Let’s begin today with the clip below of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon telling an audience at the Hill & Valley Forum why so many companies are fleeing high tax New York for low tax Texas. A transcript follows:
Transcript:
Why are you buying more real estate in Mamdani’s Manhattan right now? Well, he wasn’t the mayor when we started building that building five years ago. But here’s a lesson, and this lesson is true for companies, cities, states, and countries: You got to compete.
There’s no divine right to success. Just read the history books.
So, our headcount in Manhattan when I got to JP Morgan was 35,000 and now it’s 26,000. Our headcount, in Texas, it started at 11,000, now it is 33,000. That’s what happens.
And you know, Parviz, the highest individual taxes, highest estate taxes, highest corporate taxes, anti-business sentiment, you know. And that’s what happened. And you could be any ideologue you want, but that’s the real world.
And people vote with their feet. And you can’t get mad at them. If you believe in a free country, if someone wants to move to Florida, that’s their right. And so, yeah, if they make too many mistakes, mayors, including Mayor Mamdani, should worry about police, hospitals, subways, sanitation, storms, health care, schools. It’s got nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. An ideology distorts reality when it comes to something like that.
So, but our building’s great. We’re still there. It’s got some of the best people, but I think when I grew up as a kid in New York City, and you don’t probably don’t know this, there were 120 of the Fortune 500 headquarters there. In the 1970s, 60 of the 120 left. Including Exxon, GE, IBM, Union Carbide. I mean, that’s not what you want. And they’re all going to Texas, basically, or Nevada.
[End]
Here’s the money quote out of that statement:
