https://www.untappedcities.com/millionaires-row-5th-avenue-mansions/
That's the 58th Street side.
Posted on 04/20/2026 5:12:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Here in New York, our new Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of “taxing the rich.” But that leaves a question to which the answer up to now has not been completely clear: Does Mamdani advocate taxing the rich because he thinks it is good tax policy, or does he advocate taxing the rich as a way to take revenge and punish a group he thinks of as predators and oppressors?
Currently the New York Legislature and Governor are in the midst of their annual budget negotiations, in which one of the issues is whether Mamdani will be granted any of his “tax the rich” wishes. Word so far had been that the Governor has resisted those wishes, particularly the wish to increase the rates of income tax on high earners.
However, on tax day (April 15) news emerged that there is some kind of an agreement on one piece of Mamdani’s tax agenda, namely a proposal to impose a special tax or fee of some kind on expensive New York properties used by non-residents as second homes or “pieds-à-terre.” So far the details of the proposal have not been disclosed, beyond a stated goal of raising $500 million per year of revenue from an estimated 13,000 properties valued at $5 million and up. The Mayor and the Governor both released statements disclosing the agreement, and giving their own spin on same.
Over at his YouTube site, Mamdani posted the following video: [video at source link]
Opening lines:
“When I ran for Mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well today, we’re taxing the rich.”
To the extent it was not completely clear before, we now have the answer to our question: This is not about well-considered tax policy, but rather is about punishing the hated and disfavored class of “the rich.” Mamdani’s demeanor in the video is reminiscent of the thrill felt by a hungry hyena finally sinking its teeth into the prey.
Mamdani films his video on 57th Street, in front of one of the string of new luxury condo towers sometimes known as “billionaires’ row.” Excerpt:
“[The new tax is for properties] like this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million. The pied-à-terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich. Those who store their wealth in New York City real estate but don’t actually live here. But even so, they’re able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in . . . the greatest city in the world. . . . This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers.”
Take that, Ken Griffin!
Meanwhile, even as the tax will impose an average incremental cost of about $40,000 on each of the 13,000 most hated people in the City, the additional revenue will be less than 0.5% on an annual budget well in excess of $100 billion.
If you find that you are scratching your head about how the current system is “fundamentally unfair” and “hurts working New Yorkers,” well, so am I. All the properties in question already pay full real estate taxes, which increase proportionally with value of the property. Exceptions to proportional property taxes for the elderly already don’t apply to high value properties and high income people. In return for their full real estate tax payments, the wealthy pied-à-terre owners consume almost no City services, because they don’t live here most of the time. Certainly, almost none of them consume the things that are the big items in the City budget, which are K-12 education and Medicaid. Yes, they get some police and fire protection, but those services are heavily concentrated in the low-income and high-crime areas uptown and in the outer boroughs. Some of the billionaires are also undoubtedly big supporters of our cultural institutions, like the museums and the opera. (Ken Griffin definitely falls in this category.). Their spending when they come to town drives the retail uses in Midtown, and many associated jobs. Maintenance of their properties provides yet more jobs. If there is some way in which having these people around sometimes hurts other New Yorkers, I can’t think of it. What am I missing?
And then, this may be the most easily-evaded tax ever created. Likely, it will just immediately wipe out the business represented by “billionaires’ row,” consisting of condo buildings intended for sale to pied-á-terre owners. Instead, we can have the same apartments turned into short-term rentals for the same billionaires, but owned by people who are New York residents. Problem solved! Will Griffin himself be able to beat the tax by just doing a sale/leaseback of his existing apartment? That depends on the exact language of the law. But whatever exact language they use, I have no doubt that there will be easy structures to get around it. And the revenue will start well below the projected $500 million, and then decline rapidly from there as people implement the workarounds.
The income tax is not so easily avoided, because that requires moving away. If you have spent a lifetime putting down roots and building a family, that is not so easy to do. But with this pied-à-terre tax, we’re talking about people who by definition have fewer roots, and who have options of renting rather than buying, or of having their second (or third) home somewhere else.
If you think that this is such a bad and counter-productive idea that nobody could possibly support it, take a look at some of the comments on the video over at YouTube. Things like “I DONT EVEN LIVE THERE AND IM PUMPED”; or “THAT’S MY MAYOR”; or “Can you imagine if even 10% of politicians were like Zohran??? It could be a utopia.” Are these (and many others like them) sarcasm? That’s possible in some cases, but overall I don’t think so. There’s a tremendous amount of anger and jealousy out there, and a thirst for punishment.
In other news, research from the Bank of Canada reports that some 40% of Canadians who would rank in the top 1% by income are now living in the United States. The Canadians are calling this the “brain drain.” Yahoo Finance says that the trend is driven by “lower taxes” in the U.S. Who could have guessed?
UPDATE, April 19: The Washington Free Beacon had a piece yesterday commenting on Mamdani’s “tax the rich” video. They compile some publicly-available information about contributions by Ken Griffin to some New York City charitable and cultural institutions: a $400 million contribution to the Memorial Sloane Kettering cancer hospital (made jointly with David Geffen, a California resident who also owns an expensive apartment in New York City), $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art, and $40 million to the Museum of Natural History. You really need to be a Socialist to understand how this is “fundamentally unfair” and “hurts working New Yorkers.”
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You could build a designer town for $238 million.
Aren’t his parents rich?
One could build the shells of all the houses needed to copy top-end London squares for $238 million.
There are hospitals throughout America that would love a small piece of the pie for their outlays. And small museums. And small school systems. I hope the rich send their contributions to these and forget about the $10,000. a plate dinner.
Me too. Let’s spread that wealth to other states. NYC is for visiting.... for the rich anyway
https://www.untappedcities.com/millionaires-row-5th-avenue-mansions/
That's the 58th Street side.
Two words; Laffer Curve.
Status gap → insecurity → envy → shame/humiliation → resentment against achievement → contempt → moralization as “justice” → desire for destruction → retributive “tax the rich” framing → brief relief → frustration when outcomes don’t change → cynicism → renewed destructive impulses
Marxism basic idea is to punish the rich, regardless if it is economically good or bad.
Marxist ideal is for all to be equally poor, and punish all those who benefited unjustly from exploiting the poor.
Enriching oneself is the greatest sin in Marx religion!
maybe we can get busy removing tax exempt status of the caliphate, since they fight wars in the name of their god
Fifth Avenue, 1911, from Start to Finish in Historic Block-by-Block Photographs Paperback – January 27, 1995
by Christopher Gray (Editor)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486281469
I feel that he made the videos to put targets on these people in hopes of more “Luigis”.
A political system based on jealousy and envy.
“In October 1943, Atlas Corporation, collaborating with hotelier Conrad Hilton, bought the Plaza Hotel for $7.4 million. At the time, the Plaza was 61 percent occupied, and many public areas were closed due to supply shortages caused by World War II. Hilton subsequently spent $6 million refurbishing the hotel.”
“Hilton sold the hotel in 1953 to Boston industrialist A.M. “Sonny” Sonnabend for $15 million, and immediately leased it back for 2.5 years. Sonnabend became president of national restaurant chain Childs Company in 1955, and Childs purchased the Plaza that November for $6.2 million in stock.”
“HCA sold the Plaza to Lawrence Wien in November 1958 for $21 million and immediately leased it back for 25 years.”
“In November 1974, Western International Hotels announced its intention to buy the Plaza Hotel from Sonesta for $25 million. The same year, the Edwardian Room was largely restored according to designs by Charles Winslow, and was rebranded as the Plaza Suite. Following Western International’s acquisition of the Plaza, it renovated the interior spaces, cleaned the exterior, and restored much of the hotel according to the original designs, at a total cost of $200 million.”
“In March 1988, real estate developer Donald Trump bought the Plaza using a $407 million loan from several banks.”
“In March 1992, as a last resort, Trump approached the Plaza’s creditors, a group of seventy banks led by Citibank, who agreed to take a 49% stake in the hotel in exchange for forgiveness of $250 million in debt and an interest-rate reduction.”
“Trump sold the controlling stake to Kwek and Al-Waleed in April 1995. As part of the transaction, the hotel’s debt was reduced to $25 million. Kwek and Al-Waleed each bought a 42 percent stake, and Citibank received the other 16 percent stake, a move intended to prevent Trump from intervening in the sale.”
“The Plaza was highly profitable in the late 1990s, with operating income of almost $46 million at the end of that decade.”
“When the current Plaza Hotel opened in 1907, the first guest to sign its register was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. The hotel also housed other wealthy residents, such as George Jay Gould, as well as Oliver Harriman Jr. and his wife Grace Carley Harriman. John Gates, the hotel’s co-developer, had a 16-room apartment on floor 3, which he rented for $15,000 a year. Harry Frank Guggenheim lived in the hotel’s State Apartment, while Russian princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy, a prominent portrait painter in the early 20th century, lived in a suite on floor 3 with her lion.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Hotel
My guess is NYC lost a bunch productive people during Covid. Although the population has recovered somewhat, the white-collar tax donkeys haven't returned and thus the need to go after millionaires and billionaires.
The mayor will learn that there is no real cure for inequality. It cannot be bought and is not transferrable.
What’s he going to do when the city runs out of money?
They wanted it, they got it. Soak those left wing tech billionaires dry.
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