Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Ray Madoff (on how billionaires avoid taxes & threaten capitalism)

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Ray Madoff (The Second Estate, Immortality and the Law, Practical Guide to Estate Planning) is a Boston College law professor, author, and tax-policy expert. Ray joins Armchair Expert to discuss being a proudly mediocre high school student, reluctantly trading philosophy for law school, and becoming a terrible Wall Street tax lawyer who loved teaching. Ray and Dax talk about America’s return to a pre-revolutionary aristocracy, how “salaries are for suckers” among the ultrawealthy, and why $50 trillion in wealth yielded only $28 billion in estate tax. Ray explains why high earners and wealth holders aren’t the same, how fair taxation could rescue capitalism, and why the problem is the system and not billionaires themselves.Thank you to our presenting partner Lilly. Lilly’s Foundayo™(orforglipron). Advertisement Disclaimer: Please see Indications and Safety Summary with Warnings for Foundayo™(orforglipron) at https://www.foundayo.lilly.com/risk Start your 2 month free trial today: https://youtube.com/premium . Terms Apply. Cancel Anytime.Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair. Expert, Experts on Expert. My name is Daniel Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Badman. Wow, what if your name was Daniel? You would be so different. I would be a claims adjuster. Yeah, and you'd be still wearing those glasses, though. Well, I'd only have these glasses, I'd have to look at a lot of claims, and I can't see anything anymore.

Okay, our guest today. And this was, if people listen to the Ezra Klein episode, she was suggested to us by Ezra, And boy, was he right. Great lead. I'll take more suggestions from him. Send him over, Ezra. Our guest today is Ray Madoff, and she is a professor at Boston College Law School, where she teaches in rights and tax law and policy wills and trust law.

And estate planning. She is co-founder and director of the Boston College Law School Forum on Philanthropy and the public good. Now, hold on the go. Guys, don't run. It's not a tax law session. No. It's so interesting. It's one of the most interesting guests we've ever had. Her book is called The Second Estate, How the Tax Code Made in American Aerostocracy.

So everyone's very understandable frustration with the huge income inequality. You know, one guy's got a trillion dollars. And we find out what these people pay in taxes. It's infuriating. Well, we find out how that's happening. Yes. It's like it's really necessary because she breaks it all down, how this, what the loopholes are, how this happened. And if you like capitalism, some of you don't, that's fine.

I happen to like it. This is an enormous threat to capitalism. The billionaire's not paying. It is a threat. It is. Yes. It makes capitalism not work as a system. And our system has to work for everybody.

Yep. So anyways, this is fascinating. The numbers in this are going to absolutely make your headspin. Yeah. Please enjoy Ray Matoff. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about. Rob building our website on Squarespace, and I bring it up again because it's a perfect example

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sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.com slash dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dax to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. He's an object square. He's an ultrabex fan. We're in uniform. I'm not. I can't tell you how many outfits I cried before I go.

It's very casual. Peacert. Nobody wears sandals. Nobody wears sandals. You haven't seen them yet on the show? I've only seen sneakers. I believe me, I went and tried on 50 pairs of sneakers. I just look like a man.

You look super cute. Yeah, Santa's are great. Let's just start there. Thank you. That's the most important thing. And you have a savage tan. Has the summer been treating you? I was on Martha's Vineyard.

Okay. And here is the conversation that I didn't hear myself, but a good friend of mine heard at the Beach Plum Inn. I grew up going there my whole life. A friend of mine was eating breakfast at the Beach Plum Inn, and she heard somebody say to the guy that was running the breakfast, you look just like Dax Shepherd. And he goes,

oh my God, that's a huge compliment. And he's my favorite podcaster. No. I'm so delighted. I know it. Isn't that nice? Is there anything better than a compliment heard behind your back? Wait, how come you've been going there since you were young?

Are you from Boston or something? I'm from Boston. Wow, so you're from Boston, you teach in Boston. And even worse, I'm from Newton. I teach in Newton and I live in Newton. really make me like the guy that, you know, is working at the gas station, never left? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How do you end up with Ray? Disclosure, we have a historically male name given to our daughter, so I love that. Lincoln, our firstborn is Lincoln. Wow, okay, here's the weird thing about Ray. So I was actually named after my grandmother, who was sort of a huge figure in our family at large. And she came to this country,

and she was like Rivki or Rishki or something like that, but everyone called her Ray, and then she spelled it R-A-Y. The weird thing is, I have yet to meet a single Ray in my whole life spelled R-A-Y as a woman. And it's weird because women are named everything. Women are named Joseph. Women are named R-A-Y. You'd think it would be a good name. Yeah.

They need an R-A-E. R-A-E, or it's like, you know, Norma-R-R-A-E, like a second one. Yeah, yeah, Issa Ray. And here's the really weird thing. So there was a movie. It was one of these really lame. name rom-coms where somebody had to go into the witness protection program. A couple had to go to the witness protection program.

Okay. They were about to get a divorce and they witnessed a crime. Together they had to go to the witness protection program. Great premise. And they went to Ray Wyoming. Okay. Spelled R-E-Y. The penultimate line in the movie, because of course they end up getting together.

Obviously. And obviously they have a baby. Obviously they have a little girl. And the penultimate line is, and we'll call her Ray and the ultimate line will spell it R-A-E. Literally as if like, it would be too implausible. Everything else was very plausible,

but the idea that they'd name a girl R-A-Y, that was just too much beyond the limits. That is so funny. Wellful suspension of disbelief would have been violated. So even though the town was spelled presumably R-A-Y. Yes, they could have changed the name of the town. I mean, it's probably a fictional town. Somebody obviously swept in last minute and said,

Whoa, this cannot be. No one will believe this. No one will believe it. It'll be an outrage. Before everyone totally believed it. Exactly. Believed it all. Do you walk into a lot of rooms and people expect to see a male?

Yes. Well, here's the problem. So originally, of course, and I think you're being very deft about this. And nothing I wouldn't expect. I'm not positive. I know the definition of death. Okay. Well, you'll get there with the story.

Context clues. Whoa, your name. Tell me about Ray. And not your name. Are you related? to the biggest crook in the history of the world? Well, that's too pedestrian for me. That's on a silver platter, Madoff.

I mean, that's what everyone's going to say to you. Of course, that's what everyone's thinking. No, no, they don't say it. They just think it. So let me just clear it up. So the Medievs and the Megadowski's all came through Ellis Island, and they gave us both the name M-A-D-O-F. We have always been Madoff.

We then found out back in the day when we wanted to be related to them because my uncle wanted to get matoff.com, maddof.org. Remember, early in the internet, you could get them. And they said, this guy from New York

has hoovered up all of the M-A-D-O-F, yes, but we didn't know who he was. Interesting. Yes, the plot thing. So it's Madoff? We're Madoff, yes. But the problem is this.

When I say it's Madoff, not Madoff, basically it sounds like I'm saying that's Frankenstein. Like literally, I'm definitely trying. What would be great if I had dug up an interview from the early 90s of you where you were saying made off. That's exactly. I can't even tell.

I can't even correct people because I just sound like I'm being a big jerk and trying to be like, no, that's not us. We're mad off, not made off. Okay. My first question is I would say it's kind of unconventional for you to be drawn to the field that you're in. You're a law professor and you specialize in tax law in a state law. How do we explain that interest?

Yeah, I know it. First of all, I mean to say, I am a proud member of the highly mediocre high school student. Oh, good for you. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, same. Thank you. Yes, super proud.

Are you ADHD, do you think? I think I probably am because all of the things like I do better if I'm doing two activities at once and that type of thing. Okay. So I was a highly mediocre high school student, barely in the top half of my public school class, mediocre scores, I somehow thought that the SATs were sort of like a blood test, and I thought, well, I'm smart, and it tests smart. Therefore, like any piece of crap answer I give must be the right answer because that's what it's testing.

I was really out of it. And so I started at UMass, which was the best thing that ever happened to me because I found this philosophy class with this professor who was just tremendously influential in my life. and all of a sudden I found this area that really spoke to me. I loved it. I loved everything about philosophy. I then had an identity. I became a really good college student because I totally was into the subject.

You're on fire for it. I loved it and I had an identity and it was great. And I eventually graduated college with a degree in philosophy and wanted to go on in philosophy and be a philosophy professor. But it was the era where somebody said to me like, you're insane. if you're lucky, you'll get a two-year position in no place, nowhere. So lots of competition, few slots for philosophy? No slots for philosophy professors when I graduate a college.

And so I did what I think probably 50% of my college class did, which is I went to law school. After a year of like, I don't want to go. I'm not going to go to law school. I'm not going to be pre-professional. I'm not going to go to. Anyway, I went to law school, which I shockingly loved. It was actually super interesting. I would imagine it was appealing because I think I'm the,

surface when people think of law, they think of their interaction with jurisprudence as opposed to, like, law is all about thinking. Yes. It's all about structuring language. Right? It's very philosophical. Very much so. And I loved it. I loved law school. It was so fun for me, particularly because I had worked a year and I could see what types of jobs were available, which were things like a note from my supervisor who said, please call information and get the phone number for this person. It's like, okay, you could have done this in the time that you told me to do this stupid task. Anyway, but law school, very intellectually engaging. But the thing is, I thought that the value of law school for me was I would be able to do good

because philosophy I liked, but I also had that feeling of like I should do good in the world. Yeah. Also, the questions, even in philosophy, were like, does redness exist? Yeah, it's not solving anything. You're not solving any problems, exactly. And so then I went to law school, I thought I'm going to like, and the issues back in the day were like saving the whales and battered women. I'm like, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be like a hip litigator.

I'm going to be so hip in law school, applying my analytic philosophical skills and fighting the good fight. And in my second year of law school, I did a litigation clinic. And I also took corporate tax. I took it because it was in the 80s. And I was in at NYU Law School where everybody was doing like a one head, two head test for the big law firms. Very easy to walk into the big law firms. And they were like, just take corporate. Anyway, so I took corporate texts.

And I was shocked to find that I had no feel for litigation because you couldn't just think your way through. My husband's a litigator. You have to get a deposition that has someone say it. Then you have to get a case that says it. Then you have to do something else. It's so much form. Reds. And for somebody who's like a little...

Was it to feel tedious? It felt tedious and like I did not have the patience for that type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tidium to me is a... Yes, that's my... No, no, it's absolutely. My bed noir being bored, I cannot tolerate it. I mean, come on, I've diagnosed you.

This is great. I didn't even realize. I should never have gone to anybody else but you. So, are you also on the same personality time? I mean, at this point, it seems like every single person has it. First, we've all come that way with our phone. Yes, we all have it. I was actually thinking that one of the things I was looking forward to is I'm getting like a two-hour break from my phone here.

Yeah. It's huge. I don't know if it's age or I think it's just the times. We can't focus. None of us can focus. It's very hard. Our brains have been hacked with stimuli. Yeah.

And they're responding accordingly. It's hard to know what's in you and what's from the outside. I didn't like litigation. But what was particularly destabilizing was I found that I loved corporate tax. Now, one thing is that I had a one thing. I had a woman professor in corporate tax, so that does, I think, make a difference. She made me think like, okay, this is for you. You could do this.

Yeah. But also, it turns out that it's really very similar question. So like a big question in corporate taxes, what's debt and what's equity? That's a lot like what is redness. Does redness exist? Sure. Because it depends, right, where you're viewing that from. It can change on a dime.

What are the parameters? How do we conceptualize the world is a lot of what tax law is about? And I went off to Wall Street because that's sort of what everybody did, super easy at the time. And I was probably one of the worst tax lawyers ever. I could do it. But I could not care less if my clients paid taxes or didn't pay taxes. Like, you know, what you want as a tax lawyer or somebody really, they treat your money like their money, their way. And for me, it was like a little intellectual exercise, super interesting.

And I definitely didn't have a preference one way. Hardly interested in the outcome. Not at all. That's not what you want for your lawyer. Exactly. Someone who finds it an intellectual engagement. Yeah. I see that you're having fun, but do you have any sense of how this is going to end? No. Exactly. Nor do I care. You may owe $10 million. I don't care. But very, very luckily, I got a position in teaching, which I had long wanted to do.

If you remember back in philosophy, I love school. I love fall in New England. I love that you put on your plaids. You go back to school. The whole thing about it, I love. I love students. Campus. campus. Yeah. Campus. Now it's coffee. Now you walk around with your coffee all day long.

What's not to like? It's the best. Yeah, yeah. It's dreamy. Okay. So we must get into your book. I'm going to start with the title because my first question has to do with the title. The second estate, how the tax code made an American aristocracy.

So I think my first question for you is, can you tell us a little bit about pre-revolution France where this term originates? The second estate. Can I tell you a little bit about how what the book was supposed to be called in my country? names originally. Yes, they always make you change the name, right? Yes. So when I put in my proposal for the book, it was called Why You Pay More Taxes Than Billionaires. Cut straight to the chain. That's what I thought. Yeah. And my editor, the person would become my editor, he said, love the book, but if you insist on this title, I will not use it. And so I'm like, all right, I want to publish with you. Was he himself a billionaire and he felt offended?

I don't think so, no. He didn't really give me a reason, but he did say, I think you should call it this, the second estate, how the tax code made an American aristocracy. This was like in our original correspondence. And I thought to myself, there is no way I am calling it that. Like, I'm going to yes him to death and say, yeah, sounds great. Kick it down the road.

Exactly. But I was thinking, forget it. It's bad enough that it's a book about taxes. And now I'm going to layer on that it is a title that you don't understand at all. So now you'll be confused. Then you'll find out it's taxes. Like none of this were seeming to be worked for me. But what happened was I began to look more and more into this whole thing about the second estate.

And I realized how unbelievably apt it was. And it actually came to me to be like one of my favorite things because he liked the idea that the title was a bit of a mystery. And in fact, I think if it had been why you pay more taxes than billionaires, it just would have looked like every other book on this subject. We're going to get into it towards the end of this. But yeah, there is a climate right now. And a lot of people hate billionaires.

Yes. Across the board. They're the villains. So this book is more substantive than that. If I'm looking and I'm like, oh, here we go, there's another let's kill all billionaires. Exactly. I'm off put by it. Exactly.

It doesn't feel thorough. That's right. So the second estate, let me go back. that for people who don't know because I myself. And the most often thing people will say to me is second estate, like the fourth estate is the journalist. That's all anyone knows. The fourth estate is the journalist. And that's true. The fourth estate here in the United States are the journalists. But basically in France, in pre-revolutionary France, the first estate was the clergy. The second estate was the aristocracy. And the third estate was pretty much everyone else, right? Your bourgeoisie,

your peasants, all of those people. And what was interesting was, about it was that the clergy, of course, didn't pay taxes and owned a whole bunch of land, but also under the explicit French rules, the aristocracy had these special privileges, like they were the only ones who could carry swords, and they were the only ones that could hunt in certain places. And their best privilege was they were explicitly written out of the tax system. So they didn't have to pay taxes just because they were aristocracy. And what's interesting is that you didn't have to be born into an aristocracy. You could actually buy your way into an aristocracy

because people would sell their title. And so basically there was this guy named DuPont who was an economist in France, and he said, the only way to avoid taxes is to become very rich. And I thought, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, because that is exactly the situation here in the United States. And I think what makes this a very good title, if I may,

is because the public doesn't really know this. The public doesn't know that the rich have been written out of the tax system. Because by its appearances, it seems to be heavily burdening the rich because it's heavily burdening a portion of the rich, but the real rich, it's giving a free pass. And I think even in your book interchangeably,

and I think we could use it going forward as like there's rich and then there's wealth. Often what we're talking about is like wealth. being exempt from... Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I think that one problem that we've had is that there has been a conflation of high income earners and high wealth owners. And this has been caused by a lot of different people.

In part, Democrats had a role to play in it. I think what they were trying to say was we're not going to raise taxes for people who earn less than $400 million. But people heard it as, if you earn $400 million, you're the problem. And that is not the problem. People with high incomes are paying lots and lots of taxes. Yeah. And it's politically, I think, been a big mistake not to recognize the high burden carried by high earners.

I agree. What do we qualify then as wealth versus high earners? Right. So basically, the issue is that if you earn money through work, you have a podcast, you do a, you're an actor, you know. No matter what you do, when you earn money, you pay a lot of taxes. and it used to be the case prior to 1986 that there were all sorts of ways that people with high income could avoid taxes

because we had tax shelters. Remember, there was a lot of talk about tax shelters. You're giving me the fake nod of like... Well, she was born in 87. I've heard my parents talk about. Yeah, yeah, one year. You did you hear your grandparents talk about back in the day? She was born into a tax shelter-free America.

Exactly. I remember quite well. I was 11 watching 60 minutes with my grandparents every weekend. And yeah, that was a regular topic. Yes. They actually, and this was under Reagan, closed the loophole that allowed high-income earners to reduce their tax liability. My father was a doctor, so he was always being told to go into tax shelters. In any event, all that came to a crashing stop in 1986 because they closed that loophole. They said, you can't offset your work income with what they call

passive losses. So that closed that loophole, and it has been closed. So right now, you have lots of people who have high incomes and they're paying all the taxes. As I like to say, I work for free until July 1st. Ah, yes. I start getting paid July 1st. Yeah. Right? So yeah, I give away half of what I make across the board.

Yeah. I'd like to go through it chronologically. So I think let's first talk about when we get a tax code in 1909. No. So the first tax code is earlier during the Civil War era. It has a very expansive definition of... income. It has lots of really interesting stuff to it. But we have a very conservative Supreme Court, and they find the whole tax unconstitutional. So it's gone. It's gone. And so the country is

entirely relying on tariffs. Terrorists, yeah. So the early part of the 20th century. So let's place ourselves where the world is, right? We're post-Civil War. And then we have the rise of the industrial age. And with the rise of the industrial age, we all of a sudden have these super-rich people that we didn't have before. We have Vanderbilt. We have Carnegie. And then their kids are getting the money and they are acting like royalty. They're building mansions all over, Newport, New York. This is really relevant, right? Because that was this unheard of explosion of wealth that the common people got to witness and like, hold on, what's going on? And that's currently happening again. Yes, exactly. In a very dramatic way. So these are very parallel. That was the time. You might have heard the

phrase conspicuous consumption because there was a book written by Vablind called the theory of the leisure class. And it described about how they proved their worth in the social world by showing off their wealth. And they had these extraordinarily lavish parties. They had elephant serving champagne. They had cigars. They'd give you as a little party gift, a cigar that's wrapped in a $100 bill. So you had this lavish lifestyle. But at the time, people were thinking, this is very un-American. America is a place of equality. And America is a place without dynastic wealth.

It's a meritocracy. And Jefferson wrote about his concern about this false aristocracy of wealth. We should have an aristocracy of merit, not an aristocracy of wealth. And yet, the country had become a place where we had this massive accumulation of wealth of people who were running around wearing crowns. It also was the time where under our Constitution, you can't have a title of aristocracy. But what they would do is because they so loved aristocratic life

is they'd sell off their daughters, right? Downton Abbey, all these other shows. They were going to England and they were marrying off their daughters so they could bring royal titles to their family. And Cornelia Vanderbilt wore a crown around New York City. Wow. So the problem is that there came to be a concern about the stability of the country and about capitalism itself surviving. And if you

remember, McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, right? There was real concern that the country would be thrown over because socialism was so big, right? Socialism was running through Europe and Russia and leaders were being overthrown. What was this country going to do? And because of that, there was a big push to let's make sure we don't have this aristocracy anymore. Let's bring taxes into the picture. Because the other thing is, is that tariffs are an interesting type of tax because tariffs, what they do is they raise prices. And so they really affect, back at the day, they really affected farmers and regular consumers,

both because of things that were imported, but also because of things in the United States that were produced in the United States. Now they could raise their rates because their competition was knocked out by the tariffs. And it's asymmetrically painful. for lower class people. This is my issue with the gas tax in California. I'm like, this is a liberal state. Why all of our taxes are punishing the people that it affects the most? Yeah, exactly. Like, you're rid of this freaking gas tax. Exactly. Okay. So that was the mess we were in. You had Carnegie writing in the Gospel of Wealth, we've got to do something because we need to maintain the alliance between

rich and poor. Everybody has to be in this thing together. And he said, what we need to to do is we need to have really, really heavy taxes on transfers of death to make sure that we don't have a bunch of rich people running around and not taking and not contributing to the public. Well, it starts to threaten the core of capitalism. Exactly. Because we're all playing Monopoly. Anyone who's played knows once you have boardwalk and these other ones, the game can't be played. So if someone's starting life owning boardwalk, how is this now capitalism?

Exactly. Yeah. So it's an effort to save capitalism, ironically. To save capitalism. And that's why Teddy Roosevelt also advocated for taxes because he was worried that capitalism would crumble. I think we're back to the parallel. You believe it. Exactly.

Yeah. Scary. You know what? I think what we have had until now is scary. I think that this might be a solution. But I don't want to get. That's the end. That's the end.

That's the end. But right now, you have all these people very concerned. And even the Wall Street Journal wrote, we got to do something about taxes here. We have to because we have all these rich people, and they're an affront to what it means to be an American, because what it means to be an American is to work hard. Even de Tocqueville, who is that, you know, famously reflected us about what the American culture was, said, like, what makes America America is that everybody values work. Now we get a bunch of rich kids sitting around, and they're showing off their money,

and this is very destabilizing. So the answer, even though Teddy Roosevelt was a big advocate for it, he never got it through. it wasn't until 1913 that we got first the constitutional amendment that allowed the new income tax, and then three years later, the estate tax, and then in 2024, the gift tax to back up the estate tax. So now we had a way that we were actually going to tax rich people. You have to realize that they had all these investments and the investments produced dividends, and so they were taxed on their investments during their life, and they also produced interest. So like the two ways of profiting from your investments were to get interest in dividends.

And then on top of it, there was this additional tax that was imposed whenever the property was transferred. And together, these taxes were designed to impose taxes on the richest Americans based on their capacity to pay. And was it always progressive? When did it become progressive? Well, originally, it was just a tax that only applied to the richest 5% of Americans. So 95% of Americans were completely exempt. Then when it came time to funding World War II, we had to do another round of tax raising. And so they say it changed from a class tax to a mass tax.

But then we had to keep it that it was based on capacity to pay. We had these progressive rates, which meant that the later dollars that you earned, the higher dollars were taxed at a higher rate than the earlier dollars. So this was working pretty well, right? We had kind of a golden era between World War II and the 70s, and then things start to change. They start to change, yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

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It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions, and availability, Allstate, North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. So, but I just want to say one other thing about this period that was sort of relevant. So there were a couple of things that were going on that helped fortify this system. One of them is the fact, as I said, that there was a threat of socialism. And then in the 1940s, like when FDR was doing it, there's now a threat of communism.

Yeah, even scary. Yeah, and it was scary. And so there was a real understanding. If we want to have a capitalist country, capitalism has to prove that it serves the country as a whole. And the way that it serves the country as a whole is that when somebody makes a load of money, they share the wealth through taxes. And so that's the legitimacy. Taxes serve to legitimate a capitalist system when it's working right. And that's why it is so disturbing and concerning what's going on now. Yeah. It's very much threatening capitalism. Yes. And in a way, this threat to capitalism, I think, is going to be the thing that saves us. Because without a threat to capitalism, you're not going to get the broad public support

to actually impose meaningful taxes. People are going to grab as much as they can get away with. We've seen this over the past 40 years. This is what's happened. So what happened? Why did this change? The system worked well enough, right? We had high taxes on income and we had taxes on estates and gifts.

Like estate, meaning you've accumulated all these assets and wealth. When you die, that's getting passed on. That's the estate. So at that point, the government would like to take 40% of that. This only applies to like the richest one to two percent of Americans. So a small slice of the country. Yeah, even currently, you can give away up to $15 million. So this all is active after $15 million.

Exactly. Right. The current estate tax is $30 million per couple. But we'll see how it's not even active for that. And sorry, gift is just giving any amount. Yeah, except for there's a bunch of exceptions. So you can give, this is a subject I teach. So now I'm all excited.

I'm going to explain to you estate and gift tax in just three minutes. So basically, it applies to all transfers at a 40% rate, right, with a 15 million exemption, but there's a bunch of things that it doesn't apply to. So, for example, you can make unlimited transfers to a spouse, unlimited transfers to charity, and then you can give to as many people as you want every year, $19,000 per person per year. So the idea of it is to keep it out of regular people's lives. So regular people can live their lives, but when we start talking about transferring massive amounts of wealth, we're going to have this system. And the important thing to be aware of that I want to say up front,

because I think the public has been duped about some of these things, is that the income tax system entirely exempts all money received by gift, inheritance, and life insurance. Life insurance is the biggest scam going. So, for example, to say somebody earns like, you know, $200,000 or $100,000, they pay about $30,000 in taxes, okay, between payroll and, income taxes. Somebody else is handed $100 million out of a life insurance policy. That person doesn't even have to tell anyone. They pay no taxes. They don't report it to anybody. It is entirely free.

This is your business. Wow. So the system is so unfair on the income tax side. Because the other thing is, if somebody finds a hundred bucks on the street, they're supposed to pay taxes. That's interesting. So if you find money like a treasurer or whatnot, you're supposed to supposed to, or you have a gold mine, you find the gold. Yes. Treasure trove, we call it in the law. If you win a prize, if you win the lottery, if you get unemployment insurance, social security, right, you're forced to pay taxes on every way. If you do a barter exchange, if a plumber does plumbing for a web developer and a web developer creates a web page for the plumber, they are both supposed to report taxable income on their tax returns.

And the IRS has all sorts of like, here's how you do the barter exchange information. They have a table you can go to. Exactly. In one area, it's like we're closing every single loophole. And another one, right this way, tax free, no worries, right? It's the real velvet rope world for the people who are lucky enough to get gifts, inheritance, and life insurance. And like, who are those people?

Those are the super rich. Those are not regular people. And there has been a big duping with the public about this. They have not been educated about, which is sort of why I'm a little bit of a crazy zealot these days. Because I do think that when the public knows, then they see how unfair it is and they're less likely to be duped. Yeah. Back to your question. So we're in the period where we have the system, where we have this estate and gift tax system.

The income tax system gives a free pass because we count on this estate tax system to do a good enough job with the richest Americans. We carve out 99% of the public and then we say, here's where you're going to be paying the tax. we'll collect it at the person who's transferring it. Now, I think the reason for that is because back in the day, the way people transferred property, when they transferred property at death, it went through probate court. It was kind of an easy, convenient time to collect this information, right?

We weren't living in the modern information age where we track everything. And so it kind of made sense to impose it on the person who died. but I think that that had a little bit of an Achilles heel in it. Because then, as we'll see in the 1990s, as we're coming up to this point, it made it vulnerable because you're like taxing dead people. For some people, they'll already have paid a lot of taxes on it, right? So if you think of like Paul McCartney, he's probably a billionaire,

but he's probably paid taxes along the way on the royalties and on all the things that he gets. And they really marketed it very successfully. So basically, let's talk about what happened. Yeah. What happened to make this thing fall apart? And it's a couple of different things. I would say the most significant thing was the attack on the estate tax. So here's what's interesting is that the estate tax was very non-controversial.

And Congress used to do its job keeping it up. So in 1976 and 1986, one of the problems with the estate tax, tax was that people could avoid it by creating multi-generational trust and that would go from generation generation. And so Congress enacted a new tax called the Generation Skipping Transfer Tax that was designed to impose a tax at each generation. 1986. 1996, 1990, Congress was at it again. And they enacted a tax because people were finding a way to squeeze the value of their assets so they were hiding value. Congress said, we can fix it. And they enacted something called special evaluation rules. And what's interesting is both of these things happened under Republican presidents.

This was not a political issue. This was a, this is a tax. We got to fund this enormous government of ours. We have to fund the government. Exactly. And it's appropriate to have this tax and to maintain it. In 1990, what happened was a group of 18 of the country's richest families, the Waltons, the The bars, the coats, right? All of the favorites. They're all around still today. They funded this campaign to turn the public against the estate tax. Because if you think about it, they were already able to avoid the income tax by avoiding

salaries. So one way people avoid is salaries are for suckers. You don't want to salary. And then the other way was through investments, which we'll talk about, they avoided. They stopped getting dividends and they started to do stock buybacks, all of this type of stuff. They've gamed all the other. This was the last stubborn one. And so they started a campaign.

What was the man's name? Chester Thigpan. What a name. Chester Thigpan. A grandson of slaves who had a Christmas tree farm. Kids would come play in the farm and the neighbors would hunt. And as my son said to me, I hope not at the same time. But in any event, he was his very idyllic figure, very sympathetic.

He testified in Congress. Matter of fact, he testified many, many times in Congress because he was a favorite. And he said, I have worked my whole life for this Christmas tree farm. And it's beautiful. And I love it. I want to pass it to my family. And I'm going to be hit with the estate tax. It's going to become timber.

It's going to the whole farm is going to be destroyed. And this was tremendously effective. I mean, just also, just picking that farming is so manipulative. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to get back to that point because it's really important. By focusing on family farms and businesses, If we think back to this whole thing, remember when I said that in the early part of the 20th century,

there was a concern because we had all these rich people running around, and people thought of Americans as being people who had family farms and businesses. That's what it meant. But it was because it supported a livelihood. People would work on the farm, and then their kid would work on the farm, right? Yeah. But what's happened is that the Mars, the Cokes, all of these people, they're trying to say that their companies, they're not saying it directly because they know it won't sell,

is like a family farming business. We're just a family business, right? It would be like Carnegie saying that U.S. Steel is just a family business. You know, it's crazy. But this is what they have pulled over the American public's eye. And as it turns out, Thigpin would have not been affected at all because the estate tax already preempted that. Yes. When he died, he was not subject to the tax.

Because he didn't make enough money. Because it was under the threshold. He was under the exemption. He had a Christmas tree bar. Exactly. Exactly. The exception was big. It was wholesome.

Yeah. Down homesy. And also, we have all sorts of protections for family farms and businesses in the tax code for real family farms and businesses that provide low interest rates and special valuation. And we could easily exempt real family farms and businesses. And back in the day, I testified in Congress, it was obviously a Republican Congress at the time because it was called the impact of the death tax on family farms and businesses anyway. And I got a call from some Democrats like, will you go take?

testify in this thing. And it was like, it was ugly. Also, they've now rebranded it as death tax as opposed to a state tax. Yes. So they called it the death tax and they basically made it seem they ran such an effective campaign that even today, a huge portion of the public believes it primarily hurts low and middle income people. I mean, it's crazy. It was a tremendously effective campaign. So what we look at what happened since this campaign in 1990, right? One thing that happened was, So Bush was the big leader of repeal the death tax. I hear his voice in my head. No, George W. Bush.

Oh, H.W. Bush actually was the one under who we had the special evaluation, actually fortifying the estate tax, right? But George W. Bush, he was part of this campaign. It was the era of government is bad. Let's get government off our back. It was all sorts of things that gave rise to all this stuff. But when George W. Bush enacted this thing, What he did was he said, okay, let's have a gradual increase of the exemption amount and a decrease in the tax rate.

And in one year, we're going to have no estate tax at all. This is bizarre. I mean, I don't even really know functionally how this happened. It just went away for one year. Because he didn't have the votes to have permanent repeal. Because we have these rules that anything that costs the government money has to be resolved within 10 years. This would have cost the government a lot of money. And so you had to fit it within the 10 years.

So we had one year, we called the Jubilee Year for rich people to die. Wow. And rich people died. Some people got lucky. Yeah, some people had Steinbrenner got lucky. One of them had $20 billion or something. Yeah, Steinbrenner had a load of money. God bless those kids, man.

They just got the whole lot. Did anyone kill themselves? No, that was a year, by the way. There was a lot of humor amongst the estate planners of, like, things to get your relatives in that year, which were like, you know, warm chicken salad. Right. Hand gliding lesson.

Yeah. You know, it was, we sort of had our day. The estate planners had their day briefly. Let's get grandpa some hand gliding lessons. Also, Granddad, have you ever tried heroin? You shouldn't leave the planet without trying that one time. But then next year, Obama was in office. The estate tax was scheduled to revert to its $1 million exemption and like a 60% tax, right?

But Obama, he ended up just kind of continuing. He made a $5 million exemption. He continued it because he knew the public had been turned against the estate tax. But then, of course, Trump came in and he doubled it to $10 million and now it's $15 million. But that's not the real issue. And this is a super interesting part of the story, which is that the real way that they succeeded was that Congress stopped closing loopholes. The last time Congress has closed a loophole in the association. state and gift tax was 1990.

36 years ago. George H.W. Bush. And so the thing is, the way tax rules work is you count on Congress. Basically, Congress provides rules, taxpayers find their way around rules. Congress is supposed to close the loopholes. Tax, right, it's a dance between taxpayers and Congress and the IRS. Cat and mouse. Yes, but all of a sudden, Congress has engaged in quiet quitting.

They are doing nothing. And so as a result, there has been an explosion. And so what's happened to the estate tax is instead of it being a well-maintained tax, it in fact has become a tax that is a tax in name only. And I'm going to give you two reasons why we know this is the case. One of it is because it raises basically nothing. I'll just hit you with those numbers. In 2000, there was 120,000 estate tax returns.

In 2010, there was 47,000. In 2013, there was 32,000. And in 2021, there was only 2,584. Yeah. So the number has gone way, way down of estate tax returns. But even more concerning is the tiny, tiny amount it raises. It raises hardly anything. Now only $28 billion. $28 billion, an amount that Elon Musk easily gains and loses in a single day, multiple days. It's nothing. But here is the biggest, in case you need any further proof that the estate tax now works for the benefit of the rich people rather than as a harm, is the fact that in

2025, when Trump is in office, he has the capacity to have whatever tax bill he wants. Because he has the Senate, the House, and he is in the executive. So they can pass anything they want. They can pass anything. He says in his campaign, he's opposed to the death tax, the immoral, double death tax, right? But guess what? Doesn't even mention it. He doesn't get rid of it. He keeps it in the books. And the reason is, by keeping the estate tax, believe me, if rich people had wanted it, repealed, it would have been repealed. But what happened is that rich people realize they benefit because if you actually repeal the estate tax, people would wonder, wait, I don't understand. You can get $100 billion tax free, never pay anything on it. It's only because they're pretending they're subject to the estate tax. Yeah. It provides cover for the rich, no real tax burden. Blame the estate tax. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I'm counting 40%. Yeah. And that's sort of the tricky, super interesting part of the story.

Okay, so this is what I think the headline of all of it is. So in 2021, Publica published leaked IRS returns. Yeah, by Charles Little John. Who is now- These names are great. Isn't that great? I know it. You think I'd made it up.

If I was like a fiction writer, I'd be so proud. It's very Charles Dickens, all the. So in this article, what was revealed is that the true tax rate that Warren Buffett was paying, remember, the highest rate on income is 30. 37%. Yeah. He was paying 0.1%. Bezos was paying 0.98%. Michael Bloomberg was paying 1.3%.

And Elon Musk was paying 3.27%. And now this is my favorite part of the book, is how the mechanics work of them not paying any taxes. Somebody who earns $60,000 a year pays in just federal taxes, $14,000 in taxes, okay? can you imagine that you're getting by on $60,000 year? That can be the difference between having a car or paying your rent or buying food or health. It's less than a thousand dollars a week to live on.

You can't live like that. No, you absolutely can't. And yet, these people with their massive wealth are like, we're doing such good for society. I mean, or what they say is, I don't know if you saw the recent interview with Bezos, where he was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin. And there's a lot of perpetrating of this baloney. And they go, look, the top 1% are already paying 40% of the taxes, right? You hear this all the time.

Which is true. Which is true, but they're not talking about that. No, they're talking about everyone in Beverly Hills, all these neighbors here. They're talking about people with high income. Yes. The high wealth owners hide behind the high income earners and make it seem like they're paying taxes when they're not. So I think we should go slow here and lay out some terms. But you have a couple different kinds of taxes.

one of them is income tax. Everyone listening virtually will be paying income tax. You receive a check on Friday. They've withheld money. That is your taxes. The other kind of tax is capital gains. Oh, but I thought you were going to talk about the other very important tax. The hidden tax for the person who earns a paycheck.

The payroll tax, which is 15%. 15.3%. Right. It's a significant. When I talk about our person who earns $60,000, most of those taxes are payroll taxes. Payroll taxes start at $1. They're really burdensome.

and they're entirely hidden from the public. Because if you look on your pay stub, they're called like contributions. Have you ever been confused by that? Yeah. And then Social Security's in there. Don't they even break down. They call them FICA, Futa.

Yeah, they break it into a few categories. Yeah, they put them in different pockets. You don't know what the heck there. But they make it sound like because they call it contributions, and then you get from Social Security, sometimes they'll send you these periodic statements. This is how much you have. They make you feel like you've somehow set this money aside

for your own savings. And now when they're going, we've got to cut Social Security, hey, all these people that are paying Social Security now for current retirees, you're saying like we're going to screw these people after they've paid for everybody else? It is so unfair. So anyway, payroll taxes, I just want to make sure that we mention those because those are very burdensome.

And, as you might recall, when Mitt Romney said, 47% of makers, they're takers, not makers. And they're going to vote for Obama no matter what because they're not giving to society. and they were not paying income taxes, but almost all of them were paying payroll taxes. And payroll taxes are so burdensome. When you actually look at the figure of non-payers, including payroll taxes, the number is like 16% of non-payers, which is basically the same number of people we have over the age of 70.

So this story about the non-payers and the Republicans love the story, we have to have a skin-in-the-game tax. I mean, these are the people who are actually paying taxes. These are the people who are actually paying double taxes, not the inherited wealth people who are paying no taxes. And that's the thing that the public, again, is being misled about. Okay, so you have ceiling of 37% federal income tax, and then you have the payroll tax. And then you also have capital gains tax. And that is set at 20% plus 3.5%. I'm not sure with that.

3.8. And that is if you sold a house, you might have dealt with capital gains. You bought a house for 100 grand, you sold for 150. you have $50,000 of income, but that's capital gains tax. Yeah. And then the other place capital gains applies is investment. So I bought Nvidia. I 10x my money.

I'm going to pay on that 90% of, you know, and that's set at the 20%. And then the 3%. We could debate all day long why that is capped at 20%. You're going to find that I'll dance. I'm not full alignment with you. I do think there's a global thing where we do need to protect people. But we'll get to that. You might think you're not in a line with me.

But maybe, maybe. I think that you are. Okay. So at any rate, now there are incredible ways that are so inventive to get around these, which is why we're seeing someone like Buffet Pay 0.1%. So if you never sell the stock, you've never realized the gain. There's nothing to apply the 20% tax to. So anyone whose livelihood comes from ownership of a company,

ownership of all these different stocks, As long as they don't sell it, they're not going to be taxed on it, which, again, I can make a great argument for it. We'll get to that down the road. But explain how people are living. How is Bezos have a yacht in many, many homes? Exactly. How do they have any liquid money if it's all in? This is incredible.

Let's talk about Larry Ellison because he's been spending like crazy. $30 billion he has in loans or something like that. Maybe more because he actually had to incur another $40 billion on his purchase of Paramount, which he's also been backing. So Larry Ellison is somebody who spends a lot. He bought the island of Lanai in Hawaii just for fun. By the way, on the island of Lanai, he bought all the businesses on the island,

and he also owns all the property. And he put into his contracts, if you get fired from your job, I am throwing you out of your house. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's the kind of nice guy he is. Anyway, so he runs this island, right? Like a fiefdom.

How is this legal? I can't. I know. Anyway. On the plus side, there's two four seasons on that. There's two four seasons. That he owns that.

Yes, he owns the both. Because they're just a management company. Yes, exactly. He owns it all. Anyway, it's interesting actually because I met somebody from Molokai, and they said that a rich person tried to acquire Molokai in a similar way, and the island of Malachi fought against it, and they're getting back at them by leaving everything just to be like waste. They're not taking care of the property.

They've bought it all. They have abandoned theaters and everything else, and they won't sell it back. of like, nice island you got here. You better, you know, it would be a shame if we didn't keep it up. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that's just another story of billionaires run amok. And he owns Oracle. He owns Oracle.

A big chunk of Oracle. Yeah, he owns about 30. Always in the top 10 richest people in the world. Yes, exactly. Super rich. He owns tons of Oracle. He buys tons of stuff. He never sells his Oracle stock.

But what he does is he uses his Oracle stock as collateral and enables him to buy loans. And because it labels him to get money, to buy everything he wants to buy. I want everyone to go step by step. So Larry Ellison walks into a bank and he says to them, hey, I'd like a billion dollars and I will secure it with a billion dollars of equity or my stock. Yeah. Or $1.5 billion of my securities.

Yeah. So a bank's primary mission is to loan out money. The risk they incur is what if the people don't pay? How do we get the money back? And that's all done with collateral when you buy a house. The house is theirs, right? So he says, let me just put this. stock up as the collateral. I'm going to borrow a billion dollars. And then what happens? So he starts

receiving, does he get it all in one chunk right at front? Whatever he needs. You know, I'm sure, whatever he needs. Because remember, these people are in the business of lending money. The banks. The banks or private lenders. You don't have to be a bank, you know, all sorts of people. They lend, and that's what their business model is. And they want to lend to Larry Ellison. It's risk-free. It's risk-free. Well, is it, though? Because even the collateral isn't a asset isn't a tangible asset if the stock market crash. So what happens is they retain the right. And this has happened with some other owners of companies. In Oracle, by the way, it's gone down about 50% in value in part because of over-leveraging of Oracle and then add on to it Ellison's

extreme leverage. The lender holds the stock. And so then they're going to make a margin call if it falls in value. They're going to be like, give us more stock or sell your stock or we're going to sell your stock because we're going to protect ourselves. Oh, so they're able to sell it. Yeah. Yeah. So the bank can sell it. The bank can sell the stock. He doesn't return it. The bank can sell the stock. So they are well secured. They're very well protected and they get more stock than they need to cover their credit. So step by step, he goes into the bank. I want a billion dollars. Great. They go, thank you, Mr. Ellison. Here it is. Here's this amount of stock is collateral. He gets a a billion dollars. He spends it. Now, he's on some schedule. What's the average terms of these loans? Are they

one-year loans, five-year loans, 20-year loans, do you know? Well, I think that the point is that they can be demand loans. So most Americans think about loans in connection with their mortgages, right? Or their student loans. Okay, we're lending you money for some set period of time, then we want to get our money back. But there's another way of lending money, which is called the demand loan, which is like, we're giving you money, no set time, you just pay the interest, and that's fine with us. Great.

So he borrows a billion dollars. It's at 3%. So every year he's got to give him $30 million back of this billion. Now, at some point, he can then go to Bank B and say, hey, oh, this bank a billion dollars. I need a billion and a half. I pay off that loan. He gets his securities back. He gives them now to this bank.

He can just leapfrog endlessly. And he doesn't need to leapfrog endlessly because if you think about it, you're in the business of lending money. Who would you rather lend money to that you don't want it back? If you get it back, you've got to find another rich person to lend it to. You said this on Ezra Klein's podcast. Like, they don't want the money back. Keep going back to the bank and asking him for more money.

Yes, exactly. They love you to do that. So my question in all this was, I am unclear. Eventually, the bill comes due. Says you? Well, at some point, either the bank's going to have to sell those securities. I'm saying when he dies. Why?

I mean, the point is this. You're living in a world where you are imagining that this amount that he's borrowing is, like, bumping up against the total money that he owns. I think a more accurate way to think about it is like, imagine you needed $10 and you need to borrow $10 and you need it to be able to pay back $10 and then maybe you needed to increase it to $80. There would be no difficulty with you paying it back or passing that loan on and having your kids take over the loan, right? You have to realize the amount as much as they borrow. I mean, this is crazy because, of course, he's borrowing enough literally to buy Paramount, Islands, everything. but his wealth is extraordinary.

Yes, but here's my only question. So he borrows a billion, eventually goes through that, right? He borrows a billion, and now he's got to borrow another billion. And that's fine because now he's just still making the interest payment on the original billion. And he's by not having sold his stock. Oracle's an interesting case because it did plummet in value. That's why I like Bezos as an example. Right. Bezos so prides himself.

He wants to get all sorts of credit for not borrowing against his stock. He actually occasionally sells his stock. He thinks that he should get a big pat on the back. This is what he was telling Andrew Rossorg. And me, I sold some stock. I mean, I guess that is better than... Yeah, but the point isn't whether people sometimes pay capital gains or not. The point is that we have people with multiple hundred billions of dollars

and they are able to choose whether or not to pay taxes when nobody in this room can decide, you know what, I don't feel like paying taxes. There's no game for me to even play. There's no game for you to play. Here's what I want to do. And actually, I have a little gift for you guys, even to if you'd like them. Okay. Okay.

It's important to let people know from that original story we just told them about the borrowing, that you pay no income on a loan. Yes. That's really important. So he gets a billion dollars from the bank. That's a loan. Presumably he has to pay a back. So that's not income.

Right. Because we might have missed that. People might not have realized, yeah, that billion dollars, he doesn't pay one penny. Right. Your congressman actually is working on a bill right now to tax, borrowings say that that should be taxed. Some people think that that's way. I think there's other ways of solving them. Okay. Okay. But so we're talking about like debunking myths, right? One of the myths is like the top 1% are already paying 40%? No, that's high earners. And the other is 40% pay no taxes.

No, they're paying payroll taxes. Okay. The third myth I'd like us to debunk today here and now is this idea that the rich don't have enough money to make a difference. We're going to have to tax the middle class. You hear this all the time, right? We have to go up to the middle class because the rich simply don't have enough. So here I want to give some numbers. I'm going to give broad general numbers. In 2025, the government took in about $5 trillion. They spent $6.9.

They actually $4.9,6 million. So they had to borrow $1.8, add it to our debt. By the way, this year, today just came out. I don't know if you saw this, the highest interest rates that the government has ever had to pay on $30. 5.2%. We are paying so much money a trillion dollars a year just to maintain this debt. This is when we have seven trillion dollars of expenses, five trillion of income, right? We are spending a full trillion just to maintain this debt.

And the other thing is, by the way, if we go to back in the day, you used to not be able to go to war and not raise taxes. In the 20th – we raised taxes when we went to war. Now, it's in the 21st century. Oh, we're going to war. push it on to our kids, our grandkids, let them pay for it. We don't have to pay for it. Okay, big problem. But so we had to borrow because we didn't raise enough money from the richest 1%.

And as people like the Wall Street Journal and now the Washington Post like to say, and the economists like to say, that's because the rich people are already being heavily taxed, not true. And in any event, they don't have enough money. You know this already, so I can't say, I'd like to say, guess how much? Maybe I could let Monica on. Guess how much we had to borrow just under $2 trillion. million dollars. Guess how much the richest one percent owned at the end of 2025?

Guess how much the richest one percent owned? So now you know, the total revenue that the government took in was $5 trillion, okay? From all sources. This is from corporations, payroll taxes, tariffs, the whole, this is so mean for you to put monocon spot. The whole enchilat. The whole enchil. Okay, so how much wealth do you think the richest one percent owned? Nobody knows the answer to this, by the way. So don't feel bad. I'm scared to answer. But you say a reasonable number. What do you think is a reason? What you guess? This is me.

It's not trick. What do you think the total value of the assets of all 1% are? But including the wealthy people. Just the top 1%? No, no. I'm sorry. The top 1% of wealth owners. Not income earners. The top 1% wealth owners. Good. Okay. Monica, you are an A student. Thank you.

You do not have ADHD. You're like, because you're paying very, very, you're not just jumping. to some obvious answer, no effects. But yes, go on. Okay, so 50. You know what? 50 trillion.

50 trillion. Yes. Is it 47 or 50? It was 47 when I wrote the book because it was 2024. Oh, okay. And now it's 50 trillion in 2025. 55 trillion now. Their wealth is growing astronomically.

By the way, 50% of the country owns under 5 trillion. So right out of the gates, you just say, a logical person would say, okay, with a 40% state tax, if the youngest person in this lot is 40, in 40 years minimally, we are going to get back $20 trillion in estate tax. That's what the number should be. If there's 50 trillion out there, we should get 20 trillion in the estate tax. Or it should be subject to the income tax. Yeah, but just alone that, that could solve the gap for 10 years.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. The other thing is it's going on is there's been enormous gifting that's going because that's where all the action is. And do you know how much the estate tax raised from this $50 trillion, now $55, but when it was $50 trillion, we had that number $28 billion out of $50 trillion. A trillion is $1,000 billion. Yes.

So the middle class is making up for that other $5 trillion. I feel that this chart really shows at all that. Oh, that's great. Gift. You can. Thank you. Thank you. So this is this idea that it doesn't matter if these people pay taxes.

We had to borrow $1.8 trillion, and we know that many people in the top 1% of wealth owners don't have to pay taxes because they don't have taxable income, which, by the way, is the reason why the Buffett rule was such a snow job on the public. What's that? Yes. So back in the day, Warren Buffett said when Obama's running, and even before then, Buffett says, this is so unfair. I pay taxes at such a lower rate than my secretary.

My secretary pays payroll taxes, income taxes. I pay capital gains taxes. But he was hiding the lead when he said that. Because the problem, well, yes, it's true. Rates probably should be the same. We might disagree about that. But the bigger point is that he didn't have any taxable income because he only earned his total salary was a hundred,

$100,000, including bonus. He would never take more than that. And he even reduced his salary for the private use of his office. He was like, I got to pay the company back for that. So we got like a $90,000 salary, right? What was he living out? Was he selling? Well, he had a little bit of side investments that were his own private thing. Outside of Berkshire Hathaway. But in then Berkshire Hathaway, he had as the policy of Berkshire Hathaway to never issue dividends. If he was issuing dividends, he would have had regular taxable income. But he knew not to issue dividends because just as salaries are for suckers, dividends, particularly in the 20th century when they were subject to tax like ordinary income, were also for suckers. So now he didn't issue dividends, and that's why he didn't have any

taxable income. So a rate differential wouldn't have made any difference with him. Yeah, so the two things that blew my mind about this book was, A, how they function, learning about this borrowing against your money, never really paying, that was startling. But what's crazy is how the tentacles of this change everything about the whole financial sector, which is dividends, right? So you had an investment in a GE. They profited X amount of money. Well, they don't keep it.

They distribute that to the shareholders in the form of dividends, which get taxed as income tax at the highest 37%. So slowly these companies. decide, well, shit, our shareholders don't really want to pay that income tax on these dividends. We don't want to pay taxes on it. What if we take that profit, we buy back shares from people? Let's just stop for a second, though. Up until 1982, the only way a company was allowed to share profits with its shareholders was to issue dividends. That was it. So a dividend is simply the way that the company earns money. They're worth 100. They earn 10. They distribute.

and that was how companies worked. And then it was subject to the highest rate. And when I was growing up, when you were buying a stock and you were a middle class person, you were looking for a company that had a great dividend. That was the whole game. That was the whole game. And in the 1970s, 70% of returns of stock value. I think of 74.

74% came from dividends. It was all dividends. And what's really interesting is what the stock market looked like. It looked like a jiggly, like a sign curve. that went in a very narrow margin. So in 1982, the stock market was at about 3,000. It was also about 3,000 in the 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, all the way back to the 20s, it had been 3,000.

This is inflation-adjusted. So the stock market just looked like a squiggly line, and that's because every time the company shared profits, it became profitable and their value went up, they shared the profits and the value went down because the money was sent out to people. Yes. Okay?

But then in 1982, something happened, which is that under Reagan, he had a Dean Whitter executive be the head of the SEC. And one thing that companies were not allowed to do was to go out into the market and buy their own shares of stock. Because when they did, what that did was it boosted the price. And they said, this is price manipulation. You can't just distort the value. But in 1982, pretty much on his own, this Dean Whitter executive, that became head of the SEC said, it's okay. We know it's price manipulation.

We believe it's, but we're just going to let people do it because they want to do it. And as a result, since 1982, it has never been more than like 16%, maybe 17% of profits have been shared through dividends. Because instead, companies are buying back their own shares like crazy. And last year, more than a trillion dollars was spent buying back your own shares. And when you buy back your own shares, rather than the stock price going down, the stock price stays up and maybe even goes up a little higher, right? Because you've reduced the total number of shares that are outstanding. More demand, less supply. And that's why one of my favorite charts in the book is this chart that shows the stock market from 1915 to 1982 looking like this squiggle line.

And then in 1982, it takes off like a hockey stick because, of course, there's a lot. a lot of reasons. This is not the only reason. I don't want to get, like, letters and booms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But before, if you had booms, you'd be sharing profits. Yeah, same. You still had to share the profit somehow. And also executives began to be compensated with stock and based on the value of stock price. So a lot of things happen to cause stock prices to increase. But the point is that from tax worldview, that we used to have a system that taxed, the big theme, We used to have a system that taxed people according to their capacity to pay. Now we have written the rich out of the tax system.

We've created our very own second estate. Yeah. Nice pivot back. Beautiful. The way you wrapped it up, you took all the loose ends and braided it like Rapunzel. I want to bring one more terrible thing that's happening into it. And then I want to have some just fun questions. And then maybe it'll be pushed back.

Maybe it won't be. But the other huge thing that has to be addressed is step up and basis. No. I don't think so. No. Isn't that what ultimately they're getting out of the estate tax with? No. Step Up and Basis is a super giveaway that we shouldn't have. But it's not the nature of the problem. It's just like what we call in Boston the jimmies on the ice cream. Jimmy's are the chocolate sprinkles. It's the garnish.

You already have like all the benefits of capital gain. So I'm going to explain what step up and basis is. People love to say the problem step up and basis. let's fix Step Up and Basis, that would be letting the biggest problems remain. I got you. So here's what, let me explain what Step Up and Basis is. And we also call it the Angel of Death loophole.

Okay, so let's say bought Nvidia stock, and it went up to $10 million. You bought it for like 50 cents, and then it's worth $10 million. If you sell it, you'd have to pay this 23.8%. But instead, if you pass it on to your kids, at death, they're treated as if they bought it for $10 million, even though nobody's paying any taxes on it because we have an exemption amount.

There's no estate taxes on it. How is this not the most enormous, if I'm trying to get $50 billion out of this person, and their $50 billion is solely held in stocks that have appreciated, and they pass it under their children, the children inherit it, they're not saying, oh, $40 billion of that is profit. Am I misunderstanding? You're misunderstanding because the example that I gave was $10 million. Okay, so let's do that.

This creates a problem because it creates this problem of lock-in effect. Nobody wants to sell anything. People don't want to sell their homes. They don't want to sell their stock. They want to pass it on to their kids because they can avoid taxes. The thing is, the cost of it is you have to pass it at death. And if you're passing property at death, it's much harder to avoid the estate tax. All of those things that arose, remember I said a whole bunch of loopholes arose and they're called like crats and crats and grots and intention.

defective grant or trust and the flourishing of all of those things, they are all dependent on gifting. And gifting, when you give property, your kids get the same basis that you had or whoever you give it to. Explain basis. So you bought your Nvidia stock for $50. It's now worth $10 million. If you make it as a gift to Monica, of course, just because you love her, she has your basis, which is the amount that you paid for at $50. So when she says, sells it, she would have to pay gains based on subtracting $50 as the amount that she had invested. If instead you gave it to Monica when you died, she would get a $10 million basis so she could sell it for $10 million and she'd have no taxes.

Yeah. Okay. But when we're talking about where the real money is, which is our very rich people and all of our private equity people, we haven't even talked about them, right? They are all avoiding taxes because they're essentially creating zero. zero value gifts. They are doing zero-d-grats and all these different things that'll be too boring to explain. But basically what they're doing is they're finding a way to transfer property, make it look

like it's worth nothing, and then it pops up and the other person's worth all this money. But you can only do those during life. Very hard to do them at death. And that's why the step up and basis is something that people love to point to, like because it's such an outrage. Where the real problem lay is in the fact. fact that somebody can start a company or do with something, they're worth nothing. They become worth several hundred billion dollars. They never pay taxes during their life. They give it away.

They'd ever pay taxes. They give it at death. They don't pay income taxes, right? There's never a tallying of the gains. And that's the problem. It's not the step up and basis, which is kind of, yes, that's so egregious, but the bigger problem is that we should be taxing those gains to the person who earned them. And this was proposed by both Richard Nixon and Barack Obama. That is how common sense bipartisan it is. Exactly. And it's the rule in Canada, right? When you transfer property, that's the person who enjoyed the gains. Mark Zuckerberg has enjoyed the gains. Larry Ellison has enjoyed the gains. Let them pay the gains when they transfer the property. not just when they sell it.

That's how we should be addressing that. Okay, so here's my couple of questions. Because I would say, if I had to plant a flag, I would say I'm a centrist. I'd say I'm a centrist. Okay, great. So my fears are a couple things. So we've seen a huge impact on economies when they raise their lower business taxes, right? This is like pretty well established.

England had a horrendous business tax for a while, and then Thatcher, yes, slashed that, and they kind of revitalize their financial sector. We are competing in a global economy with other countries that can host companies. I'm using just business taxes as an example. Because it's a global economy and because many of these multinational companies can put themselves anywhere,

countries have had to compete with business tax rates, right? What's a business tax rate? 15% or something or 20%? I don't know. It's small, right? But it's small. Corporate taxes raised their own complexity. And there's a lot of reasons why they're complex.

One is this issue of competing, right? But there are movements that there would be a global agreement to have a minimum. In the absence of that, though, we have to be competitive is the point I'm making. Maybe. I'm going to leave that aside because the point is that when you're talking about an individual, I mean, do you want to move to Qatar because you'll get lower taxes there? I don't think we have to worry about Americans. First of all, we have a big exit tax for somebody who leaves the country.

You can't just pack up all your stuff. And they track you down. You're good at that. You're big exit tax. And then you give up your U.S. citizenship. Is that really something somebody wants to do? That's a big move. So I don't think we have to compete globally when we talk about personal taxes.

But the reason I bring it up is we're now starting to see attempts at that within the country, right? That's an entirely different story. So this is the big question. I'm glad we're turning to it because this is obviously the question of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. is wealth taxes, both on the national level and on the state level. So we have talked about the fact that people are able to acquire $55 trillion of wealth and there are all sorts of rates and not pay any taxes on it.

And so what are we going to do about it? And so a logical thing is let's have a wealth tax. And first we heard it on the national level. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other people are now pushing for a wealth tax on the national level. On a national level, the problem is there's a very real risk that the current Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional for some very boring reason. And you're great at illustrating how almost impossible it would be to evaluate someone's total assets. What's that painting worth? What's that property worth? It's almost impossible.

It's very difficult to do it on an annual basis, and there'll be a lot of incentives for people to start hiding their value on an annual basis. if you have an annual tax on all of people's wealth, people might find it's invasive, people might move out of the stock market, there's all sorts of reasons that it's a problem on the national level. So now here comes California, and it is proposing this thing. And I think there's a really important piece that we've been talking about, but I want us to bring it back, which is that California is a hugely successful state. Fourth biggest economy in the world. It's bigger than Japan. Yes, amazing, right? Why the hell are roads? look like this is a mass communication.

Well, that's a separate question. But the point is that California should, it has a high income tax, right? It has a lot of rich people. High property tax, high income tax, high sales tax, high gas tax. You think that they should be able to raise a lot of money. What we've been talking about here

is all the ways the federal government has betrayed California and every other state. And some of them has been that they have allowed a corrosion of the income tax base. So that, for example, we used to have a lot of dividends. Now we don't have taxable dividends. So the other thing that California used to be able to have was an estate tax, its own estate tax. And every state in the country had an estate tax. And the reason for it is because the federal tax allowed a credit allowing states to raise estate taxes and people's overall tax bill wouldn't increase. What's interesting is,

that the federal government used to care about having strong states. And it allowed strong states by giving credits for states to be able to raise taxes and not lose its citizens. And that is something that we've moved away from. And the estate tax allowed states to raise money from its wealthiest citizens because it had credit for every state. George W. Bush changed the credit to a deduction. And then as a result, all the states began to run away, including California, stopped having estate taxes. So now California doesn't have an estate or gift tax. The income tax, you get all these people, Mark Zuckerberg's not taking a big salary, Sergey Brin not taking, but none of these people are taking big salaries, right? So they're not getting money on their salaries. They're not selling

their stock. And so what is California to do? Because we don't have the rule that whenever they transfer the stock, they're subject to tax. We've really sold the states out because the federal government has allowed the corrosion of the base. And so California now, which has a massive amount of wealth held in publicly traded stock, which is very easy to value. And now, by the way, the feds have just thrown in and said, oh, yeah, you know what, if that's not enough, we're taking your Medicaid too. You know, we're not going to provide for anything. And so California has been backed into a corner.

And even though I write about being opposed to wealth taxes as the answer for the federal government, and I recognize that states have this problem of people can always pick up and move to another state. I come from a high-tax state, Massachusetts, and I do think it's a problem. You know, we have this millionaires tax now, and, you know, I'm a good lefty Democrat type, but I do worry that businesses are going to open in New Hampshire and not in Massachusetts. Of course, we have to worry about that. Yes.

We're taxing the income earners enough. For my money, as this centers, we don't need to be raising the tax rates on people paying income. Exactly. But so then, what do you want California to do? They've got a big hole in their budget. they're not able to raise money with their high income taxes. If they continue to raise money, it's just like a leaky bucket. There's nothing that they're taxing.

They're taxing the income enough. So then the wealth tax, it's all this sort of there to see for the public to see the wealth because it's all publicly traded stock. I'm quite sympathetic to it, even as I am opposed to wealth taxes generally. So I've gotten a lot of interest on the federal level on my tax proposals, particularly from moderate Democrats. And I think the reason for that is because of the pressure that's coming from the left. And if we go back to our story that we've been telling, it was the threat of socialism.

It was the threat of communism. And what I worried about was that with capitalism reigning supreme, right, we no longer have real threats to capitalism. So this is something I talk about in the book. Bronco Milanovic has written about this and Tony Jude has written about this. Capitalism no longer has to prove itself because there's nobody competing. competing with capitalism. But now we have these Democratic Socialists, right?

And they're creating a little bit of a competition tiny with capitalism, and it's having an impact. And so that's why, even though I see the risks of the California wealth tax, I also see how we need to get a change of our federal system. We can't keep running up this debt for our kids and grandkids. It's so unfair. And so we've got to find a way of raising money. And we have to do that by fixing our tax system.

And I think that we're only going to fix our tax system when people worry that there's something worse out there. And that something worse is wealth taxes. Yeah. Okay. So I was on a hike with my wife and she was like, you know, why can't you just cap it at like a billion's most someone can have? Which I think is a pretty common thought, especially for young people. And I was like, okay, but explain how that works mechanically to me because you're Jeff Bezos. You start this incredible company.

Every time his value goes up, do we reduce his ownership? and should we make it so this person who started a company and is pretty responsible for its success owns 0.01% of their own companies so that they can be capped at a billion dollars? Like how mechanically does this work? Go ahead. So I want to respond to that because I think that this is exactly

why we have to be careful about what conversations we're having. And this is why I think conversations that like every billionaire's a problem, the problem is misleading us because it makes it seem like these are people who are paying lots of taxes along the way and now we're going to punish them because they have more than a billion dollars. It's such a false narrative. If we start with the real narrative, which is these people have been able to acquire hundreds of billions of dollars and so far have contributed nothing or at least if they have, they didn't have to, to all of our expenses. That's the system that we have. And so that's the system that we should be trying to fix. I want to make one

argument, and I just want to hear what you think about it. Amazon's worth $2.9 trillion. Yeah. He owns 8.2% of that stock, which means he has made other people $2.6 trillion. Yeah. So I think a lot of people are like, kill the billionaires. It's like, okay, you kill Jeff Bezos, but what you've also killed is $2.6 trillion that is in pension funds, retirement accounts. other people have made $2.6 billion off of this person. Sometimes you've got to step back, I think, and go like, okay, but what's the net result of this person we all hate? I'm answering the public right now, and I want your opinion on what I hear is that everyone should hate Bezos and he shouldn't have this much money.

But what I'm saying is, remember, 92% of the money generated by Jeff Bezos other Americans have. That's not what they're saying. That's not what they're saying. They're saying that he can make as much money. He can make all the money, but he has to give the money back, not just to other people who will make a lot of money and also not pay taxes. That's the issue. I'm not done with my point at all.

So he has made $2.6 trillion for other people. And he's done so by having 10% of this company being very invested in it and still leading it to make these other people $2.6 trillion. My ultimate question is like, what is the mechanism by which you're going to get him to pay taxes without him selling his shares of his own company to get the money. What do I think we should be doing to fix our taxes? How are we going to get the money from Bezos without forcing him to sell?

We do two things. One is that whenever he gives away the property, he should tally the gains. That I'm with you. Whether you're doing life or a death. Okay, that's all that I want Bezos to do. So I'm with you on all this. And the estate tax. Then the estate tax, we have to get rid of the estate tax.

So here's the thing about the estate tax. The estate tax is dead, obviously. The fact that the Republicans kept the estate tax, it is dead. And you don't think you can save. You can't salvage. It will not be saved because it has this Achilles heel. We are looking at the wrong person when we're looking at the dead person. The question is, if it's the case that anybody who gets money in any way gets a tax-free,

how much of a preference do we want to give to money received by gifts, inheritance? and life insurance. And I think what we should decide is like, fine. People can inherit a million or two million, whatever you want to say tax-free, noting that it is a preference for inherited wealth. And then after that, they should pay taxes like anybody else. Great. I'm with you.

So would you not have a problem with Bezos having lived his whole life, accumulated $200 billion, never paid taxes on it while he was alive so long as once that movie moved on. Okay. That's the solution. Yeah. But all these people who want to immediately see Elon Musk pay taxes, I don't think it's practical. But I don't understand, though, this. This seems weird to me.

We have the plumber and the web designer, each paying taxes when they're doing barter exchanges. And you're like saying, like, I don't want Elon Musk to have to pay taxes. What do you care if Elon Musk has to pay taxes? I want him to pay taxes if he borrows $2 billion to fund his lifestyle. I want that tax. Oh, you want a tax on that. But I don't want to force somebody to have their stockholding. evaluated on a given day at this stock price and say, you know what, you owe half of that money to the

government. But the thing is, and this is why I'm so glad you're asking these questions, right? These are the types of arguments that are such red herrings about the actual reality of the situation, right? And they shift it. But don't you think that's what America's demanding right now? No. I think that the problem is the American public has been duped about the amount of taxes that are paid by the wealthy. Then they're thinking, okay, they're not paying taxes. How should we have them pay taxes? They're not tax lawyers. They don't know the details. And so they're saying like, well, let's just do this because this sounds good. I think that people simply are like, I'm paying a load of taxes every year. I'm looking around. These people are not paying anything. What is up with that?

Agreed. The fact that Jeff Bezos claimed the child tax credit, which is what it showed, feels wrong. It feels wrong. That's why they work. It's unfair. I disagree with how ProPublica chose to do it by saying it's this small percentage. That isn't how I would choose to describe it? But the point is, how is it that we are living in a world where all of the richest people have many, many years of no tax contributions? And they're living luxuriously. There's one thing if they're living in a one-bedroom apartment, like the other person

and just keeping the money in stocks, okay. But they're not. They have multiple houses. They're on yachts. They're spending money and they're not contributing it. I agree. That's a huge problem. They should get tax on that money they're spending.

But to your point earlier, that money they're spending is such an insignificant piece of their wealth. Right, but they should be paying something. Yes, yes, yes. Our system should be fixed. This line of questioning was wonderfully revealing. We're in lockstep. You're not asking for them to be paying a significant portion of taxes year to year. No, I'm not.

But you are probably asking for them to pay taxes on the money that they're spending year to year. Well, you know, it's an issue because the problem is paying taxes on borrowing. You can't have a law that applies to just down. They have to fix that. It's hard to fit it into the structure of the test guard. Can it be if you borrow a certain amount you have to pay on it? What I worry about is sometimes you get like a fetishistic response to a problem and then the actual problem doesn't get solved. Yeah.

Or it's like Pennywise, how foolish. Yes. And so that's my concern. There's a lot of lack of information and lack of sophistication in the public for taxes. And you can't really blame them. It's confusing. It's confusing. It's confusing.

And we shouldn't be so confusing. We have to simplify it. I think that, yes, the public might be speaking in broad terms, but not because it's a fundamental problem that we need to be getting at. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. No sensible person is saying that somebody should be subject to 50% tax every year and all of them. Okay, so we have the same thing, which is I want these people at the end of their life to have paid 50% of what they've made back to the government. That's what I want. Yeah, good. We both want that. Yeah. And I just wanted to

be clear on what mechanisms you think we're going to get that. I think it's counterproductive to try to do it along the ride. And I totally agree. One hundred percent. That's the point I'm making. It's like you can't really do it year to year. And you can't ask people to give up percentages of their company while they're running it. But I don't think that they would actually have to give up percentages of their company.

They have plenty of taxes. They can borrow money. Just as they borrow money to buy a super yacht, they can borrow money to pay for the taxes. So I don't think they would have to. You don't think it's impossible, but I don't think it's very plausible. I mean, it's certainly not with this 5% billionaires tax, which, as I say, I'm generally opposed to billionaire's taxes, but I can understand how California has been backed into a corner. And nobody's going to have to give up anything. Great. I'm just constantly like, what's the

mechanism everyone's proposing to get these people to pay today? And I just don't see how that can happen. And you can't because I do think, like we talked about with Oracle, it's lost 50% of its value. And I think the public is aware property goes up and value and down in value. And it's too complicated. That was the Biden proposal and minimum tax on billionaires. It's hard. I think a lot of people had that type of reaction of like, you're taking money, then you're giving a credit and what are you doing. It feels kind of hard to do. Yeah. So in an ideal world, we would be able to do it, but we can't do it and I think it's impractical. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Okay. I love your book. I love your message. And we could probably do another three hours together and how neither party, neither party is going to

step up and do this. It's hard, though, because the people who are making $40,000 a year don't have time and energy to differentiate between in that 1%. Like to them, all of those people are on a different level. They're in a movie. Yeah, whether you're a billionaire or you're a millionaire. Well, exactly. That's what I think I talk about in my book is the difference. It's very hard for people to know.

And I'll tell you my own baggage and my own personal. The reason it's heated for me is like people are angry at just money now. I find it very ironic. We live in a country where the promises you can make yourself into anything. and regularly when we see people do that, everyone's mad about it. Yeah. Because they're conflating these classes that seem like the same from the outside that are dramatically different. Again, I pay 50%.

Exactly. And so don't be mad at me. Absolutely. But the mistake that I think that people make, and this goes back to our earlier discussion, is when they say the problem is billionaires. No, the problem is how did you acquire your wealth? The problem is the system, not the person. Agreed.

Some people are bad people, some people are good people, all up and down the thing. But like, we don't say to Jonas Sok, you created the polio vaccine, therefore you never pay income taxes. No, you pay income taxes, just like everybody else. Everybody should be paying taxes because that's how we have to support the country. It shouldn't matter. It's not about hating billionaires. It's about hating the system and having a fairer system. I adore you.

So fun. I always try. I don't get to see you guys every day. I want to audit your class. I want to have lunch with you in Boston, and I hope you'll come back for your next book. Definitely so fun. Thank you so much. Here.

I have this. Can't why. I'm a big coffee drinker. I lost that from my answer being correct. Was that? Yeah, you nailed that, Monica. That was scary. I wouldn't have come close to that guess.

You were a star. Yeah. A star. All right, well, be well. Everybody read the second estate how the tax code made an American aristocracy. All right. Thank you so much. Hi there.

This is Hermium Permian. If you like that, you're going to love the fact check with Miss Monica. How do you feel about Diana Ross? I feel good. I don't have too many opinions. You don't. Ain't know mountain high enough. Love that song.

It's a solid one, right? Yep. What else do we hear this morning, Aaron? I'm coming out. Great song. Upside down your turn to me. You're giving love and stinkily. I guess I love her.

Yeah. I just came to this conclusion. this realization too. Wow. I've been waiting for Aaron to join me on the 70s R&V train for 40 years. Yeah, it's been rubbing up slowly over a lot of years.

Oh my gosh. Well, now that you're into astrology, it all makes, I know. I found myself dancing in the car the other day to Diana Ross. That's fun. My kids are even like, oh my God. What's happened to you, sir? Yeah. Speaking of legends, we brought it up a little bit yesterday, but Dolly passed away, and I thought it was so

love, like, just everyone is so sad, universally. Yeah. And I think that's like just what an indicator of a beautiful life. Yeah, that's a good point. I don't, she might be one of the least polarizing people in the world. Yes, everyone is very, like, bereft. And I think, and she deserves that.

But it's like such a lovely, beautiful thing. And it was Sim. This part's going to seem off color. Oh, I have a few as well. But I was at a store this weekend where they had vintage shirts. They have a very small collection of vintage shirts, so they're insanely overpriced, like crazy. So there was a Sheneid O'Connor shirt that was $2,000. Oh, a T-shirt.

That's crazy. It's crazy. I bet my brother probably still has his from that era. I should ask him. He might be sitting on 2K up there in Portland. Seriously. I would call him and go, good. Good news for you, buddy.

You're sitting on Duke Gay. You're set for life. Okay, but there was a dolly shirt. Oh, okay. And we were like, oh, this one's so cute too. This is so great. And then I was like, then I, whatever, left. And then yesterday I was like, oh, my God, that shirt's probably $10,000 today.

Yeah, probably skyrocketed. What was the price? I don't know. Okay, you weren't interested enough in it. No, because I didn't like love, love the shirt itself. Like, I think it was really big. Okay. Are you looking for a thinner or a thicker material?

Thin. Same. Same. I want cheese cloth. You want it to be all, basically, see-through. That's right. Transparent. Couple holes, if you can.

With a hint of the old screen print on there. Yeah, that's nice. Just a tiny hint. The unfortunate part is I would splash grease on it immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Like cooking oil or some butter. Yeah, same.

You know, someone. This shirt. This one in particular has been baking soda like five or six times. Mine has two. This year in particular loves to get oily stains. It sure does. Yeah. I agree.

We should almost need it. I don't even think I went near the kitchen when I wore mine. Oh, no, that's bad endorsement for my shirt. Yeah, it's not great. This one. I don't find that to be the case with any of our other merch, but this one's like every time I put it on, my God, I did it again. And then I do wonder how many oil stains am I collecting on other things that aren't showing it? Yeah.

That's what you got to wonder. You got to. You got to sit there and wonder about it. I haven't, unfortunately, haven't held on to anything from our youth. Yeah, I was very jealous when Lincoln started wearing the exploited shirt. And I was saved because I think I was like getting rid of those. And I think Kristen was like, secretly maybe it was like, you can't be getting rid of these. No.

But do you know the whole thing with us and our T-shirts? This was a great hack. Oh, you were tiny T-shirts. I wore extra tiny t-shirts. Baby T's. You did, didn't you? And you went to McDonald's and you had like tiny T-shirts on. Oh, yes.

Yeah. Horse. Prince. Prince. And then Aaron had these baseball pants that were way too from when I was a little later. No, but this was a great hack for my mom who was, of course, on a huge budget is that my brother and I loved these punk rock t-shirts. And we would take a trip every year before school. Our school's shopping.

was going to Young Street in Toronto. Okay. And we'd spent the whole day going into all these t-shirt shops. Oh, my God, this is great. And they were all, what do you call them, Fugazis, they were pirated. You know, they were, they weren't official merch from these bands. And so they were super cheap. All these shirts were like, I don't know, $8 or something.

And I would come home with six exploited shirts, Jeep. GBA8 shirts, Dead Kennedy shirt, just all these cool shirts with all these. And of course, everyone was so jealous because you can't buy them anywhere but Toronto. Dude. But then, of course, I would give Aaron some. Yes. Oh, that's nice. And it was really the uniform of junior high.

It was the coolest shirts. For the most part, black and white. Yeah, yeah. Occasional splash of red. Yeah. But it was a hack for my mom because she could get our whole school clothes shopping done for like $90, you know. That's so smart. It made the trip to Toronto free.

Back to school shopping was really fun. You liked it, right? Oh, my, of course. Who doesn't love it? It gave me anxiety. Because you have one day to find every outfit you're going to wear for a year. It's not realistic. And then you're also worried you're going to bump in.

I was worried. Look, this is all luxury, right? Aaron, did you ever even go school clothes shopping? I feel bad. I don't even complain about this. I know. Please. Yeah, no.

I'm not complaining. I'm saying I'm grateful. No, she loved it, but I'm complaining. Because I would go there, and it's like, generally I'm kind of picky, even though you wouldn't think I am. You are picky, yeah. So it would be like, I hope there's a bum equipment sweatshirt I like. There's only three. Is that a band?

No, that was like a popular brand in the early 90s, late 80s. You don't remember bum equipment, B-U-M, these oversized sweatshirts. This is back in the Z-Cavarici's day. I also miss that thing. Dark. I miss it. I did yesterday. He looked great in a pair of zes.

Oh, absolutely. You'd freak. Yeah. Because they're so big. Yeah, I love a big. Tons of pleats. I love pleats. Like, the fact that I was, like, loved a pair of jeans with tons of pleats is hysterical.

I can't imagine getting him to. The power of trends. And I got, one time I got the parachute pants. That was great. But anyways, I would go there and it was like, if you don't find your whole wardrobe today, then you're shit out of luck. And you go to my, there's only three stores I liked at the mall. and then you bumped up into your budget a lot.

Sure. I just found it very stressful. Was yours protracted over like multiple days? No, it was kind of, gosh. I mean, it depends on the age. Like at some point back to school shopping was just me and Cali going to the mall. And you got mom's credit card? I had an allowance, $20 a week.

Wait, you were buying your own school clothes? Yeah. That can't be. I was. No, I mean, I'm thinking more throughout the year. Like maybe I bought like one. I don't think my mom and I went shopping for high school back to school. Like, I think at that point I was sort of on my own buying my own stuff.

What about junior high school or middle school? I know. Well, yeah. Limited 2 was the place. Yeah. My mom never wanted to buy me anything from Limited 2. So I would like be begging and pleading. Sometimes she would get me like one shirt from there.

Okay. That was it. Yeah, they didn't really, we didn't do a huge amount of back to school shopping. but like she would, this is funny, we just had this conversation. Do you guys know Upton's? Did you have Upton's? Upton, Sinclair? No.

No, it was a store. And we spent all week trying to figure out Uptons, my parents, when I was home. Because I told my mom she used to shop at goodies. I brought up goodies. Did you guys have goodies? These all sounds very southern to be honest. Sam Goodies. I know.

Not Sam Goodies. Goodies was a clothing shirt. Biggie Wiggly Wiggly. Wiggly, yes. Wiggly wogglies. I have a piggy wiggly shirt that I do love. Anyway, yeah, I said something about goodies because I vividly remember my mom bringing home leggings from goodies for me. Okay.

They had hearts on them. Remind me on leggings again because I remember I got it wrong once. Leggings. Like you wore what you called leggings and I thought leggings were like panty hose. Right. What do you think leggings are? Well, I think it's different now. Isn't it just yoga pants now?

But back then, I thought it was panty hose. Okay. Pany hose? Maybe in the... Do they call it that anymore? Does anyone wear panty hose? I don't think people wear a panicky hose. It's disgusting.

What does the hose mean? Well, it is in the shape of a hose. Like a garden hose? Yeah. I mean, it is. It's a panty in hoses. It is sort of an extension of your panties. Because you're not supposed to know you're wearing those.

But you are also supposed to. They're nude. And they have a. And they're so tight. They have a grundle in them too. Are you not supposed to wear panties with them? I think you are. Okay.

Double up. That would be bad. They should be called second panty hose. I think they're sexy. Sorry, we interrupt you. Uptown. Sure. Everything is sexy.

I don't think you would. Have you ever seen a woman with only panty hose on? I think I have. I think I've, you know, you know, then getting down to business. That's nice. That was really popular in the 80s to have a woman. It was very common on the cover of Playboys. It would be panty hose, no top, looking over the shoulder.

You couldn't show the boots on the cover. I feel like I've seen Cindy Crawford in that look. It was a look in the 80s. Yeah. Black generally, not like nude color. Yeah, because pantyhose. Yeah, nude color, I think, is your nana. Nude is.

Yeah, as you think of your grandma and there's saggy. Nude. It is the main color. They're invented because you weren't supposed to have your legs exposed. So women would wear it under their skirts and so for secretaries. Also, the for chillingness in the winter. When you want to wear your skirt to work, I think it was also supposed to be a little. They added that.

Okay. The warmth. Yeah. And also supposed to make your skin look smooth and stuff. This does. Anyway, no, leggings in this case were like 80s leggings. Like they're like thicker. They're pants basically.

They had stirrups. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know? Okay. They're really cool. Anyway, my mom brought me homes from goodies, and I brought this up for some reason, and she was like, no, I've never shopped at goodies. And I said, well, you did.

I know for sure. I remember you bringing the bag, and I was so excited. Sometimes my mom would go shopping on her way home from work and bring me items. She had a time crunch. She was a career woman. Yeah, exactly. But she wanted to shop. Then she said, no, I used to go to that one store a lot.

And I was like, what? And we like couldn't figure it out, couldn't figure it out. I was asking chat. Oh, sure. So many questions I was asking chat. And my dad then got very demoralized by AI. He was like, yeah, no, we're not in any trouble here because it couldn't figure it out. It could not figure it out.

And then I just went to straight up Google. I asked it a few questions and it got it. Ah. Now, what's your dad's general feeling on AI? Is he of a take? Mm-hmm. Mm. I'm sure he does.

Is he using it? My dad's back to work. Oh, he's, oh. Do you know those stories? I do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He had his retirement party.

The last time I was even in here was when this was happening. Yeah. He had his retirement party and then he was at work Monday as a consultant. Exactly. Exactly. And now he's like picking up more hours. I'm so happy for him. So, overdone.

He's got a. He's got to get that mind. Finding up for O-Tee. So you figured out it was Uptowns with Google. Uptins. U-P-T-O-N. It's U-P-T-O-N. U-P-T-O-N.

U-P-T-O-N. That's Uptown, no. U-P-T-O-N. Oh, okay, we're missing a W. Yeah, okay, U-T-U-Ns. Shout out Uptins. I mean, it was a great play. It was like Coles before Coles.

Okay. I mostly only know wrong. Ross and T.J. Max. Love T.J. Max. Is the other one you just said in that category? Uptons, no. Not Uptons, Coles. Is Coles like good luck to everyone?

You know, like, when you walk into Ross, it's like the greeter should say good luck. Yeah. No, Coles is much better. Yes. It's like department store? It is. It's like a standalone department store. It doesn't have, because T.J. Max and Ross are all like resale or like, you know, like things that didn't make it.

Odd lots. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, my dad, my dad, he, he's not that worried about it. Okay. He just thinks this is what happens. Like, everyone was worried with the computer and everyone, you know, and then you figure it out.

So he's not too worried. Okay, now, this is probably too nosy about his finances, but I imagine when he retired, he got a, he has a retirement package. Yeah, probably. Yeah, so this, no wonder people go back to work as a consultant because he's probably getting some percentage of his original income. and then he gets to go in there as a consultant and also get wages there. So he's kind of like doubled his salary. I don't know. Let's talk.

I'll get him on the phone answer. Let's ask him on what he's making. I don't think he wants to share. They notoriously never, ever, ever will share their finances with me. They've never told you. What's your take on that? That was a huge part of growing up. Like they, I would ask all the time, what, how much money do you make if everything so,

if we're just up to be so scared of money? Yeah, yeah. How fucked are we? Yeah. And they just said it's none of my business. Really? My mother very much was like, I have to turn them out into the world with some financial literacy. So, like, they should know what I'm bringing in, what our expenses are, how this is all working.

No, the literacy was just you should always be, like, scared. Paranoit. Put a ton of it, all of it away, maybe like $1 you can keep. And that's what you should do. But if you were to ask them now, would they tell you? Maybe, like, how much they made? How much they have saved? Oh, I think they have alluded to the number.

Uh-huh. But they wouldn't want me to say it on. Okay, I have a question. Yeah, yeah. For both of you, both have children. Let's say one of your children, this is like a Jonathan Haidt, sort of. Let's say one of your children makes just a lot of money is going to be totally fine on their own and independent of you, right? And then your other child, one of your other children, does not.

Now, when you're doing your will... This is Davis-Hidaris. He didn't get any money. Is that a penny? So, yeah. So when you're doing your will, are you guys, you're just even Stevens? Or are you thinking it like, well, this person needs. For sure.

For sure, what, even Stevens? No. Oh. No, if one kid's struggling, the other one is totally financially set. I will tell the one financially set, like, hey, when I die, I'm going to leave your sister's more money because she needs more help than you do. Wow. And it's not because it's not any reflection on what I think you deserve. but it is a reflection of how well you've done

and that I want to make sure you're both safe. Like that's easy, I think. And even I've told my mother, like, you know, I bought half my mom's house at one point, like one of the houses ago, a couple houses ago. And I even said like, so hey, when you pass, I just want my half back. You can give David and Carly the other half.

You don't have to like try to divide. That happened to. third so that I then get 66% of it. Like, I just want my money back. And then I even change that. And I was like, you know, whatever you have give to those two, it would be insane to give me more money. So hopefully your children would just offer if they're financially set.

I mean, I guess it's, okay. Why? Because are you expecting 50-50 square? And they are going to do that. Like they are, and so that's an interesting. For me, it has zero. to do with the money. Yeah, whatever money I get, I probably will give it.

To your brother. Depends on where he is. This is the other thing. It's like you don't know what's going to happen to people. Life as long as Twisty-Turvy. Very. And if something like, what if the rich sister lost all their money? And then you've given.

Well, ideally they have a good enough relationship that she goes, hey, I know dad gave you all the money because you didn't have any, but now I don't have any. I think, well, your children are different, but not necessarily different, but they're, this thing with money breaks up so many families. Post-postomously, yeah. Exactly. It causes so much damage. And so-

That's why you've got to do a will because you're just, you're ensuring that they'll be fighting each other. Yeah, and like, and so for me, I think it's just necessary. to prevent a lot of that, to also, yeah, it's just you got to go even Stevens. And my parents believe that too. Well, definitely if you're divvying up the money on who you liked more, that's a no-no. But depending on who needs it more, I think that's really relevant, has to be taken into account. But it's just in that moment, you just don't know. I'm super envious of Aaron because he just, obviously, you'll just give it all to his son.

He has two daughters and his son and he'll give his whole estate. his son. Well, what about the husband? I wish I had a son to make it so clean. Or the husbands of your daughter. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes. They'll be getting some money. I've never, I've never thought about it besides being, everyone gets an even split. But if I run into some money and these kids start doing their, you know, right now they're not, they're teenagers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky. Another thing you have to factor in is, is one of your children struggling with massive addiction?

Yeah. The last thing you want to do is give them enough money to kill themselves. So there may be a situation where you have to say to the other sibling, look, I'm giving you all this money, but you got to, you got to take care of your sister. Yes, that is, of course, a different situation. I mean kind of just pending regular stuff. 50-50. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. You know, my brother just had a baby, cutest baby, Memphis.

I love him. I bought him a quilt yesterday. Oh, I wanted to bring that up. Okay, so I bought him a quilt that was originally, ding, ding, ding, $1,000, but it was $100. It was on sale for a... It was a $900 all. Mom.

I know. I got to wonder if it was ever worth a thousand dollars. That's what I wanted to bring up. I was like, do you think that was like a trick? I figured some moths got in there or something. Although, Aaron and I, if we owned a quilt that was $1,000, we would be selling it for $100. We just had this conversation that both of us are so bad at selling stuff. Like, virtually every time I sell something, I meet the person, and I go like, God, they have less money than me.

Like, I remember I sold my Harley. I remember that story. Yes, I remember that. I thought of that story yesterday. And the dude, like, I forget what I wanted. Maybe I wanted 10 grand for it. And he came and he had like six grand with them. And he's like, okay, yeah, I really wanted him.

I got to run to the bank and get above it. And I go, just fine. Yeah, take that fucking more. Because he worked at a treatment center and I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like anything he would have shown up.

I probably would have said. I agree. I'm more into the just giving it. Yeah. I just want. this point. You to leave me alone.

Exactly. Whatever that's so quickly. How much do you want to take it? Just fucking get out of here. How much is that? Yeah. But Monica, I'm so scared to make you mad, but I kind of think

that they should give Neil a little more. I know you think that, but I don't. Okay. I don't. It's a symbol. It has nothing to do with the money. And it's one thing, you know, you're like, you know, we love you the most.

We love you equally, but it's like, it's just hard. It's, it's, it's too hard. That's what Cedera's felt. Yeah. He didn't like it. Yeah. It's painful. I think, I understand logically where you are coming from.

Yeah. But emotionally, I don't, I think that would just be very hard regardless. There wouldn't be a world where you'd be okay with like 60, 40. Again, it's not even about, it's not. It's not about the money at all. It's, it's actually just a indication of like, these are my children. They get, you know what I mean? Let's take you out of it.

What do you think my mom should do between me, Carly and David? I think she should split it evenly. And I think you will give. it. Like, again, it's not, I don't think then you're going to be like, yay, I got all this extra money. All right. The only thing that's tricky, though, about that is your parents can pass on their

money to you guys. But once you get it, you can't pass it to your brother without a tax penalty. I know. I'm just not all that. We, you know, we had the tax. Well, you'd have to make half of it disappear now. So basically, of this pot that started, it could all go to you guys tax free. But if you transfer it to him, now we've reduced.

the pot 25% of the total pot. And then it was like for a why so that everyone felt good. It should have just all gone to who needed it tax free. But need. Okay, again, okay. Let's, so the need is, I guess, relevant. If someone's poor. Yeah.

And someone's rich. Yeah. Yes. But also that's not right anyway. If like your sibling is poor and you have a ton of money, that's already a little bit like. What are you doing? Yeah, why aren't you helping out your sibling? But if you're, if they're fine.

Uh-huh. Okay, I'm not talking billionaire, obviously. But even, okay, that's a good thought. So what if it was a billionaire? Okay. And then a, the brother is a lawyer. Okay. So it does well.

Yeah, yeah. But private practice. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Personal injury. No, he does IP law. He's making $300,000 a year.

Good for him. Yeah. Yeah, good job. Should the parents... What's the other brother? A billionaire. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

See? So we got a billionaire and then a lawyer making $300,000. No, the billionaire. You've got to give it all to the lawyer. It's insane. It's insane. It makes no sense. It doesn't make...

He's going to have... have a billion, one million dollars to feel good? Like he's going to feel good versus the light changing. Listen, here's part of the thing. I know. Listen, okay, in billionaire's situation, I guess I agree. But you know what's funny is I do think we all naturally go everything more than what we have seen. So if someone only has $20,000 or $2,000 to their name and you have $2 million to your name,

That is the exact same proportion as you having two million, someone having a billion. No, totally. But $2 million is not enough to like never, to feel totally safe. Depending on what age you are and where you live and how you manage the money. Well, yeah, I guess if you have $2 million in your 80, like great because you probably you won't need it all. Does remind me one of the funniest things Aaron said to me. And he actually relieved me of this terrible fear I have. We were watching one of the many sports documentaries that always give me financial anxiety.

Because virtually every sports documentary you watch of a big hero in the 80s, you find out that the city was a gas that he got a million dollar contract. I know. And then I'm sitting there with Aaron and I go, that was like the most preposterous amount of money in 1986 when Isaiah Thomas got that. But dude, 1986 was 30 years ago and there's no way he still has a million. Right? Yeah. And I'm like, that's why like no amount of money in 30 years, you know. Well, exactly.

And then he goes, he goes, yeah, but you're not Isaiah Thomas's age. You're already 50. Like, you're already at the finish line. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's super relevant. It is very relevant. It's very relevant. Trying to figure out how to make money last for another. How to stretch it.

Yes, yes. You pointed out that I'm old. And it was like, gave me great relief. It's rare that that being pointed out gives you a lot of relief. That is true, yeah. Anyway, yeah. So I just think it's an interesting thought experiment. I'm definitely on the side.

How does your brother feel if you talk to him about it? No, he doesn't get to decide. Well, he gets to have an opinion. I'm curious what it is. Let's call him. Okay. Is this forever changing for the parents? Like you're calling up your guy.

Lincoln's not doing well. Uh-huh. Let's change the will. Yeah. Right. That's a good question. So I've done estate planning and it's a lengthy thing. And then Chris and I are just so lazy about it.

We're like, we don't want to. I'll tell you what happens in this estate planning that gets tricky is you go, first things like what happens if one of us dies. Okay, well, that's obvious what happens? And then it's okay, what if both you die? Yeah. And then you go, okay, well, I want my sister Carly to take over. Sure, yeah. And then you go, what happens?

if she dies, right? And then now we're on a third tier. And now, by the time you get to the fourth person, we're now arguing over who should get this. Of course. The responsibility of our children. And then at that point, I go, this is fucking nuts.

We're stressing ourselves out over something that literally statistically could not happen, which is all three people now have taken charge of our children. I've all passed and we're down to who I knew in eighth grade. Like, what are we talking about? The three of you could be in a car together. I hate that you said that. It's like not that.

Dude. Okay, where am I in line? So we kind of tabled it over this one, like we couldn't decide on the fucking fourth person to get the kids. Yeah. And then we just like, fuck this thing. And we put it off for a while. And then, of course, we're getting urged, rightly so by our financial advisor to finish this. Because we fly together.

I race motorcycles. You know, all the shit. Anyways, we finally got through it. But it's like, you know, it's like four sessions sitting with this estate planner for hours and hours and hours. And you don't like thinking about it, A, it's like not a topic. All you're talking about is like when you're dead and your kids are going to be without you and all that. And then you're also figuring out like what age should they get? What, again, what happens if one of them's an addict?

You need a lot of legal language to deal with that kind of situation. And you're kind of trying to forecast every conceivable thing. Yeah. And the only thing that I was just dead sure against is I was like, let's make this very clear. Nobody gets a fucking penny unless they sign a pre-up. I do not want some deadbeat burying my fucking daughters. And then getting divorced and taking a quarter of the money I worked my whole life. Or like, that to me was like, I'll come out of my grave and kill someone.

Oh, nice. Have you guys heard of doing a free... This is embarrassing, but I don't have a will right now. And I should, no matter... That would mean you don't want him to get one. No, I want him to not need it. Okay, because I thought you not because you don't want the thing that was just said to happen. No, my knocks are, they know.

They have... They're ambiguous. Multiple purposes, yeah. But this has come up a lot recently. And it's, yeah, it's out of lazy. And it's what a lot of people do, I assume. Just so lazy. It never occurred to me because I was like, whatever.

Your motorcycle collection. Just bitty up this tiny bit of shit. Yeah, my... Each kid get some motors. Fight for it. Yeah, they usually have one motorcycle right now. Which is pretty good. That is good.

That's more than I'm not. That is good. So we've been talking about it, but just haven't pulled the trigger. And I'm like, I do? Go to, because I'm a fucking jackass. I don't know how to do it. And I'm like, according to chat, who I'm...

Yeah. Yeah. But you should have chat make your will. Yeah, you should. Okay. Yeah. It makes legal documents. Yeah.

And, um... Yeah, so there is a way to do it without going to a lawyer. Do my tattoo contract. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I had the whole contract made on chat. Sent it to my, Eric, who's a lawyer.

And he's writing, he's like, this is like bulletproof slash aggressive. Okay. Yeah. Um, well, that's... The answer's that then. Yeah. Yeah, we looked in and I'm like, oh, that's why I don't have to, like, I just take this to a fucking no-dirt. Now, are you going to give yours, so is it, so, okay.

I like that you're whispering. Yeah, because this gets tricky. Twicky. So are you going to leave your money to Ruthie for your children? That gets real tricky. Too dangerous to answer on here. I know. That's why I whispered it.

It even gets more dangerous, or not more dangerous, but there's this life insurance policy on me that I don't know what it is. And this was bought by my ex-wife. And with good reason. Yeah. She had a pretty good chance of collecting money. Yes, a long time ago. Yeah. Oh, God, yeah.

Now, since I've got sober, there was this one, there was a moment early on where I start trying to do the right thing. I'm like, okay, I have to be responsible and pay these bills and these bills and these bills. And she's like, yeah, you got to start paying this fucking life insurance. I've been paying it for years. And I'm like, cool. So I pay that, but I've never asked a question. Like, does this go to you? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. beneficiary. And I'm like, wait. This is tricky. Rightly so. She's like, yeah, if you die, like, and the kids were all babies when this happened. You still have to pay for half these kids.

So, yes, I should get it because I'm going to now assume all the pay. This is so confusing. Yeah, because when you remarry, what? Do you have two? Can you get two? Double. Yeah, so I don't know the answer to that. You could, you could certainly amend that.

policy to have multiple beneficiaries. Yeah. Yeah. Which you'll never do, but you could. Which I'll forget when I walk out of here. But I think, sure, why wouldn't Roofing it a piece? Your old taste. A little round to me.

She's not going to be able to take care of herself without me. I'm joking. She does much better than me. I mean, this could be for 20 grand. I have no idea what it is. I've never seen details. When my dad died, obviously he just mostly had a lot of debt. Yeah.

But I did get a call that was like your father had a life insurance policy. And I'm like, first of all, how? And then, you know, how much? And it was like, it was $1,500. Oh, wow. And I'm like, where did this come from? What is the kind of life insurance policy case? $1,500.

No. Oh, to David and I, but I was like, just send it to David. $1,500? It's not a great insurer on the... One cent? One cent a year? Like, maybe he saw commercials. Like, for $0.25 a month.

You could leave your loved ones $1,500. $1,500. He's like, it's something. It is something. Sure. I'm just like, where did this come from? I think he must have, like, it had to be a part of some other thing he got that just got lobbed on to the bill that you had to have.

have if you have, I don't know, it makes no sense. I joined AARP and I thought this was fun. Wait, wait, wait. Isn't that for like 70-year-olds? Yeah. American Association of Retired persons. Yeah, but listen. You listen up.

This probably went into your junk mail, but I got it in the mail and saw that I was eligible to be a member of AARP. and I laughed really hard. And I was reading through it for a very small fee of like $14.99 for an annual. Oh, wow. Anyway, so I was like, this can't be right. It was when I turned 50. Then it got better as I was reading.

And it was like, so I'm like, okay, so the perks are you can get like a coffee at McDonald's. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So, I mean, holiday and discount. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Then I see you can order a second card for $7.99 for your spouse, which Ruthie's seven years younger than me. So I'm like, oh, this is even funnier.

This is worth $20 just for the laugh. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if that's part of their strategy when they're doing their marketing budget. They're like, a lot of people are going to buy this for a laugh. Yes. It works. So I order them.

I'm just saying it's not a huge mystery house. Sometimes you've had financially. So now I'm like pounded with mail and. Yeah, they know you're in soccer now. Notifications from AARD. No, where are you? But one I've been seeing lately, and I've set a couple of and having opened them was life insurance.

And I'm like, well, I don't mean I'll look into this. But it might be one of those $15.00. But your focus is more on the AARP right now. I really would love to go to a holiday in out of town with my wife. And we both have to present our cars. Yeah, that is really fun. That is fun. Did they give you the sticker for the back of your window on your car?

I got a lot of stickers. You should put them all over your car. It came. with a lot of stickers. I'm trying to think if I'm more courteous and forgiving

of people when I see the sticker or if I'm angry at them. Like, I can't remember if I'm forgiving or if the second I see it, I go, oh, they're going to drive like shit.

Well, you wouldn't... Both. You wouldn't be forgiving if you pulled up and saw it was me. I would be like, what the fuck? Yeah, it'd be pissed.

It's like when you see a guy jump out of his car in the handicapped and sprint into subway. I know. And he's got to, The fucking license plate and everything. But it's legit.

Wow. Congratulations. Thank you. That's amazing. I told you my father, like, he loved his placard so much. He traveled with it. And so often we would be like we would pull up, there's nobody there. It's like we're going to Costco at 11 a.m. on a weekday.

Yeah, he had his knee replaced. And, you know, he was obese and stuff. And the spot directly. next to the handicap would be open and I would start pulling in, you know, whoa, what are you doing? Go over one. And it's like, oh my God, why? This is now a weird obsession.

Yeah. You have to be in this spot. We're going to walk all of Costco. You couldn't be one by the way. You walk great when you think there's, um, fucking samples at the far end of the store. Oh, no. Oh, I love him so much. I love him the most. It was great.

Oh, man. He's a great man. Oh, boy. Backies? Yeah, well, I do want to make one thing there because people might think that I'm very greedy. Okay. Because I want half of my parents' money.

But my money will go to my brother. Which is all the more reason. No, more reason that like, okay, so, so, okay. I mean, all the more reason that you want them to have it all anyway. No, I want my money for my parents because I earned that money from them. Listen, part of the reason I did, I did. Part of the reason I have this money is because I was trying to make them proud. Uh-huh.

And I did it for them. Uh-huh. And them only. For them and them all. I think for you too. I think for you too. No, for me too. But that is real.

Uh-huh. And so I deserve that. I deserve to feel equally loved and cared for. Yeah. Do you think they love you equally? I'm starting to wonder now that we got a new baby in the mix. Okay, okay. That's sort of how this started.

I was like, oh, I wonder what's going to, I wonder if this is going to change things. What if they left it just all of the baby, not to you or Neil? That baby didn't earn it. Exactly. That baby earned money from my brother and Emily. Well, he's made your grandparents, his grandparents, is extremely proud. They think he's a soccer star. From just being born?

He didn't have to do anything. Exactly. I had to do so much. He's like a Marine. He gets more than three weeks than most people do in a lifetime. Here I am coming back with A after A after A. He didn't have to do shit. Anyway, well, it's going to be great.

Yeah, yeah. And it's not even going to happen for like a hundred years. years. Yeah. All right, let's do some facts. Yeah. I love Ray Madoff. Me too.

Yeah. Once in a while, these come up, I don't know, every 15, 20 episodes where I repeat all the data I learned in the interview to every single person I see for the next week. Yeah. And that was this interview. Yeah. This is a fantastic. Fantastic interview.

Alarm bell. Great information. We all need to listen to this. Alarm calls not a thing. No, it's just an alarm bell. An alarm bell. Yeah. Okay.

Sound the alarm. Sound the alarm also an option. Okay. Yep. Okay. She said women are named all kinds of male names, you know, but not Ray. Yeah. She said they're named Joseph and Frank.

I personally have Frankie. Frankie. I know Frankie. But that's Frankie short for Francis generally. Is it? Yes. And I would say Joseph, I've never heard. Joe, but that's for Josephine.

Yeah. But that was just funny that she said that, but then it made me want to look up. Girl names were once more common for boys. Okay. Great. This is from, she knows. Uh-oh. Ding, ding, ding.

Nose. That's from a previous. Okay. Robin. That used to be a boy name. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Robin Hood, sure. Yeah. I definitely think, when I hear Robin, I definitely think, female more than I think now yeah um okay jocelyn was a boy name what i know medieval medieval times Kim these are good good job she knows Kim was a guy's name yeah it didn't even appear on the female name charts until 1944 whoa at which time it was far more popular for boys well Kimberly is Kim, right?

Yeah. Was it Kimbo? The boys weren't named Kimberley. They were just named Kim. Darcy. Was it a boy's name? Yeah. And it's such a good name.

I could just be at home and make a list, you know. I could be like Jennifer. No, they have stats. Oh my God. They have sources? Yes. Okay. Okay.

If you live in the United States, you probably think of Darcy as a girl's name. It's firmly entrenched on the feminine side, consistently within the top 1,000, most popular girl names in the U.S. from 1949 to 1994, peaking at number 349 in 1968. It was on the most popular male name list in this country. Two, barely consistently from

1954 to 1970. Whoa. Yeah. I wonder what they went. They went by the full Jocelyn? No, Darcy. Oh, Darcy. Have you said Jocelyn? Yeah. Okay. I did. So it's not out of nowhere

that I just said Jocelyn. I'm just a few behind. Yeah. Okay, Aubrey. Kim? Okay, Aubrey was a dude's name? Yeah. Okay. When? 1810? It didn't even make the list for girls until 1973. Up until then, it was far more popular for boys. Having been in the male top of thousand names, even prior to 1900. 1810, probably it peaked. Probably. Um, Dana. I know this one. You knew that one? Well, I know a male Dana. You do? He was my teacher, AP History, U.S. History, and he was awesome. Shout out, Dana King. You liked all your teachers, yeah? I had a lot of teachers I liked, yeah. I got a good...

That's where Lincoln and I really diverge, and I'm so grateful. She likes her teachers. She's a teacher spot. Yeah. Yeah, I was like the bane of most teachers' existence, and I didn't like them. They liked me. And what a terrible way to go through. And she loves her teachers so much. I'm so happy and relieved. It's so nice to be liked by your teachers. It is. Riley.

I had a male teacher, Mr. Shade, in seventh grade science. Aaron brings us up all the time. He grabbed one of those big metal heavy chairs, right? Like the whole base is metal, wood back. He grabbed it and he fucking swung it and threw it right at my head sitting at the desk. And I ducked and it hit the table behind me. He would have sent me to the hospital. What'd you do?

Do you remember? Well, no, because then he immediately was sending me to the office. No, I'm saying what did you do to make him throw it? Oh, I can't remember my infraction. I think I talked for the fifth time after he had warned me not to. But we got even. We got even. You did?

Yeah. He in the summertime was a park ranger at Kensington State Park Barcire. Oh, no. Like, I don't like that he threw it. chair at you, but I'm nervous. He deserves this. This motherfucker almost took my head off. You can't throw a chair at a 12-year-old.

I know, but you were probably being so bad. I wasn't mean to him. I think I was talking to Aaron. Okay. Park Ranger. Yeah, and we kind of knew he couldn't fuck around at that job. And so Aaron and I found him a couple

different times at that job and taunted him like crazy after we were out of high school. Okay. Riley. We're like, where's your pistol? Why don't you pull your... They give you a pistol? Oh, my God.

All right. Mr. Shade, if you're with us, I don't apologize. Most people I would. Imagine his life. He tried to assault a 12-year-old child. No, I'm fine with don't. We're not even even yet. You were a bad kid.

I wasn't a bad kid. I was an antsy ADHD kid who talked too much. He, though, let's take you out of it, pretend it's not you. Okay, and it's just a teacher who's dealing, who's not good at being a teacher, and it has all these kids and doesn't know how to control them. And one is relentless, and he lost his shit. And this isn't the first time either. He'd beamed me in the head with a fucking eraser one time, too. Okay.

And he doesn't have enough money, so he has to be a park ranger in the summer. And this is a lot. You've added, hold on, hold on, hold on. What do you mean he doesn't have no money? He lived in my cheap-ass town. He was middle class in my town. He just had that job because he wanted to be a park ranger. If you were interviewing.

Yeah, it's okay. You can't see within it. Listen, if it's 12 years, here's what you do. You stop. You go, let's go out into the hallway. Of course. Let's talk. No one's saying he did a good thing.

Okay, great. No one's saying his behavior was appropriate or right. But we can also have compassion for his circumstance, which is what we normally do always. I, I, um, yes, there are certain folks in my history that I have a hard time extending compassion to. And that's okay. You're, you're a human to. You know, you've done, you have given, you have said that before. You have given some compassion.

I mean, more than I would give. All I've said, the most I can extend is in the game of life, he suffered the most. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That I can give him. I don't want to extend. to him any, but I do want to extend this teacher. I don't know why.

I wish you would meet Mr. Shea. Teachers are just, it's, you know, it's so hard. I get it. It's so hard. It's too hard. But Monica, you cannot chuck metal chairs like kids. I know, I know, I know. And if you, if that's your disposition, you cannot be a teacher in public school.

Yeah, yeah. But I don't think, I don't like that he got taunted. Oh, I do. I wish, I wish, I guess we would have assaulted. I'm sorry. Okay. Riley. Shannon.

Shannon. Shannon. Shannon. Carol. There's a really tough hockey player named Shannon. Yeah, Shannon is, I have heard it as a voice. Carol. We know that.

Do you know Carol? Girl. All these dads have these things. So Bree's father, Greg, would always call for the mom. Always. It'd be like, this is such a family thing to do, I think. Like, stand up and go into the bet, you know, like. Oh, no, everyone's shouting.

Girl! So, I mean, he always, girl. So I always make fun of them and I would just randomly yell Carol all the time. Yeah. And then Kristen's dad has a great one. You've heard her imitate that one. Kelly, Cal, Gal, Gal, Gal Lane. Oh, he's a progression.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's funny. It's getting heated. It's so funny. We all do it, right? Yeah. Yeah, we all do it. Yeah, it's very funny.

Carol, Morgan. We know him Morgan. Yeah. Love him. Morgan Sackett. Shout out. Hillary! Was a man's name?

Yes. Oh, man, that's tough. If you're like a cowboy and you walk into the saloon, I love it. I want you to meet my friend Hillary. I think he'd probably go by Old Hill. But Hillary, yeah. Okay.

That was also 19. Oh, no. I would say that that's tied with Shell Silverstein and Johnny Cash's boy name Sue. Hillary is raw. If you name your son, Hillary, like just you got to acknowledge you're setting them on a real. I'm going to do it. Oh, my God. I would fucking not allow it.

Courtney. I have heard that. Lauren. Lauren. Lauren Michaels? No, that's Lorne. You do often say Lauren, but it's Lauren. L-O-R-N-E.

Okay. This is... He's Canadian, though, so maybe that's how they spell Lauren. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Lauren. I mean, I don't hear the difference between what you're saying. Lorne, Lorne, Lauren. Okay.

So... Lauren, Lauren. Lauren. Two syllables. Lauren. Yeah. Lorne, one syllable. Lorne.

Okay. I know. It is hard. Yeah. Okay. We're splitting hairs, but yeah. We're really, really not. Sydney.

I think it's because his last name was Michaels. They're like, let's soften it up. Sure, maybe. Lauren Michaels. Okay. Sydney. Sydney, Poitier. Poitier.

Allison, I have heard this. I have heard this. Allison Crawley. Ballester, yeah. But still. Shelby? Okay. Shelby.

Shelby Silverstein? Shelby from Peaky Blinders, but that's the last name. Shelby Shelby. Shelby, Carol. Carol. That's a man. Carol Sheryl. And Carol, there's a big actor.

Carol from all in the family. Yes, yeah. Irby Bunkett. What's his name? Archie Bunker. Archie Bunker. What the fuck? Carol.

Carol. Carol Burnett. Carol Channing. Carol. O'Connor. Connor. Okay. Lindsay. Kelly. Kelly. Beverly. Kelly Slater. Beverly. I've heard it. Again. Uh-oh. Meredith? Come on. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. We got a lot. We got a lot.

Okay. You're just naming every single girl's name now. There are a lot on this list. Okay. I will be that. Okay. Nancy. Cindy. The rom-com. What do you think is the most? girly name. Lily. If you name a dude Lily, again, I hope he can fight. That's all I hope. No, you better stick up for that guy.

I hope for his sake he can fight if he's named Lily. Like boy named Sue. You pray he can fight because he's going to be in a lot of them. So you think I have the girliest name? Yes. Wow. Okay. The movie rom-com were a couple had to go into witness protection program and

And then they went to Ray Wyoming. That was, did you hear about the Morgans? It was in 2009. Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker. Okay, I looked up what professors are the hardest to become. Like, what subject of being a professor is the hardest? Because philosophy is how we got into this. Humanities and arts is extremely, it says extreme slash brutal job market competitiveness.

So it's philosophy, history, English. Then very high job market competitive. So one rung down is pure basic sciences, biology, physics, chemistry. Then moderate, accessible is professional schools, business, nursing, computer science. Is there anyone that says easy? Nope. Like, I feel like physicists has got to be up there. No, physics is in pure basic sciences.

It's very high competitive. Okay. Okay. I just feel like not a ton of people. Here's when I'm this. Just so you know how I'm doing this. Very few people major in physics. Everyone majors in communications.

I'm just talking about how many people major in the thing that feels like it'd be telling. That might be additive because if not that many people are. Well, first of all, though, everyone does kind of have to take it. That's what I'm saying. Every college has a physics professor. Yeah. Yet not a lot of people major and get their graduate degree in physics. A ton of people get their law degree.

A ton of people do communications. So that's that many people you'd be competing against versus you graduate in something that very few people graduate in that would have to increase your odds. Does that make sense? I know, but also they just don't need as many professors in those then. If not enough people are majoring in it. That's a solid point. But there are certain things like they have to have a physics department, right? Yeah.

But it might just be small. The physics department is probably smaller than that. Anyway, whatever. Is Paul McCartney a billionaire? Yes. Yeah. That catalog is a value. Is California still the fourth biggest economy in the world?

Yes. Correct. I wish you could do your head that way. You keep it exactly how it is. I'm going to take a photo of you. This would be, you should figure out how to do this on Halloween. Okay. Who will I be?

March Simpson. Oh, yes. Lebanese March Simpson. Oh, wow. All right, I'm going to send this to you. That's a different episode. Okay, you know. I mean, I could probably do a pipe cleaner or something.

You could figure it out. I could help with the physics, ding, ding, ding. Okay. Yeah. Gross domestic GDP surpassing 4.1 trillion. I mean, it's just nuts that a state is higher than Japan. I know. Than Japan.

Yep. Narrowly ranking ahead of countries like Japan, India, and the UK. But still. I'm pretty proud of it. I think it's U.S. China, Germany. That is right. California. That's what I just read.

You didn't read that? I read it in my, I did. I just didn't say it out of all. Okay, that's a good distinction. All right. All right. Love you. Love you.