Pod Insights Prof G Markets The American Affordability Crisis — ft. Neera Tanden About this episode Ed Elson and Scott Galloway are joined by Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, to unpack affordability in America under the Trump administration. She also weighs in on healthcare policy, wealth taxes and soaring housing prices.
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Transcript 6,806 words · 21 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:29 Scott Galloway? Today's number one. The United Arab Emirates will send its first-ever athlete to the Winter Olympics this weekend. An Alpine skier who learned to ski in a Dubai shopping mall. True story yet. I absolutely love the Winter Olympics. It's the first time where I can scream at a woman, "Sweep harder!" during the curling event and not be called a sexist.
1:54 Speaker 09 Markets are bigger than us. What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it.
2:03 Scott Galloway? What do you think, Ed?
2:04 Ed Elson? You didn't really give me time to laugh. Just immediately, what do you think? You gotta, you gotta give it a moment. This is what they teach you in, in comedy school. You gotta wait a beat and wait for the audience.
2:18 Scott Galloway? Was that what they teach you in comedy school? You're talking at most comical a university high school. So, and bitch, uh, the reason I was a virgin until 19 and not till 40 is because of this rocket sense of humor.
2:30 Ed Elson? You can always improve, can always be better, no matter how good you are.
2:33 Scott Galloway? Well, the Winter Olympics play an important social role. It's important that there's a sport or an event where only white people are allowed to play that sports that no one else can afford to learn. So.
2:42 Ed Elson? That's true. That's not a joke, that's just a fact.
2:45 Scott Galloway? That was social commentary in the form of humor. How are you, Ed?
2:49 Ed Elson? I'm doing very well. How are you?
2:50 Scott Galloway? I'm fucking exhausted. I'm doing this, I don't know if you've heard, but I've.
2:53 Ed Elson? You seem a little out of breath.
2:54 Scott Galloway? I kind of started a movement. Um, and I'm about to go on Jake Tapper. And then anyways, um, I unsubscribe, I know you want to know more about me. Um, I unsubscribed from Uber last night and, but I love Uber. This was a tough one. And when you unsubscribe, which I'm sure you've already done, is you want to be part of this movement and not just virtue signal all the fucking time, you little hipster Brooklyn sandal dyed weirdo. But I unsubscribed from Uber and the last screen you set, you see, it tells you how many Uber Eats you've ordered and how many Uber rides you've taken. Okay. Guess how many Uber, how many times I've ordered from Uber Eats?
3:35 Ed Elson? I think it's gotta be like a thousand. Is that, am I going too high?
3:39 Scott Galloway? Thirty-seven. I'm not a big food delivery guy and I usually use Caviar for some reason. I'm used to the interface. In the last 10 years, how many Ubers have I taken?
3:47 Ed Elson? That's gotta be over a thousand for sure.
3:49 Scott Galloway? Thirty-seven hundred and fifty-six. And I did some research. All right. So this is what big tech does. Big tech comes in with a value proposition where they charge you. 20 bucks for an Uber that cost them 40, they try and consolidate the market and then they slowly but surely start raising prices. So I take Uber Lux. The average Uber Lux ride in 2015 was between 40 and 60 dollars. Today, by the way, Uber has raised its prices once they consolidated the market, 7 to 10% a year, twice or triple times the rate of inflation. Now, the average Uber Lux ride is 80 to 120 dollars. So 350 rides a year at an average price of about 100 bucks, because I'm usually going back and forth from the
4:32 Scott Galloway? airport. I am spending every year $35,000 on Uber. That's true. And I realize this is a story of privilege, but what I've decided is I canceled Clip that now. I canceled Uber. I've been taking the Tube and the Subway in New York, which are incredible. I don't know if you knew this, but there's tunnels underground and these cars go through them on tracks and they get you where you need to go for like two or three bucks. They're just, they're really, they're seriously amazing. Some weird people and also the people aren't that hot on the train. That's the only thing I would, I would, I would suggest fixing. We need more hot people on the trains. Yeah, they could make like a hot girl's train, maybe that would fix things. Or hot dudes. I'm fine with the hot guys. I go to Equinox. At this point, I just
5:17 Scott Galloway? want hot. So I figured out with the money I'm going to save, no joke, I could lease, including parking and insurance, with the money I'm going to save, having canceled my Uber account, I could lease a Mercedes G-Wagon, the new BMW i7, or a Range Rover with the money I'm saving. This is all a long-winded way of saying, go to resist and unsubscribe and you will find out just how much money you are spending on different tech platforms that have slowly but surely increased their pricing and you don't realize how much it's costing you. Anyways, I'm getting, just to really stick it to the man, I'm going to go buy a Range Rover.
6:00 Scott Galloway? But here's the, I mean, here's the question, because
6:07 Ed Elson? I mean, how are you getting around? Are you not, are you, are you switching to Lyft? Cause I know you're doing this thing where you, you have two different subscriptions and you get rid of one of them. Is that, is that what you're doing here?
6:18 Scott Galloway? I'm not exaggerating. I've been taking the tube in the subway and I've been doing this awful thing called Uber X where they have like air freshener and shitty cars and, oh my god.
6:27 Ed Elson? You're still taking Ubers? It's just you downgraded?
6:30 Scott Galloway? No, I do the Lyft, the, the cheap Lyft one. Lyft, it's called Lyft Walmart or something, or Lyft, Lyft, life has not worked out the way I'd hoped. But, and a guy who doesn't know how to use Waze and is on an Android phone, um, God, I sound like such a douchebag right now, but I've been taking the subway. It's incredible.
6:50 Ed Elson? Good stuff. $35,000. That's pretty good.
6:52 Scott Galloway? So anyways, um, um, I'm going one by one. Uber was the tough one. I'm excited about that one. I'm doing Paramount Plus tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to do Apple TV Plus. I did Amazon Prime on Friday. That wasn't hard. I don't order that much from Amazon, but anyways.
7:12 Ed Elson? I'm shocked to hear that.
7:13 Scott Galloway? Yeah, I don't buy a lot from Amazon. What have you unsubscribed from, given I know that how emotionally invested are you, you are in this movement?
7:19 Ed Elson? I haven't unsubscribed yet, but I'll, but I'm happy to hear from you what you think I should unsubscribe from. I could maybe go between Lyft and Uber.
7:28 Scott Galloway? Memo, hold on, hold on, one second, one second, Ed. One second. Memo to file, read, Ed Elson, review and compensation. Does not like, act like an owner, is poor for morale. Music does not match the words. It's disappointing our audience.
7:43 Ed Elson? We'll see, we'll see how disappointed everyone is.
7:45 Scott Galloway? You have, let me get this. Your boss and a person you, you constantly say I'm your role model has started a movement and you have yet to unsubscribe from anything. Do I have that right?
7:56 Ed Elson? You did get that right. Yeah.
7:58 Scott Galloway? And by the way, none of this comes for free. We just lost an advertiser who rhymes with Snapple and we just lost, or I lost another telco advertiser that rhymes with Mint Mobile.
8:15 Scott Galloway? Anyways, nothing's for free, Ed. Corporate is like, it's really great. You're finding your virtue all of a sudden, but we're not down with that. And so, yeah, nothing's for free. No thanks for free. Anyways. All right, let's get to our guest, Ed.
8:30 Ed Elson? All right, here's our conversation with Neera Tanden, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress. Neera, thank you for joining us on Prof G Markets.
8:40 Speaker 11 Thanks for having me.
8:43 Ed Elson? So I just want to start with a quick bio of who you are. So you are the CEO of the Center for American Progress. You've also worked in the White House. You're the Director for the Domestic Policy Council under Biden. You also helped to create the Affordable Care Act under Obama. You are a Democrat, but you have just plainly had a lot of experience in policy. So we want to focus on affordability in this episode and the policies that we're seeing from the administration so far. But just based on your experience, having worked in the White House, having worked as a policymaker, how would you rate the performance of this administration one year in?
9:27 Speaker 11 I think the first and foremost thing for any administration to do is to figure out how to do no harm. In that arena, the administration has definitely failed. What is, you know, kind of stark is that at a time where people are concerned about really making ends meet, the administration's cornerstone policy is tariffs. And those tariffs raise the cost of goods for, you know, most Americans, a lot of small businesses and just increased costs overall in the economy. But it's also important to remember that tariffs are essentially a version of a sales tax
10:06 Speaker 11 that is really disproportionately impacting kind of working class, poorer Americans. So I think on affordability writ large, the real challenge for the administration is that it's making the problem worse. And when you really go beyond just goods like... Groceries, or just buying like soccer balls at your local Target, you know, things like healthcare, it's an even starker picture. So there, the president is really, President Trump is the first president in my lifetime, who has actually successfully taken healthcare away from people. You know, he's the one big beautiful bill act.
10:51 Speaker 11 Will increase costs for millions of Americans by ensuring they don't have health insurance. The whole debate on premium tax credits, Affordable Care Act, premium tax credits, is also fundamentally about affordability as well. So I am gonna go with an F.
11:07 Ed Elson? Saw that coming.
11:09 Speaker 11 I know that might shock people. That might be, I just was like, I was really changing it up there. But yeah, I'm going with a failing grade.
11:20 Ed Elson? I was expecting a D coming in, but we went straight to the F. So there's a lot of different domains to dig into here. I want to dig into housing for a moment. We saw two kind of remarkable interactions last week. I'm just gonna play these two clips for you, and I'd love to get your reactions.
11:43 Speaker 12 And there's so much talk about, oh, we're gonna drive housing prices down. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes. And they can be assured that's what's gonna happen.
11:55 Speaker 13 We are going to give guidance at some point to see what is a mom and pop. That someone, maybe your parents for their retirement, about five, 10, 12 homes. So we don't want to push the mom and pops out. We just want to push everyone else out.
12:12 Ed Elson? I mean, those two clips really made the rounds. I think the clip that I'd really like to get your reaction to is Trump saying that he actually wants housing prices to go up, which is quite remarkable, because it seemed that he's been trying to present that he wants to address housing affordability. He's come up with some proposals that we can get into. But then he comes out and he just says outright, no, I want them to go up. What do you make of that clip? How relevant and important actually is it? What does it mean for affordability at large?
12:46 Speaker 11 We get a lot of conversation from Donald Trump. And every once in a while, you he will just honestly tell you what he thinks about an issue. And I think this is this is really one of those areas. And, you know, for people who understand housing in America, one of the big challenges is that it's a difficult issue, right? Because people who have bought a house, you know, a lot of people's wealth in America is in their house. And so a lot of incumbents like to keep the people who already own a home, like to actually keep housing values up and sometimes oppose the development of additional housing in their neighborhoods, et cetera.
13:29 Speaker 11 But we're really living through one of the problems with that that whole system, which is today, the average age of a first time home buyer in the United States is 40 years old. Rents went up 30% from 2020 to 2023, and they've stabilized since then. And in some markets, they're coming down. But people overall have got a rent shock and a housing shock. And I think it really does say a lot about the president, which is, I think, the people he talks to on a regular basis, maybe the wealthiest Americans, really want to keep housing values up because it is key to their wealth.
14:13 Speaker 11 But for working class Americans, middle class Americans, who are trying to buy a home or trying to just make ends meet by paying, having an affordable rent, to say that you don't want any more housing means you want housing prices to go up. You want to make it harder to buy that home. You want to make it harder to afford the rent. That is what that means. And, you know, I think it's just kind of a classic thing here, which is on tariffs, on this policy, on so much more.
14:46 Speaker 11 You know, the great irony here is the president is making life a lot harder economically for working class, middle-class Americans.
14:55 Ed Elson? Do you think that that quote actually means that we are going to have a policy under Trump of not building more housing? Because, I mean, I guess something that's been interesting to me is, I thought that there were just debates over what to, I thought we all agreed, we want to get housing prices down. And then the debate or the divergence was like, how do you do that? Do you do it by addressing interest rates? Do you go out and buy mortgage bonds as Trump has proposed? Or do you, you know, he's even proposed that institutional investors can't buy single-family homes. Do you just build more housing? That's been the whole abundance thing coming from Ezra Klein. And yet, then he just says outright, no, actually, that's not our difference of opinion here. I want them to go up.
15:40 Ed Elson? Does that mean that we're actually going to see policies, you think, that will actually increase the price of housing intentionally? Is that what that means?
15:51 Speaker 11 My interpretation of what happened here is the president might have been talking about lowering housing costs because his advisers tell him to say he wants to lower housing costs. It is a really deep concern for Americans. It's a, it's a really deep concern for young people, like middle, you know, people who are trying to buy their first home, people are in their like 30s, 40s. It's like a lot of his constituents, it's people who voted for Donald Trump, think housing is too high. So I think that is why his political advisers had told him that. And then I think maybe he was at Mar-a-Lago on a Saturday night where a bunch of really
16:30 Speaker 11 rich people said, well, you know, more housing means that in my neighborhood, like Scarsdale or wherever people live, we would have more housing in that, you know, that, nobody wants that. Nobody wants housing, more housing in my neighborhood. Nobody wants to value like my house. And I think this is an issue where you kind of have to choose. I mean, this is the issue about policymaking. And when you work in policy, you have to make a choice. Oftentimes between two different groups. And, you know, I thought that clip kind of just, in a way, perfectly captured the president's interest, which has been a hallmark of his administration, which is to do what he needs to do for his supporters, donors, network,
17:15 Speaker 11 whatever you want to call it.
17:18 Ed Elson? We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend and please follow us if you haven't already.
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19:07 Ed Elson? We're back with Prof G Markets. I think one thing that I always find and that we always find whenever we try to dig into healthcare is we like try to figure out why are healthcare costs still so high? Why are they so much higher in America? And then we kind of do the digging and digging and then it's always comes around to some answer of, oh, there's a lot of just complexity in the middle somewhere. There's the pharmacy benefit managers, there's the insurance companies, no one can see eye to eye on this stuff. The whole thing is just like, oh, it's really complicated. Like, that's the explanation. Could you just give us like a 101 on what is going on with healthcare policy in America right now?
19:50 Ed Elson? And why hasn't America really gotten its act together in terms of bringing healthcare costs down?
19:58 Speaker 11 The way I bottom line healthcare costs in America is the per unit cost of things in America is much more expensive. Going to a doctor, getting a medical device, getting a surgery is much more expensive here than in Europe or other places. Just anything you do is a lot more expensive in the United States. And the reason why it is a lot more expensive in the United States is essentially you have a variety of forces, hospitals, insurers, PBMs, drug benefit managers, like middlemen, the drug companies.
20:42 Speaker 11 All, like, very few of those forces are transparent. And so it basically, the fractured system allows a bunch of people to drive up costs. A big, a big area where things are just much more expensive in the United States is hospital care. It's just, and those hospitals often have a monopoly. And no individual group is using their, has enough market power to really drive costs effectively down. So it's a very inflationary system. So I don't have like a much better answer than it's complex and that's what makes it
21:25 Speaker 11 more expensive, but essentially of a system that is super fractured and in a way...
21:32 Speaker 11 Everyone looks at somebody else to lower the, to be transparent. What we should do is have everyone be transparent. The hospitals should be really clear on what it costs. And, you know, there, I do think that there is an additional problem in the United States, which is because people don't have health insurance, there are a bunch of forces, like hospitals shift costs. I mean, there's, we've insured a lot of people in the United States, particularly after the ACA, but there are some people who still don't have coverage and they shift costs to others to sort of pay for, for that. So it's, it's, it's two complicated things. But what we should do is have radical transparency everywhere. Get rid of the PBMs.
22:16 Speaker 11 There's a lot of self-dealing in the system as well, and that would make it a lot better.
22:20 Ed Elson? What could government do about this? Like, the, the, what I'm getting is like, all of these, this fractured system, all of these independent actors, everyone's blaming it on each other, pointing fingers, being opaque. Like, I feel like that's exactly the domain of the government, to get in there and just figure it out. What would that look like?
22:41 Speaker 11 There are states that have done really effective things. And I'll give an example. So it's to use the power of the, of the government, not to set price caps, but to basically try to negotiate with all the insurers. Insurance is regulated in the United States, basically at the state level, for the most part. And so, very similar to the German model, where you have kind of bargaining between all the employers and all the insurers to set, the government kind of oversees, to set lower prices for insurance. And they do the same thing with hospitals. And essentially, it helps bring the whole price system down by taking negotiating power
23:26 Speaker 11 and concentrating it. And this is why I think it's important for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, because you have, you have something that has a lot of market power, able to match the power of like near-monopoly prescription drug companies. So I think, you know, other countries have used that model. Other countries have also done single payer. But in a system that's going to be, that you imagine, short of single payer, having the government help You know, basically negotiate with employers and like bring all the employers together and we're negotiate rates down in a way where companies can still be profitable,
24:09 Speaker 11 but you actually are concerned about consumer costs as well. You know, I think that's an important step.
24:15 Ed Elson? What is Trump, is this administration doing on healthcare policy that is that you think is either a good idea or a bad idea? I think the one thing that I'm kind of interested in particularly is Trump RX.
24:30 Ed Elson? And from my understanding, it's, you know, this policy to theoretically get the the cost of drugs down. That's also part of his whole great healthcare plan. The details are like not very clear as to what he's actually going to do there. But just on healthcare, what do you make of what this administration has either gotten done or not gotten done so far?
24:50 Speaker 11 The Trump administration is trying to lower healthcare costs and actually lower the level of federal payments to Medicare Advantage plans. So the Trump administration recently, you know, tried to put the brakes on some overpayments to Medicare Advantage, which Medicare Advantage is a private insurance in the Medicare system, which historically has been, you know, overcharging the federal government vis a vis like much more than, you know, it pays for traditional Medicare, fee for service Medicare that the government is just handling. So that's, that's one area. And, and Trump RX, like,
25:30 Speaker 11 basically the Democrats in Congress passed Medicare drug negotiation. They have not undone that. And in some ways, it seems like they're trying to act like they're building on that by lowering drug costs. But you know, whatever, that's good. It's good if this is an area where they are trying to continue that work. And there are plenty of areas they're not continuing important, good work. So, um, you know, I think that's a really important step. I think the fact is that even Donald Trump recognizes Americans pay more for drugs, prescription drugs than anywhere else in the world. And we do that at the same time where we spend the most money on research for prescription drugs.
26:13 Speaker 11 So consumers are paying on both ends and I'm glad he's trying to take some steps there.
26:21 Ed Elson? We'll be right back. And for even more markets insights, sign up for our newsletter at profgemarkets.com/subscribe.
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27:37 Speaker 03 Welcome to Sephora.
27:38 Speaker 04 I'm looking for a perfume that's not too perfumey.
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27:43 Speaker 05 Serum moisturizer or moisturizer serum.
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27:48 Speaker 04 My concealer is making me look worse.
27:51 Speaker 03 Sounds like the wrong shade. Let's get you matched.
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28:02 Speaker 07 Hi, I.
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28:11 Ed Elson? We're back with Prof G Markets.
28:13 Scott Galloway? I want to take advantage of the fact that you are sort of at the intersection of a kind of a think tank. Is that how you would describe your group right now, policy group think tank?
28:22 Speaker 11 Yes, I would say the Center for American Progress is an action oriented think tank.
28:26 Scott Galloway? An action tank. So.
28:29 Scott Galloway? The and the fact you've worked in the Obama administration, you have a solid understanding of economics. What I want to do is sort of a lightning round here. I want to propose a series of policy ideas and get you a sort of quick 30,000-foot, action-oriented reaction. You ready?
28:44 Speaker 11 Mm-hmm.
28:45 Scott Galloway? Single payer or national healthcare?
28:49 Speaker 11 If America could start over again, there'd be a lot of benefits to single payer. It works well in other countries, but it would be a radical transformation today. So I, we support, I support more of a public option to people that would create competition for insurance companies and they'd actually have to compete on lowering costs vis-à-vis the government.
29:11 Scott Galloway? Mass distribution of GLP-1 drugs.
29:14 Speaker 11 That would be great. I mean, GLP-1 drugs are, they have many facets, one of which is the drug companies just kind of discovered, like, they basically struck gold with these drugs. They weren't expecting to, you know, they invest to have this kind of benefit. They are exceedingly expensive. They have huge costs, huge health implications. They would make Americans' lives much, much better on a whole range of issues. We're discovering health, sleeping, heart conditions, as well as weight loss. So it would be fantastic to get wide distribution and much cheaper price.
29:58 Scott Galloway? Federally mandated minimum wage of $25 an hour.
30:00 Speaker 11 I think, you know, we're looking at things like a $20 an hour. I think the most important thing to think about here is how you set a wage that people can live on and do it in a way that creates more job opportunities and doesn't give people an excuse to get rid of jobs. So, I mean, you could do $25 minimum wage and think of some regional variation, but I think the impetus to drive the minimum wage up is really crucial and hugely necessary. Just in much of the landmass of the country, it is still $7.25, just as a reminder. So
30:42 Speaker 11 think about what that's like. In most of the South, it's still $7.25. In much of the West, it's still $7.25. And I think that is outrageous, frankly, in this day and age.
30:54 Scott Galloway? Elimination of capital gains and mortgage interest, one. One basic income tax rate and similar to what Reagan did.
31:01 Speaker 11 I think the country over the last 20 years has seen a big increase in wealth that goes towards capital versus labor. And I mean, there's been some studies that show when you really raise capital gains, that, you know, people play games around that. But fundamentally, I think we should raise, we should have, we should not have this big differential between capital gains and traditional income. That benefits very wealthy Americans.
31:35 Scott Galloway? Last one, alternative minimum tax of 50% for anyone making over, say, 3 million a year.
31:40 Speaker 11 Yeah, that sounds good. I, I think what I'd say here, and you know, you've, you've talked about this yourself. I think we have a real kind of cancer in the country in declining opportunity. And I also say, you know, we had Raphael Warnock here, a cap, a few months ago, and he was talking about, you know, essentially a spiritual crisis in the country. And he identified it really with a sense that millions of Americans, most Americans in fact, don't think that they can, that they have a real fair shot in the country.
32:19 Speaker 11 And they might think that because it's true that upward mobility has really declined. We have less economic mobility than Canada, almost half. And we have less than most countries in Europe. This was a country that used to be a place where you could go as far as your talents can take you. So I, I think we have to transform our institutions to make them put that issue like.
32:48 Speaker 11 Opportunity for every American at the heart of what they do. And those ideas are part of that.
32:55 Scott Galloway? Last question for me, just along the lines of the lightning round. What do you think of the idea, the notion of mandatory national service?
33:01 Speaker 11 I love it. I wish we could get it done tomorrow.
33:03 Ed Elson? I would add one proposal to the lightning round. This has gotten a lot of tension recently. It's very controversial. It was proposed in California, and that is a wealth tax. Specifically, the one that was proposed in California would be a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Basically, for those wondering what is a wealth tax? It's just take your net worth and lop off 5%. What do you think of wealth taxes? Do you think they make sense? Do you think they will address inequality? What do you make of them?
33:37 Speaker 11 Well, I think it's hard to do at a state level. I would say that. I think the fundamental impetus to me is how you address the inequality in the country. And I want to say a little bit more about that, which is I think we've had an important conversation about inequality for over, you know, 15 years. Piketty's book came out like 15 years ago. And I think that we lose sight of how it's a corrosive effect, not just on our economy, but our democracy. I mean, and that billionaires today have the ability to have a billion times wealth
34:18 Speaker 11 of other people is one thing, but they also have a billion times more political power. So I think it is very corrosive. Now, you know, I hate to be a policy wonk here, but there is some concern that a Supreme Court will never approve of a wealth tax because we needed an amendment to even get an income tax. So I think to me, the most important question is how do we use, how do we, what ideas can we have, which there are many, to reduce the kind of overwhelming political power and economic power of the very wealthiest people in America? And, you know, I would just also note, you know, if you just look at, say, the 1995 tax code.
35:04 Speaker 11 This is in the heart of the Clinton administration. It had pretty high taxes and the economy was doing very well. Okay, we had, we were still able to have a tech boom. We had pretty high tax rates on income. We had pretty high tax rates on, on the highest end and on capital gains. And, you know, we didn't do these three rounds of tax cuts that George Bush did on dividends and all these other things. We're just a wealth of areas that we have cut taxes on over the last 20 to 30 years that we could undo without the Supreme Court challenge or other challenge of the, that a wealth tax would raise. And so it might be easier to start doing those and see where we land at.
35:47 Ed Elson? I mean, yeah, I think, I think this is hitting on what Scott often talks about, which is the difference between being right and effective. And, you know, maybe a wealth transfer fixes things, just a one-time wealth tax, but is it actually going to get done? To your point, probably, almost definitely not. Are you proposing higher taxes in general, just higher tax rates? What are some of the, the ideas that you think are more likely to happen that would be more effective, more probable than a wealth tax?
36:21 Speaker 11 So I think we should start with what our values are, right? Like, I think, you know, we should reward merit in our country. We should ensure that, like, people can rise, et cetera. We shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't make it so much easier to have benefits of capital over labor, you know? You should reward work. So if you, like, those values to me mean that you would eliminate things like stepped up basis, which is a way in which really wealthy people kind of hide money from taxes and enrich their heirs. You have a, you should have a higher estate tax, in my view.
37:04 Speaker 11 You should have raised capital gains, you know, increase, not lower, taxes on dividends. You know, there's just a whole way, there's a whole range of ways the tax code, particularly over the last 30 years, has benefited. Super wealthy Americans and benefited capital over labor. People are investing instead of people who are like working paycheck to paycheck. And from my perspective, I think we should start, I mean, like, you know, I think we should have a rich debate about a wealth tax, sure. But it's complicated. It's really hard to do. It's, people can still hide assets and income. And so I think we could just start off making the tax code a lot fairer by unrigging it.
37:47 Speaker 11 In many ways, it has been rigged over 30, at least particularly the last 30 years.
37:52 Ed Elson? If you were the emperor of America for a day, so there's no Congress, there's no checks, no balances, you can basically just do whatever you want, you've got a day to do it. What would you change in the law? What would you implement and why?
38:12 Speaker 11 I would ensure that we built mixed income housing in the suburbs and wealthier parts of America. And I'll say why I think that. You know, essentially what we've learned about poverty in America is that people who have access to like wealthier places, poorer people who have access to wealthier places, their upward mobility goes up like this. Rod Schetty has done a lot of work in this space. And, you know, to be candid, this actually is a bit the story of my life. My parents got divorced when I was really young.
38:55 Speaker 11 My father left just as a kind of accident of policy. Massachusetts had passed this encouragement of low income housing in suburban areas. My mom was able to move into an apartment. We had really good schools. If she didn't have that apartment in a middle-class town, I could have grown up in a place where no one went to a college. I grew up in a place where everyone went to college. I went to college. I went to eventually law school. And I'm here because of all those decisions. So if I could change one thing in America just for a day, there'd be a lot of opposition from some like wealthy homeowners, but I would have a system in America where we integrated
39:33 Speaker 11 housing a lot more, allowed much more mixed income housing in places that are wealthier in the country. And I think you'd have a lot more opportunity for everyone.
39:45 Ed Elson? Neera Tanden is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress. Before leading American Progress, Tanden was the domestic policy adviser to President Joe Biden and director of the Domestic Policy Council overseeing some of the administration's signature achievements, including its efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs and expand health insurance coverage. Previously, she was senior adviser and staff secretary in the White House. Neera, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time.
40:12 Speaker 11 Thank you.
40:20 Ed Elson? This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Shulon, Isabella Kinsel, Chris No Donahue, and Mia Silverio. Drew Burrows is our technical director, and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday.
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