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No, New York City’s wealthiest are not fleeing the city after Mamdani’s win
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025
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The very rich don't hold a very large percentage of their weath in immobile form. More in investments of various sorts.
And those assets ultimately are tied to something physical.
We're talking about the ultra rich, not just your average lucky rich guy earning a big paycheck
If hypothetical tax fleeing rich guy has £5bn invested in some American company and they are running from a tax on that asset, what do they do? They have to sell off the asset to someone who wants it (good) or they still face the tax (especially in America where uncle Sam will follow you to the end of the earth to get your tax bill).
Imagine they manage that and don't make too much of a loss doing so (which is already not realistic, but anyway). Now what do they do with that? Keeping cash as cash is basically flushing money down the drain, so they need to quickly reinvest it in something roughly as financially performant as what it was in before. Problem is if they are a rational investor, their money was already in the best place so wherever it goes next basically has to be a compromise.
The ultra rich are a different breed to what you're thinking of, even their market investments are big enough it's generally pretty hard to move them between borders for the purposes of avoiding tax
You are missing the point of this specific scaremongering. Nobody ever said the ultra rich would leave the US if he won. They said (just like the headline and article state clearly) the rich would leave the city, going to FL and TX. It is QUITE easy to keep all your market investments and corporations and even your real estate holdings while living in another state, or heck, even another city within NY.
Your argument makes sense when talking about the federal government implementing a wealth tax, but it doesn't have much to do with a city raising taxes. The rich are going to stay in NYC because it's a great city to live in if you are rich, though it isn't where I want to live if I were poor or even as an upper middle class person. The regular wealthy people have houses in multiple cities in their country and will live in the city they enjoy living in. The ultra rich have houses in multiple countries, but they will still choose where they spend most of their time based on where they like spending most of their time.