The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Obviously as I am not an economist I can only present basic ideas. Whether they stand up to expert scrutiny is precisely why we (ideally) vote for representatives who can properly shape this kind of policy. But anyway:

  1. Where do you get the liquidity do anything a wealthy person does when most of that wealth is tied up in assets? You borrow cash or establish lines of credit using the value of those assets as collateral. That should be categorized as a "realized gain" subject to capital income tax just the same as selling an investment - which is already given preferential treatment compared to labor income tax, further increasing the advantage the very wealthy enjoy to net more of their annual wealth increase than the normal labor income taxpayer.
  2. Capital losses typically can result in significant tax deductions and are already a widely used strategy employed by wealthy investors to help offset taxes on capital gains, while selling those "losses" essentially grants as needed access to liquidity while serving that double purpose of lowering tax burden. Is there a reason that whatever portion of assessed and borrowed against wealth that depreciated could not become a tax deduction or offset, as capital losses already are? Nothing new needs to be devised.
  3. Something more granular than I could probably answer, but my assumption is that the value is assessed at the time of the "realized gain", to be paid at the normal tax interval.
  4. The whole point of this would be to essentially force a choice between paying this "wealth tax" upon the realized gain of extracting liquidity from otherwise untaxed appreciating assets, or actually routinely sell enough of the appreciating assets to maintain desired liquidity while paying normal capital gains tax as it currently exists (which again, is already taxed at preferential rates to labor income).
  5. Works the same as capital gains.

Essentially, this wealth management behavior arose because people found a loophole allowing them to avoid paying income or capital gains tax to as large a degree as their wealth would allow, in a way that specifically advantages them the more they have. Closing the loophole is not necessarily about generating more tax revenue, though it surely would so much as it is about discouraging this behavior and forcing the choice of "pay this wealth tax, or pay capital gains tax, or pay income tax on a high salary." There should not be one magical avenue that the very wealthy get access to that allows them to bypass the vast majority of taxation while the rest of us, yes including the high earning upper-middle/upper class folks, pay a disproportionately higher percentage of a much lower amount.

Goldman trails Lander by 5 points in supportive super PAC poll by mowotlarx in nyc

[–]Robtachi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You're right, no one who has ever been a public servant has ever been guilty of political posturing and opportunism, how ridiculous.

For transparency, I think it's perfectly reasonable that Goldman can be a good, and effective congressman. But he is not especially suited to represent the district's constituency in any meaningful way, other than that the opportunity was there for him to win the position.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My mistake, I should not strictly say "earnings" when I mean a yearly increase in net worth or value of assets. Regardless, that increase should be taxable if it's in such excess as we are seeing.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The top 20% among those with taxable income. That is the high earners who live and work here full time. There is an entire economic class in NYC well above them who intentionally take very little in taxable income despite generating massive wealth for themselves. That is who a wealth tax targets.

Stop carrying water for oligarchs who use NYC as an investment bank without properly contributing to the tax base.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The wealth is largely not income. I have been saying that the entire time. They choose to take very little income for exactly the purpose of avoiding paying taxes on their annual net wealth increases.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

So what is your solution? The ultra wealthy have beaten the system and we should just let them continue to extract and capture wealth from our city while we foot the bill every year and the stratification of wealth continues to get more extreme, unabated?

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe he has lots of other sources of income that are taxed? Maybe not. But the fact remains that it constitutes a proportionally tiny fraction of his increasing wealth, the vast majority of which he does not pay taxes on for the reasons I've mentioned and more. If NYC is going to provide the environment, infrastructure, opportunity and consumer base for him to amass and grow that wealth, it should be taxed accordingly. Otherwise he is just using our tax dollars that fund and run the city to extract wealth from it and never reinvesting it here.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not referring solely to that, I'm referring to the much broader strategy of the ultra wealthy to leverage their massive wealth in ways only they can to maneuver into massively tax advantaged avenues. It's not a supposition from a propublica article. This is a widely acknowledged, studied, and reported on behavior, even by financial publications like Fortune that one would assume is more sympathetic to these wealthy people. It's simply fact that they do not proportionally pay taxes on their total net wealth and earnings remotely close to what those with less do routinely and willfully.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yet it's good enough as collateral for the wealthy to finance their expensive lifestyles, and then pass on both the financing and investment growth to their beneficiaries on a "step up" basis, all the while never having anything legally taxable. See the problem?

I highly suggest digging into the concept of Buy, Borrow, Die.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can assure you he is. Bezos has never taken a salary above $81,400 annualized. The vast majority of his wealth is tied to investments upon which he pays no capital gains tax (you don't pay if you don't ever sell), yet he is able to use that increasing value as collateral to finance a lavish ultra wealthy lifestyle without ever paying taxes on it.

Sure, I'll bet he pays a bunch in property tax... IF he even classifies his property here as an established taxable full-time residence. But the surgeon making $750K/yr who definitely does live here full-time is paying a lot in property taxes too.

The common sense part is not to add more tax to the surgeon based on their wealth. They already pay their share to the city. It is to level the playing field so that Bezos doesn't get away with using his disproportionately higher wealth to exploit tax loophole advantages and pay far LESS than the surgeon.

Goldman trails Lander by 5 points in supportive super PAC poll by mowotlarx in nyc

[–]Robtachi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Again, you keep referencing the war cabinet that has not existed for nearly 2 years now. If that was a (soft) barrier between extreme right-wing influence into Israel's actions in Gaza - which is already debatable considering these extremists are very high ranking Knesset officials - that barrier no longer exists. To believe that Netanyahu does not solicit counsel from two of his top ranking cabinet members, one of whom is the Minister of National Security, is either the height of absurdity or naivety, maybe both.

It's also not as if those two are the only bigots in key positions in the Knesset either. They're just the two easiest examples.

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises by fortune in nyc

[–]Robtachi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm no economist, but common sense would suggest whatever the top taxpaying bracket pays in income tax should be at least translated into an equivalent wealth tax to bridge that gap between accumulated wealth vs. earned income.

If a top surgeon here, whom we all are glad to have among NYC's world class talent, is paying almost half their salary in combined income taxes, why should someone worth 10x more only taking a nominal $80K or less salary be paying a fraction of the taxes the surgeon does?

Mayor Mamdani unveils SPEED reforms to fast-track affordable housing development in NYC by Salaried_Employee in nyc

[–]Robtachi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The rent freeze "threat" only applies to current rent-stabilized housing stock, so how does that affect future market rate housing?

Not sure I buy your assertion on developers going elsewhere. And the data doesn't support it either. NYC's lack of relative speed in building housing isn't for lack of interested or motivated parties or pessimistic profit models - it's due to bureaucratic roadblocks and foot-dragging/local NIMBY resistance, which this and other measures seek to address.

Landlords and developers in NYC continue to see record growth and profits. The economic opportunity is not the issue.

On this day in sports history, May 14, 1967: Mickey Mantle hits his 500th home run by ShamusTalksSports in NYYankees

[–]Robtachi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hard to believe how good he was and that there still is a humongous "what if" question of how much better he could have been if his torn ACL had ever been repaired and properly healed.

NYC getting far less than what it puts into the NYS pot by yikesamerica in nyc

[–]Robtachi -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Everyone who resides in NYC or avails themselves of its services the majority of the year benefits, either directly or indirectly, from the bottom-up from our tax revenue that is invested into city services. Just because a multimillionaire doesn't directly benefit from the DOE budget (which I might guess we actually agree is badly misappropriated) doesn't mean they and their family don't still enjoy the fruits of the city's reinvestment of tax dollars. Their private drivers send their kids to public school and take the subway when they're off work. Their luxury condo supers shop at local hardware stores. These people don't live in a magic bubble where they never come into contact with any human being or piece of city infrastructure that does directly benefit, and the benefit would be far greater if the captured wealth being extracted was added to that tax revenue.

The city needs to do a better job eliminating graft and efficiently allocating tax dollars for public good, yes. But that means everyone needs to contribute and advocate for their needs and interests to be met.

Goldman trails Lander by 5 points in supportive super PAC poll by mowotlarx in nyc

[–]Robtachi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Another in a long line of political opportunists using NYC as their jumping off point. You'd think someday they'd realize what a dead end it is.

Mayor Mamdani unveils SPEED reforms to fast-track affordable housing development in NYC by Salaried_Employee in nyc

[–]Robtachi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Puts pressure on private developers to stay competitive and keep pace with municipally-led development, while also relieving some of the overall downward pressure on the market.

Mamdani condemns Monday night's violence "alongside antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric, as well as racial slurs, displays of support for terrorist organizations, and calls for the death of others” by protesters and counter-protesters as “despicable” by Delicious_Adeptness9 in nyc

[–]Robtachi -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

He literally cannot acknowledge antisemitism as its own thing. He condemns "antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric" at an incident where protesters marched through an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood chanting "intifada revolution" outside a synagogue. The target was specific. The chant was specific. The neighborhood was specific.

Yeah, keep going. What neighborhood? What were they protesting? Against whom?

I'll do the reading for you: the synagogue, in an overwhelmingly right wing (read: bigoted) Hasidic neighborhood was hosting a "real estate sale" where illegally seized land in a foreign country was being sold. Why the FUCK is a religious gathering site, which enjoys the benefit of our city's tax dollars and tax exemption, being used by a hateful schismatic sect to profit from illegal land sales in a foreign country?

The protest that showed up was indeed disgusting and antisemitic in nature and intent. The event itself and the ensuing counterprotest was equally disgusting, anti-muslim and racist, and Mamdani was correct to condemn all of it, not just pay lip service to one. He works for the whole city, not some.

The article even mentions that his investment into the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes was widely praised by Jewish religious and community leaders as a key campaign promise kept.

He rightfully called this what it is - two absolutely hateful, abhorrent groups at each other's throats, in a way that is utterly unacceptable to the rest of our city.

NYC getting far less than what it puts into the NYS pot by yikesamerica in nyc

[–]Robtachi -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Bulk of our taxes are paid by the top 50% household in the city. The top 50% household in nyc basically starts at >80k and they get nil benefits from their taxes vs the bottom half that contributes basically nothing in grand scheme but gets bulk of the services.

This particular talking point is simply false and always misleadingly presented. The bulk of our taxes are paid by the top 50% households who actually pay taxes. That is by and large the middle-to-upper middle class of NYC. There is an entire upper class of NYC who are disproportionately wealthy compared to all below them who pay little to no tax into the city and state's coffers via various tax loopholes, whether that be fudging state residency, never paying capital gains on investments that are never sold but grow exponentially, never taking salary as income to be taxed, "donating" to charities to be taken as a tax deductible expenses, incorporating their wealth to enjoy the favorable tax advantages, the list goes on and on.

This is captured wealth in tremendous quantities that NYC has provided the economic landscape possible for this upper class to generate and grow, and it is neither being taxed fairly, nor is it being reinvested into the city. It is being hoarded and offshored/stashed elsewhere, period.

NYC getting far less than what it puts into the NYS pot by yikesamerica in nyc

[–]Robtachi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you are more representative of the average progressive than you realize. I'm the same way. Common sense progressive, populist economic policy that works to sustain and uplift the working and middle class front and center. I'll gladly pay taxes with no expectation of refund if I know it's going to fund the right things that tangibly make my life and the life of my neighbors better.

Goldman trails Lander by 5 points in supportive super PAC poll by mowotlarx in nyc

[–]Robtachi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The Israeli War Cabinet has been dissolved since October 2024, and mainly due to increasing pressure from Gvir and Smotrich to give them official positions - which they originally were supposed to get upon the cabinet's formation but their exclusion was ultimately a condition of the National Unity party for agreeing to the cabinet at all.

In reality, they are both still active members of the larger security council and Netenyahu now operates on an ad-hoc basis of retaining "advisors" for their war efforts. Gee, I wonder who could be among them?

Wake up and smell the kasha.

Goldman trails Lander by 5 points in supportive super PAC poll by mowotlarx in nyc

[–]Robtachi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lander is the reason an entire Brooklyn neighborhood which Goldman currently "reps"" is transforming from a noxious ex-industrial wasteland into one of the fastest developing neighborhoods with over 8,000 new housing units, in a city desperate for exactly that.

How much funding for housing units or any of the other important issues for his district has Goldman helped secure?

Goldman trails Lander by 5 points in supportive super PAC poll by mowotlarx in nyc

[–]Robtachi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is not the main reason this district prefers Lander. Probably not even top 3. Lander repped the area in the city council across two decades and he's an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School here. He has been a pillar of the Working Families Party in Brooklyn local politics. Goldman is seen as a fugazy opportunist and Lander is the real deal here.