 Most people are basically honest when it comes down to it. But they're being taught to be dishonest. They're being taught that that's the American way. That's what Trump told them, only stupid people pay taxes. Well, I'm here to tell you, patriotic people pay taxes. I think we have to come back to that. It's patriotic to do things together. It's patriotic to be part of a collective thing that's bigger than yourself. I'm here today with Morris Pearl. He's the chairman of the patriotic millionaires here in the United States, working with my good friend, Erica Payne. They've just put the book together called Tax the Rich. I'd like to spend some time with Morris, not only talking about his book, but what he sees on the horizon and what we can all do to help them realize the vision that their organization's put together. So tell me a little bit, what inspired the book Tax the Rich? We just saw this gross unfairness. It's what Piketty had been telling us about from his book. Those of us who are wealthy are getting wealthier and wealthier and wealthier because our wealth compounds, but so many Americans just aren't and they're falling behind. And what I'm afraid of is our nation becoming a nation of just a few rich people and lots and lots of poor people. And you and I are older than most of our team. And so we remember like South Africa when they tried that. It did not end well for the rich people. That's right. Well, I do think like we're talking about the unsustainability for the rich people. When we go back to the French Revolution or as you mentioned, South Africa, there are many episodes. And it's also very interesting how we got into a zone. I don't know if it was deliberate or conscious, but we decided we couldn't use fiscal policy, but we could use monetary policy. And in the post great financial crisis, what we did was we pumped up the balloon with highly concentrated wealth where we protected assets, not people. Maybe we're at a different place now. I think we've figured out, maybe, I hope, that our government has to take action. I think some of that was because the monetary policy part of the government, the Fed, essentially, could react quickly. Whereas the fiscal policy part, that required Congress and the president. And they can't even agree among themselves what to do. And committees, two floors, conference committees, the whole nine yards. Yeah, so they can't take quick action with fiscal policy. And for whatever reason, more or less half of the Congress, I don't know what they think. Maybe they think inequality is a good thing. Or they're afraid that if you give people something, it'll take away all of their will to work. So many of our Congress people, when I asked them, well, we need to maintain the connection between employers and employees because they're afraid that they truly believe that if people can get by without working, they will. Because they would probably. Everyone projects themselves and everyone else. One congressional staffer told me the biggest problem is that if people get too much unemployment benefits, there'll be no way to hire any workers anymore. And I said, well, in my state where I live, that would be a felony. Do you really have that problem? And they truly believe that. And I think they do because if they could get away without working and stealing and know they could get away with it, they think everybody would. It's just so sad. Well, there are a number of things here that come to mind. The first of which is, has globalization, where what you might call technology and financial capital has wings and people are bolted to the ground. Has that changed, which you might call the discretion that policymakers can use? Is it now safe to count on having a tax base when the tax base can get up and leave and go to another country? I think it's safer than people think. I really do. I think more people are moving into the United States than moving out of the United States. New York has more billionaires now than it ever did before. And we pay higher tax rates here in New York than almost any other place. But do they keep their money in Bermuda? Or do they keep it in New York? Well, it doesn't matter for the taxes. People pay income taxes here. We currently don't have a wealth tax, although maybe we should. Fair enough. You own a house. You pay a wealth tax because some of your wealth is tied up in the house that you own. And so do most middle-class homeowners here in the United States. One of the things we've been advocating and we talk about in our book is the idea of maybe it's time for millionaires and billionaires to pay a wealth tax too on their wealth. Our tax system was invented, Rob. And as you know, back when most wealthy people, most of their wealth was farmland, their capital was tied up in their land. So the real estate tax is that local municipalities charge really was a wealth tax on most of their wealth. And maybe we have to get back to that and charge today's rich people who own stocks and companies and things, a wealth tax too. The question is, how do you get the confidence of incumbents that they can address these social concerns? Because at one level, they fear voters that disapprove of them. At another level, they fear donors who don't give them the means to reach the people. Yeah, it's a very sad thought, it really is. Maybe they're a little too fearful than they need to be. We've made some progress here in New York City with our campaign finance laws. Essentially, if you can get a few hundred people to give you $100 or $200 each, you get matching funds from the campaign finance system and run for city council here in New York, which happened not that long ago, changed the face of the New York City Council. And in HR1 and S1, for the People Act that's considered by our Congress now, there are provisions to have small donor matching funds. And only matching funds for donors who give, I forget the exact number, but are $200. And I think a system like that can really enable our Congress people not to have to spend all of their time sitting in little rooms on 340 South Capitol Street making phone calls. It's just so sad that they have to spend so much of their time raising money. And even the best Congress people. And I honestly believe that most of them are trying to do a good job. I don't think that they're soliciting bribes, I mean, for the most part, anyway. But they spend so much time with their donors. They know exactly what the problems that their donors bring up are. And they don't really have time for everyone else. To go to one of these fundraising receptions and see people waiting in line for their three or four minutes with their senator, I was once at a reception when a senator said, it's a good thing I'm not a self-funder like someone else is, because it's only at events like this where I get to meet people. And I said, we are thousands of miles from your home at a penthouse in New York. And you think you're meeting people and like. We are meeting people, but it's a little strand of the spectrum that you should be meeting. Is a lot of what you're doing diagnosing the maladies that have come to life? Or are you focused more on the vision of what to do to get out of this problem? Some of both, really. We go into pretty great detail about some of the most ridiculous loopholes in our tax system. Perfectly legal reasons why rich people like us have much lower tax rates as a percentage of their income or their wealth or any other way you want to measure it. Much lower tax rates than most Americans who have to work for a living. We talk about how income earned from capital gains, buying and selling stock is taxed at a much lower rate than income from working. We talk about how real estate developers take tax breaks that are just incomprehensible to most regular Americans. We talk about how multinational corporations somehow record all of their profits in low tax jurisdictions like Ireland or Lichtenstein, even though they economically really make money here in the United States. So we really try to explain to people how it is that they, the typical Americans who work for a living and have enough extra money to buy our book, are really paying where so many people are just not. And the difference compounds, because the rich get richer and they invest their money and get richer and richer every single year. And they manipulate the laws and the regulations so that what used to be tax evasion is now just called tax avoidance or tax deferral. Yeah. When you're looking at these policies, they've got the fingerprints of both parties over time. And that despair, that despondency, that lack of trust in governance, that lack of trust in expertise which has fostered these policies isn't entirely what you might call stupid emotional people melting down. It has a coherent basis. Yeah. It's not stupid because I think that some of the people who are complaining, they've not seen a solution from anybody. They've not seen anybody come up with a solution. Even our current president has a lot more understanding, I would say. He's still an empathetic borehole about him. He's much more empathetic. And we're gonna see and hopefully he's gonna bring polish into place that will actually solve some of the problems. It's true. I remember dinette meetings talking about the deaths of despair and how so many people are overdosing on drugs and committing suicide. And those, the places where they live, those are the places where people are voting for Trump because they wanted to see a change. Do we wanna do things collectively, together, or are we each just in it for ourselves? And it's a difference of philosophy. So I think that the, I don't even wanna call them conservatives. We honestly think that we're more conservative than they are by most traditionally sort of the words. But whatever you wanna call the people on the other side, they honestly believe that everybody should just be in it for themselves. That's the difference. Is that an emotional philosophy? In other words, I can understand your belief in, we're better in a win-win game and collective, but nobody plays that game so I gotta go protect myself. That's a fear reaction in some sense. Justified with a certain logic about individual freedom. You know, sure. I mean, maybe I'd like to live in a, I don't know, a big ranch and out west someplace and not be near any neighbors, but I don't. I live on the seventh floor of a co-op on Park Avenue. I have lots of neighbors. We have rules about our building. They'll be considered absolutely insane even in the town where I grew up and upstate New York. I wanna repaint a bathroom. I have to sign some forms and approve this and approve that. I grew up in a little town upstate New York and they would have thought that was crazy, but I choose to do that because I live in New York City. That's where I wanna live. And it's reciprocal. Yeah, and it's reciprocal. You're protected by that process and your contribution to protection. I know that no one is gonna screw up the rest of the building. I know that there's things that protect me and then I put up with those things when they're protecting my neighbors too. And that's what I choose to do. Not everyone chooses to do that. That's why people who live in cities are more collectively oriented than people who live in the very rural areas. Necessities the mother of invention. Yeah, it is. It is. That's why our original state, they're called common wealths because they understood you had to have common wealth. People had to put their wealth together to do things in common together. And somehow I think it started, I don't know when it started, but it kind of increased when Ronald Reagan ran for president. He said, oh, the scariest words in America where I'm from the government, I'm here to help you. He kind of told people, you're not supposed to do things in common together collectively. I honestly think most people are basically honest when it comes down to it, but they're being taught to be dishonest. They're being taught that that's the American way. That's what Trump told them, only stupid people pay taxes. Well, I'm here to tell you, patriotic people pay taxes. You know, look back, World War II, they published all these little videos or I don't know if they were newsreels then, but little like music videos of people talking about how patriotic is to pay taxes because that's the first time that most people paid income taxes was around the time of the Second World War. I think we have to come back to that. It's patriotic to do things together. It's patriotic to be part of a collective thing that's bigger than yourself. But we've got now in today's world, we have this extraordinary wealth in the hands of a few people, which is not bad thing, as chairman of the patriotic millionaires, I mean, in favor of people being wealthy, I mean, in favor of people being millionaires, I think everyone should try it. But we also have this lack of trust in the government and the wealthiest people are the ones who have the least amount of trust in the government, at least in my personal experience in talking to people. And we have to somehow get by that and get to them or the rest of the people the idea that we can do things together. And that's really where we have to get. That's what our book is getting at is the fact that we all have to contribute not just the regular working people but the rich people too, because we have to decide how to use societies resources not by rich philanthropists deciding what they wanna do with their money but by people through the democratic process, through the voting, through the elected representatives, all the people making decisions about how resources should be allocated in our society as a whole. And that's really the essence of our book is that we have to do things by collective democratic decision-making. I think you demonstrate that there's hope for results. Thank you. Hope everyone just reads our book and gets excited about taxes.