Tea at Trianon: Tax-Raising Democrats Could Learn a Cautionary Tale from the UK

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, June 1, 2026

Tax-Raising Democrats Could Learn a Cautionary Tale from the UK

From Chronicles:

In a nocturnal video posted to his office’s YouTube channel, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani greeted this year’s April 15 tax day by announcing, “I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we’re taxing the rich.” Mamdani, who won the mayoralty by an absolute majority last November, recorded his video on Central Park South, one of the city’s poshest streets, in front of hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s apartment building as music that sounded vaguely like the soundtrack to HBO’s Succession played in the background. Mamdani chose the location with purpose: Griffin represents, to him, “the richest of the rich,” and therefore a source of revenue to fund his social programs via a “pied-à-terre tax.” The new levy will tax second homes owned in New York by non-residents valued at $5 million or more.
Griffin responded in a CNBC interview, saying he may reconsider a $6 billion construction project that would create an estimated 15,000 permanent jobs in New York and instead focus on future projects in Miami, where he resides. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal describing Mamdani’s video as “creepy and weird,” Griffin added that Mamdani’s singling him out “put me in harm’s way.” President Trump has weighed in, telling radio host Sid Rosenberg that any city’s mayor should “cherish” business leaders and “convince them not to leave” rather than drive them away.

According to the New York Post, Mamdani has reached out to Griffin to ease the tensions but received no response. If Mamdani needs more evidence that he might be in the wrong, however, he should look across the pond to the United Kingdom, whose Labour Party, in office since 2024, has raised taxes and abolished its so-called “non-domicile” (“non-dom”) tax exemption for the non-UK income of foreign nationals who reside in Britain. (Britain, like almost all countries except the United States, does not tax its own citizens’ foreign-earned income).

The results have been a disaster. According to figures cited by the Daily Telegraph, some 10,800 millionaires expatriated from the UK in 2024 alone, an average of one every 45 minutes. More jarring evidence came on May 15, just days after Griffin’s CNBC interview, when the Times of London released its 38^th annual “Rich List,” a compendium of the country’s richest 350 individuals, including UK citizens worldwide and foreign citizens residing in Britain. (Read more.)