Please consider Mayor de Blasio Says Wealth Is ‘in the Wrong Hands’.
Mayor Bill de Blasio used his sixth State of the City speech to present his tenure in New York City and his promises of things to come as the alternative.
“Here’s the truth, brothers and sisters, there’s plenty of money in the world. Plenty of money in this city,” the mayor said, flanked by screens with graphs of productivity outpacing compensation. “It’s just in the wrong hands!”
He cast himself as an aspiring Robin Hood — aiming to take from the rich and give to the poor — even as he has thus far been unsuccessful in his many attempts to raise taxes on high earners.
New York is the “safest big city in America,” the mayor said. With Washington showing no interest in creating Medicare for all, “New York City will lead the way,” Mr. de Blasio said in announcing his health care initiative.
The speech concluded: “Those goals are not utopian or unreachable. They are achievable.”
Not Utopian Indeed
Socialism is never utopian. It simply does not work. The more extreme the efforts, the quicker the failure. That is the proven track record.
But it never stops people from trying.
Indeed, promises of “free” healthcare, food, shelter, phones, have an allure. This kind of nonsense is after all what got Mayor Bill de Blasio elected, complete with a $225,000 salary.
Minting Millionaires
Need help getting elected? Just Mint Millionaires.
Despite his promise to reform to pay and perquisites, Mayor Bill De Blasio showered the city workforce with billions of dollars in overtime and extra pay. Last year alone, this amounted to $3.2 billion.
The De Blasio administration is minting millionaires. City employees routinely earned $1 million in wages every four to six years. This is a serious trend at the Department of Corrections, an agency employing 66 of the 100 highest overtime earners across the city last year.
The city’s pay and overtime systems are so broken that some employees worked 100-hour weeks for the entire year. That means these employees worked 13 hours every day for 365 days, including holidays and weekends without taking a single day off for vacation or sick leave.
- Daniel Cherenfant, a community associate at the Department of Buildings, worked 2,736 hours of overtime last year on top of 2,000 hours of regular work. This means Cherenfant worked the equivalent of 13 hour days every day of the year.
- Mohammed Uddin, a motor vehicle operator at Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), worked 2,459 hours of overtime – the equivalent of 12.2 hours each day of the year when added to regular hours.
- Tyrone Watkins, a custodian at ACS, cleaned off 2,420 hours of overtime – the equivalent of 12.1 hours each day of the year when added to regular hours.
- These examples give new meaning to New York City’s nickname as “the city that never sleeps.”
Dedicated Civil Servants
These dedicated civil servants no doubt do work tirelessly at one thing: Getting out the vote for Mayor de Blasi.
But much of what de Blasi wants to do requires assistance from the state government in Albany. His programs clearly do not “pay for themselves”.
Democrats in Control
Not to worry, for the first time in decades, Democrats are in Complete Control of NY State.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the Democratic Party seized complete control of the New York State government, decisively evicting Republicans from running the State Senate, which they have controlled for all but three years since World War II.
“My great frustration has been the inability to pass progressive measures that would have made a significant positive difference for the state and, as governor, bearing the burden of the failure of their passage,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview on Wednesday. “The Democratic Senate will liberate me from that frustration.”
There is already chatter about legalizing recreational marijuana; investing more in the crumbling subways; addressing climate change; and installing an early voting system for the first time, all ideas that the governor has previously offered differing degrees of support for.
And after a tumultuous primary season in which liberal challengers ousted seven more moderate Democratic state senators, the virtual Holy Grail of current progressive thought seems within reach: a state-run universal health care system. Mr. Cuomo stopped short of fully embracing the proposal, saying it “has merit.”
If you have wealth in New York, they have pledged to take it. And they will. Get out.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I really care very little for terms which people use to try and pigeon-whole ideas: progressive, liberal, socialist, democrat …. divide et impera. It makes us lose sight of what is important and stops us reasoning. Instead, it just serves to trigger Pavlovian biting instincts.
You make a statement but do not explain why you think that would be the case. Even if it were true, is that a bad thing? Today, 99.9% are renting private property from the 0.01%. Is that a more desirable state of affairs? You may think you own your house, but your average household is also collateral to the tune of 150-200k of government debt, and that does not include any unfunded pensions, healthcare and medical costs. Also, it doesn’t include any student debts or any inflation which you in fact suffer from, but for which you are not being reimbursed, thanks to ZIRP/ NIRP.
Also, you just make a claim that the state would own all property after one generation but do not explain, why that would be so, when I have already outlined below, why that would plainly not be the case. Remember, you do not pay taxes with assets, but with money. The executors of any estate will always have to sell all property first, to raise the money to then pay the tax (and as I have suggested, any such monies could in fact be cancelled. But again, that could be debated.). So, nothing would change in terms of how and where such assets are bought and sold, i.e. stocks will continue to be bought and sold on the stock exchange and through private trade sales, futures exchanges, forex markets etc. will continue as is, nothing would change, as I have explained below. The price level will come down for sure, but affordability will increase across the board.
All of this would be achieved without a) shedding a drop of blood, b) infringing or changing a single private property right and c) causing any ethical harm or damage, very much the opposite in fact!
Try and remind me, why you think we should accept the fact or why it may make ethical sense, that some people are simply born with privileges which a normal person has no chance to ever overcoming during their lifetime and that therefore 99.9% of the people will always be subservient to the 0.1%. How does that benefit society as a whole? You do remember, that we have had revolutions, including in the US, during which millions have been killed and in pursuit solely of making this wrong right and at overcoming birth rights and unearned privileges once and for all? By inference, you might as well wish to reinstate a medieval feudal society or in fact slavery, because what you have today is very much the same, even if they try and put lipstick on it and claim it to be something else.
Why do you think death would stop transfers of wealth from being made. If I knew upon my death, none of my accumulated wealth would transfer to my children, I would do everything in my control to transfer them that wealth and associated privilege during my lifetime. For example, private college would become $100,000 per year instantly. Even grade school for that matter. Not only would I have every incentive to supercharge my children’s prospects I would also be inclined to debase the living standards of their competition. Whatever is in my power during my lifetime, with all the money in the world, that is the incentive. No incentive to invest, just a power struggle. I fear this idea of yours would bypass the feudal era altogether and hyperlink us to caveman days. You speak of this mythical 99.9% as being normal, yet apparently they live as slaves. But you don’t live as a slave do you? If so, why? Maybe you don’t realize that half the country doesn’t even pay taxes. Call it the birthright of the downtrodden. Maybe they should begin to pay their ‘fair share’. In fact, it’s quite a privilege to be just poor enough these days.
Here you come with a plan to steal the fruits of a man’s labor when in fact that goose is already being plucked as it is. The old fable of the fisherman’s wife might inform you in your quest for more and more from the productive members of society, and don’t forget, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor. As was mentioned below, this would be a great cross to die upon.
“Maybe you don’t realize that half the country doesn’t even pay taxes. Call it the birthright of the downtrodden. Maybe they should begin to pay their ‘fair share’. ”
I can’t quite decide whether this makes me think more of “Let them eat brioche” or “Arbeit macht frei”. Either way, it is obviously deeply cynical, especially, as you still haven’t even attempted to defend, why you think unearned privileges and birth-rights are ethically right and beneficial to society. Try that, and we might actually enter what is called an argument.
As I have already stated further below, I personally have no objections with people making a lot of money out of own merit and if they decide to spend all of it during their lifetime, be it to help giving their children a good start, so be it (although some limits on passing your wealth to your spouse and children will have to apply for tax-avoidance purposes, as in fact they do today). I prefer it a lot to the situation we have today, where such children have no incentive of ever actually having to go and earn a living and yet will have power over others for no accomplishment of their own.
And no, I cannot see how that might “hyperlink us to caveman days” whatever that might even mean. How could it possibly lead to a more uneven distribution of wealth between the rich and poor (i.e. Gini-Coefficient) than we have today?
And if I am not a slave, why do I have to have a social security number and a passport? Try and live without either (certainly in Europe, where living without a passport is impossible) and then tell me how you fared. Why do I in fact have to pay any income tax? You do realise, that historically, it is a rather novel idea and anything above 10% is quite unheard of.
And to add insult to injury, each US household has to somehow make good the USD 15’000 of additional collateral which they stand for owing to the increase in US government debt EACH YEAR! Not counting the USD 30’000 in the FED balance sheet which they serve as collateral for too.
And the whole post-WWII welfare state Ponzi-scheme, which an average worker has to rely on (and pay ever increasing contributions to) in order for drawing a future pension and medical care is plainly falling apart as we speak for demographic reasons, unless they accept to flood their country with cheap unskilled labour from, in the case of the US, Mexico, hence obviously making it more difficult to earn a decent living in the first place.
P.S. “Here you come with a plan to steal the fruits of a man’s labor when in fact that goose is already being plucked as it is.” Just to clarify and make sure that you do understand, that it is in fact impossible to steal from a dead person, for the simple reason, that a dead person has no legal (e.g. ownership or property) rights (nor obviously obligations) anymore.
And re slavery, why do I have to accept a piece of paper with a number on it as compensation for my labour. I would prefer something a lot more tangible than this.
I give NYC ten to fifteen years before it has another late-70s-style fiscal meltdown.
People like de Blasio adore athletes who drag down salaries of $57 million per year. They despise executives, who have vastly greater responsibility and have trained longer for the position, who earn $18 million per year. Stupid.
Let’s start an office pool:
Which professional sports team will be the first to leave NY State?
Which professional sports team from NY State will be the first to go bankrupt?
When / Where will Goldman Sachs re-incorporate its offices outside of NY?
When / Where will Pepsi re-incorporate its offices outside of NY?
When will IBM file for bankruptcy?
When will the next Trump business declare bankruptcy?
As you can see, there is a LOT of money supporting the existing socialism utopian experiment that can vanish quickly.
Goldman already has the bulk of its back office operations in Jersey City, in NJ’s tallest building. It wouldn’t take much to move the execs, traders and other for-show positions across the river.
The same is true of most major banks. The only bank truly stuck in NYC due to all its real estate commitment is Citi.
There’s some perspective missing here. Socialism has such a broad interpretation as to make the word meaningless. If a government’s responsibility is to protect people from exploitation then socialism currently does it best (relatively speaking) – live in northern Europe for a couple of years and see for yourself.
Similarly the word “wealth” is just as ambiguous. It seems unnecessary to be able to own a 747 or buy a presidency!! A 99% tax on personal assets exceeding $20million, for example, doesn’t seem unreasonable. Such a tax is hardly likely to affect peoples’ desire to strive. Applying wealth limits to companies would additionally curb monopoly and promote competition or opportunity by forcibly splitting market share.
It seems unlikely that GE, Monsanto, IBM or Apple and so on have made the world a better place in their drive to monopolize their respective markets. The idea that greed-is-good and that free (exploitative) capitalism will magically self-correct based on the choices consumers are allowed to make, is clearly built on bullshit rhetoric sold to the US masses for a century. The evidence of its failure is clear.
Look around, at the state of the environment, the declining insect populations, the declining zooplankton in our oceans, the species extinction the declining fresh water, atmospheric pollution, particulate plastics, lead poisoning, sugar addiction and so on… these are not the signs of success from capitalism, they are the consequences of governments, prone to corruption, who have failed to protect their electorates and ignored their “socialist” responsibilities.
“A 99% tax on personal assets exceeding $20million, for example, doesn’t seem unreasonable.”
In a vacuum, maybe so, but nothing occurs in a vacuum. Hollande raised the top income tax in France to 75%, causing actor Gerarde Depardieu to move to Russia and a number of French businessmen to move to Belgium. Hollande eventually reduced the tax rate.
A 99% tax on assets greater than $20 million means that most business and tech innovators would stop striving once they hit that low ceiling. There would be no more Apples or Amazon’s, and hiring would sharply decline — perhaps even collapse — since a $20 million enterprise is a small one.
Globally, American companies would be crushed by competitors without such insane confiscation, and American unemployment would soar while wages went into a tailspin.
It’s the guy striving for a billion or ten billion or even a hundred billion who creates tens of thousands of jobs. A guy who is cut off at $20 million will create a few dozen jobs and then stop.
Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the U.S..
de Blasio has gone full retard socialist. His subjects deserve everything that is coming to them.
Plank #1 of the Communist Manifesto: Abolition of private property in land and application of all rents of land to public purpose.
++++
Bill de Blasio: ‘We Will Seize Their Buildings…’
Fresh off proposing yesterday that private employers be required to provide their workers with 10 days of paid vacation, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio set his sights on a new target: property owners.
During his State of the City Address, delivered Thursday, de Blasio warned that the city will take action against landlord abuse, even if that means seizing private property.
“When a landlord tries to push out a tenant by making their home unlivable, a team of inspectors and law enforcement agents will be on the ground in time to stop it,” the mayor said. If fines and penalties don’t do the trick, then “we will seize their buildings, and we will put them in the hands of a community nonprofit that will treat tenants with the respect they deserve,” he added.
But surely city officials won’t have the time to find and punish each one of the city’s bad landlords, right? Wrong. That’s because de Blasio is creating a new agency devoted solely to landlord abuse: the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.
As the New York Daily News notes, the city already has an Office of Tenant Advocate. However, it has not yet been funded, according to the Progressive Caucus of the New York City Council.
“we will seize their buildings, and we will put them in the hands of a community nonprofit that will treat tenants with the respect they deserve”
These nonprofits will be governed by councils of working people. These councils can ensure that conditions are fair and equitable.
(PS, what’s the Russian word for “council?”)*
All we need is a 100% tax on all forms of inheritance. Anything else is just another form of modern-day feudalism, where de facto nothing has changed from how the feudal lords ruled over the plebs.
Anybody should be able to earn and keep as much money as they can from legitimate work during their lifetimes, but once a person dies, that money must not go to the heirs, as this is ethically wrong, just as inheriting a feudal title which bestows power is ethically wrong. It is an unearned privilege and at least since the French revolution we should all agree, that such unearned privileges do not belong in a just and fair society where only merit should determine power and privileges.
States can administer estates (including any private companies) just as well as any private person can, see the sovereign wealth funds of some of the richest nations on earth. And finally, a 100% inheritance tax infringes no property rights (as a dead person has no more legal rights, nor obviously obligations). Just imagine a world, where no more real estate, castles, paintings, companies etc. would be able to be passed-on to the heirs and think about what that would do to the prices/ values of such assets…
met68,,, ridiculous,,,, but if I happens guess I’ll just pass on everything “I” worked for before I die,,,, btw… does this mean I can’t pass anything on to my spouse??
“ridiculous,,,,” : How about trying a reasoned argument why that may be the case instead? May I conclude from this, that you are supportive of feudalism? And if you were to spend everything before you die, wonderful! Spouses will need a pragmatic approach, e.g. it can be passed on once, but not twice, if spouse were to marry again later.
Let’s see,,,, the lazy, indolent, partiers, drug users, irresponsible, fat and unhealthy use up all their money and then some and then live on federal welfare and leave nothing behind when they die except maybe a pile of IOUs… those of us who are responsible, savers, hard workers, thrifty etc are expected to leave everything to government.. really ridiculous,,, the government that makes stupid decisions, waste money and subsidize the above lazy and indolent gets to spend my estate… like I said ridiculous,,, better that I pass on to my ambitious, hard working responsible children than uncle use it to subsidize socialist and their ridiculous socialist ideas…
How is this not communism? The state will soon own all corporations, all real estate, all financial assets, all media companies, all tech companies. There is nothing left for private ownerships. People like you are communists.
(And stop liking your own post…)
Have I suggested anywhere, that I want to change any private property rights or laws or that a person may not own as much wealth as they are capable of amassing during their lifetime without state interference? Also, why would any public company be a state company under such a tax regime? There will obviously still be financial stock exchanges, futures markets etc. and people can still invest as they do now. You don’t seem to (want) to understand the argument or the proposal I have actually made. By logical inference, you would also be supporting the idea that we return to a feudal society.
You are not too bright. After one generation, all houses will be confiscated. Everyone will be living in public housing after a generation or two. That is communism.
Reply to@pi314
I am not sure why my comments get deleted/censored but comments which accuse me of being not too bright and which accuse me of being ridiculous are allowed to stand. I really don’t get what principles are being applied by the censors here.
But be that as it may, why do you believe, that under the proposed 100% inheritance tax regime people would suddenly stop buying houses? The executors of the estate would have to sell all assets/ properties before paying the proceeds to the state in the form of an inheritance tax (and I would even go so far as to propose that all such monies received by the state could then be cancelled, but that could arguably be debated).
Exceptions could be made particularly for private companies, which can be handed as going concerns to a sovereign wealth fund which would continue to run the companies as a trustee until the companies can be sold to the public via an IPO or to other companies via trade sales. Is that really so difficult to fathom?
So no, this has nothing to do with communism. This is applied ethics and reason as opposed to what we have today, which is nothing short of feudal states. Millions have perished through dozens of revolutions worldwide, fighting against the principle of unearned and inherited privileges. Plus ça change.
I have just written a lengthy reply to Top-GUN, but it appears this was deleted/ censored. I have no idea why. It appears no real debate is actually desired by the site’s owners.
So my father who worked his entire life, payed taxes on everything he earned/bought isn’t free to pass that on to his children, who mind you will be taxed as well? This is an issue that would cause me to revolt, like lay down my life revolt and I’m guessing I wouldn’t be alone.
Why do ppl keep addressing symptoms of wealth imbalance instead of going after the one and only true cause? NONE of this could happen if we had honest money. ALL of it will stop as soon as the ppl stop accepting fake money as if it were real. This is the greatest open secret in the economic world and the key to unlocking global debt slavery yet nobody wants to hear it. Once honest money is restored the free market will clear all of these imbalances in one year.
I wonder where Wall St is going to move to?
During the 1970’s the top tax rate in the U.K. was over 80%.
in 1976 the U.K. government was in such a financial crisis that the largest loan ever made up until that time was given to them from the IMF.
Years of bumbling socialistic government policies had bought the U.K. to it’s knees.
High net worth and earning individuals simply relocated to tax havens.
The Beatles being one example. Ringo Starr couldn’t go to the U.K. for years
Enter Maggie Thatcher to the rescue.
The allure of free $#!T is unstoppable.
IF illegal immigration was stopped wages would rise for working class and lower middle class and many more Americans would get jobs.
IF illegal immigrants currently in USA (up to 29.5 million illegals currently according to MIT-Yale study out recently) were deported back to their home countries wages would rise massively for working class and middle class and tens of millions of Americans would get jobs.
Instead of supporting either of those things De Blasio wants to confiscate wealth for government after he just recently promised illegal immigrants FREE healthcare in New York.
Democrats are getting crazier by the day.
Ocazio-Cortez 70% tax rate is also no longer enough and some Democrats are talking about 90% tax rates…
Blasio is like the guy always hanging around in the break room, grousing about how screwed up management is. Yeah, the one who couldn’t manage the 3rd shift cleaning ladies. They put him in the break room making coffee. Yep, that’s why you can’t drink it now.
I’m sure there was no overtime fraud or sleeping on the job committed.
Let’s start with defining “progressive”. I’m sure there’ll be a bunch of stumbling to fioll the day’s time.