649 years ago, a prominent Muslim scholar warned us about Mayor Mamdani's ideas

Ibn Khaldun warned us about Mayor Zohan Mamdani’s ideas. I first encountered Ibn Khaldun while studying Islamic political thought at the American University in Cairo. His 1377 masterwork, the Muqaddimah (The introduction to his universal history), pioneered systematic approaches to historiography, sociology, economics, demography, and the philosophy of history.

Khaldun’s book features a clear description of what became known six centuries later as the Laffer Curve — the economic theory that...