Below is an expanded version of my column in the New York Post on the Hochul/Mamdani special fee to be imposed on luxury property owners in New York. The new fee comes on top of property taxes and assessments. It is just one of the wealth taxes that Democrats are pushing in various states — and pushing out wealthy taxpayers and businesses.
Here is the column:
The hunt is on.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used Tax Day to announce a new fee targeting wealthy people who still linger in the city after moving their primary residences to other states.
The tax, called pied-à-terre (or “foot on the ground”) is designed to hit people who still maintain high-value properties in the city. It is a remarkably moronic effort to ensure that wealthy people cut all ties with the city. However, Gov. Kathy Hochul has yielded to the far left and joined the effort.
Mamdani, a socialist who supports the “decommodification” of private property, is seeking major tax increases, including a 10% property tax, to fund his pledges for free buses, city-run stores, and other policies.
He will need it. Mamdani not only recently admitted that he cannot fulfill his pledge for free buses this year, but that he will only build the first of five promised city-run stores next year at the cost of $30 million — almost half of what he set aside for all five promised stores.
The new measure would add a fee to existing taxes for owners of high-value properties worth more than $5 million.
Mamdani declared the new fee part of “Happy Tax Day,” which will generate $500 million more to “help fund things like free child care, cleaner streets, and safer neighborhoods.”
He is also pushing Hochul to increase taxes on the 33,000 New Yorkers earning more than $1 million annually as well as those corporations that have not left the state. Other blue states from Washington to Virginia are moving toward similar millionaire taxes.
The move is consistent with other blue states seeing the same exodus of wealthy taxpayers and businesses due to the rising budgets and tax burdens. Rather than seeking to make their states magnets for investment, California and other states are pursuing retroactive wealth taxes and so-called “Teddy Bear laws” that refuse to recognize changes of residency.
New York has used its “Teddy Bear” regulations to declare that people who fled to other states are still residents subject to taxation because of the location of their sentimental attachments in New York (like a Teddy Bear) from pets to children.
In my new book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss these taxes and how they are the final stage of economic atrophy for states like New York. Politicians like Hochul cannot muster the courage to face bloated budgets, excessive union pension contracts, and runaway spending. In other words, it is too difficult to create a state that draws investment and residents like so many red states. Instead, they are chasing the remaining wealthy people who still maintain contacts with the state.
The result is a form of economic Darwinism in which the herd of wealthy taxpayers is thinned further by capturing the slowest or most nostalgic individuals.
The irony is that Hochul and Mamdani are working to cut the final ties of these former residents, convincing them that they are viewed as parasites to be pursued relentlessly for more taxes.
In Rage and the Republic, I discuss these efforts as a dangerous form of “economic factionalism,” a popular tactic historically used by demagogues to curry public favor by vilifying the wealthy.
Mamdani denounced those who “store their wealth in New York City real estate [and] reap the huge financial rewards” while “hurt[ing] working New Yorkers.”
This is evident in the renewed claims of figures such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), who used Tax Day to renew calls for her unconstitutional wealth tax.
Warren posted on X that “It’s time to make the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share. It’s time to pass a wealth tax.”
Socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also made the same claim. In a Guardian op-ed, Sanders cited shocking figures claiming that Elon Musk pays a tax rate of only 3.3% while Jeff Bezos pays less than 1%.
The claim comes from the dubious source ProPublica, which performs a statistical sleight of hand. In reality, the publication shows that figures like Jeff Bezos paid $973 million in taxes on income of $4.22 billion. That is a 23% tax burden, not less than 1%. Musk paid 30% with a $455 million tax bill.
The top 1% of taxpayers in this country paid roughly 40% of all taxes. The top 5% pays over 60% of taxes.
The Democrats are committed to economic factionalism as a strategy for the midterm elections. It is a major driver of the rage politics that many hope will allow them to regain power in November. It will come at a great cost to states like New York.
Hochul and Mamdani can hunt down the remaining wealthy taxpayers lingering in their state. In the end, it will not generate nearly as much revenue as it will cost as residents and businesses look elsewhere for positive living and business environments.
The best way to improve the standard of living in these states is to improve their economies and tax bases. Instead, blue states like California and New York are raising costs across the board, including through pushes for a $ 30-per-hour minimum wage. In California, the massive increases in the minimum wage have already resulted in substantial job losses and business closures.
It is unlikely that many wealthy individuals will stick around to experience what Mayor Mamdani calls “the warmth of collectivism.” Instead, it will be average New Yorkers who are burned by his “eat the rich” policies.
Mamdani sneers at wealthy people who have an expensive second home while his own family owns a huge and expensive estate in Uganda?? This is liberalism/socialism/communism in a nutshell.
Mamdani’s housing chief rails against home ownership as white supremacy as her own family owns a million dollar home in TN.
Bernie-three homes
Warren-went from one million dollars to over 12 million dollars while in Congress
Ilhan Omar- went from $100,000 to $30,000,000 while in Congress
Pelosi- now worth over $100,000,000
All while the above liberals rant about the rich. It is sickening.
OT, but related to bad Democrat policies, California ‘running out of fuel’ as imports dry up, Trump needs to act to prevent crisis: experts
“Trump to rescue California? Professors estimate that California’s inventories are as much as 30% below normal because of the state’s climate policies. California faces severe supply disruptions to diesel, jet fuel and gasoline. This not only impacts California, the professors argue, it poses a grave national security risk to the country.”
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/california-running-out-fuel-imports-dry-trump-needs-act-prevent-crisis
UpstateFarmer
FAKE NEWS !!!
Trump has repeatedly said that we are completely self-sufficient in oil and don’t need imports, so how could the problem in California possibly be related to “imports drying up.”
“The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future.”
— April 2026 White House address.
“We’re now totally independent of the Middle East… We don’t have to be there—we don’t need their oil, we don’t need anything they have.”
— April 1, 2026
“Countries take oil from Hormuz. Those countries should take lead… we have plenty of gas. We have so much gas. No country like us anywhere in the world.”
— April 2, 2026
“We produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined… we don’t need it.”
— March 16, 2026.
“We don’t need oil. We have all the oil we need for ourselves. It’s one of the great assets that we have… we have more than double what anybody else has in terms of oil production”.
“Buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty… No country like us anywhere in the world”.
Of course Trump could be lying.
What do you think ????
Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, in an interview, with This Week on Thames TV, on 5 February 1976 is famously quoted as saying “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.” In the United States we are seeing a corollary in action, “Eventually other people with money will leave a predatory socialist state leaving the middle class holding the financial bag.” According to one recent report, “Washington [state was] second only to Illinois in net outflows of young high-earning professionals” https://northwestnews.com/washington-faces-wealth-exodus-as-high-earners-depart-for-low-tax-states/?utm_source=copilot.com. That conclusion was reached independent of the highly publicized decamping of billionaires Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz to Florida. The corrective mechanism is there but its’ time constant is long. Unfortunately the culprits making these harmful decisions will be long gone before the full consequences are felt.
Then there is this bit of history, There Is No “Fair Share”… There Is Only “More”
“In April 1971, Keith Richards loaded his family and his Bentley onto a cross-Channel ferry and drove south until he hit the Mediterranean. He rented a 19th-century villa called Nellcôte on a hillside above Villefranche-sur-Mer, and converted the basement into a recording studio.
Over the following year the rest of the Rolling Stones rotated through the house and nearby properties to record the double album that became Exile on Main St., while staying deliberately out of reach of the British tax authorities.
The top marginal income tax rate in Britain at the time was 75%, and a surcharge on the highest earners pushed the effective rate on the wealthiest past 90%.
Three years later, under Denis Healey’s 1974 budget, the top rate on earned income would climb to 83% and the rate on investment income would reach 98%.
Britain would spend the rest of the decade watching capital flee and begging the IMF for emergency loans.
David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and a long line of less famous wealthy Britons eventually ran the same arithmetic as the Stones and reached a similar conclusion. Capital left the country in every form it could fit into, including bonds, businesses, luxury cars, and rock stars.”
https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/there-is-no-fair-share-there-is-only-more-155021/
How High Taxes Drive Talent and Wealth Away: Lessons from Norway and Beyond
https://www.alainguillot.com/how-high-taxes-drive-talent-and-wealth-away-lessons-from-norway-and-beyond/
The funny part is it is quite obvious. Do not need a college degree to see if you are going to tax a person more, they just might up and leave. And it does not matter if that person makes $50k a year or $50m, only a fool or true believer would stay in that kind of environment and get taxed.
It has been tried in the past, and failed.
What Happened To Countries That Implemented Wealth Tax Policies?
https://www.fascinatingworld.org/post/what-happened-to-countries-that-implemented-wealth-tax-policies
Before California, France tried a wealth tax. Macron repealed it after rich people fled the country instead of paying
https://fortune.com/2026/01/27/california-france-wealth-tax-inequality/
OT
Justice Thomas, I give you an axiom and a corollary from communist theorists:
“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
_________________________
“The goal of [Progressivism] is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin