Copyright thedispatch
The left-wing vision of New York City is too much influenced by illiterate nostalgia. The soak-the-rich fantasy of Mamdani and other left-wing radicals is rooted in a relic of the middle of the 20th century, a period when firms and individuals at the commanding heights of key industries—finance, media, publishing, advertising, fashion, etc.—in many or most cases simply had to be based in New York City or at least have a significant presence there. That is no longer the case. Many of the financial titans (and several of the firms) have shifted their operations—and their tax bills—elsewhere already (hence those 384,000 finance jobs in Dallas), and more are sure to do so if the city becomes even more hostile to their economic interests than it already is. A very small share of New York’s taxpayers—fewer than 1 percent—pay about 40 percent of all the state’s taxes. As with the disproportionate share of federal income tax paid by high-earning Americans nationwide, that share is not only disproportionate to their numbers but also disproportionate to their share of income. Mandani should administer to himself a very considerable dose of realism—he owes it to his new constituents. That means, among other things, improving the city’s business environment, making it more attractive to high-income taxpayers, and—he can pretend this is Ezra Klein’s idea if that makes him feel better—institute policy changes that will make it easier to build new housing and invest in the existing housing stock. Instead, Mamdani proposes to go in exactly the wrong direction, discouraging investments in housing by creating radical—and radically stupid—disincentives in the form of expanded rent regulation.
