Socialists have a peculiar relationship with mathematics. Much like protectionists think that arithmetic is for globalists, socialists think that adding up the costs of a program is a form of capitalistic oppression. Costs are somehow lower than expected, savings are larger than advertised, and somehow someone is expected to pick up the tab.
And this is where New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani comes into play. On his campaign trail, he made a campaign promise for universal childcare at a price tag of $6 billion. It turns out that his math was off and that it will cost about 50 percent more. According to a recent study from The New School's Center for New York City Affairs, it will cost anywhere from $8.7 billion to $9.3 billion. This is not about a single headline. It is the idea that making things "free" comes at a high price tag.
Calling something "free" is one of the oldest tricks in politics. The word focuses attention on the person receiving the benefit while hiding the costs somewhere else. Universal childcare requires caregivers, facilities, equipment, and administration. Guess what? All of that costs money.
Plus, when government sets the price of the service at zero, demand rises because consumers no longer face the normal costs of their choices. That means the government must fund a larger system than anticipated. Economics has a habit of ruining politically attractive slogans by introducing something called arithmetic.
If this were just about a single overly optimistic estimate, that would be one thing. But Mamdani's childcare proposal fits the broader pattern of government programs that sound affordable until someone has to calculate the costs and pay the bills.
Consider his other proposals. His rent freeze assumes that the government can make housing more affordable by restricting prices, while ignoring the incentives those prices create for landlords, maintenance, and future housing supply. His government grocery store proposal assumes that City Hall can enter a competitive market and somehow deliver better outcomes at a 30 percent discount. His free bus proposal fell through because he forgot that buses still require drivers, maintenance, and fuel, all of which cost money.
Each proposal involves a different policy mechanism, but none of it can avoid the reality that resources are limited. Building still need maintenance, workers still need wages, and services still require resources. Costs do not vanish simply because a politician invokes the word "free."
The appeal of socialism has been its promise to remove difficult choices. If only government were ambitious enough, everyone could have what they want while nobody would have to sacrifice. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way. Every society faces tradeoffs. Pretending otherwise only ensures that those tradeoffs appear later and do so in much more painful forms.
The best ideas survive scrutiny because they account for costs and benefits, not because they assume those pesky costs disappear. Campaign promises don't need to balance the books, but someone eventually has to pay a price for those who decide to implement them.
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