Christopher Robbins
May 06, 2026
Pop quiz: Should the phrase "tax the rich" be considered "just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs"?
If you answered, "No, of course not, I'm not an oblivious buffoon who would conflate racism with a pithy slogan for economic justice," congratulations: You have a scintilla of self-awareness and, perhaps, a soul.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Vornado real estate baron Steven Roth, who uttered these words on an earnings call, literally speaking them into a telephone with many, many other people who were listening in and now know that this white billionaire actually feels this way.
"I must say that I consider the phrase 'tax the rich'—quote, 'tax the rich'—when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs, and even the phrase 'from the river to the sea,'" Roth said.
It has been a big week for thin-skinned, well-heeled individuals speaking out against the idea that they should be forced to contribute additional, infinitesimal amounts of their fortunes to benefit society. As usual, the person to blame for all this is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
You might recall that the mayor made a video about his proposed pied-à-terre tax in front of the most expensive pied-à-terre in New York City, hedge fund tycoon Kenneth Griffin's $238 million penthouse at 220 Central Park South. It's an effective, if inoffensive, piece of propaganda—when Griffin bought the apartment in 2019 for a record-high price, there were dozens of stories covering the sale, some featuring pictures of the interior and the transaction record itself, which is a public document. All the mayor had to do was point to this existing information in the public domain, toss in some faux "Succession" background music, and raise a simple question for New Yorkers: Shouldn't the guys who don't even live here but spend hundreds of millions of dollars on mostly empty New York real estate pay a little bit more for the privilege?
Roth said on the call that the clip was an "ugly, unnecessary video stunt," and Griffin, who left Chicago for Miami in a huff in 2022, went much further.
"Looking at what Mamdani just did to me, and more broadly is doing to the City of New York, is triggering the trauma I went through in Chicago," Griffin, who has a Forbes net worth of $50 billion, said at a conference on Wednesday. "Mamdani's making it really clear. New York doesn't welcome success."
That the audience nodded sagely at these words, rather than yelling out some version of Are you fucking kidding me, bro? and immediately storming the stage before the second syllable in "trauma" to administer a hail of wedgies and noogies, is likely because Griffin said them at a business conference literally named after the "junk bond king."
While Griffin comparing a modest tax hike to the Stalinist purges of Soviet Russia is offensive to anyone who has lived in the actual real world (Mr. Griffin, you'll never guess what George Orwell personally believed—please come on our podcast to talk about it), let's take a moment to calculate what exactly this billionaire is complaining about, in dollars and cents.
Using the version of the pied-à-terre tax that City Comptroller Mark Levine referenced to estimate how much revenue it would generate for the City, penthouses like Griffin's at 220 Central Park South, which have an "assessed value" of $15 million or more, would face a 13.5 percent tax.
City tax records show that Griffin's famous Central Park apartment has an assessed value of around $15 million. (What is "assessed value," and why is it so much lower than what Griffin paid for it? Don't ask.) That's an extra tax of $2,025,000, which sounds like a lot, unless you're worth $50 billion, in which case this tax represents 0.00405 percent of your net worth.
Let's say your net worth is $50,000, which is much more than it is for the median Black, Latine, or Asian family in New York, but much less than the median for white New Yorkers; 0.00405 of your wealth is…$2.
So, relatively speaking, Griffin is complaining about an extra two dollars per year. Two bucks can't even get you a Mister Softee cone, a slice of pizza, a subway ride, or other things Griffin likely wouldn't be caught dead buying.
Also, New York "doesn't welcome success"—does "welcome success" mean verbally fellating billionaires? Because buddy, that's what the Wall Street Journal's editorial page is for.
Pop quiz: Should the phrase "tax the rich" be considered "just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs"?
If you answered, "No, of course not, I'm not an oblivious buffoon who would conflate racism with a pithy slogan for economic justice," congratulations: You have a scintilla of self-awareness and, perhaps, a soul.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Vornado real estate baron Steven Roth, who uttered these words on an earnings call, literally speaking them into a telephone with many, many other people who were listening in and now know that this white billionaire actually feels this way.
"I must say that I consider the phrase 'tax the rich'—quote, 'tax the rich'—when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs, and even the phrase 'from the river to the sea,'" Roth said.
It has been a big week for thin-skinned, well-heeled individuals speaking out against the idea that they should be forced to contribute additional, infinitesimal amounts of their fortunes to benefit society. As usual, the person to blame for all this is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
You might recall that the mayor made a video about his proposed pied-à-terre tax in front of the most expensive pied-à-terre in New York City, hedge fund tycoon Kenneth Griffin's $238 million penthouse at 220 Central Park South. It's an effective, if inoffensive, piece of propaganda—when Griffin bought the apartment in 2019 for a record-high price, there were dozens of stories covering the sale, some featuring pictures of the interior and the transaction record itself, which is a public document. All the mayor had to do was point to this existing information in the public domain, toss in some faux "Succession" background music, and raise a simple question for New Yorkers: Shouldn't the guys who don't even live here but spend hundreds of millions of dollars on mostly empty New York real estate pay a little bit more for the privilege?
Roth said on the call that the clip was an "ugly, unnecessary video stunt," and Griffin, who left Chicago for Miami in a huff in 2022, went much further.
"Looking at what Mamdani just did to me, and more broadly is doing to the City of New York, is triggering the trauma I went through in Chicago," Griffin, who has a Forbes net worth of $50 billion, said at a conference on Wednesday. "Mamdani's making it really clear. New York doesn't welcome success."
That the audience nodded sagely at these words, rather than yelling out some version of Are you fucking kidding me, bro? and immediately storming the stage before the second syllable in "trauma" to administer a hail of wedgies and noogies, is likely because Griffin said them at a business conference literally named after the "junk bond king."
While Griffin comparing a modest tax hike to the Stalinist purges of Soviet Russia is offensive to anyone who has lived in the actual real world (Mr. Griffin, you'll never guess what George Orwell personally believed—please come on our podcast to talk about it), let's take a moment to calculate what exactly this billionaire is complaining about, in dollars and cents.
Using the version of the pied-à-terre tax that City Comptroller Mark Levine referenced to estimate how much revenue it would generate for the City, penthouses like Griffin's at 220 Central Park South, which have an "assessed value" of $15 million or more, would face a 13.5 percent tax.
City tax records show that Griffin's famous Central Park apartment has an assessed value of around $15 million. (What is "assessed value," and why is it so much lower than what Griffin paid for it? Don't ask.) That's an extra tax of $2,025,000, which sounds like a lot, unless you're worth $50 billion, in which case this tax represents 0.00405 percent of your net worth.
Let's say your net worth is $50,000, which is much more than it is for the median Black, Latine, or Asian family in New York, but much less than the median for white New Yorkers; 0.00405 of your wealth is…$2.
So, relatively speaking, Griffin is complaining about an extra two dollars per year. Two bucks can't even get you a Mister Softee cone, a slice of pizza, a subway ride, or other things Griffin likely wouldn't be caught dead buying.
Also, New York "doesn't welcome success"—does "welcome success" mean verbally fellating billionaires? Because buddy, that's what the Wall Street Journal's editorial page is for.
Griffin threatening to leave New York City over the prospect of paying the equivalent of an extra $2 a year might mean something if he weren't completely full of shit: He just bought a $38 million apartment in a different building two weeks ago.
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