Unless the candidate who's deeply concerned about "POT HEADS" wins, New York City won't have a billionaire as its next mayor. This worries those who have benefitted most from Mayor Bloomberg's tenure as mayor: rich people. With the current leader of the pack of Democratic candidates proposing a tax increase on the wealthy to pay for universal preschool, the defenseless rich people have but one recourse to stop the begrimed hands of tyranny from picking their pockets: whine to the media.

Bloomberg News reporters Henry Goldman and Max Abelson, who apparently has a knack for getting wealthy megalomaniacs to talk, and talk, and talk, ask New York's Most Valuable Humans what they think about Bill de Blasio's plan to raise their marginal income tax rate from around 3.9% to 4.4%.

“It shows lack of sensitivity to the city’s biggest revenue providers and job creators,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a network of 200 chief executive officers, including co-Chairman Laurence Fink of BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest money manager. “The business community asks whether city leaders will continue to foster a strong, vibrant economy or will they try to undertake huge social and economic changes, which really are the result of global and national forces, at the expense of city businesses and taxpayers,” she said.

Wage stagnation? It's like the moon and the tides—no time to explain now. That widening inequality gap? El Niño, probably. What's not important is who got favorable zoning or what mayor read Oh, The Places You'll Go! to certain monolithic investment firms before they went to bed. It's out of our hands!

E.E. “Buzzy” Geduld, who runs the hedge fund Cougar Capital LLC in the city and is a trustee of Manhattan’s Dalton School, where annual tuition tops $40,000, said de Blasio’s plan “is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard” and “not a smart thing to do.” “Almost anyone with a self-perceived degree of affluence will be uncomfortable with de Blasio’s tax ideas,” said Michael Steinhardt, chairman of New York-based asset manager WisdomTree Investments Inc. While growing inequality is troubling, Steinhardt said, “perhaps even more so is the thought that more government spending is the way out of our problems.”



"Almost anyone," but especially billionaire hedge fund "legends" and priceless art-collectors; people like Michael Steinhardt. You know, "anyone."

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that every dollar invested in quality early childhood development—most crucially preschool—yields a rate of return of 7 to 10 percent. Universal preschool would reduce the percentage of people who are identified as "poor" by around 6%. These gains accrue over time: more college graduates means higher wages and eventually more tax revenues, plus the savings of having less people on government support. Ben Bernake has called early childhood investment "a very good investment."