The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Be Quiet and Listen

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

Dorothy A. Brown, professor of law at Emory University, joins Scott to contextualize what’s happening with the protests and poses some solutions for leaders in the corporate world. Scott also shares some observations about why we’re seeing a record number of new online brokerage accounts, the stock market, and creating an open dialogue around enduring change.  This week’s Office Hours cover mergers & acquisitions, investing in monopolies, and why growth is a tremendous Yoda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 13. We devote this episode to Lego. The Danish firm has committed $4 million to fighting racial injustice. I slipped and fell on six Lego horses. And unfortunately, they went up my ass. I had to go to the emergency room. We said, bad news, you have Lego horses up your ass. The good news is you're stable. Get it? You're stable. Oh my gosh! How inappropriate! but it's episode 13. Roll. Today on the pod, we're speaking with Dorothy Brown, a professor of law at Emory University.

She's a recognized scholar in tax policy, race, and class, and has published extensively on the racial implications of federal tax policy. She joins us today to contextualize what's going on concerning the protests and where the country goes from here. After that conversation, we'll have office hours and wrap up with our algebra of happiness. Okay, let's talk about the news. The S&P 500 has erased its 2020 losses. It's escalated more than 44% since its March lows, and NASDAQ hit an all-time high. What the fuck? The World Bank says the global economy shrank or will shrink by over 5% in 2020, and yet the market is at an all-time high. What is going on here? I have some thoughts. I have some thoughts, some not so surprising, some sort of surprising. So first off, when we talk about the NASDAQ and the S&P, one of the worst things we can do is assume that this is a proxy for the broader health of the economy. It's forward-looking. It's meant to be a reflection of

who we are as a people, but it is not, or no longer, it really is an accurate indicator of what is going on in the broader economy. Why? Because when you're talking about publicly traded stocks, first off, you're talking about half as many companies as just 20 years ago and something like a third as many 30 years ago because of mergers and acquisitions or companies going out of business. When you talk about publicly traded stocks, you're talking about the best performing companies, sort of the best of the best, and you're talking about companies with access to capital. Where are those companies? On the NYSE and on the NASDAQ. The markets have hit all-time highs. There is a total detachment now from the stock market and the kind of Main Street economy.

The other less obvious trend that is taking place here that is just fascinating, I mean, blow your mind kind of fascinating, is that we love to gamble. There's a dope hit when the slot machine is about to stop. It's fun to bet. It's something we've done for a long time. I'm not entirely sure what instinct that calls on. But effectively, what has happened is think about this. There has been an enormous destruction and supply of opportunities to gamble. Can't go to Vegas. The dog would be in Vegas. I am such a better version of me in Vegas. I typically like to dress up. I wear some crazy midlife crisis canary yellow jacket. I sometimes wear a kilt. The dog has a kilt and I break it out when I'm in Vegas. Great conversation starter. Great

conversation starter. Vegas is out. No one's in Vegas, or very few. And think about this. There's been a total destruction in sports, meaning one of the biggest industries in the shadow economy, sports betting, has gone away. So where can you bet? Where do you have to do research, make calculated risks, make a bet, and get that DOPA hit, hit that primal sensor of winning or losing? You guessed it, the stock market, the number of new accounts reported by TD Ameritrade, by Schwab, by Robinhood has skyrocketed. So we've seen an entirely new cohort enter the market. The retail market may be driving, or these speculators, these gamblers, there's people that would be at the horse track or in Caesar's casino book, whatever they call it, where they bet on sports or call

their bookie are now betting on stocks. And supposedly the professional investor class is on the sidelines because they're just like, don't get it. Or they don't understand how this has happened. Is that sustainable? What happens to stocks? I don't know. According to CNBC, data tracked between May 31st and June 6th shows Biden spent over approximately 5 million on Facebook ads and Trump spent about 1.2 million. Supposedly, the controversy of the civil unrest, I don't know what the correct term for it is, has sparked a wave of giving across Democratic candidates. And obviously Democrats are excited that the handling, if you will, if you can even call it that, of both the pandemic and the civil unrest has not shed the current administration in a good light. And Democrats are trying to take advantage of it. Speaking of Facebook, speaking of Facebook, I think the perfect description for Mark Zuckerberg or the new moniker for Mark Zuckerberg is that he is the world's most successful oligarch. What is

an oligarch? An oligarch is someone who uses their proximity or exploits their proximity to power to garner massive wealth in a corrupt manner, right? We think of oligarchs in Russia where I become close to Putin. I give him or her 10%, supposedly Putin is the wealthiest man in the world, 10% of my profits that are ill-gained by getting Putin to basically shut down my competitors or some other form of corruption. That is kind of the definition of corruption, if you will, and that is state-sponsored theft. What do we have here? The mother of all unholy to a Hitler used radio, demonization of immigrants, a refusal to condemn violence against one's perceived political threats. I don't I don't. And everyone says it couldn't happen here.

Just as we said, oh, oh, the virus can't get here. We're just too fucking cool. We're too awesome for the for the virus to actually come here. Now, the virus didn't get the memo on how exceptional America is. Just as we didn't think that could happen here, there's a notion that somehow what happened in the middle of the 20th century in Europe couldn't happen here. Sure, it could happen here. Look at Germany, pre-World War II, a very advanced society, incredibly culturally rich, incredible technology, and a massive appreciation for the arts and culture. And then a madman took advantage of economic strife and convinced an angry populace that

we should begin rounding up people. Oh, we would never round up people. Yeah, we did. We did it. When your grandparents were alive, it was called internment camps where we put Japanese Americans behind barbed wire for no other reason than they were Japanese. Anyways, I do think it's time to start openly and honestly asking ourselves what kind of similarities we see and how we cauterize that as soon as possible. In November, a bit of a political ad there, and I know that's not where you come here. But anyways, in other news, the editors of the

opinion page for the New York Times, James Bennett, and the managing editor, I believe it was the managing editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, were both fired for insensitive articles, opinion, op-eds, whatever you want to call it, or poor decision-making around titles. In the case of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the title was Buildings Matter Too or Building Lives. Basically, a journalist wrote an article about physical destruction alluding, and the editor chose the title Buildings Matter Too, which was a stupid title and insensitive. And then James Bennett was a little bit more controversial. He posted an op-ed from Tom Cotton, and they felt that it was just so false, so poorly fact-checked that it just reflected terrible judgment. And I find this disturbing in the sense that we're in

that part of the cycle with a controversy or civil unrest or a movement, and this is a movement, and it was overdue, and I would say 90% of it is inspiring. But we also run the risk that it's so raw and so sensitive that if you don't sign up for the prescribed orthodoxy of the movement, and that orthodoxy is, in this instance, either very far right or very far left, again, more polarization, you run the risk of being canceled. And I worry that we are, if we don't open ourselves to a dialogue, if we just demand everyone sign up for the most extreme version of our orthodoxy, or they're our enemy and deserve to be called out and shamed and canceled, that we don't invite a constructive dialogue such that we can shape more enduring, lasting change. If we don't get moderates, if we don't get people from all points of the political spectrum to have a productive dialogue around what does it mean to actually defund police? Do we end up with private militias that rich people

control? What does it mean? What does it mean for unions? What are the benchmarks? I think the idea of totally reshaping police forces is super interesting when I think about London Bobby's not carrying guns. I think about UCLA. We had a fairly small police department. The UCPD is what we called them. But we had a much larger community service organization called CSOs, community service officers. And these were young men and women who were students who were given a blue jacket and this powerful weapon called a walkie-talkie. They were mostly used just to escort women around campus at night who were worried about walking alone through kind of dark foresty areas of campus, but it was powerful. And they had the walkie-talkie and people felt

safer. And if they saw something or sensed or observed something that might escalate to danger or crime, they then called the cops. And it struck me as community-based policing and very effective and also very cost effective. And when you think about it, if you think about how we're addressing poverty, how we're addressing mental illness, how we're addressing addiction, we're doing it with police, firearms, and jail. And regardless of the morality, just economically, it's just too goddamn expensive. So we need to rethink law enforcement. But when the orthodoxy is that all police are bad and that police are prone to violence and that all police are racist, you immediately shut out a large swath of the population that would like to have a constructive conversation around a new approach to policing. And I think we end up with change that is more reactionary and then it dies down. And the people who don't want to do anything or don't want to see change because they're

fed up with the extremism of the orthodoxy of either side just take advantage of our democracy, which kind of lends itself to inertia, and they will wait it out, and there'll be very little enduring change. And I worry that the firing of people based on one frame in the movie that is their career is evidence that we are not yet at a point where we can have a productive dialogue around shaping innovation, shaping reform, the results in enduring change. Okay, enough preaching from the dog. Enough howling at the moon. Let's pay the bills.

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what tools are right for you and what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for and to help us out we are are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. welcome back here's our conversation with dorothy brown professor of law at emory university school of law and a nationally recognized scholar in tax policy race and class professor brown welcome to prof g where does this podcast find you it finds me me in my house on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Let's bust right into it. It's obviously been an illuminating past two weeks, the protests in the wake of George Floyd's death. Yes.

You know, illuminate much more than just police brutality. Can you provide some context for these protests and if there's sort of what the underpinnings reflect around the current state of our country and our economy? Yeah, so I think there's a direct line between the protest and economic inequality. When we think about the over-policing, that is a function of budgetary decisions, right? So state and local governments decide how much to spend on whatever it is they want to spend, K-12, police. And we've seen money that's spent on the police are used to over-police Black Americans. And let me just point out, Black Americans are taxpayers and are paying into those state and local budgets that are then over-policing them. So there is a direct line between racial justice and policing and racial justice and economic

inequality. And you're seeing kind of like a liberating moment that people are saying, yes, we saw George Floyd murdered, and that's awful, and we need police reform or defunding police, right? We also say, but wait a minute, there's systemic racism everywhere. It isn't just in the policing system. And that's what this movement has been about. It has been about moving the calls for police reform into virtually every other area that I can think of. And we haven't seen that before.

So I'd love to just throw some theses at you and you respond and tell me where I've got it right and where I've got it wrong. And that is, I think that almost everything around our economic policy is meant to, at its root, transfer wealth from young people to old people. And if you look at young people, they tend to be more multiracial, represent that the minority is about to become the majority, and that the current kind of power structure is all about figuring out ways initially to hold people of color back, but now it feels like the best way to do that is just to kind of hold young people back. Do you see any merit in that thinking? You know, not really. And here's what I would say. I'd say the status quo is designed to transfer wealth to white men, old white men. So I wouldn't limit it to just young to old. I would say everything is designed to transfer wealth to old white people, right? Because if you're saying young to old, then it would suggest old black Americans are benefiting from this, and that's not what we see. So I would say everything is designed to maintain the status

quo, which is old white guys who have been running things for a really long time, continuing to prime and groom other old or soon-to-be old white guys to take over when they retire. Yeah, that's a fair point. I've often reflected in the 90s when I was starting internet companies, and I was raising a lot of money. And now I look back and think 98% of the capital raise that I observed was from a profile, and the profile was white heterosexual males. We were all so proud of ourselves in the startup community when Planet Out got funding that we started funding gay white males. We saw that as really liberating. But women were held out of the party and people of color just had absolutely, they didn't even know where the address was.

It's strange. I'm embarrassed by how natural it seemed or that we didn't recognize it as unnatural. So it seems like criminal justice or our approach to prisons, policing, are absolutely kind of baked in in terms of systemic racism. What are the less obvious means of which there is kind of this underpinning of racism in our society? So what's been interesting to me about, and the reason why I think criminal justice reform issues are easier to recognize, is there are videos. We don't see video. There's been a Black in the Ivory for black Americans in higher education. There's been hashtag publishing paid me. So you're seeing now conversations about the publishing industry,

where you see black authors not getting the advances white authors are. You see black professors talking about their horror stories. Those things are just as evident, but not material. They're not everywhere. We don't have videos. So I would say systemic racism is everywhere. I write about it in the tax system, for example, and most people go, what? Yeah, people don't think about it because the IRS doesn't collect the data. And people think, oh, when we talk about tax policy, we're really talking about poor people. And my pushback has always been, no, we're talking about racial inequality that isn't just felt by poor taxpayers. So you see systemic racism everywhere, but the public doesn't necessarily see it everywhere. But what I see this movement is doing is opening eyes to a lot of white Americans about how widespread systemic racism

really is. They may have started this quest with, oh, it's just in the policing and we fix the policing, we'll move on. And then we see the debacle in Georgia with their voting yesterday and the pictures that showed if you were in a racially diverse neighborhood, you had tremendous lines, hours and hours of waiting. But if you were in a white neighborhood, virtually no line. So there really isn't an area that is immune to a systemic racism analysis. Yeah, we had Peter Henry, the dean of my boss from NYU Stern, and he highlighted that if you think about the Republican Party has kind of become the party of old white guys. I mean, there's just no there's no I think it's pretty apt description. And they are resisting the minority becoming the majority and that their go to tactic has become voter suppression, that he thinks that is really the biggest issue facing us.

They don't want to compete. Their strategy is just to suppress the vote. And many of them have been saying the quiet part out loud lately. We don't want vote in, you know, by mail because then a Republican will never win again. I mean, elected Republican officials have actually said that. So suddenly we're not in a democracy. Yeah, it's frightening to think that not only it's there, but it's just so brazen. Let's talk a little bit about tax policy. I've never understood why we don't go back to the Reagan era and we just have income. We have income that sweat earns current income. We have income that your money earns in the form of capital gains. And I don't know if it was intended this way, but it strikes me that when you have white households own the majority of stocks and assets, that effectively what you're doing is you're transferring wealth again from people of color who tend to get the majority of their income from current income taxed at a higher rate.

And the majority of capital gains income flows to white households who pay a lower rate. I mean, isn't that just straightforward transfer from one party to the other? Yes, I completely agree with you. And I think the 86 Tax Reform Act that Reagan championed where wages and income from stock were treated the same. And it lasted about two years. It lasted about two years, right? Because people were like, no, we should tax capital less. Why? There's really no good reason to tax capital less. It and I think you agree with this, very performative statements. You know, we stand with George Floyd and we are appalled by racism. And we've all, you know, our all white board agrees.

You know, it's sort of, it feels very performative. And by the way, I'm guilty of this. I sit on a board and I, you know, this is really, you were talking about educating white people. And I'm one of those people that's going through an education process. And one of the things I've noticed is I kind of look left and look right on a lot of the corporate boards I'm on, and we all look very similar. And what do you talk about corporate America and what, how actions, how the music can match the word, how can the action start to foot to the words being put out? Yes, that's an excellent question. And I think the first thing and the other, you know, performative statement is Black Lives Matter.

OK, so, yes, we've got these corporations saying these slogans. And if you were to ask your employees, do they think the company thinks Black Lives Matter? They would likely say no. So the first thing I would say is instead of the statements, now let's be clear, statements are important, right? So if I'm a black employee and I'm like stressed because I'm dealing with watching a video, I'm dealing with incidents in my own family, I'm dealing with all this, I like that my employer puts out a statement, but that's step one. Step two has to be, what am I doing to root out and eradicate the systemic racism in my workplace?

It starts to be with the board, right? So you need a board that shows Black Lives Matter. Not that says Black Lives Matter, but that shows Black Lives Matter. So that's step one. You need to diversify your board in a meaningful way. The second thing you have to do, I would say, is listen to your employees. Now, here's the thing. Most of us who work in places, if it's a safe space, they'll tell you, well, why don't we do it this way? But the first time they do it and they get shut down, they don't do it anymore. So if you want to know what's going on, if I were a CEO, I would provide a space for anonymous input so that the employee would not worry about being retaliated against. And if I were a board who really cared about this issue, I would make the CEO's continued employment conditioned on racial diversity numbers getting up, retention numbers getting up.

I would say, in addition to share price, because we know share price is important, I would make the CEO accountable for moving us forward. And I'm sure most CEOs are not equipped for this, right? So they would figure it out though, right? If their jobs were on the line, they would be incentivized to do better. The hard part there, as I just think this through, is when you start, do you disarm unilaterally? I wonder if you need some sort of legislation or regulation to encourage investors to buy the stocks of companies that are achieving those goals. Because when you place any sort of constraints or regulation on a board, the fear is that, okay, we're disarming unilaterally

and other companies that aren't subject to these same standards will have an easier time, at least in the short term, outperforming us. But maybe at the end of the day, if you're just skating to where the puck is, that's a... I see your point. I apologize. I'm going round and round. So I would... Here's what I... I think that's a legitimate pushback. And here's what I would say. Right now, you're not getting the maximum potential out of your employees. Your employees have great ideas. And when they give them, they get shot down and then they stop giving them. And I think the market would react in a positive way, not a negative way. What CEOs are currently underestimating is how much less they're getting out of their black employees than they would be if their black employees were empowered to soar. And let's talk, let's go back to tax policy. What two or

three changes could we make to the tax code that would both make a healthier economy and also address some of these systemic issues? So first is what we talked about. Tax, income from wages at the same rate as income from capital. Income is income is income. There is no distinction. That's the first thing. The second thing is look at the subsidies for homeownership. I've written about this. I've talked about this. Homeownership is a decidedly race-based asset. Overwhelming majority of white Americans own homes.

They're a minority of black and Latinx Americans own homes. homes, but we have tax-subsidized homeownership, which basically means renters, which are disproportionately Black and Latino, are subsidizing. Right, there you go. I knew you'd like that, right? So why don't we examine our, and I'd say get rid of them, our tax subsidies for homeownership? If you care about housing, then let's have tax subsidies for housing. But there's no reason why we should subsidize such a race-based asset, especially in light of the government's role in making it a race-based asset.

Yeah, I think that's such a powerful point. The two largest tax subsidies in America are the deductions on capital gains and mortgage tax interest. And if you look at them, distinctive this notion that owning a home is the American dream, which is a tagline brought to you by the National Association of Realtors. Both of those tax deductions, the largest, the most expensive tax deductions in our society do exactly what you're talking about. They transfer wealth from one cohort, primarily people of color and younger people to older, wide people. Talk a little bit about what would you like to see happen if there was regulation in addition

to this tax policy we had discussed? Can you think of any specific regulation that you think is overdue that we need to immediately think about? So part of me thinks the mandate would be transparency, that put out, require the numbers to be published on websites. What percent of your board is Black? What percent of your executives are Black? What percent of your executives are black? What percent of your workforce are black? And what types of jobs do they hold? Right? So those companies that have a customer base that's very racially diverse, they would be embarrassed. And you would see shortly before the due date for the publication of the numbers, board appointments announced. That's my guess.

So that's what I would say, transparency. Yeah, I've seen some numbers around the number of black executives at Apple. And it's just been sort of shocking. It's sort of rattling. Okay, that's it. So the firing of, there's been high-profile firings. And, you know, they say they resigned, but let's be honest, they were fired. The head of the opinion section.

You took my CrossFit. Well, CrossFit, but let's be honest. That guy just had, I don't want to say he had it coming. That guy just seems, strikes me like to be an idiot. Okay, finally, he was an idiot at the wrong time and he got fired. The head of the opinion section of the editorial page of the New York Times, James Bennett, the editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Bon Appetit. Bon Appetit. Do you think these are people that should have been fired and finally were starting to fire white guys when they deserve it? It's overdue. Or are we in an era where there is, quite frankly, if you're over the age of 50 and white,

and maybe it's time, you're kind of walking around with a grenade in your hand with a pin out. Are these firings overdue? Or are we in an era where it is just a dangerous, where there's just so much emotion, and it's so raw, that you put out a bad headline and you get fired. I think it's overdue. And I think you can't fall on your past record as a defense for some of the heinous things that happened, right? So the Philadelphia Inquirer compared buildings to people. Okay, well, you know, Black Americans, we were property, right? So really, really, somebody had to tell you that? You know, as a New York Times, things they didn't want to agree with. handled it like that, he might still have his job. That's the problem. It's the arrogance that comes with these positions. And they're so used to ignoring black voices without consequences.

You can make a mistake and you can say, I'm sorry. And if it's sincere, people will forgive you. But when you double down, we know the apology isn't sincere because your first reaction when nobody was looking, when you thought you wouldn't be accountable, was, you know what, you just need to grow up. Snowflakes in effect. Really? Really. Let me ask you something more generally outside of this specific issue. We both teach at global campuses or big schools. And I worry that there is a trend on campuses that if you don't subscribe

to a specific orthodoxy that is usually, for lack of a better term, progressive, that the environment is such that it doesn't really foster an open debate or what I think is one of our missions, and that is to provoke. And I worry that some of this, I think the term was just great awokening, that it might be stifling dialogue and without a dialogue, and I would like to think a campus is a good place to have this dialogue, that we never really register enduring change because we have a large cohort that just goes silent and becomes resentful of the fact that there really isn't a market or an arena for open debate. Any thoughts?

Yes, I have lots of thoughts. And my first is I don't think our campuses are all that progressive. And if you've ever talked to black students on your campus, you would know that. So and I'm not saying you, you. I'm saying people who say this is progressive would know that. So I taught a Ferguson movement course at Emory a few years ago, and it was open to every, it was a university course, open to every student at the university. So I had a bunch of undergrads in there and the stories they would tell me about

what their racist white faculty would say in class would make my hair stand on end. So I always push back at this notion that there's this progressive orthodoxy, because how do you define progressive? Because I would say if there's a progressive orthodoxy, there's a racist progressive orthodoxy, and it's an anti-black racist. So that's a problem. Number two, everybody isn't good at facilitating a controversial conversation. So this notion that all classes ought to be about provoking winds up terrorizing students who look like me, that it really isn't this open debate. It's room for someone to say the N-word in class. No, that's not open for debate. I don't want to hear that crap. So people don't think about the impact on their students, particularly their black students in these spaces.

That's why every few years you hear black students complaining. Hello, we need more black faculty. We need more black administrators. We need more people who can help us. So this wokeness is a myth. I haven't seen it. I've been a law professor since 1991. I have never seen this wokeness.

I've never seen this orthodoxy, particularly, and I want to be specific, about anti-Black racism. That the stories you would hear if you were to ask for them from our Black students would be a story not of, oh, I feel so welcomed in the classroom. Oh, my professor made me. No, they're like, I'm hiding. I don't want to get called on. I don't want to answer. Or, you know, I've heard of con law professors who think they're so clever when they call on the black student to argue against Brown v. Board of Ed. Really? That's open debate? That's offensive. And it isn't about, well, lawyers have to be able to argue both sides.

Why'd you pick the black kid? You, professor, were being very race conscious in that decision. And the student doesn't have a chance to say, you know, we don't empower our students to say, no, thank you. I'll stick that one out. So a question we always like to ask people for advice. We have a very young and a very male viewership. What advice do you have for young people in this? What are the takeaways here? What would you advise in terms of learning, trying to be more thoughtful about this topic, trying to engage in it in a productive way. What advice would you have? Yes. And this is hard for a lot of really bright white males. Be quiet and listen. It was one of the lessons one of my white male students in my Ferguson course taught me. He said, Professor Brown, I've learned. Be quiet and listen to what the students of color have to say because they have an important

perspective so the first thing i would say is you're not an expert so read up on it what do you do when you're not an expert you read right so get a book white fragility is one of the books i've been recommending people to read because the title is white white fragility-wise, it's so hard for white Americans to talk about race. Okay, so step one, do some reading. Step two, if you are as upset about the video as I am, then become an ally and think about, once you educate yourself, ways that you could intervene on behalf of your black colleagues as opposed to silencing them, right? So if something happens, somebody tells, or forget their black colleagues, they're in a group and it's just a bunch of white guys and they're joking around and somebody makes a racist joke and you're offended by it, but you don't say anything because you don't want to get kicked out

of a social club. Decide it's not worth being in the social club if your price is listening to racist jokes. There are little things you can do and there are big things you can do. I'd say start with the little things. Dorothy Brown is a professor of law at Emory University School of Law, a nationally recognized scholar in tax policy, race, and class, and has published extensively on the racial implications of federal tax policy. Professor, and class, and has published extensively on the racial implications of federal tax policy. Professor Brown, thanks for joining us and stay safe. Thank you. We'll be right back.