\u201cTax the rich. Billionaire tears not included,\u201d Sen. Liz Warren smugly captioned a photo of her sitdown with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Lina Khan: What a great message to send to Gotham\u2019s business community, and to any companies that had been thinking of coming here.<\/p>\n
Of course, that signal already got sent when Mamdani tapped Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chief famed for warring on companies simply because they\u2019re successful, for his transition team.<\/p>\n
Yes, Khan and the rest of the Trotskyite trio insist they\u2019re not anti-business, but their consensus that the existence of billionaires is one of America\u2019s biggest problems says otherwise.<\/p>\n
Because it assumes billionaires did something wrong to make all that money \u2014 when in fact they did many things right to convince others to voluntarily pay them for goods and services that wouldn\u2019t exist without them. <\/p>\n
The first problem with Mamdani\u2019s plan to \u201ctax the rich\u201d<\/a> is that the rich, more than anyone else, have options. They can \u2014 and do \u2014 flee<\/a>.<\/p>\n And they don\u2019t just take their money with them: They carry off countless opportunities for other people to get ahead.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n Most US mayors do their damnedest to appeal to businesses to come and set up shop in their communities; the cities whose leaders do otherwise keep losing ground.<\/p>\n New York holds a far lower share of the nation\u2019s wealthiest than it did a decade or two ago, and has lost a whole lot of entire industries. <\/p>\n We\u2019re well down the path of losing the last real golden goose: Wall Street.<\/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 JP Morgan Chase \u2014 formed by two companies once definitively core New York City firms \u2014 now has more employees in Texas than in New York. <\/p>\n Florida, which like Texas has no state income tax, is becoming the prime location for hedge funds and private equity firms.<\/a><\/p>\n Other companies are scaling back, too, or choosing never to come here at all. <\/p>\n And why should they? Mamdani is open about believing that enterprise is a scam and successful people are simply good thieves.<\/p>\n