Tom Brady won the Super Bowl for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after 20 years in New England. Supermarket and real estate mogul John Catsimatidis, a New Yorker for most of his 72 years, recently told The Post that he will build in Miami if City Hall blocks his Coney Island expansion plans. There is a lesson to be learned here.
Belief in the future of the Big Apple is rooted in the belief that our most productive and talented class will never leave the city. Gotham’s blood is supposed to flow in the veins of our movers and shakers who would never turn their backs on us.
That’s what the people of Boston thought about Tom Brady.
But after six Super Bowl victories with the Patriots, Brady felt taken for granted. He accepted smaller contracts than others of his caliber. Coach Bill Belichick rewarded the star’s defender trying to change him until he was canceled by owner Robert Kraft. The team refused to offer Brady a long-term contract last year, forcing GOAT to accept a one-year contract at age 42 – or find another home. He went to the Buccaneers and never looked back, winning the seventh Super Bowl last Sunday.
All this proves: loyalty to the hometown is not sacrosanct. Love only goes that far when you are betrayed by the place where you have invested much of your life and wealth.
Consider now the great, pandemic Apple that is moving away from the damn political “leaderships”, lawless subway platforms, uncollected garbage, homeless people, chaotic schools, and troubled businesses and cultural institutions. If the city once needed a percentage of finance, real estate and philanthropy to transport football for us, now it is more than ever. They helped save us from bankruptcy in the 1970s and get us out of the depths after 9/11.
But today they are seen as chopped liver in the town hall and in Albany, where political hacks are destroying them – and the middle class. Our politicians do not estimate that a relative handful of annual winners of more than $ 1 million – about 37,800 in a city of 8.3 million – already pay 43% of the city’s income taxes.
Governor Cuomo, after rejecting higher taxes last year, said last month that he now wants to raise state taxes for New Yorkers who earn more than $ 5 million a year from 8.82 to 10.86 percent to get a combined state-city income tax of 14.7 percent, “The highest income tax in the country,” he said proudly. In other words: soften the rich to cover deficits that are the fault of the reckless management of his administration. This would come in addition to the recently raised “mansion” tax on property sales of more than $ 2 million and a proposed share sale transfer tax that could decimate Wall Street.
Meanwhile, Mayor Blasio would prefer to focus on “millions and millions of people who are the backbone of New York City. . . I’m not going to beg anyone to stay, “he said last summer. “I was troubled to hear this concept that because rich people have a number of concerns about the city that we should host them, that we should build our policies and approaches around them,” he added. “It doesn’t work here anymore.” In other words, he would prefer billionaires like William Rudin, Ken Langone, David Koch and Michael Bloomberg – all great philanthropists – to go hiking.
It’s already happening. Investor Carl Icahn is moving his company to South Florida. Investment firm AllianceBernstein moves most of its operations to Nashville, Tennessee. Ken Griffin Fortress extends to Palm Beach. Even the powerful Goldman Sachs could move its asset management division to Florida, a state without income or state taxes. And last week, Stacey Cunningham, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, warned that the entire operation could flee the city for unknown parties if the share transfer fee is imposed.
Meanwhile, New Yorkers who are just rich are scared of the death of candidates for mayor whose mother tongue is “awakened.” Instead, it heads to South Florida. Our metropolitan area loses about 270 people a day, up from 100 two years ago, mostly in Florida. Big Apple restaurants, strangled by New York rules, are also opening in Miami for business as soon as they can.
Of course, the more talent left, the more will follow. Brady took with him former New England teammates Rob Gronkowski and Antonio Brown to Tampa Bay. The two players scored three touchdowns last week, while Patriots fans complained about the miserable situation of their once strong team. For the thrill of punishing the bad guys with a percentage, our business-hating political class would happily do the same with New York City.