New York is F**k'd | Mamdani Primary

Mom Donnie, it's not official quite yet

because there are votes that still need

to be counted, but it appears that he's

going to be the Democratic nominee, and

his platform uh is concerning to many

Republicans, calling for free buses,

free child care, city-owned grocery

stores, all paid for by taxing wealthy

New Yorkers, and raising the corporate

tax rate. Mom Donnie overcame

accusations and he still is being well I

guess a lot more businesses are going to

be leaving New York for probably the

great state of Florida. I hate to say it

but I spent 16 years growing up in

Florida. Uh and I would much prefer

Florida over New York any day. I get

nice warm water at the beaches.

Beautiful sunny beaches, mind you. And

yeah, you had a little bit of heat and

humidity, but ain't as blistering as the

weather in Manhattan or just New York

broadly. But we got to talk about this

Democratic primary because this to me is

a broad symptom for somebody with these

policies to win a Democratic primary. Uh

mind you, this was shared by Gays for

Trump 24. I just noticed that. Anyway,

uh mind you that this this is a somebody

who's winning a Democratic primary. To

me, this is a sign of the failure of the

Democratic party to have any form of

leadership whatsoever. Uh when you look

at people like Gavin Newsome, who in his

own podcast is asked by Charlie Kirk

point blank, do you support banning men,

biological men in women's sports? And

Gavin Newsome can't even give you a

straight answer because he's gota, you

know, hand gesture his way around. Well,

you know, I'm actually a fan of

fairness. Oh, and by the way, I have two

sons and daughters and I've got four

children. And have we talked about

fairness yet? This is what people hate.

People are sick and tired of lunatic

politicians that can't give you a blunt

answer. Who cares if you're wrong later?

just be honest and tell us what you're

thinking so we could evaluate if we

trust you or not. It's very simple, but

no human is perfect. But politicians

just suck. And this is why you're in a

position of a leaderless Democratic

party. And then you get a loon like this

who wins the Democratic nominee

nomination for uh for for in their

primary. So this person is actually now

going to be going up against this guy

who wears a red beret and was almost

killed by John Gotti.

Yeah, more more on that in a bit. But

apparently he was sitting in the back of

a taxi and there was an assassin in the

front of the car, turned around and shot

him in the ding-dong. And uh apparently

this Curtis guy jumped out of the car

and got away and gotty got charged. And

it was just a big mess. Like this Curtis

guy, he's like OG New York. You know,

when you get targeted by John Gotti,

you're like OG New York. But what's not

OG New York is this guy which is mom

Donnie who in 2020 now in fairness 2020

this was right before COVID everybody

was going like woke crazy at the

beginning of 2020 and 2019 so it's

entirely possible that some of these

policies have changed. Uh oh wait he has

a website where he actually just gives

you his current policies so we could

just look at some of these. He literally

calls himself a democratic socialist. uh

born in Uganda

uh who you know will participate in or

support hunger strikes for taxi drivers

to get debt relief for taxi drivers

winning over 100 million in the state

budget for increased subway service uh a

successful fairree bus pilot uh because

buses I guess are very expensive and

he'll use every tool available to bring

down rent create worldclass public

transit and make it easier to raise a

family these are his pitches is the

first pitch is freeze the rent. A

majority of New Yorkers are tenants and

more than 2 million of them live in rent

stabilized apartments. You know, one of

the things that most people don't

recognize and it's okay because really

unless you're you're into economics and

you study this, it's understandable not

to be aware of this, but here's how rent

control works. Just a brief bottom line.

The people who are currently in a rental

do benefit with rent control. So, it is

true that rent control benefits people

who are currently in a home. However, in

the long term, as with most things in

politics, when you create some kind of

price ceiling, you create long-term

distortions. And so, the more you

implement rent controls, the more

popular you might look in the short

term. But in the long run, what you

actually do is you disincentivize the

construction of newer, better quality

products or or properties and more of

them. Instead, you essentially force the

construction of lower quality, lower

income properties, and you end up

putting people potentially where they

just can't afford to live in the first

place. So, if you can't afford to live

somewhere, typically the idea is, okay,

well, let's move somewhere where we can

afford to live. But that doesn't mean

people want to be displaced from their

homes or their families or otherwise.

And that's why rent control is so

popular. So when the economy gets to a

point where it's squeezing people out

with lower incomes, there's a

frustration that rent should be kept

low. Again, it works in the short term,

but only for the very short term. In the

long term, you end up with fewer homes.

And when you end up with fewer homes

available, guess what happens? You end

up with more unaffordability in markets.

And you end up with shortages. So you

end up with rental shortages and then

unaffordable rents in the first place.

So it's kind of like rent control just

exacerbates the problem. The better way

generally to reduce home prices is by

increasing supply by streamlining your

building and safety standards and

actually getting the government in a

streamlined manner in keeping the

government involved in a streamlined

manner but getting most of the

bureaucratic red tape out of real

estate. So that way you still have

health and safety inspections and you

can limit the potential risks of people

building without regulation, but you

don't make it so arduous to go through

years and years of planning processes

where different opinions can change

different building plans in on different

street blocks at the whim of uh you know

a local city council member or whatever.

This is why it's so frustrating to build

in areas like New York. It's very

challenging and some of these programs

like freezing the rent are just going to

exacerbate these issues in the long

term. So from an economic point of view,

this is a terrible idea. From a populist

point of view, very very common. Eric

Adams has taken every opportunity to

squeeze tenants with handpicking

appointments, blah blah blah. Okay, so

he slams Eric Adams. Something to keep

in mind is Eric Adams was basically

going to be a felon for uh for for uh

taking political contributions, not

properly disclosing them. Uh and he was

indicted. He was investigated by the

FBI. He was a Democrat. Then he cozied

up to Donald Trump who basically ordered

the investigations against Eric Adams

dropped and all of a sudden Eric Adams

is running as a Democrat. Now, this

potentially led to Eric Adams uh or or

sorry uh Mandami's rise in the

Democratic primary because if you think

about it, you have Eric Adams as a as an

independent. So, he's not part of the

primary. So, then it's either Quomo or

this guy, this freeze the rent guy.

Well, do you want the slime ball that's

Quomo whose reputation has basically

been trashed or do you want this

socialist guy who says he's going to

freeze your rent?

Keep in mind this is not an actual

election yet. The election is November

4th, 2025 for the mayor. And Eric Adams

is going to be running against uh

Mandami as well as again this Curtis

guy. So Curtis, he walks around with

this uh beret all the time, this sort of

red beret because of his sort of

anti-rime and pro- like helping the

homeless or whatever uh organization

that he helped found. He founded this

the Guardian Angels back in the 70s

apparently. Uh which may have

contributed to uh him almost being

murdered by the Godi crime family, but

you know, this picture looks like it's

straight out of the Sopranos. Okay. Uh

but anyway, uh you know, this this is

not a foregone conclusion here that New

York is about to become socialist.

You're still going to have an election

versus Adams if people want to choose

him. uh other independents uh and and

then of course this uh this guy Curtis

Sliva Slivwa whatever uh here the here's

the polling how it shook up Mandami got

43% of the vote Cuomo got 36% of the

vote surprisingly a lot of the uh higher

income individuals ended up voting for

Mandami in this particular Democratic

primary so that would be of the

Democrats especially in parts of

Brooklyn uh along the edge the coast

coal areas here uh into Queens a little

bit as well. And you can see the more uh

conservative sides recoiled against the

idea of governmentr run grocery stores,

free buses uh or frankly things

initiatives like low nocost child care

or city-owned grocery stores. Now again,

while these things sound great, getting

the government involved into lowprofit

businesses is usually very very

expensive and not very good. First of

all, look at Kroger. This is Kroger's

annual report. Kroger had sales of $147

billion, which makes them sound really

rich. But they had a net income of just

1.8% of that and they have to get

through the ups and downs of economic

cycles as well. So if you have

recessions, you could really get taken

out here. These are grocery stores

operating at a 1.8% margin. This is a

terrible business to be in. So, this

idea that uh Zorhan wants to run

city-owned grocery stores to control

food prices is insane. You'd be better

off giving people more food stamp money

than trying to actually run the

businesses yourself. Uh because once you

start paying people prevailing wages to

stand at a grocery store checkout line,

it's going to be a disaster. Now, don't

get me wrong, I'm all for cracking down

on crappy landlords because I actually

think most landlords suck. But raising

taxes is just going to end up pushing

out a lot of people from New York.

Remind you, you already have some of the

most extreme tax rates in New York. You

have a city tax, the state tax, uh, and,

uh, the federal tax. So, when you

combine all of this, boy, it is a tough

tough case to argue for more taxes in

New York. And some of these plans that

he comes up with seem to not only

incentivize sort of crime like ending

cash bail, uh, which we've tried this.

We tried this in San Francisco. We tried

legalized drug injection sites. We've

tried this sort of stuff in Portland,

Oregon. It was a giant failure. We tried

defund the police. It was all a failure.

This person really needs to learn from

the failures of other countries or

sorry, other other states. And I'm

really hopeful that New York doesn't

elect somebody like this because frankly

it's just sad for the Democratic party.

It just goes to show that Democrats

really can't get it together and that

it's a leaderless party right now. Very

sad. Anyway, I got to go. That's all I

got. We'll see you in the next one.

Goodbye and good luck. Why not advertise

these things that you told us here? I

feel like nobody else knows about this.

We'll we'll try a little advertising and

see how it goes. Congratulations, man.

You have done so much. People love you.

People look up to you. Kevin Praath

there, financial analyst and YouTuber.

Meet Kevin. Always great to get your

take.