A real estate investment tycoon on Tuesday said that calls to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans were akin to “racial slurs.”
As reported by The New York Times, Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth took time during his company’s latest earnings call to decry calls from politicians such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fund public programs by taxing the rich.
“I must say that I consider the phrase ‘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," said Roth.
Roth took aim at Mamdani for celebrating a proposed pied-à-terre tax on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners have other primary homes, and was particularly upset that the mayor filmed a video announcing the tax outside a $238 million penthouse owned by Ken Griffin, the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel. He called the announcement “dangerous" and an “ugly, unnecessary video stunt.”
The Vornado CEO went on to say that America’s wealthiest individuals deserve the nation’s gratitude, not their scorn.
“The rich, whom the politicians are targeting… are the epitome of the American dream,” he said. “They are at the top of the great American economic pyramid for a reason. They should be praised and thanked.”
Roth’s remarks drew criticism from Douglas Farrar, former director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden.
“A billionaire real estate CEO compared being asked to pay taxes to a racial slur, then said the top 1% should be ‘praised and thanked,’” Farrar wrote in a social media post. “There was a time when the wealthy had the good sense to be quiet about it. Now they demand gratitude on earnings calls.”
Activist and healthcare advocate Melanie D’Arrigo noted that Roth build developments in the city after intentionally allowing properties to sit in a state of blight for years, which “gutted Black and brown neighborhoods in exchange for billions in tax breaks.”
Roth’s lamentations about the treatment of the wealthy in the US came as human resources and software services company Dayforce teamed with the Living Wage Institute to release a new study showing that the percentage of Americans earning a living wage has significantly declined over the last five years, from 55.8% in 2021 to 50.7% in 2025.
The report notes that “job growth has recently slowed, and millions of workers haven’t seen a meaningful improvement in their financial situation,” even as “the costs of housing, food, childcare, and other essentials are elevated, energy prices have spiked, and affordability continues to be a major issue for a significant share of the workforce.”
The data in the report all came from 2025, before President Donald Trump launched his illegal war with Iran that has sent gas prices soaring above $4.50 per gallon and is threatening to unleash a global food crisis.
US consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan hit a record low last month, and the university found that the effects of the Iran war were the primary drivers of Americans’ economic pessimism.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Well I do hate them.
I’m definitely in the camp if it’s too late to just “tax the rich”. They need to be removed from this mortal coil with extreme prejudice.
They’ve shown they’re naught but the lowest scum in existence. What they’ve been doing in the shadows has earned them some of the most medieval punishments we can concoct in the deepest recesses of our primitive minds.
I’m talking about hanging upside down and sawing them in twain. I’m talking about the old red raven. I’m talking about the iron maiden. I’m talking about the bronze bull. I’m talking about being drawn and quartered on horseback.
This period in history needs to be so creatively horrific for them because if we don’t, we are going to be on the receiving end of all that again.
The ultra wealthy are just too fucking stupid to learn when to quit. Generations of the inbred freaks hoarding money and breeding with their sisters and cousins pollutes the gene pool and gives the lowest of us the highest authority whilst being spectacularly devoid of humanity.
