Mamdani targeted Ken Griffin — cementing NYC’s – Latest News
Last week New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood outdoors Ken Griffin’s house building and grinned, “Today we’re taxing the rich.”
He mentioned it like he was declaring victory.
It was really a eulogy for one of the best cities on the earth.
I do know what occurs once you get tax coverage proper, as a result of I watched it occur once I was governor of Florida.
For years, my state has taken benefit of the best way New York drove its residents and its best companies straight to our door.
They introduced their income, their firms, their staff, their charitable contributions and their tax {dollars} with them.
Florida received; New York misplaced — and Mamdani has determined to double down on failure.
“Tax the rich” (or as de facto Democratic Party spokesperson Hasan Piker would most likely put it, “kill the rich”) has turn out to be the rallying cry for a celebration that both doesn’t perceive the aggressive panorama between states, or doesn’t perceive fundamental math.
For them, right here’s a lesson in how the socialism death spiral works.
You tax the rich and job creators at punishing charges.
They flee — and the tax base shrinks.
You’re left with a finances gap.
Democrats resolve the reply is to tax whoever stays even more.
More people depart; the outlet will get larger.
Repeat till your metropolis or state is broke and utterly unrecognizable, whereas denying that you just created the issue.
Any observer can see that is taking place to New York — besides its rulers.
The Empire State has no garments.
This month, Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul introduced New York’s first-ever pied-à-terre tax, an annual surcharge on properties valued above $5 million when the proprietor’s major residence is outdoors New York City.
They declare it would generate $500 million a yr, however they received’t inform you what comes subsequent.
The second these house owners resolve a $5 million property in a metropolis that resents them isn’t well worth the annual invoice, they sell.
The income disappears, and property values general soften.
That’s not a finances repair; it’s a spiteful political marketing campaign concentrating on the very people who keep town’s funds afloat.
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Which brings me back to Ken Griffin, who not coincidentally moved himself and his company’s headquarters from Chicago to South Florida in 2022.
His Citadel hedge fund and Citadel Securities nonetheless make use of hundreds of people in New York City, producing good-paying jobs, native spending and a tax contribution that dwarfs nearly another single resident.
Griffin’s lifetime charitable giving exceeds $2 billion.
He not too long ago dedicated $400 million to New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
He’s personally dedicated $10 million to help Citadel staff serve on nonprofit boards supporting health, anti-poverty and training organizations throughout town, like Harlem Lacrosse and the New York Piano Society.
So what does Mamdani do?
He makes Griffin a political goal.
He stands outdoors Griffin’s home to name-and-shame him in a slick social-media video.
The metropolis’s own mayor villainizes a man who employs hundreds, pays an monumental native tax invoice and has donated billions to causes benefiting New Yorkers.
This isn’t governance — it’s class warfare dressed up as coverage.
And now, Griffin is threatening to abandon New York City altogether.
There’s a completely different approach.
When I turned governor of Florida, my administration cut taxes by more than $10 billion, reformed allowing, eradicated more than 5,000 pointless laws and recruited companies aggressively.
The best anti-poverty program any authorities can help is a job, and Florida constructed 1.7 million of them by getting authorities out of the best way.
I grew up in public housing, so I really feel real sympathy for the working-class New Yorkers who can’t choose up and transfer out.
They will bear the heaviest burden of this socialist imaginative and prescient that’s taking up New York, dropping wages and alternatives whereas the politicians who prompted the injury pat themselves on the back.
To be clear, good economies don’t final without end — one thing leaders in Florida and different red-state beneficiaries of New York’s decline ought to keep keenly in thoughts.
It takes fixed, day by day work to keep growing jobs and enhancing people’s lives.
It’s not simply a tax cut right here or there, it’s a constant deal with making states reasonably priced for all households — which is why I’ve by no means supported a tax or charge increase and by no means will.
The competitors between states will get more intense on daily basis.
Blue states need to tax their approach into prosperity, nevertheless it at all times fails.
Mamdani can keep internet hosting photograph ops outdoors billionaires’ buildings.
Meanwhile, the people funding his metropolis’s finances will keep doing what New Yorkers have been doing for years: They’ll call the movers.
Rick Scott represents Florida within the US Senate and served because the state’s governor.
