Jamee Moudud on the Intellectual Roots of Zohranomics

What It Covers

Economist Jamee Moudud of Sarah Lawrence College traces the intellectual roots of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's economic agenda, contrasting neoclassical orthodoxy with classical political economy to reframe debates around rent stabilization, progressive taxation, and state intervention in housing markets.

Key Questions Answered

• •Classical vs. Neoclassical Origins: Adam Smith is not the intellectual ancestor of neoclassical economics — that label belongs to late 19th-century thinkers who stripped politics from political economy. Smith's actual work, including his Glasgow University lectures, explicitly acknowledged power imbalances between property owners and workers, making him closer to an institutionalist than a free-market theorist.
• •Market Failure Reframe: Treating pollution and social costs as "market failures" is analytically misleading because they are endemic to all production, not exceptions. The more useful lens is that property rights law determines who bears social costs. Before the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, industry legally externalized far more damage — a political, not market, outcome.
• •Post-War Mathematization: Philip Mirowski's book *Machine Dreams* documents how Cold War defense funding drove economists trained in weapons optimization to model the economy as a machine populated by perfectly rational actors. A 1985 National Science Foundation symposium and subsequent Journal of Economic Literature survey concluded top graduate programs were producing what they called "idiot savants" — technically skilled but unable to engage social reality.
• •Progressive Taxation Historical Precedent: Claims that billionaire taxes or progressive fiscal policy destroy capitalist economies contradict the historical record. The 16th Amendment legalizing federal income tax, combined with high marginal rates through the 1950s and 60s, coincided with what many economists describe as capitalism's golden age — suggesting tax progressivity and economic growth are not inherently incompatible.
• •Targeted Policy Design for Rent Stabilization: Rent caps need not harm smaller landlords if paired with differentiated fiscal tools. Moudud proposes that large real estate corporations with strong cash flow absorb cost increases, while smaller landlords with constrained margins receive tax credits or public subsidies to cover maintenance — a structure that addresses the supply-side critique without abandoning affordability goals.