Mamdani says he doesn't believe 'that we should have billionaires' | Hacker News Reader

Mamdani says he doesn't believe 'that we should have billionaires'

thehill.com

42 pointsgeox45 comments

And he's absolutely right. It can't be a democracy if money speaks and people can't.

This campaign was very good at reciting taglines and aphorisms that resonate with certain parts of the voter base. This is one of them. The reporter asking the question basically teed up a softball and let him hit it, again without delivering anything policy related.

And yet, he’s the only candidate who seemed to have any willingness to address concerns of constituents in any significant way. The entire rest of the field was busy kissing Israel’s ring as if anyone in New York struggling to pay rent cares about that.

Just because a politician uses simple and catchy language doesn’t mean there isn’t policy substance behind it. Democrats have been losing for years trying to explain complicated macroeconomics to their voting base, Mamdani is one of the young democratic candidates who is a breath of fresh air.

If you think no one in NYC cares about Israel… and I mean clearly you do, just in the opposite way.

Cuomo was a terrible candidate.

The #1 issue is the economy, by far, between voters of both parties. Foreign policy is #4 on the list out of 10 (Pew Research).

I’ll also remind you that this is a mayoral race. The pew research numbers I’m citing are for president of the United States.

I am quite aware that Cuomo is a terrible candidate, that doesn’t take away from Mamdani being a very good candidate in terms of his effectiveness at conveying his message and building a coalition.

Of course none of us know yet whether he will be a good mayor.

Democrats explaining macroeconomics to their voting base?? Never have I seen such a thing. They generally do what Mamdani did: promise things that people want for free or for cheap. With some hate for some groups added for balance.

You mean like cheap eggs and hate for undocumented immigrants and trans people?

You say Democrats just want to promise freebies so I’ll give you a fun challenge: find me the last Republican Congress that passed a budget that reduced the growth of the national deficit.

I’ll give you a hint there, it’s not the Tax Cut and Jobs Act nor the Big Beautiful Bill.

Meanwhile, Medicare for All was estimated by the congressional budget office (nonpartisan) to save money.

> promise things that people want for free or for cheap. With some hate for some groups added for balance

I hate to break it to you but that's the exact same playbook used by the current administration.

All right, and where is the substance? Yes, there could be some. But where is it? Anybody seen it?

Democrats have also been losing on social justice issues while ignoring the actual economic concerns of the poor. Well, is "there shouldn't be billionaires" a social justice slogan, or is it going to actually help the poor in some way? I think it's more a social justice slogan.

Kind of a silly question when the candidate has an entire webpage with details of his plan:

https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform

Uh huh. And where on that is "no billionaires"? I looked but didn't see it.

So we're back at "slogan, with no substance".

I have no idea why you’re hung up on the slogan. You need substance to justify it?

That’s like saying you need substance to back up a slogan like “criminals shouldn’t break into my house.”

I think voters understand intuitively why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

I never understood this argument. What does it even mean not having billionaires. These “billionaires” are share holders in their own company. They don’t have liquid cash worth billions.

It’s the value of the shares that make them billionaires.

Is the politician suggesting they should liquidate their shares? Who will own the company then? Will they keep changing ownership and diluting shares if it reaches billion dollars?

This argument doesn’t even make sense.

As far as taxes go, these are unrealised gains. Even for Capital gains to trigger, there has to be some kind of transfer/sale. And transfer/sale has a different meaning in tax and legal language.

> Even for Capital gains to trigger, there has to be some kind of transfer/sale.

The way rich people avoid capital gains tax is to borrow against their stocks. So they get to enjoy their wealth without paying back to the society.

Lending against securities is available for general public. Don’t know what your complaint is?

> So they get to enjoy their wealth without paying back to the society.

Why is there an expectation for “someone” to be a guardian of society? Isn’t the govt functioning?

I am sorry to say, conversations like these are pretty common in echo chambers.

Wouldn't it make more sense to say that we shouldn't have poor people?

Two very different statements and both could be true

Does he also think that NYC shouldn't let billionaires leave?

Better the billionaires leave and the city adapts(like building housing on their abandoned property) if you ask me

Why would their property be abandoned? It won't be abandoned in any legal sense; it will either be sold, retained, or seized.

Selling it would mean you pay taxes. Retaining it you pay taxes. It's probably not going to be seized if you don't abandon it, it's not like it's a low income neighborhood in the way of a highway.

Billionaires didn't get to be billionaires by abandoning $10 million properties to avoid $1 million in taxes.

Then the additional taxes shouldn't be an issue.

Regardless of one's stance on Mamdani's politics this entire "how will NYC survive without the billionaires???" talk all over the news and social media has been exhausting. No, NYC isn't standing today because of the grace of a few dozen ultra rich individuals. They can all leave tomorrow, and the city will be perfectly fine. And we all know they won't, because no matter how much they shout otherwise on social media these people love the culture and convenience of liberal cities. The majority of Republican politicans, donors, CEOs and "influencers" wouldn't survive a day in the "middle America" they claim to embody.

This probably will be weaponised against him but as a proposition shorn of political intent, it has some good qualities. At root, he says the number of orders of magnitude in society should be more constrained. Having a span of 10^6 (billions to thousands, so knock of 3 of the 10^9 digits) is too many. I would think thats a defensible propositon.

Arguing that some people demand aspirational goals as high as that in order to do what they do begs many questions: Not that their demand is invalid (as demands go, I've never found bargaining very easy, arguing for billions is beyond my comprehension) but I seriously doubt the ability to add that much value is a skill distinct enough that it can command that rate of return, against all other choices.

Not "they can't generate the ROI" as much as "others can generate that ROI just as well, it's contestable".

Fund managers (for example) vary in costs, and returns, in ways which I think undermine the proposition here.

Many people take remarkably "fundamentalist" views of peoples rights to limitless potential. "it's my right to accumulate billions if I want" is very strong in opposition to this, aside from the people who may plausibly earn billions who have an entirely rational reason to disclaim alignment here. We experienced this 6 orders of magnitude down the tree in an australian election around tax concepts called "franking credits" which were proposed to be ended by the labor party. Large number of pensioners voted against it, despite being repeatedly told they had none, and would lose none: The meme of "Labor is coming for your franking credits" was unstoppable.

Many people who will fail to become millionaires, will oppose constraint on becoming Billionaires.

A parallel but unrelated case: Tax on lottery winnings. Fair or unfair?

The problem with these constructions is that they’re a Motte and Bailey: As soon as anyone starts pointing out the numerous problems with analyses that assume zero-sum games and no second-order consequences (like business owners restructuring to move their companies to nearly any other country which wont seize their ownership) the person retreats to something like “I just think taxes should be slightly higher” or “Why do you hate feeding the poor” or something.

How does it apply here? There is no retreat - Mamdani's plan is public and is "taxes should be slightly higher" among other things. Specifically higher corporate tax and top percentage wealth tax for the area.

If the US hadn't argued so vociferously against normalised worldwide minimum tax standards, this argument would be significantly weaker. The root cause of "well I'll just take my wealth elsewhere" is that taking it elsewhere attracts a benefit against leaving it in the economy with the new taxes.

It's certainly true that capital flight is a risk which has to be assessed, but at that point, we really can say (to re-enter the political domain) that the super rich are holding the rest of the economy to ransom.

Apple sitting on $1T of funds deciding how to spend it best in apple shareholder interests needs to be set against apple re-distributing $1T to shareholders, who then incur tax consequences with capital gain, and the rest of the world gets to move on with things that tax can do. Keeping the money inside Apples safe harbour isn't actually useful.

Remember, money is meant to be useful. Hoarding it, is not always helpful.

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