America's wealthiest are hurting. Not financially, of course. Their wallets have swelled by 81 percent since 2020, according to recent data. The wound is deeper, more existential: nobody likes them anymore.
Steve Roth, CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, made this pain public during an earnings call. He compared the slogan "tax the rich" to racial slurs, describing it as language "spit out with anger and contempt by politicians." The comment landed as billionaires face renewed scrutiny over their tax obligations and their outsized influence on American policy.
The trigger for Roth's complaint was a video released by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announcing a proposed tax on second homes valued above $5 million. The mayor filmed the announcement in front of billionaire Ken Griffin's penthouse. Roth called the move "irresponsible," though Griffin's property hardly required a presidential reveal to attract attention. He paid $238 million for it in 2019, a record for U.S. residential real estate.
There's an irony worth noting. Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor, has himself endured slurs far more severe than anything directed at the wealthy. Fellow New York politician Vickie Paladino labeled him a "known jihadist terrorist" among other Islamophobic attacks. Roth's concern appears not to have extended there.
The broader landscape for the ultra-wealthy is decidedly rosy. Billionaire wealth jumped 16 percent in 2025 alone, according to Oxfam, triple the previous five-year average. Meanwhile, one in four people globally lack regular access to food. The wealth accumulation hasn't triggered a tax code overhaul, despite growing calls to raise effective rates on the richest to match what teachers pay.
What may amplify billionaire grievance is their control of the megaphone. Oxfam reports that billionaires own more than half the world's largest media companies and all major social media platforms. This dominance sometimes translates into sympathetic coverage. Wall Street Journal columnist Kyle Smith recently published a piece titled "Billionaires Rock," lamenting that society's richest are "denounced, despised and disrespected." He suggested their accomplishments warrant statues in public squares and inclusion in school curricula as inspirational parables.
The irony thickens when one recalls that News Corp, owner of the Wall Street Journal, is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Smith's defense of billionaires arrives courtesy of a platform owned by a billionaire.
The cultural moment Smith describes is already arriving. A gold statue of Donald Trump stands at a Miami-area golf course. The president has expressed hope for additional golden tributes in Gaza and Venezuela. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is restricting what schools can teach, creating conditions where billionaire success stories might soon edge out lessons on systemic inequality and racial wealth gaps.
None of this has translated into policy that shields billionaires from criticism or shields them from tax proposals. New York's proposed luxury property tax remains under discussion. Calls for wealth taxes and higher marginal rates persist across multiple states and at the federal level. The fact that billionaires control major media outlets and wield enormous political influence hasn't insulated them from the conversation, though it may shape how that conversation appears in some newsrooms.
Author James Rodriguez: "Billionaires have money, power, media control, and now they want sympathy too. That's a luxury most Americans simply can't afford."
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