Heather MacDonald points out that New York mayor Bill de Blasio's agenda is far from new:

Here is the dirty little secret about the war on inequality: Everyone, rich and poor alike, wants cheap goods and services. We are hard-wired for bargains: If we can pay a lower price for the same item, we will choose the lower-priced version, all else being equal. We are all complicit in the drive for cheaper means of production. The poor are the biggest patrons of outsourced goods and big-box retailing with its allegedly unjust wages. Or look at it another way: The most frequent complaint about health care is that it's too expensive, not that it's too cheap. Yet raising the pay of low-skilled health-care workers, for example, will only increase the cost of health care for everyone, including the workers themselves.

Such conundrums are lost on de Blasio. Expect him to operate on "progressive" autopilot: The rich (except those who support me) are takers, the poor their victims; wealth comes at someone else's expense; government officials are wiser and more compassionate than private actors; inequalities are the product of racism and economic injustice; individual choices have little or nothing to do with poverty.

If New Yorkers were too ignorant or apathetic not to reject these LBJ-era bromides, they deserve what they are going to get.