"The top 1 percent of New Yorkers pay over 40 percent of all income taxes," Paulson & Co. said in an e-mailed statement on Oct. 11, the day Occupy Wall Street protesters left a mock tax-refund check at its president's Upper East Side townhouse.
'Going to Vomit'
Tom Golisano, billionaire founder of payroll processer Paychex Inc. and a former New York gubernatorial candidate, said in an interview this month that while there are examples of excess, it's "ridiculous" to blame everyone who is rich.
"If I hear a politician use the term 'paying your fair share' one more time, I'm going to vomit," said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.
Ken Langone, 76, another Home Depot co-founder and chairman of the NYU Langone Medical Center, said he isn't embarrassed by his success.
"I am a fat cat, I'm not ashamed," he said last week in a telephone interview from a dressing room in his Upper East Side home. "If you mean by fat cat that I've succeeded, yeah, then I'm a fat cat. I stand guilty of being a fat cat."
Job Creators
Wilbur Ross, 74, another private-equity billionaire, said in an e-mail that entrepreneurship and capitalism didn't cause the financial crisis.
"Tearing down the rich does not help those less well- off," said the chairman of New York-based WL Ross & Co. LLC. "If you favor employment, you need employers whose businesses are flourishing."
That view is shared by Robert Rosenkranz, CEO of Wilmington, Delaware-based Delphi Financial Group Inc., a seller of workers'-compensation and group-life insurance.
"It's simply a fact that pretty much all the private- sector jobs in America are created by the decisions of 'the 1 percent' to hire and invest," Rosenkranz, 69, said in an e- mail. "Since their confidence in the future more than any other factor will drive those decisions, it makes little sense to undermine their confidence by vilifying them."