Mamdani’s Tax Fantasy Is Already Failing Somewhere Else

 Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Last week I wrote that Zohran Mamdani is a f***ing moron has proposed a new estate tax that is not really aimed at billionaires but at ordinary New Yorkers whose so called wealth is largely tied up in the homes they spent decades paying off.

That argument may have sounded abstract to some readers, like a warning about unintended consequences that might or might not materialize. But we do not have to speculate about how these kinds of burdensome taxation policies play out. Other than the Laffer Curve, which exists for a reason and has existed for 50 years now, we have another real world example, and it is happening in a state that shares many of New York’s political instincts and fiscal habits.

Massachusetts recently implemented a new 4% surtax on income above one million dollars after voters approved the measure in 2022. Supporters framed it as a targeted, reasonable way to raise revenue from top earners in order to fund public priorities like education and transportation. In theory, it was precisely the kind of policy that politicians like Mamdani claim will generate large sums of money without broader economic consequences.

But, of course, the early data tells a more complicated and far less comforting story.

In 2023, the first year the surtax took effect, Massachusetts experienced a net outflow of $4.2 billion in adjusted gross income. That number increased eight percent from the prior year. This was not driven by a sudden collapse in population or some unrelated shock. It reflects a steady and measurable movement of income and the people who earn it out of the state. Even more telling is that this shift occurred despite the fact that overall migration patterns did not dramatically worsen. In other words, fewer people may have left, but those who did leave took significantly more income with them...(READ THIS FULL STORY HERE).