New York Mayor Bloomberg Says Liberal Tax Policies Will Lead To Nowhere

Start Thinking Right ^ | February 19, 2009 | Michael Eden

[Michael Eden]

You don't expect wisdom from people who have too-often sided with fools, but conservatives found an unexpected ally today in Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

He basically says that, while he understands how fun and rhetorically useful Marxist class-based demagoguery is, we'd be fools to actually govern that way.

BLOOMY BLASTS RICH TAX WARNS OF WEALTH EXODUS

By DAVID SEIFMAN, February 14, 2009

Charging that it's "easy to rile against the rich," Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday that the income-tax increases being considered for the wealthiest New Yorkers would drive them from the city.

"One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50 percent of the taxes. In the city, that's something like 40,000 people. If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral," the billionaire mayor said on his weekly radio show.

"The question is what's fair. If 1 percent are paying 50 percent of the taxes, you want to make it even more? Anybody below that 1 percent, no taxes?"

Legislators in Albany are considering state income-tax hikes for households earning from $250,000 to $1 million to close a budget gap next year of at least $13 billion.

At the same time, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn this week proposed three higher tax brackets in the city with a top tax of 4.65 percent for married couples with incomes of $1.2 million or more.

Bloomberg is taking a political risk by standing up for the rich in his re-election year.

Polls show the mayor's popularity is highest in Manhattan, the wealthiest borough, and lowest in The Bronx, the poorest.

But that didn't stop him from questioning the wisdom of loading tax burdens onto the rich.

"Keep in mind little over half the households that file tax returns don't pay any taxes, and about 30 percent of the households that file get a credit from the government, that's the Earned Income Tax Credit," he said.

"It's also true that it's easy to rile against the, quote, rich. I saw one group wants to give affordable housing to people up to $240,000 income a year, but $250,000, they're millionaires and we've got to tax 'em."

State Sen. Diane Savino (D-SI) said Bloomberg's concerns about a millionaires' exodus is unfounded.

"Research does not bear out that people get up and leave," she said. "People say they'll go to New Jersey. Their taxes are higher. It'll cost them more to live there."

A spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver declined comment.

Well, first of all, allow me to deal with the idiot liberal bimbo Diane Savino who says, "Research does not bear out that people get up and leave."

It doesn't as long as you don't bother to live in the real world.

Let me simply present a couple headlines:

From The Wall Street Journal: "California's Gold Rush Has Been Reversed: Entrepreneurs are fleeing heavy taxes in the state."

From National Review Online: "Exodus From California."

That last article presents a survey from the California Business Roundtable that found:

1. The cost of doing business in California is 30 percent higher than the western-state average.

2. Almost 40 percent of the California decision-makers participating in the Roundtable survey plan to "outsource" jobs from California to other western states, preferably Texas.

3. Half of the companies have "explicit policies to halt employment growth in California while less than five percent of companies have retention policies in place to keep jobs in California."

4. Last, California's "regulatory environment is the most costly, complex and uncertain in the nation." Regulatory costs are 105 percent higher in California than in other western states.

Outsourcing from one country to another is as legitimate as outsourcing from one state to another. It's a principle from Econ 101. And, it works: Just monitor California.

The LA Times, discussing California's $42 billion budget deficit, refers to the fact that "California's government continued its grinding downshift toward insolvency." And technically the state - which is failing to meet obligation after obligation - is already insolvent.

It is rather fascinating that the states with the highest tax rates are experiencing the worst budget deficits and the greatest financial crises.

It is amazing that if those 40,000 rich New Yorkers got tired of being demonized and demagogued and left New York City, that the city would essentially just shrivel up and die. If even a significant fraction of those 40,000 decided that the sun was warmer and the taxes were lower in Arizona or Florida, the city would implode from the weight of its own socialist social structure.

I've never been "rich," and now that we've elected a president and a Congress whose policies will ultimately destroy this country's economy, I probably never will be rich. But I understand a few things.

I understand that it is rich people, not poor people, who create jobs. When was the last time a poor person hired you for a job?

I understand that rich people, not poor people, invest in the economy and support the economy with their taxes. As just one example, for all the demonization of "Wall Street bonuses" by the Democrats, the loss of those bonuses cost the state of New York a whopping $1 billion in tax revenues. And the poor aren't going to make up for that loss in revenue.

And I understand that rich people got rich in the first place by working harder and for longer hours, by investing in more education for themselves, and by saving and investing rather than spending and consuming. I understand that they got rich by sacrificing the short-term for the longer-term benefits.

Meanwhile, Democrats are tearing our economy down. Last night on Sean Hannity, they played a montage of at least 25 times that Barack Obama described our economy as being in "crisis" in order to fearmonger his porkulus bill. Does that make you want to risk investing in better days? And private jet manufacturers saw their businesses tank after Democrats demagogued the automakers for having the unmitigated gall to fly to the Capitol in private jets.

Even former communist KGB agent Vladimir Putin knows that socialism doesn't do anything but drag down an economy.

Now that Democrats have no one to demagogue, we'll see what a disaster they make of the economy. They are already off to a bang-up beginning.

[Michael Eden]

I wouldn’t attempt to argue that Bloomberg is “stupid.”

But I would say that he is a political opportunist who says what he says for political effect rather than from conviction, and that his worldview might enable him to succeed in business (particularly if he violates his own alleged “principles” for the sake of a buck), but that doesn’t mean that it is a sound worldview.

Bloomberg has never been the sort of politician I would be willing to trust.

[9YearLurker]

I think there is a consistency to his world view—though it certainly isn’t mine. It is one somehow shared by many longtime Manhattanites. (And those are the relatively pragmatic ones, not the real loonies!)

Does he have your typical self-made billionaire’s arrogance, sometimes bordering on delusion? Yes, I think he’s got that too. All told not too bad for NYC—though not as good as Giuliani. Still, he is something of an embarrassment on the national political stage.

As to all that party switching, you’re right: that’s pure opportunism!

[Michael Eden]

9yrlurker,

I completely agree with you that there IS a consistency to the worldviews of liberals and conservatives alike.

I wish more people understood that. Many look at their leaders with a “salad bar” mentality, refusing to look at a candidate at the comprehensive level.

Bloomberg is a lightweight version of Arnold Schwarzenegger - a social liberal but relative fiscal conservative. Which basically means both men are liberals who have some understanding of the laws of economics.

[9YearLurker]

Yes, that’s it exactly! The simple truth is most people want to be good and kind people. If they live in an environment—Manhattan or Hollywood—in which the accepted social views are liberal, then only if they are very strongly independent and thorough in their thinking (e.g., Reagan, Moynihan) will they go against that orthodoxy.

Many Freepers who live in our heartland don’t understand how this can be so.