Countries with more than half the world’s population went to the polls last year. And the basic message they sent to their governments was one of dissatisfaction and anger with the status quo. Their frustration seemed especially focused on the side that has traditionally been identified with big government, the left.
No matter where you look, the left is in ruins. Of the 27 countries of the European Union, only a few have center-left parties leading government coalitions. The main centre-left party in the European Parliament now has just 136 seats in the 720-seat chamber. Even in countries that have been able to curb the rise of right-wing populism, such as Poland, it is the center-right that is prospering, not the left. And in the United States, of course, the extent of the victory of Donald Trump – almost 90% of American counties moved to the right – suggests that it is largely part of this trend.
The crisis of democratic government, then, is actually a progressive government crisis. People seem to feel that center-left politicians have been taxing, regulating, bossing and intimidating them for decades, but the results are bad and getting worse.
New Yorkwhere I live, and Floridawhich I visit often, They offer an interesting contrast.
They have comparable populations: New York, with about 20 million inhabitants, and Florida, with 23 million. But New York state’s budget is more than double that of Florida ($239 billion versus about $116 billion). New York City, which is just over three times the size of Miami-Dade County, has a budget of more than $100 billion, nearly 10 times that of Miami-Dade. New York City spending grew from 2012 to 2019 by 40 percent, four times the rate of inflation. Does any New Yorker feel like they got 40 percent better service during that time?
What do New Yorkers get for these enormous sums, generated by the highest tax rates in the country? (If you are well off in New York, you pay almost as much in income taxes as in London, Paris or Berlin, without free higher education or healthcare.) New York’s poverty rate is higher than Florida’s. New York has a slightly lower rate of homeownership and a much higher rate of homelessness. Despite spending more than twice as much on education per student, New York’s educational outcomes – graduation rates, eighth-grade test scores – are about the same as Florida’s.
It’s easy to console yourself with the thought that these sky-high tax rates and rising public revenues are providing some crucial ingredients of a progressive government. But often they are simply the toll of waste and mismanagement. The first phase of construction of the Second Avenue subway line, at $2.5 billion per mile, was eight to twelve times more expensive than a sample of similar projects in places like Italy, Sweden, Paris and Berlin. A large portion of state and municipal tax revenue goes to financing pensions. In Illinois, more than 8% of the budget goes to pensions. In New York, almost 22% of the budget goes to civil servants’ pensions and benefits. Promising generous pensions to civil servants has been an easy way to buy the support of a crucial voting bloc, while ensuring that the costs are not reflected in budgets until years later.
America’s great cities are incubators of growth, vitality and energy. That is why attention is focused on them and their governance. And what has been seen recently is unbridled liberalism. For years, robberies proliferated in California cities due to a weak anti-theft law. New York’s homeless – some of whom are drug addicts or mentally ill – are left to frighten and harass the public on the streets and subways. The man charged this week with attempted murder after allegedly pushing a man in front of a subway train had previous arrests.
The ultimate test, of course, is how people vote with their feet. For years, New York has been losing people to states like Florida. This same story can be told with slight variations about California and Texas. Basically, the big red states are growing at the expense of the big blue states, which will translate politically into more Republican representation in Congress and more electoral votes.
There is now an interesting effort by people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to combine cultural conservatism and economic nationalism with radical government reform. That could be an attractive ideology for many voters frustrated by a government in which nothing seems to work all that well.
On the other hand, if Democrats don’t learn some hard lessons from the misgovernment of many blue cities and states, they will be seen as defenders of cultural elites, woke ideology, and bloated, inefficient government. That could be a formula for the permanent minority.
© 2025, The Washington Post.
