CNN Business reporter Nathaniel Meyersohn came out with an utterly ludicrous headline June 4 trying to retcon Mamdani’s hammer-and-sickle persona, “Zohran Mamdani’s capitalist plan to fix the housing crisis.” No, you didn’t misread that. Meyersohn is actually arguing that Mamdani’s socialist pipe dream to use $22 billion in tax dollars for government-built “affordable housing,” while putting rent freezes on landlords, is somehow giving a nod to capitalism. The reason: Mamdani is now supposedly looking to get the real estate developers who opposed him to sign off on his agenda. That’s it.
Meyersohn tried to put lipstick on the pig of Mamdaninomics:
His strategy uses market-oriented policies — easing building regulations, loosening zoning restrictions and rescuing the city’s crumbling public housing stock through private financing — to advance his social democratic goals of 200,000 affordable homes over the next decade.
However, as always is the case with these textbook cases in media gaslighting, the devil is in the details. The National Review editorial board pointed out May 29 that “Technically, those buildings will be owned and managed by private investors. But the city will foot much of the bill and, in return, layer on mandates that are sure to slow production and drive up costs.” If that wasn’t bad enough, under the Mamdani plan, “Developers will have to pay construction workers a minimum wage of $40, almost twice the industry’s national average. Once the buildings are completed, if ever, the city will keep rents capped.” In short, “Mamdani wants to be your landlord.”
What in the Sam Hill does that have anything to do with free markets? Even Meyersohn, in all his illusory wisdom, undercut his own thesis in the 12th paragraph: “[Mamdani’s]housing plan still contains policies like rent regulations that squeeze private developers and may undermine the city’s ability to produce as much housing as other cities.” And that paragraph came just before a blaring sub-headline Meyerson included, “Rent freeze.”
Agendas like these would make Karl Marx blush. As George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley wrote May 30: “Mamdani promised in his inaugural address to introduce New Yorkers to ‘the warmth of collectivism.’ It now appears landlords will likely be the first to feel the heat.”
Cronyism? Maybe. Capitalism? Only if you’ve been chugging the Schnapps and ended up drunker than your overly political uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. Putting communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent-control abomination of an agenda and capitalism in the same context as if they’re synonymous with one another is some crazy work, CNN.
