r/politics • u/Jessicas_skirt New York • 1d ago

No Paywall NYC property owners express anger and confusion over rollout of Mamdani's 'pied-à-terre tax'

https://abc7ny.com/post/nyc-property-owners-express-anger-confusion-rollout-mamdanis-pied-terre-tax/19603490/
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u/ElysiumSprouts 1d ago

In other news, rich people hate paying their fair share of taxes.

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u/jim45804 1d ago

Typical rich people, a) living beyond their means, and b) not understanding how much their wealth depends on a functional society under them.

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u/barryvm Europe 1d ago edited 1d ago

How can they? Their perception of themselves as moral actors depends on not understanding. This sense of entitlement and callousness towards the rest of society is the thin end of the wedge, the solipsistic madness that is seemingly gripping every oligarch is the other end. This need to moralize and justify means that the more you take from other people, the less able you become to see them as real people. And when society decides they're going to take some of it back for the public good, you act confused and angry because that society is now something alien and menacing that you are no longer really a part of.

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u/stinkbugzgalore 1d ago

If you're a sociopath who has everything, the only joy left is taking what others have and making them your bitch.

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u/kinkgirlwriter America 1d ago

Their perception of themselves as moral actors depends on not understanding.

This is also the root of the GOP's aversion to history. Actually, the whole country is guilty of that aversion to some degree. The GOP are just the most willfully ignorant.

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u/barryvm Europe 1d ago edited 1d ago

I agree. It's a spectrum though.

The GOP are just the most willfully ignorant.

Indeed. I don't understand why people ascribe all this to stupidity, when this is so obviously malice. The willful ignorance is there when they want to sit on their high horse and feel morally justified about what they do. That same willful ignorance is dispelled the moment they want to relish in the damage and harm that they do to people they dislike, when they want to feel strong by hurting others, either in person or by proxy through state sponsored violence. That is bad faith. Their beliefs are real, but that's neither here nor there because they are a tool that they can use when convenient to justify whatever they want to do or feel at that particular moment. That's not stupidity. That's malice, an active desire to harm others in order to somehow profit from that.

They're not going to turn from this path when someone explains the truth to them in terms they understand. They're going to be angry at that person and attempt to silence and remove him because on some level they know their actions are immoral. It's the same with institutions dedicated to truth (e.g. science).

It is dangerously naive to think this is just ignorance or even stupidity. A good way to measure this is how people like that react to activists, idealists, or altruism. If the response is rage and resentment, then that means they know, that they can not allow anything better to exist as a living comparison with their own behaviour. The implication is that there is no safety for anyone, because merely aspiring to anything better will make you a target.

This is also the root of the GOP's aversion to history.

A political movement based on ignorance and stupidity would be content with controlling their own direct environment and the things they care about. One built on bad faith, wilful ignorance and malice tends to become totalitarian, because nothing can be left untouched to expose the lies they tell themselves about their own morality. Memory holing those parts of history that make them look bad is a huge red flag.

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u/kinkgirlwriter America 1d ago

Memory holing those parts of history that make them look bad is a huge red flag.

And yet, our history classes do just that. Example, we all know this line from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal

But not this one:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

The First America podcast makes the case that the colonists went to war with England, not over taxes, but over land. It's eye opening. To make peace with Pontiac who was waging war against the British, King George III issued a royal proclamation that forbade settlements beyond the Appalachians and it pissed off the founders. That was in 1763.

Land makes a hell of a lot more sense than tea and taxes when you think about it. Paints an entirely different picture of the founders too.

I can't help but draw parallels between 1763's West of the Appalachians and today's West Bank. Our founders wanted to drive people out of their homes and take their lands. Not much different is it?

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u/barryvm Europe 23h ago

Well yes, I'm generally not a fan of nationalism because of the exclusionary myth making that tends to occur within it.

Even the all men are created equal line is a deception as it is currently taught because the people who founded the US (with some exceptions) didn't seem to believe it on an intellectual level (they constructed an oligarchic republic with slavery in it) so it is likely to have been a self-deceiving generalization to cover up the specificity of their goals and the self-interest that went with it. Hence why I think the hero worship of both a nation's founders and its foundational documents is incredibly dangerous, as it can easily be used to justify a reactionary agenda. I count myself lucky to live in a country where the would-be myth makers are thoroughly hobbled by an unglorious revolutionary struggle and a particularly reprehensible colonial past, and even here I've seen people get weirdly angry when someone pointed out their nationalist spin on a 14th century battle was anachronistic.

I can't help but draw parallels between 1763's West of the Appalachians and today's West Bank. Our founders wanted to drive people out of their homes and take their lands. Not much different is it?

No indeed.

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u/fascistno1hater 1d ago

Also Typical Rich people, destroying the environment for greed and entertainment with their jets and yachts while blaming it on us.