F ourteen years after Occupy Wall Street, Zohran Mamdani’s campaign radiated the spirit of the 99 percent: The mayor-elect promised to pay for free buses and universal child care by raising corporate taxes and increasing the city income tax by 50 percent for New Yorkers earning $1 million a year—roughly, the top one percent. In his victory speech, Mamdani railed against the “billionaire class” and promised that the richest New Yorkers would soon have to “play by the same rules as the rest of us.”
In fact, New York City’s one percent already pay taxes at the single highest marginal rates in the country. They play by very different rules indeed: 41 percent of New York State’s income-tax revenue is generated by the top one percent of earners, a share matched only in California. Unusually, New York City then adds an income tax on top of the state rates, and 40 percent of that revenue comes from the one percent as well.
[Michael Powell: Zohran Mamdani is about to confront reality]…