Voting Democrat BACKFIRES, Mamdani TAXES THE POOR As New Yorkers FLEE
Tim Pool argues New York voters are regretting Zorah Mamdani's election, claiming her socialist policies like raising property taxes, charging for street parking, and proposing a $30 minimum wage harm the poor while driving away the wealthy. He cites surveys showing one-third of residents want to flee due to cost of living issues, asserting these measures create a budget shortfall that forces taxes on those unable to relocate. Ultimately, Pool suggests this trajectory mirrors the 1980s decline, potentially paving the way for a future political correction to restore order. [Automatically generated summary]
It's only been a few months, but things in New York City are already turning very sour.
And it looks like a lot of people regret their decision to vote in the new mayor, Zorhan Mamdani.
You've got threats to raise taxes on the poor.
Indeed.
You've got NYPD budget being slashed.
Now they're talking about charging New Yorkers for parking.
Hey, they did it in Chicago.
I don't recommend it.
Zoran Mandani says, well, look, we got a major budget shortfall, so how about you tax the rich?
Or else we have no choice but to tax the poor.
The only problem with that, it's a framing device.
Zoran Mandani tells you that we're trying to tax the rich, but there is no way taxing the wealthy of New York will cover their budget shortfall.
For that matter, the wealthy have already been leaving in droves.
It's a trick.
Mamdani knows the only way to fill the gap in their budget is to tax the poor.
He's talking about raising property taxes, which will affect working class people.
They're talking about taking away free parking.
Hey, rich people already park in private lots.
They ain't putting their Maserati or Bugatti out there on the street unprotected.
No, that's for you, working-class Joe, who needs to pull over and park.
They are going to charge you money for it.
In Chicago, they sold the rights to parking, public parking, to a private corporation, which I don't know how that's constitutional, but they did it.
And now a private company decides when you get fined by the government.
Now we're seeing this.
A staggering one-third of New Yorkers want to flee the city, citing cost of living and quality of life.
It seems like people got quite a different story, quite a different scenario with this here at Zorhan Mamdani.
But I'm going to tell you this, my friends.
I'm actually not all that mad about it.
I'm not.
Now, certainly, look, I get defunding the police is not a good thing.
But let's be real.
He Trojan horsed his way in as a socialist, and now he's taxing all of these people who want to live this way.
Now, I'm not saying it's good for New York.
I'm saying you do not get to demand free stuff from everybody else without footing a bill.
And now that these people want the things promised by Zorhan Mamdani, they're going to have to foot the bill.
And I say, okay.
On top of that, New York has got a massive feces problem.
It's disgusting.
And it's unfortunate that our great cities have become this.
In San Francisco, you got a poo department.
Not a joke.
We got a fire department.
We got a police department.
You got a poo department.
I'm not joking.
This is dead serious.
There is so much human waste all over SF, they had to create a department to go and clean it up.
Now New York's starting to experience the same thing.
You know why?
Nobody is picking up their dog poop.
This is low trust society stuff.
New York is fragmented and breaking down.
It's been for some time.
I've long complained about the open-air fish markets they have on the Lower East Side, saying, look, I get it, that Chinese migrants are used to putting up dead fish.
Okay, I call it dead fish, but it's food.
I get it.
Fresh fish in the market where they come from.
But it's pretty crazy when you walk in and everything smells like rotting fish and there's animal products just flowing into the streets.
I say, yo, we got to have some kind of controls on this.
But unfortunately, if you go into those neighborhoods and you tell them they're not going to be able to do that anymore, they're not going to vote for you.
So what do we get?
We get this.
Lion Mamdani, they call him.
And now people are starting to really regret exactly what they voted for with black leaders in the city saying they're being snubbed and saying they are being hit with the brunt of these tax increases.
Well, my friends, I can't say anything other than you reap what you have sown.
And this is why I left New York.
This is why many people have been making videos incessantly saying don't vote for Zoran Mamtani.
To be honest, I don't know that you'd get anything better from any of the other candidates as well, considering that they're all too scared, and this is true of all politics, all politicians, too scared to actually reduce benefits and social programs so that they can balance the budget, because they know you'll never win if you actually do that.
But maybe that's Zorhan Mamdani's real plan, because Trump seemed to like him.
Maybe he went to Trump and said, look, I'm just playing the socialist thing.
I am going to tax these people, close that budget, and get the city back on track.
And they are going to be pissed.
Well, I don't know that that makes sense because I'll tell you this.
It's a runaway train.
If you are losing your wealthiest, then you lose tax revenue.
If you lose tax revenue, you can't fund programs to try and get the city back on track.
It seems like it comes and goes in waves.
And we are now entering a nightmare scenario for New York where it's going to get bad.
With defunding the NYPD, you're going to get more crime.
It's going to get pretty bad.
You're going to have dog waste everywhere, crime, trash, and no funding for it.
This is what it was like in the 80s.
Trump came in and brought the wealthy back to the city, which brought in more revenue, brought in more high life, more trade, more economics, more economic activity, I should say.
And this resulted in a resurgence.
At the same time, you had Giuliani with his broken windows policy, where he was basically like arrest them for the minorist of infractions.
Hardcore policing, bringing back individuals with great incentives and tax incentives and luxury.
And that's how you do it.
What we are watching right now is completely the inverse.
Let's jump into the news.
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Easy enough.
Let's get to the news.
We've got this from the New York Post.
Staggering one-third of New Yorkers want to flee New York, citing cost of living and quality of life.
Survey shows.
In a landslide majority, more than eight in 10 New Yorkers who responded to the mayor's poll believe that the state is no longer affordable for the average family, up from 82% in 2025.
Those high prices fueled 40% of New Yorkers lining up to leave for greener pastures.
Well, 21% cited quality of life, 15% said taxes, and 10% said politics, according to the poll.
Now, I want to pause real quick and show you this beautiful photo.
Look at that photo of New York.
Isn't it crisp and beautiful?
You can see all the snow.
You see the woman pushing her baby stroller through the snowy streets.
Yeah, it looks really pretty, except there's a reason why I don't want to live there, especially with my family.
And that is all of this snow is covered with disgusting chemicals, high concentrations of lead, oil, brake dust, all of that nasty stuff.
It sits in the snow, and as the snow melts, it remains concentrated.
And then you end up with basically toxic sludge everywhere.
Guys, maybe the reason they're doing all of this in New York is to get you to leave because the city is too congested.
And with Zoom, everybody works remote anyway, right?
They say 7% are fed up with the weather.
I don't agree with that.
I love the snow.
The number of New Yorkers wanting to jump the state line increased to 33%.
It was up from 27% 15 years ago.
The willingness to get out of town was highlighted last year when more residents moved out of New York and New Jersey than any other state, with most bound for the South and Pacific Northwest, according to United Van Line's 2025 National Movers Study.
Indeed.
Now, you may be asking me though, but Tim, people want to leave.
He's only been in office for like three months, right?
He certainly hasn't destroyed everything in that short amount of time.
I absolutely will give him that.
I do not believe that Zona Mamdani is responsible for literally every single problem that's affecting New York.
He inherited all of these problems and now he's got to juggle them and he doesn't know how to do it.
It's funny, like right when he gets in, bus prices and train, the metro prices went up and everyone started roasting him.
I'm like, guys, he had nothing to do with that.
He just got into office.
That was preset in the previous administration.
It's a time bomb for poor Zoran Mamdeni.
Well, here you go.
Black middle class New Yorkers say they'd be victims of Democratic Socialists of America's tax hike plan.
Indeed they would.
Indeed they would.
Many black middle-class NYC property owners say they'd be amongst the biggest victims of the DSA.
Some told the Post the DSA's Marxist measures, which include higher taxes for individuals making over 300,000 and taxing inheritances over 250,000, would hurt New Yorkers like themselves who spent decades building up retirement accounts, paying off homes, and planning their estates to benefit their loved ones.
The reason you invest is to acquire wealth with the hopes of putting it towards your legacy, your family, and this will greatly affect my family.
I'm going to say it, as I often do, I believe Democrats are racist.
I believe that they, you can call it the soft bigotry of low expectations, right?
That's what Bush called it.
No, let me say it like this, my friends.
I believe that some of these plans, many of these plans, are intended to actually harm black families so they cannot improve.
And I mean it.
Let's talk about these wealth taxes, taxing inheritances over $250,000.
Let me explain for you why that is intended to hurt the poor.
You may be saying, Tim, you're silly.
$250,000, you're wealthy.
Maybe not like super rich, but you're comfortable, right?
Indeed.
There is a threshold of money at which point money is meaningless to you.
$250,000 is not that limit.
Maybe it is a million bucks per year.
Maybe the more money you get, the less money matters.
You know, and I say this not as a humble brag, but in full disclosure so I can explain this.
I go grocery shopping and I only somewhat pay attention to the prices.
I don't stop and look at the price of a gallon of milk.
I'll check the prices I'm grabbing it for $4.29 or whatever it might be, but I don't really think about it all that much beyond that.
When I get my bill afterwards, I go, wow, it's $400,000 now, right?
I am not saying this to brag or to be condescending or insulting, but just to explain the perspective of someone like me.
I make a lot of money.
And so I got to be honest, at a certain point, money doesn't mean the same thing.
So understand this.
When they say that they're going to tax inheritances over $250,000, they're talking about upper middle class people.
So if you're a black family and you have suffered generational poverty, but in the past generation or two, you've improved, started a business, you're making money now, and now you finally have a real inheritance to give, and it's only $250,000.
The communists come and take away from you.
Now hold on there a minute.
What if I'm ultra wealthy old money and I've got a $50 million inheritance to give to my kid?
Well, they're going to tax it.
Let's talk, let's try this.
Explain this rather easily, and then we'll jump to the next story here that we have in line with Mamdani considering eliminating free parking.
How much money do you need to be comfortable?
There are studies done on this, and the average right now, I think, in the US is around 150K.
If you have $150,000 a year as a salary, after taxes, you should be enough to pay for health care, have kids, have enough food, and afford a two-week vacation while putting a little bit away towards your retirement.
That's the number they say.
To be honest, though, at 150K, look, I know a lot of you would say, like, I wish I was making that much, but no, in all seriousness, you still don't feel like you're ultra-rich.
You're just finally starting to feel like you can relax a little bit.
You're still worried about the money.
You're still worried about the market, your retirement accounts, and all of these things.
At 250K, it's a bit more comfortable.
However, you still really are thinking about the money.
At 250K, you can certainly afford to live a middle-class median life, as one would hope you could.
However, after 250K, they start taxing you more, right?
So now the harder you work, the more you work, the less you start getting back.
That's the top tax bracket.
Now, hold on.
Actually, I think it might be, they might have increased it, but let me put it like this.
If you make $10 million a year and you only need $150 to be comfortable, what do you do with the rest of that money?
Literally whatever you want.
First and foremost, you can just stop working because that's going to cover $150K.
Let's just say with inflation, if you're making, let's say you make $10 million a year, after your first year after taxes, you're going to take home $6 million.
You put that into the proper wealth management fund and just live off the interest and you don't got to do anything.
This is the point.
When they say like, oh, we're going to tax inheritances and properties.
Rich people don't care.
They will move.
They will find loopholes.
They will hire lawyers.
Middle income and mid-level businesses are going to be the most hurt by those policies.
All it does is create a wall.
So if you are traditionally coming from a legacy poverty, impoverished family, they're putting barriers in front of you that make it harder for you to get rich.
And if you're rich, you're going to say, guess I'll hop on my private jet and fly to a different state where it's cheaper.
You can't do that if you're working class.
You can't do that even if you're upper middle class.
You can't just sell your property.
You might be underwater right now.
Well here we go.
In the latest move, Mamadani, I know his name's Mamdani, I'm just goofing off, is considering to eliminate, considering eliminating free parking.
This is a really great example.
We have this tweet here.
I want you to hear it from this woman where she explains it.
unidentified
So it looks like City Hall is discussing whether or not to charge people for using the streets for parking right now.
Mind you, ZoroMamdani ran on taxing the upper class and not the lower class.
See, the upper class in this city, they usually go to a garage.
It's usually like the lower and the middle class that park on the street.
There's also people that are living in cars that also park on the street.
I try to tell a lot of people before the election that the people that we're voting in is not for the regular people.
And they do not represent or come from backgrounds of regular people.
It's a problem that there's overcrowding and too many cars.
Punishing the poor, I don't know if that's the appropriate solution.
It's almost like Mamdani says, we got too many cars.
We got people sleeping in the cars.
Just make it impossible for them.
Isn't that great?
We're not going to solve the problem.
We're going to make the problem go away, right?
Those are different things.
Mamdani comes in and says, trust me, we're going to tax the rich and do all these great things.
And then it just makes it worse for everybody who's poor.
That's the reality of this.
The rich people are leaving because they can and it's easy.
And the ones who can't, because maybe they're wealthy, because they have a law practice specifically for New York State, well, they're not being hurt by this all that much.
Again, let me just lay this out.
Let's say you have $100 million and Mamdani says, I am going to tax you at 20%.
And you go, oh, that's $20 million.
Well, I can't leave the state because all my money is made here.
So it sucks and I'm pissed off, but I have $80 million.
Now let's say you make $100,000 and Mamdani says, I'm going to tax you an additional 20%.
You then say, I'm only taking home 60.
Now you're knocking me down to 80.
I'm going to take home 47 after this.
I need every dollar.
I need every penny.
Rent is expensive.
Yo, rent is 3,500 in some places of New York per month.
And if you're making 100K, you're taking home 60, you're talking about more than half of your income covering your rent.
If you make $100 million, or if you have $100 million and you've got $80 after that, you're going, oh, it's so annoying that I lost $20 million.
I could have done so much more than that with that money.
Well, I still only pay $20,000 a month and I got $80 million, so what do I care?
Now, don't get me wrong, obviously there are people who make like a million bucks a year and they're trying to charge them 20 grand on top of what they already pay.
So if you make like a million bucks, I think you end up taking home like 500K or a little bit less.
Like half your money goes to taxes.
So here's the reality.
If you're living in New York and you're wealthy, your business at this level likely comes from a more national enterprise.
That is, you don't personally need to be in New York.
If your business operates in New York and you run that business, just leave.
You just leave.
$20 million.
Like if they're actually going to tax you that much money, they don't.
I think it's like 10 or 13% total.
So it'd be like 13 million if you're making 100.
I got to be honest, would you give that money away?
No.
Look, there's very few people who make that kind of money.
But if you're making $10 million a year and they're trying to take $1.3 million of your check to be in New York City, you're going to be like, I would rather just fly in a private jet every weekend or when I need to come to New York.
The way New York does it is if you come to the city more than half the year, they charge you income tax for the full year.
So there are a lot of ultra-wealthy people that move to Florida and then they just fly out for business meetings when they have to, but considering Zoom and all that, they don't anymore.
Anyway, long story short, otherwise I'm just ranting on this stuff.
Momdani is actually implementing policies that just are gutting everybody.
And here's my favorite.
Here's my absolute favorite from Gothamist.
New York City's $30 minimum wage proposal headed to city council.
This is it.
This is the apocalypse.
Guys, I am okay with a cultural standard for a minimum wage.
I am okay with it.
Culturally, you have people who don't want to do certain jobs.
So what the Democrats do, they say, bring in illegal immigrants because they do the jobs that we don't want to do.
That's not true.
Anybody would be willing to do any job if the price was right.
So they say, who's going to clean your toilets?
I got to be honest.
You want to hire Tim Poole to come clean your toilet?
I got an honor rate.
I will absolutely clean a toilet for the right price.
Not even a joke.
Now you may be saying, well, hold on there, gosh darn minute, Tim.
Why would you?
You're so successful and wealthy and so busy.
Yeah, sure.
How much would you have to pay me to get me to clean your toilet?
So if you lived locally and you wanted me to take time out of my day to come and clean your toilet, it's probably going to cost you $400,000 to $500,000.
Yeah, you know why?
Because I run a big company that generates eight figures in revenue and actually multiple companies.
So what is my time worth?
Now, don't get me wrong.
There's some people that'd be like, I would never degrade myself that way.
It's like, mew, you know, for the most part, yeah, sure.
It's probably, like, realistically, if someone said they want me to come and scrub their house clean, I'd be like, it's not happening.
Like, literally, there's no amount of money.
Well, that's not true.
$15 million, done.
I'll make your house look brand new, personally, by myself and with a toothbrush.
That's $15 million.
I tell everybody watching, guys, you know, things we can do with $15 million, it's like, you know, almost a year of revenue for our company done in, you know, a couple days.
I'll take it.
Now, what about you?
How much would it take for you to clean a toilet?
30 bucks an hour?
You might say yes.
The only problem is these are culturally enforced standards.
The money has to exist.
These people don't get it.
I certainly hope, I beg, and I pray that they do this.
And I don't really mean it, but because I know it's really, really bad for the city.
But let me explain to you what happens.
So we worked in New Jersey and I was talking to an accountant.
New Jersey passed a minimum wage increase and the accountant said they lost 20% of their clients.
It's really sad.
So he said, here's the thing.
They do a minimum wage increase, but they say it's going to go up by increments, right?
So six months, it'll go up 50 cents.
Six months later, another 50 cents.
Six months later, it's another 50 cents.
The problem is, say like a local pizza restaurant's operating on thin margins.
The owner might only be taking home $50,000 a year as the owner.
So he's not by any means wealthy.
You've now told him he is going to have like a 17% wage increase overnight.
He doesn't have the money in the account.
So what do they do?
They fire everybody.
They shut down.
You can't just do this.
You know, like maybe what they would have to do is implement like a 2% food tax, which would then go towards payment grants to cover wages initially as the prices seek to normalize.
But really, really, it's just never going to work.
A $30 minimum wage.
Now, there are some benefits to this.
Don't get me wrong.
In the short term, it'll be a nuclear bomb in New York.
But the people who are able to live and work as things normalize after the destruction, if you're making $30 minimum wage in New York City, why would you want to work in New Jersey?
So what's going to happen is people are going to live in Jersey and take the bus into New York to work at McDonald's for $30 per hour because that money will go a long way in Jersey.
It's a temporary stopgap over a long enough period of time.
This will affect every part of the country.
And the truth is, minimum wage doesn't matter.
What matters is the value of labor and the value of labor is held internally within humans.
So if someone comes and says, I'm really good at cleaning floors, I'll say, I don't know, need that twice a week.
What are you willing to pay for it?
I got to be honest, anyone can do it.
And so therein lies the challenge.
If 10 people line up and all say, I'll clean your floor, I say, let's take bids.
One guy says, I'll do it for 50 bucks.
The other guy says, I'll do it for 40.
I'll do it for 30, 20, 10, 5.
I'll do it first time for free so you see how good I do it.
And then next time I'll charge you 20 bucks.
I say, done.
That's the problem with mass market competition of low-skilled labor.
Just saying, no, no, you have to give them $30.
It doesn't work.
It just does not work.
Now you've got 10 people all standing in line saying, I'd like to clean your floors this time.
And I'd be like, well, you can't negotiate with each other.
You can't compete for the job.
Everybody has to get paid the same.
So what do I care?
Who's the best at it?
It doesn't work.
Now, there are benefits, right?
Nationally, by having a high standard, it's easy to buy imported products from countries that don't have a high standard.
New York state legislature supports increasing taxes on New York City's wealthiest.
And indeed, they're already leaving, and they're going to leave more because they can.
Guys, we operate at West Virginia.
We are looking at potential new locations.
It's nothing to do with West Virginia for the most part.
It's more about the success of the business.
But the point is, even though we've invested probably something like $15 or $20 million into the state or more, we can just up and leave whenever we want because we have money.
So if I was being told, like, and West Virginia's not doing this, I love West Virginia, but it's more about the health of the show and access to proper guests.
We've talked about how people don't want to travel anymore.
There's a lot more to it.
And other opportunities and ancillary businesses that we're trying to expand, there may be better locations, unfortunately, for West Virginia, though we do love West Virginia.
We've got one of the best reps, Riley Moore.
He's great.
And so anyway, you take a look at, if I was in New York and they said, we're going to tax you more, I'd just be like, okay, we're leaving.
Why come?
In fact, here's a funny thing.
We've had companies reach out and ask, would we be willing to do the show in New York?
And there's sponsorship opportunities and guest opportunities.
And I said, yeah, it's never going to happen.
The taxes are too high.
We lose way too much money and we don't gain enough by doing it.
Texas?
Pretty dang good.
Florida?
Pretty dang good.
Nevada even, because you got Vegas.
A lot of celebrities coming and going.
You could have a fun show in Vegas.
The socialist crime blueprint begins.
NYC leaders pull back the curtain on Mamdani's vision for public safety.
He wants to slash the NYPD budget and revamp 911 response as transit crime jumps 18.5%.
I watched a video of a guy shoving another guy in front of a train the other day.
And apparently it happens a lot in New York now.
It's pretty dang wild, isn't it?
How we've gotten to this point.
Now, I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers for you on what New York should or shouldn't do for the most part.
I can tell you that artificially increasing wages isn't going to do anything.
The argument they make is that, well, it's for big corporations.
They can afford it.
Okay, let's play this game.
You say, we're going to increase the minimum wage to $30, but only if you have at least 100 employees or more.
So that means McDonald's, Wendy's, that means, you know, Taco Bell, whatever.
Sure.
Here's the problem.
So if I get a job at Taco Bell, I get paid $30 an hour.
But if I go work at mom and pop's pizza shop, I'm going to get paid $15.
I'm going to go work at Taco Bell.
So what happens to mom and pop's pizza shop?
They go to business.
They can't find any employees.
Nobody wants to work there for dirt.
The big corporations, we're told, can afford it.
They can afford it.
They got so much money, they can afford to pay it.
Yeah?
Can mom and pop taco shop compete with Taco Bell Taco Shop?
Indeed, they cannot.
So where do all the workers go?
Now, don't get me wrong, Taco Bell may be very upset that they got to pay an increased minimum wage and increase minimum wage.
But in the end, they can afford it, right?
So they do.
Everybody chooses to work for them instead.
Nobody wants to work at the small business that can't afford to pay well.
They all quit and those businesses go under and then everything becomes a corporate monopoly.
And that is the world the left wants to give you.
They, you know, call it ignorance, short-term thinking, or otherwise.
They don't have a real plan in place.
It's the unfortunate reality of all of this, all of this, you know, we'll give you whatever you want, socialist policy stuff.
It just doesn't work.
So my friends, New York, I wish you the best.
But defunding your police, raising taxes, charging for parking, I got to be honest, maybe it actually does have a positive effect 10 years from now, because things are going to get so bad that everybody flees.
Things start to become cheaper again, and there's no one left to rob.
And then someone like Trump can come in and fix it once again.
Maybe Trump Jr.
But for everybody who remains, Godspeed.
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