Wealthy Escape From de Blasio’s New York

04 Mar, 2014 by Dave Blount

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Whoever would have expected the rich to respond to the election of a communist mayor by escaping New York? That is, who other than everyone who has the slightest clue. Michael Goodwin reports:

One friend says 10 wealthy people have told him they are leaving and another says disgusted New Yorkers bought $1 billion in residential property in Florida since the November election. The Sunshine State confers an automatic tax cut of about 12 percent because it has no city or state income tax, nor does it have an inheritance tax.

Beyond taxes, the mayor’s open hostility is a factor. His insulting treatment of former Mayor Bloomberg at the inauguration remains a cloud over him. As one affluent woman, a self-described liberal, told me, “De Blasio hates me, so I hate him.” She doesn’t personally know him, but draws her conclusion from his words and deeds.

The central problem is the mayor’s childish view of wealth.

Taking a page out of Barack Obama’s playbook, de Blasio casts his push for a tax hike on those earning over $500,000 as a moral imperative.

“I believe it’s time to ask the wealthy to do a little more,” he said last year. He paints taxes as a matter of giving back, as though the money was taken from others.

The sneering suggestion that everyone with money is somehow guilty of something is not a surprise coming from a man who spent his honeymoon on an illegal trip to Castro’s Cuba.

In the end, there is no free lunch, even for thieves. De Blasio and his supporters will have to pay a price:

As Bloomberg often noted, about 5,000 very wealthy families paid 30 percent of the city’s income tax. Losing even a few of them means significantly less money for filling potholes and hiring cops.

That’s why communists have an internationalist outlook. So long as there is any liberty anywhere, the productive will escape. When there is no one left to loot, the tyrants run out of other people’s money, and socialism collapses.

The only solution is to control the whole world. The United Nations keeps that Marxist dream alive.