Mamdani Socialism BACKFIRES On NYC, Mayor Threatens To RAISE Taxes On Working Class
Mayor Zorhan Mamdani’s proposed 2% tax hike on NYC earners over $1M and $980M reserve raid in 2026 risk worsening the city’s fiscal crisis, as 10% of $10M+ households fled since 2018—driven by AOC’s Amazon pushback and Trump-era tax policies that once lured wealth. Corporate giants like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have already relocated due to high taxes and litigation risks, with Texas overtaking NYC in finance jobs by 2024. Critics argue Mamdani’s "socialism" will deepen urban decay, accelerating a trend of wealthy flight that leaves services underfunded and streets littered with neglect. [Automatically generated summary]
The new mayor of New York City, Zorhan Mamdani, is having a pretty rough go of it.
A series of scandals have erupted throughout the city over improper waste management, animal waste all over the place, and now a threat of attacks on the middle class and the working class from the mouth of Zorhan Mamdani himself.
What he's saying is that if they don't get their wealth tax, if they don't tax the rich, they're going to have to tax the poor.
The only problem is neither of these plans actually make sense.
And it's resulted in an economic and political crisis in New York City for which everybody is making fun of Zorhan Mamdani.
And I'm going to do something that may surprise many of you and actually defend Zorhan Mamdani right now.
By all means, I am going to criticize his plan on the wealth tax.
We're going to go through these numbers and talk about what's actually happening happening as we are seeing a mass exodus from New York City already.
It's been ongoing.
It is getting worse.
But I want to make sure this is absolutely clear as everybody's putting the blame on him.
He just got into office.
Guys, I disagree with his worldview.
I disagree with his proposed policies.
I think he's wrong about all of this, but the dude just got into office.
That being said, I can cut him some slack on these policy proposals that he's rushing to come up with, but something did change.
Seemingly, as soon as he got in, something did change.
Now, I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's that city workers don't like him, and so they're kind of half-assing it.
I think that something was being done by the previous mayors that they did not adequately inform Zoran Mandani about.
And now we are seeing a bubbling up of a serious crisis.
That is, guys, when we are looking at the streets filled with dog waste all over the place, I mean, the videos are crazy bad.
Okay, something different is going on because we did not see this in the same way previously, indicating it looks like people don't really like the guy.
He may have won for one reason or another, but it seems like maybe the city workers don't really like the guy.
Now, what we're going to do here is we're going to break down the proposals from Zoran Mandani, and he is getting a lot of heat right now because he is outright stated.
They have two choices.
We're going to loot the Rainy Day Fund.
We're going to take money from retiree health care.
We're going to tax the middle and working class, or we're going to tax the rich.
And to all the liberals of New York City and the leftists, they're saying, well, why not just tax the rich?
The problem is it has already been reported over the past several years.
The top 10% of wealthy individuals in the city have already fled.
And many of these companies are taking jobs away as well.
This is not a new phenomenon.
AOC famously chased Amazon out of New York.
She did not understand that a tax benefit was not giving tax dollars.
Legit.
Amazon said we want to bring $30,000 to Queens.
And she said, what?
Why would we let them do that?
The city was basically saying, we're going to give you a discount on your taxes.
You'll save $10 billion in taxes if you come to us.
Why?
Because the increase in jobs, the increase in workers, and the taxes paid by Amazon, though at a discount, would still be a massive boon to the city, which they needed to fix their crumbling train and public transit infrastructure.
Well, AOC led a protest in the financial district, and Amazon ultimately said, fine, we out.
She actually was quoted as saying she thought they were going to be giving Amazon money to do it.
Not what was happening.
And this is the problem with these lefties.
They genuinely do not understand these policies.
So let's do this first.
I'm going to play the videos for you so you can hear it straight from Zoran's mouth himself about how he is planning on taxing the working class.
But really, it's a threat.
Let us raise taxes on the wealthy individuals.
Unfortunately, they'll just leave.
What this means is he is legitimately telling you their only path forward is to tax the working class.
I'm going to break it down for you.
Before we get started, my friends, make sure you go to cashbrew.com, pick up some delicious gas brew coffee.
It's great stuff.
Appalachian Knights of Dark Roast, everybody's favorite, followed by Ian's graphene dream, low acidity coffee.
You guys are putting Ian through college, and you know he needs it.
I hope you realize he's not literally going to college.
That man would not do that.
You just, he gets a portion of the revenue from his coffee that it was his idea.
It was a brilliant idea.
Casbrew.com to support our work, but also smash the like button, subscribe right now to this channel if you haven't already, and share this video.
You guys, the other day, everybody shared it.
Not everybody, but a lot of people did share it.
And you can see it really, really does help.
So if there's one thing you can do, if you believe in the work that I'm doing and the extra hours that I put in every single day, just copy the link to this video, post it on your social media.
I saw in the analytics, it was pretty amazing.
Facebook direction was massive.
So you guys, thank you all so much for doing that.
Considering it again if you really do want to help.
Now let's get started with the video right from Zoran himself.
Then I'll play the longer video for you, but let's cut to the meat and potatoes here.
At the heart of this path is a property tax increase.
This would effectively be a tax on working and middle class New Yorkers who have a median income of $122,000.
The second path also requires us to raid our reserves.
It would mean withdrawing $980 million from our city's rainy day fund in fiscal year 2026 and $229 million from the Retiree Health Benefit Trust in fiscal year 2027.
These are steps that have been taken before, but only in moments of extraordinary external crisis.
We've also just received information that new data in the state's school aid formula will bring an additional $97 million to New York City on a recurring basis.
All of that brings the fiscal deficit down to $5.4 billion.
But I want to be clear.
$5.4 billion is still a very steep mountain to climb.
And there are two paths that we can walk.
One that offers long-term stability and a second one with significant pain that we deeply hope to avoid.
There's the structural imbalance between the city and the state.
We want to work with Albany to raise personal income taxes by 2% on the 33,000 New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year and to raise corporate taxes on the most profitable corporations.
And we know that for far too long, New Yorkers have given far more to the state than what we have received in return.
It is time to end the drain.
If we cannot follow this first path, we will be forced onto a much more damaging path of last resort.
One where we have to use the only tools at the city's disposal, raising property taxes and raiding our reserves.
This second path is painful.
We will continue to work with Albany to avoid it.
This first path will deliver the structural change that we need to recalibrate the relationship between the city and the state.
Because as we know, New Yorkers contribute 54.5% of state revenue, but receive only 40.5% back.
At the same time, New York City's portion of the state's GDP has grown by nearly 10% since 2010.
That imbalance is untenable.
Once again, I'm calling for Albany to end the drain.
There is no third option of failing to balance the budget.
By law, ever since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, which placed the city on the brink of bankruptcy, New York City has been legally required to balance its budget.
We will do so.
If we cannot pursue the first path, the only option we have remaining is a second path.
A 9.5% property tax increase impacting over 3 million residential units and over 100,000 commercial buildings, targeting those with a median income of 122,000.
This, what he's actually saying is, we don't want to do it, but we're going to do it.
The point is this.
You cannot tax the rich out of a hole.
You can't, okay?
You're talking about targeting a finite and small group of people for large sums of money when they have the freedom not to work or to leave.
We do not live in a world where you can force people who are capable to actually do the labor.
You see, the communists genuinely believe from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
And let me tell you what's wrong with that first and foremost before we get into a big philosophical debate on communism.
I work 16 hours a day and somewhat on weekends.
When I started this company, I was working every single day, no days off.
Every day I was producing my show.
We then added a nightly show, so I was working double shifts Monday through Friday with single shifts Saturday and Sunday.
Now, I'm capable of doing that, but I will be damned if you will force me to work that 74 or 64 hours, 64 hours, that's more than that.
That's 80 plus, that's 96 hours.
You want me to work per week, 96, 96 hours per week, that I would have to work for nothing.
That's the communist ethos.
It ain't happening.
I am going to work extra because I know that I get a reward.
And the challenging part is it's a diminishing return.
For every extra hour I work, I make less money.
No, no, no, hold on.
I don't mean less overall.
It means that if the first hour I work, I make $100.
The second hour is $90, then $80, then $70, then $60.
And so when I add the extra workload, I'm pulling in probably 60% of what I get based on the first half of the day.
And then I got to pay a higher tax rate on that money.
So I'm getting substantially less.
These people don't get it.
But here's the news from the New York Post so you can.
New York is losing jobs to Texas and Mamdani's tax push will worsen the exodus.
The New York Post reports, New York is losing thousands of jobs to pro-business Texas.
And Mayor Zoran Namdani's push to raise corporate taxes would only accelerate the exodus.
An analysis released Tuesday by Big Apple's top corporate advocacy group claims.
Now, what people like Zoran Nandani do is they go to working class people and say, the rich are lying to you because they don't want to pay taxes.
They don't need to lie to you.
They're rich.
They can leave.
But they want to be yours.
Is the value of the product purchased worth the cost?
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
If you want to live in New York because the opportunity is there, well, then you're going to pay your taxes.
If you are someone with a local New York-based business where you make $10 million a year, literally selling products to New Yorkers and you can't run your business somewhere else, you're pissed.
But hey, you can't leave.
Unfortunately, most of the companies that make that level of revenue can be operated anywhere and don't need to base themselves in New York City, which means you will lose tax revenue by increasing the taxes.
Fortunately, for people like Zorhan Mamdani, they can maintain power by tricking people who are ignorant of economics into believing their lies.
They say, quote, New York has already ranked last nationally for tax competitiveness and is consistently ranked among the bottom states for starting small business and for small business growth.
Let's just talk about the media business.
So we've had companies talk to us quite a bit about options for, let me put it like this.
We make a lot of money, we pay a lot of taxes, and we do a lot of development.
When we're building park, like the skate park, we've built that.
We bought property around the area.
What's happening, and the reason why they love a business like mine, is that through the internet, we produce content which generates revenue from all over the country and even some parts of the world when ads are sold.
That money is pulled in from all over the country and then centralizes in whatever location we are in.
To put it simply, you got a guy in Seattle, a guy in LA, a guy in New York, they all watch an ad and a dollar from each of them goes to West Virginia.
And I've had people ask, do you think New York would be viable or the New York Metro?
And I'm like, absolutely not.
I mean, it's a scummy place with a major tax crisis.
And it's the highest, New York City is the highest tax place in the country.
I don't want to be there.
I don't need to be there.
The costs are way too high.
It is not worth it to be there.
West Virginia is great and competitive, close enough to D.C. to be able to get guests to drive in, cheap enough land, and the people here want the work and want the economic stimulation.
So why would I consider running my multi-million dollar business in New York City?
The same is true for basically anybody.
If you're in the tech or if you're doing national sales, headquarters somewhere else.
Heck, why even be in Delaware?
Delaware's gone crazy.
You can certainly go to Nevada, Texas, or Florida, and that's exactly what people are doing.
They say New York City's top combined marginal corporate income tax rate, which includes other levies such as the MTA corporate surcharge, would rise from 17.44 to 22.48 if Kathy Hochul and the legislature approve a hike.
Texas, meanwhile, has no corporate or state income tax and imposes only a modest 0.75 franchise tax.
Courts in the lone star state are also more friendly to business interests compared to litigation happy in New York, and it's easier to incorporate and open firms there.
Additionally, as it goes towards the property tax, Mr. Wonderful already pointed this out when they went after Trump for fraud.
You have just told every real estate developer to get the F out of New York because they will wage political warfare against you and steal from you.
Duh, that's what communists do.
It shouldn't come as a surprise then, the partnership said that Texas is chipping away at New York's preeminence as the capital of U.S. capitalism.
They found in 2024, Texas surpassed New York as a state with the most financial service employees.
23 companies relocated from New York to Texas.
JPMorgan now employs more people in Texas than any other state.
Wells Fargo opened a new Dallas campus in 2025, increasing the capacity by 1,500 employees.
Financial services recruitment in Texas surpassed New York.
While New York's financial service industry still remains more productive, generating $330 billion in gross regional product in 2024, 71% more than Texas.
Texas financial services grew more.
Texas received approval to launch its own stock exchange, slated to open by the end of 2026, positioning itself as a more issuer-friendly and lower-cost exchange than the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
Texas isn't winning because of one tax lever.
It's executing a coordinated multidimensional strategy to attract jobs and capital, and New York is falling into their trap.
Our report from today outlines what's actually happening with how we are losing Facts Matter here.
Mamdani on Tuesday said he'd have to raise property taxes if Hochul and the legislature don't boost income taxes on the rich.
New York Post.
Mamdani's cuckoo property tax hike will land him real estate agent of the year after inevitable exodus, Kevin O'Leary says.
Mr. Wonderful thinks it's a wonderful idea.
What he is proposing is beyond insane, but I love it.
You guys live here.
You're not paying your fair share.
You got to pay 110%.
That's the right thing to do because he's not cutting spending.
Hizzner announced a large tax increase as part of his preliminary budget plan.
The hike was part of a threat towards Albany governor.
This we already know.
We already read all this stuff.
The options, we get it, we get it.
Look at that.
Stick them up.
Mayor Mamdani threatens Hochul, raise taxes or else.
And enthusiastic O'Leary was told to stop yelling by host Abby Phillips as the panel discussed income tax hikes in the city over the past 10 years.
I'm not mad about it.
I'm excited because I want you to pay it, not me.
The Post has reached out to City Hall, indeed.
What I think he needs to understand is that they absolutely want to tax the rich.
However, they can't.
And the reason they can't is something we call the laugher curve.
You will drive away big business.
There's a video I saw that was absolutely beautiful.
Absolutely beautiful.
It was an older guy talking to a younger guy who was like a commie.
And these socialists, these communists, they just don't get economics.
They really don't.
What they want is slaves.
And what he said was, he said, my friends, He said, you think I should be taxed 70% on every dollar after 2 million?
And the guy said, yes, and 75% for every dollar after that.
And he said, okay, I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
Once I hit $2 million, I'm going to furlough all my employees, shut the business down, and go play golf for the rest of the year.
Why should I do extra work if I'm not going to make anything for it?
This is not a threat.
It's a fact.
But these communists don't get it.
No matter how many times you tell them, they're just not smart enough to comprehend.
I'm not going to work for free, bro.
They don't get it.
You can scream in their faces.
I'm not going to work for free.
And they don't get it.
So I'll say it again.
The only outcome that Mamdani is proposing is a tax on property, which will be a collapse of the city.
It's going to fall into slums and disrepair.
And I got the videos of the feces everywhere to prove it and the garbage.
Please, commies, hear me.
I work 16 hours a day and often on the weekends to run this company.
We generate eight figures in revenue, putting our evaluation very, very high.
We have a lot of ancillary companies.
We have a coffee company, a skateboard company.
We have music.
We make money off all of these things.
We own property.
That money that I have was not given to me, handed to me.
I didn't wake up and inherit it.
I come from humble beginnings on the south side of Chicago and I dropped out of high school.
It is only because I work 10 times more than most people.
And I genuinely mean it.
I work 16-hour days, but those days are jam-packed with much more work than the average eight-hour day.
And you know how I know?
I used to do manual labor for a living for two years working at an airport.
And while I was there for eight hours, I work substantially harder today.
It's not about me.
The point is, if you come to me and say, Tim, and they already do this largely, but if you came to me and said, we're going to take 70% of all of the money you make after a certain number, I quit.
Now, the funny thing is the liberals are going to be like, good, quit, because we don't like your politics.
The point is this.
I also make products.
We also sell merchandise.
These are general goods that people like, as well as food products.
And I tell you, my friends, if you told me I couldn't make any money off doing it, I'm not going to.
I'm going to do a bunch of other things.
Probably just, I don't know, play poker or something.
Play video games, play guitar, chill, sit in the porch, hang out with the family.
It is only because I know that if I work as hard as I can, I will earn that I do.
For real, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to work for nothing.
So I left New York.
And one of the reasons was the taxes were nuts.
I was paying insane taxes.
There was violence.
One of the big issues was that with these bombings, we have protests and riots.
The rent was incredibly high.
And I was making good money, but could barely afford stuff.
I said, I should probably leave here and go live somewhere cheaper.
I was able to buy a house.
Bought a house when I moved to South Jersey.
Still high taxes, still problems, still riots.
And then we decided to move out here.
And West Virginia's got its share of problems, sure.
But it's been a lot better, cheaper, and the taxes are lower than New York.
So if I stayed in New York, let's say they charged me 5% instead of 15 or 13, I might say, well, what's the point of, I mean, if I go to another state, the taxes might be 3% or 4%, one extra percent, I don't feel like moving.
Now, again, I'll throw him a little defense because he just got in.
But it sounds to me like there is some kind of like major protest or, you know, light strike against Mamdani's leadership.
Take a look at this.
DSNY working to catch up on as trash piles up on snowbanks in parts of the city.
Videos have been going viral of garbage everywhere.
Mamtani gets in and something happened.
And people just said, we're going to let the trash and the crap pile up all over the place.
New Yorkers forced to dodge minefields of unscooped dog poop.
This is their city.
That's wild.
What does that say?
Something Volta saves lives.
I don't know.
Crap everywhere.
Imagine the parasites.
Imagine the rats and the disease that's going to emerge from this.
This is a low trust society.
It's what you get.
Gothamist says, we tested those gross piles of snow on NYC sidewalks.
Here's what we found.
Heavens me.
They found bacteria.
What do they find?
Let's just grab it.
The results confirm mostly what you've already suspected.
The snow acts as a revolting sponge for the city's filth.
Indeed.
The usual, at times, toxic dirt, grime, and excretions might typically be washed away by the wind and rain.
They've been trapped by glacial suspension for weeks.
This is a nightmare of disgusting sludge.
They found lead, pigeon feces, animal crap.
They say, what do they find?
125 parts per billion for lead.
Another place marked with a pot pocket marked with yellow pea stains, 113 parts per billion.
A kid is skimming some snow and putting it in their mouth.
They would get a decent dose of lead and bacteria.
But those lead levels are still far lower than what you'd find in much of New York City's soil.
Jeez.
This city is a disgusting cesspit.
That's crazy, man.
You know, something's wrong with this place.
Something's wrong with this place.
You know what's interesting?
What I'll say is this.
Do you know about the shopping cart problem?
This is one of the tests we like to do.
It's a gag test, but when we're hiring someone new, we go shopping with them and see what they do with the shopping cart.
It's the ultimate test, they say, of a functioning society.
You bring the shopping cart to your car.
It's a minor inconvenience to have to bring it back to the store or to the corral.
But you don't have to do it.
There's no real reward for doing it.
So would you?
Would you take the extra 30 seconds to bring the shopping cart to the corral?
I always do.
Always.
Sometimes you get lucky and you're filling up your groceries and someone walks by and says, hey, I'll take that cart.
And they'll take it because they want to use it.
Is the third, is one of the wheels busted?
Nope.
I'll take it.
It's the ultimate test of a high trust society, they say.
Are the people willing to return the carts to the corral?
If they're not, you're falling apart.
What we see here is level two.
Will you pick up your dog's crap?
And for the longest time, people did.
You walk your dog, you pick up his poop, you put it in a garbage bin.
And then what happened?
As New York becomes increasingly low trust, people say, why should I bother?
It's broken windows.
You know, a long time ago, I think this was back in the 80s, the idea was, if you came across a building with a broken window, you didn't care.
It's falling apart anyway.
And so what happened is people would spray paint, they'd break a window, and the building eventually falls apart because everyone does.
Litter is much the same.
Do you see litter on the ground?
People are substantially more likely to litter if they see other litter on the ground because it's like, I guess that's what we do.
So at the time, I think this was Giuliani, who was like, arrest anyone for the smallest of infraction.
If you arrest people for minor infractions, the heavier ones stop or slow down.
That was the idea.
And I don't know that we can say that it definitively worked because I don't believe law dictates what someone will or won't do for the most part.
Sometimes it does because they're scared to get arrested.
But the issue is your culture.
And as we watched this happen, we sought to enforce a machine against a degrading culture.
And now New York exemplifies it.
People walk their dog, their dog craps, and they say, eh, who cares?
No one else picks it up.
Why should I?
Look, there's 500 piles of crap.
What's one more?
The snowflake doesn't blame itself for the avalanche.
I'm going to show you this.
Here's the proof.
This is from Google.
New York City continues to experience a sustained population outflow with 415,449 people leaving New York State in 2024 and significant numbers continuing into early 2026, driven by high costs, taxes, and a desire for more space.
While pandemic era, 5.
I'm sorry, 5.
While the pandemic era, 5.3% population drop was the most severe, a steady ongoing regional shuffle sees residents moving to warmer, lower-tax states like Florida and Texas or even nearby Philadelphia.
They say the key drivers are high cost of living, housing, childcare, and overall expenses.
Concerns of the city's future and high taxes, specifically the salt deduction cap, and potential new local tax increases have driven 10% of households earning over $10 million to depart between 2018 and 2023.
Major corporations like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are moving operations and staff to other states.
The exodus, which initially peaked in 2021, has affected both middle-class families and the very wealthy, although some areas like Manhattan saw a slight stabilization.
Understand this.
Go skiing.
Have you ever been skiing or snowboarding?
People just put their thousands of dollars in ski equipment up against a rack and walk away, go inside and drink cocoa or use the bathroom.
They are not concerned at all that someone will steal their ski equipment.
This is called high trust.
But guess what?
These people are also very wealthy.
I am not particularly concerned with someone stealing my skis because the dude who's put his skis next to mine is also rich.
So here's what happens.
Wealthy and high trust go hand in hand, not perfectly.
Culture and religion and faith do as well.
When the wealthier individuals begin to leave, these are people who are willing to work harder, you are left with low trust and higher poverty individuals.
The city is going to fall apart.
Nay, it already is.
And it's sad to see.
Trump saved it in the 80s, they say.
He brought in high income clientele to buy into his buildings because he created this idea of prestige and class.
This generated more tax revenue, allowed for the services that they needed to clean the city up, and they did.