Zohran Mamdanis anti-billionaires declaration is anti-New York City and so many of the things that make it great

Zohran Mamdani thinks a certain class of people should simply not exist.“I don’t think that we should have billionaires, frankly,” the Dem mayoral primary winner told Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.That’s a bold statement from a man vying to become the mayor of New York City and not some quaint hippie commune in the Pacific Northwest.Does he think the city’s billionaires are all hoarding their cash and swimming in their vaults like Scrooge McDuck?How naive is this guy?Wealthy New Yorkers have helped the city retain its spot as a cultural capital with world-class museums, beautiful public spaces and top hospitals, among other things we can all enjoy.But according to the Dem’s eat-the-rich candidate, billionaires can go scratch — all 123 of them who call the Big Apple home, making us the city with the most in the world.(We’ll remind the ultra progressives of that the next time they enthusiastically partake in a “No Kings” march funded by, you guessed it, billionaires.)Perhaps Mamdani the democratic socialist wants to make them extinct by redistributing their money to the poor via taxes, until they become mere millionaires.

But then what happens when millionaires become problematic for having too much?In a world without billionaires, do we cap innovation? Cap earnings and incentives to create great things that change all our lives for the better? What happens when a culture that always thrived on possibility and rewarded ingenuity and grit suddenly says no more? Mamdani is a theater kid whose mother is a film director and father is a college professor — two sectors heavily supported by the endowments of people who have big Bs next to their names.I’m guessing the 33-year-old has visited the Met and the Guggenheim, both supported not on the vibes of art lovers but by the scarole of people with loads of it in the bank.Maybe he’s taken a stroll out on Little Island, a park on the west side of Manhattan that was bankrolled ...