Conservatives warned of a mass exodus if the democratic socialist won, but experts, and property data, paint a very different picture
The warnings were stark. If Zohran Mamdani were to win the New York City mayoral election, his plans to raise taxes – slightly – on the city’s wealthiest residents would cause millionaires to bolt en masse, decamping to lower-tax states such as Florida and Texas.
The New York Post, a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, told readers on an almost daily basis through October that New York would effectively become a ghost town under Mamdani’s mayoralty, a propaganda campaign that concluded the day before the election with the bombastic claim that “nearly a million” people were planning to “flee”.
But a month after Mamdani’s historic win, there is no evidence that rich people are leaving the Big Apple. In fact, they seem to be committing to staying in New York.
You are missing the point of this specific scaremongering. Nobody ever said the ultra rich would leave the US if he won. They said (just like the headline and article state clearly) the rich would leave the city, going to FL and TX. It is QUITE easy to keep all your market investments and corporations and even your real estate holdings while living in another state, or heck, even another city within NY.
Your argument makes sense when talking about the federal government implementing a wealth tax, but it doesn’t have much to do with a city raising taxes. The rich are going to stay in NYC because it’s a great city to live in if you are rich, though it isn’t where I want to live if I were poor or even as an upper middle class person. The regular wealthy people have houses in multiple cities in their country and will live in the city they enjoy living in. The ultra rich have houses in multiple countries, but they will still choose where they spend most of their time based on where they like spending most of their time.