Gaurav Kapadia: evaluation

Transcript context

…Now, sometimes I hear from my right-leaning New York City–skeptical friends that the city relies heavily, fiscally, on some quite small number of taxpayers. Sometimes the number 200 is cited, and that if some fraction of them left, everything would fall apart. Is that true, not true? I think it is. Let’s take a big step back. New York is amazing to me in many ways because it is the only major city, really, that I know of in America that’s not a company town. Everyone thinks it’s their company town. The financial elites think it’s their company town. Artists think it’s their company town. Musicians think it’s their company town. Broadway actors think it’s their company town. That, I think, is one of the great strengths of New York. Now, as you point out, we have the highest number of high earners of any city in New York as well. Obviously, given how high the tax rates are, there’s a disproportionate impact on the city’s finances as people stay. I’ve heard, also, numbers like 200 and numbers like 400 or 1,000 people drive a vast preponderance of revenue. I would say, though, that is actually better than some of these other cities that rely on just one or two people. New Jersey, obviously, very famously, when David Tepper left, they ended up having a budget shortfall. I think Bentonville would probably have a problem if Walmart left. While it is, of course, quite narrow, I think that the city has much more of a stable base than people realize. Who’s been the most underrated New York City mayor?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.