New York City just elected a socialist mayor who wants to tax second homes and soak the wealthy.
Florida is approaching $2 trillion in annual GDP with zero state income tax.
Those two facts just happened at the same time – and the contrast tells you everything Democrats refuse to learn.
The Number That Should End Every Economic Argument
When Ron DeSantis took office in 2019, Florida's economy was roughly $1 trillion.
It has nearly doubled since.
Not grown modestly. Not outperformed projections. Nearly doubled – while maintaining no state income tax, cutting regulatory burdens, and welcoming every business, family, and retiree that blue states chased away.
That's not luck.
That's what happens when a governor looks at residents as partners instead of revenue sources.
https://twitter.com/ElRushboNews/status/2056541849398222918?s=20
Businesses relocated. Capital followed. The population exploded and real estate development accelerated with it.
Florida became one of the dominant economic engines in America precisely because it refused to play the game every big-government politician insists is the only way to fund growth.
The conventional thinking has always been that governments need to continuously raise taxes to fund prosperity.
Florida destroyed that argument completely.
When you stop squeezing people, they invest more. They hire more. They open businesses, purchase homes, and build communities.
The economic activity expands organically – and the broader revenue base grows with it.
This is not theory. It happened. We watched it.
While Florida Built Wealth, Democrats Chose a Different Path
New York City voters just handed their mayoral primary to Zohran Mamdani – a socialist Democrat running on wealth taxes, second-home surcharges, and expanded rent control.
One model says: keep more of what you earn, and watch what people do with it.
The other says: you are not doing enough, give us more, and we will decide what to build.
https://twitter.com/TimRayHolcomb/status/2056341918112456984?s=20
For decades, the left has watched the population bleed out of high-tax states like New York, California, and Illinois – and their answer has been to tax whoever stayed even harder.
New York has lost residents to Florida and Texas every year for the better part of a decade.
The lesson Democrats took from that: raise taxes on second homes.
At some point you have to stop calling this a mistake and start calling it a choice.
Kevin Warsh Just Inherited the Same Test
Here's what nobody is saying out loud about the Federal Reserve right now.
As Kevin Warsh takes over as chairman, American families are already getting hit from every direction at once – elevated interest rates, insurance costs that have doubled in some states, groceries that cost 30% more than they did five years ago, and a housing market so frozen that first-time buyers have essentially given up.
The temptation at the Fed will be to keep tightening on paper while the real economy quietly breaks underneath.
That's exactly the trap Florida showed you how to avoid.
Think about any small business owner who relocated from a high-tax state to Florida in the last five years. No state income tax. Employees who kept their bonuses. Room to open a second location.
They didn't need a government program to do it – they needed a government that got out of their way.
https://twitter.com/TruResRE/status/2056626220209725488?s=20
That's the model Warsh should be studying, not the one coming out of New York City.
When you pile higher interest rates on top of rising insurance, rising energy, and rising taxes, you don't discipline an economy – you kill the guy trying to make payroll on Friday.
Small businesses stop expanding. Homebuyers walk away. Developers shelve projects. Employers stop hiring.
That's not inflation control.
That's a recession by committee.
Florida proved the opposite works.
When people keep what they earn, they spend it, invest it, hire with it, and build with it faster than any government program ever could.
That's the lesson sitting right there in the numbers – and Democrats just told you exactly how much they care about it.
Sources:
- Duvi Honig, "DeSantis' Shows Strong Economies Built by Empowerment," Newsmax, May 19, 2026.
- Arthur Laffer and Jonathan Williams, "Rich States, Poor States," American Legislative Exchange Council, 2025.
- "Florida Economic Briefing," Florida Chamber of Commerce, 2025.
