The video explains New York City’s $5 billion annual budget shortfall and the mayor’s high‑profile promise to "tax the rich". Because the state would not allow a new income tax, the only enacted measure was a modest annual fee on owners of non‑resident properties valued at $5 million or more. Within a week, ultra‑luxury home sales collapsed, showing the tax’s immediate deterrent effect. The video cites billionaire Ken Griffin as an example of wealthy owners fleeing the city, expanding his Miami operations after growing frustrated with New York taxes and crime. With the fee ineffective, the mayor’s fallback was a proposed 9.5 % increase in the general property tax, which would affect roughly three million apartments and likely raise rents for ordinary tenants. The state ultimately provided a one‑year, $5 billion bailout. The narrator argues the policy backfired, that the real burden falls on renters, and urges viewers to judge politicians by actions rather than promises.
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So the New York mayor's tax on the rich completely backfired in 6 weeks, and the people most likely to end up paying all of those fees are actually the renters that he was trying to protect. Here's the whole story. So New York City actually has a massive money problem. Every year the city collects taxes and spends that money on police, schools, trains, and trash pickup. Right now, it spends about $5 billion more than it actually collects. That missing $5 billion is really the whole story. And so the new mayor was trying to answer it by making the worst financial decision probably in New York's history, by making the richest people actually pay for it. He stood outside a $238 million penthouse, the most expensive home ever sold in America, looked into the camera and said, today we're gonna be taxing the rich. Well, today we're taxing the rich. Now here's what the clip didn't actually explain. A mayor of New York cannot raise income taxes by himself. The state government has to actually approve it and they actually said no. So the only new tax that actually passed was a small one, a yearly fee on people that own homes that are worth $5 million or more and that don't actually live in New York and it started July 1st. And that literally just took one week to fail. Normally, 3 to 5 homes above $10 million sell every week in Manhattan. The week after the fee started, exactly one home over $10 million sold, and homes priced below $5 million—they sold just fine, actually a little bit better than last year. This is exactly how rich people always treat taxes: they just step around the system and they use it to their advantage. And if you look deeper, they're not just stepping around; they actually leave. The man who owns the penthouse that was talked about in the video, Ken Griffin. has done it before. He's the richest man in Illinois. His companies paid for billions in taxes over 10 years, and he gave $600 million of his own money to Chicago schools and hospitals. In 2022, he got tired of the taxes and crime, moved his companies to Miami, and all that money went with him. After the mayor filmed that video outside his window, he simply made his Miami headquarters way bigger. Which brings us back to the original $5 billion that New York does not have on a yearly basis. The rich weren't covering it. So the mayor showed his backup plan, which is completely contradictory, to what he believes, raise the property tax, the yearly tax that every building owner pays, by 9.5% on 3 million ordinary apartments. So the city council actually refused to let this happen. In the end, the state handed $5 billion to cover the city fee, the gap, for one year's time. Now, what's interesting about this is that the plan actually backfired in only 6-week time. The rich stepped around the tax, the billionaire built a bigger Miami, and the only backup plan on the table turns the landlord's tax bill into increased rent prices. That really exposed his true agenda. It wasn't to help people. The rich people's penthouse are going to be completely fine, but New York's rent, that is actually up for question. Remember, people would deceive you with a video, 50 million views, and then go around the back and do the exact opposite thing and tax the regular day people that had nothing to do with it. Do not give these people your time. Watch people by their actions, not their words.
