Private Equity Spends Two Decades Turning NYC Into A Spreadsheet, Accidentally Elects Human Being
After years of rightly accusing the world of being historically illiterate about Israel, Jews now rush to conflate rent stabilization with Stalinism. (It’s OK. I’m pro-Israel Jewish + fiscal liberal.)
(Image: “Capital Flight” by Stella Stillwell)
What does it mean to be a pro-Israel, pro-Judaism, pro-Jew Jew in an era where economic liberalism is having a moment on the world stage, thanks to a Muslim. For one thing it means I have a fresh new topic to argue with my best friends about.
Many of them (okay, ALL of them) are recycling stale tropes about “socialism” like it’s their first time engaging the debate. It’s disappointing, especially when coming from a place of pain, because it makes navigating the conversation tricky. (Sign me up!)
That grief is shared, by the way. I’m none too pleased about the mayor of my city, the best city in the world, for his thinking that October 7th was merely a war crime and not terrorism and attempted genocide. (It was both and more.)
But emotional resonance doesn’t excuse weak reasoning about economics.
So let’s start there.
We already live in a mixed economy. Public schools, Medicare, Social Security, all socialist elements normalized into daily life. Mamdani’s vision isn’t a revolution. It’s a temporary refinement tackling specific crises. It’s democratic, not at all unconstitutional, and focused on protecting ruined lives from being turned into yield.
Let’s start easy: the grocery store pilot. Five city-owned shops in food deserts, isn’t Soviet communism with breadlines. It’s a public response to chronic market failure. These neighborhoods aren’t profitable for grocers, so they get abandoned. It’s not radical to intervene. It’s pragmatic. Like rural post offices or transit lines that run at a loss because the alternative is letting people rot.
The real panic isn’t Bolshevism. It’s capital flight. Rent control and tenant protections disrupt the financial model. When net operating income (NOI) collapses and internal rate of return (IRR) falls apart, investment dries up. The soundbite hysteria isn’t about ideology, it’s about spreadsheets. When a mayor threatens the assumptions behind yield, real estate investment capital seeks greener pastures. (Perhaps literally, in this case.) That’s what this backlash is actually about.
There’s irony in watching those who rightly criticize clumsy analogies about Israel turn around and deploy equally lazy comparisons between democratic socialism and Venezuela. (In simplest terms, Venezuela isn’t a democratic republic in any meaningful sense. That fact pollutes the data for comparison.) It’s the same reflexive oversimplification. The same bad faith.
Yet the capital risk is real. Development will slow. Deals will die. And still, it’s possible to know all that and decide the tradeoff is worth it. To choose people over the portfolio. To pay the pound of flesh.
Criticisms of Mamdani’s statements on Israel remain valid. The clarity and moral urgency that October 7 demanded were not met. That failure cost trust. He condemned the attack, mourned the dead, and called for the hostages’ release, but not with the precision the moment required.
Calling it a “war crime” underplays the truth: it was terrorism. The IDF’s response, however devastating, was not genocide. It was targeted military action against an enemy that embeds itself among civilians. Israel’s moral standards in warfare are not the problem.
And nothing is more grating right now than the surge in strident anti-Israel rhetoric. Hamas celebrates Israeli civilian deaths. Israelis grieve every bullet. That distinction matters. Support for Hamas is idiocy. Mamdani’s rhetoric, to the extent it’s echoed that script, is frustrating and dangerous. But it’s not the whole picture.
He supports LGBTQ rights, which Islamists reject. He has said Jewish New Yorkers deserve safety and freedom from antisemitism. He’s met with Hasidic leaders. He refuses to use “Globalize the Intifada” and has disavowed its violent connotations. When he fumbles, it’s possible he’s not dodging, but trying to stay composed under pressure.
Not everyone who backs Mamdani believes progress is always good or tradition always bad. That’s not the claim. The serious work is about tradeoffs: cost, risk, benefit. Good faith analysis yields different conclusions depending on values and thresholds.
Yes, some of his supporters are naive. But others see the policies clearly and still choose disruption. The attacks on “socialism” aren’t substantive. They’re placeholders for discomfort with redistribution. This race wasn’t about slogans or grocery stores. It wasn’t even about Israel. It was about whether NYC exists for REITs with north of 20% IRR, or for its people north of the Battery. And New Yorkers get to decide without breaking a single law on the books. What could be more American than that, Donald?
The city needs more than real estate investors. It needs fairness. More importantly, it wants fairness. And how we define fairness has an ebb and flow in the American zeitgeist. Mamdani has made some lofty promises and must be held to account. If it fails, he’ll be replaced by the same people who installed him.
The city has spoken.
And one more thing: People talk about rent hikes like they’re just numbers. They’re not. They’re goodbye speeches. It’s sitting your kid down and explaining why they can’t go to school with their friends anymore. It’s shutting the lights off in a shop you built from nothing because some guy in finance wants to squat on the building for upside. It’s telling your mom you’re moving out of state because you can’t afford to live ten blocks away anymore. It’s ripping up the roots of what makes a neighborhood mean something. And for what? A better return for absentee landlords treating buildings like assets instead of homes? Fuck that. FUCK THAT.
And the thing is, you CAN muddle through here. Even when it’s tough. Even with peeling walls and weak heat. Even if the tax base leaves. People stay because of neighbors, cousins, bodegas, stoops. Not because the wallpaper is new. And most of the ones who threaten to leave? They don’t. Because they know what this city is. They know what makes it electric.
It’s us.
I’m cautiously optimistic. Let’s see what happens. And as for the antisemitic part, this is a chance to be as precise and charitable in our interpretations as we want other’s to be with us. a fitting challenge for the אור לגויים, the light unto the nations.
This is all just my opinion. I may be wrong. Can’t wait to find out.