Photograph Source: Alex Lozupone – CC BY 4.0

The economist Noah Smith recently penned a piece titled ‘America Has Only One Real City.’ It should be obvious which city Smith is referring to. While Los Angeles may have the cultural Hollywood elite that is so allegedly resented by the masses in flyover country, New York has some of that along with many more things so despised by reactionaries such as a population density that dwarfs every other big city in the U.S., including a vast immigrant population, and a large public transit system that is by far the most used system in the country.

This list could go on. In fact, New York can hold up pretty well to any city in Scandinavia. While cities such as St Louis and Chicago have long taken down their public housing, New York has barely touched any of it. The 400,000 units of New York’s public housing hosts a larger population than cities such as Jersey City, Richmond, and Pittsburgh. Overall, almost half of New York’s apartments are rent-stabilized. The past decade, New York instituted both universal pre-k and universal 3-k and recently the city announced a $10 million pilot program to provide free childcare for children 2 years old and younger, expected to cover hundreds of low-income families.

New York’s unions may not have quite the juice they once did, but the city is still certainly a union town with a rate almost twice the national average (there was recent talk of a strike on Broadway until the two unions representing Broadway actors, stage managers, dancers, and musicians agreed to new contracts). It has been a long time since CUNY, the city’s university system, was free but it still offers in-state tuition far cheaper than can be found in most other places.

Now, with the eyes of the whole country on the city’s mayoral race, New York just elected a democratic socialist. Few things are as tediously amusing as a right-wing freakout. The amusement lies in how regular and predictable such freakouts are and just how simple it is to cause them. The past six months, since Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary, have been something to behold. Campaign to make bus service free and New York is apparently on its way to being a surreal combination of sharia law and North Korea.

Certainly, like many political insurgents, Mamdani has been quite fortunate in his opponents. Current mayor Eric Adams washed out weeks ago. Rare for an incumbent to top out at under 15 percent in poling but Adam’s combination of corruption scandals and footsie playing with Trump managed the feat. It wasn’t long ago Andrew Cuomo resigned the........

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