Capitalism earthquake in New York

First it was Luigi Magione.

Last week it was Zohran Mamdani.

Two totally different people, totally different situations but to me emanating from a similar aggrieved source.

When Luigi Magione killed a healthcare CEO, people interpreted his actions as a cry against the inhumanity of the healthcare insurance industry. There were stories about denial of services to those with insurance.

I worried it was more about the growing inequality, the rising inflation and the increasing difficulty to live in America. The young people of today are not as well off as their parents were.

Last week, Zohran Mamdani won the Democrat primary for New York mayor; he beat Andrew Cuomo who had greater donor funding. Now, I have not been following the mayoral campaign but what I have learned from last week was that Mamdani ran on the theme of affordability.

Growing inequality and affordability: that is right smack in the middle of capitalism.

Some of his proposals

From what I know, he wants to have government-run grocery stores – maybe in select areas – probably to tackle food insecurity and food desert. That is a unique proposed solution and sounds quite leftie. I have no idea how that would work but if New Yorkers are willing to experiment, let them experiment.

His other proposal is to increase the tax on the wealthy. I don’t know the details but I’m under the impression that it would be those over a certain million status (maybe $50,000,000) that would face the increase, and the increase would be 2%. It would be a “50%” increase, going from 4% to 6%. Depending on how you look at the numbers, 50% increase sounds a lot, 2% in going from 4% to 6% is “oh you poor thing” (sarcastically) or depending on the income, it would be $20,000 ($1,000,000 income) to $1,000,000 (on $50,000,000 income).

I suspect most normal people would not have much sympathy for the $50 million wealthy.

The wealthy and corporations said they would leave the city. It remains to be seen what happens.

Although, we are talking about the primary, not the election. He hasn’t won yet, so there may be a lot of commotion over nothing.

I guess all we can say is that the people in New York are looking for serious change and Mamdani is speaking to them.

Corporations and politicians need to take heed

Somehow, corporations need to get a handle on their shareholders and investors. I suspect the drive to increase prices and make things in general expensive is probably coming from their pressure to increase profits. These folks need to pull back if they don’t want serious problems later.