A lot has been written and said in the media and elsewhere about New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani since his surprise win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary earlier this month. Pundits, mostly on the right, are flabbergasted that Democrats in the city have allowed themselves to be seduced by someone who advocates ultra-liberal policies instead of the modesty that they say the current political environment calls for. Most troubling, in the view of commentators, are Mamdani’s proposals for free public transportation, city-run grocery stores, and a freeze on rents in the city’s rent-stabilized apartments.

Although Mamdani is a self-professed democratic socialist, I am not entirely sure what to make of some of the things critics have said about his proposals. I am well aware of the tendency of partisans to make other people’s statements sound a lot worse than they actually are, usually by withholding contextual information. Because I am not a resident of New York City, I didn’t follow the primary election closely and therefore do not know much of the details of Mamdani’s propositions. I have only seen a short video clip from one of his speeches. In it, he talked about the housing crisis in New York City, and the fact that large numbers of the city’s workers cannot afford to live there. Although there was nothing controversial in that excerpt, it is quite possible that other contents of his full speech on that occasion were contentious for some people.

Because I have experienced socialism directly and wasn’t too impressed by it, I am generally not a fan of the kinds of policies that Mamdani advocates—if indeed what his detractors say are true. Whatever the case is, the one thing I am sure of is that it is ill-advised for so many people to see him only as a “left-wing radical” and someone not worth paying attention to. What I have observed these past few weeks with the discussions around Mamdani is a repeat of a bad movie we have seen before.

During the last three decades or so, our fellow citizens in Middle America tried to call the nation’s attention to the disruptive impacts that globalization was having on their lives. Over that period, the factories that employed many of them and were the foundations of local economies were relocated to other countries where labor costs were considerably lower. That exodus left entire communities decimated. Poverty levels rose sharply.

We all know now that not nearly enough attention was paid to the concerns of Middle America. Political leaders and elites kept talking about the benefits of free trade, of which there are many. The problem was that the gains accruing from free trade were not equitably shared. Some people became enormously wealthy, while many others were impoverished. The resulting increase in economic inequality created the deep resentment that is a leading cause of our current poisonous political atmosphere. Populists tapped into that anger and have succeeded in pitting Americans against each other.

The Mamdani voters should be viewed as another version of Middle America. As I understand it, they are young and mostly from middle class backgrounds. Many of them happen to be recent college graduates who are struggling to find their footing in the real world. Casually dismissing their concerns and characterizing them as naïve is extremely unwise.

Today’s young people face a long list of worries. Rapidly rising college tuition means they are carrying large student loan debts into an economy in which jobs, if they can find them, are becoming increasingly unstable. Technology companies that have traditionally employed large numbers of college graduates are now laying employees off by the thousands and replacing them with artificial intelligence systems that can perform human functions. Several corporate leaders have said in recent weeks that they expect this trend to accelerate in the coming years. More and more, high school seniors are going to be entering college not knowing whether the skills they learn there, regardless of what they major in, will be obsolete by the time they complete their degree programs.

The housing affordability crisis that Mamdani talked about in that short video clip is a huge issue that demands urgent national attention. Most likely, those of us who have owned homes for a couple of decades or more took out mortgages when interest rates were ultra-low and houses were not as expensive as they are now. For that reason, we perhaps don’t quite appreciate what today’s young people are facing when they go looking for accommodation. It often takes personal encounter with a problem to fully understand the magnitude of it.

My son graduated from college last year and has been a renter in the city where he lives and works. His first lease is ending soon so he is searching for a new apartment. I was shocked when I learned about the rents that landlords are charging for the apartments and houses that he has looked at. He is not in New York City, San Francisco or Boston, cities known for their insane housing prices. Through his experience, I now know that regardless of where in the country young people find themselves nowadays, they face impossibly difficult choices.

The truth is that there are substantial numbers of young people today who, after paying their rents and student loans each month, will have little to nothing left over from their paychecks for their other basic needs. That is if they have jobs to begin with. Therefore, some youngsters are either having to move back in with their parents, or depend on them for financial assistance to make ends meet. Unfortunately, not everyone is lucky to have those options available to them. In some cases, the parents may be struggling financially themselves.

This recent Wall Street Journal article nicely highlighted the housing problem. A young Republican activist is quoted as saying that ‘the administration must “improve the material conditions of the younger voters” by building 10 million homes—a “Marshall Plan-type thing.”’ The article’s author pointed to high interest rates as a major contributor to the housing crisis. He cited data showing that nationally, average monthly mortgage payments on median-priced houses rose sharply from $1,445 in 2021 to $2,570 in 2024. That is a nearly 80 percent increase over that three-year period. No wonder rent prices are so high everywhere. Landlords are forced to pass on those cost increases.

Because of our deep polarization, nowadays, we hardly ever stop to listen to what others are saying. People’s concerns are routinely classified as “whining” and quickly dismissed. We know where that got us when we failed to properly heed what Middle America was telling us. Honking drivers can be annoying, but in some cases the “nuisance” is to our benefit. They may be telling us, for example, that we are driving on a flat tire or going the wrong way (something I have done many times).

The lawmakers and political leaders we hire and pay to craft policies to deal with the myriad socio-economic problems facing our nation should be doing some hard thinking now because the world our young people are dealing with today is, frankly, quite frightening. What we don’t need is the flippancy that some of these policymakers and political commentators have been displaying. Whatever we think about Zohran Mamdani, he is saying things that we better pay attention to.