Federal, state, and city lawmakers are calling on the state legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo to pass a tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers that would raise $5.5 billion for the state's most vulnerable residents. The Billionaire's Tax and Worker Bailout Fund would tax unrealized capital gains and amend tax law so that those capital gains are counted as annual income. New York has at least 118 billionaires, and their wealth increased by $77 billion over the first four months of the pandemic, according to a recent analysis.

But on Thursday, Governor Cuomo said he doesn't support this kind of tax because, he claims, the ultra-rich will just leave New York.

"The issue of addressing the difficulties from COVID is not just a New York problem, it’s a nationwide problem," Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters. "I'd like to see those officials demanding that Washington do what it needs to do to help New York and the other states."

Cuomo added, "If they want a tax increase, don’t make New York alone do a tax increase, then they just have the people move to Connecticut, let the federal government pass a tax increase. And let them apply it all across the country, so you don’t hurt any one state. Because if you take people who are highly mobile, and you tax them, well then they’ll just move next door where the tax treatment is simpler. It has to be done on a federal level."

The governor then suggested that House Democrats refuse to pass legislation until President Donald Trump provides proper relief to "help the poorest Americans."

Supporters of the state bill, which is sponsored by State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Carmen de La Rosa, say New York's tax is necessary because the state has the ability to help immigrant workers who are omitted from existing government aid.

"We need to ask Governor Cuomo to tax the people who are benefiting from this pandemic in order to support the working families who are facing housing insecurity, food insecurity, and more," Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who supports the billionaire's tax, said in a video released Thursday.

Senator Ramos said in a statement, "There’s no reason why working families in New York state, one of the richest states in this country should be in so much need of basic necessities when we have the largest concentration of billionaires in the entire world."

Make the Road New York, an advocacy group that's a part of the new Fund Excluded Workers Coalition, called Cuomo's comments on rich people fleeing high-tax states a "debunked myth."

"Instead of listening to excluded workers, Governor Cuomo keeps peddling a thoroughly-debunked myth to justify his failure to tax billionaires," co-executive director of Make the Road New York Deborah Axt said. "It’s time to make billionaires pay and fund excluded workers."

The group pointed to a 2016 analysis showing the "transitory millionaire hypothesis," as it's known, "contains a grain of truth: millionaires pay more attention to tax rates than does the general population. Yet, in its strong forms, the transitory millionaire hypothesis is a misperception of both elites and the attractiveness of moving to a different state."

The analysis of 45 million tax income records over 13 years found elites do move from high tax states to low tax states, but their migration flows are so low that they do not have much impact on the overall tax base.

"Today, migration seems to be not a privilege of riches, but rather a burden of dislocation and a loss of social ties—something that high-income earners can and do avoid," the authors wrote at the time.

Business leader Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, agreed with Governor Cuomo and suggested that New York's billionaires were already out of the state.

"Most of the ultra wealthy are not around to see the demonstration and, should the legislation pass, they are far less likely to return," Wylde said in an email. "So the state's revenues and jobs are likely to decline substantially if the demonstrators win their cause."

Some 2 million New Yorkers have received unemployment benefits, with little hope in sight all those jobs will return by the end of the year. But undocumented workers don't qualify for unemployment benefits, and they were left out of the federal CARES Act as well. Even freelancers who are eligible for expanded pandemic unemployment have faced an uphill battle getting the payments.

Meanwhile, the wealthiest New Yorkers are getting richer, despite the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jeff Bezos's net worth has ballooned to $171 billion, adding nearly $57 billion just this year, according to Business Insider. His company's workers have staged walkouts across the country in an uprising against the union-busting tech behemoth, as workers have gotten sick COVID-19. At least eight workers have died of coronavirus, including a Staten Island employee.

The Street Vendor Project, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Laundry Worker Center, and Desis Rising Up and Moving are among groups joining politicians for a "sleep out" at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's penthouse on Fifth Avenue. Some workers began a fast at noon Thursday as a part of the demonstrations. On Friday, they'll march to Cuomo's Manhattan office for a press conference at noon.

Amazon did not immediately respond to questions about the sleep out outside of Bezos's Manhattan home or if Bezos would support a billionaires tax personally.