Capitalism Delivers for Zohran Mamdani

His budget-balancing cuts to pension payments are made possible by strong stock-market returns

By Austin Berg. Excerpts:

"the single largest line item in his deficit-reduction plan: cutting the city’s payment to its pension funds by $2.3 billion over the next two years."

"The justification for changing this payment schedule is that New York City pension-fund investments have been booming"

"Investments held by New York City’s five pension systems have exceeded expectations for 10 years running, earning 10% returns last year and 7.7% over the past decade, compared with a 7% benchmark."

"What could have produced a boom of that scale? Not socialism."

"continued outperformance of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ stocks" (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla)

"Democratic socialists decry the evils of capitalism, yet they depend on strong economic growth as a magic beanstalk to pay down legacy debt"