Conservatives warned of a mass exodus if the democratic socialist won, but experts, and property data, paint a very different picture

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.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    113·
    13 hours ago

    …

    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