Economics and economies determine the fate of kingdoms, empires, nations, states and cities. It's a very serious subject and we don't need Mamdani to remind us of that!
The American Revolution of 1776 was driven by the winds of "no taxation without representation" with the original Thirteen Colonies of the early United States rebelling against the predatory colonial British overlords, overthrowing the rule of English King George III (1738-1820) who eventually went mad.
The French Revolution of 1789 was an uprising by the impoverished and starving French peasants known as the Third Estate against the over-the-top extravagances of the French nobility, clergy and monarchy typified by Queen Marie Antoinette exclaiming "let them eat cake" when told that the peasants had no bread to eat. Eventually the French King Louis XVI (1754-1793) and his wife Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) were beheaded at the guillotine by the French mobs.
The 1917 Russian Revolution by the Bolsheviks was fostered by the hopeless situation of the overworked Russian serfs who were basically slaves of the upper-class Russian landowning classes. The Czar of Russia Nicholas Romanov (1868-1918) and his wife the Czarina Alexandra (1872-1918) were eventually shot and executed by the Bolshevik revolutionaries.
The 1929 American stock market crash brought on the Great Depression that continued until the outbreak of the Second World War.
The collapse of the German economy after the First World War resulted in the rise of Nazism.
China's vast corrupt imperial system collapsed in the twentieth century, paving the way for the eventual 1949 Communist Revolution and conquest and takeover of China by Mao Tse Tung and his hordes of Russian-backed Communists.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) lived and wrote in the context of early industrialized Western Europe. His most famous work is "Das Kapital", full title in English: "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy" all about the evils and downfall of Capitalism.This, however, did not happen in the Western World. He did not foresee the unexpected successes of his Marxist and Communist revolutionary ideologies taking place in Eastern Europe, in agrarian Russia, and in the Far East, in feudal China.
What did happen in the Western World, in Western Europe and in the United States in particular, was the spread of moderate socialism and the establishment of the so-called Welfare State, sometimes derisively called the "Nanny State" where the government/s provide/s various types of financial, economic even monetary assistance to its citizens, helping them cope with life's challenges and difficulties. This is done to prevent the masses of citizens turning to revolutions to overthrow those states.
This approach worked but sometimes it was taken too far.
A country where the application of the idea that the state take extraordinary financial, economic and monetary care of its citizens became known as a Welfare State, such as in the United States where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) introduced what became known as the New Deal. The Emergency Banking Act provided help to bankrupt banks and hence to their customers, and the Social Security Act helped citizens earn savings for retirement, provided help for people with disabilities and help with unemployment.
In the 1960s US President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) introduced his "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" and the creation of Medicare and Medicaid to provide free medical insurance to elderly and lower class Americans. In addition he ensured and fostered voting rights for marginalized black citizens through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This put a stop to the demands of mostly black revolutionaries who were rioting in American cities and chanting "burn baby burn!"
Parenthetically, Israel was s socialist state at its inception and a prime example of a comprehensive welfare state, but evolved to a combined capitalist state with welfare aspects . Like in all welfare states the government programs are ultimately paid for by the heavy taxation of the hard working entrepreneurial and capitalistic profit-oriented revenue-producing citizens.
In America, since the times of President Roosevelt and President Johnson, other presidents, states and localities have added to and increased various welfare state benefits, oftentimes with the rise of taxation of higher income people, businesses and corporations. Thus America is the greatest Capitalist country in the world and at the same time is also the largest welfare state in the world. America's booming economy, its great wealth, huge national budget and the REASONABLE and MODERATE taxation policies allow for a parallel welfare state to be funded and exist.
In effect this has created a de facto and de jure balance between pure Capitalism on the one hand and Socialism on the other hand, a rather delicate and easily misunderstood national balancing act. Pull too far in the direction of raw individualism, unfettered Capitalism and greedy profiteering, and the masses are soon aroused to anger and revolution. Pull too far in the direction of Socialism, profit sharing and annexation of wealth from those who produce it, with high taxation and unchecked spending on free government programs and the welfare state, and one gets into Communist and totalitarian territory
No nation can be purely Capitalist without elements of Socialism incorporated into it, as the Western World has become. Similarly, no nation can be purely Marxist-Socialist-Communist-Totalitarian-(Dictatorship) without it eventually failing, as happened to both the former USSR and the People's Republic of China. Both the USSR and the PRC impoverished and bankrupted themselves with military overspending and an inability to rouse their own people to become productive producers of anything besides fostering revolutions in the Third world and stoking wars in the MIddle East. The USSR collapsed and broke up, and its member states turned to the Western World Capitalist models. Likewise, the PRC has become a de facto industrial giant working along Capitalist lines and means of production.
So suffice it to say that lower income and even middle income Americans are the beneficiaries of the cornucopia of a very rich country that has money to spare for its poorer citizens and delivers it through various social welfare programs. There are so many overwhelming welfare state benefits in America, from free education for all in tens of thousands of public schools, free medical insurance via free Medicaid insurance for hundreds of millions of Americans, Medicare medical insurance for the elderly and disabled, retirement and disability benefits via Social Security, welfare payments to the really poor especially for the millions of unmarried black mothers, subsidized housing with next to nothing rents, and even free housing via "Section Eight" benefits, food subsidies with Food Stamps, other benefits for children and infants, free libraries. Add to this subsidization of transportation, highways and roads, various tax abatements, exemptions, refunds and other programs that could fill very big books with all their details.
These benefits come from the United States' federal, state, city and local governments and are encoded in laws passed by the US Congress, state legislatures, city and local authorities. They are constantly enhanced and expanded. Suffice it to say that there are no "starving Armenians" in America, a land where no one dies of hunger and food is plentiful and basically cheap.
In comes NYC mayor-elect Zohran Kwame Mamdani (born 1991 in Kampala, Uganda) who keeps on bleating that there is a "cost of living" and "affordability" crisis in New York City making it sound like we are on the verge of the French, Russian and American revolutions combined. It is as if America has never heard of the greatest welfare state on Earth which it has become.
Mamdani is the master of making exaggerations sound rational and normal and in effect creating the big lie that New York City is on the verge of some sort of economic disaster unless he is allowed to tax the richer white neighborhoods of the city, introduce free busing, give away free groceries, free universal "childcare", and housing for hundreds of thousands of the poor. Yes, at one time, he did say defund the police.
His battle cry is "affordability!" and "cost of living!"- just hollow slogans. This is all part of his fuzzy-wuzzy Democratic Socialist propaganda agenda that is really pushing the already available social programs of the welfare state over the edge into becoming a de facto Communist one where citizens are given everything free by the state, in this case the city. No doubt the dreams of the Democratic Socialists is to go national and then global, creating the "Socialist People's Republic of America" or in his case given his devotion to Islamization, a hoped-for "Islamic People's Republic of America"!
Think about it, all the people of the world would love to come to America. With all its warts, it's still the "go to" country for the world. America has to install tough border restrictions to keep out the tens of millions of people from Latin America coming across the borders and the hundreds of millions of people from around the world clamoring to get on planes to take them to the USA. Many do get through and land up in America's cities, like NYC, and in its countryside where there are plenty of low paying jobs to be had.
Comes Mamdani and speaks for many of these people who are in New York City and in many of America's other cities, making it sound as if these newcomers are refugees in their own new home country, as they were in Syria or Iraq today.
The lower, poorer, working classes that Mamdani speaks for so passionately, those that he says "live in poverty," get so many free programs, thata his claims are patently false. There is free education for all children, no questions asked, free health care and OBGYN and newborn care at any American hospital as they show up in any emergency room, free food programs, easy entry to Green Cards that gets them Resident Alien status and direct access to all benefits any regular long time citizens get. Add easy access to driver's licenses from Motor Vehicles Bureaus all across America, free lunches for kids in schools, free police protection, free garbage pickup, free well-maintained roads, parks, meals to go at churches and soup kitchens, and much, much more!
Bottom line, to say the least, nobody starves in America!
In short, modern day America is not France on the eve of the French Revolution with starving peasants roaming the streets, with uncaring monarchs and selfish nobles ignoring them. Modern America is not Russia and China on the eve of their Communist revolutions. Mamdani is both a liar and a twister of reality playing with people's heads and gaslighting the lower classes into thinking that they must get everything handed to them on a golden platter, and that the way to go is to tax the rich and corporations who happen to be made up of mostly white people.
Add this to Mamdani's chutzpahdik devotion to Islam and his visceral hatred of Israel. He accused Israel of non-existent "genocide" while standing next to Trump in the Oval Office during his recent visit there. When asked about the screaming bedlam by anti-Israel pro-Islamist rioters outside of the Park East Synagogue, he said that the synagogue should not be hosting events that "go against international law," a false statement referring to a pro-Aliyah meeting that was taking place at the Shul - totally out of line and another distortion and lie.
The only violations taking place are by Mamdani himself as he tramples on Jewish life and Jews' devotion to Israel.
This is what we can expect from the liar who spins his socialist Utopia pipe dream and hangs it like a carrot in front of the increasingly Islamized and Arab masses that have made New York City their new home. These newcomers are all benefiting from the amazing Welfare State based in New York City and are living the life of luxury that they did not have in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, yet Mamdani has the audacity to claim they need more benefits, more "affordability" a lower "cost of living." The way to go about, in his book, it is to tax and soak the the rich, impose onerous taxes on the corporations and to try to milk the federal government as he cozies up to Trump in the White House.
Just consider this: He was born in 1991 in Kampala, Uganda to Indian-born parents, his father is Muslim his mother is Hindu, his family is wealthy thanks to American capitalism, and now in 2025 he is only 34 years old. He only became a US citizen in 2018 and he can't believe his luck and the crazy stupidity of America and its porous immigration and political systems. "Poof"- with a little help from some political sleight of hand legerdemain, smoke and mirrors, playing to the proletariat peanut gallery, pulling an Islamic rabbit out of a magician's hat - and presto, he gets to be mayor of America's largest and most important city, just like that.
Could this story remotely happen in any country on Earth, could a 34-year-old inexperienced American-born candidate become the mayor of its most important city or of its financial capital? Could this occur in Mamdani's native Uganda or in his parents native India or in his supporters' Arab dictatorships or in any African, Asian, Latin American or even European country?
Only in America can an immature, inexperienced, smooth talking, wet behind the ears, upstart, antisemitic, anti-Israel, Islamist, Socialist/Communist new immigrant's dream come true!
Stay tuned because we live in very strange times!
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. From 2017-2024 he was a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy.
Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at izakrudomin@gmail.com