As Zohran Mamdani has campaigned for New York City mayor, speaking about his platform of fast and free buses, universal child care, and other programs that will make life in New York more affordable, the age-old question hangs over his agenda: “Sounds great, but how is he going to pay for that?”

The answer to that question is “ by taxing the rich.” Simply moving money around in a badly constricted budget isn’t enough; free buses and universal childcare cannot come at the expense of after-school sports or trash pickup.

Take universal childcare, which socialist state senator Jabari Brisport has long pushed for and Mamdani has made a cornerstone of his platform for an affordable New York. Enormous majorities think it’s a good idea, but state leadership wants “someone else to pay for it,” Brisport says. The federal government is one possibility, but that’s obviously a frivolous suggestion while Republicans are running things. Governor Kathy Hochul, instead of putting universal childcare in the state budget this year, set up a task force to determine how to pay for it, which Brisport calls “a waste of time.” He says, “there is only one solution,” and that’s taxing the rich. And that has to happen at the state level because the city has no taxation powers of its own.