The Hypocrisy of Freebie Politics

You ever notice how the loudest voices screaming about “affordability” are usually the ones sitting pretty with no real worries? Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC — and now their shiny new protégé, Zohran Mamdani. He’s 33 years old, barely cut his teeth in politics, but he’s already the progressive darling promising free buses, frozen rents, government grocery stores, and a $30 minimum wage.

And who’s standing behind him, clapping like seals? The same politicians who helped build the very system that made life unaffordable in the first place.

That’s the part that drives me nuts. They want you to believe they’re on your side, but the truth is, they’re selling the same tired pitch: make the rich pay more, hand out a few new programs, and somehow everything will get better. Meanwhile, they never mention the elephant in the room — how much of our society is already living on subsidies, generation after generation, locked into dependence. The middle class foots the bill, the wealthy dodge it with loopholes, and the political class just cashes in on both ends.

---

Freebies Without Accountability

Let’s be honest: New York and most of the country is already drowning in subsidies. SNAP, Section 8, Medicaid, WIC — billions of dollars every single year to keep people afloat. And yet the cycle never ends. Instead of asking why the cycle continues, politicians like Mamdani pile on with promises of more.

Free housing. Free buses. Free food. Free everything.

Sounds good if you’re 25 and drowning in student loans. But here’s the question nobody answers: who’s paying for it? You think Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders are losing sleep over rising grocery bills or credit card debt? You think AOC is worrying about whether she can qualify for a mortgage? No. It’s the working class — the people who don’t qualify for subsidies and don’t have the loopholes of the rich — that end up carrying the burden.

---

The Missing Piece: Accountability

This is what none of them want to touch. You don’t fix a broken system by throwing freebies at it. You fix it by making accountability part of the deal.

Where’s the push for real education reform? For trade schools that actually prepare young people for jobs that pay? Where are the incentives that get people working instead of sitting on subsidies for life?

And let’s be blunt — where’s the conversation about family responsibility? We all know what happens when kids grow up without fathers, without role models, without stability. The absence of the family unit is one of the biggest drivers of poverty and crime in this country, but no politician wants to touch it. Too controversial. Too real. Easier to talk about “free rent” than to talk about rebuilding families.

---

Housing Hypocrisy: Wall Street Buys the American Dream

Here’s another piece they won’t touch. Congress sat back and allowed Wall Street to cannibalize the housing market. BlackRock, Vanguard, and other massive investment firms have been buying up single-family homes like Monopoly pieces, turning neighborhoods into rental portfolios.

And what happens to the average working-class family? They can’t compete with billion-dollar bids. The so-called “affordability crisis” isn’t just about supply. It’s about politicians letting corporations eat the supply.

So when Mamdani stands up and promises “affordable housing,” forgive me if I don’t buy it. Because the real solution would mean going after Wall Street, and no politician in his corner has the guts to do that.

---

San Francisco & Portland: America’s Warning Labels

If you want a preview of what this “free everything” future looks like, just look west. San Francisco and Portland have spent billions trying to solve homelessness, crime, and affordability. Both cities leaned hard into progressive freebies — and both cities are collapsing under the weight of their own compassion.

What do we see? Streets lined with tents. Open-air drug markets. Homelessness worse than ever. Businesses fleeing downtown. Crime through the roof. Families moving out in droves.

And Mamdani’s bright idea? Government-run food stores. As if a city bureaucracy running your grocery bill is going to fix inflation. San Francisco tried that kind of top-down “solution” thinking, and it ended up chasing businesses out of town and destroying neighborhoods. Do we really want to import that model to New York?

---

Lawlessness on Display

And while we’re talking about San Francisco, let’s not forget the insanity of Prop 47 — the law that basically legalized shoplifting under $950. The result? Exactly what you’d expect. People waltzing into Walgreens, CVS, Target with garbage bags, filling them up, and walking right out the front door. It’s all on video.

And the fallout? Stores closing. Jobs gone. Communities left without basic services. Not because people didn’t need them, but because crime made it impossible to operate.

That’s what happens when you combine freebies with zero accountability. Entitlement takes over. Lawlessness becomes normal. And the people who suffer most aren’t the politicians in their cushy neighborhoods — it’s the everyday workers and families who get left behind.

---

Progressive Hypocrisy, Front and Center

Elizabeth Warren isn’t worried about the price of groceries. Bernie Sanders isn’t sweating over rent. AOC isn’t losing sleep about whether her credit score will block her from buying a house. These politicians are sitting very pretty. They don’t live with the struggles of poor and working-class people — yet they parade around as if they’re carrying that weight.

And that’s the masquerade. It’s hypocrisy. They know the truth behind it all, but they won’t touch the real issues. Instead, they keep recycling the same playbook: blame the billionaires, promise new freebies, and tax one slice of society that’s already contributing more to the tax base than anyone else.

Do tax loopholes need to be tightened? Absolutely. That’s a fight worth having in Congress. But don’t scapegoat the entire group of people who are working, producing, and carrying the load for the rest of the country. Not when you’ve got an enormous portion of Americans living off subsidies.

This is what they don’t say out loud: it’s easier to go after the people working and paying than it is to confront the hard truth about a system that allows entire generations to live without ever stepping up.

---

The Hard Truth

Affordable housing? Affordable food? Of course those are good goals. Nobody is saying otherwise. But pretending you can solve them with freebies is a fantasy.

The real solutions aren’t easy, and they aren’t popular:
- Build more housing by fixing zoning and cutting red tape.
- Ban or cap hedge fund ownership of single-family homes.
- Reform the credit scoring system so it reflects reality, not Wall Street lobbying.
- Enforce laws — stop normalizing theft.
- Strengthen education, trades, and families so subsidies aren’t permanent.

That’s the conversation America needs. But it’s not the conversation Warren, Sanders, AOC, or Mamdani are interested in having. Because giveaways buy votes. Accountability doesn’t.

---

Conclusion

We don’t need another politician selling us a fairy tale about “free everything.” We don’t need a city government running food stores like it’s the Soviet Union. And we sure as hell don’t need more slogans while the middle class collapses under the weight of taxes, crime, and a broken system.

What we need is leadership willing to tell the hard truth: freebies without accountability destroy cities. We’ve seen it in San Francisco. We’ve seen it in Portland. And unless New Yorkers wake up, we’re going to see it there too.