Zohran Mamdani thinks a certain class of people should simply not exist.
“I don’t think that we should have billionaires, frankly,” the Dem mayoral primary winner told Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
That’s a bold statement from a man vying to become the mayor of New York City and not some quaint hippie commune in the Pacific Northwest.
Does he think the city’s billionaires are all hoarding their cash and swimming in their vaults like Scrooge McDuck?
How naive is this guy?
Wealthy New Yorkers have helped the city retain its spot as a cultural capital with world-class museums, beautiful public spaces and top hospitals, among other things we can all enjoy.
But according to the Dem’s eat-the-rich candidate, billionaires can go scratch — all 123 of them who call the Big Apple home, making us the city with the most in the world. (We’ll remind the ultra progressives of that the next time they enthusiastically partake in a “No Kings” march funded by, you guessed it, billionaires.)
Perhaps Mamdani the democratic socialist wants to make them extinct by redistributing their money to the poor via taxes, until they become mere millionaires. But then what happens when millionaires become problematic for having too much?
In a world without billionaires, do we cap innovation? Cap earnings and incentives to create great things that change all our lives for the better? What happens when a culture that always thrived on possibility and rewarded ingenuity and grit suddenly says no more?
Mamdani is a theater kid whose mother is a film director and father is a college professor — two sectors heavily supported by the endowments of people who have big Bs next to their names.
I’m guessing the 33-year-old has visited the Met and the Guggenheim, both supported not on the vibes of art lovers but by the scarole of people with loads of it in the bank.
Maybe he’s taken a stroll out on Little Island, a park on the west side of Manhattan that was bankrolled mostly by media mogul Barry Diller and his wife, Diane von Furstenberg.
Then there’s our great hospitals. Ken Langone, an early investor in Home Depot, has donated millions and millions to NYU, helping turn it into a world-class facility. His generous cash infusion allows medical students to study there for free — something Dr. Ruth Gottesman’s billion-dollar donation also ensured at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $750 million to fund charter schools. The late Charles Dolan founded the Lustgarten Foundation for pancreatic cancer research, underwriting administrative costs so all donations go to the mission.
I could go on and on.
Also: Bloomberg’s father was a bookkeeper. Langone’s, a plumber.
We used to hold up success stories like theirs as proof of the exceptionalism of New York City. If you can dream, you can build it here.
Now, Mamdani is saying, if you can build it, we’ll be looking for ways to take it from you.
His views are anti-innovation and anti-progress.
Sure, the ultra-rich are not above scrutiny. Just last week, Jeff Bezos and his gauche new wife, Lauren Sánchez, took over Venice with in-your-face displays of wealth. Some of the celeb guests are the same hypocrites who pledge to fight climate change but cruise the oceans in yachts and fly planes like most folks drive cars.
However, to act like billionaires are a class of useless hogs who aren’t taxed and don’t contribute to every strata of our society is ludicrous. Especially if you’re in the Big Apple. Much of what they support makes it a desirable place to live.
The more we learn from Mamdani’s past comments, the clearer the picture gets. He claims to be about making New York affordable, but espouses Marxist values like “the end goal of seizing the means of production.” Yikes.
Mamdani says just that in a 2021 video for the Young Democratic Socialists of America, while posed against a background showing outer space — appropriate because his ideas are so at odds with a world where gravity exists. He adds that we must “ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.”
Mission accomplished.
That should send a shiver down spines. But by tapping into the affordability crisis crippling many people, he’s become a star. He ran a very savvy modern campaign — meeting New Yorkers on the streets and flooding social media with zippy ads and promises of free stuff.
But don’t be fooled by his charisma. Implementing socialism and taxing billionaires out of existence is not the answer. They’ll simply leave New York City for more hospitable waters and take their moolah with them.
Then we’ll really be up a creek.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
