;^)
Posted on 04/20/2026 5:12:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Here in New York, our new Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of “taxing the rich.” But that leaves a question to which the answer up to now has not been completely clear: Does Mamdani advocate taxing the rich because he thinks it is good tax policy, or does he advocate taxing the rich as a way to take revenge and punish a group he thinks of as predators and oppressors?
Currently the New York Legislature and Governor are in the midst of their annual budget negotiations, in which one of the issues is whether Mamdani will be granted any of his “tax the rich” wishes. Word so far had been that the Governor has resisted those wishes, particularly the wish to increase the rates of income tax on high earners.
However, on tax day (April 15) news emerged that there is some kind of an agreement on one piece of Mamdani’s tax agenda, namely a proposal to impose a special tax or fee of some kind on expensive New York properties used by non-residents as second homes or “pieds-à-terre.” So far the details of the proposal have not been disclosed, beyond a stated goal of raising $500 million per year of revenue from an estimated 13,000 properties valued at $5 million and up. The Mayor and the Governor both released statements disclosing the agreement, and giving their own spin on same.
Over at his YouTube site, Mamdani posted the following video: [video at source link]
Opening lines:
“When I ran for Mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well today, we’re taxing the rich.”
To the extent it was not completely clear before, we now have the answer to our question: This is not about well-considered tax policy, but rather is about punishing the hated and disfavored class of “the rich.” Mamdani’s demeanor in the video is reminiscent of the thrill felt by a hungry hyena finally sinking its teeth into the prey.
Mamdani films his video on 57th Street, in front of one of the string of new luxury condo towers sometimes known as “billionaires’ row.” Excerpt:
“[The new tax is for properties] like this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million. The pied-à-terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich. Those who store their wealth in New York City real estate but don’t actually live here. But even so, they’re able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in . . . the greatest city in the world. . . . This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers.”
Take that, Ken Griffin!
Meanwhile, even as the tax will impose an average incremental cost of about $40,000 on each of the 13,000 most hated people in the City, the additional revenue will be less than 0.5% on an annual budget well in excess of $100 billion.
If you find that you are scratching your head about how the current system is “fundamentally unfair” and “hurts working New Yorkers,” well, so am I. All the properties in question already pay full real estate taxes, which increase proportionally with value of the property. Exceptions to proportional property taxes for the elderly already don’t apply to high value properties and high income people. In return for their full real estate tax payments, the wealthy pied-à-terre owners consume almost no City services, because they don’t live here most of the time. Certainly, almost none of them consume the things that are the big items in the City budget, which are K-12 education and Medicaid. Yes, they get some police and fire protection, but those services are heavily concentrated in the low-income and high-crime areas uptown and in the outer boroughs. Some of the billionaires are also undoubtedly big supporters of our cultural institutions, like the museums and the opera. (Ken Griffin definitely falls in this category.). Their spending when they come to town drives the retail uses in Midtown, and many associated jobs. Maintenance of their properties provides yet more jobs. If there is some way in which having these people around sometimes hurts other New Yorkers, I can’t think of it. What am I missing?
And then, this may be the most easily-evaded tax ever created. Likely, it will just immediately wipe out the business represented by “billionaires’ row,” consisting of condo buildings intended for sale to pied-á-terre owners. Instead, we can have the same apartments turned into short-term rentals for the same billionaires, but owned by people who are New York residents. Problem solved! Will Griffin himself be able to beat the tax by just doing a sale/leaseback of his existing apartment? That depends on the exact language of the law. But whatever exact language they use, I have no doubt that there will be easy structures to get around it. And the revenue will start well below the projected $500 million, and then decline rapidly from there as people implement the workarounds.
The income tax is not so easily avoided, because that requires moving away. If you have spent a lifetime putting down roots and building a family, that is not so easy to do. But with this pied-à-terre tax, we’re talking about people who by definition have fewer roots, and who have options of renting rather than buying, or of having their second (or third) home somewhere else.
If you think that this is such a bad and counter-productive idea that nobody could possibly support it, take a look at some of the comments on the video over at YouTube. Things like “I DONT EVEN LIVE THERE AND IM PUMPED”; or “THAT’S MY MAYOR”; or “Can you imagine if even 10% of politicians were like Zohran??? It could be a utopia.” Are these (and many others like them) sarcasm? That’s possible in some cases, but overall I don’t think so. There’s a tremendous amount of anger and jealousy out there, and a thirst for punishment.
In other news, research from the Bank of Canada reports that some 40% of Canadians who would rank in the top 1% by income are now living in the United States. The Canadians are calling this the “brain drain.” Yahoo Finance says that the trend is driven by “lower taxes” in the U.S. Who could have guessed?
UPDATE, April 19: The Washington Free Beacon had a piece yesterday commenting on Mamdani’s “tax the rich” video. They compile some publicly-available information about contributions by Ken Griffin to some New York City charitable and cultural institutions: a $400 million contribution to the Memorial Sloane Kettering cancer hospital (made jointly with David Geffen, a California resident who also owns an expensive apartment in New York City), $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art, and $40 million to the Museum of Natural History. You really need to be a Socialist to understand how this is “fundamentally unfair” and “hurts working New Yorkers.”
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Marxism, the religion of the malcontents.
The city will get what they voted for electing this idiot. I hope it stings and leaves a mark.
This guy is frightening the way he releases his propaganda. Hopefully people can see through it for the BS it truly is.
5 free food stores for 8,000,000 (8 Million) people.
I bet he stays up at night trying to think of ways to punish those evil, hateful, disgusting, selfish successful rich people.
;^)
I remember back in the 60's and 70's when European taxation started to drive an exodus of athletes and entertainers. Actors were already in a special category because of the dominance of Hollywood at that time; no one questioned that an actor might move once he broke out to an international audience and might choose to do the Hollywood thing to compete at that level. But Bjorn Borg caused a stir when he left Sweden, and the Beatles left the UK, and the list went on and on. The general public might not pay much attention to businessmen, entrepreneurs and scientists, but when it hits entertainment and pop culture ....
Here and there, I'm starting to see rumblings that California and New York may be sabotaging their professional sports teams. Now THAT might wake some people up.
This might have been true in some past societies and perhaps in some today, but it is not true in Western Civilization where achievement and merit or the lack thereof produce upward and downward mobility.
Not only is their ideology based on false assumptions, but it attracts predators and oppressors who prey on achievers, intentionally using the false assumptions as an excuse for nefarious designs, laziness, lack of intelligence, or other reasons for non-achievement or as an excuse merely to confiscate--to steal--the rewards of the labors of the achievers.
This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers.”
You would think those ‘working New Yorkers’ would realize they can’t afford $238 million for a penthouse...so how does it hurt them that someone can? Just shaking my head.
Zohran Mamdani must have his money in a offshore account?.
Manhattan Contrarian ping
When there’s no rich left , tax everyone double
Good! Those “rich” people in NYC supported Dems since forever. It’s just too bad they won’t be forced to stay there and live in the ****hole they’ve created.
And the New Yorkers who voted in the election voted for that platform. Yes, its true that a lot of people did not vote and a lot voted against him, but the majority of people who voted voted for his platform. He did not hide it. So let them have it. All the hysterics don't matter. Is he "giddy" about taxing the rich? I don't know. Maybe he is. So what? Let him. They voted for it. If they don't like it, maybe next time they'll be more effective in finding a candidate who can defeat him other than Cuomo, who had an incredible amount of baggage, and Sliwa, who was a lightweight with no chance.
The rich are more likely to:
-Pay a significantly higher amount of taxes
-Invest, create businesses, and jobs
-Buy things
-Donate money, be philanthropists
-Be a meaningful contributor to a political party or candidate
For me the best example was working for a start up business years ago (as employee #7). It was started by persons with some wealth that had the resources for initial funding (my first paycheck was a handwritten personal check by the owner) and the knowledge and skill to guide the growth of the business and eventually going public. The experience didn’t make me a Republican, I already was. It gave me an up close and personal example of capitalism. Not the theory of it, but a front row seat to see a those ‘eeeevil capitalists’ in action. Sadly, I didn’t get to see poor people exploited as the Left would tell us always happens…
They don’t even try to hide it anymore, their anti-Christ agenda, the blueprint they are all following.
That foul unclean evil spirit housed inside Obama has appeared to prop up all this NYC insanity. But that creature knows they really want a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and Social Credit scores to control everyone in their 15 minute cities with Digital IDs. Which at the end of the day, their ‘great reset’ will appear much more sane and reasonable to many, rather than merely brute forcing Communism as Mamdani is the reminder of. Here is the new solution of the New World Order.
Mandami will do as much damage to NYC as a nuclear bomb.
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