Remember when "experts" said they'd all leave NYC if Mamdani put on his Pied-a-terre Tax? The result was that more of them actually moved TO NYC.

Actually they didn't. Most of them had other homes in states with no property taxes, and they called THAT their primary residence, instead of NYC, where they'd have to pay State and City taxes. Most of them didn't want to leave NYC, so they just owned up to the fact that their NYC home was their primary residence, and now they'll have to pay a tiny bit of tax.

They could always do that, but given a choice, they'd rather not. Mamdani just removed the choice.

IMHO the way a country is managed in Neoliberal societies boils down to the answer to the question "Who can afford to pay the politicians the most?"

That's not the poor or the working class, it's the rich.

So Neoliberal countries are managed in the interest of the rich.

Shit like "we can't increase taxes for the rich otherwise they will leave" is just politicians backfitting excuses to political choices which they do for very different reasons than that.

As I see it, if we include the legal forms of monetarilly incentivising politicians (basically the "if you take care of us now, when you leave that post we take care of you", with for example when they retire from their elected positions non-executive board memberships for politicians in the industries they favored when in power) the status of "Democratic" nations right now is almost entirelly explained by the high prevalence of Corruption.