Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, editor of City Journal. And joining me is a regular

guest on the podcast, Stephen Ide. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing

editor of City Journal. Steve specializes in social policy issues, including homelessness and mental

illness. He was a 24-25 public scholar at the City College of New York's Moynihan Center,

and he's the author of Homelessness in America, the history and tragedy of an intractable

social problem. Today, he's joining us to discuss his recent article from City Journal's

Autumn issue, Scandinavia on the Hudson, which takes a look at New York's ongoing experiments with social democratic policies. So Steve, thanks for coming on 10 blocks.

Glad to be here, Brian. Thanks for asking me. You know, there's a lot of talk, obviously, about socialism and New York politics these days with the rise of

democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani and the growing influence of the Democratic

Socialist Party generally. Your essay argues that New York though is already far

more social democratic than some of its leftist politicians like to admit. Yet

despite massive spending on housing, education, and

welfare, outcomes of these policies often remain poor. Why do these programs so often fail to

deliver effective results? Are there structural differences, economic, cultural, or political,

that make, you know, what you could call the Scandinavian model hard to replicate in the U.S.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, in a sense, my essay is just one long-winded way to ask that very question.

As you know, I work on homelessness, and I've had often people ask me, you know, why do European cities look so much more orderly than American

cities? And I've pondered what the most effective response to that question would be. And at a certain

point, it occurred to me that, well, you know, one reason why Americans just don't seem so persuaded

that if we just expanded the welfare state much more generously,

a la Europe, we would look just like Europe, is we've had these little experiments such as New York City,

where we've done something like that, you know, and conditions don't seem to be so much more orderly.

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