This is about a liberal airhead and a Democrat who has a brain.

Wall Street Journal

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a demand for Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In a new video, the progressive Democrat from Queens says it’s time “to stop protecting” billionaires and “pass a billionaires tax.” The idea is to make billionaires cover New York state’s expected $13.3 billion Covid-induced budget shortfall.

It’s hardly a surprise to find Ms. Ocasio-Cortez enlisting in the new #MakeBillionairesPay campaign. In Albany, a billionaires tax and an ultramillionaires tax are already among the bills under consideration. Yet in his response Mr. Cuomo sounded downright Republican, almost as if he were channeling economist Art Laffer of Laffer Curve fame:

“A single percent of New York’s population pays 50% of the taxes, and they’re the most mobile people on the globe,” the governor said. With 118 billionaires, New York revenues would take a big hit if even just a handful of them were to leave.

Some of his best friends are billionaires, Mr. Cuomo went on to say, and New York needs to be nicer to them. He’s personally been begging those who have taken refuge at summer homes to move back to the city. “I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, ‘You gotta come back, when are you coming back?’ ” Mr. Cuomo said.

“‘We’ll go to dinner, I’ll buy you a drink. Come over, I’ll cook,’” the governor tells them. But “they’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? If I stay there, I pay a lower income tax because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge.” For high-earners that’s nearly 4% of income on top of Albany’s take of a little under 9%.

Almost instant confirmation of the soundness of the governor’s assessment here came when Bill de Blasio blasted him for it. The mayor emphasizes he has no intention of trying to make the city’s tax policy more attractive to people with wealth. And if Congress won’t pony up the dollars the city and state need, “we should immediately return in Albany to the discussion of a tax on wealthy New Yorkers.”

This isn’t the first time Mr. Cuomo has taken issue with the soak-the-rich crowd, though he hasn’t put his money where his mouth is. In his 2010 run for governor, he vowed to allow a “temporary” millionaire’s tax to expire on schedule, saying that to let it stand would be a new tax. But in the end he did let it stand, although he trimmed it back a bit, and 10 years later this “temporary” tax remains.

Likewise with Mr. Cuomo’s opposition to hiking taxes on the rich today: It’s limited to New York. He’s fine with the feds taxing the rich for him, then distributing the money back to states.

“Cuomo’s plan is twofold,” says E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy. “First, he’s banking on a compromise congressional deal that gives him sufficient federal aid to plug this year’s budget hole. Then, hope Biden wins and Democrats keep the House and take the Senate, which probably means another round of stimulus and big federal tax increases.”

Mr. Biden has also pledged to lift the cap on federal deductions for state and local taxes—another item on Mr. Cuomo’s wish list. Politicians in high-tax states love this deduction because it hides from taxpayers the true costs of their state governments.

Billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg once said New York City is a “luxury,” meaning people were willing to pay more for the high value it provides. The question is whether the wealthy will still be willing to pay that premium—and underwrite the spending—for a city where shootings and murders are on the upswing, not to mention rising homelessness and other afflictions.

On top of all this, the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed how vulnerable overtaxed states and cities are. Tens of thousands of people have now discovered they can work remotely, meaning they don’t even have to be in the greater New York area to do their jobs. In the long term this will have unsettling implications for everything from the city’s workforce to state and local tax revenues—and not only for New York.

“You are kidding yourself if you think you can be one of the highest-taxed states, have a reputation for being anti-business and have a rosy economic future,” the governor said back in 2011. It’s as true today as it was then, even if the Cuomo years have done little to change New York’s ranking as one of America’s most overtaxed states. And if the governor hopes to persuade billionaires now thinking of leaving to stay put, he’ll have to offer them more than a home-cooked dinner.