NYC’s Socialist Mayor Raids the Piggy Bank

Politicians would rather bankrupt your grandchildren than fire a single bureaucrat. That’s the lesson from NYC, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani just announced he’s raiding the rainy day fund, looting the retiree health benefits trust reserve, and jacking up property taxes to close his budget gap.

S

signüll

@signulll

one of the biggest tragedies of politicians & politics in general is that cutting costs are simply never ever on the table.

Feb 18, 2026

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The one option that’s never on the table? Cutting costs. It’s the same playbook San Francisco ran for a decade. Spending grew 17% while revenue grew 2-3%. When the $800 million deficit hit, Mayor Breed asked departments for 10% cuts. They laughed at her. Aaron Peskin said in 2016 that he wanted “air to come out of the tech economy.” He got his wish. Now the city is broke and the supervisors who cheered are hunting for new revenue sources.

Mamdani is running the same experiment in New York. And his signature policies—rent freezes, city-run grocery stores, reduced policing—have been categorically disproven by mountains of data.

Rent Freezes: The Policy 93% of Economists Call Insane

Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck once said rent control is “the second-best way to destroy a city, after bombing.” He wasn’t being hyperbolic.

Stanford economists Rebecca Diamond, Tim McQuade, and Franklin Qian ran the definitive study using San Francisco’s 1994 rent control expansion as a natural experiment. Their findings, published in the American Economic Review—the top economics journal in the world:

Landlords responded to rent control by converting 15% of rental supply to condos and TICs. The result? Citywide rents went UP 5.1%. The policy designed to make housing affordable made it more expensive for everyone not lucky enough to already have a unit.

This isn’t controversial. As even Paul Krugman wrote: “The analysis of rent control is among the best-understood issues in all of economics, and—among economists, anyway—one of the least controversial.”

In the American Economic Association’s landmark poll of 464 economists in the 1990s, 93% agreed that rent ceilings reduce housing quality and quantity — the strongest consensus on any policy question asked. No subsequent survey has overturned it.

NYC already has roughly 50,000 vacant apartments, about a quarter sitting empty due to rent regulation. Mamdani wants to make that worse.

Government Groceries: $60 Million to Solve a Problem That Doesn’t Exist

Mamdani says City Hall needs to get into the grocery business because New Yorkers are being “priced out” of private supermarkets. He wants to spend $60 million opening government-run grocery stores in each of the five boroughs.

One problem: NYC already ranks #1 among US metros for “equitable access” to grocery stores. You can walk to one in 10 minutes almost anywhere in the city.

Kansas City tried this. Their government-run grocery store lost nearly $900,000 in a single year before closing. Similar experiments in Baldwin, FL and Erie/Caney, KS all collapsed within five years. Grocery profit margins are below 2%—government can’t replicate Walmart’s global supply chain. And if Mamdani actually wanted cheaper groceries, he could just let Walmart into NYC. But politicians block it with zoning.

The Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome put it bluntly: the idea that New York “could somehow try to replicate Walmart’s global supply chain and entire business model is just laughable.”

Defund the Police: A Policy Even Its Supporters Abandoned

Mamdani’s third pillar is reduced policing. The evidence here is even clearer.

The Manhattan Institute’s comprehensive review of defunding research found that adding one cop per 10,000 people reduces violent crimes by 3.7%, robberies by 5%, and murders by 3.2%. The benefits accrue disproportionately to Black Americans, who are more likely to be crime victims.

Police spending is only about 3% of total government budgets. Redirecting it would be a “drop in the bucket” for social services while devastating the communities progressives claim to help. Every city that tried defunding saw crime surge—and quietly re-funded their departments. Oakland’s MACRO program, designed to respond to 911 calls without armed officers, costs over $3,600 per referral whereas Oakland PD only costs $88 to $120 in comparison. Only 6% of contacts end with actual provision of health services.

The DSA Playbook: Fail, Blame Capitalism, Repeat

These aren’t new ideas. They’re the same failed policies the Democratic Socialists of America have pushed everywhere. San Francisco tried them. The results are in: $800 million deficits, empty storefronts, streets too dangerous to walk. The city spends $20,000 per year per resident—same as the federal government—for far fewer services.

The pattern is always the same: promise utopia, deliver dysfunction, blame the market, demand more power.

The tragedy isn’t that politicians refuse to cut costs. It’s that voters keep electing them anyway. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be this way. San Francisco voters are waking up. They recalled Chesa Boudin. They’re pushing back against the machine.

New Yorkers can do the same—but only if they see through the socialist fantasy before it’s too late. Adams may have left a budget shortfall mess, but Mamdani is about to spend even more. The data is clear. The evidence is overwhelming. The only question is whether NYC will read it before or after the crash.