New York City DSA\u2019s chapter<\/a> suggests the state should raise taxes on those making over $300,000 a year and on capital gains and inheritances as well.\u00a0<\/p>\nUnfortunately, New York has little room to further squeeze the well-off: It already ranks second in the nation in terms of percent of income taken as taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New York City\u2019s tax rates on the wealthy are already the highest in the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The DSA and its supporters claim that ever-higher taxes won\u2019t force the well-off to move, but the evidence contradicts them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Economists Joshua Rauh and Ryan Shyu found that a California income-tax hike drove almost 1% of top taxable incomes out of the state in a single year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The loss of taxpayers and other changes among the well-off meant the state lost most of the cash it would otherwise have raised from the tax.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another study, by Enrico Moretti and Daniel Wilson, looked at how state taxes affected the movement of top scientists, a group that\u2019s not thought to be particularly mercenary or focused on cash.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They found a 1% increase in after-tax income in a state brought nearly 2% more star scientists into the state \u2014 while a tax increase drove them away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Political calculation\u00a0<\/p>\n
New York\u2019s high rates explain why the state lost more than $7 billion of annual taxpayer income just to Fairfield County in Connecticut over a five-year span, 2019 to 2023 \u2014 and more than $7 billion just to Palm Beach County in Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some on the left celebrate the flight of the well-off from their states and cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson of Seattle argued that claims that millionaires would leave her state after a tax hike were overblown \u2014 and as for \u201cthe ones that leave? Like, bye.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a political logic to why some might celebrate the flight of the well-off. <\/p>\n
By driving more of their political enemies away, socialists can ensure their political dominance. Economists call this \u201cthe Curley effect,\u201d based on former Boston Mayor James Michael Curley\u2019s efforts to drive the well-off from the city and cement his political base.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet cities cannot survive forever if they keep shrinking the tax base that funds them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A century ago, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin promised to build \u201csocialism in one country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of New York\u2019s socialists are promising to build socialism in one state \u2014 or even in one city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fact that the people they hope will fund that socialism can always move away means their plans are doomed to fail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Glock is the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Americans are some of the most mobile people on Earth: They move homes about three times more often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[15314,1091,9,24,55,54,56,299,2780,82],"class_list":["post-295127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-citizens-budget-commission","tag-democratic-socialists-of-america","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opinion","tag-taxes","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}