New York’s Barista Proletariat Is Getting Socialism Good and Hard
20th February 2026
The young, overeducated, underpaid, and disproportionately new arrivals that gave New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani his electoral margin of victory last November have no memory of how badly run and unlivable the city was before Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg cleaned it up. Judging by Mamdani’s first budget proposal, however, they are about to experience ideologically driven mismanagement firsthand.
After promising an explosion of new spending on free buses, free child care, and lower rents, Mamdani unveiled his first budget this week, which is a $127 billion plan for a city of 8.5 million people. To put that in perspective, the state of Florida has a population almost three times that of New York City, 23 million, and manages to provide government services for $10 billion less, $117 billion, than the Big Apple does.
Of course, Florida is run by Republicans.