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Bryce Tolpen's avatar

I'm with you -- with every word of this amazing article. And especially with your well-worded peroration:

" . . . we’re heading into the climax. The audience is restless, the stakes are sky-high, and the country isn’t waiting for a policy wonk with a white paper—it’s waiting for a protagonist with a vision. Someone who can step into the spotlight and rewrite the story of what this country can be.

"We need the abundance Democrat who’s going to create are more effective government—absolutely! But we also need the social Democrat with a bold plan to rebuild our country from the ground up."

Thank you for the links that take us back to your essays that flesh out your points.

To all of this: Yes!

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David Roberts's avatar

Great article, Elle. I ranked four "abundance " candidates and with sadness put Cuomo fifth. Now that Mamdani won, I assume he will be the mayor and as such I hope he does a great job.

I agree that we need vibes and charisma to push and pull us closer to the Scandinavian model. And we need higher taxes to pay for it.

NYC competes with Florida and other places for the wealthy. I personally think it's absurd for people who earn enough to worry about their marginal tax rate to move for tax reasons. But wealthy people are just as irrational as any other economic class and perhaps more paranoid. So to me it's a question of whether a higher tax rate will mean greater tax revenues assuming there is some flight. In any event, the state sets taxes and the Gov. has already said no to the tax raises.

The state vs, state competition for businesses and residents is why I think federal taxes are the best mechanism to raise more revenue to fulfill an abundance agenda. But unfortunately we're right now moving in the wrong direction.

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