Nov. 9, 2025

MM#445--A Socialist Mayor, A Capitalist City: New York’s Stress Test

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message New York just elected a 34-year-old democratic socialist as mayor, and the city’s political ground shifted underfoot. We unpack the upset—how small donors, social media savvy, and an affordability-first platform overcame long odds—and then stress test each promise against law, budgets, and history. From four-year rent freezes and free buses to universal childcare and a path to a $30 minimum wage, we ask the hard question: which ide...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message

New York just elected a 34-year-old democratic socialist as mayor, and the city’s political ground shifted underfoot. We unpack the upset—how small donors, social media savvy, and an affordability-first platform overcame long odds—and then stress test each promise against law, budgets, and history. From four-year rent freezes and free buses to universal childcare and a path to a $30 minimum wage, we ask the hard question: which ideas can survive America’s legal constraints, market pressures, and political realities?

We trace the century-old arc of socialist governance in America, from Milwaukee’s well-run public housing and clean streets to Schenectady’s fare cuts—and the recurring forces that blunted those movements: fusion-party pushback, capital flight, constitutional guardrails, policy poaching by major parties, and national headwinds. Along the way, we highlight how capitalism repeatedly course-corrected without revolution—trustbusting monopolies, creating deposit insurance after bank panics, and building safety nets that lowered elderly poverty—absorbing reforms while keeping markets dynamic.

Then we bring it back to Gotham. Expect legal battles over rent and sanctuary measures, fiscal tests for big-ticket programs, and business responses ranging from adaptation to exit. Some proposals may be piloted, trimmed, or retooled; others could become durable parts of city life if they measurably improve affordability and mobility. The wager here is not ideology, but durability: can bold promises translate into workable policy without cracking the city’s economic engine? Listen for a clear-eyed roadmap of risks, trade-offs, and the likely areas where New York may bend, adjust, and, ultimately, decide what sticks.

Key Points from the Episode:

• Who Zoran Mandani is and why he won
• The affordability agenda and funding claims
• Reactions from national figures and business leaders
• Historical record of socialist mayors 1900–1960
• The five forces that limited socialist experiments
• Capitalism’s pattern of correction and absorption
• Legal, fiscal, and market tests facing New York
• What policies might endure and what may fade

Other resources:

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00:00 - Opening And Election Shock

00:31 - Who Is Zoran Mandani

02:24 - Reaction From Leaders And Critics

04:12 - The Platform: Affordability And Sanctuary

06:10 - Voter Surge And Coalition Building

08:20 - Is This A Bellwether

09:59 - History Of Socialist Mayors

13:47 - Five Forces That Blocked Socialism

16:20 - Capitalism’s Self-Correction Argument

WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

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Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute.

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Here we are, five days after New Yorkers turned out in record numbers, over two million strong, the highest for a mayor oral race since 1969, and handed a stunning upset to a 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Marxist from Queens.

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Zoran Mandani is now your mayor elect of New York City.

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The son of a renowned academic and celebrated filmmaker born in Uganda, raised in the so-called melting pot of Astoria, Mandani clinched over 50% of the vote.

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Surprisingly, 54.4.

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Or 50.4%, rather.

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He edged out Governor Andrew Cuomo's independent bid at 41.6 and the Republican Curtis Slewa's 7.1%.

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He is the first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian descent, and the first born in Africa, the youngest in over a century in a city where the subways rumble like thunder and the skyscrapers pierce the clouds.

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This certainly feels like a thunderclap all of its own.

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So there we saw on election night.

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Gen Z voters who flooded the polls drawn by Mondani's TikTok savvy and unfiltered promises.

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He said New York will remain a city of immigrants.

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A city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant.

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We hope he has the realization that there are many illegal immigrants, which the rest of the country is looking at in New York City.

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President Trump rightly branded him a radical and threatened to slash federal funds.

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The mayor shot back, the mayor elect shot back.

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We will fight every attempt to deport our neighbors and criminalize our communities.

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Certainly sounds like an insurrection threat.

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A la South Carolina 1832, 1833.

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Or perhaps more daringly Fort Sumter, 1861.

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Let's hope not.

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Certainly Mondani's campaign was a version of a master class.

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It was funded by small donors, over 100,000 of them.

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Not sure if they all came from care, but he bypassed the big money machine.

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He got endorsements from the radicals, of course, Bernie Sanders, AOC.

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They volunteered an army of 50,000 knocking on doors from Bronx to the Brooklyn.

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His platform was all about affordability.

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In a town where the median rent hit$3,500 and a family of four needs$150,000 just to scrape by, by my research.

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Four-year rent freezes on a million stabilized units, is what he wants to do.

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Free citywide buses, universal childcare for six weeks to five years, and a minimum wage that's going to be hiked to$30 an hour by 2030.

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And all of it funding by taxing the ultra wealthy and corporations while expanding sanctuary protections against Trump's deportation machine.

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Folks, we don't know how to square that circle.

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But it resonated.

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But they saw Mondani as a fighter who spoke their language.

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Sometimes literally.

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Turnout did surge, with early voting up 65%.

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He flipped the Bronx.

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He gained ground in black and Hispanic neighborhoods that had leaned for Andrew Cuomo in the primary.

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Even the radical and progressive Bill DeBlasio, his predecessor, snapped a selfie with his ballot for Mondani.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer fighting for his own job called him up and said, I've worked with Zoron on tax taxi driver relief.

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Let's keep New York strong, fair, and thriving.

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Governor Hackie Kathy Hokel echoed an olive branch, looking forward to making our city more affordable together.

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But there is a lot of concern in the rest of the country.

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President Trump fired off a truth essential truth social rant saying New York just elected a communist mayor.

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Watch the funds dry up.

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Millionaire developers are already plotting exits, one mogul tweeting that New York City will become Mumbai under Mondani's watch.

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Argentine president Javier Malaya, the libertarian firebrand, invited displaced New Yorker south.

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If the going gets tough under a communist party, you're welcome in Argentina to prosper.

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Even Elon Musk, never won to mince words, labeled him a charismatic swindler.

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The whispers of anti Semitism certainly are correct.

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Critics point to his past of anti Zionist comments, his ties that veer way too close to the edge, the crypto crowds jittery too, fearing his regulatory zeal could chill innovation.

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But as the confetti fell in Brooklyn, Cuomo conceded gracefully, and Mandani's win isn't just a local quake, but it's certainly not a bellwether for the rest of the country.

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Can democratic socialism slash Marxism scale from assembly halls to city hall without buckling under the weight of its reality?

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We say it cannot.

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Because here's the truth.

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We've seen it time and time again.

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Socialism gets tried, it's always found wanting.

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But capitalism, the free market over two hundred and fifty years in this land does not crumble.

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But it does occasionally correct itself.

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So let's rewind to the early twentieth century, when the red flag flew over American city halls.

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Between nineteen hundred and nineteen forty, America dabbled in socialism.

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Hundred and forty six socialist mayors were elected across three hundred and forty eight towns, mostly in gritty industrial spots like Milwaukee and Schenectady, New York.

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They promised the moon, municipal ownership of streetcars, free baths, eight hour days for city workers, and for a flicker it sparked.

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Take Milwaukee in nineteen ten.

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Emile Sedel, the nation's first socialist mayor of a major city, swept in with twenty one aldermen.

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The streets gleamed cleaner.

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Kids got free textbook, milk was safer.

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Two years later, Democrats and Republicans fused tickets and booted him out.

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Daniel Hone followed in 1916.

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He held the fort for 24 years, the longest running of any socialist mayor ever.

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He had built America's first public housing.

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He nailed it down with workers comp and turned Foul Rivers pristine.

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By nineteen thirty four, Time magazine had crowned him and Milwaukee, one of the best run cities anywhere yet.

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In nineteen forty, another fusion steamroller ended it.

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Frank Zeidler, the last of the breed, served until nineteen sixty.

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He expanded more public housing.

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He integrated schools before the feds mandated it, which we would have to say is a good thing.

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But the Cold War chills and the urban sprawl, they froze him out.

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Now in Schenectady, New York in 1911, George Lunn manipulized the trolleys.

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He slashed the fares.

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Sound familiar.

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General Electric played along until tax heights loomed.

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They said we'll build elsewhere.

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Jobs fled, Lunn followed in nineteen thirty.

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He was out.

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A nineteen eleven and nineteen fifteen surge birthed more than seventy one time wonders in Berkeley, Toledo, Ohio, Lima, public markets, anti corruption drives all felled by the same blade, fused opposition, tight budgets, and bosses that bolted.

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So five forces sealed their fate every time.

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The fusion tickets from the big parties uniting to crush the upstart.

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Capital flight firms packed it up when profits were pinched.

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And then our structure, the American structure.

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Constitutional walls were up, property rights and federalism blocked, seizures by overarching socialist mayors.

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And policy poaching.

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Democrats and Republicans snatched the winners like public housing and labor laws.

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They corrected them, as they always do.

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And then the national storms.

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That of World War I and the drafts, the Cold War purges that branded socialism as a sabotage.

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Because socialism was tried, it's been tried full throated in the United States, and it's always found wanting.

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But the label, the ideology, it couldn't outrun the ballot, the boardroom, or frankly, the Bill of Rights.

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The reforms, some have lived on, absorbed, diluted, rebranded, and changed.

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Now contrast that with capitalism's quiet gene genius of the free market.

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For 250 years on American soil, it's bent but never broken.

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Child labor was once the product of socialist rants.

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But markets demanded skilled hands, and states stepped in with laws.

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No need for factory takeovers.

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Socialism ranted about the eight hour day at the turn of the twentieth century.

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Unions bargained them at private tables, not city councils.

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Monopolies like Standard Oil.

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Teddy Roosevelt's trustbusters wielded antitrust hammers.

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And capitalists brought in the scapels, not the guillotines.

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Socialists would always talk about bank panics in 1907, 1929, 2008, the free market came up with deposit insurance and the Fed tweaks turned into recoveries.

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Now these equality spikes, progressive taxes and safety nets from Social Security to the failed Obamacare.

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Well, over the time, Social Security has sliced poverty from twenty-two percent in 1959 to eleven percent, especially with our elderly.

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But it happened all within the framework of free enterprise.

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Capitalism doesn't demand a revolution, it it invites refinement.

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When Wall Street crashes, the free market will rein itself in and make the necessary adjustments.

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When wages stagnate, sometimes minimum wage hikes and gig economies will tweak to follow, but it's messy.

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There's boons, there's busts, there's robber barons and recessions.

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But the free market self-heals.

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It self-heals because it sees in elections, innovation, and the sheer mobility of people and their money.

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You don't like the rules, you can vote them out.

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Start a rival firm, move to Jersey.

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That's the American alchemy.

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Markets are the engine.

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Democracy and the Republic has its guardrails.

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So where does that leave us with Mayor Electman Donny?

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Well, his win is electric for the left, the radical left wing.

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He will push those buses to be free, those rents to be frozen, those wages to be up.

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And then the pushback will happen.

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There will be lawsuits from landlords, threats from DC, and billionaires will exit stage right.

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America's machinery whirl will whirl to life.

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Courts will check the overreach if they're fair.

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Businesses will adapt or innovate around it, or simply move.

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That's the beauty of the American way.

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Voters will reward over time what works.

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They will tweak what doesn't.

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Mondani's bold strokes, the viable ones, if there are any, will be woven into the fabric.

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Just like Milwaukee's sewers.

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They still flow, but they flow with capitalist pipes.

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The rest will just fade, as they always do.

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Because here's the enduring echo and epoch of America.

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In this republic of restless dreamers, no ideology owns the future.

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Socialism will dabble and test the waters.

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Free market capitalism will chart the course.

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Mondani's four years will stir a pot, maybe even a season if it's good.

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But America will always correct.

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As we always have.

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As always, keep fighting the good fight.

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Thank you for joining us.

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We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast.

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Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources.

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Until next time, keep getting your mojo up.