New York is hemorrhaging jobs and residents, but instead of trying to make it an attractive place to do business, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pursuing his obsession with redistributing what wealth the city still has along racial lines. He’s a socialist, which means, even 100 years after socialism proved itself an economic, social, and democratic failure everywhere, that he is more impressed by ideological purity than by practical results.
Mamdani released his administration’s first “Racial Equity Plan” this month, a 375-page document identifying more than 200 racial equity “goals and outcomes” for the city’s 45 agencies. These are to be pursued through 800 strategies and tracked by more than 600 indicators. You just know that anything requiring 800 strategies and 600 indicators is bound to find excuses for its eventual failure. But Mamdani promises that this “whole-of-government approach” will embrace the values of “vigilance, remedy, and reconstruction” to achieve “racial equity in every facet of life.”
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The report begins by describing New York’s history as one of “colonization, exploitation, and racial oppression,” noting that “the land New York City stands on today once belonged to the Lenape people, who were forcibly displaced through settler colonialism.” Yet, despite all this exploitation and oppression, New York’s black population grew and thrived for nearly 320 years before peaking in 2000.
Mamdani’s Racial Equity Plan does not explain how or why racism suddenly became worse in the 2000s — it was then that everyone could see that race relations were, in fact, getting better — causing the city’s black population start to decline. Now the rest of the city’s population is shrinking too, as businesses relocate to more business-friendly communities. They’re not leaving because they agree with land acknowledgments and think they should vacate in favor of earlier inhabitants. They’re leaving because Democrats such as Mamdani and their leveling policies make the city inhospitable to entrepreneurs, wealth creators, and owners.
The Mamdani report was reportedly scrubbed by city lawyers of all references to “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” and of explicit minority hiring goals to avoid scrutiny from the Trump administration. But set-asides for minority-owned businesses in government contracting survived into the final version, as did mandated “anti-racism training” for all city government staff.
Fortunately for New Yorkers, this Racial Equity Plan does not include specific proposals for new tax hikes. But it includes plenty of other directives that limit how New Yorkers may use their property and will make it harder, not easier, to build the homes the city needs to become more affordable.
These include a mandate that “racial equity” be considered in evaluating all new construction projects, the prioritization of “affordable housing” in all new construction, and the “incorporation of non-residential uses in affordable housing developments,” such as public health services and “fresh food.” All new construction projects must submit to “community-involved neighborhood planning,” which will create more opportunities for activists to shake down developers for money. The plan even calls for a 20% increase in “historic resource surveys in underserved neighborhoods,” which, again, will cause delays and add costs to new construction.
Mamdani’s focus on redistributing wealth rather than creating new wealth was on full display during his press conference, when he was repeatedly asked what specific policies he proposed to retain and attract big employers. “I’m wondering specifically if you could speak to retention of large companies,” one journalist asked. “Do you have any concerns specifically with the CEO of Partnerships of New York commenting on Apollo moving their headquarters? Is there anything in this report that addresses retaining these large companies that are already a big generator of jobs in the city?”
Mamdani offered no specifics on anything his administration was doing to improve the city’s business environment. Instead, he said, “What this report is a reminder to all of us to do is to build a city where equity is not a footnote or an acknowledgment but is also a framework for how we deliver for the people of this city.”
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Therein lies the problem. Mamdani is not focused on growing or even retaining jobs in New York. He thinks “equity” is more important than economic growth. Unless a large employer can prove to him that the jobs it maintains or creates predominantly benefit minority communities, he is not interested.
That is why more and more large employers are leaving the city and will continue to do so until a new administration focused on job creation, not wealth redistribution, takes power.
