Daring To Dream

     Unless you’ve spent the last several decades in a coma, you’ve surely heard your quota of “doom talk.” You may even have contributed to the supply. There’s always something to fear, isn’t there? An American with no apocalyptic forebodings is unequipped for cocktail-party conversation. If you’re the sort who throws such parties, or is occasionally invited to one, that’s something to ponder.

     Terror of nuclear war was the bug-bear of my youth. Have the head-under-the-desk practices continued to this day, or have they lapsed since the Soviet Union bit the big one? I haven’t kept in touch with scholastic fashions, and there are no minors conveniently near. If they’ve lapsed, perhaps the “yellow peril” could be used to make them fashionable once again.

     Eco-catastrophism dominated the Seventies and Eighties. We were running out! Of what, you ask? Well, it changed with the seasons. At one point it was oil. Then it shifted to iron and other metals. Then it was the ozone layer, or acid rain. Then it was species. Did you know that 43 trillion species go extinct every day? No, really!

     (Nota Bene: If you want to sling bullshit without sounding like a jerk, begin your baseless proclamations with “Did you know that.” It has an immediate and powerful effect on the credulous. Also, it prods know-it-alls into either arguing with you, or amplifying your statement with a dollop of their own bullshit. Great for breaking the ice at parties!)

     The decades have marched on by without any of the older phantasms coming to pass. There’ve been successors, of course. Overpopulation. Plastic in the oceans. Global warming. The homeless crisis. Invasive species. Impending plagues of Marburg or Ebola. (Eat your heart out, COVID!) And everything gives you cancer.

     At any given time, there’s some nightmarish-if-nebulous eventuality the doom-talkers insist that we must fear to the depths of our souls. And the Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent State is supposed to combat it, whatever it is, with all its forces.

     I won’t speak for anyone but myself, but I’m worn out. My supply of fear energy is down to zero. The doom-talkers can prattle on as they like. I’m done listening to them.

     Not that I ever paid them much attention, really.

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     Today’s chapter in doomerism is the failure of the “American Dream.” Few people bother to make that vision specific, which probably aids the doomers in their campaign to make us fear its disappearance. In any case, the doom-talk is out there and plentiful.

     Broadly conceived, the American Dream is about ever-advancing prosperity for one’s family and one’s progeny. It’s future-oriented: however well you’re doing at the moment, you hope for more and better in the days to come, both for yourself and for your children. The doomers rant that the Dream has dissolved – that the realist’s outlook isn’t for more but for less. Young Americans who have labored in the hope of realizing the Dream are out of luck; their predecessor generations have “used it up.”

     Sounds a lot like the oil-depletion talk of the Seventies, doesn’t it?

     The reality is quite a bit different. Americans are already living the Dream. The Gross Domestic Product is over $42 trillion. Divide that by 330 million Americans; what’s the quotient? $127,000 per man, woman, or child, isn’t it? No, it’s not uniformly distributed, but only about 10% of the national population – yes, counting the illegals, too – is left out of the mix. Nearly all the rest of us partake of the greatest explosion in productivity in human history. By historical standards, nine Americans out of every ten are rich, rich, rich.

     What’s that you say? You don’t feel rich? You’d rather not have to work? You’re aggravated that you have bills to pay? Junior is giving you static because you won’t buy him new $200 jeans and $300 sneakers? Buck up, dude. When did you last miss a meal? Was it good food or leavings from a dumpster? Is your home well heated? How many cars does your family have? How old are they and how well do they run? Is your wife’s closet anywhere near to empty? How about her shoe collection?

     The Dream was never about each of us becoming as rich as Croesus. It was about getting to where 90% of us are now: comfortable, secure, and able to afford some modest luxuries. Yes, we still have to work, but that was always part of the bargain. And about that work: unless you’re a coal miner or an open-ocean fisherman, it’s probably less strenuous and far less dangerous than anything our predecessors had to endure.

     A big part of disappearing-Dream fear arises from our worries for our kids. Some of them lack initiative. Others lack direction. Some of the occupational possibilities we faced seem to be less open to our young. And of course, we have some quite realistic fears about their safety.

     I could go into detail about to deal with those things, but I’ll spare you. The salient point is that they have you to protect and inspire them, and time to get their wheels on the track. You did it; ergo, they can do it. These days, there are even more avenues by which to pursue one’s chunk of the Dream than you and I enjoyed as callow youths.

     Ironically, the biggest hurdle America’s young people must surmount is the torrent of will-sapping, soul-destroying doom-talk. If you can teach them to ignore that, you’ve done your job.

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     There will always be work to do and choices to make. Every choice carries a cost, even if only in the opportunities one must forgo to make that choice. You can’t do it all. (I tried.) Neither can you have it all. Filet mignon or veal? Corvette or cabin cruiser? Saint-Laurent or Ralph Lauren? Sydney or Gstaad? You must choose, and forgo what was not chosen. That’s why we call economics “the dismal science,” and never mind the closet-space problems.

     All that having been said, this is the American Dream. Unless you’ve been drinking rotgut out of a brown paper bag and sleeping in an alley under a blanket of old newspapers, you’re living it today. You’re a blessed participant in a historic miracle. With a little focus and discipline, your kids can have it too.

     Don’t let the doom-talkers take it away from you.

Serfdom in 2025

     How common are employment policies as explicit as the following:

     Let’s leave aside the contradiction of “voluntary mandatory shift coverage” for the moment. Doesn’t this look like a form of slavery?

     In some places and times, medieval serfs were attached to the lands they farmed. They were forbidden to leave for a better deal. The land baron asserted ownership over them as well as over their homes and produce. How different is it to be shackled to one’s job via a telephone?

     It has been said, and truly, that men were freer when their phones were attached to the wall.

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     I suppose that were a prospective employee to be informed up front of the “on call 24/7” requirements of the position he’d been offered, it would be a legally acceptable sort of deal for an employer to offer. But for the boss to spring it on him after he’d taken the offer would be a form of fraud. Yet that’s been happening with increasing frequency to persons in certain occupations – and the higher the stress associated with the occupation, the more likely it is.

     Other, similar conditions have been sprung on new employees. I worked briefly for a firm whose VP believed he had first call on every one of his subordinates’ waking hours. I worked for another who had no compunctions about demanding six days per week, ten hours per day from his people “in emergencies.” And nearly all supervisors feel perfectly justified about calling their people during off-shift hours, should the demands of the moment warrant it.

     There are occupations where a demand for that kind of round-the-clock responsiveness can be justified. Some positions in the police come to mind; so do command-level positions in the military. But most white-collar occupations “should” be more relaxed. How did we reach the current state of affairs, in which every salaried employee is tethered to his job by his cell phone?

     It doesn’t seem like an advance to me.

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     “Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You’ve got to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man behind a counter who says, ‘All right, you can have a telephone, but you’ll have to give up privacy, the charm of distance.’” – Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind

     I remember thinking that Star Trek “communicators” would be a marvel to possess. To be in touch with family and friends at all times! Never unable to summon aid in an emergency! Yet they were a pale shadow of today’s “smart” cell phone.

     The cell phone is progress of a sort. Being able to contact others no matter where you – or they – are is certainly handy now and then. Add the multifarious features of the smart phone, and wonder of wonders! Instant access to all the information and entertainment in the world rests in one’s hand. But the loss of privacy is a serious counterweight to those things. The inability to say to another that “I have no access to that right now” puts all one’s knowledge and expertise at the disposal of the caller.

     Employers have been ruthless about exploiting that bit of progress. The abuses are most common in “employment at will” states, where an explicit labor contract is not required and the terms of one’s employment are nebulous. Salaried workers are deemed available, de facto, at every instant of their lives. Differences of opinion about that are usually resolved in the boss’s favor.

     And there is absolutely nothing to be done about it.

For Armistice Day

     [I first posted this in 2013, when it appeared to me that the world was hurtling toward Armageddon. We survived; we eventually shook off the Obamunists and the Bidenites. The terrors that ravaged the Old World did not visit us. We found a peacemaker and raised him to the Oval Office. For a while, things looked, if not good, at least bearable.
     But what are Mankind’s prospects, really? Given the currents of hostility, avarice, and lust for power plainly visible throughout the world, how do things look to you today? – FWP]

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     World War I remains the greatest man-made tragedy in all of history: a brutal, pointless, utterly avoidable conflagration that ended a century of peace and destroyed the optimism and confidence that had created the modern free world. Twenty million died during the war proper, including most of the young men of France and Germany. Twenty million more died in the influenza plague that followed.

     Fixated on symbolism, the Allied Powers demanded that the Germans sign the armistice agreement at exactly eleven o'clock on November 11, 1918: The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. One year later, the Treaty of Versailles that supposedly ended the war and established peace proved to be, in the words of General Ferdinand Foch, "an armistice for twenty years." Perhaps it's for the best that no one remembers the "Great War" as a thing of patriotic glory.

     Which is why, on this Armistice Day in the year of Our Lord 2025, I've decided to memorialize it with a poem few can bear to read, and those who’ve read it can hardly bear to remember:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-- Wilfred Owen, 1918 --

     Pray for peace.

Flashes Of Insight Dept.

     We all have them. The trick is recognizing them and making proper use of them. Have a typical sample:

I was reminded of the debt slavery system last week when I fully paid off an account and the next day got a warning that paying the account off was going to drop my credit score.

They don't want you to pay off debts, they want you to just manage it.

— Rae ❤️‍🔥 (@FiatLuxGenesis) November 9, 2025

     This woman was “clued in” by an institution that had been profiting from her indebtedness. Not everyone is that fortunate. Perhaps she had a subliminal instant of “What if everyone?” – that quick, massively disturbing recognition of a pattern previously uncontemplated. It happens now and then, even to people barely conscious of their own existences.

     Patterns exist because of the commonalities among us. We all hunger. We all want. We all fear. We all respond to “carrots and sticks:” incentives and disincentives. He who detects a strong motivator, shared widely among us, that he can exploit has taken his first step toward wealth, power, fame, or all three.

     Sometimes that recognition carries another in its wake.

---

     Professional money managers learn things about the ebb and flow of investment that most people never realize. This is something of an “of course” matter; one couldn’t make a living managing others’ assets without some amount of special knowledge. Yet bits of that knowledge are useful to the rest of us as well. One such item is this: Contrarians nearly always make money.

     The contrarian, in the equities markets, is one who studies market behavior for its current trends, and then deliberately plays against them. Everyone is buying? The contrarian sells. Everyone is selling? The contrarian buys. Given the old aphorism that “The trend is your friend,” how does that work?

     A trend is a temporary thing. “Trees do not grow to the sky,” as Baron de Rothschild has told us. Every trend will end at some point. While it lasts, its dynamism provides opportunities to those with available capital. The key question is how the current trend will end.

     Take an arbitrary equity: say, the stock of that perennial titan of American industry, Acme Corp. Is it going up, perhaps propelled by some dramatic recent development? If contrarian Smith already has some Acme stock, he’ll sell at a point where its price reflects an unusually high price-to-earnings ratio (P/E). That way, when Acme peaks and falls back toward a historically stable P/E, Smith can buy it back. That gives him both a profit on the sale plus continuing returns on Acme shares.

     The same applies if Acme is “in trouble:” that is, if its share price is declining. Smith waits until Acme is significantly below its historic P/E, then buys. When Acme rebounds, he can profit by selling. (A “value investor” such as Warren Buffet might choose to hold the stock instead.)

     The contrarian’s assets are patience, liquid capital, and confidence that “the trend will end,” usually without taking all his money with it. And he nearly always profits.

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     “Don’t run with the herd” is advice frequently given to young people by their parents and other respected advisors. It’s hard advice to follow. There’s always that suspicion that “the herd” knows something you don’t. That might be true... but going in the opposite direction is more likely to get young Smith something his contemporaries will not.

     “The herd” tends to conceal the identities and characteristics of those in it. We see the rushing crowd; we overlook the individuals. That’s no way to attract the attention of others with something special to offer. If you want to be noticed, run the other way.

     Several patterns are current among young Americans. Nearly all young adults borrow, thus shackling themselves to an obligation that will last several years. Why? They want something: a house, a car, a vacation, or some other expensive item. But whatever it is, they seldom need it. And since they’ve borrowed to “afford” it; they’re committed to paying more for it than its nominal purchase price. Young contrarian Smith lives beneath his means, saves his money, and waits until he can afford what he wants without paying interest.

     Young Americans today “play around” for years before choosing a mate and “getting settled.” That’s herd behavior too; it’s fueled in part by sexual hunger and in part by the subconscious need to “have someone.” Young Smith, who wants to be noticed and desired by a truly exceptional young woman, keeps himself to himself. Oh, he socializes, but he doesn’t date a lot of women, and he certainly doesn’t “sleep around.” The young women who know him will take notice. It will intrigue them... much to his benefit.

     It’s practically self-explanatory. The exceptional are those whose behavior is exceptional: the contrarians! They don’t “run with the herd;” they note which way the herd is going and run the other way. And they almost always derive an exceptional benefit from doing so.

     Of course, being part of “the herd” does confer something as well. Many people actively want the anonymity, the obscurity, and the freedom from independent judgment that come from losing oneself in the crowd. But those are drives I don’t share.

The Pillars Of Power

     I once wrote:

     Many are the laws that go unenforced, or are selectively enforced according to the whim of “the authorities.” Many are the laws written to target particular institutions or individuals, who are thus made “enemies of the state” in fact if not in name. Many are the laws written so obscurely that even those who wrote them cannot explain their intent nor their effect. Many are the laws that have advanced injustice rather than justice.

     When those who claim to represent the law decide, arbitrarily, when it applies and what degree of enforcement it deserves, then there is no law. When they decide, for whatever reason, that the law binds some persons but not others, then there is no law. When the law is written in such a fashion that no one can be certain what it compels or forbids, then there is no law. And when the law is “interpreted” to override the natural rights of individuals to their lives, liberties, and honestly acquired properties, then there is no law.

     I meant it then, and I mean it now.

---

     I’ve also written, on several occasions, that the pillars of freedom are three: education, communications, and weaponry. Power-seekers know that quite well. In every society on Earth, the State strives to control all three: to impose itself upon them; to thwart alternatives to them; and to prevent escape from the State’s versions of them. I challenge you, Gentle Reader, to cite an exception. Thus, what serves the freedom-seeker can serve the power-seeker equally well.

     Let’s have a quick survey of those things in these United States:

• Education is almost completely controlled by governments. Their tool for imposing State-controlled “public” education upon us is principally economic: high levels of taxation that demand two incomes per family and discourage expenditures on educational alternatives. The escape of homeschooling compels serious economic compromises by families that choose it.
• Armament in private hands is obviously suppressed by governments to the maximum possible extent, despite the “protections” of the Second Amendment. Yes, you can buy a surplus tank or howitzer, but only after rigorous investigation by the State and rendering the thing impotent for conflict.
• Private persons’ ability to communicate is where we retain the greatest latitude. However, it’s also where the State is most active today, principally through lawfare, anti-“hate speech” campaigns, and the seduction of Big Tech into its agenda.

     All that, despite the “protections” of the Constitution! No need to imagine where we’d be without the Constitution; just look at what’s been done to the peoples of Europe.

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     So we see that the pillars of freedom serve equally well as the pillars of power. To the extent that the State controls them, it controls us. It denies us and our progeny what we need to retain even a shred of freedom. Flee? To where?

     Have a bit of Orwell for dessert:

     If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.
     If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion of the voice, at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength. would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet-!
     He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices women’s voices — had burst from a side-street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep, loud ’Oh-o-o-o-oh!’ that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It’s started! he had thought. A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding round the stalls of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamoured round the stall, accusing the stall-keeper of favouritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve.
     There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another’s hands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?
     He wrote:
     Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

     “The proles” are us, Gentle Reader. We quarrel over potholes, zoning laws, the noise from this one’s barking dog and whether that one’s hedge violates community standards. We joust over school buses, and after-school programs, and trivial differences in property tax rates. We contend over “inequality.” We’ll fight to the death over that last saucepan.

     What would we do, were we actually conscious of what’s been done to us? What’s still being done to us? Would anyone dare try to smash any one of the three pillars of power? Who would risk his life and fortune to try?

     Perhaps I’ll be back later. Just now, it’s time for Mass.

The Terrible Power Of ‘If’ Part 2

     Writer R. G. Ryan deposeth and saith:

     New York just elected a communist as mayor. OK fine. What if instead of running around with our hair on fire screaming about the demise of the Republic we just let it play out. Maybe view it as a huge social experiment. I don’t think it will take us all that long to see whether this version of socialism works or not.

     It’s a suggestion being made in several quarters. Such an experiment will affect the lives of millions, many of whom would rather not be involved in it. But it appears that socialism’s next trial run will take place whether they wish it or not. That returns us to the questions posed in the previous piece.

     There’s quite a bit of danger here. Not all of it is visible.

     The asymmetrical and elevated taxation newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani has in mind to power his agenda is of concern, of course. During his campaign he said that he wants to lay heavier taxes on “richer, whiter” areas. New York City’s income tax, like the state and federal versions, allows for “progressive” rates that bite harder as one’s income increases, so given the cooperation of the city council, he could get away with it. But the persons who live in those “richer, whiter” districts are more mobile than many other New Yorkers. They might choose not to stay and be shorn.

     Mamdani hasn’t yet suggested the expropriations characteristic of communist regimes, but it’s a good bet they’re not far from his thoughts. When the State goes into competition with private enterprises, that measure becomes ever more attractive to the regime. Big Apple businesses could feel Mamdani’s clutching fingers at any moment, especially in the food sector, which he’s openly targeted. Other businesses will be endangered simply from increases in the city’s cost of living and operating.

     There’s also a looming prospect for the suppression of dissent. Socialist and communist regimes dislike to have their failures discussed. Mamdani might follow the example currently being set by Britain’s Labour government: declare any public statements it finds uncongenial “hate speech” and deploy the police against the speakers.

     But those are the easily seen dangers. There’s a less visible one that deserves mention: the possibility that with adroit maneuvering and heavy support from the donors that financed his campaign, Mamdani might contrive a “honeymoon” that makes his version of socialism look workable.

     The 1988 serial A Very British Coup dramatized such a possibility. Freshly elected Labour prime minister Harry Perkins, by dint of personal charisma and financial support from the Soviet Union, had engineered a state of affairs in which the United Kingdom appeared to have achieved a version of socialism in which the country was economically stable and at peace. The premise of the drama was that various titled Tories would not have it: they counter-engineer a clever, almost entirely bloodless coup against the Perkins government. The series ends with Perkins addressing the nation with the outline of the coup: he challenges Britons to choose between his elected government and the Conservative plotters.

     Mamdani has already begun to solicit financial support for his intentions from those who backed his campaign. Will those donors ante up to fuel his schemes, thus providing a grace period during which the inherently unworkable appears to work? What would ensue? Would New York State’s government be induced to support his agenda?

     These are all hypotheticals, of course: “if” statements. But they delineate dangers and possibilities that deserve some thought.

The Terrible Power Of ‘If’

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. I hope you got more sleep than I did. Anyway, here we are, with Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes Day comfortably behind us, it’s time to proceed to the really urgent questions of our time, such as this one:

What if Mamdani’s social experiment actually turns out to be a success?

— Sarah Luna (@sarah_luna_1111) November 6, 2025

     I think the lady who asked that question did so to gauge the astonished outrage in the reactions. Apparently, she wasn’t disappointed. But the question itself is worth thinking about, for a very simple albeit troubling reason:

Any Sociopolitical System Will Work
If Enough Of Those Subjected To It
Accept And Believe In It.

     ...with the murmured codicil:

...For Certain Values Of “Work.”

     Those who find the above confusing should read the title of this tirade a few dozen times.

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     Some words have more power than others. “If” is one such. In Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter called it “the push into fantasy,” and it is so. What follows “if” can be as bizarre and outrageous as you please, else why would we use it?

     Sarah Luna’s innocent-looking question compels us to probe for what “success” – just another way of saying “would work” – would mean to a socialist regime. For we know all the following, from both theory and history:

• Socialism is economically inefficient.
• It requires coercion to bring it about.
• The great majority endure a lower standard of living than under capitalism.
• The ruling elite acquire wealth and power unavailable to anyone else.
• That creates emigration pressure, which must be quelled by force.
• It also encourages military expansionism.

     All that having been said, a socialist system can be said to “work” if the overwhelming majority of those subjected to it voluntarily accept its constraints and conditions. That requires the elevation of socialism to a moral precept: i.e., that any other sociopolitical system is morally wrong.

     By any other standard, socialism is a failure. Only if those subjected to it accept it as a moral code – a faith — can it be stabilized.

     The great Gregory Benford summarized this problem in his novel Against Infinity:

     “The Marxists thought that under socialism, alienation and class warfare would stop. They ignored the fact that the dialectical model of change never predicted an end to contradictions, or to evolution. Socialism requires a bureaucracy, and that means an administrative class. The administrators faced a problem Marxism never discussed: how well socialism works, versus capitalism. What is the good of being exactly equal to everybody else, if that means you have to be poor? The last century has taught us—or rather, Earth—that socialism is less efficient than capitalism at producing goods.”

     In other words, if the standard is an unquestionable moral precept that “capitalism is wrong and socialism is right,” socialism “succeeds.”

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     Mamdani’s vision of a socialist New York City has only that one chance of survival: persuading the overwhelming majority of Big Apple residents that the conditions he seeks to impose upon them are morally mandatory. Is that even thinkable, in the city that’s been the commercial and financial hub of the world for a century – the city that’s been called “the capital of capitalism?”

     It doesn’t seem likely, but stranger things have happened. Perhaps all the “diehard capitalists” will “emigrate” to friendlier cities and states. Perhaps the remaining residents will accept the much lower standard of living socialism provides as the price for being “right” while the rest of us are “wrong.” It’s just a moral stricture, qualitatively the same as Christianity’s requirement that married men remain faithful to their wives.

     But it’s not likely. Big Apple residents are accustomed to high wages and affluence. Mamdani will face pressure to raise revenues without raising taxes appreciably. He’ll appeal to the state government, and possibly the federal government, for aid. And it’s not entirely impossible that he’ll get it. Remember the Great Default of 1975 under Mayor Abraham Beame?

     Concerning the possibility of a fiscal collapse, Manhattan Institute fellow E. J. McMahon comments:

     Could New York City ever go broke again? The answer is no—or at least, not in the same way as it did in the 1970s, because of financial guardrails set up by the reforms of that era. The prosperity that lifted New York out of virtual bankruptcy, however, also seeded new versions of the political impulses that gave rise to the crisis in the first place. The elected officials who nowadays dominate city hall and Albany exude a sense of fiscal entitlement and economic invulnerability, an aversion to any suggestion of limits on government ambitions, strikingly reminiscent of the Wagner and Lindsay eras. The city’s sprawling network of tax-subsidized nonprofits—a political force that didn’t exist a half-century ago—lobbies relentlessly for higher spending while serving as an organizational network for progressive activists and politicians. Nearly one-quarter of New York’s private-sector employment—twice the share of 30 years ago—is now concentrated in the publicly subsidized health-care and social-assistance sector, which accounts for all the city’s post-pandemic job growth. The municipal labor unions are as powerful as ever, if not more so.
     In short, New York City is poised for another epic fiscal fall. A moderately severe recession is all it would take to push it over the edge. This time, the climb back to fiscal stability could be considerably more difficult.

     Those “political impulses” have come to fruition with the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani.