"Fading superpower" is typical EU cope. It may help to be a little bit introspective about why one might want to oppose EU politics, or its leaders, whose "leadership" over the last decade has led to unprecedented migrant, economic, and energy crises, and stalling growth.
"I thought the goal was to generate tax revenue from the taxes, which wouldn't happen to the extent they end up in the hands of NYC residents."
You're right, I'm saying I think it is a good tax for reasons secondary to revenue. We all know NYC is going to squander the money, at least they might make housing slightly cheaper for the average New Yorker in the process.
"If you make the tax too high it starts discouraging the behavior you're taxing, which can paradoxically reduce overall tax revenue."
I am generally against more taxes, but the structure of this one is quite good in terms of the incentives. If wealthy people who only live in the city part-time stay in hotels instead of buying second homes, the net effect should be to increase the cost of hotel rooms and reduce the cost of owned-housing. NYC charges nearly 10% tax on hotel stays, so recoups some of the cost there. Having property in your city mostly being occupied by people who live their full time, particularly when property is already very expensive, seems like a good thing overall.
There being more $10+ billionaires doesn't make your life worse when you are earning 50% more on a real dollar basis than you would have been 50 years ago.
And yet somehow, magically, all of these things are better than they have been ever at any point throughout human history. It's almost as if the system is working.
You said: "underwriters ... doing the same thing as the credit agencies did in 2008 by giving underwater mortgage backed securities a AAA rating"
That isn't what is happening at all.
In an IPO the underwriters and the company collaborate to set the price based on approximate demand and what they want the quality of the holders to look like.
In the roadshow, the company is very constrained as to what they can say or disclose outside of the scope of the S-1. They can't include MNPI, forward looking financial projections, etc. Underwriters are also prohibited from sharing MNPI, or publishing marketing disguised as research.
So I guess if you're saying the SpaceX S-1 is completely full of shit and there's hidden risk in it, than it could be similar to 2008, but in this case nobody is manufacturing a rating, and those material misrepresentations would constitute securities fraud. Investment banks and ratings agencies aren't the same thing at all, and the buyers of marginally profitable IPO stocks are (hopefully) different than those of AAA MBS.
In what way would that be securities fraud? I guess you could get nailed under Section 17(a), but really hard to make a case they're defrauding investors by representing they were going to make ads worse performing than they ended up making them.
In order for it to be securities fraud it has to be tied to a securities transaction and the misstatement has to be material to a reasonable investor's decision.
Single example is worthless. Is there a pattern of this happening far more often? Overall, do fewer people get incorrectly arrested or detained as a result of this technology, or more.
What destruction? US GDP growth has recovered to the pre-COVID trendline while EU lags behind it's already-slow previous pace.