Georgia shouldn’t follow New York’s embrace of democratic socialism

News of New York City’s mayoral race has been difficult to escape, even as far away as Georgia where progressives have been gleefully applauding the youthful and charismatic Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani. A recent opinion piece from a Georgia lawmaker even seemed to glorify Mamdani and suggest Georgia needs politicians like him and his policies.

Who New Yorkers ultimately choose as their next mayor matters little to me. That’s entirely up to them, and considering Mamdani garnered 43.5% of the vote in the Democratic primary in a very Democratic city, Mamdani must be viewed as the front-runner. Again, if that’s what New Yorkers want, then go for it, but what should worry readers is the effort to import Mamdani’s ideas to the Peach State.

Mamdani cruised to an easy primary victory thanks to his self-proclaimed democratic socialist platform. He promised to “freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants,” “create a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low,” and “bringing the NYC wage floor up to $30/hour.” National Review additionally noted that Mamdani earlier “called for exacerbating ‘class consciousness’ with the ‘end goal’ of ‘seizing the means of production.’” Woah there, comrade.

There’s a lot to unpack there, and these are some truly terrible public policies—some in response to real issues. According to Apartments.com, the average rent for a 591 square foot apartment in New York City is over $4,000 a month. That’s astounding, and Mamdani rightly sees affordability as a persistent issue and thus wants to freeze certain rents. However, this is an uninformed idea.

“Decades of academic research shows that capping rent increases below market rates results in demand outstripping supply for rental accommodation,” the libertarian think tank Cato Institute reported. “Incumbent tenants cling more tightly to their cheaper property, meaning fewer dwellings on the market [and] longer searches […] Less tenant churn means many households simply can’t find properties reflecting their family or job needs.”

A recent experiment demonstrates the folly of freezing rents. In Argentina, President Javier Milei repealed their rent control law, and the results have been stunning so far. “Traditional rental listings have skyrocketed—from 5,500 before the reform to 15,300 today, a staggering 180 percent rise,” the Cato Institute added. “Real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) rents have fallen, short-term workarounds are declining, and tenants are finding properties suited to their needs.”

Mamdani’s proposal to increase the minimum wage is also fraught with problems. “Raising the minimum wage would increase the cost of employing low-wage workers,” the Congressional Budget Office noted. “As a result, some employers would employ fewer workers than they would have employed under a lower minimum wage.”

Employers would then either pass the increased wage costs to consumers—leading to price increases—and/or replace workers with cheaper machines. In fact, CNN reported last year, “California just hiked minimum wage for fast food workers. Some restaurants are replacing them with kiosks.”

If some democratic-socialists get their way, then many of the kiosks might not be the primary pain point because they want the government to own and control a number of grocery stores. This would be a disaster-in-the-making, unless you’re a fan of bread lines, and I am not. Governments are terrible at operating businesses. Nevertheless, plenty of them have tinkered with the idea of state-run grocery stores, and the Soviet Union’s experiment with them proved their failure. Its people were often left to deal with barren shelves and long lines for morsels of food.

This issue was even magnified when then-Soviet official Boris Yeltsin visited a grocery store in the U.S. “Yeltsin, then 58, ‘roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,’” the House Chronicle reported. “He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, ‘there would be a revolution.’”

“In the Chronicle photos, you can see him marveling at the produce section, the fresh fish market, and the checkout counter. He looked especially excited about frozen pudding pops. ‘Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,’ he said.” In order to hide the results of the USSR’s failed policies from foreigners, the Soviets even created commercial Potemkin villages—or fabricated developments intended to falsely show a cornucopia of available goods.

Despite the truth about these policies, some activists and officials seem determined to enact them in Georgia, which would be a detrimental mistake. Thankfully, the political makeup of the Peach State makes this a non-starter for the foreseeable future. That aside, most Americans understandably want better wages and more affordable housing and groceries, but the answer to these desires shouldn’t exacerbate the problems. We need freer markets, not more government control. That’s why we cannot import Mamdani’s ideas to Georgia.