Conservatives warned of a mass exodus if the democratic socialist won, but experts, and property data, paint a very different picture
The warnings were stark. If Zohran Mamdani were to win the New York City mayoral election, his plans to raise taxes – slightly – on the city’s wealthiest residents would cause millionaires to bolt en masse, decamping to lower-tax states such as Florida and Texas.
The New York Post, a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, told readers on an almost daily basis through October that New York would effectively become a ghost town under Mamdani’s mayoralty, a propaganda campaign that concluded the day before the election with the bombastic claim that “nearly a million” people were planning to “flee”.
But a month after Mamdani’s historic win, there is no evidence that rich people are leaving the Big Apple. In fact, they seem to be committing to staying in New York.
It’s funny that people keep forgetting wealth is tied to assets
Most valuable assets can’t really move
The rich typically live near their assets so they can keep a finger on the politics around them
Tax those assets and if they want to dodge the tax, they have to give up the asset we want anyway
They.
Can’t.
Just.
Run.
The very rich don’t hold a very large percentage of their weath in immobile form. More in investments of various sorts.
And those assets ultimately are tied to something physical.
We’re talking about the ultra rich, not just your average lucky rich guy earning a big paycheck
If hypothetical tax fleeing rich guy has £5bn invested in some American company and they are running from a tax on that asset, what do they do? They have to sell off the asset to someone who wants it (good) or they still face the tax (especially in America where uncle Sam will follow you to the end of the earth to get your tax bill).
Imagine they manage that and don’t make too much of a loss doing so (which is already not realistic, but anyway). Now what do they do with that? Keeping cash as cash is basically flushing money down the drain, so they need to quickly reinvest it in something roughly as financially performant as what it was in before. Problem is if they are a rational investor, their money was already in the best place so wherever it goes next basically has to be a compromise.
The ultra rich are a different breed to what you’re thinking of, even their market investments are big enough it’s generally pretty hard to move them between borders for the purposes of avoiding tax
They absolutely could run, whether that means selling their property, hiring people to manage them (they already do that), or whatever other way to facilitate leaving.
They can leave, and they can afford to leave and live almost anywhere else for cheaper.
They just don’t want to.
It’s an important distinction because it highlights the truth about every future argument the wealthy make: they’ll yell and cry and say it’ll be disasterous, and then nothing happens.
But your comment isn’t correct in any way, I guess people just up voted it because they agree with the spirit of it?
I mean I upvoted you because of your wicked username, so sue me
The OC feels good, but yours sounds correct.
Yeah; that makes sense, to me. Afterall, What’s the point of being rich if you can’t live where you want.
Because they can’t
If you’ve ever heard a “wealthy” person say otherwise, you’re talking to a deluded clown.
30 families own over half of the UK
Those assets are not mobile
Edit: not 30 families, but the much more reasonable number of 50. More detail below
What are you even on about?
You legitimately think wealthy people can never move cities because they have to personally be there to overseas the buildings they own? And that all wealthy people own a bunch of buildings, but only in the city (not just state) they live in?
Like, there is just so much that seems to need to be explained here…
…
No, of course they can move, they typically have a lot of money, they physically go where they like.
Their assets can’t though, and if you look at anyone who owns a majority of assets in a given country, they typically do everything they can to put their weight on the government there
And, of course, they typically have to be a citizen of said country, where they pay tax. (Or if you’re American, you just pay tax regardless of where you are, because fuck you, apparently freedom isn’t free—not a yank btw, just have some mates that suffer this particular pain)
We’re not talking about the kind of rich guy most people immediately think of: high income & flashy wankers,
We’re talking about the literal handful of bastards that are breaking the world economy right now by simply existing.
Ultimately they own ground and stuff on that ground. Maybe via middlemen (and currently a shitload of vibes), but wealth ultimately comes from assets.
None of that is practically moveable
Even literal gold bars are really hard to move across borders in any kind of quantity
All of that is what ultra wealth really is, and in every real sense, only that is wealth in a capitalist economy. Everything else is an abstraction over a physical asset or just negligible.
The percentage of wealth owned by he ultra wealthy is on the rise. That means the percentage of wealth for literally everyone else is shrinking.
You wanna know how we can watch that happen? Just wait. You’ll be able to tell we’re fucked if the prices of assets (like, idk, houses) go up quicker than the average person’s pay
… Wait… Fuck.
Edit: tbf I was too pessimistic in my previous comment, it’s not 30 families, it’s actually 50, so I’m glad we’re actually living in such an egalitarian society
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/may/19/uk-50-richest-families-hold-more-wealth-than-50-of-population-analysis-finds