Episode 7: Ignoring History - Zohran Mamdani and NYC

In Episode 7 of "The Reagan Faulkner Show," titled "Ignoring History – Zohran Mamdani and NYC," host Reagan Faulkner delves into the recent election of New York City’s first self-identified Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Faulkner opens by outlining this episode as the first of a two-part series focused on Mamdani’s policies, their likely effects, and what his election might signal for the United States as a whole. The host details Mamdani’s most ambitious proposals: city-owned grocery stores, a multi-year citywide rent freeze, free public transportation, universal childcare, and a controversial plan to seize control of properties from landlords deemed unsuitable by city authorities. Faulkner frames these policies as ideologically extreme and potentially unconstitutional, asserting that they pose major risks for economic stability and property rights.

The episode scrutinizes how Mamdani intends to fund these initiatives, highlighting sharp proposed increases to corporate tax rates—making New York the most expensive state for businesses—as well as wealth-targeted taxes on high-income individuals and affluent neighborhoods. Faulkner contrasts New York’s proposed 11.5% corporate tax rate with North Carolina’s much lower 2.25%, suggesting that such policies would prompt an exodus of high earners and businesses, amplifying economic woes. She points out that while these tax hikes require state legislature approval, the presence of Democratic Socialists and supportive state leadership heightens the risk of their passage. Faulkner repeatedly emphasizes the broader national implications if these policies become reality in a major U.S. city, warning of increased costs, shrinking innovation, and risk to the middle and upper classes.

Throughout, Faulkner critiques the practicality and long-term effects of Mamdani’s agenda. She argues that city-run grocery stores and rent freezes risk undermining local small businesses, discouraging landlords from maintaining or offering rental units, and creating artificial scarcity. Universal childcare is painted as undermining the traditional family, while the property seizure plan is deemed both radical and dangerous for investment. Faulkner concludes with a call to action aimed at young conservatives, urging engagement, advocacy, and candidacy in order to counter what she presents as an existential threat posed by Mamdani’s vision for New York—a model, she cautions, that could become a template for left-leaning governance elsewhere if not actively opposed.

Transcript

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New York City just elected their first Socialist mayor. And now the city might fall under his costly policies and idealistic initiatives. Let's jump right into it on today's episode of The Reagan Faulkner Show. So basically, this series is going to be in two parts because there's just so much to cover about. Zoran Mamdani, his policies, their effects, and really how he got elected and what that means for the broader United States. So in this episode, we're going to talk about a handful of his just most abstract and honestly, the policies that are most doomed to fail. And then on next week's episode, we're going to look at really how he got elected, why he got elected, and what that means for the greater United States as a whole. So really, as you all know, last Tuesday, the results came in and as we all expected, Mamdani was elected to New York City's mayorship, and along with him came a wave of policies that Mamdani had been promising and running on over the course of his entire election. And namely, the top five are his city owned grocery stores, his four year rent freezes, free busses and public transportation across the city, free universal childcare for the city and for parents. And then the most worrisome coming out of a recently resurfaced video of him wanting to take control of property from landowners if they deem that the landowners are not good, which very subjective, very abstract, and extremely concerning because of how unconstitutional and how anti-capitalistic it is in nature. So the biggest question that's really centered around these policies is how on earth Is New York going to afford this? How on earth is Mamdani going to pay for this? And what is that effect going to look like on New York City citizens, taxpayers, and residents? Well, luckily, Mamdani has a plan. Not a good plan, but he has a plan. So first and foremost, he wants to see a tax increase for corporate tax in the entire state of New York. So he wants to raise the taxes from the current 7.25% to an 11.5%. And just for reference, for any business owners here in North Carolina right now, North Carolina's corporate tax rate is 2.25%. So this is going to be nearly five times the corporate tax rate here in North Carolina. And it's going to make New York the most expensive state, the largest corporate tax rate of any US state across the entire country. Out of all 50 states, it will be the most expensive to incorporate in New York State, which is absolutely shocking. Now, the second thing that Mamdani wants to do to fund all of his initiatives, all of his policies, is to raise the income tax to 2% for every individual making over $1 million, which, as you know, with the cost of living in New York and everything like that, most people are making maybe not most people, but there's a considerable, considerable amount of people that have $1 million in assets just because of how expensive it is to live in the city, how expensive it is to live in the state. Looking at these tax rates are absolutely insane. So this is going to harm a lot of people. This increased tax rate is going to harm a lot of people, a lot of businesses. And then finally just kind of building off of these two tax rates, he has come out and said, quote, that he wants to tax the richest and widest neighborhoods. So not only is he looking at this from a monetary income level, success of the company, success of the individual. He also wants to specifically target white neighborhoods and rich white neighborhoods because as he believes these are the most privileged and these are the people who owe the most to the city and to society as a whole. Now, luckily, all of these tax increases, the local tax increases for New York City, and then the tax increases that he's proposed for the state have to be approved by the legislature that resides in Albany. So there's a little bit of a chance that these policies won't go through, and that there won't be this massive explosion of taxes across New York State and New York City. But unfortunately, the state legislature in Albany is comprised of about eight Socialist members, and these are listed on socialist and office website so y'all can look up socialists in office and it'll come up and it has like the bios of other socialist members. And the website specifically says, quote, NYC, DSA and Mid-Hudson Valley DSA endorsed elected officials that works together in the New York State Legislature to advance a socialist vision for working class people across our state. So this isn't just a website that everyday Americans have put together. Like I think that person might be socialist or, oh, I saw them like at this DSA thing or DSA posted them or whatever. No, this website is specifically run by and managed by a group, probably the DSA. Not 100% sure, but by a group that can fact check and prove that these candidates and these elected officials have actually been endorsed by the DSA, are elected and are currently pushing forward socialist policies in New York State Legislature. So they are legitimately socialist. Mamdani was actually he's on the website as of the time of filming, because he was a member of the state legislature prior to his run for mayor. So these this is legit. Like there are legitimately at least eight socialist members verified through DSA. Democratic Socialists of America, if y'all don't know that are sitting on the legislature of New York at this time. And then we also have to worry about Governor Kathy Hochul, who has endorsed mom Donny. And there's a chance that she might side with many of his policies and many of these proposed tax increases. Now, she has protested the tax increases in the past, saying that it's going to drive away business. It's going to drive away the wealthy. It's just generally not going to work as we're going to keep talking about in this episode. But as midterms close in, and as elections are happening, as primaries are happening, as we're seeing the shift in election trends and voting trends, we really don't know where Governor Hochul loyalty is going to lie. Will it be to mom Donny because of his just absolutely unexpected primary win? And then just how quickly he grew in popularity and beat Cuomo? Uh, how Adams had to drop out of the race, everything like that. So is she gonna side with mom Donny because he does seem to have such a great amount of support in the state and in the city. Or is she going to side with what is right and what is economically accurate, that these tax increases are just going to be so detrimental and disastrous for the city and for the state as a whole? We're going to have to wait and see on that one and what the other rest of the legislature does. But again, going off of that, there is a trifecta of democratically held, um, state spots in New York. So first, the Democratic Party has control of both chambers, so they have control of the House and control of the Senate. They also have control of the governorship in New York. And then they also have the office of Secretary of State and Attorney General General. So they have all the state leadership that they need for mom, Donny's proposed tax increases and anything else that has to be approved by the state legislature. The Democratic Party has everything that they need to allow this to happen, to approve it and to set it forward. It's just there are a lot more people than just the eight Socialist members and Governor Hochul. So it's really a question of what the rest of the Democratic Party is going to stand for. But if the state House and state Senate choose to vote in favor of Donny's policies and the governor signed it into law, New York is just they're facing so many potential losses, y'all. I mean, it is absolutely mind boggling what the city and what the state have at risk of losing. So, first of all, obviously the wealthy individuals that are they're going to bear the weight of these programs. This is just anybody making over $1 million, the top 1% of earners. The corporations that are very successful there. All of these groups are threatening to leave. Some of which I've seen on TikTok and X and social media. They've already left. They've got backup properties in Miami. They've got backup properties in other parts of Florida, other parts of the US. And they're gone. They have left. They want no part of this. They said, if Mamdani wins, I'm out. So we already have a chunk of people that have left or will leave by December 31st. And then you've got an entire group of people that are going to sit and wait to see if Mamdani is able to implement these policies and implement these initiatives, and if he is, most likely they're going to leave as well. So that's the first major group is the wealthy, the top 1% of people that live in New York and New York City. Now, second, we've got the businesses whose taxes will be funding these programs. And this is going to consequently just absolutely destroy jobs in New York, destroy entire industries, just all of it innovation. Nobody's going to move to New York if they think they're going to have an 11.5% tax increase for incorporating there. I mean, they're going to lose so much, not even the city. I mean, we like to think like, oh, okay, the New Yorkers made their bed. They voted him on. They're going to kind of reap what they sow. But this is going to be catastrophic for the entire state. And then we're going to see as these people move and as these companies incorporate in other areas, we're going to see an increase in property taxes. In other areas. We're going to see a rise in costs because supply and demand. So this really does have a national effect, potentially national effect if these policies are implemented, if the state legislature decides to side with Mamdani and move forward with his policies and with approving these tax increases. But let's get into a little bit of, I'm saying, like, are these policies are terrible, they're going to be catastrophic. But why? Why am I saying this? Why are they going to be catastrophic, really? Why are these people going to move? What are the effects for New York because in a utopia, these policies are great. I mean, in a utopia where people are objectively good, they're not going to take advantage of the system. There's enough money to go around. Policies are great. But in a broken world like where we live, these policies are just they're they're terrible. They really are. So first, the city owned grocery stores. He wants to put one city owned grocery store in every borough in New York. There are five boroughs. So ultimately he's vying for five city owned grocery stores. And the cost on this is mind boggling.$60 million for five grocery stores.$60 million. And in order to facilitate this program, y'all have to think about it. They would have to create an entirely new supply chain and an entirely new model for a non-corporate grocery establishment, which, first of all, the government isn't exactly great at doing things government run anyway. I mean, look at the DMV here in our state and arguably DMVs across the country. Look at the IRS like the government isn't really good at running things. So why are we going to put them in charge? Why are New Yorkers, I should say, going to put them in charge of their food supply? I mean, that is that is insane. But yes, they will have to create an entirely new supply chain in order to facilitate these lower than market costs. And a good alternative to this without making it government run is places like Walmart. Now, if you don't know, Walmart has actually been barred from being in New York City. They they are not allowed to be in the city. They are not allowed to run their operate there, none of it. But if the city would allow Walmart to come in instead of doing these grocery stores, Walmart is famous for their success in the supply chain, in creating low prices and creating consumer value. It would be better to just let them in because they already have Sam's Club, they already have Costco, they already have these other big box stores. Just let Walmart come in and do what mom Donnie wants to do. But on a private level, on a capitalistic level. So there's there's one issue with the grocery stores. The second one is they're risking putting local bodegas. Or if you don't know what that is like, local markets, uh, privately owned little stores with knickknacks and snacks and drinks. They're risking putting these out of business because these little markets can't compete with a free or at least lower than market cost, um, retail or grocery retailer. So there's a whole nother issue, a whole nother sect of jobs lost, a whole nother sect of income tax and corporate income or corporate tax that the city is losing. If these grocery stores are putting out local markets that are owned by citizens of New York, and then if these citizens can't continue affording to stay there, they're going to have to move, they're going to have to go somewhere else. And the situation is just going to exponentially get worse. Now. Rent freezes are his next big one, which we don't have enough time to even hit the tip of how bad rent freezes are. But just a little. Get the 911, not the four one on on it. Basically, it's going to disrupt the economy and artificially inflate the prices of non-frozen units non-frozen apartment units. So typically a rent freeze is or the people who get the rent frozen apartments. It's not determined on need or on wealth status. It's determined on who the, um, lease or wants to lease to. And generally speaking, renters with higher incomes are actually chosen, which is counterintuitive to the entire purpose of rent freezes. But typically the ones with the higher incomes are chosen because they're less risky for the landlords. They don't believe that these people are going to default. They believe that they're going to be consistent, to pay on time, all of that. So the people that the rent freezes are for are not even getting what's needed. It's not meeting the purpose of this. So that's one issue. It just it undermines the entire purpose of what Mom Donnie is hoping to do. So unless he also gets statutes and laws changed, then it's going to be relatively useless. And then also in New York City, current laws actually allow stabilized apartments to be passed down from generation to generation. So there are some units where somebody's great great grandparents might have owned it or I guess not owned it because it's an apartment, but rented it back in the 1940s, 1950s. And because of laws that are on the books in New York, this has just been passed down from generation to generation to generation. And because they're rent stabilized, I mean, these apartments might be $900,$1,000, $1,100 a month, extremely cheap. And they're nice. I mean, there are some in, um, upper Manhattan, I believe. I mean, these are nice, nice units that people are paying, like, pennies on the dime for compared to how much it costs to live in New York City. So maintaining the current status quo, maintaining these laws is also not going to help because it's creating, for lack of better words, an artificial aristocracy for people who are renting them and have been renting them for generations within the city's most lucky elites, the people who were privileged enough to have grandparents who were paying dirt cheap rent. And then this law was passed and they just got grandfathered into the apartment. And I mean, getting rid of it and leaving would be like throwing away the winning Powerball ticket. I mean, you're just not going to do that. It's an amazing opportunity for your kids and your grandkids. And then lastly, many of these rent stabilized apartments need absolutely insane degrees of upgrades and renovations in order to be code compliant in order to be somewhere where people would want to live. And by some estimates, these units might be costing $100,000 and more to upgrade. This is going through complete electrical renovations, complete flooring renovations, making sure the floors are stable, going through plumbing, going through safety, just insane degrees of renovations just to be code compliant and legal for somebody to live in. And if the rent is frozen, if the rent is stabilized, the landlords can't recoup that investment. They're never going to come out of that debt. So what they're doing is they're taking these units offline and they're not allowing people to live in them. They're not renting them out because it's just a bad investment. It would just be dumb to pour $100,000 into something that might take 20 or 30 years or even more to get back out of it. So they're just offline and it's just creating more of a housing shortage and higher artificial rent inflation because idealistically, generally, yeah, the units are there, but they're not being sold, which is just driving down supply and continuing to drive up demand. Now these are a little bit of the easier, more general one free busses and public transportation that's going to cost about $800 million annually, so close to $1 billion annually just for this free public transportation, instead of where you pay to get on the metro, pay to use the public bus. Whatever taxpayers with incomes of over $1 million, the people will be funding this. They have no use for it. They have a car. They can take Uber, they can take a cab. They can do whatever. They have absolutely no use for this, which means that they have absolutely no desire to stay in the city and fund it. Like they just nobody would want to do that unless you're going to benefit from something. Generally speaking, you have no interest in paying for it. I know personally I wouldn't you can call me a bad person for that. But I mean, if you're not going to use what you're paying for, then there's no incentive to pay for it. Now, if you're going to gain from the taxes that you pay, the way that we gain from some of our programs, the way that we gain from, um, infrastructure and things like that, that's great. But just random free busses going around, they're not they're not going to want to pay for that. And then my biggest question for this is how will the city keep homeless people, keep people who are drug users, and just generally other individuals that may not have respect for, um, the resources, how are they going to keep them off the busses or protect the busses? Like how will they keep them from riding on it all day because they have nowhere else to go trashing them with litter? Um, human waste has been a huge issue where we've seen this, tried in other places, use drug paraphernalia. People in New York are just saying that they're needles all over the street. How will we prevent needles from being on busses, where you might be taking your kids or putting them on the bus to go to and from school, or to and from their extracurriculars? Like, what will the city do to prevent this? We've seen it in Atlanta's public train system and, you know, will New York have any mode for policing this? We know that Mamdani already doesn't like the police and originally wanted to defund them, which he's since gone back on. But will there be any, um, just way to to regulate this and make sure that it stays clean and classy and not just degrade and become a terrible place where you don't want to take your kids, because he hasn't said anything about that. Now, the universal child care is going to cost about $6 billion, according to mom Donny, and it will be available for children as young as six weeks old, up to five years old, which this is just going to further degrade the nuclear family, the value of the nuclear family. Children are basically going to be raised by teachers and caretakers and not their parents. From the age of six weeks old to up to 18 years old when they go off to college. And then even then, they're being indoctrinated and raised by professors and faculty and staff at these universities. And then this also allows indoctrination to begin earlier as children are being taught broad spectrum curriculum rather than actually being taught, parented and disciplined by their family, by their own parents, by grandparents, by aunts and uncles who might Whom I babysit them or siblings. Like you're just literally giving the government your child at six weeks old and saying, here you can raise them. I'll see them at dinner time. I mean, that's terrible. That's not how any kid wants to live. I love my family. I love my parents. I do not want to spend my entire life from six weeks old to 18 or 22, just being raised by random humans that the government's like, oh, yeah, they're they're able to be employed. Like, we've seen the way that teachers have acted after Charlie Kirk's shooting is that are those the people that we want raising our kids? Because I know personally they're not who I want raising my kids. And then finally, we'll look at taking property from the rightful landowners. That is just absurd. That is completely unconstitutional, y'all. I mean, we I at least in my lifetime, I have never seen a candidate even say anything like that. I mean, mom, Donny really is. He is saying the the quiet part out loud. He is saying all of it. So in a resurfaced video, like I said, mom, Donny explains that the city is going to charge landlords with hazardous code violations on their property with fines, and then if these violations, hazards, whatever are deemed to be, quote, immediately dangerous, these fines will be tripled. And then if a landlord refuses to fix the violations, New York City is going to step in and fix the violations and then send a bill to the landowners, which, you know, through all of this, all this free stuff, the city can't just fix it themselves. They're still going to tax the rich man, the property owner, the landlord, the capitalist. And Mamdani says that if that still doesn't work, this is a direct quote. If that doesn't work, the city is taking over the building. We're putting the worst landlords out of business. He is trying to step in and usurp the means of production, specifically in property and income. Are not income, specifically in property and leasing and, um, landlords. He wants the city to be in charge of that. This is just the first step. He wants the city to be in charge of that because he believes it'll be more efficient. He also wants the public to own pieces of property. Kind of, I guess like pre feudalism, he wants there to be like public cohorts of land where the government subsidizes housing, but that's further down the road. But I mean, taking taking somebody's property is absolutely insane. This is going to further the flee of business owners, further the flee of investors, because nobody wants to buy property, pay millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars for an apartment complex or a building with a couple of units just for mom Donny to be like, oh, you're a bad property owner. You know, you have to get out. The government owns this now. I mean, that is insane. No business owner wants to take that risk. Absolutely nobody would want to take that risk. And if landlords continue facing this more risk than reward system, they're not going to want to do it anymore. They're not going to want to own the property. They're not going to want to be landlords. Like I just said, they're going to leave. They're going to sell. They're going to move out. They're going to say, you know what? Government just take my land. It's not worth it anymore. Or back in the 70s, um, you know, there were New York, um, city landlords that were literally committing arson on their own property because the rent freezes were driving them out of business. Like we're going to start seeing things like that, which is going to take more housing offline, which is going to continue inflating the price of housing, which is going to continue the housing shortage in New York. It's just going to be absolutely terrible. And now let's look at cumulatively, this is not counting the child care. This is not counting the busses. This is not counting the grocery store specifically what mom Donny wants to do for housing, which he wants to do a lot more than what we had time to get into today. But according to a PM article, the housing initiatives alone will cost the city about $100 billion. That is with a B $100 billion and if I recall correctly, you can fact check me on this. I could be wrong, but I believe that the city's budget is $70 billion a year. And this is just for housing. Not for anything else, not for police, not for anything. And it just really shows, like what Mamdani thinks he can do, I guess, how how entitled he is, for lack of better words, like how much he thinks other people should pay for things because none of this is going to benefit the wealthy. None of this is going to benefit the upper middle class. Quite frankly, none of this is going to benefit the lower middle class. This is going to benefit the poorest of the poor in New York. And then we're going to have people taking advantage of this system. We're going to have other states sending all their homeless to New York, all their drug users to New York, all of their, um, people with mental health issues that might live on the streets, more homeless to New York because they have the resources and they're just openly like, yeah, take the resources. People with illegal immigrants in other states, they'll go to New York because New York can, quote unquote, afford it. And then we have the top 1% of New Yorkers basically funding the existence of the entire nation's homeless, the entire nation's drug users, the entire nation's, um, people with mental health issues, which isn't fair to the 1% of people who live in New York that have incomes like, I don't believe in socialism at all whatsoever, but at least if this was going to be implemented, it should be implemented at a level where either other cities can't send their homeless and their other, um, people who need the help or where everybody's paying for it, which really nobody should be paying for this. This belongs to the church, as this belongs to nonprofits. This isn't a government problem, but it his policies are insane. They're going to be catastrophic if the legislature votes them in. And I just have to say, for my generation, for Gen Z, for Gen Alpha, it's really going to be up to us to stop this nonsense because we do not want to work. Excuse my language. We do not want to work our asses off and go to school just to pay for other people to live on the streets, because it's going to be like, it's not going to be that bad to live on the streets. If this is what Mamdani is proposing, it really won't. People are going to choose that over high school and college and actually working, and then we're going to be working very, very hard, going to college just to fund this and not have enough to bring home to our families. So, young conservatives, I'm talking to you when I say this run for office, start chapters of conservative clubs at your school, speak out, post on social media, do whatever you have to do because this isn't the America we want to grow up in. And as I'll get to in part two of this, it's only going to grow. This could potentially be the future of the left. This could potentially be future policies in the making at a national level. And as a nation, we don't want to see that. We don't want it to come to that. We want to stand for Reagan conservatism, stand for the policies and the ideas that founded America that have been the foundation of America. We do not want to see this radical liberalization of our policies, of our nation and of our cities. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of The Reagan Faulkner Show. If you enjoyed today's content, remember to like, subscribe, follow, and share. I cannot wait to jump into part two. It's going to be really interesting to look at kind of what this past election means for midterms, what it means for our country as a whole, and to just analyze, modernize policies a little bit more. And what his election really means for the future of our country and for our young voters. Um, remember, if you want more content, follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at the Reagan Faulkner Show and The Wilmington Standard, and check us out online at Reagan in the Wilmington standard.com. Can't wait to see you all soon.