Zohran Mamdani, Radical?

Not exactly, and the question is actually beside the point.

Photo by Creative Commons

There’s a big thing Zohran Mamdani gets wrong about New York’s government — and a big thing his critics get wrong. He’s wrong to say New York City fundamentally rigs the game against the poor and working class. His critics are wrong to treat his platform as some radical leap toward socialism. The truth is more grounded: New York already runs on big government, with a remarkably generous social safety net, and Mamdani’s agenda mostly builds on what’s already there. The size and reach of today’s system make his proposals, by definition, incremental rather than revolutionary.

This is not to say that Mamdani’s plans are necessarily wise or well calibrated, just that when placed in proper context, they’re smaller in scope than most critics — and many allies, and even Mamdani himself — suggest.

Right now, a $112.4 billion municipal budget funds the nation’s largest school system, its biggest public hospital network, deeply subsidized transit (run and funded mostly by the state, but the point stands), free parks and libraries, rent vouchers, lawyers for tenants facing eviction, and public housing for about one in 17 residents. The private economy — including finance, tech, tourism, healthcare, creative industries, and small businesses — grows largely in concert with this vast public infrastructure, not in spite of it. It is of course true that at any point, a public sector that becomes too large or inefficient can start dragging on private dynamism. New York hasn’t reached that point definitively, as our local economy remains reasonably healthy in many respects, but the risk isn’t theoretical.

Let’s step back and see the government we have clearly. The scope of New York City’s public sector in 2025 would have stunned earlier generations. The public schools serve more than 900,000 K-12 students at per-pupil spending in the mid-$30,000s and up. Meanwhile, the city guarantees free, full-day pre-K for kids and offers expanded 3-K. (Mamdani was among those who claimed that public schools were starved of funding for years by Gov. Cuomo; they never were.) CUNY educates roughly 240,000 students at low cost. NYC Health + Hospitals treats more than a million residents annually across more than 70 sites with a multibillion-dollar budget. NYCHA houses more than 400,000 people — about one in 17 New Yorkers — across 335 developments. Nearly half of the city’s rental stock is rent-stabilized. Fares paid by New Yorkers to ride subways and buses cover less than a third of transit operating costs; the rest is subsidized by government. Three dozen cultural institutions in public facilities get city support. These aren’t marginal programs; they’re entrenched civic infrastructure that makes everything else possible.

Then there’s the safety net. A right to shelter, essentially unique in America, provides around 90,000 people with a place to sleep on any given night. (No, nobody should have to sleep in a shelter; yes, housing is too expensive — but these are topics for a separate conversation.) The city’s Right-to-Counsel law gives low-income tenants lawyers in Housing Court; 89% of tenants with full representation remained stably housed. CityFHEPS — the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement — pays a large share of rent, and vouchers can be used anywhere in New York State. Payment standards are pegged to Section 8 levels; as of July 2025, New York City covers up to $2,646 for a studio, $3,058 for a two-bedroom, and $3,811 for a three-bedroom, plus utilities, within the city. The program now serves about 52,000 households and costs over $1.1 billion annually, roughly $20,000 per household on average. Add NYC Care, which guarantees low- or no-cost medical services regardless of immigration status, and you have, courtesy of accretion over many years, a local safety net unmatched in scope or generosity among major U.S. cities.

It’s not a coincidence that New York City’s combined federal, state and local tax burden is the highest in the nation. That’s both a feature and a flaw of America’s best and biggest city. Expensive government and high taxes are part of what make New York work — though of course there are limits to how expensive and how high.

So nobody should pretend we live amid austerity that’s terribly skewed against the poor and working class.

Yet to justify what he and his opponents alike frame as sweeping new investments, Mamdani portrays New York as rigged against ordinary people. In his victory speech, he said city politics “abandons the many and answers only to the few.” The potent campaign line is not an accurate depiction of reality. Millionaires and billionaires underwrite a hugely disproportionate share of state and city government. New York’s problem isn’t neglect — it’s performance. The city is generous; it just doesn’t always deliver efficiently or well.

Mamdani isn’t totally naïve about this. “As someone who is very passionate about public goods,” he’s said, “we on the left have to be equally passionate about public excellence. Any example of public inefficiency is an opportunity for the argument to be made against the very existence of the public sector.”

The current scale of public investment is important not only because it corrects Mamdani’s caricature, but because it puts his proposed future investments — which opponents are treating as a wholesale reinvention of New York’s economy — in clearer perspective. In light of our already robust, expensive public sector, Mamdani’s platform looks evolutionary, not revolutionary. Extending universal childcare to infants continues a trajectory that began with pre-K and 3-K. Making buses free goes a step further than the existing Fair Fares discount — but it’s a difference in degree, not in kind. A four-year rent freeze tweaks a regime that already covers nearly half the city’s apartments. A few city-owned grocery stores would barely register in the budget. These are additions to an enormous existing structure, not a reinvention of it.

That doesn’t make them good ideas that are worth the tradeoffs. Each proposal raises real questions of cost and feasibility. Fare-free buses would cost hundreds of millions annually that could be better spent on improving bus service, and would have all kinds of collateral consequences that Mamdani hasn’t adequately thought through. Universal childcare for ages 6 weeks to 5 years — the biggest-ticket item — would cost several billions of dollars per year, especially if Mamdani puts childcare worker pay in parity with public school teachers, as he’s said he wants to. And it would raise a host of complex implementation challenges that the Pre-K expansion never did. Freezing rents will probably bankrupt buildings in the outer boroughs whose finances are already teetering on the brink.

Mamdani’s proposed tax hikes on corporations and high earners would require Albany’s approval, and analyses from the Citizens Budget Commission and others suggest they wouldn’t fully cover recurring costs, leaving a significant gap to close through phasing or cuts. That gap matters, as does the very real risk of tax flight by the top earners who disproportionately fund the city’s vast budget.

So there are big questions worthy of debate here. That debate, however, isn’t about whether we’re going to live in Aynrandland or Havana on the Hudson. New York City is and will remain a very mixed economy.

Mamdani’s mistake is overstating the system’s neglect; his critics’ mistake is overstating his radicalism. The truth is that New York is already a high-tax, high-service city, as it probably needs to be. After acknowledging that, we should debate the wisdom of Mamdani’s policy ideas, their fiscal realism, and, if he pursues them, the intelligence with which that happens.