Give us your rich and downtrodden capitalists!
Boca Raton, Fla., Mayor Scott Singer told The Post he’s already had numerous discussions with New York city business titans about relocating to his beach city after socialist Zohran Mamdani’s primary-race stunner.
“New York is not going to be the capital of capitalism anymore,” Singer predicted.
“I’ve pitched them on moving their corporate headquarters. We already have financial-services firms with a strong presence here,” Singer, the city’s Republican mayor since 2018, said of the Big Apple business leaders he’s spoken with since last week.
“We expect more inbound calls. We expect to have more people coming because of high taxes [in New York] — and we’re ready,” he said, adding that some of the inquiries he’s received have come from leaders of financial services and tech industries.
Boca has no income tax or business taxes, while Mamdani said he plans to raise both as well as property taxes on some wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods to fund his $10 billion socialist utopia.
In Boca — a city of 103,000 residents and already home to many well-heeled former New Yorkers — property taxes on corporations and residents fund city services.
“We are ready to show you a better quality of life,” Singer said of future potential New York transplants.
“It’s going to be harder for people to stay in New York,” he said. “Socialism is a terrible idea that has failed everywhere it’s been implemented.
“Raising taxes and freezing the rent is not going to solve the affordability crisis.”
Singer’s office provided a list of 50 publicly traded and privately owned firms that have headquarters or major offices in Boca Raton, including: ADT, Regenerative Medical Technology Group, Office Depot, Aerospace Technologies Group, Canon and Tyco Integrated Security.
Boca Raton is no longer just a haven for well-heeled retirees, he said. The median age of residents of Boca keeps dropping because of new businesses and young families moving in, Singer said.
New York City’s move to socialism is a great opportunity for Boca Raton, he added.
“We are going to make lemons into lemonade,” the mayor said.
Singer, who resided in New York in the 1990s, quipped, “I’m a die-hard Yankee fan — you won’t miss anything!”
In his eyes, the Big Apple is no longer the city that progressed and thrived under the leadership of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg.
Boca now has the lowest property tax rate in Florida while Mamdani is proposing a new 2% tax on millionaires and higher corporate taxes and a “sky-high cost of living,” Singer said.
Boca, with miles of beaches and 49 parks, also is business-friendly with streamlined city services, while Mamdani is proposing “new socialist agencies” and “city-run groceries” and more bureaucracy, the Florida mayor said.
Singer said his city has “balanced growth” with beaches, sunshine and safety while NYC faces “forced rent freezes, 200,000-government built apartments” and less private investment.
Mamdani, during an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, defended his grandiose tax and spending proposals — including free buses, city-run grocery stories, housing expansion and freezing rents — as attacking the affordability crisis, not accelerating it.
He also said, “I don’t think we should have billionaires.”
Mamdani said wealthy New Yorkers are leaving because of quality-of-life concerns, not because of having to pay higher taxes.
“And when they do leave, it’s actually to other states considered high-tax: New Jersey, California,” Mamdani said.
“The reason I want to increase these taxes on the top 1%, the most profitable corporations, is to increase the quality of life for everyone, including those who are going to be taxed,” he said.
Attacking the high cost of living will help employers attract and retain workers, he said.
