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.
Hopefully, other places learn from this. Taxing billionaires properly will hardly send them running. And once all the interesting places have learned that most of the notorious tax evaders don’t run, the few that run will run out of hiding places.
How disappointing.
In related news, my dog didn’t die of loneliness after worming treatment.
You mean the propaganda to convince the middle class they’re just temporarily embarrassed billionaires that will rise to the top with upper class tax cuts?
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.
Most valuable assets can’t really move
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.
They just don’t want to.
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
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.
It’s not a R vs D battle.
It’s a rich vs poor battle.
Let’s see what side he’s on.
It’s the same threat as a 5 year old threatening to hold their breath until they die if they don’t get their way.
Curious how soon we would expect to see signs of an exodus if there were one? I’m all for dunking on conservatives but I imagine it takes a little longer than a month to put moves like that in place. Plus he’s not even mayor yet so he couldn’t have any direct impact on the city.
Capital flight scaremongering again
Bea lot cooler if they did.
It has been a while and someone else can go look up the interview but Warren Buffet put this type of argument to rest decades ago. Never in any of his calculations was he concerned about the tax implications of his investments. The tax shit comes later.
People are not passing on investments because the taxes will be too much that is straight idiotic. I’m not going to take this 20% return on my investment with little to no risk because the gov’t will want to tax my 20% gain? Think about it for one second.
Also the wealthy aren’t going to leave New York City it has too much culture, financial wealth, and power for that to make any type of sense.
Of course they aren’t. Because he’s not a threat.
Has he raised taxes yet though?
Not that I expect it to make a difference, but it’s a bit premature to claim victory if not.
He doesn’t even officially become mayor until January.
People act like he won be primary and became God king. And then won the general and became double God king.
No, and he won’t, because he rode the socialist ticket and will likely be status quo. Only time will tell, but based on history, maintaining that momentum is unlikely.
Which… Makes sense right? Like - he’s a democratic socialist but the rest of the city council is not. He’s not a king, he’s a mayor and needs to work with others to bring about change.
This is a feature not a bug.
We will see he falls in line very quickly while setting himself up for success after his time as mayor.
Yep. He’ll be a dissapoinment and he’ll rapidly lose the support of his base. Not necessarily because he’ll be a bad mayor but because, regardless of what he does, he’ll be constrained by the laws of reality. When your base is socialist, reality is never enough.
Why hasn’t he given universal healthcare to everyone in the US!!! Huhhhh??? ;)
Mamdani promised to execute the bourgeois class and redistribute housing to the proletariat and he’s already breaking promises
