Valuetainment - May 23, 2026


＂Don't Pretend It'll Solve The Problem＂ - Jeff Bezos DISMANTLES Mamdani's Tax The Rich Agenda


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

165.78

Word count

1,096

Sentence count

76

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Rob and Sarah discuss the latest in the wealth tax debate, Jeff Bezos' interview with Aaron Sorkin, and why he thinks billionaires should pay a higher rate of taxes. They also talk about how the top 1% pays 40% of taxes, while the bottom 50% pays only 3%.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 let's tax these billionaires.
00:00:01.440 We're in Aspen, and all of a sudden I get a story comes out saying
00:00:04.880 they need this 882,000 signatures to be able to pass on a 5% wealth tax.
00:00:10.060 I'm like, of course they're going to get the signatures.
00:00:12.800 What do you mean?
00:00:13.680 Because it's only 200 billionaires.
00:00:15.420 Of course they're going to come up with this.
00:00:16.780 So guess what ends up happening?
00:00:18.200 They get $1.5 million plus signatures on a 5% tax.
00:00:22.220 So that's going to be on it for people to vote.
00:00:24.500 And then one by one by one, people like Bryn and others are leaving
00:00:27.260 and saying, you're not going to tax me on this.
00:00:28.680 I'm out of here, right?
00:00:29.320 Yeah. And yesterday, Jeff Bezos is doing an interview with Sorkin, which, by the way, I thought this was a phenomenal, phenomenal interview.
00:00:36.980 You haven't watched this whole thing. You ought to put it on the list of things to watch the next couple of days.
00:00:42.000 Here's what he had to say about taxes. Go ahead, Rob.
00:00:45.780 Elizabeth Warren has made this point repeatedly. I think she's made a reference to you and others are able to pay a lower tax rate,
00:00:52.680 even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am.
00:00:59.320 These people sometimes say that, you know, I don't pay taxes.
00:01:04.460 It's not true.
00:01:04.800 I pay billions of dollars in taxes.
00:01:07.220 And it's a perfect, again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate.
00:01:12.200 But don't pretend, you know, that that's going to solve the problem.
00:01:16.900 You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens.
00:01:21.980 I promise you.
00:01:23.260 This is, so you can't connect those two things.
00:01:26.660 Not logically.
00:01:27.360 You know, there are more examples.
00:01:30.680 Why is rent expensive?
00:01:32.820 Why is rent so expensive?
00:01:34.380 I recently saw somebody blamed it on Airbnb.
00:01:37.440 Okay, Airbnb is not the cause of expensive rent.
00:01:40.700 In fact, it's been almost, let me finish here one second.
00:01:42.860 It's already been outlawed in New York City, and rents are still very high.
00:01:48.100 So we know Airbnb isn't causing high rents.
00:01:50.780 What's really causing high rent is government intervention.
00:01:55.380 Yeah, exactly.
00:01:56.740 Thoughts on what you had to say?
00:01:58.040 Well, 100% correct.
00:02:00.480 And we are the proof of that in California
00:02:02.580 because we have taxed the rich in California.
00:02:09.440 That's one of the reasons that our fiscal situation
00:02:13.320 is such a mess in California
00:02:15.620 with massive volatility in state revenue and year to year
00:02:20.760 because so much of it is dependent on the stock market
00:02:24.140 because so much of it is dependent on the wealthy.
00:02:27.500 I mean, the number is something like the top 1% of California earners
00:02:32.280 pay about 50% of the income tax.
00:02:36.400 And so that's already happening in California.
00:02:38.900 And as we said earlier, they've doubled the budget.
00:02:41.180 Look what happened to school results.
00:02:42.340 I mean, he's bragging Newsom about $28,000 per student per year
00:02:46.440 for the public schools, and the results are terrible.
00:02:51.140 So that's exactly right.
00:02:52.500 And we've been through all the reasons.
00:02:55.020 And Bezos is right that the drivers of these costs in California, certainly on housing, is all these endless regulations and concessions to the groups that control the Democrat politicians, the unions, the climate activists, the lawyers.
00:03:12.420 That's how we've got to this point.
00:03:14.800 Yeah, I mean, look, when you're seeing, he continues to say the top 1% pays 40% of taxes.
00:03:21.220 The bottom 50% pays 3%, and I think that should be even zero, Rob.
00:03:26.580 If you go to that one on percent taxes, yeah, there's another clip.
00:03:34.100 It's not going to be a quarrel.
00:03:37.960 There's one that you have to find, Rob, where he says go to the one with Mamdani, see if it's that one.
00:03:43.880 Go back and see if it's the Mamdani one. 0.74
00:03:45.480 billions of dollars in taxes and it's a perfect again if people want me to pay more billions
00:03:53.280 there's a part that he specifically says go to his account go to bezos x account
00:03:57.300 just type in jeff bezos go to his account
00:04:00.380 because i think this is becoming more and more logical second one there you go go a little bit
00:04:08.760 lower go lower lower lower he writes it in the account in the video that's it so he puts yes
00:04:17.220 do not okay press this one see if it's the same one or if it's a different one start by having
00:04:21.660 the nurse in queens not pay taxes why somebody at all why is some why is a nurse in queens who 1.00
00:04:28.920 makes 75 000 a year paying more than a thousand dollars a month in taxes that's a thousand dollars 1.00
00:04:36.120 a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything.
00:04:40.120 And so, and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to?
00:04:44.180 The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes.
00:04:50.740 It's only 3%.
00:04:52.120 We can find 3%.
00:04:54.060 So we don't have, it's a small amount of money for the government, you know that.
00:04:59.660 And really, the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd that we're doing this.
00:05:06.120 You know, we shouldn't be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington.
00:05:12.320 They should be sending her to talk about.
00:05:14.480 This aligns with what you're saying.
00:05:16.280 No tax is under $100,000.
00:05:17.680 Right, right.
00:05:18.160 Because look at California's tax schedule, right, where you look at the rates.
00:05:21.640 It's insane.
00:05:23.580 You start paying, I think these numbers are right, you start at $72,000 of income.
00:05:29.620 You're starting to pay in California 9.3% state income tax.
00:05:34.200 that is higher than the top rate in most states of america at 72 grand i think it kicks in
00:05:41.960 it's just insane like nine three on 70 so i'm paying seven thousand dollars on 72k i could
00:05:50.500 have kept that money car payment food gas whatever it is that stays with me it's really bad it's a
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