Wolff Responds: "When Billionaires Threaten Us, Threaten Back!" Dated April 29, 2026

Ajouté : 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]Welcome friends to another Wolf Responds. I call this one When billionaires threaten us, threaten Back.

[00:00:12]And it's about a remarkable interchange recently between New York City's new mayor, Zoron Mandani, and a billionaire, one of the richest billionaires in the world, Kenneth Griffin of Citadel, a company that's uh like a large hedge fund. that collects rich people's money and invests it for them in a variety of ways making them even richer than they were uh at the beginning of the relationship.

[00:00:49]Yes, people there are individuals who spend their lives making money by making rich people richer and it turns out you can become a billionaire just doing that.

[00:01:05]I think that's what Jeffrey Epstein was working on when he, how shall I put it, came to an untimely end.

[00:01:16]What was the struggle between Mayor Manni and billionaire Griffin?

[00:01:24]Mayor Mandani, a mayor who is getting quite a few things done in a very few months of having begun being the mayor, needs money to do those things.

[00:01:38]Very common.

[00:01:40]And one of the ways he's decided to go get the money is to tax the super rich.

[00:01:49]And one of his ways of doing that is to say that you're if you're rich enough to own and operate a second apartment here in New York City beyond whatever your principal residence might be, then it is perfectly legitimate for the city of New York to tax that kind of an apartment a certain amount of money because it's clear that a person who owns more than one residence is a person who is at the upper end of the income distribution. And in the event that they might not be, there would be the usual ways to appeal and get out of paying the tax because of other circumstances.

[00:02:46]But the details here are not what matters.

[00:02:50]What matters is how the billionaire Griffin reacted.

[00:02:56]My guess is, I don't know the details, but a man who has uh according to Forbes, 30 or 40 or even 50 billion dollar to his name would not be affected in any significant way by a small tax. And that's what mom Donnie is talking about on his second or third or fourth apartment on Fifth Avenue or wherever he might keep it.

[00:03:31]So what Mr. Griffin did, and this is what I want you to think about with me, is he made a threat. He threatened Mr. Mom Dandi and he threatened the people of New York City all in the same breath, saying in effect that if he he the mayor goes through with this tax on second apartments, by the way, a tax that has been supported by New York's governor Hoshel as well, that if Mamani and Hosel go through with it.

[00:04:14]He will rethink employing people in New York City. He may not undertake the construction of a new office building. He may not keep the existing staff he has here working here.

[00:04:33]He will abandon New York, you know, like Donald Trump did. and maybe he'll move to Mara Lago or maybe he'll go somewhere else. But he's threatening, don't you dare tax me because if you do, I will financially hurt the mayor and I will politically hurt the mayor and I will financially damage New York.

[00:05:03]Instead of raising money to do the things he's promised, I will deprive him of the taxes we now pay and might have paid in the future by moving my operations out of New York.

[00:05:21]I am amazed at how many people tell me this when I say to them, "Well, why don't we tax the rich to pay for the things we need?"

[00:05:34]There are hundreds of big mega corporations who use the existing tax code right now not to pay any taxes at all. Every year, every year there are law firms and tax firms and accountants who make a good living telling corporations and rich people how to use the tax code to avoid paying taxes.

[00:06:07]You and I can't afford them because they would cost us more than they could save us. But if you're a billionaire, what difference does you does it make?

[00:06:19]You can hire them. By the way, they're a business expense and you can deduct them and they can save you lots and lots of taxes, way more than whatever you have to pay to them.

[00:06:34]So rich people don't pay the same taxes we do, and they haven't for many years.

[00:06:42]Warren Buffett, a billionaire even richer than Kenneth Griffin, became famous a few years ago when he publicly announced that he compared the percentage of his income, he's a billionaire, that was taxed by the government, by the state and local authorities to the rate of taxation faced by his secretary.

[00:07:13]and he announced to the world that his secretary paid a larger portion of her modest income, what he paid her in taxes than he did.

[00:07:28]And he himself had the decency to say this is a tax code that is outrageous and should not exist.

[00:07:41]Well, Mr. Mani has now taken him at his word.

[00:07:46]He's changing the tax code. He's proposing a very small, modest tax on the second or third apartment of rich people and the rich people threaten him and threaten our city of New York.

[00:08:07]Well, what do I say to people who think, "Well, then I guess we can't make them pay their fair share of taxes.

[00:08:17]They can use their gimmicks, the law, to get out of the taxes. They can use the lobbyists they pay in Washington and Albany to write the tax laws that their accountants can then use to get them out of taxes.

[00:08:36]But there's nothing we can do because they will hurt us if we dare tax them.

[00:08:46]Every oligarchic autocratic government has always played this game.

[00:08:56]We should not allow it to control us.

[00:09:00]And one way, and there are many ways, and if you're interested, let me know and I'll talk to you about some of the other ways. But today, I want to talk to you about one way you can fight back.

[00:09:15]And Mayor Mandani, I hope, is listening.

[00:09:20]Maybe he doesn't need to, having figured this out on his own, but here we go.

[00:09:26]One of the things you can do is threaten back. What do I mean? I mean telling Mr. Griffin that if he goes ahead after you pass this tax and moves his operations out of New York if, and by the way it's a big if. This is in many cases pure bluff. But let's suppose he actually does. he moves.

[00:09:56]Well, then the city should say to him, "We are going to inform every New Yorker."

[00:10:06]And by that mechanism, we're going to be informing the whole of the country and especially all of the friends of New York City around this country that the Citadel Corporation, your business and the people the Citadel Corporation works with, other businesses, businesses that Citadel owns, businesses that Citadel financ answers and so on.

[00:10:39]We're going to go around and we're going to tell people, you might want to think again about doing business with a company that acts in this way.

[00:10:53]The that publicity letting the people of New York, that's uh the New York area here, we're talking 10 to 20 million people and the friends of New York around the country, millions more. They're going to hear the story of what these companies did and what you're doing if you patronize them, if you buy from them.

[00:11:25]Are there pension funds of labor unions and of social organizations that are given to Citadel to invest?

[00:11:35]Well, there are lots of companies that do that. You don't have to give it to Citadel.

[00:11:42]And if you know that Citadel is behaving in the way I just described, and you can go check the news files over the last couple weeks, and you'll see this story all over the place.

[00:11:58]Mr. Griffin seems to think that being public about the threat he makes is the only threat that'll be out there and it'll shut Mr. Manni down. Well, when billionaires threaten us, the best procedure to start off with is to threaten them back.

[00:12:21]Threaten them with the kind of publicity they do not want and cannot absorb.

[00:12:31]Are there other things we can do? You bet.

[00:12:37]Companies can hurt the communities in which they work. No question. But those communities have power if they're willing to look at the situation, to talk to economists like me and many others who can advise how to do it, what works to do it, all the rest that is needed. We don't need to cringe and fall on our knees when corporations and the billionaires they make into billionaires threaten us.

[00:13:14]We shouldn't let them get away with it because, you know, if they do, then the sky's the limit. They'll try anything and everything. And I'm sure if we spent time studying Mr. Griffin and Citadel, we will learn that they probably already did.

[00:13:36]If conversations like this strike you as useful, please share them with your friends, your neighbors, your family, your co-workers.

[00:13:47]That's why we make them. And if you can help defay the financial costs of producing and distributing videos like this, that would be another way to partner with us. And for all those ways, we are very appreciative. Thank you.