What If Andrew Yang Wins the New York City Mayoral Race?

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang has a very good shot at winning the New York City mayoral race.

It could very well be the final dagger that destroys a once great city.

Annie Lowery in a recent Atlantic article lists some of the mad, socialist programs he wants to implement:

•  He wants the city government to establish a basic income for the half a million New Yorkers
• He wants to create a public-banking network.
• He wants to convert hotels into "affordable" housing

Lowery adds:

Yang’s campaign is almost certainly helped by the fact that, plugged in or not, many people have growing hopes for what the government can achieve. The left has moved dramatically leftward since the Obama years. Democratic socialists are getting elected; Congress is shrugging off concerns about deficits; once-moderate politicians are talking about New Deal–scale policy solutions... 

The city’s budget, with its $4 billion shortfall, is also a problem. But he quickly pivots to his plans to pull in more state and federal resources, his willingness to find “modest value-adds,” and his desire to milk the city’s billionaires and work with its nonprofits. 

Mayoral candidates Eric Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, and Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, have significant support—but as of mid-March, Yang led the field by a 13-point margin. 

The one minor ray of hope is that Yang is truly an unpredictable fruitcake. He may implement some unexpected positives. According to Lowery, he "has also committed, if softly, to cutting taxes."

It is difficult to see how the current city deficit plus his socialist spending plans and his plan to "milk the billionaires" would lead to tax cuts but maybe the flake would actually focus on tax cuts. 

 -RW