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 feels to me like staying in New York City as taxes rise on the hyper-rich would be the ultimate flex. You’re so wealthy you can’t even be bothered to notice the plebs have raised taxes on you.
Some marketing team needs to get working on this angle, lol.
Fun fact in ancient Athens only the rich payed taxes because it was seen as both a flex and civic duty, since if you had enough money to qualify it meant you were doing very good.
Also was a good way to not go the way of the tyrant.
They DID go the way of the tyrant a few times. And when they had a democracy they were a slave society that headed up an “alliance” of city-states that was essentially an empire and protection racket. Athens is cool and all but deeply flawed too.
Can we go back to using the dirty money in donations to build libraries and improving educational systems instead of each billionaire hyping the next hyper surveillance platform and hallucinating aggregators?
This is basically what they did in feudal Japan.
Like, a potential rival that lives near your capital, is given the opportunity to pay for the development of a massive wall to protect it, along with bragging rights that they’re powerful enough to help the city, and that they have close ties with leadership as an ally
This drains them of capital they could use to raise an army, and also installs a big fortification that makes it harder to attack.
What?
Everyone wealthy enough to pay those taxes can afford to pay those taxes.
Saying they can’t is a lie to the non-wealthy. And I honestly didn’t think anyone was naive enough to fall for that.
But apparently you all really thought the richest people in NYC were gonna have to leave due to taxes?
The wealthy will remain the wealthy one way or the other. The only difference is whether they imagine themselves as becoming poorer or if they imagine themselves as being high status.
Either way it will be the same people. The question is whether you can manufacture consent.