February 20, 2026 • 40 mins
While salaries are an anchor in many Americans' lives, billionaires instead rely on investment income and tax avoidance to line their pockets. Professor and author Ray Madoff takes us behind the curtain of the mega-rich and their asset-saving tricks, just as states like California and cities like New York debate how to address their crushing budget shortfalls. Plus, what Generation Alpha thinks about your skinny jeans, and Steven Colbert takes on the FCC.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi Stacy Bradstone, Welcome to Everybody's business. Thank you so
much for filling in for Max Chafkin as he has
whisked off to the Alps.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
From what I understand, right, and not as a competitor,
I don't think, but as.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
A spectator, yeah, I think he is actually going to
see some Olympic events.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
And he's messed.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
A crazy week, right, just a brutal week and a
reckoning in the world of AI.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, investors in a lot of big software companies, including
Salesforce Oracle Service, now they have been kind of swept
up in this panic that's happening in the industry. And
even while all of this is happening and all these
reckonings are coming down, there is still no question in
anybody's mind that there is a lot of opportunity and
(00:52):
money to be made in AI.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And speaking of wealth, there's something surprising happening in the
conversations about it. California, New York City are having a
kind of brutal debate over how we tax wealth.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
People who earn money pay very high taxes, whereas people
who have money don't.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
That's ray Mattoff and Stacy. We're going to speak with
her today about the way we tax or don't tax
the very rich in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And after that we're going to switch gears a little
bit because before Max left, he and I had a
conversation about Generation Alpha. That is the topic of the
latest issue of BusinessWeek. Particularly. We tend to think of
Jen Alpha's as a very on screen generation, but as
it turns out, there are a lot more skeptical than
we might think.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Don't do scroll kigs horrible.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
This is Everybody's business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. I'm Stacey Banicksmith.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
And I'm Brad Banickstone.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I welcome you into the Vanik Clan for this week's discussion.
We're going to fire up the LM and look at
the effect of AI on the economy. But first, Brad,
let's take a look at the headlines. As we mentioned,
we're seeing a different kind of AI panic. One by one,
(02:11):
sector after sector is being pushed by this sell off
in the markets.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Right travel services, financial services, legal services, software as a service.
It's all being slowly eaten away by fears that AI
tools are going to render these companies useless.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I mean, what's so interesting to me about this is
that we really don't know how things are going to
shake out yet. I mean, these are just very early days.
But the panic seems to be about the speculation, almost
as much as all the exuberants was about the speculation.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
I totally agree it's vibes based, as we.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Say on this vibes based, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Right, I mean, we know AI automates routine work. They
can handle workflows and coding, But I mean the idea
that it displaces data, governance, security, compl clients, vendor support,
all the things that these companies Oracle Salesforce Service now
do so well. I mean, it feels far fetched to
(03:08):
me and more a market reaction than an underlying reality.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I feel like we're seeing this effective AI in so
many parts of the economy, though I feel like it's
the same exact thing in the job market. There's just
so much speculation about I mean, I think there's a
enormous amount of promise. You're really in the heart of
it where you are, Brady, But there's so much promise
and excitement over what AI can do, and so much
fear about what it's going to do as well. It's
(03:32):
just really interesting to me kind of the emotional arc
of AI in our economy right now. And it's easy
to write off vibes I think as being sort of
silly or ephemeral, But I mean, we're talking about billions
of dollars being like sucked out of the economy because
(03:53):
of fears or just pumped into the economy because of excitement.
It's a strange time.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
It's a weird moment, and part of it is the
fear of kind of AI disruption, and part of it
is simply the sheer scale of the capital investments that
are being made as these companies build out data centers,
enter into costly partnerships with companies like Nvidia, or simply
do the work to build up their own AI agents
(04:17):
and try to integrate them into their core products.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It reminds me of back when I was a reporter
at Marketplace. One of my beats was big data, back
when big data was a was a beat, And what
everyone kept saying to me over and over was did
you ever see Minority Report? Of course, do you remember
this When Tom Cruise is running through the mall and
there are all these holograms being projected by these different
brand personalized They're like it's time to replace your whatever
(04:42):
Nike Pegasus or like would you like a Rolex or
whatever it is. And everyone kept saying that is happening,
like that is just around the corner, and it never happened,
Like it still hasn't really happened. I mean it happened
in a different way. And I think about that moment
all the time right now, because I feel like that
is happening with AI. But there's so much money behind
(05:03):
it now and so many market forces behind it. It
seems like it's really kind of shaking the foundations of
our economy in a really profound way. And you know,
in another development this week read these AI companies are
now setting their sites, of course, on deeper pockets the
US government. I feel like all big business eventually turns
(05:23):
its gate. It's like the Jupiter of the finance world,
right is the largest gravitational pull. Everybody wants a US
government contract. But now there is a lot of excitement
and investment around developing autonomous weapons and also using AI
and service of kind of mass surveillance. And now there's
(05:44):
a big discussion about putting protections in place around that
as well.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Right this week we saw anthropic talking to the US
government about extending its claud contracts, SpaceX talking about competing
in a Pentagon contest to produce voice control autonomous drown
swarming technology, and Stacy. The interesting thing here is how
at odds these potential relationships are with some of the
(06:09):
core values that fueled at least some of the AI
companies and Thropic of course, you know Open AI, who's
founding mission was to benefit humanity. They're going to the Pentagon.
They're trying to draw some lines around the relationship. I
don't know how successful that will be.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Boys control drones is very frightening because I feel like
when I have tried to interact with AI via voice controls,
it just doesn't often go that well. And the stakes
in this case are really low. It's like, you know,
a recipe for chicken or something, but if we're talking
about like drone strikes, it just seems like the Department
(06:48):
of War needs to get it right.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And Stacy.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
One more development this week, NPR hosts David Green suing
Google for using a likeness of his voice and it's
product notebook LM. Now you know you're a longtime radio personality.
David Dreine says that is his voice. It says intonations
and filler words.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
What do you think?
Speaker 6 (07:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
This is interesting? I mean, I feel like there's quite
a bit of crossover here between you know, the debate
happening in Hollywood over people's likenesses. I do think it's true.
I mean, this happened at NPR in other iterations as well.
I remember there was a bunch of excitement over an
AI launch that used a voice that sounded very similar
(07:31):
to Steven Skeeep's voice, and it was a podcast that
would generate itself if you said, like, hey, I want
to learn about you know, any fiber and the importance
of fiber in your diet in a podcast form, and
then they would have an en Scipion like voice interviewing
a reporter and it would just immediately generate it. So
when I was at NPR, we were both sort of
(07:52):
delighted and excited by this because it was just so
funny how fast it was able to put it together.
But it did feel kind of terrifying. And the point
that I had a colleague make, and I think this
is a really good one, and to answer your question,
is that you know the reason they're using stevens Keep's
voice or David Green's voice is because there's a lot
of sort of authority in that voice, and that's from
(08:14):
a lot of years of reporting and you know, trying
to get it right and a lot of hours and
time and investment went into that credibility.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
And we should say, Google insists it's a paid actor,
but it's hard to believe it's a total coincidence.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
It is hard to believe it's a total quincience. I mean,
this happened with us. Scarlett Johansson's voice too, write like
they were they appropriated that. I mean, I think because
we have associations with these voices, and I feel like
for us as humans, like we hear voices before we're
even born, Like this is very primal for us, and
we have very emotional associations with voices. It is a
(08:49):
little tricky when an AI can just generate a voice
you trust. I mean, imagine if it's like a family
member or you know, someone you you absolutely look up to,
or someone you absolutely hate, and just like the emotions
that get evoked around that voice telling you something. I
think it is quite powerful and is definitely worth a look,
and I'm glad this lawsuit is happening because I think
(09:11):
it will force a deeper dive because in this country,
like that's how things happen, right via litigation. Bradstone, you
have a big story running in this issue of BusinessWeek.
Can you talk a little bit about it. It's about taxes,
but it's super exciting and interesting. I feel like some
(09:34):
people don't always think that about it.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Nothing more interesting than taxes, right. I wrote the opening
essay of our March issue, how to Tax a Trillionaire.
You may have heard Stacy California tearing itself to pieces
over a proposal a one time tax of five percent
on wealthy families with over one point one billion dollars
in assets. This has not even qualified for the ballot yet,
but politicians are coming out for and against. Billions are
(09:58):
being raised by super packs fight it. People have threatened
to leave the state and that's it. Famous founders Larry Page,
Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg buying homes and establishing residences outside
the state.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
This is a fascinating topic and certainly one that has
been really top of mind, I think for the last
few years now, as people have discussed wealth and the
disparity between the wealthy and lower income people getting wider
in this country. And we are very lucky to have
someone you spoke with for your article. Ray Madoff, professor
at Boston College Law School and author of The Second Estate,
(10:32):
How the Tax Code Made in American Aristocracy. Ray, welcome
to everybody's business.
Speaker 5 (10:37):
Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be
here with both of you.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
So, Ray, you wrote the book on how we tax
or how we don't tax billionaires. I really relied on
you as I reported out this story. So tell us
what do you think of wealth tax proposals like the
one in California.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
It's interesting because wealth tax proposals are in some ways
an obvious solution to the current situation. The current problem
that we have now is that the wealthiest Americans have
found many easily available effective ways to avoid the income tax.
And when they avoid the federal income tax, they also
avoid the state income tax. And so wealth taxes seem
(11:17):
to provide the perfect response to this problem, which is fine,
let's just tax their wealth. The problem is, like a
lot of solutions, the devil is in the details. They
might work in theory, but I am very concerned about
their ability to work in practice.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So this might seem like kind of an obvious question,
but I think it is quite interesting when we talk
about taxing someone's wealth as opposed to their income. What
do we mean and why is this a solution that
people like to talk about when dealing with the wealth
or the income gap in the US.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Yeah, And I think the answer is because of the
failure to tax income. I'm going to start on the
income side, because I think that's the tax that most
people are most familiar with.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Right.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Most people who are well off are well off because
they get salaries and other forms of taxable income. And
the more taxable income you get, the higher taxes you pay.
The thing is for our richest Americans, all these guys
in Silicon Valley, they have found ways of avoiding taxable income,
and they do it by following what I call the
(12:22):
tax avoidance playbook. And the first step is they avoid salaries.
So all these guys that are like, you know, the
greatest of all time, they're taking extremely modest salaries. So
Jeff Bezos gets a salary of eighty two thousand dollars,
so low that he actually qualified for the child tax credit,
which he took. And you know, and he never takes
(12:43):
more than that. And it's not just tax and it's
not because he's just a modest, humble guy, right, it's
because he knows that salaries are for suckers, because salaries
are subject to lots of taxes. They are subject to
both income taxes and payroll taxes, and together those taxes
are frequently, you know, over fifty percent. So they don't
(13:05):
want anything to do with that. And so what they
do is they don't take salaries and instead they rely
on the growing value of their stock. And the growth
in value of their stock is extraordinary. Bezos again probably
on his own, his stock has probably gone up one
hundred and fifty billion dollars just since twenty twenty three,
So you're talking about massive growth of wealth. The thing
(13:26):
is that growth of wealth also avoids taxes because we
don't tax growing wealth until the property is sold. And
our wealthiest Americans have found a way to access this
property without actually selling it. And what that way is
is that they use it as collateral to borrow money.
(13:46):
And all of our richest Americans have borrowed huge amounts
of money to support their most lavish lifestyles. And what
it means is that they are able to live off
of this money without paying any taxes on it. Or
a state like California, and they have no salaries, they
have no capital gains, they have no income, and yet
(14:07):
they have massive amounts of wealth, and so of course
the natural thing is to say, well, let's just tax
them on their wealth. We know they have hundreds of
billions of dollars, so let's tax their wealth much like
one would tax a house. Right, a house is tax
not because it produces income, but based on the value
of the house. And that's what they're trying to do
(14:29):
in California and in other places that have proposed adopting
a wealth tax. It would be basically a five percent
tax on all the property interests owned by the various
taxpayers who fall into this group, which I think it's
a billion dollars is the current proposed cutoff for the
California tex And.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
So, Ray, let's talk about the California tax. I mean,
why then is that a bad idea? If it is,
I mean, we're seeing a lot of billionaires taking their
toys and leaving the state Nevada, Miami, bat Florida. And
by the way, the reason this is proposed is that
the healthcare union, the largest healthcare union in the state,
looked at the state budget, saw that the One Big
(15:08):
Beautiful Bill Act is going to open up a massive
hole in the state's medical budget and thought, this is
a you know, a reservoir of perhaps untapped wealth that
we can access. So, you know, are these state led
measures just a bad idea.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
Yeah, there's a couple of problems with them. As I say,
they are a totally understandable idea in theory, particularly when
you're talking about people who own publicly traded stock and
we can easily see at least what that stock is worth.
But there's a number of practical problems, particularly for states.
(15:44):
One problem is, as we're already seeing, is that people
can leave the state. Now California is trying to get
around it with this bill because they said anyone who
is a citizen on January first, I think that was
the cutoff date, they are still going to be subject
to this tax even if they reloak. But I'd say
a bigger problem comes with valuation, and that's because when
(16:05):
we have publicly traded stock, we can see that type
of value, but lots of wealth is held not in
publicly traded stock, and a lot of it is held,
for example, in partnership interests that are highly complex like
seven hundred levels d partnerships owning partnerships and very very
difficult to track that value, and then add all the
other types of things that people own. And the problem
(16:27):
is for states is that states normally piggyback their systems
on the federal government. Right, the federal government figures out
what your adjusted gross income is, and then the state
just rides on that. With these wealth taxes, states are
going to have to on their own put in all
that they need to try to track value, and it's
(16:48):
going to be a highly complex endeavor. And if we
were to do it large scale, like on the national level,
I think it would incentivize a lot of our wealthiest
Americans to stay out of the publicly try and instead
to stay in privately held business interests. And we already
see that now where a lot of private businesses are
not going public, and this would give them one more
(17:09):
reason to not go public. But when businesses pull out
of the public market, that's not good for all of
us who depend on the public market for our retirement
and other savings.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
I'm curious because I know a lot of countries have
tried a wealth tax because I love how you said
salaries are for suckers. And it's true that a lot
of the wealthiest people, especially you know, generational wealth, it
gets tied up in properties, yachts, coin collections, things like that.
So a lot of countries have tried to get at this,
like France and Austria and Finland, they have all dropped
(17:41):
this wealth tax, like, they all backed away from it.
Are the reasons that you're laying out why? I mean,
did they have the same difficulty in assessing how much
wealth was actually there? And people potentially moving?
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I think it's very difficult to capture everybody's wealth, the
wealthy of the wealthiest people, I do think, And in Europe,
in particularly, you have a lot of problems with people
moving because of course you have freedom of movement, but
without a unified system of taxation and so of course
people can easily move to lower tax jurisdiction. So it's
(18:15):
particularly problematic in Europe. And you know, I think that
if one we're going to have a wealth tax system,
it is going to involve sort of a whole new
way of thinking about things that frankly, at least in
the United States, is kind of anathema to our way
of thinking, just in terms of basic privacy. Right, if
people were forced to disclose every single thing they owned,
(18:36):
I think that a lot of Americans, even those who
weren't subject to the tax, might feel that that is
too invasive of people's privacy. So I worry about that
as well.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Ray, why are the politics around wealth taxes and taxing
the wealthy? Well, why are they so tricky, so hard fought,
so bitterly emotional at something that we're seeing right now
in California.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Well, I mean, of course, one reason is that the
wealthy of a lot of firepower, right, and so now
you're coming after them, and they have a lot to
say about it. So we've been seeing this more and more,
where the wealthiest are throwing their weight around in ways
that I think culturally they were previously probably less inclined
to do. Right, they would be concerned about the wealthy
(19:20):
throwing around their power, that this is maybe anti democratic,
But we're not in that age today. We may be
in the future, but right now we're in the age
that is embracing throw around your weight. Look out for
number one and it's almost like the greed is good.
You know, they say that every forty years a time
repeats itself, and so this is this is greed as
(19:41):
good to the nth degree. I think in the era
that we're living in right now.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I mean, do you think that taxing trillionaires or taxing
this super wealthy is that something that is potentially doable?
Speaker 5 (19:54):
So I think the first answer is to stop focusing
on that we're taxing trillionaires, we're taxing billionaires, because I
think that type of framing makes it sound like the
rich are already paying a lot of taxes and now
we're going to impose extra burdens on them, And so
(20:14):
then it pushes us to have these kind of conversations
that are like, you know, our rich people good or
bad for society? Do they bring jobs or do they
you know, all of this stuff. But that's really beside
the point. I think the bigger problem is that the
public at large has been duped about who pays taxes
and how much taxes the wealthy actually pay. And so
(20:36):
I think what's better is to say, you know, wealthy
people need to pay taxes just like the rest of us,
not that they need extra taxes that we're going to
specifically impose on them, But they need to We need
to adjust our rules because right now, our rules allow
the wealthy to acquire just exorbitant amounts of wealth entirely
(20:58):
tax free, and for them it's optional.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
That's why you have to wonder, like, why do we
hear things like when Elon Musk says, you know, should
I pay taxes or shouldn't I pay taxes? Right, he
asked his Twitter viewers, or Warren Buffett says, well, I
think I do better by not paying taxes, not paying
down the national debt, and instead giving to my philanthropy.
Somebody who earns a salary cannot make that decision that
(21:23):
they're going to not pay taxes and instead donate to charity.
So why are we letting our wealthy treat taxes as
an option rather than as an obligation that we all
have to share.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Is there any country that's really done a really good
job of this or is it just really tricky to
tax people who have a lot of resources.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
I don't think it's really tricky to tax I don't
think that's the actual problem. We easily could tax our
wealthiest Americans by adopting one role that was proposed by
both Barack Obama and Richard Nixon, which was an odd
pairing right, which was that we tax these gains at
whenever the property is transferred instead of requiring sale. Right,
(22:03):
we should say when these people transfer their property by gifts,
which they're doing a lot of gifting or a death,
they're going to recognize the gains then. And then the
other thing that we need to do is to tax
inheritances by pulling them into the income tax system, because
inheritances right now, are you know? The current estate tax
system is so deeply flawed it's not even a tax system.
(22:25):
And then I think we could also adjust the rules
of philanthropy, and then we'd have a system that I
think does a pretty good job of treating everybody the same,
bringing everybody into the tax system, and requiring everyone to
contribute to supporting the costs of government.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Ray before we let you go.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
I mean, these these failures in the tax code have
been around for decades. Warren Buffett wrote the famous twenty
eleven New York Times hotbed pointing out that a secretary
paid a higher tax rate than he did, So I mean,
is there any reason to think that maybe this California
ballot proposition, despite its flaws, becomes a kind of inciting
moment where we can have a kind of more clear
(23:03):
eyed and rational discussion about how the rich pay taxes.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Absolutely, because I think one great thing about this California
and frankly the other states that are doing it, is
that it's really shining a light on the fact that
the wealthiest Americans are in fact not paying taxes and
don't have to pay taxes, and so this this moves
the needle forward, right instead of having confusion like are
(23:28):
the rich paying a lot of taxes or not? You
don't really see those discussions. Mostly people say, oh, yeah,
the rich aren't paying taxes, and how are we going
to address it as a problem. So I actually think, well,
I'm not in particular favor of this wealth tax. I
think it is a very positive change for getting a
fairer tax system because it's opening up conversations just like
(23:50):
this where we actually see how the wealthy avoid taxes
because they avoid taxes on their salaries and on their
gains and on their inheritances.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
So, Stacy, my takeaway is that we're the suckers earning salaries.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
I know their taxes.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
That's going to that's going to haunt. The salaries are
for suckers, is going to hant.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Hooray.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Thank you for bringing that to our attentions, and thanks
for being here as a guest on everybody's business.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Thank you so much, wonderful being here.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Thank you. Okay, Brad, let us set the trillionaires aside
for the moment to talk about a slightly different topic,
although another cohort that does command an enormous economic power.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
With perhaps just as much mystique as the trillionaire's Jim Alpha. Stacy,
So kids between the ages of I guess is you
know just born and around sixteen. We have a whole
package and the current issue of Business Week about Generation
Alpha as a potent economic force.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
One of the really surprising things about Gen Alpha is
that even though most of them aren't earning their own
money yet, a lot of them are commanding a lot
of money or wielding a lot of economic power within
their families. I mean, I know you have children, Brad,
or how much control do they have over how your
family spends?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
They're a little older, they're not Jen Alpha, but I
would say Stacy they have all the control and really,
oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Over like where you guys go on vacation, what you eat?
We just say streaming service.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Let's just say they're formidable.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
But the thing ahead, you know, Jen Alpha, they get
interested earlier in cultural trends, in beauty products and influencers,
and so they are a force that companies have to understand.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Well, Brad, before Max whisked off to the Olympics, we
did have a conversation about Gen Alpha. Both of us
wrote articles for the Gen Alpha issue and Max actually
talked to his children for the story, and we learned
all kinds of things about this generation. It's economic muscle
and also some of the traits that it's starting to show, which,
(26:01):
of course companies and people everywhere are very interested.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
In, very curious to hear what you found out.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Let's roll the tape.
Speaker 6 (26:09):
I am a, as you know, Stacy, very serious journalist,
and so in preparation for this segment, I went out
and I did some reporting. I gathered some important tape
with some important Gen Alphas that I know. This is
my daughter Alice, her best friend Olive, and then my
son saw these are ages eleven, ten and nine. So
(26:31):
the sweet spot of gen Alpha, and I wanted to
just ask them, okay, like, what do you guys think
is cool? Because to your post, this.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Is a million corporations.
Speaker 7 (26:41):
They're asking us a very eensive question, discretionary spending. What
I have is so valuable, like the CEOs of some
of the most important and valuable.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Companies selling giving it to us for free on everybody's generous.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
So let's give a listen.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
This is sort of a quick focus group on some
trends that are big or not big among the alphas.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
All right, Minecraft and.
Speaker 8 (27:06):
Roadblocks road Minecraft's okay.
Speaker 6 (27:10):
Taylor Swift bad Bunny good artist kid Rock?
Speaker 8 (27:16):
How would I know?
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Pokemon millennials?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
What I don't know?
Speaker 4 (27:22):
iPads okay, TikTok, don't do scroll kids, horrible, cyber trucks,
garbage trucks.
Speaker 8 (27:33):
Six seven, it's over cats eye as sucks, skinny jeans t.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Gnarly is gnarly good or bad?
Speaker 4 (27:48):
You didn't catch that reference.
Speaker 6 (27:49):
That's it gets from a cat's eye song called Gnarly.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
And it's also big and gnarly. It could be good
or bad.
Speaker 6 (27:58):
It means it means awesome, it means gross, it means
all the things they love Bobati, though I can tell
you now, I gotta say, so you reacted to my
kids talking about technology and saying that you know Instagram,
and I'll have said the same thing, you know Instagram,
taktok poison.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Poison for your brain.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
So I wrote about this.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
It's not wrong.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I wrote about this in the latest sits Business Week.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
And I really think that this idea that alphas are
the most online generation. You see this show up all
the time. It even shows up sometimes in surveys. I
don't know that that's totally true, or it may be
missing a part of the story, because it's true that
although alphas do have a lot of screen time, and
(28:41):
you brought up COVID this this time where all these
kids were just like basically plugged into screens twenty four
to seven, but they've also kind of internalized a lot
of the skepticism about screens that their parents have as well.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
And I hear that in my own house.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
And this is the thing I wanted to write about,
which is like I read a lot about parents and
children getting into fights about screen time, and the way
it's always described is like a parent saying that I
am in a big fight with my kid about screen time.
They will not get off TikTok at the dining room table.
And these kids are often a little bit older than
my kids. But the big fight in my house over
(29:19):
screen time is my kids like yelling at me, and
they're the ones being like, get off your phone, deck,
get off your phone. And I really think and it
shows up in some of the surveys. So there's some
Pew data about kids feelings about social media. And a
few years ago, like three years ago, it was kids
thought that social media was basically good and it is
(29:41):
totally flipped where now the numbers say just the opposite.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I should pull this up really quick.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
Twenty twenty two, they as teenagers, is social media mostly
good or mostly bad for people your age? And at
the time, thirty two percent said that it was mostly bad,
twenty four percent said that was mostly good, so slightly negative.
Today eleven percent mostly good, forty eight percent mostly bad.
So basically a lot of kids are at least aware
(30:09):
of this. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're not doing it.
But I think this is something that big companies are
going to have to reckon with, not only because kids
may not be quite as brain poisoned as their parents. Like,
I think our generation, especially maybe people a little younger
than you and I who really grew up on the Internet.
(30:31):
I think we are the ones maybe who have like
the least healthy habits around screens, whereas some of these
quote unquote digital natives are actually maybe a little bit
better able to kind of compartmentalize. And then you also
have you know, all of these countries are passing laws now.
So Australia just passed a rule saying kids under sixteen
(30:52):
are not algy social media. That Spain is doing it,
the UK is doing it, a lot of US states
are doing it. There is a shift happening, and I
don't think any of us really know where it's going
to go.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I wonder what AI is going to throw into this mix,
because I do think just the way people are interacting
with AI now, maybe not not such young kids, but
maybe older alphas, because people have like very personal conversations
with AI or asked advice.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Yeah, when I was reporting this story, I talked to
John Heit, who is the author of The Anxious Generation,
which is this best selling book. He's an NYU social psychologist,
and he's like the guy who created a lot of
the kind of conversation going on right now around screen time,
and he says essentially that AI is like social media,
(31:42):
but a million times worse, because part of the problem
with social media for kids and for development is that
it kind of like takes kids away from like human connections.
But with AI, there's no connection at all. It's just
a bot making.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Connecting, but maybe not with a human.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Yeah, and so you know, he's told me, you know,
I think it's the worst way you could possibly bring
up a kid.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I do think those concerns are out there.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
And unlike with social media, where there was like a
ten year period where pretty much tech companies did whatever
they wanted. They were marketing Facebook and Instagram to very
young children, and there was an effort that was that
it kind of got derailed, but they even wanted to go,
you know, younger than thirteen.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
They were gonna have like nine year olds.
Speaker 6 (32:26):
On on these social media platforms, which when you think
about it, I don't know, as a parent, it seems
kind of crazy. The conversation now is very different. I
also will say when I talk to my kids about AI,
they don't like AI.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
They think it's dumb, and.
Speaker 6 (32:39):
Maybe this is partly because because they're you know, they're
my kids, and they hear my a skepticism. But I
don't know that that's totally true. I think a lot
of kids are actually kind of aware of the limitation.
I was talking the other day with my daughter Alice
and one of her friends, and they were saying, oh,
it would have been so great to grow up in
the eighties. And I was like, why, why would it
be so great to grow up in the eighties, and
(33:00):
they said, well, you could go to movie theaters and
talking about these kind of retro experiences. Alice is super
into CDs, which is funny, and then she goes, yeah,
your generation's so lucky, and I said why and she goes, well,
you haven't had your brains poisoned by AI. And I said, well, Alice,
you don't have to use AI, and she goes, it's everywhere.
(33:20):
I try to search for a fat frog on Google
and I get a bunch of AI. She was really
disturbed by the fact that the Google results for fat
frog was AI.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I now want a Google fat frog. But I think
she's right in that. I mean, because companies are adopting it,
it may be hard to not use it, and then
when you start using it, it may be hard to
not kind of veer into a more personal relationship. But
also maybe there's more of an awareness now than there
was when social media started, because that was such a
new thing, and maybe there wasn't as much of an awareness. Also,
(33:52):
I think because you were connecting with other people, maybe
there was less of a warning flag's going off, because
I mean, there have been like a million movies and
books about Rise of the Robots.
Speaker 6 (34:02):
I do think that the kind of screen anxiety that
the Jonathan Heyde view of the world is seeping into kids.
When I called him, he told me, you know, if
you had called me three or four weeks ago, I
would have told you your kids are freaks. But he
had actually just released like a kid's version of his book.
It's called The Amazing Generation. It's a graphic novel and it's,
(34:25):
you know, surprisingly, it's sold pretty well, and there are
all these Amazon reviews of kids being like, I.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Hope I never get a smartphone and things like that.
Speaker 6 (34:33):
So it may be that kids really have these kind
of retro values or maybe just absorbing from us, the parents.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I feel like there can be a gap between knowing
what's good for you and doing what's good for you,
and AI makes certain things so easy, including writing papers,
doing research. I feel like that's going to be really
hard to I mean, it's like it's so awesome to
have a flip phone, or it's awesome to g scale
your phone until you are on deadline.
Speaker 6 (35:03):
I'm so glad you brought that up, because even in
this Pew survey where kids are saying it's bad for
their peers, they don't think they are using it badly.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
So there is a bit of a Now.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
I'm personally not addicted to it. I feel like it's
like the thing with the glass of wine. It's like,
I mean, I have a glass of wine every night,
but that's totally different.
Speaker 6 (35:22):
But you know what, like these public health campaigns, they
work sometimes, And as I have been.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Thinking, say no to drugs work no.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
But say no to smoking absolutely worked.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I mean eventually.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
And when I've thought about the conversations that I have
at the dinner table with my kids around screen time,
they really really remind me of conversations I had with
my parents, members of my parents' generation about cigarettes, where
I was getting all of this kind of anti tobacco
information at school and coming home and being like.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
You shouldn't small, you know, oh my god, And that worked.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
I mean, you look at the generational shift on smoking
and it's been profound.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Like a member of the generational shift on smoking had
to do with taxes.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Sure, but it has made a difference.
Speaker 6 (36:08):
And talking to John Hate about this, what he said
is and where he kind of compared it. He said,
you know, one of the things I think that really
worked on cigarette smoking was in the late nineties, the
sort of anti tobacco groups. They started sort of demonizing
the tobacco industry and saying it wasn't really about your health,
it was about these tobacco companies are manipulating you. They
(36:30):
are selling you an addictive product, they are making money
off of you. And I think there's some research showing
that that marketing that happened in the late nineties was effective.
And he thinks that some of the messaging around tech
that's pretty similar. That's all about, you know, Mark Zuckerberg
is trying to addict you to your phone or whatever,
just like you heard in my daughter and her friend's statement,
(36:50):
like it's poison there.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
They're tricking you. Like that sense of a big company getting.
Speaker 6 (36:55):
One over on you is a message that maybe could
potential breakthrough among among teens and younger kids.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Brad, it is that time in the show when we
talk about underrated stories of the week, and you brought
us an underrated story. What is there.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Sorry for us?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Well, Stacy, is Stephen Colbert really ever underrated? I?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I like him. I think he is very often underrated.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
I do too.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
I think we'll be feeling the reverberations from this week's
events for a long time. First, on Monday, he wanted
us a program The Late Show. As you probably heard,
and said lawyers at CBS, his bosses had blocked him
from airing an interview with US Senate candidate from Texas,
James Tallerico.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yes, and from what I understand, he still did get
the interview out into the world. He uploaded it on
YouTube and it has been viewed seven million times.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
That I was told, in some uncertain terms that not
only could I not have him on, I could not
mention me not having him on. And because my network
clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
This, Stacy. This is a three way battle.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who you might remember
as Jimmy Kimmel's Foyle, Yes, is trying to enforce those
old equal time rules on the public airwaves, so if
you have one candidate, you need to give time to
their opposition.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
CBS is saying they didn't.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Force Talerico off the air and simply insists they gave
the late show options for how to fulfill those equal
time obligations. And Cobert, who is set to end a
show on May, I think he just doesn't.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Give af at this point.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
He went on the air again this week and said
every word of a script was approved by CBS lawyers,
and he's fighting well.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
I mean, I have to say the big winner in
all of this is James Talerico, who says after this
interview went viral on YouTube, his campaign raised two and
a half million dollars in twenty four hours, which is
just mind blowing.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
And that's a way I think the story could be underrated.
He's competing for Senator John Cornyn seat. He is studying
to be a Presbyterian minister. He went on Ezra Klein's podcast,
you can kind of see the Democrats falling in love
with Tallarico and this incident this week is only going
to raise his profile.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I also feel like there's something maybe a larger theme
going on here too, but about the media and the
Trump administration. I mean, we just had huge layoffs at
the Washington Post. Like you said, Jimmy Kimmels also had
a big run in with the administration. It's really interesting
to see the administration like quite directly engaging with the
media in a lot of cases. Although it's unclear if
(39:50):
that actually happens here, it's definitely a theme right now right.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
I mean, the question is are they trying to enforce
fairness on the public airways or is this a part
of and agenda? And I think that question has all
sorts of impacts, including in the battle over Warner Brothers,
which could go to Netflix, could go to Paramount and
of course owned CNN.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
So this is the only beginning of this kind of fight.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
This show is produced by Stacy Wong and Jasmine JT.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Green.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, Sam Rogan handles engineering,
and Dave Purcell factchecks. Special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin,
Maria Ling, and Angel Reccio. If you have a minute.
Please rate and review the show. It means a lot
to us. And if you have a story that should
be our business, send us an email. Everybody's at Bloomberg
dot net. That's everybody's with an s at Bloomberg dot net.
(40:44):
Thank you for listening, and see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi Stacy Bradstone, Welcome to Everybody's business. Thank you so
much for filling in for Max Chafkin as he has
whisked off to the Alps.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
From what I understand, right, and not as a competitor,
I don't think, but as.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
A spectator, yeah, I think he is actually going to
see some Olympic events.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
And he's messed.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
A crazy week, right, just a brutal week and a
reckoning in the world of AI.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, investors in a lot of big software companies, including
Salesforce Oracle Service, now they have been kind of swept
up in this panic that's happening in the industry. And
even while all of this is happening and all these
reckonings are coming down, there is still no question in
anybody's mind that there is a lot of opportunity and
(00:52):
money to be made in AI.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And speaking of wealth, there's something surprising happening in the
conversations about it. California, New York City are having a
kind of brutal debate over how we tax wealth.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
People who earn money pay very high taxes, whereas people
who have money don't.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
That's ray Mattoff and Stacy. We're going to speak with
her today about the way we tax or don't tax
the very rich in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And after that we're going to switch gears a little
bit because before Max left, he and I had a
conversation about Generation Alpha. That is the topic of the
latest issue of BusinessWeek. Particularly. We tend to think of
Jen Alpha's as a very on screen generation, but as
it turns out, there are a lot more skeptical than
we might think.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Don't do scroll kigs horrible.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
This is Everybody's business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. I'm Stacey Banicksmith.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
And I'm Brad Banickstone.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I welcome you into the Vanik Clan for this week's discussion.
We're going to fire up the LM and look at
the effect of AI on the economy. But first, Brad,
let's take a look at the headlines. As we mentioned,
we're seeing a different kind of AI panic. One by one,
(02:11):
sector after sector is being pushed by this sell off
in the markets.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Right travel services, financial services, legal services, software as a service.
It's all being slowly eaten away by fears that AI
tools are going to render these companies useless.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I mean, what's so interesting to me about this is
that we really don't know how things are going to
shake out yet. I mean, these are just very early days.
But the panic seems to be about the speculation, almost
as much as all the exuberants was about the speculation.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
I totally agree it's vibes based, as we.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Say on this vibes based, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Right, I mean, we know AI automates routine work. They
can handle workflows and coding, But I mean the idea
that it displaces data, governance, security, compl clients, vendor support,
all the things that these companies Oracle Salesforce Service now
do so well. I mean, it feels far fetched to
(03:08):
me and more a market reaction than an underlying reality.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I feel like we're seeing this effective AI in so
many parts of the economy, though I feel like it's
the same exact thing in the job market. There's just
so much speculation about I mean, I think there's a
enormous amount of promise. You're really in the heart of
it where you are, Brady, But there's so much promise
and excitement over what AI can do, and so much
fear about what it's going to do as well. It's
(03:32):
just really interesting to me kind of the emotional arc
of AI in our economy right now. And it's easy
to write off vibes I think as being sort of
silly or ephemeral, But I mean, we're talking about billions
of dollars being like sucked out of the economy because
(03:53):
of fears or just pumped into the economy because of excitement.
It's a strange time.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
It's a weird moment, and part of it is the
fear of kind of AI disruption, and part of it
is simply the sheer scale of the capital investments that
are being made as these companies build out data centers,
enter into costly partnerships with companies like Nvidia, or simply
do the work to build up their own AI agents
(04:17):
and try to integrate them into their core products.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It reminds me of back when I was a reporter
at Marketplace. One of my beats was big data, back
when big data was a was a beat, And what
everyone kept saying to me over and over was did
you ever see Minority Report? Of course, do you remember
this When Tom Cruise is running through the mall and
there are all these holograms being projected by these different
brand personalized They're like it's time to replace your whatever
(04:42):
Nike Pegasus or like would you like a Rolex or
whatever it is. And everyone kept saying that is happening,
like that is just around the corner, and it never happened,
Like it still hasn't really happened. I mean it happened
in a different way. And I think about that moment
all the time right now, because I feel like that
is happening with AI. But there's so much money behind
(05:03):
it now and so many market forces behind it. It
seems like it's really kind of shaking the foundations of
our economy in a really profound way. And you know,
in another development this week read these AI companies are
now setting their sites, of course, on deeper pockets the
US government. I feel like all big business eventually turns
(05:23):
its gate. It's like the Jupiter of the finance world,
right is the largest gravitational pull. Everybody wants a US
government contract. But now there is a lot of excitement
and investment around developing autonomous weapons and also using AI
and service of kind of mass surveillance. And now there's
(05:44):
a big discussion about putting protections in place around that
as well.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Right this week we saw anthropic talking to the US
government about extending its claud contracts, SpaceX talking about competing
in a Pentagon contest to produce voice control autonomous drown
swarming technology, and Stacy. The interesting thing here is how
at odds these potential relationships are with some of the
(06:09):
core values that fueled at least some of the AI
companies and Thropic of course, you know Open AI, who's
founding mission was to benefit humanity. They're going to the Pentagon.
They're trying to draw some lines around the relationship. I
don't know how successful that will be.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Boys control drones is very frightening because I feel like
when I have tried to interact with AI via voice controls,
it just doesn't often go that well. And the stakes
in this case are really low. It's like, you know,
a recipe for chicken or something, but if we're talking
about like drone strikes, it just seems like the Department
(06:48):
of War needs to get it right.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And Stacy.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
One more development this week, NPR hosts David Green suing
Google for using a likeness of his voice and it's
product notebook LM. Now you know you're a longtime radio personality.
David Dreine says that is his voice. It says intonations
and filler words.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
What do you think?
Speaker 6 (07:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
This is interesting? I mean, I feel like there's quite
a bit of crossover here between you know, the debate
happening in Hollywood over people's likenesses. I do think it's true.
I mean, this happened at NPR in other iterations as well.
I remember there was a bunch of excitement over an
AI launch that used a voice that sounded very similar
(07:31):
to Steven Skeeep's voice, and it was a podcast that
would generate itself if you said, like, hey, I want
to learn about you know, any fiber and the importance
of fiber in your diet in a podcast form, and
then they would have an en Scipion like voice interviewing
a reporter and it would just immediately generate it. So
when I was at NPR, we were both sort of
(07:52):
delighted and excited by this because it was just so
funny how fast it was able to put it together.
But it did feel kind of terrifying. And the point
that I had a colleague make, and I think this
is a really good one, and to answer your question,
is that you know the reason they're using stevens Keep's
voice or David Green's voice is because there's a lot
of sort of authority in that voice, and that's from
(08:14):
a lot of years of reporting and you know, trying
to get it right and a lot of hours and
time and investment went into that credibility.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
And we should say, Google insists it's a paid actor,
but it's hard to believe it's a total coincidence.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
It is hard to believe it's a total quincience. I mean,
this happened with us. Scarlett Johansson's voice too, write like
they were they appropriated that. I mean, I think because
we have associations with these voices, and I feel like
for us as humans, like we hear voices before we're
even born, Like this is very primal for us, and
we have very emotional associations with voices. It is a
(08:49):
little tricky when an AI can just generate a voice
you trust. I mean, imagine if it's like a family
member or you know, someone you you absolutely look up to,
or someone you absolutely hate, and just like the emotions
that get evoked around that voice telling you something. I
think it is quite powerful and is definitely worth a look,
and I'm glad this lawsuit is happening because I think
(09:11):
it will force a deeper dive because in this country,
like that's how things happen, right via litigation. Bradstone, you
have a big story running in this issue of BusinessWeek.
Can you talk a little bit about it. It's about taxes,
but it's super exciting and interesting. I feel like some
(09:34):
people don't always think that about it.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Nothing more interesting than taxes, right. I wrote the opening
essay of our March issue, how to Tax a Trillionaire.
You may have heard Stacy California tearing itself to pieces
over a proposal a one time tax of five percent
on wealthy families with over one point one billion dollars
in assets. This has not even qualified for the ballot yet,
but politicians are coming out for and against. Billions are
(09:58):
being raised by super packs fight it. People have threatened
to leave the state and that's it. Famous founders Larry Page,
Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg buying homes and establishing residences outside
the state.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
This is a fascinating topic and certainly one that has
been really top of mind, I think for the last
few years now, as people have discussed wealth and the
disparity between the wealthy and lower income people getting wider
in this country. And we are very lucky to have
someone you spoke with for your article. Ray Madoff, professor
at Boston College Law School and author of The Second Estate,
(10:32):
How the Tax Code Made in American Aristocracy. Ray, welcome
to everybody's business.
Speaker 5 (10:37):
Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be
here with both of you.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
So, Ray, you wrote the book on how we tax
or how we don't tax billionaires. I really relied on
you as I reported out this story. So tell us
what do you think of wealth tax proposals like the
one in California.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
It's interesting because wealth tax proposals are in some ways
an obvious solution to the current situation. The current problem
that we have now is that the wealthiest Americans have
found many easily available effective ways to avoid the income tax.
And when they avoid the federal income tax, they also
avoid the state income tax. And so wealth taxes seem
(11:17):
to provide the perfect response to this problem, which is fine,
let's just tax their wealth. The problem is, like a
lot of solutions, the devil is in the details. They
might work in theory, but I am very concerned about
their ability to work in practice.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So this might seem like kind of an obvious question,
but I think it is quite interesting when we talk
about taxing someone's wealth as opposed to their income. What
do we mean and why is this a solution that
people like to talk about when dealing with the wealth
or the income gap in the US.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Yeah, And I think the answer is because of the
failure to tax income. I'm going to start on the
income side, because I think that's the tax that most
people are most familiar with.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Right.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Most people who are well off are well off because
they get salaries and other forms of taxable income. And
the more taxable income you get, the higher taxes you pay.
The thing is for our richest Americans, all these guys
in Silicon Valley, they have found ways of avoiding taxable income,
and they do it by following what I call the
(12:22):
tax avoidance playbook. And the first step is they avoid salaries.
So all these guys that are like, you know, the
greatest of all time, they're taking extremely modest salaries. So
Jeff Bezos gets a salary of eighty two thousand dollars,
so low that he actually qualified for the child tax credit,
which he took. And you know, and he never takes
(12:43):
more than that. And it's not just tax and it's
not because he's just a modest, humble guy, right, it's
because he knows that salaries are for suckers, because salaries
are subject to lots of taxes. They are subject to
both income taxes and payroll taxes, and together those taxes
are frequently, you know, over fifty percent. So they don't
(13:05):
want anything to do with that. And so what they
do is they don't take salaries and instead they rely
on the growing value of their stock. And the growth
in value of their stock is extraordinary. Bezos again probably
on his own, his stock has probably gone up one
hundred and fifty billion dollars just since twenty twenty three,
So you're talking about massive growth of wealth. The thing
(13:26):
is that growth of wealth also avoids taxes because we
don't tax growing wealth until the property is sold. And
our wealthiest Americans have found a way to access this
property without actually selling it. And what that way is
is that they use it as collateral to borrow money.
(13:46):
And all of our richest Americans have borrowed huge amounts
of money to support their most lavish lifestyles. And what
it means is that they are able to live off
of this money without paying any taxes on it. Or
a state like California, and they have no salaries, they
have no capital gains, they have no income, and yet
(14:07):
they have massive amounts of wealth, and so of course
the natural thing is to say, well, let's just tax
them on their wealth. We know they have hundreds of
billions of dollars, so let's tax their wealth much like
one would tax a house. Right, a house is tax
not because it produces income, but based on the value
of the house. And that's what they're trying to do
(14:29):
in California and in other places that have proposed adopting
a wealth tax. It would be basically a five percent
tax on all the property interests owned by the various
taxpayers who fall into this group, which I think it's
a billion dollars is the current proposed cutoff for the
California tex And.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
So, Ray, let's talk about the California tax. I mean,
why then is that a bad idea? If it is,
I mean, we're seeing a lot of billionaires taking their
toys and leaving the state Nevada, Miami, bat Florida. And
by the way, the reason this is proposed is that
the healthcare union, the largest healthcare union in the state,
looked at the state budget, saw that the One Big
(15:08):
Beautiful Bill Act is going to open up a massive
hole in the state's medical budget and thought, this is
a you know, a reservoir of perhaps untapped wealth that
we can access. So, you know, are these state led
measures just a bad idea.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
Yeah, there's a couple of problems with them. As I say,
they are a totally understandable idea in theory, particularly when
you're talking about people who own publicly traded stock and
we can easily see at least what that stock is worth.
But there's a number of practical problems, particularly for states.
(15:44):
One problem is, as we're already seeing, is that people
can leave the state. Now California is trying to get
around it with this bill because they said anyone who
is a citizen on January first, I think that was
the cutoff date, they are still going to be subject
to this tax even if they reloak. But I'd say
a bigger problem comes with valuation, and that's because when
(16:05):
we have publicly traded stock, we can see that type
of value, but lots of wealth is held not in
publicly traded stock, and a lot of it is held,
for example, in partnership interests that are highly complex like
seven hundred levels d partnerships owning partnerships and very very
difficult to track that value, and then add all the
other types of things that people own. And the problem
(16:27):
is for states is that states normally piggyback their systems
on the federal government. Right, the federal government figures out
what your adjusted gross income is, and then the state
just rides on that. With these wealth taxes, states are
going to have to on their own put in all
that they need to try to track value, and it's
(16:48):
going to be a highly complex endeavor. And if we
were to do it large scale, like on the national level,
I think it would incentivize a lot of our wealthiest
Americans to stay out of the publicly try and instead
to stay in privately held business interests. And we already
see that now where a lot of private businesses are
not going public, and this would give them one more
(17:09):
reason to not go public. But when businesses pull out
of the public market, that's not good for all of
us who depend on the public market for our retirement
and other savings.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
I'm curious because I know a lot of countries have
tried a wealth tax because I love how you said
salaries are for suckers. And it's true that a lot
of the wealthiest people, especially you know, generational wealth, it
gets tied up in properties, yachts, coin collections, things like that.
So a lot of countries have tried to get at this,
like France and Austria and Finland, they have all dropped
(17:41):
this wealth tax, like, they all backed away from it.
Are the reasons that you're laying out why? I mean,
did they have the same difficulty in assessing how much
wealth was actually there? And people potentially moving?
Speaker 5 (17:53):
I think it's very difficult to capture everybody's wealth, the
wealthy of the wealthiest people, I do think, And in Europe,
in particularly, you have a lot of problems with people
moving because of course you have freedom of movement, but
without a unified system of taxation and so of course
people can easily move to lower tax jurisdiction. So it's
(18:15):
particularly problematic in Europe. And you know, I think that
if one we're going to have a wealth tax system,
it is going to involve sort of a whole new
way of thinking about things that frankly, at least in
the United States, is kind of anathema to our way
of thinking, just in terms of basic privacy. Right, if
people were forced to disclose every single thing they owned,
(18:36):
I think that a lot of Americans, even those who
weren't subject to the tax, might feel that that is
too invasive of people's privacy. So I worry about that
as well.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Ray, why are the politics around wealth taxes and taxing
the wealthy? Well, why are they so tricky, so hard fought,
so bitterly emotional at something that we're seeing right now
in California.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Well, I mean, of course, one reason is that the
wealthy of a lot of firepower, right, and so now
you're coming after them, and they have a lot to
say about it. So we've been seeing this more and more,
where the wealthiest are throwing their weight around in ways
that I think culturally they were previously probably less inclined
to do. Right, they would be concerned about the wealthy
(19:20):
throwing around their power, that this is maybe anti democratic,
But we're not in that age today. We may be
in the future, but right now we're in the age
that is embracing throw around your weight. Look out for
number one and it's almost like the greed is good.
You know, they say that every forty years a time
repeats itself, and so this is this is greed as
(19:41):
good to the nth degree. I think in the era
that we're living in right now.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I mean, do you think that taxing trillionaires or taxing
this super wealthy is that something that is potentially doable?
Speaker 5 (19:54):
So I think the first answer is to stop focusing
on that we're taxing trillionaires, we're taxing billionaires, because I
think that type of framing makes it sound like the
rich are already paying a lot of taxes and now
we're going to impose extra burdens on them, And so
(20:14):
then it pushes us to have these kind of conversations
that are like, you know, our rich people good or
bad for society? Do they bring jobs or do they
you know, all of this stuff. But that's really beside
the point. I think the bigger problem is that the
public at large has been duped about who pays taxes
and how much taxes the wealthy actually pay. And so
(20:36):
I think what's better is to say, you know, wealthy
people need to pay taxes just like the rest of us,
not that they need extra taxes that we're going to
specifically impose on them, But they need to We need
to adjust our rules because right now, our rules allow
the wealthy to acquire just exorbitant amounts of wealth entirely
(20:58):
tax free, and for them it's optional.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:01):
That's why you have to wonder, like, why do we
hear things like when Elon Musk says, you know, should
I pay taxes or shouldn't I pay taxes? Right, he
asked his Twitter viewers, or Warren Buffett says, well, I
think I do better by not paying taxes, not paying
down the national debt, and instead giving to my philanthropy.
Somebody who earns a salary cannot make that decision that
(21:23):
they're going to not pay taxes and instead donate to charity.
So why are we letting our wealthy treat taxes as
an option rather than as an obligation that we all
have to share.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Is there any country that's really done a really good
job of this or is it just really tricky to
tax people who have a lot of resources.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
I don't think it's really tricky to tax I don't
think that's the actual problem. We easily could tax our
wealthiest Americans by adopting one role that was proposed by
both Barack Obama and Richard Nixon, which was an odd
pairing right, which was that we tax these gains at
whenever the property is transferred instead of requiring sale. Right,
(22:03):
we should say when these people transfer their property by gifts,
which they're doing a lot of gifting or a death,
they're going to recognize the gains then. And then the
other thing that we need to do is to tax
inheritances by pulling them into the income tax system, because
inheritances right now, are you know? The current estate tax
system is so deeply flawed it's not even a tax system.
(22:25):
And then I think we could also adjust the rules
of philanthropy, and then we'd have a system that I
think does a pretty good job of treating everybody the same,
bringing everybody into the tax system, and requiring everyone to
contribute to supporting the costs of government.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Ray before we let you go.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
I mean, these these failures in the tax code have
been around for decades. Warren Buffett wrote the famous twenty
eleven New York Times hotbed pointing out that a secretary
paid a higher tax rate than he did, So I mean,
is there any reason to think that maybe this California
ballot proposition, despite its flaws, becomes a kind of inciting
moment where we can have a kind of more clear
(23:03):
eyed and rational discussion about how the rich pay taxes.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
Absolutely, because I think one great thing about this California
and frankly the other states that are doing it, is
that it's really shining a light on the fact that
the wealthiest Americans are in fact not paying taxes and
don't have to pay taxes, and so this this moves
the needle forward, right instead of having confusion like are
(23:28):
the rich paying a lot of taxes or not? You
don't really see those discussions. Mostly people say, oh, yeah,
the rich aren't paying taxes, and how are we going
to address it as a problem. So I actually think, well,
I'm not in particular favor of this wealth tax. I
think it is a very positive change for getting a
fairer tax system because it's opening up conversations just like
(23:50):
this where we actually see how the wealthy avoid taxes
because they avoid taxes on their salaries and on their
gains and on their inheritances.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
So, Stacy, my takeaway is that we're the suckers earning salaries.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
I know their taxes.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
That's going to that's going to haunt. The salaries are
for suckers, is going to hant.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Hooray.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Thank you for bringing that to our attentions, and thanks
for being here as a guest on everybody's business.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Thank you so much, wonderful being here.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Thank you. Okay, Brad, let us set the trillionaires aside
for the moment to talk about a slightly different topic,
although another cohort that does command an enormous economic power.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
With perhaps just as much mystique as the trillionaire's Jim Alpha. Stacy,
So kids between the ages of I guess is you
know just born and around sixteen. We have a whole
package and the current issue of Business Week about Generation
Alpha as a potent economic force.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
One of the really surprising things about Gen Alpha is
that even though most of them aren't earning their own
money yet, a lot of them are commanding a lot
of money or wielding a lot of economic power within
their families. I mean, I know you have children, Brad,
or how much control do they have over how your
family spends?
Speaker 3 (25:16):
They're a little older, they're not Jen Alpha, but I
would say Stacy they have all the control and really,
oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Over like where you guys go on vacation, what you eat?
We just say streaming service.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Let's just say they're formidable.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
But the thing ahead, you know, Jen Alpha, they get
interested earlier in cultural trends, in beauty products and influencers,
and so they are a force that companies have to understand.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Well, Brad, before Max whisked off to the Olympics, we
did have a conversation about Gen Alpha. Both of us
wrote articles for the Gen Alpha issue and Max actually
talked to his children for the story, and we learned
all kinds of things about this generation. It's economic muscle
and also some of the traits that it's starting to show, which,
(26:01):
of course companies and people everywhere are very interested.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
In, very curious to hear what you found out.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Let's roll the tape.
Speaker 6 (26:09):
I am a, as you know, Stacy, very serious journalist,
and so in preparation for this segment, I went out
and I did some reporting. I gathered some important tape
with some important Gen Alphas that I know. This is
my daughter Alice, her best friend Olive, and then my
son saw these are ages eleven, ten and nine. So
(26:31):
the sweet spot of gen Alpha, and I wanted to
just ask them, okay, like, what do you guys think
is cool? Because to your post, this.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Is a million corporations.
Speaker 7 (26:41):
They're asking us a very eensive question, discretionary spending. What
I have is so valuable, like the CEOs of some
of the most important and valuable.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Companies selling giving it to us for free on everybody's generous.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
So let's give a listen.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
This is sort of a quick focus group on some
trends that are big or not big among the alphas.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
All right, Minecraft and.
Speaker 8 (27:06):
Roadblocks road Minecraft's okay.
Speaker 6 (27:10):
Taylor Swift bad Bunny good artist kid Rock?
Speaker 8 (27:16):
How would I know?
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Pokemon millennials?
Speaker 2 (27:20):
What I don't know?
Speaker 4 (27:22):
iPads okay, TikTok, don't do scroll kids, horrible, cyber trucks,
garbage trucks.
Speaker 8 (27:33):
Six seven, it's over cats eye as sucks, skinny jeans t.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Gnarly is gnarly good or bad?
Speaker 4 (27:48):
You didn't catch that reference.
Speaker 6 (27:49):
That's it gets from a cat's eye song called Gnarly.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
And it's also big and gnarly. It could be good
or bad.
Speaker 6 (27:58):
It means it means awesome, it means gross, it means
all the things they love Bobati, though I can tell
you now, I gotta say, so you reacted to my
kids talking about technology and saying that you know Instagram,
and I'll have said the same thing, you know Instagram,
taktok poison.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Poison for your brain.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
So I wrote about this.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
It's not wrong.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I wrote about this in the latest sits Business Week.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
And I really think that this idea that alphas are
the most online generation. You see this show up all
the time. It even shows up sometimes in surveys. I
don't know that that's totally true, or it may be
missing a part of the story, because it's true that
although alphas do have a lot of screen time, and
(28:41):
you brought up COVID this this time where all these
kids were just like basically plugged into screens twenty four
to seven, but they've also kind of internalized a lot
of the skepticism about screens that their parents have as well.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
And I hear that in my own house.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
And this is the thing I wanted to write about,
which is like I read a lot about parents and
children getting into fights about screen time, and the way
it's always described is like a parent saying that I
am in a big fight with my kid about screen time.
They will not get off TikTok at the dining room table.
And these kids are often a little bit older than
my kids. But the big fight in my house over
(29:19):
screen time is my kids like yelling at me, and
they're the ones being like, get off your phone, deck,
get off your phone. And I really think and it
shows up in some of the surveys. So there's some
Pew data about kids feelings about social media. And a
few years ago, like three years ago, it was kids
thought that social media was basically good and it is
(29:41):
totally flipped where now the numbers say just the opposite.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
I should pull this up really quick.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
Twenty twenty two, they as teenagers, is social media mostly
good or mostly bad for people your age? And at
the time, thirty two percent said that it was mostly bad,
twenty four percent said that was mostly good, so slightly negative.
Today eleven percent mostly good, forty eight percent mostly bad.
So basically a lot of kids are at least aware
(30:09):
of this. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're not doing it.
But I think this is something that big companies are
going to have to reckon with, not only because kids
may not be quite as brain poisoned as their parents. Like,
I think our generation, especially maybe people a little younger
than you and I who really grew up on the Internet.
(30:31):
I think we are the ones maybe who have like
the least healthy habits around screens, whereas some of these
quote unquote digital natives are actually maybe a little bit
better able to kind of compartmentalize. And then you also
have you know, all of these countries are passing laws now.
So Australia just passed a rule saying kids under sixteen
(30:52):
are not algy social media. That Spain is doing it,
the UK is doing it, a lot of US states
are doing it. There is a shift happening, and I
don't think any of us really know where it's going
to go.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I wonder what AI is going to throw into this mix,
because I do think just the way people are interacting
with AI now, maybe not not such young kids, but
maybe older alphas, because people have like very personal conversations
with AI or asked advice.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Yeah, when I was reporting this story, I talked to
John Heit, who is the author of The Anxious Generation,
which is this best selling book. He's an NYU social psychologist,
and he's like the guy who created a lot of
the kind of conversation going on right now around screen time,
and he says essentially that AI is like social media,
(31:42):
but a million times worse, because part of the problem
with social media for kids and for development is that
it kind of like takes kids away from like human connections.
But with AI, there's no connection at all. It's just
a bot making.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Connecting, but maybe not with a human.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
Yeah, and so you know, he's told me, you know,
I think it's the worst way you could possibly bring
up a kid.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
I do think those concerns are out there.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
And unlike with social media, where there was like a
ten year period where pretty much tech companies did whatever
they wanted. They were marketing Facebook and Instagram to very
young children, and there was an effort that was that
it kind of got derailed, but they even wanted to go,
you know, younger than thirteen.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
They were gonna have like nine year olds.
Speaker 6 (32:26):
On on these social media platforms, which when you think
about it, I don't know, as a parent, it seems
kind of crazy. The conversation now is very different. I
also will say when I talk to my kids about AI,
they don't like AI.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
They think it's dumb, and.
Speaker 6 (32:39):
Maybe this is partly because because they're you know, they're
my kids, and they hear my a skepticism. But I
don't know that that's totally true. I think a lot
of kids are actually kind of aware of the limitation.
I was talking the other day with my daughter Alice
and one of her friends, and they were saying, oh,
it would have been so great to grow up in
the eighties. And I was like, why, why would it
be so great to grow up in the eighties, and
(33:00):
they said, well, you could go to movie theaters and
talking about these kind of retro experiences. Alice is super
into CDs, which is funny, and then she goes, yeah,
your generation's so lucky, and I said why and she goes, well,
you haven't had your brains poisoned by AI. And I said, well, Alice,
you don't have to use AI, and she goes, it's everywhere.
(33:20):
I try to search for a fat frog on Google
and I get a bunch of AI. She was really
disturbed by the fact that the Google results for fat
frog was AI.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
I now want a Google fat frog. But I think
she's right in that. I mean, because companies are adopting it,
it may be hard to not use it, and then
when you start using it, it may be hard to
not kind of veer into a more personal relationship. But
also maybe there's more of an awareness now than there
was when social media started, because that was such a
new thing, and maybe there wasn't as much of an awareness. Also,
(33:52):
I think because you were connecting with other people, maybe
there was less of a warning flag's going off, because
I mean, there have been like a million movies and
books about Rise of the Robots.
Speaker 6 (34:02):
I do think that the kind of screen anxiety that
the Jonathan Heyde view of the world is seeping into kids.
When I called him, he told me, you know, if
you had called me three or four weeks ago, I
would have told you your kids are freaks. But he
had actually just released like a kid's version of his book.
It's called The Amazing Generation. It's a graphic novel and it's,
(34:25):
you know, surprisingly, it's sold pretty well, and there are
all these Amazon reviews of kids being like, I.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Hope I never get a smartphone and things like that.
Speaker 6 (34:33):
So it may be that kids really have these kind
of retro values or maybe just absorbing from us, the parents.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I feel like there can be a gap between knowing
what's good for you and doing what's good for you,
and AI makes certain things so easy, including writing papers,
doing research. I feel like that's going to be really
hard to I mean, it's like it's so awesome to
have a flip phone, or it's awesome to g scale
your phone until you are on deadline.
Speaker 6 (35:03):
I'm so glad you brought that up, because even in
this Pew survey where kids are saying it's bad for
their peers, they don't think they are using it badly.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
So there is a bit of a Now.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
I'm personally not addicted to it. I feel like it's
like the thing with the glass of wine. It's like,
I mean, I have a glass of wine every night,
but that's totally different.
Speaker 6 (35:22):
But you know what, like these public health campaigns, they
work sometimes, And as I have been.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Thinking, say no to drugs work no.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
But say no to smoking absolutely worked.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
I mean eventually.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
And when I've thought about the conversations that I have
at the dinner table with my kids around screen time,
they really really remind me of conversations I had with
my parents, members of my parents' generation about cigarettes, where
I was getting all of this kind of anti tobacco
information at school and coming home and being like.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
You shouldn't small, you know, oh my god, And that worked.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
I mean, you look at the generational shift on smoking
and it's been profound.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Like a member of the generational shift on smoking had
to do with taxes.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Sure, but it has made a difference.
Speaker 6 (36:08):
And talking to John Hate about this, what he said
is and where he kind of compared it. He said,
you know, one of the things I think that really
worked on cigarette smoking was in the late nineties, the
sort of anti tobacco groups. They started sort of demonizing
the tobacco industry and saying it wasn't really about your health,
it was about these tobacco companies are manipulating you. They
(36:30):
are selling you an addictive product, they are making money
off of you. And I think there's some research showing
that that marketing that happened in the late nineties was effective.
And he thinks that some of the messaging around tech
that's pretty similar. That's all about, you know, Mark Zuckerberg
is trying to addict you to your phone or whatever,
just like you heard in my daughter and her friend's statement,
(36:50):
like it's poison there.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
They're tricking you. Like that sense of a big company getting.
Speaker 6 (36:55):
One over on you is a message that maybe could
potential breakthrough among among teens and younger kids.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Brad, it is that time in the show when we
talk about underrated stories of the week, and you brought
us an underrated story. What is there.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Sorry for us?
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Well, Stacy, is Stephen Colbert really ever underrated? I?
Speaker 2 (37:22):
I like him. I think he is very often underrated.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
I do too.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
I think we'll be feeling the reverberations from this week's
events for a long time. First, on Monday, he wanted
us a program The Late Show. As you probably heard,
and said lawyers at CBS, his bosses had blocked him
from airing an interview with US Senate candidate from Texas,
James Tallerico.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yes, and from what I understand, he still did get
the interview out into the world. He uploaded it on
YouTube and it has been viewed seven million times.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
That I was told, in some uncertain terms that not
only could I not have him on, I could not
mention me not having him on. And because my network
clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
This, Stacy. This is a three way battle.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who you might remember
as Jimmy Kimmel's Foyle, Yes, is trying to enforce those
old equal time rules on the public airwaves, so if
you have one candidate, you need to give time to
their opposition.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
CBS is saying they didn't.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Force Talerico off the air and simply insists they gave
the late show options for how to fulfill those equal
time obligations. And Cobert, who is set to end a
show on May, I think he just doesn't.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Give af at this point.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
He went on the air again this week and said
every word of a script was approved by CBS lawyers,
and he's fighting well.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
I mean, I have to say the big winner in
all of this is James Talerico, who says after this
interview went viral on YouTube, his campaign raised two and
a half million dollars in twenty four hours, which is
just mind blowing.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
And that's a way I think the story could be underrated.
He's competing for Senator John Cornyn seat. He is studying
to be a Presbyterian minister. He went on Ezra Klein's podcast,
you can kind of see the Democrats falling in love
with Tallarico and this incident this week is only going
to raise his profile.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I also feel like there's something maybe a larger theme
going on here too, but about the media and the
Trump administration. I mean, we just had huge layoffs at
the Washington Post. Like you said, Jimmy Kimmels also had
a big run in with the administration. It's really interesting
to see the administration like quite directly engaging with the
media in a lot of cases. Although it's unclear if
(39:50):
that actually happens here, it's definitely a theme right now right.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
I mean, the question is are they trying to enforce
fairness on the public airways or is this a part
of and agenda? And I think that question has all
sorts of impacts, including in the battle over Warner Brothers,
which could go to Netflix, could go to Paramount and
of course owned CNN.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
So this is the only beginning of this kind of fight.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
This show is produced by Stacy Wong and Jasmine JT.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Green.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, Sam Rogan handles engineering,
and Dave Purcell factchecks. Special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin,
Maria Ling, and Angel Reccio. If you have a minute.
Please rate and review the show. It means a lot
to us. And if you have a story that should
be our business, send us an email. Everybody's at Bloomberg
dot net. That's everybody's with an s at Bloomberg dot net.
(40:44):
Thank you for listening, and see you next week.
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