00:00I think Mandami is not, if your goal is to make New York City kind of financially solvent,
00:06what you don't want to do is drive out the Ken Griffins of the world, right?
00:10Ken brings very valuable business.
00:13That's a $6 billion project, which will generate thousands of construction jobs,
00:19architecture jobs, marketing jobs, make your list.
00:21Employees will pay material amounts of taxes because they're highly compensated employees.
00:26And it's that, it's sort of the Wall Street and the tax revenues from Wall Street are what enable New
00:32York City,
00:33kind of all the people in New York City to have a better life.
00:36And if you drive out the Ken Griffins of the world, who notably has made a major contribution to New
00:42York,
00:43not just from bringing his business there, but he's been very philanthropic,
00:47a $400 million donation to Morris Lone Kettering, which is an institution that doesn't just help New York,
00:52because it helps people with cancer all over the world to go, to go, to get treated there.
00:56So it's just not, it's not a very smart approach.
00:58By the way, I can't think about Pershing Square without thinking about New York City,
01:01but could you ever see yourself being driven out of New York?
01:04I think it's unlikely.
01:06I'm more of the kind of guy to fight to make sure New York City is a great city than
01:09someone who's going to leave.
01:10The problem is, though, that with these policies, even if they have dire economic consequences,
01:15Mondani is incredibly popular and he's still very popular with his base.
01:18So how do things change then? How do you fight this tide if there still is this broad-based popular
01:24support for these types of ideas?
01:27It's an issue. I mean, I think the answer is a better candidate.
01:31Who, you know, look, where Mondani was correct is that New York is not a very affordable place to live.
01:36But you're not going to make it more affordable by getting rid of the biggest drivers of tax revenues for
01:42the city.
01:43Mondani already has a budget crisis, but we've got to figure out how to run New York City much more
01:47efficiently.
01:47But when you raise taxes, you know, the most mobile people, frankly, are the Ken Griffiths of the world.
01:55Ken can choose to locate his business wherever he wants, and he can locate his pied-Ã -terre wherever he
02:00wants.
02:00Very true.
02:01Though we are heading into midterms, and again, affordability is on the ticket, and that's pushed a lot of people
02:05left.
02:06Are you worried about how this shakes out, that we might get more candidates who want to put forward these
02:10types of ideas into economic policy?
02:13Yeah, look, I think, you know, you look at a country like Argentina and how far it fell, right?
02:17One of the most Argentinian GDP, whatever, 100 years ago, was one of the most significant countries in the world
02:25and fell off the map because of socialism and other bad policies.
02:28Now you see Malay coming back and the country dramatically recovering.
02:32It's sort of a great example.
02:33And it's crazy to me that socialist ideas can travel into a country like this one.
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