State taxpayers are on the hook for a large chunk of the city’s supposedly budget-balancing revenue. As two experts described it, “What Mamdani is hailing as a triumph for democratic socialism amounts to a state bailout standing on a pension gimmick wearing a trenchcoat. [Gov. Kathy] Hochul has given him billions in direct funding, plus her blessing to punt costs almost a whole generation into the future.”

Meanwhile, Mamdani is running into other policy-related trouble. His signature campaign promise of instituting “free buses” has been punted into the future, though it seems many New Yorkers have decided to implement their own version of his pledge unilaterally, in violation of the law.

This, in turn, is deepening some related fiscal woes. Gothamist reports:

It still costs $3 to ride the MTA’s buses, despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge to make them free for everyone. But don’t tell that to a growing number of New Yorkers who are evading the fare. The MTA last week reported paid bus ridership fell nearly 8% in June compared to the same month last year. During Mamdani’s first six months in office, the fares the MTA collected from bus riders fell by $31 million compared to the first half of 2025. And MTA Chair Janno Lieber suggested Mamdani’s campaign pledge wasn’t helping. “With malice towards none, I say all the talk of free bus has an impact, it does have an impact,” Lieber said following the MTA’s board meeting on Wednesday. “Without rancor and without blame, I do think we have to now turn as a city to re-establishing the principle that everybody shares in the responsibility for contributing to this system.” Lieber said many of the people skipping the fare can afford to pay, which passes “along responsibility to somebody else who’s probably not as well off as you are.”

Surprise: Talking endlessly about “free” services fosters a sense of entitlement, creating incentives and altering behavior in ways that harm the viability of said services.

And in many cases, according to the lightly treading bureaucrat quoted above, the freeloaders can afford to pay fares, shifting the burden to law-abiding residents of lesser means. Behold, “progress.”

According to the New York Times, another major Mamdani initiative isn’t working out well either. His signature childcare program is rife with funding and functional problems, creating chaos and uncertainty.

“Many early childhood centers have yet to receive funding to buy classroom furniture and basic supplies like pencils and paper, or to pay newly hired teachers and assistants,” the New York Times story relays. “Without the money, several providers have warned parents that the centers will not open when school starts on Sept. 10. Because of the delays, city officials had encouraged providers to apply for interest-free bridge loans from the city — not just for 2-K programs but also for 3-K and pre-K programs.”

And how’s that temporary “fix,” caused by other ineptitude, working out? Not well.

“Many of those who have applied for the loans say that money has not arrived either, forcing them to take out high-interest personal loans, borrow from relatives, and drain their personal savings.” The piece quotes one childcare provider lamenting, “Yes, they have a 2-K program, but they didn’t set up the infrastructure to make it work.”

It seems Mamdani’s socialist utopianism suffers from both funding and competence crises. Alas, telling people you’re going to deliver them the moon and stars is easy. Executing on a vision and paying for it are very separate propositions.

Perhaps the problem with socialism is that, indeed, you eventually run out of other people’s money — but also that your fellow government supremacists can’t do their jobs properly. Behold, “progress.”

As for Mamdani’s wildly costly and slow-moving city-run grocery store misadventure, socialists are struggling to explain how this ill-conceived and, based on other similar efforts, unworkable policy is fair to existing businesses being forced to compete with government-supported stores offering lower prices subsidized by taxpayers.

One infamous and cartoonishly hypocritical limousine socialist sniffed that if private grocers and bodegas can’t keep up with artificially low prices offered by the government at taxpayer expense, “then maybe they shouldn’t have been in that business in the first place.”

The Mamdani administration is also offering preemptive bailouts to bodegas, also at taxpayer expense, in the form of freshly announced grants. These disbursements are partially designed to help blunt the impact of the distorted pseudo-competition that will be introduced by city-run shops.

In short, one statist intervention has triggered additional disruptions, necessitating additional statist interventions.

A far better way to help those businesses grow and flourish “would be to let them compete in the market, not temporarily distort it with taxpayer-subsidized goods for just long enough to make private enterprise unprofitable,” observes Noah Rothman.

But government interventions at the expense of private enterprise are a prominent feature of Mamdani’s failed worldview. Business owners and taxpayers, including any number of Mamdani supporters who are now crying foul over his half-baked and incompetent “pied-à-terre” tax rollout, will always be damaged in such doomed experiments.

In some cases, it’s cluelessness. In others, it’s by design. Behold, “progress.”

I’ll leave you with a sentiment expressed by Mamdani after an inmate died in city custody.

“I am deeply saddened by the death of a New Yorker in City custody at a jail on Rikers Island early this morning. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss,” he wrote last week, conceding that the cause of death in the case wasn’t yet known.

He vowed to pursue what he called “the critical work of creating better conditions in our city’s jail system and closing Rikers Island as quickly as possible.”

Unmentioned in the statement? Any reference whatsoever to the deceased prisoner’s lengthy criminal record, which included allegedly walking into a Bronx laundromat in 2024 and using a meat cleaver to hack one man to death while wounding another in an unprovoked attack.

Mamdani’s post also did not mention the dead detainee’s victims or his loved ones.

That snub, said one bereaved family member, was a “slap in the face” from the mayor. “It’s terrible,” added another. “It’s not fair at all.”

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE PEACEFUL

But the anti-law enforcement mayor’s priority isn’t highlighting or even acknowledging such politically inconvenient crime victims. It’s closing the jail that held this accused murderer.

Behold, “progress.”