Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Holds Tax Day Forum With Economists Gabriel Zucman and Joseph Stiglitz
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
I think first and foremost, I just want to say thank you for the immense amount of work and scholarship and advocacy that you have both done. It is exactly what has allowed for this moment to be realized by so many in the fight for a fairer world for each and every person who calls it home and continuing in your tradition of good news. I'll say that so much of that scholarship [and] that advocacy, we’re already seeing the fruits of it. Just last night, we saw an announcement that we are working together with the governor to introduce New York City's first-ever pied-� -terre tax. This is a tax on properties worth more than $5 million that are owned by people who do not reside in New York City. The super wealthy who can purchase properties and use them to store their wealth to benefit from New York City's real estate market but [do] not have to pay back into that same city that generates so much of that wealth in the way that they should. And that idea of a fairer society is at the principle of all of this advocacy, because what we are talking about is a recognition of the inequality that has permeated politics through the five boroughs of our city, through our country [and] through the world. I think as you were saying, when we talk about how we are excelling, we have to also admit to a number of things. You know, one is that [in] New York City, we like to compare ourselves to other global cities across the world, as we should. But if we compare ourselves, for example, to Berlin and Madrid, we find, in fact, that we have 80 percent higher levels of inequality. If we speak honestly about the levels of inequality in this city, we know that our counterpart in that is Panama, in terms of the levels within that society. And when we look at this city and we correctly describe it as the most expensive city in the United States of America, we do so knowing that when we measure the true cost of living here, it shows that more than 5 million New Yorkers cannot afford it. Sixty-two percent of New Yorkers cannot afford to live in this city. And so, for all of the discussion of the imagined exodus that would take place were we to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers by the appropriate amount, I say imagined because before I was a mayor, I was a state legislator, and I was part of an effort to increase taxes on millionaires at that time. We were told the same thing then. And what we find now is that we have more millionaires today than we did at that time, even after having passed that tax. And so, for all of that conversation about this imagined exodus, we have to reckon with the very real exodus that we are seeing in this city: an exodus of working-class people. An exodus of those who cannot afford to live here. And for many who work here, who now find their residence in Jersey City, or in Connecticut or in Pennsylvania, anywhere else where their dollar can go a little bit further. And we've seen, just in a snapshot from 2000 to 2020, the city lost 200,000 of its Black residents. That is the cost of inaction. And so that also speaks to the urgency of this conversation and this advocacy, and it is a representation of the fact that while this is a global issue, it is also very much a local issue here in New York City.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source And I think part of this comes back to our vision. Our vision is that everyone stays in the city and that we have room for others to join us in the city. And what we often speak about is that the revenue that we would use from this increased taxation, it is to increase the quality of life of this same city that we all call home. So, if you are a billionaire or a millionaire or if you're a working-class person, you have to deal with so many of the conditions of the city, to varying degrees and [in] varying ways. But when we're talking about this money, it's an investment back into the very things that New Yorkers measure as the efficacy of a City government in providing daily services. We're talking about, for example, we just had our first hundred days. We have a Department of Transportation that filled in 102,000 potholes in that period of time. Now, I can personally attest to the fact that they are doing it at all hours of the day. At midnight, in the morning, at every single hour of the day, they are doing this work. Part of the reason they can do this work is because of the taxation system that allows for the revenue to fund this work. And so often we speak about aspects of the public sector as if they are guaranteed, as if they are not things that need to be funded, as if they have no relationship to the generation of private wealth, when in fact these are the foundations of that. And I think, to your point, when we're looking at actual studies about migration, the Fiscal Policy Institute, I think it was, found that the wealthiest New Yorkers leave at one-fourth the rate of other New Yorkers. That when we're talking about actual impacts to migration, the closer correlation is not wealth with new tax status; rather, it's whether you're a young family with a child and you cannot afford child care. Those families are twice as likely to leave as the average New Yorker, because of the fact that in this city, child care is more than $20,000 a year. And I'll just go back to speak about the level of wealth we're talking about. I shared earlier the pied-� -terre tax. Yesterday, I was standing in front of, I think, 220 Central Park West. Ken Griffin owns a penthouse that he bought, I think, for $228 million, north of $200 million. This is the kind of wealth that is being stored in the city. And it is a residence that is so often empty. And it was actually not that many years ago when a developer told the State Senator Liz Krueger, who represents that district, about a new building to come up. And he said, “Don't worry, no one's actually going to live here, so it won't have an impact on the need for city services.” That's the way it's been built into our city's life and its expectation. And now is the opportunity to change so much of this.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source So, I think, before I speak of the vision, I want to address one additional thing that has come up in our conversation, which is what we have money for in this country. We are speaking right now, having a conversation as our country has spent now close to $30 billion on a war in multiple countries in the Middle East that has killed thousands of people. It is a war that is costing at least $500 million a day. And the return on that is images of our country bombing girls' schools in Iran. And as we look at that, we have to remember it as part of the same conversation that we have about the struggles of working-class people. Because the same amounts of money would be transformative for the lives of working-class people across the city, across this country. And the choice instead to invest that kind of money in war is a choice that — it doesn't just speak of a complete abdication of our political, economic and moral responsibilities. It also speaks to a choice that will itself exacerbate this cost-of-living crisis and that we're seeing that already in this city. Now, our vision, when we speak about taxing the rich, when we speak about what we want this city to be, it's a vision of a city where working-class people can do more than struggle. It's a vision of a city where we build on the successes of today and deliver something transformative for tomorrow. When I talk about making buses fast and free, it is as much an economic necessity as it is a necessity for the peace of mind of working-class people. Because the anxiety that also comes with precarity is one that is often not measured. You were saying earlier, if we were to measure the time tax, we would see this inequality at an even larger chasm. And yet we see that time and time again that this struggle to afford the most basic things, it has so many knock-on effects. Part of the reason that our city is putting forward our first-ever city-run grocery stores, one in each borough, is also because we want to make it easier to live a healthy life in this city. We keep telling working-class people to eat healthier, to live healthier, yet we don't reckon with the fact that it's cheaper to do the opposite in this city and in this country. So, if we want better outcomes, we have to make those outcomes easier to pick. When we speak about this vision, it's a vision of an understanding that a city and a society has that if we want to grow our population, if we want to grow the families of New Yorkers across the five boroughs, we have to make it easier to raise those children. So, it's a vision as well where child care is truly universal. We're proud of the fact that we have finally fixed universal childcare for three-year-olds. We're delivering universal childcare for two-year-olds, first time in our city's history. We want to continue that. We want to extend that to one-year-olds. We want to extend that to children as young as six weeks, because what we want is a recognition that for too long, we have asked the working class of this city to bear with unimaginable costs and then asked ourselves why the outcomes are not the way that we would like them to be. And I think even the examples that you mentioned, frankly, if we were to say those examples today as a reference of what we were aspiring for, we would be told that they were unrealistic. If we were to speak of CUNY today or SUNY today or Mitchell-Lama today or the rapid expansion of the subway system today, we would be told that goes beyond the possible. And we have to ask ourselves, why is it — and I'll say this also as a Democrat — that the ambition that we are looking for can so often only be found in our party's history, as opposed to in the present or in the future. And I think to what you both speak of, we have to have a recognition that this is a global issue. It requires a global response. The proposal is the right one about an implementation of a two percent tax on wealth across the globe. And much like the climate crisis, we cannot allow ourselves to wait for a global agreement to take local action. And that's why it's so exciting to be here with so many, frankly, who have been on the front lines of this advocacy to ensure that we are creating a fairer city. And we're doing so by asking the questions of our tax system that we've so long been told that it's not even possible to question. And when we do question it, we realize, in fact, that it can be different, it must be different, and we're starting to make it different ourselves.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source I think just in our conversation today, you can see the power of example. We are continuing to cite example after example of how these beliefs can actually not only be implemented but can be successful. When Massachusetts takes that step to implement that new surcharge, it can then be cited here in New York as an example for what we could see if we were to do the same. And I think this is something that Senator Sanders often shares with me and shares with so many others, is if you can make something work in New York City, it is allowed to be the proof of concept for it to work elsewhere. And I think that is what animates so many here, is that we know our struggles to afford life in the place that we call our home, those are not unique to New York City. That is a reality for working class people across the country, across the world. The struggle against inequality, it's not distinct. It is in fact becoming part of the human experience. And what we are so excited by is by recognizing once again that New York City is a home to the world. We have more than 3 million of our 8.5 million residents are immigrants. I'm one of them. And that this is the moment in time where we can show ourselves once again as part of being that same world that can advance a fairer vision for all of us. And I think just once again, truly to say to both of you, that your research, your clarity, your bringing together struggles that have previously been thought of as isolated ones is instead part of one larger global issue. It is not only refreshing, but it is clarifying to all of us as to what our work must be in this moment. And I think there are many, myself included, who have gone through moments in our politics where it feels as if we could not ever get any further from the truth. And yet what we are able to see in this moment is in fact that there is so much we can do. There is so much we can deliver. And that when we win anywhere, it can then be used as an example to win everywhere. So, thank you so much.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceAnd thank you to our incredible moderator, our commissioner of International Affairs, Ana María Archila.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Holds Tax Day Forum With Economists Gabriel Zucman and Joseph Stiglitz.