Economically and the new left

The election of Zohran Mamdani as a Democratic candidate for New York mayor has conventional democrats unfolding and most of the rest of the world are very concerned.

Mamdani is called “Socialist”. He has spoken that we could be better without private property, it is desirable for the government to hold all the housing and that we should probably nationalize the “means of production”.

Given the devastating experience with these ideas in the 20th century in Russia, China, North Korea and Cuba, how could one at 21^F Is their century seriously examined?

Here is a background.

There are almost no Marxists in the world today who have a basic understanding of mainstream finances. It is not only that they have not bothered to dominate discipline. It’s worse. They do not believe in economic theory at all. With a few exceptions, they see mainstream financially more than an apology for capitalism.

It wasn’t always like that. Marx himself was a strict student – who was strongly influenced by such classical economists as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. At the beginning of the 20s^th Century, many economists have seen socialism as an operating system of economy. In 1929, Fred TaylorIn the presidential management of the US Economic Union, it has set the conditions under which a socialist economy could theoretically achieve an effective distribution of resources. These ideas were supported by such economists as Abba Lerner and Oscar Langeamong others.

For the first half of 20^th Century, economists rejected the Marxist view of the world. But many of them regarded socialism as a system that could really work.

As the century continued, we began to take examples of socialism in practice. These were systems governed by dictators who were very busy maintaining power, killing their enemies to be disturbed by the achievement of “effective allocation of resources”.

According to the best estimates, the Nazi government killed Close to 21 million citizens. About 70 million citizens were killed in the USSR, mainly by Stalin. And 35 million Chinese were killed, mainly by Mao TSE-Tung.

Rj rummel Estimates that nearly 170 million people were killed by their own governments at 20^th century. The overwhelming majority of all these deaths were the crimes of the socialist governments.

How did the economies of these systems work (when people were not killed or starving to death)?

In Marx’s view of capitalism, the capitalists occupied a surplus value created by the workers. The capitalists then lived in luxury, while the workers lived at the level of survival. Ironically, this was exactly what happened in socialist systems, except that they were not the capitalists who lived in luxury. Were the socialist rulers.

This model of rulers living in luxury, while the population as a whole lives in poverty and the rule is maintained by threats of torture and death has been repeated in this century under socialist regimes in North Korea, Cuba and more recently in Venezuela.

In the meantime, people on the left have long lost interest in effectively distributing resources or any other idea that will force them to dominate basic economic concepts.

Poll on the people who watched the latest Democratic National Convention and you will probably find that most of them believe that if a price is too high, the government should push it down and nothing bad will happen. Similarly, they believe that if a price is too low, the government should push it and nothing bad will happen.

After all, if you think the reason for high prices or low wages is greed, when the government pushes behind the only thing it will suffer is greed itself.

In a different way, the modern left does not believe that market prices serve any socially useful function.

As for Mamdani, he has argued special reforms That every freshman who gets Econ 101 should be able to see through a jiff. Among them: rent control, doubling of the minimum wage at $ 30 an hour and grocery stores.

THE Economist Paul KrugmanA well -known liberal, he noted that economists are almost unanimously believing that one of Mamdani’s main proposals, rental control, reduces housing opportunities and leads to deterioration of home quality. (See his own handbook on the subject.)

Krugman’s manual is also good enough to explain why the laws of minimum wages are destroying employment opportunities. While some economists believe that small increases in the minimum wage may not be so harmful, almost no economist believes that large increases will not cause unemployment.

In what seems to be the greatest increase in history, California recently increased its minimum wage from $ 15 to $ 20. The result: loss 18,000 fast food tasks.

And you don’t have to take a lesson in finances to know that the idea that the government can run a grocery store more effectively than the private sector is self -evidently stupid.

The real puzzle is not the reason why there are candidates who adopt stupid ideas. The real puzzle is: Why are economists not more vocal in condemning ideas that defy what all economists know?

After the New York Primary, Paul Krugman He wrote: “I was very shouted by Mamdani’s victory.”

Go shape.