(TikTok screencap)
Mamdani making T. Swizzle pay NYC taxes was the reason he balanced the budget? I thought it’s because he negotiated with NY state for aid (which, fair game; NYC pays more in taxes than it gets back), delayed the city pension, and is finalizing a pied-à-terre tax.
What meaningful raise on Taylor Swift’s taxes has Zohran Mamdani imposed? Did she not pay taxes before? What’s the source here?
The real world is allowed to be complicated and messy, and ironically, reducing it to “hurr durr he taxed Taylor Swift” is doing a disservice to what Mamdani actually managed to work out to balance the budget – which is imperfect, but he inherited a $12 billion deficit from a grifter. It’s good for what it is.
Taylor Swift owns multiple secondary properties in New York City.
She has amassed a massive real estate footprint on a single block in Tribeca, worth an estimated $50+ million. Her holdings include:
- An 8,000-square-foot duplex penthouse at 155 Franklin Street.
- A second-floor unit in the same building purchased for nearly $10 million.
- An $18 million townhouse right next door at 153 Franklin Street.
Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani finalized a deal to implement a pied-à-terre tax surcharge on luxury secondary residences in NYC.
The tax starts as a 4% surcharge on the property’s value and then there is an annual charge that scales up progressively based on the assessed value.
Rhode Island passed a similar luxury second-home tax targeting non-resident estates over $1 million, a piece of legislation that the press nicknamed the “Taylor Swift Tax” due to its impact on her $17 million Watch Hill mansion.
To say that this alone is balancing the budget is an oversimplification (what are hot takes if not reductive) but the tax will have a meaningful impact because she owns a lot of property in NYC.
The tax in its entirety is supposed to bring around 500 million. The NYC budget was 12 billion in the red.
It’s a great start, but suggesting that they managed to balance out the budget thanks to something that handled 1/24th of that deficit is just silly.
Sure, it is reductive but I also get what the image is referring to and don’t think we have to be too literal about it. It’s saying the spirit of that tax (ie. taxing the ultra wealthy) is how Mamdani is going about balancing the budget - while invoking a very recognizable billionaire to drive the point home. I read it more as using Taylor Swift as an example rather than insinuating her taxes, or the secondary estate tax in general, would be enough to balance the budget on their own.
Many hot takes are like this. They’re meant to capture your attention, and while they may not be literally true on their own, the good ones have a reasonable conceptual foundation.
It’s not how he’s doing it though. The biggest items in his balancing act are the billions of dollars in state aid and regulatory exemptions he’s called in, the deferral of pensions contributions for 5 years, punting key policies down the road to 202X and an accounting quirk that saw NYC over-estimate the number of employees it would have this FY to the tune of $1.3bn in non-existent salaries. So he did bring $500m in extra taxes, and he negotiated state aid, but mostly it seems to be abot not doing things, and taking the credit for coincidences.
I think that it creates a false image in people’s eyes.
For context: I’m all for taxing the rich. At the very least the should have all their methods of “avoiding” tax removed, but I honestly hope they get taxed something like 90% for their insane wealth.
At the same time I know a bit about how the world works and I have friends who work in AML, so I know that “taxing the rich” will never bring as much money as people think it would.
Back when Musk pretended to be the “cool leftist millionaire” he would sometimes boast about the taxes he paid, trying to be “the shining example” for other top 1%. He was still paying a tax rate of between 0.4% and 0.1% - thanks to his accountants being creative.
On top of that, people completely do not understand what progressive taxes mean. They think that if you have a tax level of 10% for $0-1000 and 20% for $1001-10000, then it means that if you’re earning $2000, you would pay $400 in taxes. Which is not true, you would pay (100010%)+(100020%) = $300.
But this fundamental misunderstanding makes them think that a billionaire should be paying some massive amounts of money from ALL their total net worth (which is also confusing “wealth” with “worth”, btw). Even if we somehow someday got a fair and honourable billionaire, their tax payments would feel like they’re avoiding taxes because of those misconceptions.
This meme reinforces a false reality where these taxes are significant enough to change things - they’re not and they most probably won’t be.
Enough partial solutions will sum up to a whole. If we treat them all as insignificant, then none will be enacted and no progress will be made.
Did I say anything remotely like that?
Or, maybe, did I say “it’s a great start, but let’s not overreact”?
Careful. Hurr-durr is your voter base!
Yeah this seriously needs a source
The good thing is that she still can donate to food pantries too!
taylor parties with magats i woulndt be so sure, and shes conservative herself.
Giving the freedom to billionaires to not pay taxes because they donate to charity is so very wrong.
I don’t have the power to decide where my taxes go. They shouldn’t either.
“Who knew non-profit would be so profitable?!”
As much as it would hurt charities, removing the tax deduction for donations of any kind feels necessary at this point.
Turns out, lots of charities are also grifts for their administrators.
Well, they’re actually not paying taxes on that portion. So they’re effectively getting to use your taxes to to multiply their promotion of whatever the goverment defines as charitable, be it food pantries or religious communities “providing” conversion therapy.
Sam Altman knew.
Abso-fucking-lutely.
Every billionaire is complicit, including your favorite billionaire: The pop star, the superstar athlete, the philanthropist, or the guru who cosplays as middle class. They’re all motherfuckers.
This is why I can’t stand to watch professional sports anymore, just some millionaire getting payed by his billionaire owner to play a game so you stay distracted by your bread and circuses.
Whatever you do, never mention this world-view at work, if you value your career.
I just hoot and holler along.
Totally honestly, I’m pretty open about all my views no matter where I am.
Me too, because I don’t really have a career. I’ve somehow sunk to my level of barely-competent “work” and collect a paycheck.
I play in a few bands and do some sports in my free time so I feel I don’t really have the bandwidth to care about what my coworkers think or about my work other than I do it and get paid.
Like what’s even the point. Why do you care which oligarch leased the best toys for themselves this season?
But none of this is true. He didn’t balance the budget by taxing more, he did it by cutting pension contributions and state subsidies.
New Jersey tried this same playbook. It worked for a few years but now they are going bankrupt because the companies left.
Same thing is already happening to new York. Citidel is already moving to Florida.
Why are all the memes now text on top of pictures of randos
Im pretty sure they are screengrabs from tiktoks. Never really used it myself but thats the default font afaik
Now watch me TikTok it further by pasting half of my blurred, blotchy head in the image so that I can point repeatedly in the general direction of the video I want you to see. Maybe even point at my ear once or twice to say, “Lishhun too, bruh…”
I hate that platform so much. I swear most people are operating on half-spent watch batteries nowadays and have just come to accept this crap as passable content.
Stundents and professionals are outsourcing their critical thinking to ai and it is having a measurable negative impact on their productivity and understanding. Internet brainrot has been around since the first websites. I doubt tiktok is much worse for the kids than aim rooms, myspace, instagram etc. Social media is toxic but i think the brain drain is more likely because our education system in the us is focused on funding over educations and the thechnocrats are pushing ai for everything wikipedia and giving a shit could solve
I remember at school we weren’t allowed to use Wikipedia, and further “it hurt your ability to actually research issues”.
Or the internet in general not having to find answers in books.
The next thing is always the boogyman huh
I remember being told “anyone can edit wikipedia” as the reason it wasn’t allowed. It wasnt a verifiable source. But at least for the most part, they try to remain factual.
Tiktok is pushing a specific agenda with their algorithm and trying to drive engagement and addiction. They don’t care if what gets put on their platform is true at all.
I mean I’d hope people aren’t using tiktok as a source for paper writing lmao.
Yeah, the issue was that people would just site wikipedia and not bother to learn where the info came from. But if you follow the sources at the bottom of the wiki it can be a very valuable research tool. Localized llms in a library could be used in the same fashion. But when people rely solely on the computer, bad stuff happens
Mamdani made Taylor Swift pay taxes
False: there’s no mention of Taylor Swift in particular. This may be an attempt to create a false conflict between the two.
She probably has second homes there. Which were taxed more.
It’s always weird cuz I donate to Charities and I also already pay taxes. How come they can’t do both?
I’m just looking for a reason to bring the plane memes back
I knew it was Taylor Swift’s fault the whole time. :)
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I love the Fediverse fr
He balanced the budget by doing some things right! But an additional 4bn came from the Governor that is trying to get reelected and is sucking up. Don’t forget that.
Me made 500 million from taxing more. He made up the other 11.5 billion from State subsides and stopping pension contributions.
And I applaud that!
Pension bit is a bit iffy.
Right, no one deserves to retire. We can’t afford it
And that’s fine for now, we will see what happens moving forward
Absolutely! I think he is doing great and want them to succeed
1000% The more he succeeds and shows that these principles progressives have pushed for years are effective the more we can hopefully swing the rest of the nation and get votes for a better country for all of us.
How much of that 4bn originally came from the city anyway?
Oof that’s a difficult question. Do those that generate the revenue deserve more of said revenue or is there some redistribution?
Doesn’t matter to me right now because I think he is doing a great job
I think if there’s a surplus it should be redistributed, but the city should get what it needs to balance it’s budget before anything goes to the state/fed. This spending could be audited by the state to ensure that the money is not going to waste/corruption. Those who are producing the revenue should be able to benefit from it before anything goes to others.
I disagree with that. M understanding of a society is that you are helping on another. That should create an equal level of wealth, comfort, whatever you want to call it. So much for the theory.
Budgets are numbers set by what do I have and what do I want. And the want part is dynamic just as much as the have part. And as soon as there is some have everybody wants something. Why wouldn’t you just keep it all?
Another point is that a city can’t exist on its own. It needs food, water, logistics and people that come in to work. It is a giant standing on another kind of giants shoulders. It is not only morally right to share the revenue but necessary to keep the system running.
Speaking of morals: of course we need to help the others that are less fortunate.
This isn’t about wants. These are needs NYC is massive and has an absolute fuckton of problems that need to be solved as a result of that. This money is to take care of it’s citizens/infrastructure that are currently not having their needs met. People living/working in NYC should have the revenue they create go towards those things until their needs are covered. Paying for stuff provided by the rest of the state should also be included in that.
“Wants” would be the surplus I was talking about. If they get to that point then yea that money should be shared. Obviously societies should use their surplus to take care of those that need help but it’s not fair to expect those that are not having their needs met to give to others.
NYC contributes a lot more than that to the state. I don’t mean that in a “it’s not fair!” way but NYC residents just receive fewer benefits for each tax dollars they put in and that will continue to be the case.
Subsidizing rural communities a good thing as long as it’s not at the expense of the people keeping the state running. If the infrastructure crumbles, there are no tax dollars to fund anything
I thought he didn’t adjust taxes? I thought pension funds were used.
I’m not 100% up to date though so i may just be wrong.
He suspended pensions contributions, took just over $8bn in state aid funding and exemptions from state regulations, and delayed initiatives such as classroom size reduction. The city also over-estimated the number of employees it would have this year so that was an extra special saving of $1.3bn when expected outgoings were reconciled with the actual number. The actual tax increases he has implemented would “only” be worth $500m.
Basically it was a one-time thing, and the budget won’t be balanced next year, and the tax increases are nowhere near enough. But it got good press for a couple of days which I suspect was the point.
Something similar happened with the Federal Liberals in Australia a few years back, maybe in a more cynical manoeuvre. They structured things to get two or three good years of budget balance, had a big song and dance about budget being ‘back in black’, coffee mugs were made, anybody who cared to read a little understood the transitory nature of it, but that didn’t stop the media screeching and squawking.
Joke was on the Liberals in the end, their main opposition, Labor, benefited more from those years than they did, since the Liberals then went ahead and lost the next election.
Lets hope Mamdani is less cynical, and has more humility than the Australian Liberals. In the process proving to Americans that some right winger churning out Friedman quotes isn’t actually that good for an economy.
It’s both. He convinced Kathy Hochul to pass a tax on second properties (pied-à-terre tax), but he also suspended pension contributions for 5 years.
Did he figure out a way to tax the billionaires that primarily own assets?
Yea i looked it up earlier. It looks like a tax on second homes valued over a certain amount
Fuck yeah he did.
And, shockingly, they’re not leaving NYC en masse.
We desperately need a tax on securities. I don’t particularly care about taxing luxury products, because those products are produced by workers, who pay taxes and buy things. But securities are the “means of production”.
Don’t tax the dollar value of the security. Don’t force them to liquidate their shares before they can pay a tax. Just go ahead and transfer a percentage of their shares of each security to the IRS, who can liquidate it on the open market, slowly over time.
Tbh Just taxing securities backed loans as income would close a big hole
I don’t think that would actually do anything at all. Banks would just loosen their lending requirements, and all those securities-backed loans would just become personal loans to high-net-worth individuals. The investment portfolios of the ultra-rich need to be directly targeted.
I’d take 1% per year. This tax is only on the obscenely-wealthy. Every natural person can exempt $1 million of their total portfolio. No exemptions for artificial persons. The IRS is limited to liquidating no more than 1% of total traded volume of any issue on any given day: >99% of trades will be market trades, so the IRS shares will have minimal effect on value.
Part of the reason we call some securities liquid, vs not, is that some can’t easily be divided.
The govt can’t easily take hold of 1.3% of someone’s family mansion. Or a rare painting that they got hold of.
I don’t think I’ve heard a definition of “security” that would refer to either of those examples. Perhaps “registered securities” is closer to my intended meaning?
I would not intend for this tax to apply to personal assets or the owner’s primary residence, but it is not particularly difficult to divide ownership of real property among multiple entities. Applied to investment properties, the government would basically be a lienholder.
That and a fucked up minimum wage
I am not sure if you are familiar with NY’s minimum wage. NY is one of the states that set the state minimum higher than the federal minimum and continued to do so. It still isn’t enough, but we are trying here.
To be fair, NYC has always had a balanced budget. It’s literally required by law.
Though there’s definitely been an increase of social services which is good.
Though I think it’s a misrepresentation to say that money came from taxing rich people more. The bulk of it, if I’m not much mistaken, has been from some creative accounting with the NYC pension system.
This is true, but also Adams left a huge deficit on his way out with must-pays with the sole intention of hurting Mamdani utilizing that requirement as a cudgel. It’s nothing short of impressive that he was able to stick to his values and reverse the damage at the same time.
It’s nothing short of impressive that he was able to stick to his values and reverse the damage at the same time.
Was he able to do that? How do we know that at this point?
Wait. So it’s still bologna? Who could’ve guessed?
And the city accountants last year over-estimated the number of employees they would have at the beginning of this financial year, so it turns out the city was planning to pay $1.3bn in salaries it realised didn’t exist.
I feel like this person just hates Taylor Swift
Sounds to me like they hate apologists for billionaires. And I do too.
First of all I want to point out how dumb it is that my comment had no downvotes before this person came around and insinuated I’m a “Taylor Swift apologist”. See, what we have here, folks, is the power of suggestion. All it takes to ruin someone’s image is an accusation. That’s why we have defamation laws. So, as revenge, I would like to let you know that FlashMobOfOne likes to steal chew toys from dogs and call them “little sons of bitches” then look their owners dead in the eye and say “What? That’s technically true”. Do I have to prove that? No. This is the internet. Take my word for it and downvote FlashMobOfOne. You should be ashamed of yourself for what you did to those puppies, pal.
Second of all, FlashMobOfOne, you brilliant master of deduction: in my comment I was referring to the fact that the person in that TikTok in the original post is using Taylor Swift to mean “all billionaires”, when Swift is hardly the wealthiest or most defiant of them. There’s no need to single one out, and if you do, it’s funny if you pick one that isn’t nearly as bad as the others, because it makes it look as if you have a personal problem with that one individual that is unrelated to their wealth. That’d be sort of like, say, hating the Spice Girls, “especially the black one”. Now do you get how my comment there was sardonic or are you still busy hating, and here is where I provide options, pretty blonde women that either: a) wouldn’t date you in high-school b) were more popular than you in high-school (because that is the sort of superficial teen-film level reactions that Swift tends to bring out in people)
Does everyone get it now? Has the humor been properly explained to everyone? Good. I’m going back to bed (literally) (just figured I’d point that out so no one reads into that too)
But just for the record, yes, I do listen to Swift and, no, I don’t think that makes me worse than the large collection of people here that yell about “capitalists” while using Amazon, having a Netflix subscription or watching sports on Rumble or whatever other businesses owned by billionaires. And no, I don’t like her wealth. I listen to her music, not to her shaking a bag of coins. I also don’t idolize her on the internet, because I’m not a boot licker.
And here’s another thing: Swift didn’t make her money by force. She didn’t monopolize the music industry and become the only artist who can provide vinyls, CDs and concert tickets. I don’t care how you look at it, the fact of the matter is that people give Swift money willingly. It’s literally on them. Nothing of what she sells is a basic necessity. So, again, the choice of Swift as a sort of “face of the billionaires” is such a laughably bad choice that it’s funny. That’s why the original post is funny and why my comment was too. And that’s regardless of anyone’s personal view on Swift.
Also, this: https://lemmy.world/comment/23769293
“Now, get outta here, you rascals, I mean it” - Bill Murray, SNL’s Weekend Update, 1977
EDIT: Petty, dammit… that’s the word I was looking for. The tiktok is funny cause it’s petty… It’s way less “fuck billionaires” and more “fuck taylor swift in particular”
