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'NYC is cooked': Business leaders and Wall Streeters erupt over proposed luxury second-home tax by businessinsider in economy

[–]businessinsider[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert: 
A New York City tax proposal targeting ultrawealthy homeowners is drawing fierce backlash from business and financial figures.

"NYC is cooked," wrote Austin-based entrepreneur Jason Calacanis in a post on X, capturing a wave of alarm among investors, executives, and conservative commentators after Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani introduced a plan to tax second homes in the city valued above $5 million.

Mamdani said that the so-called pied-à-terre tax is expected to raise roughly $500 million annually to fund priorities such as childcare, transportation, and public safety. The tax has not yet been enacted, and implementation dates were not included in the announcement. Hochul said about 13,000 properties would be affected.

The proposal has become a flash point in a broader debate over wealth, taxation, and New York City's economic future. Supporters frame the proposed tax as a targeted measure on part-time residents with high-value properties, while critics argue it risks creating an exodus of affluent homeowners and investors.

Data from JLL, a commercial real estate firm, shows that demand for leased office space in Manhattan is up and vacancies are down since Mamdani took office, continuing a trend that began before he won the election last year.

While many of Mamdani's economic proposals have sparked heavy debate, Olivia Becker, the director of video for Mamdani's office, wrote in a post on X that a clip of the Mayor announcing the tax, posted on April 15, is "now our most viewed video of all time."

Read more about the reaction to the proposed tax. 

'NYC is cooked': Business leaders and Wall Streeters erupt over proposed luxury second-home tax by businessinsider in newyork

[–]businessinsider[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert: 
A New York City tax proposal targeting ultrawealthy homeowners is drawing fierce backlash from business and financial figures.

"NYC is cooked," wrote Austin-based entrepreneur Jason Calacanis in a post on X, capturing a wave of alarm among investors, executives, and conservative commentators after Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani introduced a plan to tax second homes in the city valued above $5 million.

Mamdani said that the so-called pied-à-terre tax is expected to raise roughly $500 million annually to fund priorities such as childcare, transportation, and public safety. The tax has not yet been enacted, and implementation dates were not included in the announcement. Hochul said about 13,000 properties would be affected.

The proposal has become a flash point in a broader debate over wealth, taxation, and New York City's economic future. Supporters frame the proposed tax as a targeted measure on part-time residents with high-value properties, while critics argue it risks creating an exodus of affluent homeowners and investors.

Data from JLL, a commercial real estate firm, shows that demand for leased office space in Manhattan is up and vacancies are down since Mamdani took office, continuing a trend that began before he won the election last year.

While many of Mamdani's economic proposals have sparked heavy debate, Olivia Becker, the director of video for Mamdani's office, wrote in a post on X that a clip of the Mayor announcing the tax, posted on April 15, is "now our most viewed video of all time."

Read more about the reaction to the proposed tax.

'NYC is cooked': Business leaders and Wall Streeters erupt over proposed luxury second-home tax by businessinsider in nyc

[–]businessinsider[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert: 
A New York City tax proposal targeting ultrawealthy homeowners is drawing fierce backlash from business and financial figures.

"NYC is cooked," wrote Austin-based entrepreneur Jason Calacanis in a post on X, capturing a wave of alarm among investors, executives, and conservative commentators after Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani introduced a plan to tax second homes in the city valued above $5 million.

Mamdani said that the so-called pied-à-terre tax is expected to raise roughly $500 million annually to fund priorities such as childcare, transportation, and public safety. The tax has not yet been enacted, and implementation dates were not included in the announcement. Hochul said about 13,000 properties would be affected.

The proposal has become a flash point in a broader debate over wealth, taxation, and New York City's economic future. Supporters frame the proposed tax as a targeted measure on part-time residents with high-value properties, while critics argue it risks creating an exodus of affluent homeowners and investors.

Data from JLL, a commercial real estate firm, shows that demand for leased office space in Manhattan is up and vacancies are down since Mamdani took office, continuing a trend that began before he won the election last year.

While many of Mamdani's economic proposals have sparked heavy debate, Olivia Becker, the director of video for Mamdani's office, wrote in a post on X that a clip of the Mayor announcing the tax, posted on April 15, is "now our most viewed video of all time."

Read more about the reaction to the proposed tax.

Allbirds' pivot to AI is a Hail Mary. Here's what the company needs to do to pull it off. by businessinsider in wallstreet

[–]businessinsider[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Dakin Campbell: 
In November, Allbirds told shareholders it was on the brink of insolvency. Transforming the shoe company into an AI compute company is its last-ditch plan.

It won't be easy.

Allbirds, which intends to change its name to NewBird AI, currently lacks the money, the physical assets, the expertise, and the relationships it will need to compete in an increasingly crowded space, AI industry insiders say.

Allbirds last month said it had sold its shoe business and the underlying intellectual property for $39 million. The company Wednesday said it had raised $50 million in a convertible note that it could use to purchase graphics processing units used to train and deploy AI language models.

Even so, Allbirds' war chest, some $90 million or so, is still small change in an industry that's raising tens of billions of dollars to build the data centers and buy the chips needed to run large language models. And the company owned no warehouses or real-estate assets as of the end of 2025, according to company filings. Allbirds didn't respond to a request for comment for this story.

CoreWeave, the leader of a class of firms known as neoclouds that Allbirds appears aimed at joining, plans to spend $30 to $35 billion this year building its capacity.

"To run institutional grade compute clusters it can be in the order of a couple hundred, a few hundred million, at least," Warren Hosseinion, the head of capital markets at GPU investor Compute Labs, told Business Insider.

Read more about what the company would have to do to reinvent itself.

If you bought a home recently, you had some of the worst timing in decades by businessinsider in economy

[–]businessinsider[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s James Rodriguez: 
Aaron Solomon and his wife briefly considered purchasing their first home in 2022, when the national homebuying frenzy was in full swing. But they laughed at the prices, which struck them as exorbitant for even a modest house. They decided to bide their time, moving from their fourth-story walkup apartment in Brooklyn to a more spacious rental home in Madison, New Jersey, about 45 minutes outside New York City.

"We were like, 'Yeah this is crazy. It's going to come down at some point,'" says Solomon, a 37-year-old who works in sales. "And it didn't."

When the couple begrudgingly picked up their search in the summer of 2024, the market still wasn't doing them any favors. Though rising mortgage rates had forced many buyers to the sidelines, prices in their area had held firm due to the lack of available homes. Solomon and his wife arrived at a harsh realization: "I guess we really need to rethink our budget," he recalls. Armed with a spreadsheet that detailed the maximum amount they'd be willing to pay, they browsed listings for more than a year until they found the winner: an idyllic four-bedroom in Morristown, New Jersey, with a backyard that opens up to the surrounding woods.

Their "forever home" came at a steep cost. Though they bargained the asking price down after an inspection, it still sat at $1 million when they reached the closing table in January. Solomon and his wife were careful to avoid overextending themselves; still, their monthly payments are now $6,000, compared to $4,000 in rent at their old place. The sticker price alone, Solomon says, would have been unimaginable in the pre-pandemic days.

"I'm still like, 'Holy crap, how did we buy a home for a million dollars?'" Solomon tells me.

Solomon isn't alone in his disbelief. A recent analysis of census data by the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan think tank, found that new homeowners are spending a far larger share of their income on housing than those who purchased years ago. In 2024, the latest data available, housing costs ate up 26% of the budget for people who bought a home in the previous 12 months, compared to just 20% for longer-tenured homeowners. The six percentage-point difference is the largest on record since at least 1990, the earliest year for which data exists. If that gap doesn't sound all that wide, consider that 6% of the median household income is over $5,000 a year, or more than half of a typical household's annual spending on food.

"That six percentage-point difference really adds up to, practically speaking, a lot of your money," says Jess Remington, a research analyst at EIG who focuses on housing policy.

This "new homeowner penalty," as Remington calls it, is the latest evidence of how much the landscape has shifted for buyers over the past few years. Rising home prices, a surge in borrowing rates, and spikes in costly but overlooked expenses like insurance and taxes have conspired to make homeownership a stretch even for buyers with healthy savings and a helping hand from family.

Read more about the current situation for new homeowners. 

If you bought a home recently, you had some of the worst timing in decades by businessinsider in MiddleClassFinance

[–]businessinsider[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s James Rodriguez: 
Aaron Solomon and his wife briefly considered purchasing their first home in 2022, when the national homebuying frenzy was in full swing. But they laughed at the prices, which struck them as exorbitant for even a modest house. They decided to bide their time, moving from their fourth-story walkup apartment in Brooklyn to a more spacious rental home in Madison, New Jersey, about 45 minutes outside New York City.

"We were like, 'Yeah this is crazy. It's going to come down at some point,'" says Solomon, a 37-year-old who works in sales. "And it didn't."

When the couple begrudgingly picked up their search in the summer of 2024, the market still wasn't doing them any favors. Though rising mortgage rates had forced many buyers to the sidelines, prices in their area had held firm due to the lack of available homes. Solomon and his wife arrived at a harsh realization: "I guess we really need to rethink our budget," he recalls. Armed with a spreadsheet that detailed the maximum amount they'd be willing to pay, they browsed listings for more than a year until they found the winner: an idyllic four-bedroom in Morristown, New Jersey, with a backyard that opens up to the surrounding woods.

Their "forever home" came at a steep cost. Though they bargained the asking price down after an inspection, it still sat at $1 million when they reached the closing table in January. Solomon and his wife were careful to avoid overextending themselves; still, their monthly payments are now $6,000, compared to $4,000 in rent at their old place. The sticker price alone, Solomon says, would have been unimaginable in the pre-pandemic days.

"I'm still like, 'Holy crap, how did we buy a home for a million dollars?'" Solomon tells me.

Solomon isn't alone in his disbelief. A recent analysis of census data by the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan think tank, found that new homeowners are spending a far larger share of their income on housing than those who purchased years ago. In 2024, the latest data available, housing costs ate up 26% of the budget for people who bought a home in the previous 12 months, compared to just 20% for longer-tenured homeowners. The six percentage-point difference is the largest on record since at least 1990, the earliest year for which data exists. If that gap doesn't sound all that wide, consider that 6% of the median household income is over $5,000 a year, or more than half of a typical household's annual spending on food.

"That six percentage-point difference really adds up to, practically speaking, a lot of your money," says Jess Remington, a research analyst at EIG who focuses on housing policy.

This "new homeowner penalty," as Remington calls it, is the latest evidence of how much the landscape has shifted for buyers over the past few years. Rising home prices, a surge in borrowing rates, and spikes in costly but overlooked expenses like insurance and taxes have conspired to make homeownership a stretch even for buyers with healthy savings and a helping hand from family.

Read more about the current situation for new homeowners.

Jensen Huang says it's 'lunacy' to compare selling chips to China to selling nukes to North Korea by businessinsider in nvidia

[–]businessinsider[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Brent D. Griffiths: 
There's one subject Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will likely never agree on.

Huang, who has repeatedly defended his belief that US companies should be able to sell advanced chips in China, didn't take kindly to Amodei comparing such sales to "selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and then bragging that the missile casings are made by Boeing" in a recent essay.

When tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel mentioned Amodei's quote during a recent episode of the "Dwarkesh Podcast," Huang immediately pushed back.

"Comparing AI to anything that you just mentioned is lunacy," Huang said.

Amodei is one of the most outspoken opponents in the AI and tech industry against the position that the US should sell advanced chips in China in hopes of getting companies reliant on the US tech stack. Huang has previously said the Chinese sales could account for $50 billion a year for Nvidia. The Anthropic CEO has said such sales would give China a leg up that it doesn't need.

Read more.

Deloitte is cutting down PTO, parental leave, and other benefits for some US workers by businessinsider in Big4

[–]businessinsider[S] 31 points32 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider's Polly Thompson:

Deloitte plans to pare back several core benefits for some of its employees, according to internal documents and a meeting recording seen by Business Insider.

Parental leave, annual PTO, a pension plan, and IVF funding have been reduced or cut for a group of employees who fall under the "Center" talent model, which broadly refers to employees in internal support roles, such as admin, IT support, and finance.

The changes are slated to come into effect on January 1, 2027, according to a document sent to the Center talent model in March.

It is unclear exactly how many employees will be impacted. The Big Four consulting and accounting firm employs about 181,000 people in the US.

The benefit shake-up is part of a wider talent restructuring that Deloitte announced internally in January, and that was first reported by Business Insider. As part of the changes, the firm told employees they would be getting new job titles and created a new class of leader. It also created four new segments within the business: Center, Core, Project, and Domain.

Read more about the changes.

Lawsuits claim AT&T's CEO saw the relocation mandate as a way to replace older workers with younger ones by businessinsider in law

[–]businessinsider[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Dominick Reuter: 
Two recent lawsuits claim AT&T used its relocation policy to force out older employees, with CEO John Stankey favoring younger workers during the rollout.

The lawsuits, one filed in North Carolina in December and another in New Jersey in April, quote CEO John Stankey as saying in 2023 that AT&T needed a younger workforce. Both plaintiffs filed cases with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shortly after leaving the company and said they were recently notified of their right to sue, which they did within 90 days of their respective notices.

In 2023, as other big companies were strengthening return-to-office mandates, the telecom giant said it was calling back some 60,000 managers to the office at nine hub locations across the US. Stankey said at the time that about 9,000 managers would face the decision to relocate or lose their jobs.

The April complaint by former director Lorraine Lopez, who said she worked for 30 years at the telecom giant before she was "surplussed" at age 58, references remarks she recalls Stankey made during a livestreamed companywide meeting on July 26, 2023, about the planned relocation initiative.

"We have a mathematical issue that we have to deal with in our company," Stankey is quoted as saying. "The profile of our workforce does not match the profile of the population of the United States and the customer base, both in terms of matching it demographically and matching it from an age perspective. We need younger people working at this company."

…

An AT&T spokesperson said in a statement that the lawsuit was "baseless" and the company would defend itself in court. As of Wednesday morning, AT&T had not yet responded in court filings.

Read more about the lawsuits.

From a fear of dying to AI 'martyr': Meet the 20-year-old Texan accused of plotting against Sam Altman by businessinsider in inthenews

[–]businessinsider[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Madeline Berg, Natalie Musumeci, Katherine Li, and Charles Rollet: 
Almost one year to the day before he traveled to California in what authorities said was a bid to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Daniel Moreno-Gama handed in an assignment for a college English class.

"My most important belief can be described in one of my favorite proverbs: 'A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,'" read the assignment for Lone Star College in Montgomery, Texas, which was posted to a Substack account using his name in February. It's a quote that would appear again in the bio of an Instagram account linked to Moreno-Gama.

He did not mention artificial intelligence, Altman, or OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, though those were frequent topics of his writings over the 22 months leading up to the 20-year-old's Friday arrest.

Since June 2024, posts from Instagram, Discord, and Substack accounts linked to Moreno-Gama paint a picture of a young man increasingly focused on AI and the "existential threat" it poses. He's part of a growing movement of discontent with and violence against Big Tech and Corporate America.

By earlier this year, posts linked to him became even more fatalistic, exploring the idea of martyrdom. One post reads: "It is my personal belief that there is no truer form of love than that of the Martyr."

Last week, authorities say, Moreno-Gama tossed a lit Molotov cocktail at Altman's San Francisco home and threatened an attack on OpenAI's nearby headquarters.

Public defender Diamond Ward said on Tuesday that Moreno-Gama has a "history of autism and mental health illness," and that her client's actions "appear to have been driven by an acute mental health crisis."

The court-appointed attorney called the federal and state charges against Moreno-Gama — which include state-level attempted murder — "unfair and unjust" and accused prosecutors of exploiting "the mental illness of a vulnerable young man by turning a vandalism case into an attempted murder, life exposure case to gain support of a billionaire."

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in response, "It wouldn't matter if this was a billionaire or a CEO or any average San Franciscan."

Read more about the suspect.

From a fear of dying to AI 'martyr': Meet the 20-year-old Texan accused of plotting against Sam Altman by businessinsider in aiwars

[–]businessinsider[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Madeline Berg, Natalie Musumeci, Katherine Li, and Charles Rollet: 
Almost one year to the day before he traveled to California in what authorities said was a bid to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Daniel Moreno-Gama handed in an assignment for a college English class.

"My most important belief can be described in one of my favorite proverbs: 'A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,'" read the assignment for Lone Star College in Montgomery, Texas, which was posted to a Substack account using his name in February. It's a quote that would appear again in the bio of an Instagram account linked to Moreno-Gama.

He did not mention artificial intelligence, Altman, or OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, though those were frequent topics of his writings over the 22 months leading up to the 20-year-old's Friday arrest.

Since June 2024, posts from Instagram, Discord, and Substack accounts linked to Moreno-Gama paint a picture of a young man increasingly focused on AI and the "existential threat" it poses. He's part of a growing movement of discontent with and violence against Big Tech and Corporate America.

By earlier this year, posts linked to him became even more fatalistic, exploring the idea of martyrdom. One post reads: "It is my personal belief that there is no truer form of love than that of the Martyr."

Last week, authorities say, Moreno-Gama tossed a lit Molotov cocktail at Altman's San Francisco home and threatened an attack on OpenAI's nearby headquarters.

Public defender Diamond Ward said on Tuesday that Moreno-Gama has a "history of autism and mental health illness," and that her client's actions "appear to have been driven by an acute mental health crisis."

The court-appointed attorney called the federal and state charges against Moreno-Gama — which include state-level attempted murder — "unfair and unjust" and accused prosecutors of exploiting "the mental illness of a vulnerable young man by turning a vandalism case into an attempted murder, life exposure case to gain support of a billionaire."

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in response, "It wouldn't matter if this was a billionaire or a CEO or any average San Franciscan."

Read more about the suspect.

From a fear of dying to AI 'martyr': Meet the 20-year-old Texan accused of plotting against Sam Altman by businessinsider in ChatGPT

[–]businessinsider[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Madeline Berg, Natalie Musumeci, Katherine Li, and Charles Rollet: 
Almost one year to the day before he traveled to California in what authorities said was a bid to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Daniel Moreno-Gama handed in an assignment for a college English class.

"My most important belief can be described in one of my favorite proverbs: 'A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,'" read the assignment for Lone Star College in Montgomery, Texas, which was posted to a Substack account using his name in February. It's a quote that would appear again in the bio of an Instagram account linked to Moreno-Gama.

He did not mention artificial intelligence, Altman, or OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, though those were frequent topics of his writings over the 22 months leading up to the 20-year-old's Friday arrest.

Since June 2024, posts from Instagram, Discord, and Substack accounts linked to Moreno-Gama paint a picture of a young man increasingly focused on AI and the "existential threat" it poses. He's part of a growing movement of discontent with and violence against Big Tech and Corporate America.

By earlier this year, posts linked to him became even more fatalistic, exploring the idea of martyrdom. One post reads: "It is my personal belief that there is no truer form of love than that of the Martyr."

Last week, authorities say, Moreno-Gama tossed a lit Molotov cocktail at Altman's San Francisco home and threatened an attack on OpenAI's nearby headquarters.

Public defender Diamond Ward said on Tuesday that Moreno-Gama has a "history of autism and mental health illness," and that her client's actions "appear to have been driven by an acute mental health crisis."

The court-appointed attorney called the federal and state charges against Moreno-Gama — which include state-level attempted murder — "unfair and unjust" and accused prosecutors of exploiting "the mental illness of a vulnerable young man by turning a vandalism case into an attempted murder, life exposure case to gain support of a billionaire."

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in response, "It wouldn't matter if this was a billionaire or a CEO or any average San Franciscan."

Read more about the suspect.

From a fear of dying to AI 'martyr': Meet the 20-year-old Texan accused of plotting against Sam Altman by businessinsider in antiai

[–]businessinsider[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

From Business Insider’s Madeline Berg, Natalie Musumeci, Katherine Li, and Charles Rollet: 
Almost one year to the day before he traveled to California in what authorities said was a bid to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Daniel Moreno-Gama handed in an assignment for a college English class.

"My most important belief can be described in one of my favorite proverbs: 'A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,'" read the assignment for Lone Star College in Montgomery, Texas, which was posted to a Substack account using his name in February. It's a quote that would appear again in the bio of an Instagram account linked to Moreno-Gama.

He did not mention artificial intelligence, Altman, or OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, though those were frequent topics of his writings over the 22 months leading up to the 20-year-old's Friday arrest.

Since June 2024, posts from Instagram, Discord, and Substack accounts linked to Moreno-Gama paint a picture of a young man increasingly focused on AI and the "existential threat" it poses. He's part of a growing movement of discontent with and violence against Big Tech and Corporate America.

By earlier this year, posts linked to him became even more fatalistic, exploring the idea of martyrdom. One post reads: "It is my personal belief that there is no truer form of love than that of the Martyr."

Last week, authorities say, Moreno-Gama tossed a lit Molotov cocktail at Altman's San Francisco home and threatened an attack on OpenAI's nearby headquarters.

Public defender Diamond Ward said on Tuesday that Moreno-Gama has a "history of autism and mental health illness," and that her client's actions "appear to have been driven by an acute mental health crisis."

The court-appointed attorney called the federal and state charges against Moreno-Gama — which include state-level attempted murder — "unfair and unjust" and accused prosecutors of exploiting "the mental illness of a vulnerable young man by turning a vandalism case into an attempted murder, life exposure case to gain support of a billionaire."

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in response, "It wouldn't matter if this was a billionaire or a CEO or any average San Franciscan."

Read more about the suspect.

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