New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposed a $127 billion budget this year. The entire state of Florida — 23 million people spread across 65,758 square miles — proposed $117 billion. One city of 8.5 million residents. One state with nearly triple the population.
Joe Rogan pointed this out on his podcast this week, and his guest Michael Malice responded exactly the way a sane person should.
"No, it's not. Is it really?" Malice said when Rogan dropped the comparison. Then, after Rogan confirmed: "No way!" Then, turning to Rogan's producer: "Holy — is that true, Jamie?"
It was true. Rogan read the numbers live on air. "Eye-popping amount… insider called 'insanity'… a record $127 billion budget proposal," he said, quoting coverage of Mamdani's plan. "The socialist city leader's plan includes a whopping 9.5% proposed property tax hike on New Yorkers, which he claims would be a last resort, while allocating another $1.2 billion for migrants. MIGRANTS!"
Malice asked for Florida's number. When it came back lower, his response was two words that don't need printing here, followed by "Holy crap!"
The per-capita math is where the comparison goes from bad to gruesome. New York City spends roughly $14,800 per resident. Florida spends about $5,100. That's triple per capita, which Rogan noted himself — a city spending three times what a state spends per person, and the state has beaches, highways, a space program launching from Cape Canaveral, and twenty-two million more people to serve.
Malice — a guy who writes books about political philosophy for a living — had no idea.
That's the part worth sitting with. A professional political commentator didn't know. Most New Yorkers don't know. The city government certainly isn't volunteering the comparison. When your budget is bigger than a state that contains Disney World, the Everglades, and the third-largest population in the country, you tend to keep quiet about it.
Mamdani's $1.2 billion migrant line item alone would fund entire city budgets in most of the country. The 9.5% property tax hike he's calling a "last resort" comes on top of a budget that already dwarfs a state three times the city's size. Last resort implies you've tried everything else. A $127 billion spending plan doesn't suggest fiscal exhaustion. It suggests a government that ran out of things to buy and started making up new ones.
Mamdani unveiled his property tax hike proposal with his preliminary budget in February. His first choice was to have Albany raise income and corporate taxes on high earners. If the state said no, his backup plan was a 9.5% property tax increase that would hit homeowners and, through their rent, tenants. He also planned to take about $980 million from the city's rainy day fund.
Even other Democrats choked on it. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. called the 9.5% hike a "nonstarter." The nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission said the mayor was giving New Yorkers a "false choice."
Florida's budget funds a state with 23 million residents. New York City's budget funds a city where the subway still smells like 1987.
$127 billion to $117 billion. One city. One state. Triple the people.