Mayor Bloomberg responded to the latest reports about rising poverty in New York City with a plea for more billionaires to move to the city. Presumably that would create new jobs for chauffeurs, maids, gardeners, personal chefs, butlers, and others to serve the needs of the powerful and wealthy. They might even endow some more of the charter schools that are on the drawing boards in the waning days of the Bloomberg administration.
Remember the poem by Emma Lazarus that is mounted on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. It is called “The New Colossus,” and it says, in part,
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Bloomberg thinks that Lazarus got it wrong. Send us the billionaires!
Here is the article as it appears in the Wall Street Journal:
Mayor Says More Billionaires Would Ease City’s Economic Situation
Mayor Says Increase in Wealthy Residents Provides Tax Revenue to Benefit the Poor
Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday it would be a “godsend” if every other billionaire around the globe moved to New York City, a clarion call for the rich just days after new U.S. Census figures showed an increase in the city’s poverty rate and a wide gap between the wealthy and poor.
On his weekly radio show, Mr. Bloomberg, who has been accused over the years of being out of touch, suggested New Yorkers would benefit if the income gap were even wider because the wealthy pay for a big portion of city services.
ReutersMichael Bloomberg said billionaires in the city are why there is such a sizable gap between the rich and poor.
Mr. Bloomberg said his administration has spent most of the past 12 years trying to help decrease poverty in the city. But he suggested New York could benefit if the income gap grew even more, saying the problem isn’t at the low-end.
“The reason it’s so big is at the higher end we’ve been able to do something that none of these other cities can do, and that is attract a lot of the very wealthy from around the country and around the world,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
“They are the ones that pay a lot of the taxes. They’re the ones that spend a lot of money in the stores and restaurants and create a big chunk of our economy,” he said. “And we take tax revenues from those people to help people throughout the entire rest of the spectrum.”
Mr. Bloomberg said billionaires in the city are why there is such a sizable gap between the rich and poor. But “if we could get every billionaire around the world to move here it would be a godsend—that would create a much bigger income gap.”
Forbes recently estimated Mr. Bloomberg’s net worth at $31 billion. Mr. Bloomberg’s 12-year tenure at City Hall ends Dec. 31.
According to new Census figures, the city’s poverty rate rose to 21.2% last year, up from 20.9% in 2011 and 20.1% in 2010. The figures also showed the mean household income of the lowest fifth at $8,993, compared with $222,871 for the highest fifth.
Income inequality in the city has become a flashpoint in the race to succeed Mr. Bloomberg. Bill de Blasio, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has said addressing the gap will be a centerpiece of his administration. He’s repeatedly described New York as a “tale of two cities.” Mr. Bloomberg and GOP mayoral nominee Joe Lhota have accused Mr. de Blasio of engaging in class warfare.
Mr. de Blasio said the city welcomes “everyone” but that city government needs “to focus not on the few but on the many.”
“The mayor needs to understand that beyond his social circle are millions of New Yorkers who are struggling and are looking to contribute to this economy if they could only get a job to contribute to it with,” he said.
Mr. Lhota said the conversation needs to be about creating jobs. “Jobs are the only way known to mankind that will deal with income inequality,” he said.
City Comptroller John Liu—who ran for the Democratic nomination for mayor and lost to Mr. de Blasio—said it would “only be a godsend” if the city’s wealthiest residents paid an equitable income tax rate. He pointed out that families making $50,000 are paying the same rate as a family making nearly $50 million.
“The mayor’s comment shows once again just how out of touch he is with the average New Yorker,” Mr. Liu said.
—Andrew Grossman and Joe Jackson contributed to this article.Write to Michael Howard Saul at michael.saul@wsj.com
This is p r i c e l e s s.
(Pun intended.)
For some, the phrase “poor people” is an oxymoron.
Bloomberg, you are a hateful, spiteful, horrid little spider whose egg sack has burst and whose little baby spiders you devour with no notion of prolonging the species.
You are a disgusting roach infested nest of ideology and narcissism.
Your stone cold visage would give Medusa a perm and make her look human.
Your heart is hundreds of thousands of times more evil than all the biblical plagues combined.
Your King Midas touch has driven out the middle class, the working class, and the poor.
Your grotesque countenance and socially limited rhetoric are indeed the incantations of the devil, and your DNA is straight from the Rosemary’s Baby pool of DNA.
You are a walking, living, breathing disease without a cure.
Good riddance to you. . . . May Bill DeBlasio reverse even 1/8 of your policies. That would be years of damage undone. Imagine if Mr. DeBlasio were to do more than 1/8.
Your money can create the pale imitation of truth, but it can never sustain the real thing . . . . . .
Robert, may I quote your vision of Medusa far & wide? It is hilarious! (And the rest of your allegories are wonderful, too.)
In this movement of pushback, “my” words and thoughts will and should never belong to me. Take them. Slather them on thick wherever you go . . .
We are in this together.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a New York Cit-tee.
Dialing for Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until 3.
So, oh Lord, won’t you buy me a New York Cit-tee.
If I had between 5 and 50 million dollars in my checking account, Manhattan, or any of the five boroughs, would be the last place I’d want to live.
That’s ME, and it is not intended as a slight against those who do choose or can afford to live in NY City.
What a cesspool of inequity and overpriced real estate it has become. It’s one big box store, one big guarded and gated community. . . . not the Manhattan I once grew up with, knew intimately as a young adult, and once loved.
Bloomberg has sanitized it, neutered it, and stopped and frisked it to death.
Now that I just touched the keys to write his name again, time to break out the Purell . . . . . .
Robert, if you had $5 million, you couldn’t afford to buy an apartment in Manhattan. Maybe a studio…or even a 1 BR, but if you have a family and want to live with the other millionaires, forget about it.
Oh well . . . . Now I’m really devestated. I’ll never be the same. My life is ruined. Blown to smithereens. How will I recover?
🙂
C’mon, Diane. . ..
Let them eat condos . . . .
Let’s not get carried away. You could buy a huge (by NYC standards) three-bedroom in any neighborhood in Manhattan for that money.
I’ll pass.
Manhattan is nothing compared to Paris or Bordeaux. And in the thick of all that gorgeous European French architecture, there is another layer, although hidden, of beauty in the fact that all those people walking around, working, living their lives have national health care and never have to dream about reducing themselves to paupers to either pay medical debt or qualify for aid.
Double whammy!
Manhattan is a cesspool of greed with people who are largley socially liberal (yea!) and fiscally conservative (boo!).
My kingdom for French citizenship . . . .
I’m one of the few who’s not a fan of Paris. I find it stiflingly conservative on a basic social level. Very pretty, though. But I can’t argue with your characterization of NYC.
FLERP,
Do you speak enough French to really integrate with Parisiennes and get to know what they are all about. They are also quite diverse and vary among arrondisements . . . . Or are you setting forth an American perspective shaped by language barrier?
I speak a bit. Mine is certainly an American perspective, albeit informed by some French friends. I find Paris generally stuffy, conservative, and very class-bound. I could be mistaken, but I’m certainly not the first to have this view.
BTW–who’s that pleasant looking gentleman standing behind Bloomberg?
The two of them remind me of the Koch Bros.
That “pleasant looking man standing behind Bloomberg” is Ray Kelly, the police commissioner. Bloomberg adores Kelly, and thought at the beginning of his 12-year reign of making him schools chancellor but decided being head of police was more important.
They look like villains from a tilted frame shot of the 1960’s Batman series with Adam West. . .
And they do technically work and live in Gotham City.
It’s Mr. Freeze and Egghead in the background.
This is the modern equivalent of “Let them eat cake.” Can the revolution be far behind?
I fear the country is becoming a tinder box. I am not a fan of violence.
Neither am I. But, as a student of history, it is apparent that the average citizen is getting frustrated with the high concentration of money and power that the one percent enjoy and are finally understanding that the middle class is being squeezed out of existence. This has all the makings of a major social movement.
Right you are . . . . . I fear its inevitability, but I could be wrong.
What nonsense. Bloomberg knows that rich people don’t keep their money in America because then it will be taxed. That’s why Gates/Microsoft bought Nokia, to keep the money overseas and avoid taxes. So Diane is right, at most, a handful of servants’ jobs would be created. But many billionaires already have residences in NY and they are one of many homes for them, so how regular are those chauffeurs’ jobs anyways?
The game is rigged. The greedy never have enough money and power and they have corrupted our government. But they are spiraling out of control and, ultimately, their craziness is likely to be a catalyst for draconian changes demanded by the populous.
The more politicians publicly focus on starving the hungry and feeding the wealthy, the more the people of this nation can see them for the robber barons that they are.
The more high profile these self-serving narcissists committed to personal privilege and excess are, the more likely the middle and low income majority, who lack upward mobility, are to pressure politicians to do the right thing and change course or risk being voted out of office.
We are very near the tipping point now. Everyone should watch “Inequality for All” http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-inequality-for-all/
Being mayor of NYC has been a very lucrative gig for Michael Bloomberg, with his estimated wealth rising by at least six hundred percent since he became Mayor in 2001.
From his chump change standing of $4.5 B in 2001, when he was listed as tied for 82nd place on the Forbes list of the richest 100 people in the world (money.cnn.com/2001/06/22/news/weathiest/list), he jumped to 10th place in 2013 with an estimated fortune of $27B.
While it helps to have a President who refuses to make any real attempts to restrain the Infinite Greed of Wall Street – Bloomberg LLP’s prosperity still depends almost entirely on renting his monitors to financial firms – re-zoning NYC and turning it over to real estate developers, some of whom sit on charter school Boards, couldn’t have hurt.
This is “trickle down economics” again. A rising tide lifts all boats, even the crustaceans stuck to the bottom of the boat.. Yeah right. How many sandwiches do rich people eat? You need a strong middle class base to heal the economy. This won’t happen, so you get these crazy ideas. Maybe outsourcing all those factories wasn’t such a great idea. Can you really have a middle-class society without industry and production? No way! This is the new America. Porsche and Rolex are doing great. The rest of us can shop at Walmart, or if you have a little more money, at Target where they actually paint the walls. The middle class is just about done. As soon as they get teachers down to minimum wage, the destruction will be just about complete. After teachers, they will go after the policemen, firemen, and paramedics, anyone who earns more than minimum wage. America as we once knew it is doomed. Go to Venezuela or Columbia to see the future.
When I first saw the headline and browsed the article I thought this to be the Mayor’s special type of humor. On second read I realized -hey. He doesn’t have any sense of humor. He isn’t kidding….. Let them eat cake IS his mantra. All his rich friends that he wants to attract to NYC are promised jobs for their recently graduated Ivy League/private school kids in the various city agencies that he has created… A great shell game. Might the cash cow be running out soon for these kiddies? Maybe they will have to go back to Daddy’s corporation or heaven forbid, get real jobs???? 90+ days left….And I am willing to bet, as with his buds Murdoch and Joel K, that their will be no one in the press looking at how much “good luck” they had with the increase in their monetary fortune $$$$ during these past 12 year reign? How much did all of their good fortune and savvy investments increased during this time? When u own the press, you do not tend to have others do such great investigative reporting….With all this cake eating, can the revolution be far behind?
I just end up shaking my head when I read stuff like this.
The fact that, in Bloomberg’s view, NYC, with an economy bigger than many countries, needs even more billionaires to solve its problems, points to major flaws in his thinking, and current set of “solutions”.
I will never forget the time Bloomberg said in a press conference how Obama and his family were visting and enjoying New York City and that like them, anyone family of modest and average income can come and explore the glories of the city because there were so many high quality, low cost things to do.
The latter part of the statement has some but not enought truth to it.
But to refer to the Obamas as a modest or average income family was hysterical. . . . Just goes to once again show the disconnect this monster mayor has and the bubble he can never escape from until he perishes one day from natural causes.
Ah, Your Honor, let them all eat cake . . . . . . let them all make over $400,000 a year, those little people and Obama.
RobertRendo, I hope you will also remember that when NYC was closed down by a blizzard, the mayor advised the public to calm down and go see a Broadway show. Just a few problems: 1) public transportation was closed down by the blizzard; 2) the roads were impassible for all but emergency vehicles; 3) Broadway tickets cost about $100 a seat; 4) Broadway is closed on Monday, the day he offered his sage advice.
Diane Ravitch,
I don’t recall that at all.
Oh my . . . .
The mayor was only trying to empathize, right? His “helping” average people of NY CIty that day is something I liken to streptococchi attacking a heart valve.
And what should the people be complaining about? What a bunch of whiners. If they did not get to a Broadway show, then Mayor Antoinette would be thinking otherwise:
Let them see Off Broadway shows. . . let them eat out at the Four Seasons or at Alain Ducasse’s place at the Essex House . . . let them take a helicopter ride to get some panoramic views of Manhattan . . . let them indulge in a shopping spree at Bergdorf’s or the Vuitton store.
A plutocrat can never have enough hand bags or shrimp puffs . . . .
Actually, did the media not report that Mr. Bloomie was whisked off to his home in the Bahamas when the storm came? Why di I recall that?
I can’t keep track of all these Bloomberg-isms. Too many. Too toxic.
As Cool Hand Luke said to his jailer, “I wish you’d stop bein’ so good to me, cap’n”. What an outrageous solution to help NYC’s poor. The infusion of foreign millionaires and billionaires and their fortunes into NYC have virtually shut out the middle class from the housing market. Middle class families actually pay taxes as opposed to the rich who cleverly avoid them.
Thanks for reminding me, Mike, why I need to send another hundred to DeBlasio
While Doomberg sends another hundred thousand to his opponent . . . .
It’s easy to poke fun at Bloomberg about this stuff. But of course Bloomberg was referring to sources of NYC local tax revenue, and that issue is in fact a real pickle. If you don’t believe the rich pay their NYC local income or property taxes, then there’s certainly no point in raising those taxes. De Blasio’s proposed tax increase would yield zero per year rather than $500 million pear year. In that case, if we need more revenue, we need to raise taxes on the middle class. On the other hand, if you acknowledge that the rich do pay NYC local income and property taxes, then having fewer rich people in NYC would cause more of the tax burden to fall on the middle class. And if housing prices fell, so will property assessments and property taxes. In this scenario, NYC’s budget would look like Armageddon.
That’s a canard: unlike people who work for a living, the rich garner most of their wealth from capital gains, not income, which is taxed at a lower rate.
That’s federal, Michael. NYC (and NY state) taxes cap gains as ordinary income. So, for example, De Blasio’s proposed tax increase would apply to capital gains at the same rate it applied to ordinary income.
Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. . . . .
And how do other cities in Western Europe do it?
How do what cities in Western Europe do what?
Deal with and generate tax revenues, that’s what . . .
Tax schemes vary city by city. As a general matter, the approach is the same thing as NYC’s. Set rates and hope there’s more rather than less taxable income, wealth, and transactions to apply them to.
Really, FLERP?
I thought Europe taxes its rich in its cities (and throughout the whole sovereignty) far more than we do here in the States. . . .
I had no idea it was so cookie cutter the way you portray it . . .
Wow. .. that was an eye-opener.
Yes, I would agree with that statement.
I’m not sure what you’re otherwise trying to say. The principle that government prefers there to be more of the thing it’s trying to tax rather than less of it is indeed cookie-cutter, though.
What in God’s name is John Liu referring to? Certainly not NYC or NY state tax rates.