MAMDANI PROMISED TO TAX THE 1%. THEN 960,000 PEOPLE ENDED UP ON THE LIST

Because, first, government is hopeless at managing things — especially big government — and second, the burden always falls back on the middle class. 

But recently, it hasn’t just remained a political slogan — it has started to seep into actual policy. 

The problem with the argument is that it’s distorted, blurring the line between ideas and the reality of how taxing the rich will function. 

As tax lawyer Dan Neidle puts it in British activist and tax-the-rich advocate Gary Stevenson’s documentary How to Get Filthy Rich, these ideas are “absolute populist claptrap.” 

This view sees economics as a zero-sum game, with the odds always rigged against you. 

As economist Thomas Sowell argues, “the rich,” “big business,” and “the top 1%” are cast as bogeymen — convenient scapegoats. 

But when these ideas are put into practice — like Mamdani’s rent caps and pied-à-terre tax — they just start the squeeze on the property market. The result? A real risk of a property downturn. 

How do I know this? 

Because Australia has already started putting these into practice. 

Thanks to the hard-left faction of the Australian Labor government, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers pushing to “tax the rich,” investment incentives have vanished. 

They slashed tax deductions for property investments from 50% to 30% and hiked taxes on investment income up to 47% for anyone holding an asset. 

Instead of supporting innovation, they squashed the desire to run a business. Rather than encourage small business investment, they cast entrepreneurs as the real villains. 

But in the end, these changes haven’t taxed the rich — they’ve made the middle class and small businesses pay for it, whilst also slowing down the property market in Australia and squeezing buyers, with some critics calling it a “property recession.” 

Much like Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax — which aims to tax wealthy New Yorkers’ secondary homes and non-primary residences — it rarely ends up being that straightforward or working as intended. 

Instead, it leads to overreach and economic policies that, like Australia’s, slow the property market without ever properly hitting their target. 

Case in point: a Staten Island Supreme Court judge recently issued a temporary restraining order blocking the rollout of Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax after warning letters went out to 17,000 property owners whose homes hit those price points. 

This resulted in many middle-class New Yorkers scrambling to prove they were exempt. 

The city has since appealed, which automatically stays the order, allowing the rollout to continue while the case proceeds. 

But the damage is already done. 

Because it proves my exact point: the policy does not target the super-wealthy as proposed, but instead ends up hitting middle-class property owners who have worked to afford a home, only to be caught by a tax that was never meant for them. 

Economies run on incentives. Take them away — no matter how — and the results are predictable. 

It’s basic cause and effect: remove an incentive, and you get less of whatever you’re discouraging. Discourage property investment, make it harder for owners, and you squeeze them out of the market. 

But there’s one clear ideological difference. 

The Australian government under Anthony Albanese doesn’t claim to be socialist (even though they are), but Mamdani does — and his policies are even more hands-on. 

If Australia is having a property crisis because of higher taxes, imagine if everything were full-on socialist. 

The real fix isn’t more government — it’s less. We need to look past frustration and focus on solutions that actually work. 

Slogans don’t solve the problem, and neither does blaming someone else. The real answer isn’t punishing the wealthy — it’s building a system that lets the market prosper in the first place. 

MAYOR MAMDANI, YOU CAN HATE THE JEWS — BUT YOU MUST PROTECT THEM

If New York doesn’t learn that lesson now, it won’t just repeat Australia’s mistakes. 

It’ll live in them — with even more radical consequences.

William Nye is a Brisbane-based Australian student and op-ed columnist who writes about politics, culture, economics, and international affairs shaping Australia, the United States, and the wider Western world. His work has appeared in The Spectator Australia and the Washington Examiner.