By skyforbes I've heard this argument a million times:
P1: "Yeah but the rich people can just leave."
P2: "Maybe SOME will, but most people will choose to stay. NEW YORK CITY BABY!"
My Research Question
How many rich fuckers would need to leave, in order to offset the income gained from a 2% increase in taxes for high income ($1MM) earners?
I personally agree with P2. I don't think most rich New Yorkers will leave, but what's the break even point? How many rich fuckers can we lose before we're back to square one?
THE GOOD NEWS:
The city COULD get like $3.2 Billion from 33,765 rich fuckers in the city.
New York City's tax base relies heavily on a tiny group of top earners. As of 2022, there were 33,765 tax filers in NYC with an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $1 million or more.
My math says a 2% tax on the $4.8M average AGI for this group of 34k individuals could generate about $3.28 Billion.
The Break Even Point
That's what Mamdani is counting on for funding a lot of his programs. But that small number is still a huge vulnerability. That's because the income distribution is so heavily skewed by the ultra-high earners.
So how many rich fuckers need to move to Florida to offset the tax increase? Overall, it's not that many.
Basically between 11.5k and 2.2k rich fuckers. That's how many we can lose before a 2% tax hike becomes pointless.
I based the average income number in this table on the average taxes for NYC paid by people earning more than $1MM. Their average income is about $4.8MM, and we would need to lose about 11.5k for us to break even with a millionaire tax. I'll be honest, it's not that many people, but I don't see that happening.
However, those numbers get a lot smaller when we consider that the richest people will have an easier time moving (As well as a greater incentive) and those numbers look a lot different. I chose a bigger anchor points at 25MM, where it would only take about ~2k rich fucks leaving the city to offset a 2% tax. That's not that many people, it's about 6.6% of our population of people earning more than $1MM.
I also added in $50MM, but honestly there aren't that many New Yorkers who earn over $50MM and I'd be surprised if this was the average income for people moving to Florida.
Plus it's NYC, baby! Who would leave?
Here's how much some of these guys would save by moving to Florida.
The average rich new yorker would save $657k by moving to Florida or Texas, where the median home price is $450k. They could easily afford to buy a nice second home and still have money saved. Heck, they could rent a mansion, keep their NYC pad, and still save money.
So how many rich fuckers do we think we'd lose? I don't know, but these numbers aren't impossible. People are heavily incentivised to leave. For some reason, losing 12k of these rich fuckers seems unlikely to me, but I honestly could see 6k.
All in all, it's not a lot of people for a city of 8.8 Million. Then again, it's hard to beat living in the city.
edit: OK, people seem unfamiliar with the idea of a person leaving a state. Is that the stance? No one has ever moved out of NYC because it's too expensive? I have a counter example.
In New York State in 2022, when the state implemented a tax on people earning more than $1MM and revenues went down. Probably because some people left. See chart below.