June 8, 2026 • 32 mins
At a time when politicians across the West are calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, legal scholar and author John O. McGinnis offers a strikingly different view: what if democracy needs the rich? He joins Merryn Somerset Webb to discuss power, inequality, free speech and what he says is the hidden role wealth plays in keeping democratic societies healthy.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Welcome to Merrion Drugs Money,
the podcasting which people who know the markets explain the markets.
I'm merri in sum Set Web and this week I'm
speaking with John McGinnis, law professor, author and former US
Justice Department official. John has just published his book Why
(00:25):
Democracy Needs the Rich, which I suspect some of you
will find slightly controversial. We are speaking at a time
when everybody, possibly on both sides of the political divide,
are being fairly critical of the rich of billionaires, trying
to find a way to make them pay more tax
one way or another, and perhaps maybe to talk less.
So we are going to get into how John feels
(00:47):
the rich are essential to improving society and are even
essential to the continued existence of democracy. John, Welcome to
Marrin Drugs Money.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It's wanted to be here now. John.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
When we talk about the rich being vital to democracy
on this podcast, which by the way, we do quite
a lot, we take it from the angle that it
is the rich who supply the finance to pay for
the things that they're not so rich vote for. So
that is how the very rich support democracy saves if
you look at it in the UK, for example, the
(01:20):
top one percent of our taxpayers pay twenty eight to
twenty nine percent of all our income tax, and if
you add their capital gain tax on top of that,
they're after about thirty three percent of the entire tax
take comes from one percent of the people. You go
to the top ten percent sixty percent of all income tax,
and even if you go to the top fifty percent,
it's ninety percent of all income tax. So over fifty
(01:42):
percent of households in the UK don't contribute anything at
all when it comes to tax. In fact, they are
mainly a negative impact on tax revenues. So if you
look at it like that, we say, how could you
manage without the rich? They actually they are the ones
who pay for what we vote for, and that that's
how democracy works. And then we look on the other
side and we have this constant dynamic in the UK
(02:04):
rising taxes, particularly rising taxes on the very rich. Our
tax base is very narrow, and a lot of our
rich on now moving abroad. They're saying lightly enough, I'll
go somewhere else, and then a lot of our demos,
our voters say good riddance to them. We didn't need
them anyway. And your premise is not that it's not
that it's only the money, it's that there's something else
(02:27):
that they offer a democratic society. So why don't we
start there with that broad overview.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So what I begin with is what they offer is
essential democracy, is pluralism, a variety of views, variety of
independent views, and the rich are extremely important in that respect.
I begin by turning on its head the argument the
rich are prom for democracy because they have too much
(02:53):
power in democracy. And my point is there are many
groups with lots of power, and therefore the question really
is do the rich have more power than the average person.
They do, but there's so many other groups, and they
act as a counterweight or a balance to that. Because
the most important people in democracy, the most important influence
(03:14):
in democracy, are what I call the professional influencers, the
people for whom influencing our culture and our democracy, that's
their job. The journalists, the academics, the entertainers, and to
some degree, the bureaucracy. And they have one thing in
common political views that are quite homogeneous, at least in
(03:38):
the United States, and I think in most other industrial
democracies they lean pretty sharply to the left, and that's
a problem because that means you might not get a
wide enough variety of views. And this idea that there
is some group who really have a lot of influence
in democracy other than the rich, and they're really the
(04:00):
essential thought leaders in democracy is a very old one.
It goes back to one of your poets, English poets,
Samuel Coleridge, who calls them the clericy, and his recognition
was that after the decline of the nobility and the clergy,
there were going to be other people who were going
to be very influential. And what it turns out is
(04:20):
just like the clergy and the nobility, they're very tightly
networked and therefore they have very similar views. And what
the rich do is they're not all to the right,
but they have a very wide variety of views in
the United States that are quite balanced in their views.
But what's important is they give a voice to the
right and indeed often rather eclectic of views that might
(04:43):
not get otherwise heard in a world where the professional
influencers held a more unified sway.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, don't. Can I take you back a little bit,
because the key point here is this idea that academics,
civil services, journalists, etc. Tend to lean left and so
at balancing voices required, and I know that this is
definitely the case. For example, in US university is one
(05:12):
of the things you quoted, nine out of ten academics
will say that they are left leaning in their political views.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
But we should start.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
By questioning why that is. So? Can we start there
by going back a little and saying, why is it
that all these groups that are very influential in our democracies.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I think their variety. This is not one answer, but
one answer is actually that precisely because they're professional influencers
of the state, they like a larger state that raises
them in status as opposed to people in the market.
And I think that's a very important aspect. I think
a second aspect is a very old problem envy. Most
(05:52):
of these people grew up with the people who become wealthy.
They were also very good students, and sometimes there are
the better students. They've become academics because of that, and
that's upsetting to them. And then finally, I think there
is just an idea because if you're an influencer, you
think the way of structuring the world is with central
(06:16):
ideas and an idea of a quality and not a
sort of trial and error, more empirically based ideas, so
more top down enthusiasms that naturally come to you. So
all of those reasons, I think put people who want
to influence the world as their profession largely on the left.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And journalists asiemst those people will have an income that is,
one way or another state sponsored.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yes, I think that's true. Of course, entertainers don't, but
it's absolutely true if bureaucrats do. And in the United States,
most of our academics, most of our important universities, like
my own, are private, but still they're become more dependent
on the state.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
So I think there's some to that, and I suppose
the other part is the charitable sector. Oh, the third
sector is might call it, which again is very heavily
stay sponsored both here and in the US, and obviously
leans to the left.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yes, that's true, although in the United States things are
a little mixed, and I don't know whether it becomes
our differences in law. One of the actual advantages of
the rich is that they'd send up actually some charities
that push against the left liberalism. For instance, our university
system and you quite correctly point out how left leaning
professors are. Conservative billionaires have actually set up centers that
(07:36):
are somewhat counterpoints, and that's been very important. And I
myself am on the board of something called the Federalist
Society here, which is a conservative group of law students
and practitioners, and they've had enormous influence on our legal
education system, which before the rise of the Federalist Society
was almost totally left wing. It's obviously the professors still
(07:58):
a very left wing, but they give a voice, and
they may are presents on campus that really wouldn't be
there but for the wealthy. So one important point about
this book is that a lot of billionaires are left
wing and they give to charities. The money on the
right makes more of a difference at the margin, because
already the professional influencers are on the left. So each
(08:21):
marginal dollar spent by the right wing billionaire, either on
politics or on culture, makes more of a difference.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, okay, So one of the key ideas in the
book is that the left leaning influencers on that side
of the equation, there is this homogeneity of opinion that
is really full on. But yet when you move across
to the Talking about the rich, you can't talk about
them in terms of having a homogeneity of opinion because
(08:51):
they don't. They're very, very different. So when you look at,
for example, the political donations of the left, you will
see in the US lots of billionaires contribute to the
Democrats in the same way that as they do to
the Republicans. You're not see any hobgenaty. And you see
that in the UK as well. You see some of
the very rich supporting labor and lots of the very rich,
of course, supporting the right. So there's a divergence of
(09:12):
opinion among the rich in a way that I suspect
most people don't really think about.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yes, that's right. And one of the reasons for that
is they have a kind of independence. I think that
most professional influencers don't because one other important difference between
the rich and professional influencers is the rich are not
gatekeepers of the other rich. How do people become rich, Well,
it's someone likes their product, or someone likes the way
they put together companies. It's a market test, and people
(09:41):
aren't thinking ideologically in that spectrum. But let me tell you,
I've been in academics a long time, appointments here are
controlled by other academics, and people's political views make a
difference in those appointments, and that's so I think true
at journalism as well. And so one aspect of the
diversity of the rich is that there's no gatekeeping function
(10:04):
that they play. And another is that the rich make
their money in all sorts of different way. Some are entrepreneurs,
some are financial people, others are inventors. And that's another
advantage of theirs, even beyond ideology. They have a different
way of thinking about the world. And in a commercial democracy,
like really all modern democracies, that's important. They know something
(10:28):
about the economy. So it's not only they bring a
variety of views, they bring a variety of perspectives about
the market that are extremely helpful. And so that goes
a bit back to the point you began with. It's
different version of that point is democracies do need to
be economically successful. They have an increasing pie is extremely
(10:50):
important for their health, and how that happens depends on policies,
and then rich bring a useful perspective to those as well.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So to become rich, you have you're automatically nonconformist, don't you.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Absolutely you see some niche that other people have not
yet exploited it.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
And so it's more you could say that, you know,
they're more rationalist than romantic, more pragmatic. To become rich,
to build a company, to turn yourself into a billionaire,
show you might have a dream or a little romance
on the side, but the path is one that is
very pragmatic.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Schumpeter, a famous economist. To be rich, you just can't
talk your way to success. But in a lot of
the professional influencers, being a great talker is a way.
And of course, as you suggest, that doesn't actually mean
you're going to have good results. There's not a connection
necessarily between eloquence and consequence.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I mean I would divide that up into maybe
one group continually talking about the world as they would
like it to be and people behaving as they would
like them to, and the other group working with the
world as it is, and the way that people genuinely
respond to incentives.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Every day, someone running a company is faced with a
market test of his actions. And let me tell you,
in academics at least, which I know best, people are
faced with any kind of market tests, or at least
not yet. Who knows, AI may start changing that. But
actually an important university, there's no sense that one's in competition,
(12:28):
there's no sense that anything is at risk.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So in that sense, one of the things that you
talk about in the book is this idea that democracy
tends to mediocrisy if you don't keep a close eye
on it, or soft deputism, etc. And so the rich
to then a constraint on the natural excesses of majority
rule exactly because they do introduce these ideas, practice them,
evaluate them, so they are available for public use.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And they also the independence to stand up against the
majority I talk at least, and it's true, there's some
analogs in British history are how crucial the rich were
as catalysts for abolishing slavery. I mean it's not well
known in the United States at least, but abolition of
slavery was an extremely unpopular view, not only in the
South but in the North. And so who was able
(13:36):
to stand up for that, Well, wealthy people, and they
paid for that. People burned down their houses. But note
that if you're wealthy and your house is burned down,
well you can build another house. But if you're not wealthy, well,
you'd not likely to speak up against something that the
majority wants. And it turns out, of course, the majority
is not always right, and so that's one problem of democracy.
(13:58):
And they also sometimes, as Tokville says, worship themselves the
majority of their mediocrity. That's a problem of mediocrity. And
the rich have therefore been very important in funding what
we now regard as the great arts, the great buildings
that are lasting monuments to our democracy. And I think
democracy is some kind of national greatness is important in
(14:21):
supporting a national democracy, and the rich play a very
important role in that. And finally, the soft decimotism point
that you raise, which goes back cut the worry to
ari style that the democracy the people are just going
to vote themselves, benefits at the expense of everyone else,
points you made at the beginning of this broadcast. The
(14:42):
rich are very aware of that, and again they, at
least in the United States, fund a lot of think
tanks that worry about that essential fiscal problem which never
goes away in democracy. And there of course the people
with the incentives to do that, and the money too,
that we be much worse off. We're not, as you
point out, wonderfully off without that constant pressure of people
(15:04):
who want to worry about the fiscal long term and do.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Worry about excellence. One of the things that the book
really brings out is this idea that there is there
really isn't any thing as a pure democracy. Is the
whole idea of everyone having a vote and everyone having
a similar level of influence is of course always nonsense
because there's always really strong pressure groups across the board.
There's the end of special interest groups. If we've discussed,
(15:30):
there's the charities, there's the academics, etc. So it doesn't
really exist, this idea of a genuine democracy because of
the way public opinion is so heavily influenced by different groups.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
In a representative democracy, it doesn't because we made the
decision not to have the kind of really impossible the
democracy that was imagined in ancient Greece, where ever we
would vote on everything, where in some sense people would
have greater influence. Was representatives are going to be influenced
by a variety of things and what works, because they're
going to be worried about what's going to happen to
(16:02):
the next election some sense, one idea about democracy is
we give a kind of prize to people who in
public office which they'd like to keep, and that tends
to make them focus a bit on consequences. But that
also means they're going to look at a variety of
views and they're not going to simply look at the
everyone individually, because they're concerned about what's going to happen
(16:23):
next time, not just what people have voted for last time.
And that's just inevitable. And people are very different. They
have different money, they have different amounts of interest in politics,
they have different eloquence. So once you have that kind
of representative democracy, it really is a fantasy to think
that people are going to have equal influence. And that
is that I do think is an underlying fantasy against
(16:46):
which people worry about the wealthy have more influence than average.
And my book begins with the idea, well, that's true,
but it doesn't follow that they have too much influence,
because there are so many groups that have more influence
than the average citizens.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, and of course I suppose we should as obvious
but true that you can only tolerate the rich offering
this balance of opinion as long as you have clear
institutions and trusted legal systems that control the excesses of
the rich as well.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Right only in a market democracy. I do argue that
in some sense the rich are better than ever because
we move more quickly through different rich people than ever
before with our technocracy, because that's always creating a new
group of rich people. So you might worry, and Aristotle
didn't worry, I think correctly, the rich could be a
(17:38):
kind of permanent, encrusted oligarchy, and that was a real
worry in a world where we had a static society
where the rich were largely tied to land. And in
that world we have people with unchanging views. We're just
really important, we're very concerned and able to keep a
lid on new ideas. But that's not our world. Our
(17:59):
world is one of churn of the next new technological thing,
and that's shown in our richest people. At the beginning
of the Forbes four hundred, which goes back now over
forty I think maybe forty fifty years, most people have
inherited their wealth. Now very small, much smaller percentage of
people inherit their wealth, and that's because we have a
(18:22):
much more dynamic, changing society and that's great because these
the rich people who come up have different ideas from
the old money, and that's a good thing as well.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So your theory, your ideas, wouldn't really support those who
have inherited their wealth in the same way as those
who have made their wealth. What we're talking about here
is people who have created wealth and therefore have these
interesting thought patterns, eccentric thought patterns even that allow them
to give value. So if we're thinking about how to
(18:56):
tax the rich, as it appears everyone pretty much always does,
should we then focus more on inheritance tax than on
any other kind of tax because the second and third
generation rich are of significantly less value to us as
opinion balances than the first generation.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I think there's a grain of truth in that, But
I want to push back slightly against that idea because
I certainly agree with you that if most people inherit
their money, that goes back to the kind of Aristotelian concern.
The people who inherit their money do often have a function,
particularly in national greatness and the arts, So you might
think there's a kind of interesting alchemy that takes place
(19:34):
in the rich. So you begin with someone who's made
their money and therefore done a lot for consumers. He
hands on money after he dies, and then his children
they're in a different position. They collect art, they do
other things that are important, And so I don't want
to say the inherited wealth has no function. I do
(19:55):
agree that if you're looking to tax things, it's better
to tax at the inherited stage than some other stages.
For instance, at least in the United States, we have
something called a step up in basis, which means that
all capital gains disappear on people's death. That strikes me
as a mistake, at least for large fortunes, and so
(20:18):
I'm not always in favor of any tax break for
the wealthy, and that would be one I would certainly
want to take a look at as opposed to taxing
their wealth. Now. Wealth taxes now I think would be
a terrible mistake. It would, essentially and that's one of
my concerns in writing this book is try to take
(20:38):
away the power of the rich. But that doesn't mean
it would go to ordinary people. It mean that the influencers,
the claresy, would just become more powerful. And so it's
not only an economic matter. The wealth taxes would have
bad economic effects. I think they would have bad democratic
effects and actually entrenching the professional influencers as more powerful.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Okay, so then I know that I know the next
question everyone listening is asking in their heads, which is
how rich is too rich? So when does inequality get
out of control? So all the things that we are
talking about, You can be rich enough for that, to
be rich enough to not be beholden to the bureaucracy
in any way, to be rich enough to hold whatever
opinions you like without having any interest in anyone's opinion
(21:21):
on your opinions. You can be rich enough for that
when you're into the tens of millions or the maybe
even the hundreds of millions, I don't know, but you
don't need much more than that to be able to
fulfill that role.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
I don't entirely agree with that. We'd certainly you need
more than tens of millions to actually fund some great enterprise. Charitably,
you may need billions of dollars. In our world. Certainly,
global public goods working on health are extremely important. No,
not also that there's a problem often with charities that
(21:53):
people aren't willing to give unless the charity is up
and running and effective, and what the wealthy can do
really wealthy, is they can just give an enormous amount
of money and bring to light a new charity that
focuses on some need that people haven't thought of before.
So I'm cautious about saying in our world that there's
(22:15):
a limit about it. I think the greater concern is
not how much any individual has. At some point you
do worry that the inequality might become just too much.
There's a debate about that. Of course, people like Pikaity
in France have raised it. I look at that in
the book and I just don't think his arguments are
(22:35):
really proven, even on his own terms, and people have
pointed out these missed some technical matters about income. But
I also point out in the book that I think
people miss out on something really important about the modern world,
which is how technology really makes people's living standards similar
in a way they never have been before. And one
(22:57):
way I try to explain this with a thought experiment
with some Oxford don and a duke. Though one hundred
years ago, two hundred years ago, they lived completely different
lives compared to when I you compare me to Peter Teale,
whom I've met Peter Teal is a lot richer than
I am. Our lives just different and completely well, not really,
(23:19):
because in some sense we all spend our time on
the internet. Information is free. Even I can summon up
as chauffeur with Uber when I need to, and that's
because the technology is dematerializing our world and so making
some things just less scarce and so people to be
able to enjoy them in common. So I think it
(23:40):
may be a mistake, particularly when we don't understand how
technology is really changing these it won't be clear that's
about middle class people. There still is a problem of
poverty and people who don't have enough. I consider that's
not a problem of inequality, and people often confused confuse
those problems. I'd see that poverty of the lowest ten
percent and income is still a huge issue. I just
(24:02):
don't think it's a probab inequality.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Okay, So putting that to one side, the key point
here is that as our lifestyles begin to equalize thanks
the technological change around us, the actual difference in absolute
wealth becomes less relevant.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Okay, Now do you think that you are getting cut through?
Because if you look at the political round across Europe
in particular, and certainly across much of the US. You
do still have this idea that you know, we can
ditch the rich, we can live without the rich, which
atacks the richinal tags them into oblivion, et cetera. There's
very little understanding or acceptance of what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Oh, quite confident that my academic colleagues are not going
to be listening to me. One thing that gives me
hope is that it is democracy. So I do think
democracy and even the great mass of people giving a
vote is useful in this respect that when people tax
the rich into oblivion and the economic consequences are really bad,
(24:58):
there are revolts of people. It's been pointing out, for instance,
that in a real democracy, when people just have the vote,
there almost never is a famine. A march Sen pointed
that out, And so I think that eventually people do
wake up to the bad consequences. But alas democracy sometimes
works slowly, I'm just trying to speed it up a little,
(25:21):
maybe a few days. The one other thing I think
would be hopeful too, is that our world I think
is going to be changed by the rise of AI
that I think it will scramble some long time political allegiances,
and I think that may give more of an opportunity
to think through some things again, so I'm cautious about that.
(25:44):
Was of course, the social changes brought on by AI
could lead people astray as well, but I'm not that
pessimistic because I do think so long as we keep
the basic idea of democracy is that the trial and
experim some of them are bad experiments of actingly rich
successively are likely to be thrown out at least after
(26:07):
a time.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Okay, John, you may be a billionaire. I don't know.
We're only looking to other across the screen. How do
you manage to be such an obviously contrarian thinker?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So while I'm not a billionaire, I grew up among
the children of billionaires, so that might be one aspected
rubbed off on me. So maybe that's one of the reasons.
Of course, there aren't going to be contrarian thinkers in
any profession. The question is they're a critical mass of them.
I think another reason is that my father pointed out
(26:44):
that my family has had a long tradition of difficulty
with authority, and so the authority that is represented by
the clarity in my profession has rubbed me the wrong
way and has actually moved me to be more contrarian
over time.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Talk about this outside influence of the rich on opinion
and operating as a sort of a healthy tension, as
one of the phrases you is creating this healthy tension
that amongstey requires should governments be thinking more carefully about
the way that they finance the organizations around them, but
the way they finance academia, about the way they finance
(27:22):
the charitable sector. And it feels that there's a responsibility
on the state using taxpayers money to finance organizations that
should be encouraging diversity of thought, and maybe isn't so.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I have two thoughts about that. One is that's absolutely true,
and we actually see movements in the United States to
create for our state legislators to create some centers within
universities that might be more heterodox, so that's an advantage.
On the other end, one asked me very careful, I
think for the state to get too involved in choosing
(27:57):
who's going to be an academic, because that backfire in
a big way and lead, of course, depending on who's
in control of the state, to actually a hyper orthodoxy.
So one thing we've had actually in the United States
is THEI diversity, equity, and inclusion, which has been all
the rage and affirmative action, which are state policies. They
(28:18):
worse state at least encouraged policies in many respects, they
actually led to greater a homogeneity of thought. So I'm
a classical liberal in the sense that I'm worried about
the state always and if the state wants to add
some particular center that will do something or other that's
apart from the rest of the university. There's something to
(28:41):
be said for that. But actually running the university and
making really tamping down on its decision making, I think
can have some law, even as some short term gains
can have a variety of long term costs.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Okay, we've talked about all the positives of the rich,
the positive externalities they create, and I suppose there is
a sort of very long list of books of the
negative externalities of the rich, So they come with negatives
as well.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
So I think the biggest negatives and the negatives and
pointed out as you say, for centuries is some of
the concerns about the rich have been that they because
of their independence, they lead lifestyles that are really not
moral and encourage that in other people. Right, And they're
also there's a view that there's some and this goes
(29:30):
back to the nobility, they're not really that connected to
their nation. They're just unconcerned about their particular place of birth.
And then finally, I think a concern is that they
themselves are a kind of interests, that they know how
to maneuver the levers of power in their own interest.
And there's something I think to be said for all
(29:52):
of those problems.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
It's a very compelling, very compelling story, and one that
it would be interesting to see politicians really react with
at all. I mean, we're still hear here. As you know,
there's endless anti the rich, anti wealth diatribes constantly, and
there's constant conversations about new taxes and new wealth taxes,
and we have mansion taxes, straight out wealth taxes. Bitch
(30:15):
of course never work, because of course, taxing the rich
is very difficult, taxing them beyond a certain level, beyond
straightforward capital gains and straightforward income. These wealth taxes are
very complicated and very difficult to manage and very rarely
raise much money. But nonetheless, the conversation is constantly about them, the.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Books that actually have shown that the only way really
to get rid of the riches to have a war
or a vast depressions, and where I think the antidote,
whatever you think of the riches, worse than the disease.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Listen, before we end, can I just ask you what
you are reading?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So I'm reading two things at the moment. One is
Charles Dickens Bleak House, which is about lawyers, most book
about lawyers, and I recommend it. It's really a I
think as great as and of course it's it's lawyers
who are another group of a last professional influencers. And
the other is a book which I think is very
(31:13):
interesting by I think Sebastian Malaby called The Infinite Machine,
which is about the race for AI and I think
he does a very good job in showing not only
the players in that race, but what's going on and
confirms my view that the world, even within five years,
(31:34):
is going to look astonishingly different from what it is today.
And in ten years, I'm not sure if we came
back we would exactly recognize I'm sure we would be
not in the same kind of podcast. I think we'd
be much more like we'd be. We could really tell
that much different that we would be talking to one
another's if we were sitting on a couch.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's Maren Talks Money.
If you like us, share, rate, review, and subscribe wherever
you listen to podcasts, and keep sending your questions in
your comments to Merrin Money at Bloomberg dot net. You
can also follow me in John on Twitter or x.
I'm at marins w and John is John out of
score steppeg. This episode was housted by me Maren's unsep
(32:16):
Web was produced by Samasadi and Moses and Em and
Jennifer Seely. Sound designed by Blake Maples and special thanks
of course to John mc ginnis
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Welcome to Merrion Drugs Money,
the podcasting which people who know the markets explain the markets.
I'm merri in sum Set Web and this week I'm
speaking with John McGinnis, law professor, author and former US
Justice Department official. John has just published his book Why
(00:25):
Democracy Needs the Rich, which I suspect some of you
will find slightly controversial. We are speaking at a time
when everybody, possibly on both sides of the political divide,
are being fairly critical of the rich of billionaires, trying
to find a way to make them pay more tax
one way or another, and perhaps maybe to talk less.
So we are going to get into how John feels
(00:47):
the rich are essential to improving society and are even
essential to the continued existence of democracy. John, Welcome to
Marrin Drugs Money.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It's wanted to be here now. John.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
When we talk about the rich being vital to democracy
on this podcast, which by the way, we do quite
a lot, we take it from the angle that it
is the rich who supply the finance to pay for
the things that they're not so rich vote for. So
that is how the very rich support democracy saves if
you look at it in the UK, for example, the
(01:20):
top one percent of our taxpayers pay twenty eight to
twenty nine percent of all our income tax, and if
you add their capital gain tax on top of that,
they're after about thirty three percent of the entire tax
take comes from one percent of the people. You go
to the top ten percent sixty percent of all income tax,
and even if you go to the top fifty percent,
it's ninety percent of all income tax. So over fifty
(01:42):
percent of households in the UK don't contribute anything at
all when it comes to tax. In fact, they are
mainly a negative impact on tax revenues. So if you
look at it like that, we say, how could you
manage without the rich? They actually they are the ones
who pay for what we vote for, and that that's
how democracy works. And then we look on the other
side and we have this constant dynamic in the UK
(02:04):
rising taxes, particularly rising taxes on the very rich. Our
tax base is very narrow, and a lot of our
rich on now moving abroad. They're saying lightly enough, I'll
go somewhere else, and then a lot of our demos,
our voters say good riddance to them. We didn't need
them anyway. And your premise is not that it's not
that it's only the money, it's that there's something else
(02:27):
that they offer a democratic society. So why don't we
start there with that broad overview.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So what I begin with is what they offer is
essential democracy, is pluralism, a variety of views, variety of
independent views, and the rich are extremely important in that respect.
I begin by turning on its head the argument the
rich are prom for democracy because they have too much
(02:53):
power in democracy. And my point is there are many
groups with lots of power, and therefore the question really
is do the rich have more power than the average person.
They do, but there's so many other groups, and they
act as a counterweight or a balance to that. Because
the most important people in democracy, the most important influence
(03:14):
in democracy, are what I call the professional influencers, the
people for whom influencing our culture and our democracy, that's
their job. The journalists, the academics, the entertainers, and to
some degree, the bureaucracy. And they have one thing in
common political views that are quite homogeneous, at least in
(03:38):
the United States, and I think in most other industrial
democracies they lean pretty sharply to the left, and that's
a problem because that means you might not get a
wide enough variety of views. And this idea that there
is some group who really have a lot of influence
in democracy other than the rich, and they're really the
(04:00):
essential thought leaders in democracy is a very old one.
It goes back to one of your poets, English poets,
Samuel Coleridge, who calls them the clericy, and his recognition
was that after the decline of the nobility and the clergy,
there were going to be other people who were going
to be very influential. And what it turns out is
(04:20):
just like the clergy and the nobility, they're very tightly
networked and therefore they have very similar views. And what
the rich do is they're not all to the right,
but they have a very wide variety of views in
the United States that are quite balanced in their views.
But what's important is they give a voice to the
right and indeed often rather eclectic of views that might
(04:43):
not get otherwise heard in a world where the professional
influencers held a more unified sway.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, don't. Can I take you back a little bit,
because the key point here is this idea that academics,
civil services, journalists, etc. Tend to lean left and so
at balancing voices required, and I know that this is
definitely the case. For example, in US university is one
(05:12):
of the things you quoted, nine out of ten academics
will say that they are left leaning in their political views.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
But we should start.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
By questioning why that is. So? Can we start there
by going back a little and saying, why is it
that all these groups that are very influential in our democracies.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I think their variety. This is not one answer, but
one answer is actually that precisely because they're professional influencers
of the state, they like a larger state that raises
them in status as opposed to people in the market.
And I think that's a very important aspect. I think
a second aspect is a very old problem envy. Most
(05:52):
of these people grew up with the people who become wealthy.
They were also very good students, and sometimes there are
the better students. They've become academics because of that, and
that's upsetting to them. And then finally, I think there
is just an idea because if you're an influencer, you
think the way of structuring the world is with central
(06:16):
ideas and an idea of a quality and not a
sort of trial and error, more empirically based ideas, so
more top down enthusiasms that naturally come to you. So
all of those reasons, I think put people who want
to influence the world as their profession largely on the left.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And journalists asiemst those people will have an income that is,
one way or another state sponsored.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yes, I think that's true. Of course, entertainers don't, but
it's absolutely true if bureaucrats do. And in the United States,
most of our academics, most of our important universities, like
my own, are private, but still they're become more dependent
on the state.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
So I think there's some to that, and I suppose
the other part is the charitable sector. Oh, the third
sector is might call it, which again is very heavily
stay sponsored both here and in the US, and obviously
leans to the left.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yes, that's true, although in the United States things are
a little mixed, and I don't know whether it becomes
our differences in law. One of the actual advantages of
the rich is that they'd send up actually some charities
that push against the left liberalism. For instance, our university
system and you quite correctly point out how left leaning
professors are. Conservative billionaires have actually set up centers that
(07:36):
are somewhat counterpoints, and that's been very important. And I
myself am on the board of something called the Federalist
Society here, which is a conservative group of law students
and practitioners, and they've had enormous influence on our legal
education system, which before the rise of the Federalist Society
was almost totally left wing. It's obviously the professors still
(07:58):
a very left wing, but they give a voice, and
they may are presents on campus that really wouldn't be
there but for the wealthy. So one important point about
this book is that a lot of billionaires are left
wing and they give to charities. The money on the
right makes more of a difference at the margin, because
already the professional influencers are on the left. So each
(08:21):
marginal dollar spent by the right wing billionaire, either on
politics or on culture, makes more of a difference.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, okay, So one of the key ideas in the
book is that the left leaning influencers on that side
of the equation, there is this homogeneity of opinion that
is really full on. But yet when you move across
to the Talking about the rich, you can't talk about
them in terms of having a homogeneity of opinion because
(08:51):
they don't. They're very, very different. So when you look at,
for example, the political donations of the left, you will
see in the US lots of billionaires contribute to the
Democrats in the same way that as they do to
the Republicans. You're not see any hobgenaty. And you see
that in the UK as well. You see some of
the very rich supporting labor and lots of the very rich,
of course, supporting the right. So there's a divergence of
(09:12):
opinion among the rich in a way that I suspect
most people don't really think about.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yes, that's right. And one of the reasons for that
is they have a kind of independence. I think that
most professional influencers don't because one other important difference between
the rich and professional influencers is the rich are not
gatekeepers of the other rich. How do people become rich, Well,
it's someone likes their product, or someone likes the way
they put together companies. It's a market test, and people
(09:41):
aren't thinking ideologically in that spectrum. But let me tell you,
I've been in academics a long time, appointments here are
controlled by other academics, and people's political views make a
difference in those appointments, and that's so I think true
at journalism as well. And so one aspect of the
diversity of the rich is that there's no gatekeeping function
(10:04):
that they play. And another is that the rich make
their money in all sorts of different way. Some are entrepreneurs,
some are financial people, others are inventors. And that's another
advantage of theirs, even beyond ideology. They have a different
way of thinking about the world. And in a commercial democracy,
like really all modern democracies, that's important. They know something
(10:28):
about the economy. So it's not only they bring a
variety of views, they bring a variety of perspectives about
the market that are extremely helpful. And so that goes
a bit back to the point you began with. It's
different version of that point is democracies do need to
be economically successful. They have an increasing pie is extremely
(10:50):
important for their health, and how that happens depends on policies,
and then rich bring a useful perspective to those as well.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So to become rich, you have you're automatically nonconformist, don't you.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Absolutely you see some niche that other people have not
yet exploited it.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
And so it's more you could say that, you know,
they're more rationalist than romantic, more pragmatic. To become rich,
to build a company, to turn yourself into a billionaire,
show you might have a dream or a little romance
on the side, but the path is one that is
very pragmatic.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Schumpeter, a famous economist. To be rich, you just can't
talk your way to success. But in a lot of
the professional influencers, being a great talker is a way.
And of course, as you suggest, that doesn't actually mean
you're going to have good results. There's not a connection
necessarily between eloquence and consequence.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, I mean I would divide that up into maybe
one group continually talking about the world as they would
like it to be and people behaving as they would
like them to, and the other group working with the
world as it is, and the way that people genuinely
respond to incentives.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Every day, someone running a company is faced with a
market test of his actions. And let me tell you,
in academics at least, which I know best, people are
faced with any kind of market tests, or at least
not yet. Who knows, AI may start changing that. But
actually an important university, there's no sense that one's in competition,
(12:28):
there's no sense that anything is at risk.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So in that sense, one of the things that you
talk about in the book is this idea that democracy
tends to mediocrisy if you don't keep a close eye
on it, or soft deputism, etc. And so the rich
to then a constraint on the natural excesses of majority
rule exactly because they do introduce these ideas, practice them,
evaluate them, so they are available for public use.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And they also the independence to stand up against the
majority I talk at least, and it's true, there's some
analogs in British history are how crucial the rich were
as catalysts for abolishing slavery. I mean it's not well
known in the United States at least, but abolition of
slavery was an extremely unpopular view, not only in the
South but in the North. And so who was able
(13:36):
to stand up for that, Well, wealthy people, and they
paid for that. People burned down their houses. But note
that if you're wealthy and your house is burned down,
well you can build another house. But if you're not wealthy, well,
you'd not likely to speak up against something that the
majority wants. And it turns out, of course, the majority
is not always right, and so that's one problem of democracy.
(13:58):
And they also sometimes, as Tokville says, worship themselves the
majority of their mediocrity. That's a problem of mediocrity. And
the rich have therefore been very important in funding what
we now regard as the great arts, the great buildings
that are lasting monuments to our democracy. And I think
democracy is some kind of national greatness is important in
(14:21):
supporting a national democracy, and the rich play a very
important role in that. And finally, the soft decimotism point
that you raise, which goes back cut the worry to
ari style that the democracy the people are just going
to vote themselves, benefits at the expense of everyone else,
points you made at the beginning of this broadcast. The
(14:42):
rich are very aware of that, and again they, at
least in the United States, fund a lot of think
tanks that worry about that essential fiscal problem which never
goes away in democracy. And there of course the people
with the incentives to do that, and the money too,
that we be much worse off. We're not, as you
point out, wonderfully off without that constant pressure of people
(15:04):
who want to worry about the fiscal long term and do.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Worry about excellence. One of the things that the book
really brings out is this idea that there is there
really isn't any thing as a pure democracy. Is the
whole idea of everyone having a vote and everyone having
a similar level of influence is of course always nonsense
because there's always really strong pressure groups across the board.
There's the end of special interest groups. If we've discussed,
(15:30):
there's the charities, there's the academics, etc. So it doesn't
really exist, this idea of a genuine democracy because of
the way public opinion is so heavily influenced by different groups.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
In a representative democracy, it doesn't because we made the
decision not to have the kind of really impossible the
democracy that was imagined in ancient Greece, where ever we
would vote on everything, where in some sense people would
have greater influence. Was representatives are going to be influenced
by a variety of things and what works, because they're
going to be worried about what's going to happen to
(16:02):
the next election some sense, one idea about democracy is
we give a kind of prize to people who in
public office which they'd like to keep, and that tends
to make them focus a bit on consequences. But that
also means they're going to look at a variety of
views and they're not going to simply look at the
everyone individually, because they're concerned about what's going to happen
(16:23):
next time, not just what people have voted for last time.
And that's just inevitable. And people are very different. They
have different money, they have different amounts of interest in politics,
they have different eloquence. So once you have that kind
of representative democracy, it really is a fantasy to think
that people are going to have equal influence. And that
is that I do think is an underlying fantasy against
(16:46):
which people worry about the wealthy have more influence than average.
And my book begins with the idea, well, that's true,
but it doesn't follow that they have too much influence,
because there are so many groups that have more influence
than the average citizens.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, and of course I suppose we should as obvious
but true that you can only tolerate the rich offering
this balance of opinion as long as you have clear
institutions and trusted legal systems that control the excesses of
the rich as well.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Right only in a market democracy. I do argue that
in some sense the rich are better than ever because
we move more quickly through different rich people than ever
before with our technocracy, because that's always creating a new
group of rich people. So you might worry, and Aristotle
didn't worry, I think correctly, the rich could be a
(17:38):
kind of permanent, encrusted oligarchy, and that was a real
worry in a world where we had a static society
where the rich were largely tied to land. And in
that world we have people with unchanging views. We're just
really important, we're very concerned and able to keep a
lid on new ideas. But that's not our world. Our
(17:59):
world is one of churn of the next new technological thing,
and that's shown in our richest people. At the beginning
of the Forbes four hundred, which goes back now over
forty I think maybe forty fifty years, most people have
inherited their wealth. Now very small, much smaller percentage of
people inherit their wealth, and that's because we have a
(18:22):
much more dynamic, changing society and that's great because these
the rich people who come up have different ideas from
the old money, and that's a good thing as well.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So your theory, your ideas, wouldn't really support those who
have inherited their wealth in the same way as those
who have made their wealth. What we're talking about here
is people who have created wealth and therefore have these
interesting thought patterns, eccentric thought patterns even that allow them
to give value. So if we're thinking about how to
(18:56):
tax the rich, as it appears everyone pretty much always does,
should we then focus more on inheritance tax than on
any other kind of tax because the second and third
generation rich are of significantly less value to us as
opinion balances than the first generation.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I think there's a grain of truth in that, But
I want to push back slightly against that idea because
I certainly agree with you that if most people inherit
their money, that goes back to the kind of Aristotelian concern.
The people who inherit their money do often have a function,
particularly in national greatness and the arts, So you might
think there's a kind of interesting alchemy that takes place
(19:34):
in the rich. So you begin with someone who's made
their money and therefore done a lot for consumers. He
hands on money after he dies, and then his children
they're in a different position. They collect art, they do
other things that are important, And so I don't want
to say the inherited wealth has no function. I do
(19:55):
agree that if you're looking to tax things, it's better
to tax at the inherited stage than some other stages.
For instance, at least in the United States, we have
something called a step up in basis, which means that
all capital gains disappear on people's death. That strikes me
as a mistake, at least for large fortunes, and so
(20:18):
I'm not always in favor of any tax break for
the wealthy, and that would be one I would certainly
want to take a look at as opposed to taxing
their wealth. Now. Wealth taxes now I think would be
a terrible mistake. It would, essentially and that's one of
my concerns in writing this book is try to take
(20:38):
away the power of the rich. But that doesn't mean
it would go to ordinary people. It mean that the influencers,
the claresy, would just become more powerful. And so it's
not only an economic matter. The wealth taxes would have
bad economic effects. I think they would have bad democratic
effects and actually entrenching the professional influencers as more powerful.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Okay, so then I know that I know the next
question everyone listening is asking in their heads, which is
how rich is too rich? So when does inequality get
out of control? So all the things that we are
talking about, You can be rich enough for that, to
be rich enough to not be beholden to the bureaucracy
in any way, to be rich enough to hold whatever
opinions you like without having any interest in anyone's opinion
(21:21):
on your opinions. You can be rich enough for that
when you're into the tens of millions or the maybe
even the hundreds of millions, I don't know, but you
don't need much more than that to be able to
fulfill that role.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
I don't entirely agree with that. We'd certainly you need
more than tens of millions to actually fund some great enterprise. Charitably,
you may need billions of dollars. In our world. Certainly,
global public goods working on health are extremely important. No,
not also that there's a problem often with charities that
(21:53):
people aren't willing to give unless the charity is up
and running and effective, and what the wealthy can do
really wealthy, is they can just give an enormous amount
of money and bring to light a new charity that
focuses on some need that people haven't thought of before.
So I'm cautious about saying in our world that there's
(22:15):
a limit about it. I think the greater concern is
not how much any individual has. At some point you
do worry that the inequality might become just too much.
There's a debate about that. Of course, people like Pikaity
in France have raised it. I look at that in
the book and I just don't think his arguments are
(22:35):
really proven, even on his own terms, and people have
pointed out these missed some technical matters about income. But
I also point out in the book that I think
people miss out on something really important about the modern world,
which is how technology really makes people's living standards similar
in a way they never have been before. And one
(22:57):
way I try to explain this with a thought experiment
with some Oxford don and a duke. Though one hundred
years ago, two hundred years ago, they lived completely different
lives compared to when I you compare me to Peter Teale,
whom I've met Peter Teal is a lot richer than
I am. Our lives just different and completely well, not really,
(23:19):
because in some sense we all spend our time on
the internet. Information is free. Even I can summon up
as chauffeur with Uber when I need to, and that's
because the technology is dematerializing our world and so making
some things just less scarce and so people to be
able to enjoy them in common. So I think it
(23:40):
may be a mistake, particularly when we don't understand how
technology is really changing these it won't be clear that's
about middle class people. There still is a problem of
poverty and people who don't have enough. I consider that's
not a problem of inequality, and people often confused confuse
those problems. I'd see that poverty of the lowest ten
percent and income is still a huge issue. I just
(24:02):
don't think it's a probab inequality.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Okay, So putting that to one side, the key point
here is that as our lifestyles begin to equalize thanks
the technological change around us, the actual difference in absolute
wealth becomes less relevant.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Okay, Now do you think that you are getting cut through?
Because if you look at the political round across Europe
in particular, and certainly across much of the US. You
do still have this idea that you know, we can
ditch the rich, we can live without the rich, which
atacks the richinal tags them into oblivion, et cetera. There's
very little understanding or acceptance of what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Oh, quite confident that my academic colleagues are not going
to be listening to me. One thing that gives me
hope is that it is democracy. So I do think
democracy and even the great mass of people giving a
vote is useful in this respect that when people tax
the rich into oblivion and the economic consequences are really bad,
(24:58):
there are revolts of people. It's been pointing out, for instance,
that in a real democracy, when people just have the vote,
there almost never is a famine. A march Sen pointed
that out, And so I think that eventually people do
wake up to the bad consequences. But alas democracy sometimes
works slowly, I'm just trying to speed it up a little,
(25:21):
maybe a few days. The one other thing I think
would be hopeful too, is that our world I think
is going to be changed by the rise of AI
that I think it will scramble some long time political allegiances,
and I think that may give more of an opportunity
to think through some things again, so I'm cautious about that.
(25:44):
Was of course, the social changes brought on by AI
could lead people astray as well, but I'm not that
pessimistic because I do think so long as we keep
the basic idea of democracy is that the trial and
experim some of them are bad experiments of actingly rich
successively are likely to be thrown out at least after
(26:07):
a time.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Okay, John, you may be a billionaire. I don't know.
We're only looking to other across the screen. How do
you manage to be such an obviously contrarian thinker?
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So while I'm not a billionaire, I grew up among
the children of billionaires, so that might be one aspected
rubbed off on me. So maybe that's one of the reasons.
Of course, there aren't going to be contrarian thinkers in
any profession. The question is they're a critical mass of them.
I think another reason is that my father pointed out
(26:44):
that my family has had a long tradition of difficulty
with authority, and so the authority that is represented by
the clarity in my profession has rubbed me the wrong
way and has actually moved me to be more contrarian
over time.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Talk about this outside influence of the rich on opinion
and operating as a sort of a healthy tension, as
one of the phrases you is creating this healthy tension
that amongstey requires should governments be thinking more carefully about
the way that they finance the organizations around them, but
the way they finance academia, about the way they finance
(27:22):
the charitable sector. And it feels that there's a responsibility
on the state using taxpayers money to finance organizations that
should be encouraging diversity of thought, and maybe isn't so.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I have two thoughts about that. One is that's absolutely true,
and we actually see movements in the United States to
create for our state legislators to create some centers within
universities that might be more heterodox, so that's an advantage.
On the other end, one asked me very careful, I
think for the state to get too involved in choosing
(27:57):
who's going to be an academic, because that backfire in
a big way and lead, of course, depending on who's
in control of the state, to actually a hyper orthodoxy.
So one thing we've had actually in the United States
is THEI diversity, equity, and inclusion, which has been all
the rage and affirmative action, which are state policies. They
(28:18):
worse state at least encouraged policies in many respects, they
actually led to greater a homogeneity of thought. So I'm
a classical liberal in the sense that I'm worried about
the state always and if the state wants to add
some particular center that will do something or other that's
apart from the rest of the university. There's something to
(28:41):
be said for that. But actually running the university and
making really tamping down on its decision making, I think
can have some law, even as some short term gains
can have a variety of long term costs.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Okay, we've talked about all the positives of the rich,
the positive externalities they create, and I suppose there is
a sort of very long list of books of the
negative externalities of the rich, So they come with negatives
as well.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
So I think the biggest negatives and the negatives and
pointed out as you say, for centuries is some of
the concerns about the rich have been that they because
of their independence, they lead lifestyles that are really not
moral and encourage that in other people. Right, And they're
also there's a view that there's some and this goes
(29:30):
back to the nobility, they're not really that connected to
their nation. They're just unconcerned about their particular place of birth.
And then finally, I think a concern is that they
themselves are a kind of interests, that they know how
to maneuver the levers of power in their own interest.
And there's something I think to be said for all
(29:52):
of those problems.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
It's a very compelling, very compelling story, and one that
it would be interesting to see politicians really react with
at all. I mean, we're still hear here. As you know,
there's endless anti the rich, anti wealth diatribes constantly, and
there's constant conversations about new taxes and new wealth taxes,
and we have mansion taxes, straight out wealth taxes. Bitch
(30:15):
of course never work, because of course, taxing the rich
is very difficult, taxing them beyond a certain level, beyond
straightforward capital gains and straightforward income. These wealth taxes are
very complicated and very difficult to manage and very rarely
raise much money. But nonetheless, the conversation is constantly about them, the.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Books that actually have shown that the only way really
to get rid of the riches to have a war
or a vast depressions, and where I think the antidote,
whatever you think of the riches, worse than the disease.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Listen, before we end, can I just ask you what
you are reading?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
So I'm reading two things at the moment. One is
Charles Dickens Bleak House, which is about lawyers, most book
about lawyers, and I recommend it. It's really a I
think as great as and of course it's it's lawyers
who are another group of a last professional influencers. And
the other is a book which I think is very
(31:13):
interesting by I think Sebastian Malaby called The Infinite Machine,
which is about the race for AI and I think
he does a very good job in showing not only
the players in that race, but what's going on and
confirms my view that the world, even within five years,
(31:34):
is going to look astonishingly different from what it is today.
And in ten years, I'm not sure if we came
back we would exactly recognize I'm sure we would be
not in the same kind of podcast. I think we'd
be much more like we'd be. We could really tell
that much different that we would be talking to one
another's if we were sitting on a couch.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's Maren Talks Money.
If you like us, share, rate, review, and subscribe wherever
you listen to podcasts, and keep sending your questions in
your comments to Merrin Money at Bloomberg dot net. You
can also follow me in John on Twitter or x.
I'm at marins w and John is John out of
score steppeg. This episode was housted by me Maren's unsep
(32:16):
Web was produced by Samasadi and Moses and Em and
Jennifer Seely. Sound designed by Blake Maples and special thanks
of course to John mc ginnis
Host
Merryn Somerset Webb
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