Written by Aaina Saini
Zohran Mamdani’s humble yet charismatic mayoral campaign captivated audiences far beyond New York; not because he embodied the familiar, sterile alternative to hardline conservatism, but because he broke from it. He offered the global left something it had been starved of: a candidate who did not settle for the status quo, who did not couch his politics in timidity, but who spoke plainly and earnestly about acting upon, intervening in, and hearing the burdens of ordinary people.
Unsurprisingly, his promises came under repeated scrutiny and criticism. Republicans dismissed him as a utopian communist while academics questioned the fiscal burden of his agenda, warning of impractical costs and bureaucratic impossibilities. Yet the polls bent in his direction, and then the election confirmed his victory. The question now follows: What does victory translate into? What, in the machinery of New York, can actually be delivered?
This article is my attempt to break down this question by examining some of his policies one by one, and tracing where New York’s political constraints end and Mamdani’s promises begin.
City-owned Grocery Stores
Mamdani has argued that removing rent and property taxes from such stores will shrink overhead and translate into lower prices for consumers. This, while simple in theory, fails to capture all aspects. However, the idea of city-owned subsidised stores is hardly unprecedented. Britain’s wartime ‘British Restaurants’ capped meal costs; Poland’s milk bars fed entire generations; and in the present day, India, Turkey, Indonesia, China, Brazil, and Mexico all operate variants of publicly supported food outlets. Even the U.S. military procures groceries at prices 30% to 40% below retail. So, this idea is definitely not new, and has worked in other places.
Looking into the specifics, one identifies some challenges. Mamdani proposes only five stores, one per borough. It is unrealistic to expect these grocery stores to be able to supply for the entirety of eight million NYC residents. Thus, this seemingly simple idea ignores distribution and price distortions. Limited supply demands long-term contracts with wholesalers, who may not offer better terms than the chains already operating in the city. Scarcity also produces distortion: Who gets access first? Who is pushed out? And if government-run stores undercut private retailers too aggressively, they risk collapsing the very ecosystem of bodegas and grocers that keep neighbourhoods afloat. Killing off competition is not food justice; it is a slow erosion of the problem’s existing stopgaps.
Even if the economics balances, the plan is directly affected by New York’s zoning and land-use constraints. Moreover, securing tax-free land may compete with urgent housing priorities. Unless Mamdani’s proposal combats these bottlenecks and leverages innovative ideas like mixed-use plots, the plan could stall even before initiation.
The policy is feasible, but not without prerequisites. Access would likely need to be prioritised, through income-based or rationing cards to ensure that low-income residents and communities of colour benefit first. And the city’s existing purchasing power is an asset waiting to be leveraged, since New York already buys food for schools, hospitals, shelters, and community colleges. Folding the grocery store network into these procurement systems could unlock real economies of scale and make contracts competitive.
Increased Taxes – Corporate and Wealth
For much of the expanded public-service agenda, the revenue engine is stated clearly: hike the corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% for top earners, and levy a flat 2% surcharge for anyone making over a million dollars. While this meets the purpose of redistributing wealth, there are some concerns that remain unaddressed.
Take corporate taxes. The campaign frames the increase as a burden to big business, but tax incidence theory tells a far duller, more familiar story, that corporations rarely pay the bill handed to them. They hand it to you. As the Tax Foundation notes, firms simply shift the burden onto consumers. A McDonald’s or Starbucks operating in New York does not absorb a 2.5% tax hike out of civic goodwill; it lifts its prices by the same amount and moves on. The city’s revenue rises, yes, but only because residents are paying more for their morning coffee, their groceries (maybe not if the grocery stores work out!), and their daily life. Mamdani never addresses this, and the public seems blissfully unaware that “taxing the corporations” may well mean taxing themselves.
As for capital flight, the panic is overstated. In an era where proximity to talent, investors, and opportunity still matters, millionaires are unlikely to abandon New York for good. The city’s gravitational pull remains stronger than its tax code. But what I anticipate willhappen is subtler: assets quietly moved outside city jurisdiction, portfolios rearranged, wealth rerouted to satellite residences just beyond the line—close enough to commute, far enough to evade. A gentler form of exodus, but an exodus nonetheless, conducted not through relocation, but through paperwork. While I believe tax increases on the wealthy are necessary, it could very well backfire when increased in a small locus of a nation, that otherwise supports wealth accumulation and provides easy exit options to avoidance.
Free Buses?
For Europeans, the idea is not unheard of: free public transit has been tested from Tallinn to Luxembourg. But never at the scale Mamdani now proposes. The projected price tag, somewhere between $600 and $800 million annually, sounds almost quaint for a metropolis with a $115 billion+ budget.
Yet, the comfort of those figures collapses under scrutiny. The estimate assumes today’s bus system, frozen exactly as it is today, simply stripped of fares. What it ignores is Mamdani’s own projection of ridership jumping by 23%. And buses do not magically increase in size to absorb crowds. Additional vehicles would need to be purchased, maintained, and staffed, which means capital costs on one end, higher operational costs on the other. Even increasing frequency without adding buses drives expenditures upward: more fuel, more shifts, more wear and tear. It’s also worth noting that a recession in the coming years is hardly improbable. Income and corporate taxes are cyclical, being abundant in good times and facing downturns during recessions. Meanwhile, the costs of free buses and subsidised groceries remain fixed, recession or not. The question practically asks itself: Can these programs withstand an economic downturn, or are we building permanent obligations on top of volatile revenue?
Then there are the overlooked expenses, such as system upgrades, routine damage, and the looming promise to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour, which would undeniably lift driver salaries. The calculation starts to resemble a budget built on wishful thinking: $600 to 800 million for now. For how long? At what cost? And with what margin for the bureaucratic inefficiencies that plague every large-scale public service?
The plan is not impossible. It is, in fact, achievable. But only with a clearer accounting of future costs, inflation, and the mess of practical implementation, and only once the city secures additional revenue streams strong enough to sustain it beyond its honeymoon phase.
Thus, while ambitious, Mamdani’s proposals remain within the boundaries of reason. The shrill accusations of “communism” are unserious, almost comically so. If anything, the loudest threats to the free market have come not from Mamdani, but from the red hat wearing MAGA itself. As analysts like IP have noted, Trump has pushed the U.S. economy toward something eerily reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Party model: deep political intrusion into private enterprise, punitive targeting of individual business leaders, and a government that bullies firms into obedience.
What used to be crisis-specific interventions, such as Troubled Asset Relief Programs (TARP), auto bailouts, and temporary industrial incentives, have mutated under MAGA into a sprawling apparatus of political interference, weaponised regulation, and economic coercion. It is a style of governance less free-market than quasi-Marxist, if not outright Maoist, in its appetite for control. In this light, Mamdani’s agenda looks less like revolution and more like responsible governance.
Lastly, it is necessary to remember, apart from economic feasibility, all these suggestions do not come without their democratic and bureaucratic procedures. Mamdani cannot himself increase taxes, and NYC’s governor Kathy Hochul has already expressed her staunch no on the subject. And yet, from where I stand, an Indian woman in the United Kingdom, raised on Mira Nair’s films (I love A Suitable Boy. Everyone watch A Suitable Boy.), and familiar with the occasional writings of Mahmood Mamdani— I find myself hoping, perhaps irrationally, for Zohran’s success. Not only because his campaign offers a rare counterweight in a political climate increasingly hostile to immigrants, especially after his surprisingly civil meeting with Trump, but because it affirms a belief I refuse to relinquish, that meritocracy need not depend on predation, that a city can uplift the vulnerable without surrendering to the wealthy.
