Socialists Must Have Goldfish-Like Memories

By Travis Korson
Tuesday, 02 December 2025

It seems socialists can’t seem to remember the failures of past economic interventions. Every few years, they dust off old ideas, repackage them in fresh language, and push for policies that have proven disastrous before.

This pattern is repeating itself in New York City’s recent embrace of socialist candidate Zoran Mamdani. His campaign promised affordability solutions but ignored decades of evidence showing government-run grocery stores don’t deliver on price or availability promises. The Soviet Union spent seven decades demonstrating this failure, yet somehow the cycle continues.

Nowhere was that more evident than in Kansas City’s ill-fated taxpayer-funded grocery store initiative. Like its Russian predecessor, it quickly became a massive financial drain until shortages forced its collapse.

These failed experiments are part of a larger trend: policymakers recycling socialist principles with predictable outcomes. Just this month, Representative Josh Hawley introduced legislation alongside Senator Bernie Sanders that would impose artificial price controls on credit card interest rates. As any economist knows, such interference ignores basic supply-and-demand dynamics and creates market distortions.

Consider what happened after the Durbin Amendment capped debit card fees. Instead of reducing costs for consumers as promised, it created a revenue gap for banks, leading to higher annual fees nationwide while eliminating free checking accounts.

The same predictable pattern would emerge with credit card rate caps. Lenders facing unsustainable lending terms will simply disappear from markets most likely to suffer financial pressure – the very groups Washington claims this policy seeks to help.

Ultimately, every time government forces its economic vision on us through interventionist policies, it creates fewer choices and more hardship. The solution isn’t top-down mandates; instead of recycling these failed socialist approaches, policymakers should focus on empowering individuals and market mechanisms that work for American families.