April 22, 2026

Now, on to the news…

Photo credit: Taylor Crothers / Contributor / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Last week, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a plan that would allow New York City to implement a new tax on apartments and houses valued at more than $5 million if these buildings aren’t listed as permanent residences. Hochul and Mamdani claim the tax will bring in an extra $500 million each year.

But the new levy “won’t help the city’s economy or its broken property tax system,” Ken Girardin and Jared Walczak argue, and it will introduce a host of new problems. Taxpayers will look for ways to reduce their tax burdens. Investing in new high-end properties will become less attractive. Putting a value on homes will become more volatile—owners will try to undervalue their properties or game the system. And the city will lose out on the economic boon these second homes bring.

These buildings “generate substantial property-tax revenue while their nonresident owners put comparably little strain on local budgets,” Girardin and Walczak write. “Those residents do not, for instance, have kids enrolled in local schools, and their high incomes mean that they are not using means-tested local services.”

Read more about the proposal.

New York City Comptroller Mark Levine recently announced that $4 billion of the city’s pension assets would be directed toward building affordable housing.

This is a bad call, Allison Schrager argues. Levine’s job is to invest the funds in a way that ensures they will be paid—and choosing a money-losing asset class goes directly against his fiduciary duty. For one thing, since pension benefits are guaranteed, taxpayers bear the burden if they fall short. And pouring money into “local real estate further exposes the funds to the local economy,” Schrager writes. “If New York City faces a downturn, real-estate investment will decline in value as the job market weakens and tax revenue shrinks.”

Read more about Levine’s decision and why Schrager calls it “poor risk management.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan for free buses is expensive: it would mean forgoing $1 billion in revenue. Researchers at NYU’s Marron Institute have a better idea: build out the subways.

In their new report, they propose adding 41 new miles of subway and 64 new stations, which, they maintain, could allow for 167,000 new housing units. It would generate significant new wealth, too, as new subway stations would boost land values and give individuals more access to employers and businesses more access to customers.

Read more about the plan and why Adam Lehodey calls it “an excellent place to start.” 

Six years ago, Benjamin Brière was sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran for espionage. A French native, he was visiting the country for his travel blog and decided to use a drone to take photos near the border with Turkmenistan.

He was released from prison after three years, but when he returned to France, he discovered his name had been removed from the French social security system. When he explained to the authorities why he hadn’t filed a tax return in four years, they weren’t sympathetic.

“French commentary suggests that this absurdity—this complete inflexibility of the administration and inability to admit exceptions on its own initiative—is both typical of, and unique to, France,” Theodore Dalrymple writes. “But of course, it is not: it could happen in any country with an oversized government and administration, where following procedure is the main business of life and fear of departing from it pervades existence.”

Read more.

“I absolutely love Mayor Mamdani. He’s doing everything he can to increase my home’s value in Uptown Charlotte, NC. The number of capital markets and finance jobs being added in Charlotte is astounding, and I sincerely appreciate what he is doing to market Charlotte as a great place to live and work.”

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Thomas Blue, commenting on New York City’s economy