Bet Your Bottom Dollar Before They Tax It

I detest much, though not all, of what Mayor Zohran Mamdani stands for.  His philosophy's bedrock is an obstacle to trust. 

But if he sticks with his "tax the rich" plans, provided wealth is fairly judged and defined, my loathing may be overturned and replaced by cautious acclaim. Stay tuned for his action and tune out his rhetoric.

To some, the mayor's plan is just a radical scheme, typical of hypocritical, affluent progressives who are driven by greed and jealousy to persecute "successful" job-creating New Yorkers. They feel it's a plot for punishing these wizards of productivity for their hard work, inventiveness and prosperity, and for their privileging us ingrates by maintaining their corporate footprint and personal presence in our town.

To them, Mamdani is a loony, grandstanding collectivist, in a classic case of "class envy," to whom the hoi-polloi are the new aristocracy. 

Actually, Mamdani's ambitions are too modest.

It will be more a paper cut than a slash to the plutocrats' partially ill-gotten gains. Ordinary folks don't hit IPOs; they punch timecards.

Owners of multiple 100,000 square foot dwellings vow to abandon New York, leaving it high and dry without a tax base. That would be their retribution for the taxman skimming their windfall, which they regard as a confiscation and betrayal of the oligarchs' social contract.

Mamdani's actual plan is anticlimactic and almost insultingly modest.

He's aiming for a mere 2 percent increase from their earned, albeit not always deserved income. Relative to the income of an average civil servant, it's a dime jump in the cost of a tuna wrap.

The taxman's weapon should be locked and loaded, not against the cottontails and woodchucks who are the common folk, but the plutocrats, who are the rhinos with fiduciaries as bodyguards.

They should be their game.

Many of the sources of mega-rich people's income are deferable, disguisable and forgivable under the present tax law. Unless we rent a flea market stall or run a cash-only business, the rest of us are denied that larcenous luxury.

Although the tax burden of the most loaded New Yorkers should be magnified, it should not be done in isolation as a remedy to correct budget shortfalls and economic inequity. There must be far greater fiscal discipline, and decisionmakers must be answerable and liable for corruption and bad judgment.  

"Tax and spend" is a polemical phrase often used simplistically and callously to describe investment in humanitarian social services. But there is undeniable validity to the charge that politicians often throw money at problems to conjure an aura of empathy for constituents to secure their votes. 

A staggering amount of tax dollars are frittered away, and invariably renewed, without regard to whether they accomplish anything positive. 

Independent audits are rarely conducted. Uncovered waste, fraud and scams are serially concealed.  Contracts and sometimes awarded and programs funded through seedy processes and a nexus of illicit profit makers.

There will always be an infinite supply of problems, but never adequate assets to resolve or even address them. We can bet our bottom dollar, but we mustn't tax it. Society is tested by how it handles its ordeals, crucibles and tax codes.

Revenue from a rectified tax structure should be dedicated primarily to medical research, which must be fastidiously monitored. It should be treated as coercive philanthropy and mandated humanitarianism.

True charity is not only inconsistent with national policy, but largely anathema to it. 

Being a billionaire is not always in terms of money. As a figure of speech, it could be expanded to refer to people who are extravagantly wealthy in the sense of political power.

The attendant hubris and cravings straddle the local, state and federal levels. This is an area in which MAGA and democratic socialists are kin.

In July, 45 of the 51 New York City Council members voted themselves a pay increase of over 18 percent, plus a guaranteed annual boost thereafter, regardless of what the city's financial condition might be. 

Mayor Mamdani and Council Speaker Menin did not accept the raise for themselves. Likely their rejection was as much a career calculation as an assertion of seep-seated principle, but if we inquire into the inner motivations of even saints and heroes, we might be blinded by disillusionment, so let's just admire their decision and take it at face value.

If the residents of Easy Street had a parade, Mayor Mamdani would have a place of honor on the bash the billionaires float. He'd like to pry open the closed fists of the billionaires (and their treasury vaults), whom Senator Bernie Sanders likens to feudal monarchs. 

Does he include the billionaires who share his ideology and donate accordingly? 

Their putrescence is non-partisan.

The taxation debate will endure even longer than Pat Boone.  But debt collection is being surpassed by data collection.

Although Governor Kathy Hochul recently signed the "first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers," it will have no bearing whatsoever on the stockpiling of our data points by government, vendors and doctors' offices.

Last week I went to an urgent care medical office to have impacted ear wax irrigated.  For my signing in, they gave me a tablet on which I was asked to identify my religion and my race. 

Why? 

I also had a cold. Did they need the lowdown in order to gerrymander nasal discharge?

We used to be known by the company we kept. Not it's by the boxes we checked.

There's a twist in our resentment of the wealth theocracy. We are infuriated and repulsed by it when it abounds in the world of business, but not of sport.

Middle class people grab all the overtime they can at work, doing double shifts, sacrificing and saving for months, just to pay for the lousiest seats in a stadium to see a professional game with their spouse and kids.

Numerous players in MLB, NFL, and NBA and NHL have total contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Baseball players Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani, for instance, have deals in excess of $700 million.

In 1968, the final season of the long career of New York Yankee superstar Mickey Mantle, he grossed $100,000.  During that same year, Roger Maris, who broke Babe Ruth's homerun record a few years earlier was paid $75,000.

For most of their careers, they were paid a fraction of those sums. Other ball players took post-season jobs as salesmen and grave diggers (Richie Hebner).

Factoring the cost of living over the last 58 years doesn't much mitigate the breathtaking gap.  We shouldn't begrudge the well-being of employees, I suppose, even as we elevate athletes beyond the stratosphere of esteem. Is it an attitudinal double standard? 

Maybe we should all just mind our own business and live with the fallout of our indifference.