Pivot - Market Milestone, Alito Flag Fail, and OpenAI Drama

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Kara and Scott discuss Disney character and parade performers voting to unionize, whether a global tax on billionaires could actually happen, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's wife flying an upside-down American flag. Then, the Dow passes the 40,000 mark as other markets surge. But are meme stocks creating a little too much froth for investors? Plus, OpenAI deals with another high-profile departure over safety concerns. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. How was your weekend, Scott?

I did something I haven't done in probably 30 years, Kara. I saw two movies in the same weekend in theaters. In theaters. Which ones? Yeah. I saw the premiere of Mad Max Furiosa. And? A friend of mine worked in TV or Warner, I'm sorry, worked in movies, Warner Brothers, and they had all the actors on stage. They had Chris Hemsworth and everyone else. And next to Chris Hemsworth, everyone looks like a defect. Everyone looks like they were produced in a factory of lesser people. Yeah, he's a handsome man. It was so much action and so much visual stimulation, you feel like a piece of beaten flank steak by the time you leave.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the Mad Max genre. I try not to watch those. I just am like, oh, that sounds like a terrible future. All those ones. Waterworld. Remember all those? Oh, Waterworld and Stomp Out Max, though. Thunderdome is amazing.

Yeah, I know it is, but I just never felt good after watching them. Fury Road, Tom Hardy. You didn't like them? No, I don't like any of those where it's the end times and everyone's dressed up looking like a goth and shooting each other with modified weapons. I just, I don't know. It's just such a dystopian, it's the most

dystopian view of the, all those dystopian things. The only one I get into is Terminator and I don't love the future stuff actually, which is interesting. Yeah, maybe Mel Gibson. Was it good though? It did. You know, I think it kind of jumped the shark. I'm a little still processing it, but I don't think it held together. It's with the woman from Queen's Gambit.

Yeah. I forgot her name. She's very compelling. Yeah. And then I saw, I think, I don't know, would you like this one? I saw Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling. How was that? You know, it's a-

Didn't do well. Didn't do well. Interesting. Box office is not good. Is that right? Yeah. It reminded me more of a TV movie of the week. It just wasn't that. It was okay. They're both really nice to look at. Right. And the thing I liked about it was it was a bit of an ode or a tribute to stunt people. Yeah. It's from the Lee, what's this guy who played $6 million? Lee Majors show. Lee Majors? Yeah, it's from the TV show.

That's why it reminds you of a TV show. Oh, I didn't know that. Because that's where it's from. That was a TV show in the 70s, 80s, whatever. What did you do? I, well, I did some more stuff. I went to a WNBA game, Liberty versus Fever. I got to see Caitlin Clark.

My friend has floor seats, so I got to sit on the floor. And how many people were in the stadium? I'm curious. It was packed. It was absolutely packed to the rafters. Where did they play? Did they play at MSG? At the Barclays Center. Barclays Center. It's packed to the rafters.

And the stadium was sold out? Sold out. Wow. Because it was Caitlin Clark that helped it, I think. But Liberty's super popular in New York. See, there's these super—I've learned all sorts of things from the lesbians of my friends who are big basketball fans. You know, there's super teams and the Liberty is one of them. And there's one in Vegas, the Aces.

But Caitlin Clark was something else, I have to say. She really is such a good player. She's a phenomenon. It was really fun to watch. I don't really care for sports, but it was fun nonetheless. It just was, there were lots of little girls in the stadium, in the Barclays Center, it's not a stadium, I guess, sitting all over the place.

There were little girls like trying to get their thing. It was nice. It was really nice. And it would be really great if there's all kinds of, the New York Times had a very good business piece about the financial challenges and yet all the things they're trying to do to get it. And if it gets popular, it gets a better TV deal. You know. People catch on. And they've got some stars now.

If there was ever a pivotal moment, quote unquote, it's now. Because she's got, and the fact that they sold out, the fact they sold out the Barclays Center is very impressive. But you're right, it all comes down to TV. TV. And that's the thing. They've had a shitty TV thing, and we'll see if it works. I mean, if they have more stars like that, all these other like uh Brittany Griner don't have to go to Europe you know to do their stuff and you create a create an ecosystem I think it was interesting and then at night I went to a play called Still with Tim Daly who loves Pivot um and it was great it was about a man and a woman that reunite after a couple decades.

They'd been together, and they have political differences. And it was really, it was good. And then that was fun. It was a little theater. Let me guess. For a twist, he's the Democrat and she's the Republican? No, no. He was running for office. It was great.

It was actually really good. It should be seen. It was really well done. It's a short 75-minute play, and it was good. And I got to meet his lovely wife, Taya Leone, who was hysterically funny. Yeah, she's very talented. Yeah, but she's also funny. She's really funny. Yeah, I was really surprised. It was fun. It was a good weekend in New York, and then we went to see my mother for late Mother's Day. And? It was fine. It was great. I brought Louie,

got back from Argentina, so I picked him up early, early Saturday morning. So I got to hang with him. So it was good. It was a very family fun weekend. It was good. Lucky it was good. We had a great dinner. But we've got a lot to do today, including the Dow's latest milestone

and OpenAI's latest drama. Man, there's so much going on over there. That's like the most dramatic of AI companies. But first, Mickey and Minnie are unionizing. Disneyland character and parade performers voted to unionize with the Actors' Equity Association, the group of 7,900 amusement park workers focused on safety, scheduling, and demanding a living wage. The vote passed with almost 79% majority. With, I don't think anyone, that's a pretty high thing.

Most other Disney Resort staff are already unionized. This is interesting because I have a bunch of friends who are character and parade performers, and they've been disgruntled. They have said disgruntled things. How did that happen? Yeah, I don't know. Just pause right there.

You have a bunch of friends who are character actors? I know, it's weird. I know a lot of them because they're kids of friends of mine, and they work there. And, you know, there's this whole, like, system of princesses and who gets to be a princess and um and like behind the scenes stuff there's all kinds of things of how they're paid and how they're picked and how they're managed i just i've heard a lot of griping from disney and the ones that are in the outfits that are hot oh yeah you know it's it's actually i was like wow that sounds like a shitty job Oh, yeah. you think? They should be unionized. I mean, just in general, with corporate profits touching record highs every year, there's going to be a revolt on several different levels, whether it's

young people getting upset at a variety of things or people trying to unionize. The question I would have is, okay, so they're unionized, but does that give them any real power? Because is it difficult to say, all right, will it result in a collective bargaining agreement or will it result in them just finding other people to put on the goofy costume? That's right. Because everybody wants to do that job, right? It's sort of the way Hollywood used to be. But Hollywood then had a union, right? So they've got, they've got the control Disney does because lots of people want to do these jobs because they're cool also dressing up like a princess. But there's a difference because if Meryl Streep and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jerry Seinfeld all join a union and none of them, and they all agree to not show up if they don't collectively bargain with the union, those people are difficult to find substitutes for. I don't see how you enforce bargaining power when they're like, well, we're going to find someone else at 30 bucks an hour to put to, you know, be Cinderella. I would just be very curious if, I mean, the media gives all these constant head fakes about all of these places unionizing and they never do any follow up work.

BMW didn't, Mercedes didn't work, right? BMW didn't. Mercedes didn't work, right? Well, no, the one I think is the right example is I think something like 200 or 300 Starbucks locations have unionized, and it hasn't resulted in, my understanding is, one additional dollar in terms of a collective bargaining agreement. So power is to them. There needs to be a transfer of wealth back from capital labor. That's the bottom line. And the question is, what's the most efficient, equitable way of getting there? Or what's the most powerful way of getting there? I think Elsa on the strike line is kind of good. Now, I mean, these people have a lot of, you know, it's not a good look for Disney to be fighting with his princesses, essentially. And again, the people, I never, someone who was in one of those outfits, maybe a Mickey outfit, or I don't know the different characters, was like, you had to work this many hours, it was not controlled, they were hot,

the parks were hot. You know, you sort of are like, well, that seems unfair. Who gets to decide? I know that I get it. It's a job's job. But still, there should be some rules that are enforced, I guess, in some fashion by a group of people who are working, right? And you shouldn't go for the lowest common enemy person who'll put up with it. You know, that's kind of... So, you know, I was a... No joke. I was a Disney character in a costume.

What? Oh, no. I was the Bruin Bearer at UCLA, my junior year in college. And? Well, that's a college thing, right? Yeah. We did that was the Bruin Bearer at UCLA, my junior year in college. And? Well, that's a college thing, right? Yeah. We did that for the grasshoppers of his high school. He sweat a lot. Did you like it? It was not real. I mean, I tried out for the football team. That's how I was hoping to travel with the football team, and that didn't work out. So I got to travel with the football team, putting on a costume that was 170 170 degrees and having kids hit me in the head. Wow.

That was fine. A college experience. We used to get really high in the fraternity and everyone would try on the costume and, you know, that stuff. Anyway, we'll see what happens. I don't think it's a good look for Disney to be warring with its princesses. That's really where that's, you know, there's a lot of other workers like the parade people and everything else. But, you know, those people should have some strictures of how they work. I think that's fair. I want to see Nelson Peltz on the union line with a princess. I don't care. He's not going to be. Are you kidding? He's like,

get back to work. He's a get back to work kind of guy. Stop griping. You're at Disney. Anyway, and let's go on to something else. Speaking of billionaires like Nelson Peltz, if he is one, I'm not sure if he is, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that the U.S. opposes a global wealth tax on billionaires. The opposition comes as Brazil called on the G20 to come up with a way to tax the wealthy who can move their wealth to low-tax jurisdictions. Brazil, along with France, Spain, Germany, and South Africa, have discussed a plan to require billionaires to pay taxes worth 2% of their overall wealth every year. That's a lot of money. Yellen said that U.S. will not support talks on this proposal. The U.S. taxes citizens on worldwide income, unlike most other countries,

which is taxed based on a person's residence. I've had lots of discussions with Mark Cuban and many others about it, and it's hard to decide who's correct, even though I kind of think the rich don't get taxed. And I do think the rich don't get taxed enough, but it's much more complex in how to do it because they can escape to all kinds of places because they're so rich. Yeah, I think in theory it makes sense, but practically when you start talking about it,

it's first off, how do you value someone's assets? And does it end up resulting in these non-economic or unnatural acts? So the question is, what's the point if you don't end up collecting the revenue? It's also, do you invest? It ends up being fraught with all sorts of workarounds and not getting to the point. What I think was a more effective way to tax the wealthy is an alternative minimum tax because the misdirect is we're focused on- Explain what that is for people who don't know. Well, the 25 wealthiest taxpayers in America paid somewhere between, and they don't know this

because the IRS can't accurately audit them, paid somewhere between an effective tax rate of 8% and 16%. The myth is that rich people don't pay taxes. That's not true. Rich people pay a lot of taxes. So I'll use you as an example. You're a super earner. You make a lot of money, but it's all reported income. Super owners that own a lot of stock or own a lot of real estate, they're super wealthy. Art, most of it is not reportable or doesn't need to be reported. It can grow tax deferred, whereas a super earner, you get clipped 40 or probably in Washington, D.C., 47% each year. But as an owner of stocks, it can grow tax deferred. In addition, if you put it into a trust and borrow against it, it never gets taxed. Right. That's the Peter Thiel thing. He did that, right? He did one of those. going to look at, it's not tax rates, it's what is the income that's taxed. So if you buy a plane, you get to write off 100% of it in the first year. There's all sorts of ways to lower your

taxable income when you're wealthy. You can put $10 million aside and just say into a donor advisory fund and say, I'm going to give this away at some point, and you get to lower your reported income that year. So the key would be, you have one number at the end of the year, and if you make over a certain amount of money, you have to at least pay 20%. So rather than trying to revise the tax code, rather than this argument about wealth tax, which would not work, you pass an alternative minimum tax as we did with corporations. Also do the same thing for corporations. Corporate taxes haven't been this low since 1939. They used to be 2.5% of GDP. This year, they're 1% of GDP. We need an alternative minimum tax for super owners and corporations. And then you know what you could probably do, Kara, is you could probably lower the taxes on super earners like yourself,

because here's the myth. Where the argument falls down and you can't get any traction is that the most innovative and important people in our society are super earners. Quite frankly, they work hard. The doctors, the lawyers, the entrepreneurs. And this is the thing. Their taxes should be lowered. The super earners and the young who have to pay current income on their earned income and don't get tax write-offs because they rent, they don't buy, who you need to go after is the super owners and the corporations. And the way you would do

that is with an alternative minimum tax for corporations and super owners, the super wealthy. Yeah. I just think when you say tax rich, people are sort of for it, but how to do it has really been the argument. And I think that's the argument that Mark was making. He said they'll go elsewhere. You end up not wanting them. One of their arguments is they won't invest anymore if they have to. You know what I mean? Which I think is not.

That one, I'm not going with him. But the idea, it pushes them down. But you're right. It's the people in the middle that get sort of screwed, who make a lot of money. Upper middle. Upper middle, yeah. The super earners. Yeah.

Whenever I see my taxes, I'm like, are you freaking kidding me with this? That's right. get sort of screwed, who make a lot of money. Upper middle. Upper middle, yeah. The super, look at what happened. Whenever I see my taxes, I'm like, are you freaking kidding me with this? That's right. And so it doesn't get, and those people are super important for innovation. You want to keep those people motivated. And quite frankly, they're paying too much. I mean, it's really the bottom half of income earners pay almost nothing in federal income tax.

Where they get screwed is in excise taxes, DMV taxes, property taxes. As a matter of fact, for the middle class, everyone talks about Florida being a low-tax state. Florida's not for middle-income earners because of all the other taxes, consumption taxes. Consumption taxes. That they have to pay. But you could, people would be shocked how low the tax rates would and could be if you taxed everyone on their total income, including corporations and the mega, mega wealthy. There's some reports saying that the wealthiest people, the 25 wealthiest people in America paid single digit tax rates. And of course, Trump bragged about that, right? Like I got out of it. You don't want to have

that attitude toward the government. I got out of it. I beat him. That's the sort of attitude he has. And I think he represents a lot of people. But more broadly, there needs to be a really robust discussion around this. Because if America were a household, it makes $52,000 a year. It collects about $5.2 trillion in revenues through taxes. And it spends $73,000 or $74,000 a year. It's got about $2,000,000, $2.2 trillion a year it's racking up in debt. All right, that is not a responsible household. And it owes $350,000, $35 trillion in debt. And because we've never missed a payment or a bill, we keep getting credit card offers and we keep accepting them so we can pretend to have the illusion of scarcity. And we're going to peace out when we die, but our

kids are going to inherit our credit card bill. There needs to be a serious conversation around tax rates, around spending. But right now, it is so incredibly irresponsible the way we approach taxation and spending. Yep. Well, people don't like that since the beginning of our country, they're pushing against all kinds of taxes. Anyways, I think it's in the DNA of our country. Speaking of DNA of our country, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said he had no involvement in the inverted American flag that was flown, quote, briefly at his house in January 2021, the photo of the inverted flag, a symbol for Trump supporters who believe there was a stolen election, was published in The New York Times last week by Jody Cantor, who's a friend of mine, a fantastic reporter. After facing criticism, Alito blamed his wife, saying she had placed the flags in response to anti-Trump signs from neighbors.

I have a little more detail on this. anti-Trump signs from neighbors. I have a little more detail on this. I've heard a number of Democratic lawmakers now calling for Alito to accuse himself from cases involving the 2020 presidential election and January 6th. I think basically Martha Ann Alito said, hold my beard or Ginny Thomas, I guess. From what I understand, and there was a little more in the Times and the Washington Post, was that there was a beef on the cul-de-sac. Someone had left a sign, it's a fuck Trump time, I think that's what it said, had been at a rally, left it there.

It bothered Martha Ann. She came over, had words with, it was like a daughter of someone who lived there. And the daughter called her the see you next Tuesday word. And then she marched back to her house and put that up. I don't know why that was her response to it. That's kind of a big response. That he didn't know it is,

I think he's throwing his wife under the bus. I don't, it just is, the whole thing is really icky, whatever it is. And he, obviously his wife overreacted if it was her, and then him blaming her. And, you know, the whole thing just makes the Supreme Court brand look even worse than ever. I don't know. What do you think?

I think that's exactly right. I mean, first off, you know, the lesson here is whenever you really fuck up, just go to the blame the wife strategy. Does that story ring true to you? No. It just doesn't ring true to me. I think there's other things I've heard about them and that block. I think it's just this beef on the block.

And I called it the cunt-a-sack instead of a cult-a-sack. That's good. I know. Thank you. It feels like I can't believe he blamed his wife and didn, or wasn't aware of her proclivities, right? Like, if your wife did something like that, you think they wouldn't tell you? Like, hey, honey. Oh, did you find out?

They're a household. When someone takes your name and you take theirs, you have collective responsibility. And one of those collective responsibilities is when you're part of the most, what used to be one of the most respected institutions in the world, you don't hang the fucking American flag upside down. And they're both guilty. And what you said is exactly right. There are few institutions whose brand has fallen further faster than the Supreme Court. It was arguably the most trusted institution, I would argue, in the world. All of these institutions are just getting trashed.

You got Clarence Thomas giving a lap dance to billionaires with cases before the world. All of these institutions are just getting trashed. You got Clarence Thomas giving a lap dance to billionaires with cases before the court. And then you have the Alito household turning the flag upside down. Yeah. And the wife, Ginny Thomas, was actually directly involved. I mean, it's crazy. She was directly involved. This woman just seems like she's had a, she got mad, drank a bottle of wine and decided to put up. That is exactly what I think happened. Like there was some, wine was involved here. Wine was involved here. It just feels like.

I don't know. I think the best punishment for these guys, I think all justices should have to live together. I want to see Sotomayor and who's the goddess, I serve the kingdom of God lady, the new one? Yeah. Oh, Amy. Amy Cunning Barrett. Cunning Barrett, yeah. I would just like them to have to hang out.

Apparently, the women all get along pretty okay. Like, that's what I understand. Although, yes, they've been appearing together, Sotomayor and her. So, I think they're trying to, like, tamp down the idiot men. The two idiot older men whose wives are batshit crazy, essentially. They, you know, this is, Roberts has got to do, he sounds like he doesn't have any control over Oh, he's lost control. Control. And one of the things, I had dinner next, I sat next to Elena Kagan, and she was telling me

all the things they go to in order not to have conflicts of interest. It was a really interesting discussion. And she took her job serious. You don't see her like, you know, but I get it if you're the wife of someone like a Supreme Court justice, that you don't get to be who you are. You don't get to fly your flag upside down. Well, too fucking bad. Don't marry them then. That's my feeling. You have to sort of, you have to toe the line with your spouse and rise to a different level. You don't get to just create an insurrection or fly a flag upside down. I mean, again, but he blamed his wife. What a loser. What a loser. I'm sorry. Yeah, I don't. The whole thing, like you said, it's yet another thing that you just roll your eyes about the Supreme Court. I like the idea of wine being involved. I don't know about the wine being idea of wine being involved, but I think that's right. Wine was totally involved.

That just, she called me a cunt. But what's the thinking though? I want to meet the woman who called her that name. I just want to meet her. But go through the thought process. What's the thinking of,

I'm really pissed off at my neighbor. Yeah. So I'm going to hang the flag upside down and I'm married to a Supreme Court justice. That's why I'm telling you wine was involved because it's like, I'll show them. It sounds more like crystal meth was involved. It just makes no sense. It makes, I, who knows? There's a young woman who had a fuck Trump sign that I want to meet and buy a bottle of wine for. Anyway, let's get to our first big story.

bottle of wine for. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. The Dow is marking a major milestone, passing 40,000 points last week for the first time ever. And that's not just the Dow, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq also hit all-time highs last Wednesday. The good news from the markets was triggered by new data showing annual inflation easing after three consecutive months of higher than expected reports. But is this a big deal? Still, people do pay attention to the stock market. Certainly, the business press does. Is it a psychological? Is it frothiness?

You mentioned and I've mentioned the meme stocks the last few weeks. GameStock and AMC were two meme stocks that had a comeback, closing last Monday up 74% and 78%. They took a tumble by the end of the week. It was a very short-lived meme situation compared to before. So give us your, what advice would you give an investor right now? Because it's confusing and people, a lot of people feel badly about the economy, but a lot of people are making money in the stock market, at least 60% of the people who

own stocks. In general, I think these indices are really damaging for society because they create a false flag and a misdirect that the economy and people are doing really well. Because 10% of America, some people think it's closer to 1%, own 80% to 90% of the stocks. So the Dow isn't a statement on the health of the economy. It's a statement. It's basically an index for how well the rich are doing. And spoiler alert, the rich are killing it. So what's happened here? Essentially, when that yield curve goes inverted, or the 10-year, I think, is below the one-year, it always predicts a recession. So people thought there was going to be a recession in 2023. It didn't happen.

And then what they were also not expecting is that earnings have—there's been earnings surprises to the upside like crazy across corporations. They've been cutting costs. They've been using AI to go ozempic and lay off people, the consumer's strong. And you've had a series of earnings beats and everyone is thrown in the towel. And this not only carries a US thing, markets in Brazil, India, Canada, Japan are all touching new highs. This is a global phenomena. But it gives people the impression that the real economy is, or real people, whatever you want to call it, Main Street is doing really well. And what the myth that's fomented around with young people that everyone has fallen into the trap of is the following.

You have two stages in your life. You have the investment stage. So everyone on this podcast right now is in the investment stage. We're all working hard to try and make money and then spend less than we can make such that we're in the investment stage of our life. When you turn 65 and you slow down, you start harvesting, you start selling your assets. You're either an investor or a harvester. When the markets are high, the incumbents and old people like like in corporations, like to convince young people that this is good for everybody. No, it's not. When you're an investor, when you're

from the age of 22 to 65, you want the markets to crash. The reason I get to live the life I live is because in 2008, we let the markets crash. And I got to buy, as I was coming into my prime income earning years, I got to buy Netflix, Apple, and Amazon for 12 bucks, 10 bucks, and eight bucks. And now Netflix is at $620 a share. But where does Zoe and Taylor in their 20s and early 30s on this call- These are producers of ours, yeah.

Lara just wrote, did he just call me old? No, Lara, you've missed all the bars. Lara's in the investor stage. Investor stage. Where do they find value? Because we've decided rather than letting prices go down by convincing everyone, oh, new highs are good, we're going to use their credit card to juice the markets and keep prices high.

Markets hitting new highs every day off of absolutely irresponsible, debt-inspired stimulus and frothiness does nothing but transfer wealth from the investors, young people, to the old people, yours truly, the harvester. Yeah, this is a big theme for you, this idea of taking from the young to feed the old. As an owner, I'm in the club with Champagne and Cocaine. And when young people say, Scott, we'd like into the club, I'd say, I'll tell you what, give me your credit card. I'll charge it up inside the club and maybe I'll tell you what it's like.

That is literally what is happening in America. If you don't let, if you don't stop this bullshit of living off of future people's earnings, work and time and prosperities to keep the markets high, which is exactly what we're doing by cutting taxes on the rich and the super high, which is exactly what we're doing by cutting taxes on the rich and the super wealthy. All we have done is said to young people, sorry, I'm going to rob, I'm going to pull your prosperity forward to me. I think it's really, I think what this theme is a really important one because we don't, you know, everybody sort of celebrates the stock market and it gets this sort of performative nature. It's almost like the basketball game I

went to. It's like, woohoo, you know, that kind of thing that people get. And it's all, you know, most of it is indeed nonsense. Everyone is not equally benefiting from this particular phenomenon, including not just young people, but people who aren't in stocks, who have to pay higher prices, who will be paying for, you know, working, having to work longer later in their lives because of all kinds of reasons. It's a real conundrum because politically it's very hard because old people vote. Old people control the voting booth, essentially. And then young people, instead of, it was interesting because when I picked Louie up at the airport, we had a really great discussion about all kinds of stuff because we haven't been able to talk quite about sort of random things as much. And we got caught in a traffic jam and we were talking about this idea of, he's very angry at a lot of young people who say, I'm not going to vote at all. And we had a great discussion about, you know what I mean? He goes, a lot of my friends. And he's always like, what are you talking about? Like, you're giving up the one power you actually have, right, to do things.

And so I'm just not going to vote. And he said it's a real trend among younger people that he hears and he finds it really terrible. Like, I'm just going to give up on it. Like, well, you don't get to because we get to die and you get to stay here for the rest of the show, essentially. Anyway, it's a very important trend because politically it's very hard to push up against any of this, for sure. The demo in democracy isn't working. We have old people who vote in, really old people who keep voting old people more money. It would have cost somewhere between $13 and $30 billion to restore the tax credit for children, which helps young mothers and the children, right? That got stripped out

of the infrastructure bill. But you know what flies right through? The $135 billion annual increase in cost of living adjustment for Social Security. On an inflation-adjusted basis, a 25-year-old 40 years ago made $85,000. 20 years ago, $75,000. Now they're making $50,000. But oh, guess what? Housing and education are up four and sevenfold, respectively. So, they're making less money, everything's more expensive, and then 210 times a day, they get a notification showing them how everyone is fucking killing it, but them, and they're enraged. I mean, it's literally like we have, and, you know, welcome to my TED Talk, we have declared war on young people. And this is what's so insulting. It's in the face of unprecedented prosperity where one company, NVIDIA, adds a quarter of a trillion dollars in five minutes post their earnings call. We could fix all of these problems. Let me ask you, NVIDIA earnings are coming out this week. Any predictions? Oh, this week?

Yeah. Oh, champagne and cocaine, because every company, whether it's Chipotle or General Motors, is buying up every GPU in sight, thinking that AI is going to make everything easier, better, lay off people. Yeah, but what I would say is that a bubble is inflating here, because I have never seen so many people so universally barking up the same tree since they went into Cisco in 1999 as people going into NVIDIA. Yeah. But right now, the mushrooms, the ketamine is still full force because every company in the world is thinking, how do I get more GPUs because AI is going to revolutionize my business?

And there's a fear factor here. You don't want to be the head of PepsiCo and not assigned a big team and a bunch of people to try and figure out how AI is going to change the world of drinks. Yep, that's true. It's not probably, but maybe a little bit. Anyway, a really interesting topic is a theme we're going to come back to again and again, because even though we love a good stock market, we don't like a fake stock market. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, drama at OpenAI again. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore.

That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better.

One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive?

Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Indecision. Overinking, second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done.

Out. Beige on beige on beige. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Scott, we're back and things are getting messy at OpenAI again. Oh man, is this the most like telenovela of a company?

The company had other high-profile departure again this week with the resignation of Jan Leike, the head of Super Alignment, which is the team focused on AI safety. That's the words. We're going to be all super aligned. Leike explained his departure in a series of social media posts, saying in part that OpenAI's safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products. And there's been a bunch of shiny products they showed off last week. Open AI, things are not unrelated.

Open AI has dissolved that super alignment team. The company told Bloomberg the group will be integrated across research efforts to help achieve safety goals. Sam Altman put out a statement and also did Open AI co-founder Greg Brockman sharing their view of the future. They said the company has, quote, raised awareness of the risks and opportunities of AGI so the world can better prepare for it. Whether they're preparing for it or not is a big question. There's been at least 11 high-profile exits in the last few months.

You know, this is an issue, again, of speed versus safety. They have been rolling out the products because they're deathly terrified of getting rolled over by the big companies. I can feel it. I can feel such a Netscape moment for them. We'll see. We'll see what will happen here. But it's definitely a company still shaking off or dealing with these issues that they've had. These two different types of people who are involved in this company, which is some that think this is a risk to humanity,

others who are like, calm the fuck down, let's make some stuff and we'll figure it out later. One of the things that got a lot of reporting was opening as off-boarding agreements that have non-disclosure and non-disparagement provisions. Not uncommon, but theirs were particularly stringent. If a departing employee violated these provisions, they were in danger of losing all their vested equity, according to Vox. Sam Altman confirmed in a tweet there was a provision about potential equity cancellation for departing employees, but it was never enforced. The company is currently changing that language.

It sounds like they're just tough customers on that thing. It is further than other people do. It's usually more talent-friendly in general in Silicon Valley. Scott, what are your thoughts on all this? When Ilya was part of the board... Yeah. Yeah, when he was part of the board that fired Sam Altman,

if you're going to stab the prince, you better kill him. When he came back, Ilya became the information age equivalent of Rogozhin. He was dead man walking. He just wasn't going to survive. Oh, no hard feelings for firing me.

Come on. Well, water under the bridge, that just wasn't going to happen. And this is similar to Meta. The fastest way to get a severance check is to go to work for the trust and safety team. Because every once in a while, in response to real heat, they'll pretend to give a good goddamn and they'll create a trust and safety team. I doubt Mark listens to him or cares about him. And then under the cover of dark, fires most of them. I like the fact that OpenAI is becoming more like what they really are. And that is they are a for-profit company. And they're not pretending to be anything. I'd rather

them be like New Yorkers. That's one of the reasons I love New York versus doing business in California, is they don't pretend to be something they aren't. And this is a for-profit companies, and OpenAI are going to be so good at making profit, they shouldn't be trusted to do anything else. And the fact, and first off- Except they were founded with a slightly different idea, but go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, and then when they took $11 billion, those people wanted their money back. Yes, that's right. So, they should have never taken that money. But the one thing, the one compensatory thing here is that any group of people that decides to call themselves super alignment should be fired. I thought you'd like that.

That is, those people should endure a certain amount of ridicule and pain. Well, you know, AI is going to kill us, Scott. I mean, it's a really interesting thing because these people are, you know, there's a group over in the tropic that are much more concerned in that regard. And I think they have a right to be. Absolutely. I think, listen, I've always been a safety, like, why are you not paying attention to any bit of safety from the very get go? And so I would naturally be affiliated with the super alignment people. At the same time for them to think this is anything other than a for profit institution is kind of, well, then go on a board, go on a, you know, go to Stanford and

become a high-profile naysayer of these things or write a book like Burn Book, right? Because they're inside these companies, I think that because of the amount of money here, there's just no way people aren't going to be aligned around the money-making. And, you know, some people are like, oh, you like Sam Altman. I said, yes, but he's a tough motherfucker. I was like, are you kidding? He's so aggressive. He's so much like all the people. He's just like, he's not like Elon because Elon's a toxic piece of shit sometimes and most of the time. I don't consider Sam like that, but he is interested in not having this company die.

He is interested in making it the most dominant company. I have no question he's hyper aggressive and just as feral as the rest of them. And so, you know, they're going to have these things because what they want to do is pretend that they care about the safety stuff, which they do peripherally, you know, more than other people, I guess. They bring it up more, but they don't, they just don't care about that issue. And they're not going to be around to see the machines eating us alive or something like, you know what I mean? Like it's- It's not their job.

Well, but see, this is the problem. Its birth was like, it was like two, it was like a hippie parent and a non-hippie parent, right? And they're fighting forever. This group, these groups of people are fighting forever. And so they are never going to be, this whole company isn't going to be in alignment. It started out out of alignment. And they're never going to, I know that I'm using a term about the idea of making sure it's safe, but they will never, this company will never, it might be what kills them, right? It might be what kills them because they're going to get unusual. It's like Google saying, don't be evil. That was his one big mistake.

Like, why did they do that? Right? Because they're evil. Not evil. That's too far. But you know what I mean? Like, that whole cosplaying about being heroic has always been a problem for these. That's not.

These companies always figure out. They're like, okay, unless we're RER Ben and Jerry's, let's be honest, folks. We all want our own big home. We all want to take care of our kids. We all want a broader selection set of mates than we deserve. So let's stop. Let's stop pretending. Where it's dangerous is that we keep thinking that Sam Altman is actually a better generation

of leader, and we don't need to be as worried about AI because Sam's in charge, and he'll speak in hushed tones and say how concerned he is. And what it does is it dampens the urgency and the need to elect people who can craft legislation to regulate these guys. That's right. It's not Sam's job to do this. That's exactly right. Sam is doing his job. He's firing people who get in the way of him making, being the, no, if Sam were to lose to Gemini or to Llama or whatever, or XAI, they wouldn't say, yeah, but he was more ethical and more concerned. And we love him for that. He's not going to get a statue for that. Let's just say there have to be ethical things.

If you're working for this, like it's working for Palantir, you're going to make Defense Department stuff. Don't work there like that, you know, or, you know, the Google employees, that's different, because Google sort of gave them an in to complain, because they were like, we're better than this, but they're really not better than this, right? So I think when you sort of, you know, you have a performative nature of being heroic, you're going to be slapped later, because you're going to let people down, period. And it's going to be very clear. And again, the reason my first line of my book was, and so it was capitalism after all, sticks. That's what it is. That's what's happening here. And I think you all should go off and form

a group of people that scares the fucking bejesus out of the potential. And you go up to Congress and you march in those offices and you explain to them why they need to make legislation. That's what you need to do. I think when people all backed Sam, a lot of people were like, oh, they love him. I'm like, no, they love the money and they want to make money here. And they want to be, not just make money, they want to be at the coolest company making this shit because it's cool. They want to be at the winning company that makes them rich. Yeah, and also is the coolest company, right? That's more than that, more than that. Anyway, we'll see what happens. I thought Jan's, I thought his series of tweets was interesting, but it doesn't really. I'm sorry, Jan. Okay, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first. So my win is The Simpsons, which I think is in its 35th or its 36th season. And there's this wonderful article in CNN, the write-up, and i want to get the writer's name first his name is uh scotty andrew and i'll just read from his kind of his overview or paragraph viewers have followed the buffoonish homer devoted marge mischievous bard socially conscious lisa observant maggie and there are hundreds of eccentric neighbors for more than 30 years there have been hundreds of couch gags celebrity guest stars strangling incidents that have inspired a cultish obsession among the protective fans.

It birthed a 2007 film that made over half a billion dollars worldwide and rides at two universal theme parks. Oh, and it's popularized the now booming subgenre of adult animated comedy. But the trick to keeping The Simpsons relevant and exciting all these years later, Selman said, is to keep the show's tremendous legacy out of the mind as much as possible. And I thought this was fascinating and an interesting learning. In addition to just being a wonderful show that's been iconic, they now have writers who were five when they saw their first, or weren't even born when they saw their first Simpsons. And I thought it was an interesting case study in innovation. Simpsons. And I thought it was an interesting case study in innovation. They try to always have a first season mindset and they try to do new stuff and not try and play too much on their

legacy. But when you think about how kind of courageous the show was, irreverent the show was, and now other shows, whether it's, you know, The Family Guy or, you know, Rick and Morty, whether it's the family guy or Rick and Morty, they take everything to a new level. They really inspired a genre. And I like how unafraid they are, how talented they are. And I think they've created a ton of economic value for a lot of people in the industry. But I watched with my son,

we literally spent two years watching every episode of The Simpsons. And anyways, my win is The Simpsons. I think it's just an incredible piece of media. Over years and years of quality, you know. And they always reinvent themselves. And they just did an episode about a guy in the bar who was sort of a side character about his funeral. And the guys get together and decide that they like each other, even when they're not drunk in a bar, and they find out more about this guy. They do occasionally really touch on very meaningful things. And then my fail is

something I've just been thinking about, and I'm curious if you see the same thing, but I saw that Reddit just struck its second deal to sell its data. It popped 12% yesterday because they just announced that they're going to sell. They've struck their second deal to use their data to be crawled by OpenAI in addition to have a deal with Gemini. And so everyone's very excited about the prospect of them using their data as input for these LLMs. I started thinking about it, and I'm worried that if we're going to end up with four or five essentially mega sources of information that inform everything we do, inform all our media, all our history papers in high school, the way we interact with each other that helps us write our memos. I thought, okay, generally speaking, and I know you feel this way, when I meet people out in the wild, they're 98% lovely. Oh, what kind of dog is that?

Oh, I love your podcast. Or can I hold the door for you? People are% lovely. Oh, what kind of dog is that? Oh, I love your podcast. Or can I hold the door for you? People are just lovely. But these LLMs aren't crawling that. These LLMs are crawling the way people speak to each other on Reddit. These LLMs are crawling the way people respond in the comments section on your Twitter feed. And when I saw those two House of Representatives go after each other and start insulting each other's looks, I thought to myself, that wouldn't have happened before social media. I agree.

And what's happened in social media is it has normalized a level of vile, uncivil, misanthropic treatment of each other that then jumps the shark to our real life. I was really put off, and some people might find this sexist, but men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic well-being or their economic vitality. And I've said this before. If you were to say to a man, you are such a fucking idiot that I don't think you're going to be able to provide for your children, that would cut to his core. You would never say that.

Women are unfairly evaluated based on their aesthetics. I'm not talking about what should be, I'm talking about what is. So when two women in the greatest deliberative body in history start insulting each other's looks, we have kind of jumped the shark. And I don't think it would have happened before social media. So my fear and my loss is if the centers of truth or what we believe is truth or the centers for what dictates the tone globally for how we communicate with each other, whether it's, again, emails or media or memos, whatever it is, which people see ultimately AI doing, And its inputs are the way we speak to each other on Reddit. That's really smart. And the input is the way we talk to each other, the tone, the inflection, the approach on Twitter and Reddit. I just wish there was a way we could crawl the way people treat each other in the real world, because I find the two are starkly different.

They can be, but you're right. It is shifting over. One of the things is, one of the sad parts is some parts of Reddit are wonderful and so full of great information. And some parts of Twitter are hysterical. Like you sort of are like, you're sort of like, oh, why can't we take the good parts? All the shitty parts are what tells. I agree. I did not. People were laughing about the whole Marjorie Taylor Greene and Crockett thing. I was like, no, no, ladies. I mean, I don't, I expect nothing from Marjorie Taylor Greene and Crockett thing. I was like, no, no, ladies. I mean, I expect nothing from Marjorie Taylor Greene,

but Crockett, I was like, okay, shouldn't have done it. Shouldn't have bit this woman. This woman is a constant troll. And to bite to that, to her love. And what she said was rude. And maybe they should have just had it stricken from the record or something like that, but to engage and continue.

And then the guy in the middle, the comer, was it comer in the middle, was like, I don't know what all you're talking about. And he didn't. For one moment, I felt sorry for him because he was like, what is happening here? Although he himself has created more strife than anyone else compared to a lot of people up there. But I agree. That's a really good one. All right. Okay. That's really good. All right. My fail is indeed, I think, Scott, you really are onto something with this young versus old thing. Because I do, I had that moment this weekend, Louis came back from Argentina, we had this amazing discussion and his worries about the future. You know, he's just 22, he's going, he's going to graduate next year. So he's thinking about where he's going and what he's doing. And, you know, he's always been a very helpful person, but was, you know, there was a lot of stuff. He's like, this is some of this sucks. Like he often veers into that, right? Like what's happening here sucks, this sucks. And he's not like that. And so I was sort of like, and he was looking for hope in the future and the future he's going to build, right? And then I was talking to my mom and she was going on about like politics again. She's watches too

much Fox News, 100%. But one of the things I said to her, I said, the future is not about you anymore at all. So why are you paying attention to this? Why do you have an opinion about this? Why are you gonna decide all this stuff? And she goes like, well, I can have a right to it. I said, yeah, but you don't, you're not gonna be here. I said, Louis should decide the future.

And she goes, well, should you? I said, I'm gonna be here 30 more years. I kind of, yeah, I should. And so it was a really interesting thing that made me think about that quite a bit was like that I don't think my mom or older people shouldn't have an opinion. But you know what? This isn't about you anymore. You're for all intents and purposes, you're not here for what's coming.

And so you should cede the power to young people and let them deal with the mess, many of the messes you've made. And so I think it's a really powerful message about that, that older people have just got to get the fuck out of the way in a lot of ways. And it's a very, it makes me sad to see that they just refuse to give up on that. And speaking of older people, on the other side, my is gene smart oh my god now there's an older person this season like sometimes it takes through like i've loved every season but this season is perfection like and all the reviews agree you know and it's because it's about an older person who had a fail in her youth this is the theme of this show she wants to be the

late night show host um that she lost she's sort sort of the Joan Rivers character and she got dinged out. And it's about sort of the sexism in that industry and comedy. And she's reached the peak. And she wants one more fucking shot on goal. And she's got it to do it. Right. And that's about an older person not giving up on a dream they had. And that one I fully back because she has what it takes to do it. And what an interesting thing to give. It's not, the season's not over yet, so I don't know what's going to happen. But I got to say, she's smart.

Someone who was just a really good, you know, not a base hitter for years, but, you know, she was in a lot of stuff over the years, designing women. And, you know, she's had a very solid career, but just hitting it fucking out of the park in the last part of her career is a delight to see. And she is, she's doing it with a younger woman, Hannah Einbender, just kick, and she's the daughter of Lorraine Newman. People don't realize that she's the daughter of Lorraine Newman, which is,

I just love to see it. It is a show about young and old making something beautiful together, and it's worth every bit of your time. It's a really great show. That's my one. So they match together, Scott. They match. They do match together. And just around what you were saying about Louis, when I was 27, me and my girlfriend borrowed $11,000. And this isn't ages ago, this is 1993. We borrowed $11,000 from her parents. I got a bonus where I was working. She got a bonus. You know what we did? We bought a home in San Francisco. Can anyone 27 or 20 do that now? No, no, no. Not without money, without family money. And we need to be much more creative around solutions.

Like one creative solution is that the mom gets to vote. If she has two kids, she gets three votes. You want to see a transfer of wealth back to children. You need to give kids and you need to give parents, specifically the mothers, because the bottom line is when you give mom's money, kids get taller and fatter. When you give dad money,

the whorehouse and the bar gets, does better. That's a bit of a reductive statement, but it's largely true. If you gave the caregivers votes on behalf of their children, it would totally change society. But something needs to happen. But the older, that's why I mentioned HACS, because there's a young and old person working together. And that's really has to happen. They have got to stop grabbing their shit and holding it tight. And young people

have to stop getting, have to figure out a way to work with the older people too. It's also on them to do so. Anyway, old and young.

Old and young. We used to have an apprentice and a mentor culture. We don't seem to want a mentor or, anyway. Yeah.

Hacks. Hacks. Hacks. Young and old. Young and old. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVID. Coming up on our other podcast this week on On with Kara Swisher, I'm talking to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. It's a great conversation. I also have a panel later this week all about Elon and shout out for the Cybertruck costumes at San Francisco's Beta Breakers race. They were so good. And on Prof G Markets is out

now in its very own feed with an episode about GameStop, market manipulation, and whether AI is becoming a bubble. Some stuff Scott talked about on the show today, but it's even more in depth. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Dertat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Saverio. Nishat Kerouac is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Something new, hack something old, The Simpsons.