Recently, as Americans were busily filing their taxes, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was hard at work on an ad campaign, which was about to launch on social media.
The self-described democratic socialist soon let loose with an off-the-wall video ad, titled “Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich.”
In the clip, he lauded the passage of the city’s first-ever pied-à-terre tax,which is an annual levy on luxury second homes that are valued at $5 million or more and are not considered primary residences.
Mamdani framed the bill’s passage as a big victory, carrying on about “taxing the rich” and the “fairness” of it all, while claiming that the revenue raised would fund numerous so-called progressive priorities.
At the same time any concerns about wealthy residents fleeing the city were quickly dismissed as “imagined.”
In the real world, such a confiscatory tax drives out investment, crushes the real estate industry, and decimates the city’s already beleaguered economy.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had previously resisted broad tax hikes on the wealthy, has done a massive turnaround and is now totally on board with Mayor Mamdani.
The theatrical Marxism of Gotham’s mayor affects more than just the city of New York. His video ad is a textbook exhibit of the very leftism that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently warned against in a powerful speech, which was delivered at University of Texas’s Austin campus.
Speaking on the 250th anniversary of The Declaration of Independence, Justice Thomas described the code word that radicals prefer these days; i.e., “progressivism,” as an “existential threat” to America’s founding principles.
“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government,” the justice said. “It holds that our rights and dignities come not from God, but from government.”
In other words, so-called progressivism, or what increasingly appears to be communism in disguise, has nothing to do with progress.
Instead the implementation of the ideology turns back the clock on limited government, individual liberty, and the self-evident truths that built the most prosperous nation in the annals of history.
Mayor Mamdani’s video ad embodies the insidious slide toward tyranny to which far too many unfortunate countries before us have succumbed.
It’s a kind of trickle down ideology that celebrates a forced redistribution of wealth that is camouflaged as moral virtue.
A smidgen of real history is helpful in aiding our understanding of what is going on.
The United States of America did not have a permanent federal income tax for the first 137 years of its existence.
From our nation’s founding until the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the federal government operated without routinely confiscating a portion of every citizen’s earnings.
In fact, America grew into an economic powerhouse precisely because individuals and businesses were free to create, invest, and retain the fruits of their personal labor.
The free market, rooted in property rights, voluntary exchange, and limited government interference, is what drove innovation, lifted millions out of poverty, and rewarded those who were willing to take a risk.
Much like humanity itself, the capitalist system is not perfect. However, it is far better than any alternative that has been tried.
Economic freedom has unleashed human potential and achieved greater success than the best of central planners ever could.
Like Mayor Mamdani, the Marxist-minded among us are aggressively dismantling our freedoms.
For every fiscal shortfall, their solution is never to place a cap on spending. Rather, it is to foment more class envy and/or assign additional victim status to those who are vulnerable.
New York’s fancy sounding pied-à-terre tax is simply being sold as the pinpointed targeting of luxury homeowners and global elites.
But like a freight train with no brakes, history has demonstrated that policies such as these have no stopping point. Instead they cavalierly race forward, smashing into things, distorting markets, squelching investments, and sending wealth sailing off to better shores.
When those in power punish success and fund their agenda on the backs of producers, an erosion of the incentives that make the free market work begins to feed upon itself.
Slower growth sets in. Fewer jobs are created. Opportunities for everyone diminish at an accelerated rate. And the collapse of a once-solid system begins to look inevitable.
Justice Thomas is correct. This malignant ideology doesn’t improve on the Founders’ vision. It wholeheartedly rejects it.
The Declaration’s promise of unalienable rights, endowed by our Creator, stands in direct contrast to the non-progressive notion that rights are doled out by politicians, are revocable at the ballot box, and are able to be axed at any local budget hearing.
Mayor Mamdani’s smirk says it all.
Look at it as a cultural signal that the deconstruction of free-market principles is marching on, that government gets to be the one that picks winners and losers, and that wealth is a public resource available to be harvested on a Marxist’s whim.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, may we take heed of Justice Thomas’s call to reject cynicism and stand firmly for first principles.
And may more and more of us help Lady Liberty hold up the torch.
James Hirsen 