New York, like California, has a large cohort of billionaires. To be exact, there are 118 billionaire families in New York. Despite the desperate financial condition of the state, Andrew Cuomo refuses to raise the taxes on the top one-tenth of 1%. Cuomo says that if he raised taxes on the billionaires, they would move to another state.
Walker Bragman and David Sirota explain another reason why Cuomo won’t raise taxes on the billionaires: one-third of them are donors to Cuomo’s campaigns, and clearly he has aspirations to run again for higher office.
As that campaign to tax billionaires received a recent boost from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York’s Democratic state legislative leaders, Cuomo has insisted that he fears that the tax initiative will prompt the super-rich to leave the state. On Wednesday, he doubled down, warning that if the state tried to balance its budget through billionaire tax hikes “you’d have no billionaires left”.
But in defending billionaires, Cuomo is protecting a group of his most important financial boosters. More than a third of New York’s billionaires have funneled cash to Cuomo’s political machine, according to a Too Much Information review of campaign finance data and the Forbes billionaire list.
So the people who can easily afford higher taxes to pay for public services should be protected from higher taxes, which for them is chump change.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This note about Cuomo’s dilemma reminds me of something Bill Clinton said in his talk at the funeral this week, paraphrased:
In politics, sometimes you are expected to do what conflicts with who you are; and so, you are asked to destroy the very thing that got you there in the first place.
I don’t know who is swimming in more shame: Cuomo or those New York millionaires. CBK
A champion of charters schools and a prostitute who would take money from a toddler if he could to stay in power: that’s the governor. I will not brush with a broad stroke the Democrats, but Andrew Cuomo is corrupt, hypocritical, and a prime example of a limousine liberal. One of the worst. Still, I will never support the GOP. We need to break this old arthritic duopoly and introduce new fresh parties with younger people and fresh ideas based on the youth movement. If the disease is acute, so too must be the medicine.
Robert Rendo I don’t know New York that well, but from what you say: He was “asked to destroy the very thing that got (him) there in the first place,” and so he has. If what you say is true, a pox on both their houses. CBK
Cuomo allowed legislation that let nursing homes off the hook in many ways due to COVID. He is bought and paid for and if lying were sugar consumption, he’d be a diabetic with two failing kidneys at this point. He’s no good. A great actor during his press conferences for COVID because he presented as dignified and calm, something anyone can do as an easy foil to the monster we have in the Oval Office.
New York’s dilemma highlights why we need to get money out of politics. Our income inequality gives the 1% too much influence and power. Cuomo would rather enact a regressive tax like raising transit fares than alienate his super rich donors. Unless we get the money out of politics, the super wealthy will continue to have a distinct advantage in running for office and getting legislation passed the benefits the rich while more lower middle class families pay more tax proportionately than billionaires. At the end of the article it notes that “A Stanford University researchers’ 2016 study of IRS data found that so-called tax flight among the wealthy is negligible.” Would New York lose its billionaires? Probably not those that need to be in New York to operate their businesses.
Cuomo emerged as a hero in the war on Covid-19. It has also been reported out that Jared Kushner proposed the state ownership of managing the pandemic because the first outbreaks were in two major blue states, New York and California. Kushner felt these blue governors would wear the failure of the response, not Trump. The blue governors including Cuomo rose to the occasion and are now considered heroes. While I applaud Cuomo’s no nonsense handling of the pandemic, we do not need another neo-liberal in the White House trying to privatize everything and continuing to expand our already huge income gap.
Are you kidding me? Cuomo is the reason New York got hit so hard in the first place. He closed hospitals, cut funding, and implemented “just in time” supply which caused the PPE/ventilator shortages. Even with the pandemic raging, he was still trying to cut Medicaid funding, even though it would cost billions in federal funds. Hero my Aunt Fanny.
Exactly the same in Rhode Island with Gov. Gina Raimondo. She, too, did and is continuing to do, a great job with the pandemic, but still has such a soft spot for charters and privatization and seems to have quite a bit of money stashed away for ????? some office other than that of governor?????
Just because Cuomo handled Covi-19 in NY, doesn’t mean he knows anything about educating our young.
What is WRONG with these people anyway? They don’t know what they DON’T KNOW and just trying to make a name for themselves in fields they no nothing about.
I am DISGUSTED with the DFERS. Wish they would all just LEARN something from TEACHERS.
Oh, when the USDoE came to my convention, it was a BIG, FAT JOKE. No one from the USDoE really listened. It was just a ploy.
And I had to organize and attend their “Talking to Teachers” sessions, too. What a JOKE that was.
Yvonne “Just because Cuomo handled Covi-19 in NY, doesn’t mean he knows anything about educating our young.”
Is Cuomo trying to “educate our young” or, like Fauci, trying to first keep them safe so that they can stay alive while they are being educated? CBK
Dienne-I make no excuses for Cuomo. When the virus was surging, he stepped into the spotlight and communicated daily with the public in the absence of the White House. He was calm, informative, and he gave the impression of steady leadership. Lots of people now perceive him as having “presidential potential.” I don’t. I am a retired NYS teacher. He lost me when he called public education a monopoly.
dienne77
Absolute nonsense; NY and NJ getting hit hard had nothing to do with actions Cuomo took including the debacle in the Nursing homes. The only exception being the failure to shut the state down a week earlier.
NY got hit hard because the virus was percolating undetected from the 3rd week in January onward. As it was in Wuhan from late November and and Italy and Southern Europe from late December.
There are few mass transit systems in the world that handle 3 million passengers daily as NYC did, certainly none in this country. You can trace the pandemic in the Tri State area to the subway and commuter rail lines. As you had less commuters you had less infections. Combine that with 27,000 restaurants , bars and offices that all those commuters left packed train to go into, packed elevators in those office buildings and packed restaurants.
And the Communities that got hit the hardest were those where multi generational families lived in the same apt or building or neighborhood. Because we don’t isolate positive cases as other nations have.
Had testing been available at the end of January , NYC would have known by mid February the extent of spread. 27,000 infected nursing home workers mostly living in low wage areas of the City, essential workers carried the virus into nursing homes unwittingly. As peak deaths in Nursing homes occurred before they were ordered to accept returning patients from hospitals and those that were returned were already successfully fighting the virus and had lower viral loads.
But the other false narrative is China hid the virus. Not with this country’s record, you can’t say that with a straight face. The first case of Community Transmission in NY was thought to be a New Rochelle Lawyer. He was diagnosed with Covid on March second. Of course he sat with pneumonia in a regular room at a Westchester hospital affiliated with Presbyterian System. He sat for 5 days before being diagnosed. That was 2 months after the virus was announced while we watched the West Coast. And in one of the Nation’s premier teaching hospital systems. He was in reality probably the 100 thousandth case in NY. Because within a week hospital emergency rooms started filling up. But without those random tests that would have shown the data of the pervasiveness of spread. How could you shut down before cases started piling up. And as we see in the South 5-6 months later; you didn’t see those extremely ill patients till 2 months after the start of spread. This even with being better informed.
If NY were to cut any of its Social Services it would still provide more benefits than any state in the Union. NYS medicaid system was
Obamacare before Obamacare without a mandate. Paid for by tax dollars.
There are two things I hate doing one is defending Obama, I think I made that clear in the past . And the other Cuomo the second biggest narcissist in the Country. But NYC is facing an existential crisis. The Commercial Real-estate Sector which fuels its economy may never return to normal with more and more companies embracing remote work. . The attraction of NYC is its cultural life from restaurants to Broadway and the Museums . That is down for the foreseeable future.
Tax the billionaires sounds great . I am all for it . Lets make it National lets bring those rates right back to the 94% of the 1950s . Lets eliminate the special treatment for Capital Gains and dividends and than redistribute that on a per capita and needs basis to the States .
Got a problem with that ? I am sure the Sh!t Hole States with low taxes would like some NY Billionaires to move down as they embraced industry when Taft Hartley brought Right to Work . Dirt bags like Ronald Reagan decades later telling people to vote with their feet and follow that industry to the low tax Right to Work South.
None of this is to say that Cuomo has not been in the pocket of Billionaires and multi millionaire developers. But when is Florida … going to have an income tax. And why was PPE diverted to States with low infection rates when the epicenter was the North East.
And Diane you can change live to living and their to there while it is sitting in moderation.
Done.
You are so right! It is well past time for public financing of politics or at least severely limiting the parameters of private funding.
What do people here think of his argument that the wealthy would simply move to another convenient state and NY would lose the taxes that they currently pay if taxes in NY were to increase taxes? Is he wrong about that?
Let them move.
Bye-bye.
The wealthy in western Europe pay far more in taxes in proportion to their wealth and they are not moving. This belief in having to be beholden to the wealthy because of this and that and these and those reasons is OVER! The end of the plutocracy begins when we believe it can be over.
If they move state revenue will drop. We could always reduce what we pay to educate our children. Does anyone here think that is a problem?
https://www.asanet.org/news-events/asa-news/do-millionaires-move-across-states-avoid-taxes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickwwatson/2018/05/10/high-taxes-dont-make-rich-people-move/#17d8f9ad25e3
Reduce it and force our federal government to give us back more of our federal dollars to finance public schools. Dependence on the rich as you state is impractical and immoral. Move into the 21st century,
speduktr,
Both your links refer to the same book, so let me just talk about the first link. The book looks at millionaires behaviour and notes that “….most millionaires today are “the working rich” and do not live off inherited wealth, but instead rely on earnings from employment. “They work as lawyers, doctors, managers, and financial executives,” he said. “They are at the peak of their careers and typically earn million-dollar incomes only for several years. People avoid potentially disruptive moves when they are performing at the very top of their game.”
I think we can all agree that billionaires do not rely on earnings from employment, but instead their wealth comes from the capital gains they have from businesses they created. Moving for tax purposes would be much less disruptive for them.
Good catch, TE. My feeling is billionaires are going to manage to minimize their taxes any way they can and since they can afford their own army of people to manage their wealth, it’s probably not worth worrying where they threaten to move. I have a feeling the extreme wealth has warped the living conditions in a lot of desirable areas of the country forcing out people with more modest incomes when prices for everything are driven up. Retirement certainly may influence decisions as it does for lots of people with more limited incomes.
He’s a Wall Street corporate Democrat and faux progressive who changes with the current political winds. No surprise he shoots down taxing billionaires. He’s also deep in the pocket of charter schools who’d love nothing more than to privatize NYC public schools to appease his madame Eva Moscowitz. While he’s provided good leadership during the pandemic compared to other governors don’t be fooled. He’s two faced and would change his tune in a second if he sensed its what the public wants, or what he thinks it wants. He has no convictions beyond staying in and exerting his power as he often does in his frequent p****ng matches with Mayor DeBlasio (no huge fan of him either). His daddy was no different. Mario was the prison building king of NYS as governor during the 80s yet he was championed as a progressive leader. The hell he was. Like Public Enemy said: “Don’t Believe the Hype”
Agreed. He is a savvy, ambitious opportunist.