Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Outsider Candidates vs. The Establishment: Who Can Beat Trumpism?

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

America has questions — and Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov have answers. In this summer mailbag episode, they tackle listener questions about such topics as: the future of the Democratic Party, whether America’s political system can recover from the Trump era, why election fraud claims persist despite a lack of evidence, and what Americans really mean when they talk about socialism and communism. Plus, they discuss the true meaning of socialism, Scott’s ideal night in New York City, and what’s giving them hope in this turbulent political moment. Get your tickets now for our live show at 92NY: https://www.92ny.org/event/scott-galloway-and-jessica-tarlov For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start, Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

Download today. Summer vacation has gotten very expensive. flights, hotels, food, why bother? And so a lot of people, I think, just this summer, kind of looking around and saying, like, I want to go on vacation, but also, is this going to be a really expensive disaster? This week, Unexplained It to Me,

how to make the most of that precious PTO. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. A quick programming note, the Raging Moderates team is taking a little summer break. So we'll be off this Thursday. and we'll be back with regular episodes on Monday, August 17th. I'm going to be out for the rest of the month, so congratulations to you all. Around here, we call it Scott Free August.

Jess has a bunch of really great guest hosts lined up while I'm away. It's going to be a nice palate cleanser. Welcome to Raging Monarch. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Charles. We're halfway through the year, and the midterms are just around the corner. It's a good time to check in with our listeners and answer some questions. You know, because for us, it's all about the fans, Jess. It is all about the fans.

It's all about the fans. Even when they say shitty things sometimes, because we read the good and the bad comments. Oh, get used to it. You don't even know. That was so elitist. Move on. All right. I'm great.

Enough of that. Let's jump in. Here's a question from Jacob Abernathy, who is wondering about 2028 and the possibility of an outsider candidate. I don't know about Jess, but I have not heard or seen. these questions. Yeah. Roll tape. Do you think the Democrats need more of an outside candidate like a John Stewart or more

of an establishment Democrat who's won previous office before but still has big, bold ideas? Thanks. Jess. So I think now there are two denominations of outsider. So there's like progressive DSA outsider. Then there's outsider like John Stewart or Mark Cuban or Stephen A. and then there's more prototypical Democrat. I really want as someone like more center left in life,

I'd like to get away from calling that establishment because it's so inherently dull and status quoy, but I do know that that's how we're understood out in the wild. I honestly think that it is so wide open for 2028, and I'm really pumped about it. I think that right now, obviously, there are certain names that you know will be on that stage, Like, what do you think it would take to get Gavin Newsom to not run for president?

What do you mean by that? You think he shouldn't or you think he is? No, but I'm just saying there are like some people that we know are going to. Right. And then there are some people in the maybe are they going to like the John Ossef's of the world and the Mark Kellys of the world. But in general, I think that we just need a lot of healthy primary action. And we need to see everybody up on stage. against each other, talking about their records, which could be in the world of business or in commentary as far as John Stewart goes. And then in politics, I find it easiest to get really excited about people with some legislative background because those are real deliverables that you can tell people, like, oh, you know, you're interested in lowering costs or you want better health care coverage. These are the things that I did to make that happen for my state. But I am wide open and I think we need all models on the stage so that voters really get the options that

frankly the Republicans got when they chose Donald Trump. What about you? Look, I sat next to Jeffrey Katzenberg at this dinner in Cannes and he said, and he was, he ran fundraising for Vice President Harris's campaign. And he said he doesn't think a Democrat, he thinks anyone in the Democratic Party right now is just qualified from running. He thinks the Democratic brand is just so bad. And his ideas were Doug McMillan, the CEO of Walmart. And who was the other guy? Jamie Diamond?

Not Jamie. I think Jamie's too old. He's 70s at heart surgery, leukemia. I think he'd be, I would like to see Jamie run. And also, I think he's sort of semi-running already. If you walk into the JP Morgan lobby, they've got a gigantic American flag. His investor updates are not about banking or the markets. They're about America.

So I think he's, I think most of these guys pretend not to want to run, but they're hoping that they'll just be such an outcry that they have no choice, the public service side of them, you know, demands they enter the fray. I have more respect for expertise, and that is studying something for years and participating in it and getting good at it. I don't like the idea, just generally speaking, of a business person being president. I do think there is a talent to governing and to understanding the legislative. I just think it's much different. I think Doug McMillan is a great guy. My idea in terms of kind of business people was a guy named Dave Ricks, who's the CEO of Eli Lilly, kind of out of central casting,

tall, handsome, most important company in Indiana, trillion-dollar company. I think he'd be an interesting candidate. So there's some interesting ideas in the business sector, but if you look at who came from business, Harry Truman, he owned a men's clothing store, but then obviously Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover, and Donald Trump. I don't know if that lends itself well to drafting someone from the business environment. And then there's the media candidates because they have a platform and they're compelling, but they're highly produced. I don't think John Stewart or Tucker Carlson really demonstrate an ability to govern other than they have the platform.

Like they have name recognition and they understand media, but I don't think there's anything about what they do that says they would necessarily be very good at governing. I'm more for a candidate. Now, generally what happens is a guy like Assov or a Bashir that we know but don't know bubbles up. And the great thing about the competitive process and the primary process is that not only produces the right person but the right person for the moment. you know, we hadn't heard of Carter, Clinton, Obama at this point in the election cycle. I think the party is going to pick a fairly centrist, tall, white, heterosexual male. I think the Democrats see this as such an existential threat that while the energy is on the far left, I do think that Democrats are going to be more focused on electability and elect a straight white male.

I don't want to call it a safe candidate, but this is what I know. It's not going to be a woman. We're a sexist nation and Democrats are more serious about getting elected, getting someone elected now than advancing the rights of a special interest group or even electing the best person, which I think Secretary Clinton would have been. I don't think they're going to take any chances. I love Rahm Emanuel.

I like Josh Shapiro. I don't think the Democratic Party is going to take a chance on a short Jewish guy. So I think it's going to be, it sounds boring. I think it's going to be a Bashir, an Assov, maybe a Pritzker with that great data energy. If I had to pick a candidate right now, it would be Newsom. I think people hugely underestimate the governor's capabilities to go behind enemy lines. His experience running the fourth largest economy in the world, I think it's Coms Group. If they do a decent job, can absolutely turn the narrative on California to the center of innovation and economic growth,

and that it has its problems, but he's addressing many of them. So I don't, I'm not sure I buy the whole outsider thing that we're looking for someone to come on high from the hill and save us from a non-traditional background. I think it's, I think we're going to find a largely establishment of candidate. And then I think that person will probably draft someone from the progressive and I say crazy, I mean crazy fucking left socialist weirdo who's young and has great energy. Because that side of the party right now is, is where all the energy is. It's where all the RIS is. So I'm boring here. I think we're going to end up with, I think we're going to end up with one of the people who we think is probably going to be the nominee.

Do you have any closing comments after my word salad? I mean, I have before floated, Andy Bashir AOC ticket would be hard for people to get mad at. I mean, they would find a way. But the top of the ticket and the VP are in arranged marriage. always been that way. So you'll have to measure what the party needs. But I think what you're trying to say is we need a politician who talks like a pundit and we'll find that person. Yeah, I just wonder in a general election if AOC is more of a liability than a plus. I don't, I think they're just- She is now compared to the like real core DSA wing, like the far, far-left stuff, like the Dari Elisa, AOC is like a moderate death on a comparative basis.

Yeah, that's a fair point. She's very good. And Republicans, I'm not saying voters, but her relationships with Republicans on the Hill, I think is one of her most under-discust and most important qualities. People genuinely like her. That's super interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah.

Like listen to Tim Burchett, for instance, like super conservative representative loves AOC. You cannot get him to say a bad word about her. So, you know. That's really, that's really probably. There's no doubt about it. She's a, she's a remarkable talent. Yeah. She's a remarkable talent.

All right. This question comes from Hallie Kappner, who wants to ask about election fraud and the logic behind it. Let's listen. Don't you think it's time that somebody asks Donald Trump, or really any Republican for that matter, to explain how it is that people that they deem so stupid, meaning the Democrats, of course, are capable of stealing, election after election so slyly so as to leave no trace at all of their massive fraud. I mean, if we could do that, I would think they would try to hire us for their purposes, right? The narrative just doesn't make sense.

And no one ever asks him this big question. I would love to hear your thoughts. Jess. They actually do try to ask him. And he obfuscates, he just says bullshit, where he's like, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of looking at? And it's like we actually did look at all of this. I think it was like 60 plus cases for the 2020 election.

And the guy, you know, is still giving primetime addresses about election fraud and claiming on the national stage that he won three elections. So it is just an impossible task to reason with people who have left our planet. And they're out there somewhere orbiting in the world of Donald Trump. And we won't be able to reach them. So it's just our job to build the biggest coalition of people who know that the earth is round and that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and make sure that we turned them out to vote. But yeah, I mean, certainly when you push and say, well, why did we only rig one election

on the ballot that time, right? Like when Trump's at the top of the ticket, but Democrats are winning down ballot, like, how does that work? That you're like, oh, well, you cheated this way, but you didn't cheat that way. And yes, we would be like the ultimate. brain in pinky in the brain if we were that smooth. Like I actually wish that we were that good, but we're not. We're pretty shitty at the political maneuvers.

We're no Mitch McConnell. So, yeah, I'm, I totally agree. Yeah, I mean, look, Hallie, you're preaching to the choir here and there's just, there's just no arguing with them. There's no, I like, I think the right framing is just to say, all right, the Republican party, let me summarize every acceptance speech of a Republican nominee. It's one of two speeches. It's either we won or the election was rigged. And it's just not only is there no evidence across 66 cases overseen by judges, many of whom were appointed by Republicans or Donald Trump himself,

but there needs to be some sort of pushback and a word that identifies people who attack institutions unless the institutions are working for them. I don't know if it's sedition, but it's really unhealthy and destructive to our economy and that something like 60% of Republicans believe the election was stolen. Just fucking insane. And it's just so funny that, okay, you've won most of everything. You won the Senate. You won the House. So you're saying that it would, I mean, what are you saying? You won just enough, but clearly we didn't cheat enough. And it feels like there needs to be more, we need to do a better job framing these people is these types of calls. And there have been some calls on the left, too. I forget the woman who ran for

governor in Stacey Abrams. In the moment she lost, she started raising doubts about election integrity. It needs to be called out on both sides. But it's not, yeah, you know, we won or the election is rigged, it cannot be a campaign speech. And you have seen on the Republican side, one of the things I liked about your colleague, Hilton, who is going to be in the runoff for governor, the noises he was making was he did not see any evidence of election fraud in the LA elections. I, you know, I think that's important. There's less fraud in our elections than there are in any individual's tax returns. I mean, there's going to be more people tonight who die of beasting than there are. are fake voters.

Support for the show comes from Zbiotics. When it comes to a night with drinks, there's always a give and take. Being in rough shape the next day just comes with the territory. Well, with pre-alcohol, that no longer needs to be the case. Zbiotics, pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was amended by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works.

When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a build-up of this by-product, not dehydration, that's to blame. for rough days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. I began taking zbiotics before they were an advertiser. I like to drink.

I am cutting down pretty dramatically as I get older, but when I do go out, I start the evening with zbiotics. With pre-alcohol, you don't need to choose between a great night and a great next day. July is packed with barbecues, fireworks, and late Saturday nights with friends. keep the good times rolling into the next day. Drink pre-alcohol before you go out and wake up ready for whatever Sunday brings. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash moderates and use the code moderates at checkout for 15% off. Support for the show comes from Mars men. It's not super invoked to talk about the changes to men's bodies as you age.

Of course, diet and lifestyle are big factors. But another factor might be that testosterone levels start dropping, which can hit as early as your 30s. The more body. fat you gain, the more your body converts testosterone into estrogen, which makes it even easier to gain fat. Marsmen can help you break out of that cycle. It's a natural supplement designed to support healthy testosterone levels. When your hormones are working the way they're supposed to, a lot of things can get easier. Workouts, energy levels, even staying lean. Mars men doesn't use any weird stimulants or synthetic hormones. It's natural ingredients that are shown to support healthy tea levels,

weight management, and exercise performance. You can check out their website for more details. And for thousands of reviews from guys who had incredible results. For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts at men go to mars.com. That's men go to mars.com for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out. After your purchase, they will ask where you heard about them. You can support our show by telling them we sent you. If there's anything we've heard about this entire summer, no matter where we go or who we talk to,

it's about gas prices. Look at these gas prices. They're ridiculous. I don't drive as much. I think they're just skyrocketing day in, day out. Gas prices are up since Donald Trump started his war with Iran. But how much does a little pain at the pump actually affect people's vote? Who is telling the truth?

And who is going to represent us and do something about it? And if gas is still near $4 a gallon come November, is it game over for Donald Trump and the Republicans? The most important is you can't deny it. the reality that Americans feel. People see what they're paying. You know, Trump trying to not recognize what people are struggling with and then to ignore the severity of it is just not a winning strategy. That's this week on America actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Here's a question from Greg from North Carolina. He's concerned about the lasting impacts of the Trump administration and the damage it is done. Here's this question.

Can our current political system realistically correct itself through future elections and normal democratic process, or is the damage becomes so deep and pervasive that some broader period of disruption or institutional reset is unavoidable? I'd really appreciate hearing both your perspectives. Do you think the country is headed to a much more turbulent period before things get better? I'm an optimist in the sense that on an election level, I do think. think that the laws are holding. All those cases were rejected, pretty much laughed out of court, the election fraud cases. I think people, if not being tired of the narrative of this, stop to steal, they're tired of Trump. And I'm optimistic that the country will bounce back from this on a democratic level. We've had threats to our democracy before, whether it's 1% of the nation's

citizens who happen to own slaves, controlling government, or us deciding that it was legal to intern people based on their ancestry, being born in Japan, while many of them had children serving in the European theater, putting them up in where we're effectively makeshift concentration camps. And we each time have managed to come back stronger as long as citizens get very engaged. So I'm optimistic that, like when our democracy has faced real challenges before, that it's bounce back stronger. What I'm less optimistic about is our power on the global stage. I believe, like Tim Snyder, we're in the midst of geopolitically committing superpower suicide, and that to go from being the operating system and the leader of 60 to 70% of the world's

GDP in military power to 30%, because we've alienated 40% Europe and Latin America, who just feel like they can't trust us anymore, and they have to build their own defense systems, their own agreements, their own governance. And the fact that we're getting, Europe to pay more for NATO is a good thing, but be careful what you wish for because, for example, our poor execution in the Middle East, where now U.S. military bases are no longer seen as security but as bullseyes, that's just going to reduce our power around the world. The fact that people are going to try and diversify potentially from the dollar, from trade with us, you can't count on us, trade around us as opposed to through us, I think that's going to hurt our GDP for decades.

because even if we get someone reasonable in office, they're going to say, well, we can't risk that a Trump-like figure is going to come back in. I mean, look at Canada. 70 percent of their exports into the U.S. And similar to the statement from Otter and Animal House who bashes the guy's car, parents' car, he's like, you fucked up, you trusted us. I think there's so many nations in the West that feel like they fucked up. They trusted us and based so much of their international trade and their national security on U.S. military technology operating systems. sort of rule of law, freedom of navigation, and they don't feel like they can trust us. And I think that, I think it's going to be hard to put that, that egg back in the shell,

if you will, or unscramble that egg. So our democracy, I think, is pretty resilient, and I'm hopeful, and I see a lot of people rising up or getting very engaged that otherwise have been that engaged. In terms of economic power and military power, I think it's going to take decades to repair what has been superpower suicide. Yeah, I have kind of a different gut reaction to this, which is I don't want to get back to normal. Like, I actually, I think that if we box ourselves into this idea of just restoring things to the way that they were, like Joe Biden's 2020 campaign, which was the restoration of normalcy, right? Like nobody wants to wake up every day nervous about what the president's going to do.

And our alliances matter, et cetera. Like, I don't think that will ever win another election. And if it is a normy, you know, more moderate politician who wins in 2028, they won't be talking like that. They're going to be talking about the systemic challenges facing the country, that the status quo isn't good enough. Like, they're going to be a fighter in the body of a moderate, whatever that might look like. And I think that the biggest challenge that we have is not fixing the institutions per se. It's rebuilding public trust. And public trust in every facet of society is down.

It's even down in terms of how much we trust fire departments. Like the most necessary things that we have in our lives when it comes to public safety are police and fire departments, right? Like that you need to know that you can call 911 and someone's going to show up to save you. from your burning building. And it's even down for them. So we need a campaign on every single level and for everyone in any position of power to kick it into high gear to try to rebuild that trust. And that's going to take a ton of work. And then there is the work of repairing things like our alliances. And I was thinking a lot about that too, that the deals that everyone that we used to be close partners with are making behind our backs, they don't automatically disappear.

I really want us to get away from talking about the future of the country as a restoration of the past. Our constitution and our history will always be important. But like this moderate knows that shit isn't working for people. And they don't want business as usual. So I don't want to talk about it in that sense. And I'm most concerned about the fact that the average American has no faith in any instance. People in positions of power have done a lot to lose the confidence of the public en masse. This question comes by way of Dublin, a guy named Jason O'Mahoney.

I wish I had an Irish accent. That part of my brain has died. He's following up on the threat about socialism versus communism and how those terms are thrown around in the U.S. Let's listen. Why do so many Americans struggle to tell the difference between socialism and communism, especially when he consider that America is no stranger to socialism. Eleven nuclear aircraft carriers and Medicare don't exactly pay for themselves. They're actually paid for what we would call good old style European wealth redistribution.

So my question is this. Are far more Americans socialist than they actually realize? It's so much better in the accent, right? All right. 100% thoughts. Yeah. I love this question. And I've been thinking about this as we've seen the rise of the rise of the

the Democratic socialists who do add the Democratic part in front of it. And part of that is a little bit to use our party infrastructure. And I have some feelings about that, but that was not the question that was posed. There are history lessons that people just refuse to learn in terms of the difference between a communist regime and a democratic socialist regime or a European socialist regime. if you actually told the average person who's railing against socialism online, the things that you were going to take away from them because they were quote unquote socialists, they would lose their minds. Because it's all the stuff that makes your life work on a daily basis. And tons of them are also on like Medicare and Medicaid and all of those things. So a big history lesson

massively needed. And I think also maybe a new term, if we could, like the right is never going to stop screaming socialists and communists from the rooftops. I would like them to answer how it is that they're okay with Donald Trump basically doing state-run capitalism because it's like taking shares and big companies and always wanting a kickback from them. But until the government is owning the means of production, they've got it all wrong. And so I don't know what the name should be. Maybe that'll be a project for the back half of the year for us to come up with something better than even democratic socialism so that they can't use it as freely. But the American people, like the European people, are pretty interested in having a healthy, you know, social

safety net, having good roads and schools and parks and aircraft carriers, as you mentioned. Yeah, words get molested and start to have absolutely no meaning. So innovation, disruption, strategy. They just They no longer have any meaning because they get applied to so many different mythologies or ideologies. So just a quick, quick definitions. All right. So people use these words as if they're swear words. They're not. These three words answer one question.

Who owns the assets and who decides where capital goes? It's about ownership and capital allocation. With capitalism, people own the businesses, and markets allocate capital. Essentially, the secret sauce of capitalism is it leverages the most basic human instinct and that is self-interest. And it ends up at self-interest, seeing a connection between your own work and your own rewards. If you create a system that leverages that, it's the most powerful system in the world. The problem is when it runs unfettered, it also results in the greatest inequality. And the history of economies is that in communist, socialist, and capitalist,

is that a small ruling class through hard work, luck, talent, oppression, aggregates, a disproportionate a disproportionate capital, talks themselves into believing why they're good people and they should use their power to create regulatory capture. They get more and more and more. And then finally, the bottom 99 goes, the fastest way to triple our wealth would be to kill the 1% or tell them they have 24 hours to leave the country. This is the story of Central America for the last, you know, 100 years. So capitalism, so we talked about capital socialism, people still own businesses, but government taxes more and provides more. You still get markets just with a bigger shock absorber. And I would argue that they need, that we need to redefine or add that just as George Bush talked about compassionate conservatism,

I think there needs to be a reframing of capitalism, compassionate capitalism. Because if you don't have that self-interest in capitalism, private property and private enterprises and the opportunity for people to come on billionaires, you are not going to be able to compete or you're not going to be able to provide the tax receipts to pay for SNAP and to pay for our parks and to pay for Planned Parenthood or whatever it might be. And one of the big differences between Europe and the U.S. is that Europe would rather have more equality and overall everyone be worse off versus the U.S. is pretty much we'd rather have greater inequality or less equality, as long as everyone else, everyone as a whole is better off. So London will pass a non-dom tax and feel good about it and say,

okay, the billionaire should pay their fair share, and this year we're going to have lower tax receipts because 10,000 millionaires have left the UK. So they would rather cut off their nose despite their face, such that they feel good about themselves and tickle the sensors of the upper middle class, despite the fact the poor people are going to end up with less social services. And then finally, the one that just doesn't work communism, the state owns everything and decides everything. You get equality, mostly because everyone's equally miserable, except the people running the state. That doesn't work. So I wouldn't even call China communist from an economic standpoint. I think capitalism that rests on a bet of empathy and has a progressive, a truly

progressive tax structure is absolutely the best model. And I would argue that is what we're what Northern Europe is. I don't even think they're socialist. We're more socialist in the sense that we've decided that the current government, the Trump administration, knows better than the private market and should have a golden share in U.S. Steel, take a stake in Intel, considering a stake in open AI, because Donald Trump has great business instincts, having turned his father fortune into less than if he just invested in the SMP and leaving a trail of bankruptcies and unpaid subcontractors. So I don't know if we need a new word. I don't know if we need a modifier to capitalism. The capitalism is the best, is the worst system in the world except for all the rest. And what we have here is capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down where we privatize the gains and socialize the losses. That's cronyism. So I think we need someone who can paint a vision of a capitalism that works as it does in Northern Europe, as it has here for the last 200 years, but recognize. that the key to capitalism is you have really robust markets. And the only way you have a robust,

sustainable market is if the three middle quintiles, which is the identifier for the middle class, has money and opportunity to buy the products that the very wealthy people figure out a way to make most appealing to this enormous entity called the middle class. And the only way you do that is to dispel the myth that the far right keeps trying to promote that the middle class is a self-healing organism and a self-creating entity species that naturally bubbles up on its own in free markets. It doesn't. When you have totally free markets, the middle class gets devoured by the wealthiest. So capitalism, free markets, full-body contact, violence amongst corporations, but solid regulation where we redistribute income from the most successful

organizations and people back into infrastructure, back into technology, back into education that creates a really robust middle class. If you want to talk about expenditures, our biggest expenditures aren't the military, they aren't the interest on the debt, they isn't Social Security. The biggest expenditures in the United States are the $2.3 trillion. We spend on loopholes and givebacks to the wealthiest corporations and people. So we have gone oligarchy, we have gone cronious. Capitalism still works, but it has to rest on a bed of empathy, and it has to have a progressive tax structure that recognizes the importance and the key to great capitalism and producing billionaires, which we want to produce the most of, is to have the greatest consumer in the world,

and that is a thriving middle class. And what does that mean? It means guys like me and people who make really good money should be paying a minimum of 40, 50 or 60 percent of their income in a progressive tax structure and get rid of the 3,600 pages that have been added to the tax code, which are there to fuck the middle class and transfer $50 trillion from the bottom 90 to the top 10, which is what has exactly happened in the last four decades. Any closing thoughts on this, Jess? I would just add to your TED talk, which I would listen to. But I would add that strengthening unions is a critical piece in strengthening the middle class or rebuilding the middle class. That doesn't mean union bosses aren't often corrupt, but we need those kinds of protections and ability to negotiate and, you know, to guarantee some decent quality of life for people that are doing some of the most important jobs in the country.

And there has been a full on assault on unions by our government. for a long time. So. I can't, I can't not take debate there. I think you're absolutely correct. If you look at the air traffic controller strike and the defenestration neutering of unions in America, it's directly correlated to income inequality. The fact that the president decided to basically gut a union and that sort of set the tone for now only about 9% of workers or under the, whatever you want to call it, belong to a union. When a state is really strong for union, effectively starts to lose corporations and they go to a quote unquote more labor-friendly state where

they can transfer more capital to shareholders. So while unions, I think, were absolutely an extraordinary vehicle for income equality and their decline can be directly correlated to inequality, the question is, what do we do from here? And I would argue unions have proven themselves ineffective in this age. Forty-five of the 46 nations that have unions have lost massive membership in those unions. I believe in unions. I just think there should be one union and it should be the federal government and I think we should have minimum wage of $25 an hour. And I think you get rid of the inefficiency, administration, corporations relocating from one state to the other, the massive corruption that affects these unions. One union, the federal government, minimum wage of $25 an hour,

minimum wage that says if you work full time, you can at least be above the poverty, line. Unions as they're currently constructed are just not effective in this age, and it needs to stop being a litmus test for whether you're a Democrat or not. This is a construct that is outdated and is not working. I comment it on your comment. Do you want to say anything about what I just said there? I do a little bit, but I don't want to turn the mailbag episode into a union debate. You know, $25 as a baseline for those kinds of jobs. Sure, it's going to be a lot more, for instance, you know, with auto workers or teachers, for instance, I wonder about the ability of the federal government writ large

to be able to operate as a quote-unquote union boss or whatever with the level of specificity that these kinds of workers need. So like a nurse's union, for instance, for hospital workers, etc. So maybe we're on to something in trying to think of a way to game this out, but there needs to be, and I understand, you know, people put people in positions of power who do things like turn their states into a right to work state. And obviously that chips away at the power of these unions. And you see people leaving them, leaving states where it might be compulsory to join, et cetera. But there has to be a way to re-envision or remodel the unions that built the middle class of this country.

Like it is so core to how we became great that I don't want to give up on it completely to just say, like, let's transfer this over to the federal government, which like we've seen what can happen when you have bad people in charge of the federal government. Like what if they all get doged? Right. Like what, you know, what if they go the way of whoever Elon Musk wakes up and says, like, we don't really need anyone who knows anything about, you know, tornadoes or national parks or anything. So I'd like to continue talking about this. But great question. I think it's a fair point, and I read an article this morning, I think in the economists basically saying that company-specific unions don't work because the company's smarter and more nimble than them and kind of was threatened to leave the state. But sector unions, like a union for all nurses across all health systems. I'm down. But there definitely needs to be a series of bold actions that restore or reverse the flow

of capital from consumer rents from labor to shareholders. So it's gotten absolutely out of control. This week, two of the most important people in Google's AI division left their jobs. Depending on who you are, that's either really terrible news for Google's whole AI project or a sign that AI may be closer to something truly world-changing than we even thought. This week on the Vergecast, we're dissecting what's going on at Google DeepMind and whether we truly are in the foothills of the singularity. All that, plus the same.

state of the no-screen wearable, what's going on with open-weight models, and much more. All that on the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. Okay, a listener from Sandusky, Ohio, has an urgent question, not necessarily about politics. Thank God. If Scott had a hotel room for one night in Midtown Manhattan and $2,500, what would he do for the night? Brother, I do it every night, or every weeknight I'm in New York, or not every night. I'll do it tonight. I'm going to go to Bond Street, sushi.

downstairs. I'm going to eat, you know, three or four hundred dollars in sushi with one or two friends. And then I'm going to go to Shaymargo or a zero bond. And I won't spend $2,500, but I'll spend another four or $500. And then about the time I start thinking I'm really fucked up and get talked into going to the box, this great place downtown and spending one or two grand, my age will kick in and I'll go home and take an edible and crash. So what would I do? I do it every night. Not every night. I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, nights away. My favorite thing is to eat and drink with friends and go to great, amazing places in New York and enjoy, be social, be with friends, and, you know, just be, get a front row seat that is the freak show of ridiculously strange and hot people that infect

this city and just the most wonderful collision of capitalism, culture, art in the history of humanity. I, I think we're going to look back on New York and say this is a golden age. Now, you said mid-10, I don't know. I don't like to go about 14th Street. I don't think anything interesting happens. Broadway. He didn't ask my answer, but... Broadway. Jesus Christ. Are you going to say Broadway? Go ahead. I don't mean to bias you. Yeah, theater. What show have you seen? What show have you seen recently that you enjoyed? I don't think that... Oh, I'm calling you out. You're a fake culture person. No, no, no. I'm not. At least I'm honest. No, no, no. I'm trying to remember the name.

and it like went to Chicago, but it's the German one. Like the... That's very specific. In other words, you pretend to like theater and you don't. No, don't do this. You don't remember the name of the play you absolutely adored? Oh, stop it. When I went to see Cabaret with Eddie Redmayne,

that was the coolest thing that I've seen in a very long time and how they recreated the club and it was like in a round, you know, where you sit around the whole thing You could be like in the back or the front of it. Anyway, and Eric and David and Ness and whatever are going to cut out me having to Google that. So like, it didn't happen. I do get dragged to Broadway or into the theater in London every once in a while. I did see the coolest.

I am a big fan of the whole IRL trend. The coolest thing I have seen in years in terms of a live event that was so incredibly moving with something called bum bum train. Have you heard of this? No. Oh, God. You sign an NDA, so I can't speak specifically to what it. It is. Yeah, don't do it on a podcast. Tons of people listen to. But you go through a where you and I was blown away, like nothing I've ever experienced before.

You got older at the Cherry Lane Theater. That was also what I was trying to think of, which was awesome. And I went with Brian. And it was full of, I think, women who miss their dads. And he warned me. He's like, I'm about to take you to something that is going to make you really miss your dad. And we were just all sobbing. Brian is so dreamy. He's so thoughtful that way. I mean, I did well for my arranged marriage. Yeah. But by the way, if I had not $2,500, but $25,000, I'd be in Atlanta right now with two great seats to the England versus Argentina.

And unfortunately, this is airing in a later date. So I'm trusting that England won. Anyways, let's end on a lighter note. Patrick from New Jersey wants to know. That hasn't exactly been the best. year so far between the war and corruption in the White House and a Democratic Party being, you know, a little lost. I'd love to know, Scott and Jess, what's giving you hope right now? Jess?

It's lame and very estrogen-driven, but my girls are sublime. It is so cool to see them learn about themselves and learn about the world. ages where you can like go out and sit in a restaurant with them and kind of have a conversation. Now there's a bit of a breakdown and I need for crayons or the travel magnetiles and some screaming for an iPad or an iPhone, which I don't want to give them and Brian does and then we fight. But I'm very hopeful for the next generation and just how cool it is to be on this parental journey. So that's my kind of lame one. But I knew you were going to say that. out. I have something similar, but it's at a different age group. I dropped off or went to orientation

with my son. Who doesn't want to disclose where he's going to school? Like, who the fuck cares? You've taken pictures all over the campus. We all know. Yeah, whatever. I'm outing him. You know, it rhymes with UVA. And when I think about America's ability to create institutions like that where all we want to do is strain the muscle in between a kid's ears, such that it grows back stronger, such that they can make better decisions around our government, our military, our business, our nonprofits. And that we have institutions and organizations like that. They were envisioned hundreds of years ago by one of the framers, Thomas Jefferson,

and just the collision of architecture and young people and hopefulness and seeing all these parents from different nations dropping off their kids who couldn't wait for their parents to leave. You wouldn't know who's president. And that's a good thing. All this is is a bunch of nervous parents trying to make themselves obsolete to their kids as a means of victory and recognizing and all these mixed emotions of, you know, realizing you've done something great with your kid, but really being sad that you're, you know, that you want your boy or your girl back. But it is, when you do walk away from it, very majestic, very sentimental, sad even, but very, very hopeful that we live in a society where. our youngest get to experience something like that. And anyways, UVA and our great public schools across, whether it's, you know, CUNY or University of Illinois or Cal State System,

our great junior colleges are very involved with the University of California. Every time I'm on campus at a public university, I feel very hopeful. Love that. Okay, let's leave it there. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and sorry we couldn't get to more of them. Yeah. All right.