OPINION:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise income taxes on the wealthy so he can use that money to pay for low-income housing he promised constituents during his campaign. And she keeps saying no. And meanwhile, Mamdani must hurry and close a $5.4 billion budget gap and fulfill the legal requirement for a balanced budget. Tick, tock, tick, tock. The new spending plan will take effect on July 1.
So is the woe of socialists everywhere.
It’s what Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Britain, famously said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Mamdani has barely stepped off the campaign trail, and he’s already finding the money from other people is gone.
Hochul has had a bit of a wakeup call herself on the fallacies of leftist living — that is, of using as much of other people’s money as possible as a means of advancing one’s political career.
“Kathy Hochul humiliatingly begs New York’s richest to return after fleeing Mamdani’s high taxes,” Sky News Australia reported in a headline on YouTube.
This is the public speech Hochul just made, where she suggested Mamdani “go down to Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded.” The humiliating part is that Hochul herself did much of the eroding.
“Hochul is calling on wealthy residents to return to the state as concerns grow over a shrinking tax base — but her past remarks telling some New Yorkers to ‘jump on a bus’ and leave for Florida are now drawing renewed attention,” Yahoo! Finance wrote.
The story goes on to report how Hochul in 2022 slammed political opponents — specifically, conservatives Lee Zeldin and Marcus Molinaro, who at the time were seeking the offices of the governor and House of Representatives, respectively.
Hochul, 2022: “We are here to say that the era of Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro — just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK? Get out of town, because you do not represent our values. You are not New Yorkers.”
Oh, my.
Now it’s 2026.
Now the left is facing the consequences of their stupidity and arrogance.
“New York’s population [experienced] shrinking by more than 101,000 between 2022 and 2023, the largest decline in the nation,” the Office of the State Comptroller for New York posted in 2024.
The rich, facing excessive taxation, simply picked up and moved.
From Moneywise: “Hochul pointed to Wall Street firms exploring moves to places like Texas as an example, arguing that tax policy plays a major role in those decisions. ‘They’re not going there because they have a nicer governor — I know that for sure — but they’re going there because of the tax rate,’ she said.”
No du’oh.
This is not rocket science.
Even Democrats should know that the wealthy and well-connected and business savvy will simply relocate if the government interferes too much with their personal finances and economic interests. It’s simple dollars and cents. Why live in a state that taxes, taxes, taxes when another does not? So goes for the cities.
Today’s world of online commerce means companies can headquarter wherever they want; the center is not necessarily a physical geographical location. New York City is not so important anymore.
And the more the city leans left, and opens the door for illegals and shuts the door on proper policing of criminal activities, all while simultaneously raising taxes on high-income earners, the less influential, the less necessary, the less relevant the city becomes to Big Business. Or the wealthy. Or those named Peter whom the government robs to pay Paul.
The fact of the matter is American earners and employers don’t need New York; don’t need New York City. As Hochul is making clear, and as Mamdani is learning — Mamdani, who is right now struggling to cut billions from city expenditures to close the budget hole by July 1 — as these two and others of similarly leftist, socialist leanings are beginning to understand, it’s the government that needs the income earners, and especially, the high-income earners.
If socialists were to acknowledge this, they would never be elected. It’s only their false promises to the low-information and lazy that wins them votes. And once they win, it’s only a matter of time before their lies are outed.
The brilliance of Thatcher’s statement stands the test of time.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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