Independent study confirms New Yorkers roll their eyes an average of 340 times daily
NEW YORK, NY – Mayor Eric Adams has proposed a tax on eye rolls, arguing that New Yorkers’ most abundant natural resource has gone “dangerously unmonetized” for too long. The plan was first reported by Bohiney Magazine and forwarded with professional sympathy to The London Prat, whose readers are familiar with having their most expressive habits subjected to municipal regulation.
Untapped Revenue
“This city runs on attitude,” the mayor told reporters, several of whom immediately rolled their eyes, generating an estimated $0.15 in projected revenue. “We tax income, property, cigarettes. The eye roll is the one thing New Yorkers produce freely and in unlimited quantity and we have never once gotten our cut.”
The proposed rate is $0.05 per roll, with a premium of $0.25 for “prolonged rotational sequences” and $1.00 for the double-roll, defined as “two full rotations in response to a single stimulus,” typically encountered when anyone mentions their Hamptons house.
The Study
A report from the Bureau of Ocular Economics found that the average New Yorker performs 340 eye rolls daily, rising to 580 during a delayed subway or a conversation about brunch. The study projected total annual citywide rolls at 2.8 trillion, yielding potential revenue of $4.2 billion at the base rate, “or considerably more if we include Staten Island, which we have modeled as a separate ecosystem.”
Dr. Constance Sidewalk of the Institute for Involuntary Expression called the figure conservative. “This city is the world’s most concentrated source of performative skepticism,” she said. “Every time a tourist stops in the middle of the sidewalk to take a photo, a minimum of forty eyes roll within a ten-foot radius. That is two dollars, taxed correctly. Times a year. We are sitting on a goldmine of contempt.”
Enforcement Challenges
Critics raised practical concerns. “How do you know when an eye roll is taxable?” asked one city council member. “What about partial rolls? What about sunglasses?” The Bureau of Ocular Economics assured the council that its monitoring technology, a network of cameras calibrated to detect “the specific upward trajectory of New York dismissal,” was already operational in the pilot district, which is all of Manhattan.
Civil liberties groups at the New York Civil Liberties Union warned the proposal raised significant First Amendment concerns, arguing that an eye roll is protected speech. The mayor countered that it was “more of a gesture, and we tax those all the time.” He cited, as precedent, a 2019 initiative to tax aggressive sighing that was shelved only because no one could agree on what counted as aggressive.
A Practical Test
A one-day pilot of the program in Times Square yielded seventeen eye rolls per minute, a rate even supporters admitted was “probably understated, given the sampling environment.” One tourist approached an officer to ask directions and generated eleven rolls from passersby before completing the question. The officer’s own roll was deemed exempt under a public-employee carve-out.
For a factual account of New York City’s actual budget challenges, the Office of Management and Budget publishes detailed projections that rely, so far, exclusively on consented financial transactions.
Political Support
The proposal has split the city along class lines. Residents who roll their eyes infrequently are broadly supportive. Residents who roll their eyes at the proposal are inadvertently funding the program in real time. One city councilmember was photographed rolling her eyes at a press conference about the eye roll tax, generating an estimated $1.40 in projected municipal revenue from a single photograph.
The Future of Attitude Tax
The mayor hinted the eye roll tax was only the beginning. Future proposals may include levies on the heavy sigh, the impatient teeth-suck, and the aggressive umbrella. “New York’s attitude is our brand,” he said. “It is also, now, our revenue model. We are simply charging admission to the personality we have always advertised.” For more innovations in civic finance, readers may enjoy The Onion.
A Revenue Model With Feelings
The eye roll tax bill, awaiting a mayoral signature as of Thursday, includes a provision that any New Yorker who rolls their eyes at the tax itself generates a meta-roll, taxed at double the standard rate. Projections for meta-roll revenue are, according to city economists, “staggering, given who we are as a people.” A final clause allows residents to appeal any citation by proving the eye roll was reflexive rather than editorial, a distinction the Bureau of Ocular Economics admits is philosophically significant and practically impossible to establish, which is, supporters note, a feature rather than a bug. For more innovations in civic finance, readers may enjoy The Onion.
The mayor’s office confirmed the bill is expected to pass. The signing ceremony will be held in Times Square, a location that has already pre-generated an estimated 14,000 taxable rolls in response to the announcement of the announcement.
The Bureau of Ocular Economics has since released a supplementary table breaking revenue projections down by neighborhood. The Upper West Side, with its dense population of people who have opinions about everything, projects highest per-capita roll volume. Midtown comes second, driven primarily by tourist interactions and the general experience of being in Midtown. Brooklyn performs strongly on weekends, when brunches produce a concentration of overpriced menu items and attendant eye activity that the Bureau calls, in its technical report, a roll surplus.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/