Yorkers' pocketbooks, too. Mamdani's program is to, where possible, wield the city's influence to lower costs and shift some of New York's power structures toward the traditionally less powerful. That means pairing rent regulations with initiatives to stimulate more homebuilding and pressuring the state to secure funding for a new free 2-K program. The city is weighing public options where the private markets fail to deliver, such as the grocery store initiative and new government-backed property and liability insurance for landlords. It's investing $30 million into an NYU quantum computing lab in exchange for a cut of its profits. And, it's pushing the idea that the wealthy could stand to chip in more and pay higher taxes. Mamdani's programs are universal instead of means tested. Many middle- and upper-middle-class will be able to put their kids in free 2-K programs and live in rent-stabilized apartments. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images This is a more expansive vision than a standard anti-poverty agenda — and a politically riskier one. New York is a crowded, raucous city where almost everyone sees themselves as an underdog, from billionaires to bodega owners to beleaguered renters. And when everyone feels like the system is stacked against them, any change is bound to make someone feel newly wronged. To his progressive allies, Mamdani's approach is an attempt to prove that local government can directly respond to constituents. The hope is that tackling and touting the little things, like snow shoveling and trash pickup, will build trust that they can use to address the big things. It doesn't sound as radical as socialism, says Elizabeth Wilkins, the president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, but it's "radical in the degree to which people have lost faith in the idea that the government cares about how they experience the economy or that the government could do anything about it." Housing is the arena where the mayor has made the biggest difference to New Yorkers on both material and rhetorical fronts. In June, the mayor-appointed Re