By Craig J. Cantoni

Written by Craig J. Cantoni

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Much of the political divide in America can be explained by where people live

The president of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Reihan Salam, had an interesting op-ed in the July 24th Wall Street Journal. Titled, “Downwardly Mobile Elites Love Zohran Mamdani,” it explained why younger generations, especially millennials, are attracted to the socialism of the Democrat mayoral candidate in New York. Excerpts:

“Drawing on decades of IRS data, researchers at Opportunity Insights, an economic policy institute, found that among Americans born in 1940, 92% earned more than their parents at age 30. For those born in 1984, only 50% did. And that decline has political consequences.

Researchers at the Social Economics Lab have found a strong correlation between perceiving yourself to be less well-off than your parents and zero-sum thinking, or the belief that gains for some people come at the expense of others. Moreover, roughly 40% of the nation’s 72 million millennials—people born between 1981 and 1996—live in high-cost, hyper-competitive metropolitan areas, where milestones such as owning a home or paying off student loan debt can loom as distant dreams.”

Let’s call it the Richard Florida curse.

Richard Florida is the urban planning guru who convinced cities across the land to redevelop their downtowns into walkable havens for college-educated “knowledge workers.” You know, the ones who go everywhere with a seven-dollar coffee in hand, like an infant with a pacifier. In the evening, they put the coffee aside and go into a hip bar to drink fifteen-dollar craft cocktails and ponder why they don’t have any savings.   

Some of the knowledge workers had challenging majors in college, while others are like Mamdani, who majored in African studies. What they have in common is a problem of supply and demand. The supply of candidates with their skillsets, attitudes and expectations exceeds the demand in their local job market.

They have three choices: one, change their skillsets, attitudes and expectations to what is in demand; two, move to a job market where the demand exceeds the supply; or three, don’t change, stay put, and expect Mamdani’s socialism to save them. 

The ardent feminists in Mamdani’s fan club wear stretch clothes that, similar to a topographic map, reveal every crevasse, mountain, valley, desert, and wetland. And the totally effeminate men in the club wear skinny pants and have the trendy unwashed and un-groomed look, replete with scruffy beards and unruly, greasy hair.

They see themselves as professionals but don’t have enough self-awareness to know how hiring managers see them.

Their urban paradises are walkable only in the sense that expensive bars, restaurants and boutiques are within walking distance—all selling the same overpriced and pretentious fare and goods that can be found in every hip downtown.  

Most of the paradises are not walkable in the sense of getting exercise, because the congestion, traffic and stop lights make it difficult to sustain a brisk pace, and because sketchy neighborhoods full of predators are usually a short distance from the gentrified downtown.  

That explains why many of the expensive high-rise apartments preferred by the crybabies have a private fitness center. Naturally, the buildings also have a coffee bar and a common office space, where the residents can pretend to be working, with their Apples in hand and buds in ears while they suck on their pacifiers.

Secular and single, they’re not into religion or kids; but they do subscribe to religious-like commandments, chief among them is to value diversity and to never be judgmental, with the exception of being judgmental about the bourgeoisie, MAGA, white people, stay-at-home moms, Mormons, cops, Israel, the United States, oil companies, guns, Walmart, capitalism, and their parents, especially if their parents are in the middle-class or higher.

They’re certainly not judgmental about deranged street people, criminals, and graffiti “artists” who degrade the quality of life in cities. After all, the so-called disadvantaged are victims of an unjust system, are not responsible for their choices, and are acting out against the Man. Curiously, though, security guards and doormen keep the underclass from entering the lobbies of the high-rise abodes of the crybabies.

One wonders why the Mamdani fans don’t move to a less expensive locale where they can afford to buy a starter home and begin to build equity. Reihan Salam of the Manhattan Institute has an answer:

“Since people tend to compare themselves to members of their own social milieu, it should hardly come as a surprise that graduates of selective colleges living in eye-wateringly expensive urban neighborhoods resent the fact that they can’t afford a home of their own. All but the richest millennials find themselves priced out of fashionable enclaves in Berkeley, Calif., and Brooklyn, in part thanks to stringent land-use regulation and other anti-development measures. One could always move to a lower-cost, less-competitive city, where a middle-class life is more readily achievable, but to many urban millennials, doing so would be tantamount to admitting defeat.”

They could move to my adopted hometown of Tucson, but they’d probably end up living in the hip downtown instead of an outlying un-hip neighborhood, such as the one where my millennial son lives with his lovely wife and two adorable children. By living frugally, having marketable degrees, and being willing to shovel s**t at work, metaphorically speaking, without complaining, they have a modest home in a family neighborhood, with a mortgage that will be paid off in several years.

It would’ve been a different story if they had chosen to remain single and rent a place downtown. You see, even the Old Pueblo has bought into Richard Florida’s nostrums. Tucson has redeveloped and gentrified its downtown, which is next door to the University of Arizona and a hipster area.

Thankfully, they chose to be suburban bourgeoisie instead of downtown Bolsheviks.

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