You’ve heard the news and may have seen the video: New York Mayor Mamdani mugging for the camera, his face in a gleeful smirk, saying “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well today, we’re taxing the rich!”
He was announcing – on April 15, the day federal and state income tax returns are due – a new special tax on “second homes” located in New York City valued over $5 million. The Marxist mayor is standing in front of a building where he says hedge fund entrepreneur Ken Griffin has a residence that he uses only occasionally. Under Mamdani’s proposal, approved by Democrats in Albany, Griffin’s annual property tax on the residence would increase from $841,000 to about $3 million.
Two aspects of this announcement were striking: the perverse stupidity of this proposal, and Mamdani’s sadistic excitement in announcing it.
I grew up just north of New York City in an era when the city almost collapsed under a mountain of debt. People who cherished the place jumped in to turn the city around and, as I graduated from high school in 1977, they launched the iconic “I Love NY” ad campaign to attract visitors, especially wealthy visitors, to come back and invest there.
The stage was set for a turnaround in New York by putting the city’s financials under control of an Emergency Financial Control Board, which shrank the government significantly, and by creating incentives to attract greater investment in the city’s aging infrastructure and real estate.
The comeback was institutionalized by the tax cuts and deregulation of financial markets (largely based in New York) that began in the Reagan administration and lasted through most of Bill Clinton’s presidency. This one-two punch spurred a national economic boom benefiting everyone in America, and especially those in NYC.
As a result, Manhattan became a destination for wealth and capital from all over the country – indeed, all over the world. The world loves New York!
Now, 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani – who was an obscure backbencher in the state legislature at this time last year, cheerfully proposes turning back the clock. Rather than attracting capital, talent, and wealth from outside the city, he wants to drive it away by imposing what amounts to a sin tax on success manifesting itself in high-end real estate investments by nonresidents. And for what purpose? The proposed rationale is to raise tax revenue, but it’s axiomatic that increasing taxes increases the cost of investing in real estate by outsiders, which reduces outsider demand for making these investments.
What New York Democrats have really done is lower the value of New York real estate, and increased the value of real estate in Miami, Palm Beach, Austin, and Dallas – places run by political leaders who are economically literate. There are condos in Manhattan that were worth $5.5 million in January that just fell to $4.99 million today, and investors from Mexico, Brazil, Europe. and Asia are calling off plans for putting some capital into New York – capital that would flow through New York’s economy and be taxed at various levels.
How is it good for the people Mamdani claims to want to help to have fewer rich people from outside the city invest in and visit? Rich people spend money that’s taxed, some pay income taxes to the city for the days that they are in the city – shopping, attending shows, visiting museums, doing deals, hiring people to work in office space that’s built and leased, and giving money to all sorts of great city institutions.
Ken Griffin, whom Mamdani singles out in his nasty little video, has given over $60 million to Success Academy Charter Schools, $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art, and $40 million to the American Museum of Natural History. And his firm Citadel and its employees pay hundreds of millions into the city coffers.
Ken Griffin loves New York, but since the 2025 mayoral election it’s turned into an unrequited love. Don’t think that he and other wealthy investors won’t notice.
Chicago’s Democrats gave Ken Griffin the high hat too, so he packed up and left – reducing city and state tax revenues, hammering commercial real estate in the loop, and hitting charitable institutions Griffin had supported around the city.
Only a moronic politician doesn’t want more rich people like Ken Griffin in their city. Mamdani is that moron.
In these dog days of Democratic rage, there are many voters who derive pleasure from hurting the wealthy or those with whom they disagree. That there are enough of them to elect people like Mamdani to important offices should give smart, good-spirited Americans who vote for Democratic politicians pause: Do you hate MAGA so much that you want to make America worse?
