How did we get here?
A socialist candidate is now front runner in the race for mayor of America’s largest and ostensibly most capitalist city.
According to Alan Charles Kors, emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania, “No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents and more orphans than socialism in power.” (WSJ 8/6/2025)
Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela, it’s a long and undistinguished list of human suffering and economic disaster wherever and whenever socialists (read that as commie-lites) come to power. Now one threatens New York City.
Whether their name is Mamdani, AOC, or Sanders these avatars of apocalypse are on the march. Sadly, they don’t have far to go.
Nine of the ten biggest cities in the U.S.: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego and Dallas are governed by Democrats. The one outlier Houston, mayor recently switched to Republican.
All these mayors eagerly embrace the radical, anti-police, pro-crime, anti-private property agenda of the “democratic socialist” wing of their party.
Closer to home, both Portland and Seattle were hollowed out by these same radical policies. Decriminalizing drug possession, a cause célèbre of the left caused a surge in serious violent crime.
Large portions of both cities were taken over by open-air drug markets. People used drugs openly on sidewalks and other public places. This disorder and dysfunction resulted in a crime surge with concomitant decrease in property values.
Their vision is the “abolition of all private property, economic inequality and the allocation of capital and goods by free markets.” (WSJ Daniel Shuchman/Alan Charles Kors).
Everywhere pure socialism has ever been tried it has resulted in the crushing of individual, economic, religious, associational and political liberty.
Mr. Kors cited an incontrovertible lesson of history: adding slick marketing adjectives to socialism’s label doesn’t change its inherent character: “whatever the ideals, whatever the initial intentions, whatever the source of early socialist conviction…Socialism will always lead to serfdom and the sacrifice of multitudes.”
Our blog entitled, “You Can Run but You Can’t Hide,” warned real property investors years ago socialists were on the march in every progressively governed city in America.
I believe their agenda is to strip you of your personal and property rights. In so doing, this could drive business out and property values down.
Sadly, an example of this has now come to pass. U.S. Bancorp Tower, Portland’s skyline making office tower known as Big Pink, sold in July for one-tenth its last sale price of 2015.
This is 90% value destruction in 10 years. It followed hard on the heels of unnecessary government economic shutdown, unpoliced rioting, drug decriminalization and homeless encampments. All tolerated or encouraged in the name of ‘equality.’
This may hasten millions in tax losses resulting in a further erosion of service delivery and an acceleration of Portland’s economic doom loop.
The ripple out from this could be wide and deep.
However, for those willing “to take a leap into the new” (thank you Omar), there is hope. DST property programs may provide an escape hatch.
The economic and cultural bifurcation of America is accelerating. The way I see it, with Trump going from strength to strength, blue state mayors and governors are doubling down on failed progressive policies: more regulation, more taxation, more disorder.
This seems to be the mandate from the next generation of leaders on their party’s extreme left.
Many productive people who have accumulated wealth through a lifetime of hard work aren’t waiting around.
They see the handwriting on the wall and refuse to be extirpated by these masked radicals. They are pulling up stakes and heading to the ‘red zone.’
Part and parcel of this transition is sale of their rental properties. They are moving both their person and equity to environments they feel are more user friendly.
The fractional nature of DST property ownership can make this process much easier.
Equity from rental property sales can be easily divided among different properties, and spread across multiple, conservatively governed states.
You should consider escaping this socialist, crime filled dystopia with DSTs.
Thank you.
