In case you imagine that you just woke up after a very scary belated Halloween-induced nightmare, no . . . it really happened!
A 34-year-old Marxist with no business experience just became mayor of New York, our nation's largest city and leading world capitalist citadel along with its adopted $116 billion 2026 budget.
Be warned that although Mayor Zohran Mamdani brings lots of fresh new ideas about ways to spend that money, it won’t be nearly enough to carry out rosy Big Apple promises which apparently brought him election victory.
Take, for example, his plans to spend $10 billion for communal housing while "demonetizing" private property ownership to make government the city's major landlord while instituting rent controls.
Expect these policies to expand derelict urban wastelands dominated by poorly maintained or abandoned structures and many predominately single-family neighborhoods to be overwhelmed by massive faceless human warehousing developments.
Those "free" bus rides for all will annually steal an estimated $700 million from the city's already tortured tax base while predictably serving as crime-ridden camping trailers for hordes of drug addicted and other homeless populations, particularly during winter months.
Good luck with curbing city rampant crime and fear with Mayor Mamdani’s plan for a new "Department of Community Safety" that focuses on "restorative justice" and "gun violence interrupters" with mental health outreach teams replacing armed police on subways.
Mamdani also plans to shell out $6 billion on a universal childcare plan, along with about $20 million for "free" baby baskets containing diapers, wipes, nursing pads, swaddles and other essential goods for all newborns.
Meanwhile, to help alleviate skyrocketing New York living costs, the nation's highest, he proposes to establish Soviet-style city government owned and subsidized groceries at wholesale costs that will compete with bodegas and other small businesses.
To pay for all this largess, Mamdani proposes to raise the combined city and state's already astronomical tax rate from 14.8% to 16.8% and hike corporate tax rates from 7.25% to 11.5%, an astounding combined 21% business tax burden.
New York, already the most highly taxed combined city and state in the nation, can ill afford to force out businesses and high-income residents who cover the lion's share of tax revenues that provide vital livelihoods and services for everyone else.
Who can blame them for leaving and carrying huge chunks of Manhattan's tax base with them as working households are left behind to cover shrinking budgets with no thanks to profligate, unaccountable government spending?
America’s largest financial institutions have already joined an exodus parade to friendlier climes.
Consider that whereas New York was home to 128 Fortune 500 headquarters in 1965, that number has dwindled to about 50 today— fewer than Texas with 54.
Even banking giant JPMorgan Chase now employs more workers in Texas than in New York City.
The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the formation of a Texas Stock Exchange, (TXSE) which bills itself as the "first and only fully integrated, national securities exchange built and headquartered in Texas." (Dallas).
The timing is remarkably appropriate, with a planned launch date in the first quarter of 2026 following Mamdani's inauguration in the first week of 2026.
And, as an added attraction, the already existing Miami Stock Exchange (MIAX) is also a major trading platform for financial options both nationally and internationally.
Populations are following tax relief, business opportunities, and jobs.
According to a recent pre-election poll conducted by J.L. Partners, around 9% of New York City’s 8.5 million residents said that they would "definitely" leave if Mamdani became mayor, prospectively representing the biggest mass exodus in American history . . . about equivalent to the population of Washington D.C., Las Vegas, or Seattle.
Making matters worse, a much larger 25% - 2.12 million – said they would "consider" leaving to set the stage for the largest population flight in U.S. history, cratering the economy and sending seismic economic shockwaves throughout the rest of the country.
J.L Partners pollster James Johnson told the Daily Mail, "Who knows if we can believe people when they say it, but the prospect of Mamdani is so scary to some that they are considering throwing in the Big Apple for new digs."
Among high earners making over $250,000 a year, 7% said that they would definitely flee.
According to the poll, men (12%) were more likely to say they'd leave than women (7%), with roughly a quarter of each group considering it. Voters ages 50 to 64 showed the strongest desire to flee, with 12% certain and 33% weighing a move.
By race, 13% of white New Yorkers and 11% of Asian residents said they would definitely leave.
Staten Island voters led the stampede, with 21% saying they’d go and another 54% considering it. In Manhattan, 6% say they’d flee and 20% are unsure; in Brooklyn, it’s 8% and 18%.
The Mamdani Socialist cum Marxist election win of America's largest city and economic Wall Street capitol portends a spectacularly transformational and costly national wakeup call, launching one of the greatest social and financial wars in U.S. history.
The ultimate outcome will determine whether income redistribution premised on vague fantasies that big government bureaucracies can be trusted to make more-informed decisions about our welfare than the judgement of taxpaying citizens who elect and pay them.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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