Posted by Tyler Durden:  Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

You can argue about the economics of Mamdani’s policies, but politically, the sales pitch isn’t difficult to understand. And the response from people who believe in markets cannot simply be to call these voters communists and lecture them about economics.

Instead, they have to answer a much more uncomfortable question. Why does the supposedly capitalist system increasingly seem to work spectacularly well for people who already own assets while becoming progressively harder for people trying to acquire them?

That is the question Mamdani is trying to present himself as answering. And most of us know he’s giving people the wrong answer. But that doesn’t make the question disappear.

In fact, there is something deeply ironic about responding to the consequences of years of economic intervention with demands for even more economic intervention…and then when your bullshit plans fail to make economic or basic common sense, turning to real entrepreneurs and business leaders for help.

We risk trying to cure distortions created partly by government policy with another layer of government policy, and then wondering why the distortions keep multiplying.

Eventually somebody has to address the disease rather than the symptoms. That means taking seriously what persistent inflation does to people who own few assets. It means acknowledging the distributional consequences of monetary policy. It means recognizing that rising asset prices aren’t synonymous with widespread prosperity. And it means understanding that “inflation is falling” is cold comfort to someone whose cost of living already jumped 20%, 30% or more.

If capitalism’s defenders want fewer socialists, they might start by making capitalism look like it works for people who don’t already own everything.