S8 Ep157: Socialism Comes to New York — Cliff May — May critiques New York City Mayor-elect Momdani's socialist-oriented policies, arguing that aggressive rent freeze mechanisms systematically diminish housing stock availability, reduce construction incentives, and

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Socialism Comes to New York — Cliff May — May critiques New York City Mayor-elect Momdani's socialist-oriented policies, arguing that aggressive rent freeze mechanisms systematically diminish housing stock availability, reduce construction incentives, and undermine long-term affordability through supply contraction. May warns that additional socialist initiatives including fare-free public transportation and police defunding drive middle-class residents toward suburban and exurban jurisdictions. May cites Venezuelan economic collapse and continuing socialism failure across multiple jurisdictions as empirical evidence that socialist economic models fundamentally cannot function effectively in complex modern capitalist economies like New York City.
1888 five points

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is CBS, I on the World. I'm John Batson. I welcome my good colleague Cliff May, the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writing his column in the Washington Times about New York City.
0:16.7	Cliff lives in Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, which is challenged enough.
0:21.7	But now he's looking at New York City, a town I lived in for 50 years.
0:25.7	My children are there.
0:27.3	I'm north, and all around me are people who are refugees from Brooklyn Heights and the Upper West Side, caused by the pandemic, not by the most recent election.
0:39.9	But there are doubts everywhere.
0:45.3	People still have property in Manhattan and in Brooklyn and Queens, and they're questioning the leadership of a man who has self-admittedly made remarks that are generally understood
0:52.0	as hate speech.
0:53.9	Cliff, a very good evening to you. I can't get
0:55.7	past the fact that this is a town of a million Jewish persons, a million. You say correctly,
1:03.3	the largest gathering of Jewish persons, Jews outside of Israel in the world, an extremely
1:10.4	happy place until a hate speaker or someone
1:14.7	who's characterizes that by others arrives to become the mayor.
1:19.5	Well, now the mayor elect of Manhattan.
1:21.9	No one is happy, but especially homeowners.
1:25.1	Good evening to you, Cliff.
1:26.7	Good evening to you. And by the way, I'm also
1:28.6	New York City born and bred. So even though I haven't been there for a live there for a while,
1:34.4	and my son lives there, by the way. And therefore, your concern is well. Now, let's take the policy.
1:40.4	The first up that Mr. Mom Downey talked about during the campaign, after the hate speech that he
1:46.5	cannot possibly refute because he said these things, he's indicated these things, he's tolerated
1:52.1	these things, but I'm not exploring that right now. I'm exploring policy. A rent freeze. Cliff,
	...

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