(DCNF)—On his show Tuesday, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson called out Democrat New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax “whiter neighborhoods,” arguing that white people aren’t the majority of wealthy earners in the U.S.
As Mamdani’s potential plans for New York City come under the media spotlight, his campaign proposal to raise taxes on wealthier neighborhoods — including “richer and whiter” areas — has drawn repeated criticism. While discussing the candidate’s background on “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” Hanson said Mamdani comes from a “very wealthy” background.
“We were just talking about entitled people. He goes to Bowdoin College. His dad is a professor of Middle East Studies. His mother’s a filmmaker. He’s very wealthy. He was pampered. He kind of lounged around after college, and then he says he’s going to go after the more affluent and whiter. No, no, no, no, no, Mr. Mamdani. I want to tell you something,” Hanson said.
“I just looked at per capita income by ethnic affiliation. What is the number one ethnic group in the United States on basis of their income? You know what it is, Mr. Mamdani. It’s you,” Hanson added. “It’s people from India. Four years ago, the recent census data, $106,000 was your average income. Now, whiter districts, they’re down to 17 [at] $59,000. And who is between 17 and number one? Other Asian groups, Filipinos, Japanese Americans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Arab, people from the Middle East in some cases.”
Mamdani’s father Mahmood is a renowned postcolonial scholar of Gujarati Shia Muslim background who teaches at Columbia University, while his mother Mira Nair is a well-known Indian‑American filmmaker. After relocating to Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Mamdani attended the Bank Street School, a prestigious private school that costs around $66,000 today, according to Mint.
Since earning his bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College in Maine, reports show Mamdani’s current net worth sits at $200,000, and he lives in a $2,250 a month rent-stabilized Astoria apartment, Mint reported. Mamdani additionally acquired four acres of land in Jinja, Uganda, which is reportedly valued between $150,000 and $250,000, according to the outlet.
According to Mamdani’s tax proposal, if elected, he would seek to “shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” according to his campaign website. His plan to “fix” the issue would involve “pushing class assessment percentages down for everyone and adjusting rates up.”
“So when you say you’re going to go after whiter neighborhoods, you should just say we’re going to go after wealthier people and Asians, because that’s what the data says if you’re going to be a racist about it. But you had to put in that little thing as a little appeal. He’s losing the black vote, and he’s losing the Hispanic vote, and that’s going to go to Eric Adams,” Hanson said.
“He wants to put that thing about whiter in there to see if he can peel off some. He got about 450,000 votes,” Hanson said. “I think there’s five million registered voters in New York. And under this ranked voting, it’s going to be down to just two or three people in the finals.”
Data from the five-year estimates conducted by the American Community Survey show whites hold the highest median household income in New York City at $108,555, followed by Asians at $87,197 and “two or more races” at $71,942, according to Neilsberg.
Nationwide, however, the median income for Indian American households reached $145,000 in 2022, surpassing Asian Americans overall, who hit $100,000, according to the Pew Research Center. Additionally, white families were estimated in 2022 to have a $77,250 median household income in the U.S., according to LendingTree.
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