New York leaders are desperately trying to stop billionaire bigwigs from hightailing it out of the Big Apple with their cash, businesses and thousands of jobs — as fears mount that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policies will accelerate the Empire State’s nation-leading loss of wealth.
The splashy one-two punch of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin and Apollo Global Management honcho Marc Rowan pledging to expand outside New York City has been coupled with a silent wave of businesses “quiet quitting” the city over its hostile environment, insiders told The Post.
1: the NY Post is a tabloid generally worth ignoring.
2: A tabloid story saying unnamed “NY Leaders” want what billionaires want should be treated as nothing more than a statement of preference for what the tabloid’s (billionaire) owners want.
3: Even if Mamdani suddenly gets on his knees and grovels for billionaires to stay it wouldn’t argue that billionaires staying is a good thing.
Not at all. “Lying” is a very high bar that most tabloids are able to easily stay under.
I infer that the names you mentioned are NYC billionaires who threatened to leave. And that it’s only a threat at this point. But it wouldnt even call them telling the Post that they want to leave as a lie–even though I suspect they aren’t going to actually go.
Let me restate my position clearly. Billionares are a drain on any society and improve nearly everyplace by leaving. What NYC might lose in hypothetical income tax from two billionaires moving elsewhere is more than made up by the reduction in competition for everything that poor NYers need to survive.
Mamdani may find his desire to stick it to the rich will leave fewer of them to tax in New York City, warned John Ketcham, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
“New York City is losing its competitive edge and Mayor Mamdani makes it far less competitive,” he said.
“Investors and job creators have options and they will go where they’re treated well. Increasingly New York City has treated them inhospitably. New York City leaders have assumed they can’t do business elsewhere, even though we have seen in the last several years a dramatic expansion of the financial sector’s activities in states like Florida and Texas.”
Again, self-serving quotes from unthinking capitalists doesn’t refute the idea that billionaires are leeches we’d be better off without.
“Job creator” is as absurd an label for their rent-seeking chicainery as the ides that corporate founders “pulled themselves up by the bootstrapz”. ~which in turn is the rough equivalent of “I’ll just fund my venture by shitting a gold brick.”~
The problem is that large taxes will encourage the wealthy to leave New York City.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
From https://nypost.com/2026/05/08/us-news/ny-leaders-desperately-try-to-stop-billionaire-bigs-from-fleeing-city-over-mamdani/
New York leaders are desperately trying to stop billionaire bigwigs from hightailing it out of the Big Apple with their cash, businesses and thousands of jobs — as fears mount that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policies will accelerate the Empire State’s nation-leading loss of wealth.
The splashy one-two punch of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin and Apollo Global Management honcho Marc Rowan pledging to expand outside New York City has been coupled with a silent wave of businesses “quiet quitting” the city over its hostile environment, insiders told The Post.
1: the NY Post is a tabloid generally worth ignoring.
2: A tabloid story saying unnamed “NY Leaders” want what billionaires want should be treated as nothing more than a statement of preference for what the tabloid’s (billionaire) owners want.
3: Even if Mamdani suddenly gets on his knees and grovels for billionaires to stay it wouldn’t argue that billionaires staying is a good thing.
Are you saying that the NY Post is lying when it said Griffin and Rowan plan to leave NYC?
Not at all. “Lying” is a very high bar that most tabloids are able to easily stay under.
I infer that the names you mentioned are NYC billionaires who threatened to leave. And that it’s only a threat at this point. But it wouldnt even call them telling the Post that they want to leave as a lie–even though I suspect they aren’t going to actually go.
Let me restate my position clearly. Billionares are a drain on any society and improve nearly everyplace by leaving. What NYC might lose in hypothetical income tax from two billionaires moving elsewhere is more than made up by the reduction in competition for everything that poor NYers need to survive.
From https://nypost.com/2026/05/06/us-news/billionaire-ken-griffin-scales-back-nyc-jobs-in-response-to-mamdanis-tax-the-rich-antics-sparking-fears-wealthy-exodus-has-begun/
Mamdani may find his desire to stick it to the rich will leave fewer of them to tax in New York City, warned John Ketcham, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
“New York City is losing its competitive edge and Mayor Mamdani makes it far less competitive,” he said.
“Investors and job creators have options and they will go where they’re treated well. Increasingly New York City has treated them inhospitably. New York City leaders have assumed they can’t do business elsewhere, even though we have seen in the last several years a dramatic expansion of the financial sector’s activities in states like Florida and Texas.”
Again, self-serving quotes from unthinking capitalists doesn’t refute the idea that billionaires are leeches we’d be better off without.
“Job creator” is as absurd an label for their rent-seeking chicainery as the ides that corporate founders “pulled themselves up by the bootstrapz”. ~which in turn is the rough equivalent of “I’ll just fund my venture by shitting a gold brick.”~