Bloomberg Warns Against Taxing the Rich

Of course, he does.

fuck you fuck you fuck you. you rich asshole fuckface. stop letting billionaires decide how they should be taxed.

What the he'll does Bloomie know about money anyway....

I can't get over how many people feel that a couple who's combined income is $250k, would classify as "rich," and deserve to be penalized for their gross excess! Crazy!

What would we do if we didn't have the rich to worship? Instead of taxing them, we should be giving them money.

Wait a minute....

" Imagine if developers had to actually build affordable housing instead of luxury condos!"

Affordable housing = "projects"...

"NYC's true middle class, i.e. the families with two earners making between $250 and $500"

What drugs are you on? If you make $500k, why are you wasting your time on this blog? Stop kidding yourself.

Btw, most of us NYers miss 'dog day afternoon' and 'french connection' time. At least it was a real city, not your Republican Conservative city of Free Marketeers and Walt Disney and Suburban Values. Obviously, you envy that gritty time, that is why you reference it, not the pablum that Giuliani/Bloomberg Republicans produces.

The 1970s were the dark ages of the 20th century. Why would anyone miss social decay and stagflation. Sounds like you miss your youth, but guess what, even when those things return you'll be OLD.

.

By the way, how much money do you think Jen Chung's made off this blog? Should she get off too? Do you think maybe Jen Chung's advertisers want only marxist hippie losers to post this blog? 'Cause there is no way that a person like you would pay to read this blog if there were no advertisers.

.

You are right about one thing, this blog is a waste of time.

This blog is not a waste of time. The only waste of time is the five minutes your folks spent spawning you.

By the way, how much money do you think Jen Chung's made off this blog?

Last I heard, Jen was still working a full-time job in addition to doing Gothamist. I don't think she's in a penthouse yet.

You are right about one thing, this blog is a waste of time.

Great! Adios! Arriverderci! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Eat the rich, don't just tax them. And start with Bloomberg whose pan-seared sweetbreads might go well with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Nanny you are way way too hard on the rich. Do you realize that if it wasn't for the rich the poor would be poorer according to mayor Mike's observation?

In some ways I kind of like that old geezer Madoff. He worked those rich pricks really well. "So I was talking to Estelle and Ira about how much Bernie M has made for us so much in the last five years that we might be buying a nice retirement home in Miami. In fact so much we can afford the "better section."

...how do you use this damn chafing dish anyway?

"I hear the protesters, you know. I think that deep down inside, I assume, they understand that we live in a different world," Oh Oh he's been hanging around Caroline Kennedy too much recently, you know.

How many expensive restaurants are there in Manhattan? Forty? Fifty? And say they have a staff of fifty. That means a total of 2,500 people. Say they had a staff of a hundred people that would bring it up to 5,000 people. Where does this guy get his figures from? With that kind of awareness how does Bloomberg's company survive. I doubt those 5,000 individuals are going to make or break the economic survival of NYC.

Let Bloomberg and his buddies eat cake.

Wish Napoleon Bloomberg would move to Connecticut. Or better yet....far, far away. Can't stand him!

Hopefully the Crime goes up on the rich. That would be GREAT. I'd love to see their faces.

Noooo! Don't tax the rich! That would be Communism!

Let's tax the middle class instead! Now that's capitalism!

" I looked at a list the other day of restaurants where the staff is unionized. They're the expensive restaurants. They're not the cheap restaurants."

But excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, but does that make the food better? Perhaps we poor fucks can't write off two $500 bottles of wine at lunch as an expense account figure while you talk about if your ugly little slut daughters Buffy and Muffy should go to Dalton or Miss Wilton's boarding school for girls in Connecticut.

Moving a plate of food from point a in the kitchen to point b at the receiver's table really doesn't need a union supervisor.

And what is so bad about the "cheap" restaurants? At least there you wont find a bunch of financial assholes trying to steal your money anyway they can.

Get real Bloomberg. Take 10 billion of your Monopoly play money and do something with it before it all disappears.

Sometimes I feel sorry for Stu Loeser, who'd probably like to stuff a ball gag in his boss's mouth. But he can't, b/c that would cost him his six-figure bonus.

And Stu, if you're reading this, I'll save you the risk of replying. You know I'm right.

How about taxing western union money transfers out of the country?

Who or what is IBM? Are they a pharmaceutical company? Automobiles? What? The name doesn't sound familiar. I did a google search and they were listed under electric typewriters.

Was that a typo and you meant ICBM?

These days IBM is in the software consultant business for large and medium sized corporate clients like investment banks, pharmaceutical companies, etc. IBM provides computer programmers and engineering consultants as well as selling software and hardware systems. IBM has over 300 thousand employees and consultants around the world.

Many of these jobs can be done overseas for less, or if work needs to be done in the US, IBM can bring skilled workers into America on temporary H1B Visas because they can pay them less than Americans.

I get it. It's kind of like Microsoft but less successful.

Developers wouldn't build anything. Truly rich people don't care. NYC's true middle class, i.e. the families with two earners making between $250 and $500 will care and they will simply leave. When they leave, they'll just strip those apartments of the high end appliances, close the fitness center, subdivide the space and turn it into affordable housing. Why would anyone take new construction and turn it into affordable housing when you can just convert the existing housing stock? When that happens, you can bet that maintenance standards will drop. Want to know what the city's going to look like -- rent "Dog Day Afternoon" or "The French Connection" to see just how gritty the city was in the 1970s. Have fun living in decrepit housing stock amid lawlessness.

Want to know what the city's going to look like -- rent "Dog Day Afternoon" or "The French Connection" to see just how gritty the city was in the 1970s. Have fun living in decrepit housing stock amid lawlessness.

Actually, I did, and many people still do. I remember the 70s very well. Had a great time. But, hey, if you're going to pull out the old movie titles, why not The Warriors? I'm guessing you're new here, which is why you don't know that quite a few people here wax rhapsodic about a time when the city wasn't all yuppies, hipsters and bond traders. They want some of the old grittiness back.

Wow in that case you must still wax nostalgic about that athlete's foot you got 5 years ago.

Many of these jobs with salaries between 125K and 250K are vulnerable to outsourcing overseas. Forget about worrying about losing business to New Jersey and Connecticut.

For example, investment banks can hire the same quality entry level financial analyst for a total compensation of 50K or less in India versus 100K+ in New York City. Also, the technology jobs are still disappearing, IBM is firing it's American employees while hiring in places like Russia and China.

Yeah well conservatives raided our tax dollars to pay themselves thats how well they did handling our financial welfare and Bloomberg is saying there's more where that came from and we (the public) have had it. It's not an either or situation...Bloomberg may understand commerce and that's fine, but we're talking about survival for all and we need balance not someone who throws us into peril and then bills the govt (all of us) for it while protecting his own tax bracket.

Based on past comments here, I'd say an awful lot of Gothamisters (Gothamistans? Gothamisers? Heh.) would love for the rich to leave the city and stop driving real estate prices through the roof. Imagine if developers had to actually build affordable housing instead of luxury condos!

When was the last time a poor person gave you a job?

Bloomberg is smart enough to now that you can kill the golden goose if you're not careful. The democrats have certainly done a fantastic job over the last few decades brainwashing so many of you with their marxist class warfare mentality. Look no further than Detroit to see where it leads.

The liberals won the presidential election. The conservatives are welcome to move to conneticut. We're staying here (as opposed to the previous plan of relocating to canada).

the mayor is rich and we expect him to speak on behalf of the rich. doesn't the less fortunate buy from the stores also, it is the stores of the non-rich that are disappearing daily. Mayor, try to walk one day in the shoes of the less fortunate and see it through our eyes why are we making less than the rich and we are being taxed more. why are you taking from the poor the maintain the status and the pockets of those who think it is just to have a club membership ($250,000 per year) than to pay their taxes like the rest of us. Mayor please start making donations to our schools and to the hospitals, that so called governor plans to close, and let the other poor people who pay taxes lose their jobs. try and do something about our health care, stop taxing us so we could all have medical care.

Let's also not forget that most of the time richies never pay their full taxes anyway. They find elaborate ways to hide the cash. People tend to forget this but I know how they operate.

"They [the wealthy] are the ones that buy in the stores..." And I guess the little people buy in...? Where do the little people buy anyway. Or don't they buy anything?

I guess they don't shop in Ferragamo, or Armani, or Mercedes Benz and Porsche dealers. So when they buy its only with chump change.

I heard Marc Jacobs is having an early spring sale on his summer collection. Must rush. I'll meet you at 21 for a brief tea after I finished. Ta Ta. Air kiss, air kiss.

when one says they'll leave for CT, what exactly does that entail?

you mean they won't eat at Per Se or have business meetings in Manhattan? or an apartment in Manhattan?

maybe they'll go to the nude strip clubs up in Rockland county?????

tax them to high hell. they could afford it, they'll not missing anything. they just want more money and greed.

see Madoff.

At some point a symbiotic relationship can become parasitic. If the host doesn't rid itself of the parasites, it will die. If New York City, New York State, and the Federal Government all want to take more from the guys making more than $250M per year, ultimately those people are going to make some tough decisions and many will relocate. It means that businesses will establish satellite offices in CT because all of their employees have already moved there. You know, like the huge offices of UBS in Stamford, the hedge funds in Greenwich, how Goldman tried to move to Jersey City, etc. If you live and work in CT, you don't go to lunch meetings in Manhattan. You don't need to shop in Manhattan, and best of all, you don't have to pay city taxes.

"At some point a symbiotic relationship can become parasitic."

I advise you to get a good biology textbook which would show that statement to be fallacious. Like the rest of your argument.

The parasites are the wealthy, don't you know? Always have been. Why did your ancestors come here? Likely because the rich back in the old country wouldn't give them squat. Don't believe that? Google "French Revolution" 'Russian Revolution', 'Potato Famine', 'The Revolutions of 1848" etc, etc.

Most of my jobs were offered by middle-class people, people scratching out a living to get through. No millionaire ever offered me a job.

Furthermore, if it weren't for unions, the excessively rich would still be even greater parasites in this country. How quickly you forget.

yawn...

1) Symbiotic relationships have been redefined since you studied biology 20 years ago.

2) It's a broad generalization that every immigrant to America has a deprivation story; not everyone arrived shoeless and uneducated.

3) It doesn't take much to be a millionaire small business owner - did you see your hiring manager's personal balance sheet? Or is your argument just fallacious?

Symbiosis has been redefined? Really? By internet trolls like you.

Your remaining two points are so vapid and inane, they are not worth refuting.

Troll away, my friend.

he's one of them multi tasking millionaires,

he finds time to post on gothamist and report potential tax cheats to the irs. classic troll.

In the 1950's during a period of broad economic expansion and growth of the middle class the richest Americans payed 90 percent of their yearly income in income taxes, now they only pay 20 percent. Meanwhile, wage earners have seen their payroll taxes go up. If you really want to see an economic stimulus then eliminate payroll and income taxes for everyone under a Million dollars a year per person.

they've been leaving NYC for decades,

there are office parks all over this tri state area.

this is just the rich wanting to stay rich and nothing more.

He must be worried bout himself and his rich buddies. Oh well, fuggem.

You can tax the crap out of them if you want, but they'll just leave for greener pastures i.e. Connecticut. Which seems to be what many commenters are aiming for anyway.

Yeah, right, Conecticut, where they can sit and watch the grass grow. LOL

NYC is among the most desired cities in the world. Those with money will just have to bite the bullet like the rest of us if they want to live here.

Pull Bloomie's bluff, and I guarantee the rich will remain, like they have for centuries.

take a hike then richies.

Yeah sure. Drive off the rich so we are left with the poor. Then you can be king again. Uh huh. Start selling drugs like everyone else but still you will be king.

Don't tax the rich.

Tax the crap out of the rich.

Puh-leez. We have the lowest taxes in the industrialized world. RIch folks in europe pay much more in taxes than their counterparts here -- yet in Paris, London et al expensive restaurants and shops are just as abundant as they are here.

You should be comparing NYC to other tax jurisdictions in the US, not ones in Europe. The rich can easily move elsewhere if taxes get too out of line.

How about using this as an opportunity to cut some unnecessary spending? This morning there was a piece on This American Life about the NYC education department's "rubber rooms" where they park problem teachers for months and sometimes years, and pay them their full salaries for doing absolutely nothing.

Also, my guess is that a good portion of the "tax the rich" contingent work or have worked as wait staff, bartenders, or have done other things where they collect a good chunk of change that doesn't end up on their tax forms at the end of the year. If you like taxes so much, why don't you pay all of your own taxes before you start demanding that someone else pays more?

Where are the rich going to move to? Where? Hackensack?

Maybe everyone on Park Avenue will just move to Dallas or Phoenix where taxes are low? With all the hassle in moving and all the great cultural benefits that low-tax states offer?? Get real.

Your comment, "And my guess is that a good portion of the "tax the rich" contingent work or have worked as wait staff, bartenders" is such a generalization as to be absurd, very absurd.

Unless you earn half a million a year, why wouldn't you want it? Better them than the working stiff.

Give me a break. This isn't even practical. He's not thinking in a practical manner. We can't continue to operate this city in favor of the rich while the city racks up its own huge deficit. Mayor Bloomberg has served his time, why can't he just go away? The people of NYC aren't here to comp the joyride of developers and neither is the federal government. Mike Bloomberg might be the mayor of Wall Street, but that's about it.