Mamdani beware Clevelands forgotten folly holds a warning for NYC

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is just the latest in a long line of tax-the-rich politicians eager to go after America’s business elite — but he should consider how one such war on wealth enriched and empowered the city over which he now presides.If not for Cleveland, Ohio, New York’s rise as the nation’s undisputed center of capital, commerce and culture may never have happened.By 1914, John D.Rockefeller was already the richest man in America.Standard Oil, the behemoth he originally incorporated in Cleveland, had moved its headquarters to 26 Broadway in New York in 1885 — a strategic decision driven by access to global capital markets, not any hostility toward his home state.In 1899, though, responding to New Jersey’s deliberate decision to actively compete for the business by liberalizing its corporate laws, he reincorporated Standard Oil as a Jersey holding company while retaining his New York City home base.Two states vied for Rockefeller’s enterprise — and both won something.But Rockefeller’s heart remained in Ohio: His wife Cettie loved Forest Hill, their estate in East Cleveland, and he returned to her there each summer.When Cettie became ill in 1913, Rockefeller stayed through the winter — past Feb.

8, the date that established legal residency for tax purposes in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County.He had already paid his personal taxes in New York.Enter John Flackner and William Agnew, Cuyahoga County’s tax commissioners.They sent Rockefeller a staggering $1.5 million tax bill, $200 million today — and threatened a 50% penalty for non-payment.Then they gleefully publicized it, bragging that when Rockefeller paid up, ordinary residents would enjoy a 20% cut in their own tax burden.A vivid populist moment, a visible villain, a promised dividend to voters — and no thought for what Rockefeller, with his enormous wealth, could have built in Cleveland had he stayed there part-time.Rockefeller paid nothing.He left Forest Hill and never came back.Histo...