Not Just New York: What Mamdani’s Victory Reveals About a Generation’s Broken Economic Promises

From Reuters

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

Sometimes it takes a comedian, not a political analyst or an economist, to say the quiet part out loud. Tim Dillon—one of America’s sharpest and most irreverent comedians—recently offered a blunt explanation for Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in New York’s mayoral race. Beneath his trademark sarcasm was a diagnosis that cuts to the heart of Western politics today.

Why did Mamdani win? “Because people don’t have money,” Dillon said. It’s not complicated. He painted a portrait of a generation that did everything “right”: studied hard, got into good universities, secured prestigious internships, worked punishing hours—and still cannot even afford to have "brunch".

Behind Dillon’s humour lies a truth that much of the political establishment seems unable or unwilling to grasp. Economic inequality and political marginalization are not abstract frustrations. They are lived, daily experiences—especially for millennials and Gen Z, whose expectations of stability and prosperity have collided with stagnant wages, crumbling public services, and soaring housing costs.

I don’t claim intimate knowledge of New York politics. I did not pore over voter files or precinct-level data. I don’t even live in the United States for that matter. But the broader logic is unmistakable and increasingly global. Young people in London, Amsterdam, Milan, Toronto, and Los Angeles are grappling with the same brutal equation: more education, more debt, more competition—yet less wealth, less housing, and less security than their parents enjoyed.

In the UK, research from the Resolution Foundation shows that millennials born in the late 1980s earned, on average, 8 percent less at age 30 than Generation X did at the same age. The decline is even sharper among graduates, who were told their degrees guaranteed upward mobility. Home ownership among Britons in their early 30s has fallen more than 20 percentage points since the late 1980s. In the United States, wealth accumulation for people aged 20 to 35 now lags far behind that of the same age group in the 1990s, even as costs—housing, healthcare, childcare—have soared.

The result is a generation living in what Dillon jokingly calls “little prison cells”—overpriced, undersized flats in overcrowded, polluted, and increasingly unaffordable cities. Even a simple brunch has become a luxury. Marriage, children, and pensions feel out of reach. A sense of betrayal hangs in the air.

It is therefore unsurprising that, as The Times has reported, Mamdani performed especially well in districts filled with young renters. They are not just voting for a candidate; they are voting against an economic model that no longer works for them.

This discontent did not appear overnight. Since the 1980s, the neoliberal agenda has guided policy across much of the West. But its promise has broken, and the breaking is visible everywhere: in falling homeownership rates, in stagnant wages, in crushing student debt, and in the explosion of online posts from recent graduates facing a job market that treats them as disposable.

Whatever one thinks of Mayor Mamdani—whether he will deliver transformative change or fall short—the significance of his victory is unmistakable. It is a warning. The economic frustrations shaping younger (and the not-so-young anymore) generations are not a passing trend. They are structural, global, and intensifying.

Politicians can attempt to dodge the problem, as Donald Trump is doing with his bizarre proposal for 50-year mortgages. Others resort to condescension, dismissing frustrated young voters by recommending they simply leave if they can’t afford the place where they were born and grew up. But the hot potato is not going away. It is now shaping elections.

New York may simply be the place where this shift became impossible to ignore, but it will not be the last.