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The NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani has pointed out the wide income and wealth gap and suggested that no one needs more than one billion dollars per year. While his complaint about inequality is valid his solution is not the panacea that he portrays. In NYC there are 123 billionaires with a total worth of $759 billion. If you took all of that money and gave it equally to the 8.25 million residents of NYC, they would each get $82,300. Understand this is not just their income it is their total worth. Then want would you do next year. Everyone is aware of the wealth gap but the fact is there are always too few rich and too many poor to just evenly divvy up the cash. This kind of talk while not effectively solving the problem sounds great on the campaign stump speech. The math doesn’t work out but it gives the impression that something is being done to help the poor at the expense of the rich. Mamdani has offered many benefits and when asked how he would pay for them, his pat answer is tax the rich. This is the standard approach when pushing socialism. It has been tried many times but always fell short of the promises. Like Margaret Thatcher said, socialism works well until you run out of the other guy’s money. Or more clearly as stated in Orwell’s book Animal Farm when he says, everyone is equal but some are more equal. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.