Back to (Mamdani’s) Future

New York City, December 31, 2027: As the crowds gather in Times Square to celebrate the start of another new year, the city leadership settles in for an evening of celebration and reflection. Since taking office about two years ago, Zohran Mamdani has implemented a series of sweeping reforms. They would have worked, too, if only those damn capitalists hadn’t sabotaged everything once again. But a new year is dawning, and surely this time, we will get it right.

The rent freeze remains in place. To be fair, the housing shortage was made much worse immediately. Those greedy, money-grubbing landlords just couldn’t handle things being fair. Many sold out to slum lords, so the quality of housing has also deteriorated greatly. Complaints of uncompleted repairs, spotty utilities services, vermin, and broken appliances run rampant. Somehow, a huge increase in budget and manpower for the mayor’s office to protect tenants has not reduced but increased these complaints. Any day now, though.

Owners have had the audacity to complain as well, if you can believe it. Apparently all the new requirements and regulations make it too “burdensome” to continue to provide housing at a loss. Sounds like greed runs amok to us. They don’t matter anyway. Millions and millions have been spent on the 200,000 promised housing units that the city will be providing. In just five or six more years, some of them may even be available to tenants.

There is good news on the housing front. With so many wealthy New Yorkers departing the city to serve their selfish ends, we can focus on keeping working class folks in their homes while snapping up potential properties in desirable neighborhoods to convert into affordable housing. The cascading exodus this has induced in some areas can only signal a new age of affordable housing. We will need to make sure that the new Office of Deed Theft Prevention has everything that it needs to support these people. Another massive budget increase is planned for that administration in anticipation. Soon, they may even prevent their first deed theft!

We look out the window of the penthouse high above the city as the people begin to crowd into the Square. Thank goodness for the Department of Community Safety! Though we have not reduced the police budget by a penny yet, the work this new organization does—for only most of what the police force costs—has been met with great enthusiasm. Indeed, services like mental health and basic medical attention are in such demand that waiting lists extend into the summer. Nothing says success like people waiting six to eight months for the product you are promising.

We’re seeing a similar pattern with our free childcare program. Though capacity is still well under what would be required to achieve our promise of free child care for all, just another hundred million dollars in the budget should get us over the hump (throw in a few more millions and we can get our baby baskets program going, too). That should allow us to finally drive out those horrible private providers (whose prices have actually gone up), reduce the wait list significantly, and ensure that we are able to educate New York’s children properly from the cradle to their doctorate in applied critical race theory.

Speaking of waiting, those city-owned grocery stores were worth the wait! People love them so much that you can hardly find one with stocked shelves. The only frustration is the shameless capitalization taking place among the private supermarkets and bodegas. They seem to be able to seize on any temporary shortage by stocking the products people want and gouging them mercilessly for it. Inexplicably, the people continue to pay these prices and subsidize the greedy owners, despite the fact that they could simply wait for the Grocery Authority to adjust their procurement. That process usually takes as short a time as a few weeks, and rarely are we finding that the changes come too late to meet dynamic needs. At least, that is what the reporting data indicate.

Getting around is so much better in the Mamdani era as well. The buses are free for all, liberating the proletariat and making the entire city accessible to everyone. It is famously a claim of the fascists that, regardless of what else was going on, Mussolini made the trains run on time. We will be burdened by no such accusation! Free of having to answer to pesky consumers, the bus service has become a jolly, care-free industry, with schedules considered suggestions and average travel times that can be described as leisurely. Some find this to be a little detrimental to their ability to get to work on time, but who cares? Why work at all in this paradise?

Indeed, a paradise it is rapidly becoming, because fewer and fewer greedy corporations are able to stand up to the tide of justice that Mamdani represents. His reforms in the area of voluntary contracts took away all the leverage of these monstrous monuments to avarice, and they responded by turning tail and running. Good riddance! Who needs major employers when we will provide everything everyone could ever want?

Incredibly, not everyone is happy. Some people are just brainwashed into thinking everything is about money: “How will you pay for all this?”, “Where is the money coming from?”, “What happened to that $1 billion you were going to raise by taxing the rich?” The screams of the capitalist bootlickers are incessant. Sure, we nearly doubled the city’s debt in two years. What of it? We owe it to ourselves! And now the people have free childcare and buses, cheap groceries, and affordable housing. So much of that money has been poured into our schools alone that any day now the data will start to reflect improvements in student achievement and carbon output—two of the most important facets of education—after ensuring that students are exposed to only the correct ideas.

The crowd below looks a little restless, and there is a palpable element of dissent. Surely the right has sent in armies of instigators to turn the people against us. However, from here—high above the fray—the screams of the agitators cannot be heard. From here, we can enjoy this moment and look forward to a future where all will accept our brilliant and benevolent plan to solve all the ills of mankind. What could go wrong?

Image Source: Adobe Stock - ardasavasciogullari - stock.adobe.com

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