{"id":663621,"date":"2026-03-18T04:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/663621\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T04:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:36:10","slug":"mamdanis-new-stealth-strike-on-the-american-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/663621\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s new stealth strike on the American dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

If\u00a0Mayor Zohran Mamdani gets his way, half of everything New Yorkers work a lifetime for \u2014 including their homes, their businesses or farms and their savings \u2014 could be stripped away on their deathbeds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

No more Empire State; he\u2019d make this the Expropriation State.<\/p>\n

Only one thing in life is certain: We all die.<\/p>\n

Mamdani is exploiting that certainty to close what he claims is a $5.4 billion city budget gap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More than that, he aims to undermine the foundations of American life by attacking wealth accumulation, homeownership and private property, per the radical agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America.<\/p>\n

Currently, New York is one of a handful of states that imposes a death tax, a 16% levy on estates worth more than $7 million.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBetsy McCaughey<\/p>\n

But the tax wish list Mamdani circulated last week to state legislators and Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed lowering the threshold to a mere $750,000 \u2014 which would clobber millions more New Yorkers all across the state with a punishing tax.<\/p>\n

He would also hike the rate to a whopping 50%, 2\u00bd times the 20% charged in Hawaii and Washington state, the highest estate-tax rates in the country.<\/p>\n

The worst feature of Mandani\u2019s tax proposal is its built-in \u201ccliff\u201d \u2014 meaning that once an estate hits $750,000 in value, the confiscatory 50% rate applies to\u00a0all\u00a0assets, not just the amount above that figure.<\/p>\n

Half the estate gets wiped out, and Albany swoops in to take it.<\/p>\n

Consider: The average home value in Westchester County right now is $823,340, while the median home price in Nassau County is a staggering $875,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even assuming no other assets, the legacies of most Westchester and Nassau homeowners would fall into the tax collector\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

Bruce Blakeman, Hochul\u2019s Republican rival for governor in November, quickly pounced on the issue, calling it \u201cthe most extreme Death Tax in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren will lose half the value of their parents\u2019 home and family businesses will have to be sold off just to pay this cruel tax,\u201d he thundered.<\/p>\n

Hochul herself, though, has been silent on Mamdani\u2019s pitch.<\/p>\n

And while it\u2019s unlikely she\u2019ll actively back something so radical, Mamdani has now injected the idea into the political conversation in Albany.<\/p>\n

His outrageous 50% rate is just a first bid: You can bet that his allies in the leftist Legislature will impose some form of estate-tax hike soon.<\/p>\n

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You won\u2019t hear Mamdani\u2019s voters complaining \u2014 he\u2019s the mayor of renters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A majority\u00a0of New Yorkers statewide, 51%, own their own homes, but in New York City the figure is a mere 32%.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Mandani swept into City Hall on a promise to freeze rents<\/a> and increase government power over housing; the homeownership ideal, and the dream of passing your home and your prosperity to your kids, is antithetical to him and his Democratic Socialist compatriots. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Even a watered-down version of Mamdani\u2019s proposal would devastate New York\u2019s farming industry, 98% of which is made up of family farms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The average net farm income is $76,281 \u2014 hardly even middle class \u2014 but based on current land values, the majority of those farms would fall into the state\u2019s clutches under Mamdani\u2019s proposal.<\/p>\n

The irony is, raising the estate tax would likely be a net revenue loser, costing New York tax dollars instead of increasing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Economists Enrico Moretti and Daniel J. Wilson have found that when states with high income-tax rates hike the estate tax as well, high earners flee \u2014 causing more loss of tax revenue than gain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can either be progressive on\u00a0income tax or be progressive on adopting an estate tax, but if you do both it\u2019s going to backfire,\u201d\u00a0they concluded.<\/p>\n

The well-off flee to death-friendlier states, simply to preserve family wealth.<\/p>\n

Mamdani claims he\u2019s pushing confiscatory taxes because he needs money to close the city\u2019s budget gap.<\/p>\n

New York City\u2019s budget is larger than the budget of the state of Florida, which has nearly three times as many people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let him cut spending<\/a> if he needs some breathing room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Truth is, Mamdani and his DSA allies in the Legislature oppose private property<\/a> and will use any pretext to confiscate it.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let these radicals, elected by urban voters who don\u2019t care a whit about homeownership, small businesses or family farming, destroy the lifetime dreams of millions of New Yorkers.<\/p>\n

Whether you usually vote Republican or Democrat, it\u2019s time to sound the alarm \u2014 before this un-American attack on property rights<\/a> picks up any more steam.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If\u00a0Mayor Zohran Mamdani gets his way, half of everything New Yorkers work a lifetime for \u2014 including their…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":663622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,135912,11194,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,618,12894,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":["post-663621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-estates","tag-homeowners","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-taxes","tag-taxpayers","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116248326054317154","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}