Prof G Markets

The American Affordability Crisis — ft. Neera Tanden

41 min
Feb 6, 20262 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Host Scott Galloway discusses the American affordability crisis with Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress. The episode examines how tariffs, housing policy, and healthcare costs are exacerbating affordability challenges, with Tanden giving the Trump administration an F-grade on economic policy while proposing progressive solutions like mixed-income housing integration and tax code reform.

Insights
  • Trump's explicit statement that he wants housing prices to go up reveals a fundamental conflict between protecting existing homeowner wealth and enabling first-time buyers, with the average first-time homebuyer age now at 40
  • U.S. healthcare costs are driven by lack of transparency and market fragmentation across hospitals, insurers, PBMs, and drug companies, requiring government negotiating power to address
  • Tariffs function as regressive sales taxes disproportionately impacting working-class and poor Americans while raising costs across the economy
  • Economic inequality has corrosive effects on both the economy and democracy, with billionaires wielding disproportionate political power relative to their wealth
  • Mixed-income housing integration in wealthy suburbs is a high-impact policy lever for improving upward mobility and opportunity for low-income families
Trends
Housing affordability crisis deepening with rents up 30% from 2020-2023 and first-time homebuyer age reaching 40 years oldGrowing recognition that tariffs function as regressive taxation disproportionately harming working-class consumersShift toward government negotiation models for healthcare pricing, following international examples like Germany's bargaining systemIncreased focus on wealth and income inequality as a corrosive force on democratic institutions and economic opportunityGLP-1 drugs emerging as transformative health intervention with applications beyond weight loss, creating cost-access challengesPolicy debate shifting from single-payer healthcare toward public option models that create competitive pressure on insurersRising emphasis on zoning reform and mixed-income housing as structural solution to opportunity gaps and upward mobilityTax code reform gaining traction as alternative to wealth taxes, focusing on capital gains, stepped-up basis, and estate taxes
Companies
Uber
Host Scott Galloway discussed canceling his Uber subscription after spending $35,000 annually, citing 7-10% annual pr...
Lyft
Mentioned as alternative ride-sharing service that Galloway is using after canceling Uber subscription
Amazon Prime
Galloway mentioned unsubscribing from Amazon Prime as part of his subscription audit movement
Paramount Plus
Streaming service Galloway plans to unsubscribe from as part of his cost-reduction initiative
Apple TV Plus
Streaming service Galloway plans to unsubscribe from as part of his cost-reduction initiative
Caviar
Food delivery service mentioned as Galloway's preferred alternative to Uber Eats
People
Neera Tanden
President and CEO of Center for American Progress, former White House Domestic Policy Council director, ACA architect...
Donald Trump
Current U.S. President whose housing and tariff policies are central to the affordability crisis discussion
Scott Galloway
Host of Prof G Markets, discussing personal spending patterns and moderating policy discussion with Tanden
Ed Elson
Co-host of Prof G Markets, engaged in banter with Galloway about subscription cancellation movement
Raphael Warnock
Referenced by Tanden as speaker at Center for American Progress discussing spiritual crisis and opportunity in America
Thomas Piketty
Economist whose work on inequality was referenced by Tanden as foundational to 15-year inequality conversation
Raj Chetty
Economist whose research on poverty and upward mobility in wealthier areas was cited by Tanden
Ronald Reagan
Referenced in discussion of historical tax policy and capital gains taxation approaches
Barack Obama
Former president under whom Tanden worked on Affordable Care Act and domestic policy
Joe Biden
Current president whose administration Tanden served as Domestic Policy Council director
Quotes
"I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes and they can be assured that's what's going to happen."
Donald TrumpHousing policy discussion
"The administration's cornerstone policy is tariffs. And those tariffs raise the cost of goods for most Americans a lot of small businesses and just increased costs overall in the economy."
Neera TandenAffordability assessment
"President Trump is the first president in my lifetime who has actually successfully taken health care away from people."
Neera TandenHealthcare policy evaluation
"The per unit cost of things in America is much more expensive. Going to a doctor, getting a medical device, getting a surgery is much more expensive here than in Europe or other places."
Neera TandenHealthcare cost analysis
"If I could change one thing in America just for a day, I would have a system in America where we integrated housing a lot more, allowed much more mixed-income housing in places that are wealthier in the country."
Neera TandenPolicy priorities discussion
Full Transcript
Support for the show comes from Fundrise. For the past seven years, there's been a room in finance most people couldn't enter, a room where you could have invested in some of the biggest names in tech, companies like Airbnb and Uber, before their multi-billion dollar IPOs. I'm talking about venture capital. Fundrise recently took a sledgehammer to those closed doors by launching a venture capital product that's available to anyone. Their mission is to give everyone the chance to invest in the best tech and AI companies before they go public. You can visit Fundrise.com slash ProfG to check out Fundrise's venture portfolio and get in early today. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This is a paid advertisement. When you run a business, you want the right tools. Enter Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. from household names to brands just getting started. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand's style. So if you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into... with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. Go to shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. Power your business with the platform trusted by millions today. What does it really mean to be a neighbor? It's just everyday people. You know, it's just people who are retired. They have a couple hours in the afternoon, so they're going to do patrols. And it's people who are, you know, real estate agents driving around, like trying to track how ice is moving and alert neighbors when things are not safe. The Rise of Mutual Aid in Times of Crisis. That's this week on Explain It to Me. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Today's number one. The United Arab Emirates will send its first ever athlete to the Winter Olympics this weekend. An Alpine skier who learned to ski in a Dubai shopping mall. True story yet. I absolutely love the Winter Olympics. It's the first time where I can scream at a woman, sweep harder during the curling event and not be called a sexist. Listen to me. Markets are bigger than us. What you have here is a structural change in the wealth distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it. What do you think, Ed? You didn't really give me time to laugh. Just immediately, what do you think? you got it you got to give it a moment this is what they teach you in in comedy school you got to wait a beat and wait for the audience is that what they teach you in comedy school you're talking to most comical a university high school so in bitch uh the reason i'm a virgin until 19 and not till 40 is because of this rocket sense of humor you can always improve you can always be better no matter how good you are well the winter olympics play an important social role it's important that there's a sport or an event where only white people are allowed to play that sports that no one else can afford to learn so that's true that's not a joke that's just a fact that was social commentary in the form of humor how are you i'm doing very well how are you i'm fucking exhausted i'm doing this i don't know if you've heard but i've seen a little out of breath i kind of started a movement um and i'm about to go on jake tapper and then anyways um i unsubscribe i know you want to know more about me um i unsubscribed from uber last night and but i love uber this is a tough one and when you unsubscribe which i'm sure you've already done as you want to be part of this movement and not just virtue taking a lot of fucking time you little hipster brooklyn sandal died weirdo but i unsubscribed from uber and the last screen you set you see it tells you how many uber eats you've ordered and how many uber rides you've taken okay guess how many times I've ordered from Uber Eats? I think it's got to be like a thousand. Am I going too high? 37. I'm not a big delivery guy. And I usually use Caviar for some reason. I'm using the interface. In the last 10 years, how many Ubers have I taken? That's got to be over a thousand for sure. 3,756. And I did some research. All right. So this is what big tech does. Big tech comes in with a value proposition where they charge you 20 bucks for an Uber that cost them 40, they try and consolidate the market, and then they slowly but surely start raising prices. So I take UberLux. The average UberLux ride in 2015 was between $40 and $60. Today, by the way, Uber has raised its prices once they consolidated the market 7% to 10% a year, twice or triple times the rate of inflation. Now the average UberLux ride is $80 to $120. So 350 rides a year at an average price of about $100, because I'm usually going back and forth from the airport. I am spending every year $35,000 on Uber. That's true. And I realize this is a story of privilege, but what I've decided is I canceled. Clip that now. I canceled Uber. I've been taking the tube and the subway in New York, which are incredible. I don't know if you knew this, but there's tunnels underground and these cars go through them on tracks and they get you where you need to go for like two or three bucks. They're just, they're really, they're seriously amazing. Some weird people and also the people aren't that hot on the train. That's the only thing I would suggest fixing. We need more hot people on the trains. Yeah, they could make like a hot girls train maybe. That would fix things. Or hot dudes. I'm fine with the hot guys. I got Equinox. At this point, I just want hot. So I figured out with the money I'm going to save, no joke, I could lease, including parking and insurance, with the money I'm going to save, having canceled my Uber account, I could lease a Mercedes G-Wagon, the new BMW i7, or a Range Rover with the money I'm saving. This is all a long-winded way of saying go to Resist and Unsubscribe, and you will find out just how much money you are spending on different tech platforms that have slowly but surely increased their pricing, and you don't realize how much it's costing you anyways i'm getting uh just to really stick it to the man i'm gonna go buy a range rover but here's the i mean here's the question because i mean how are you getting around are you not are you are you switching to lyft because i know you're doing this thing where you you have two different uh subscriptions and you get rid of one of them is that is that what you're doing here i'm not exaggerating i've been taking the tube in the subway and i've been doing this awful thing called uber x where they have like air freshener and shitty cars and oh my god you're still taking ubers it's just you downgraded no i do the lift the the cheap lift one okay lift it's called lift walmart or something or lift lift life has not worked out the way i'd hoped um but and a guy who doesn't know how to use ways and is on an android phone um god i sound like such a douchebag right now but i've been taking the subway it's incredible good stuff 35 000 that's pretty good so anyways um um i'm going one by one uber was the tough one i'm excited about that one i'm doing paramount plus tonight tomorrow i'm gonna do apple tv plus i did amazon prime on friday that wasn't hard i don't order that much from amazon but anyways I'm shocked to hear that. Yeah, I don't buy a lot from Amazon. What have you unsubscribed from, given I know how emotionally invested you are in this movement? I haven't unsubscribed yet, but I'm happy to hear from you what you think I should unsubscribe from. I could maybe go between left and Uber. Hold on, hold on one second, Ed. One second. Memo to file, Ed Elson, review and compensation. Does not act like an owner, is poor for morale. Music does not match the words. is disappointing our audience. We'll see how disappointed everyone is. Let me get this. Your boss and a person you constantly say I'm your role model has started a movement and you have yet to unsubscribe from anything. Do I have that right? You did get that right, yeah. And by the way, none of this comes for free. We just lost an advertiser who rhymes with Snapple and we just lost, or I lost, another telco advertiser that rhymes with Mint Mobile. Anyways, nothing's for free, Ed. Corp. Regents are like, it's really great you're finding your virtue all of a sudden, but we're not down with that. And so, yeah, nothing's for free. Nothing's for free. Anyways. All right, let's get to our guest, Ed. All right, here's our conversation with Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress. Neera, thank you for joining us on Prof.G Markets. Thanks for having me. So I just want to start with a quick bio of who you are. So you are the CEO of the Center for American Progress. You've also worked in the White House. You are the director for the Domestic Policy Council under Biden. You also helped to create the Affordable Care Act under Obama. You are a Democrat, but you have just plainly had a lot of experience in policy. So we want to focus on affordability in this episode and the policies that we're seeing from the administration so far. But just based on your experience, having worked in the White House, having worked as a policymaker, how would you rate the performance of this administration one year in? I think the first and foremost thing for any administration to do is to figure out how to do no harm. In that arena, the administration has definitely failed. What is, you know, kind of stark is that at a time where people are concerned about really making ends meet, the administration's cornerstone policy is tariffs. And those tariffs raise the cost of goods for you know most Americans a lot of small businesses and just increased costs overall in the economy But it also important to remember that tariffs are essentially a version of a sales tax that is really disproportionately impacting kind of working class poor Americans So I think on affordability writ large, the real challenge for the administration is that it's making the problem worse. And when you really go beyond just goods like groceries or just buying like soccer balls at your local Target to, you know, things like health care, it's an even starker picture. So there, the president is really President Trump is the first president in my lifetime who has actually successfully taken health care away from people. It was the one big, beautiful bill act. will increase costs for millions of Americans by ensuring they don't have health insurance. The whole debate on premium tax credits, the Affordable Care Act, premium tax credits is also fundamentally about affordability as well. So I am going to go with an F. Saw that coming. I know that might shock people. That might be, I just was like, I was really changing it up there. But yeah, I'm going with the failing grade. I was expecting a D coming in. We went straight to the F. So there's a lot of different domains to dig into here. I want to dig into housing for a moment. We saw two kind of remarkable interactions last week. I'm just going to play these two clips for you, and I'd love to get your reactions. There's so much talk about, oh, we're going to drive housing prices down. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes and they can be assured that's what's going to happen. We are going to give guidance at some point to see what is a mom and pop that someone, maybe your parents for their retirement, about five, 10, 12 homes. So we don't want to push the mom and pops out. We just want to push everyone else out. I mean, those two clips really made the rounds. I think the clip that I'd really like to get your reaction to is Trump saying that he actually wants housing prices to go up, which is quite remarkable because it seemed that he's been trying to present that he wants to address housing affordability. He's come up with some proposals that we can get into. But then he comes out and he just says outright, no, I want them to go up. What do you make of that clip? How relevant and important actually is it? What does it mean for affordability writ large? We get a lot of conversation from Donald Trump, but every once in a while, he will just honestly tell you what he thinks about an issue. And I think this is really one of those areas. And, you know, for people who understand housing in America, one of the big challenges is that it's a difficult issue, right? Because people who have bought a house, you know, a lot of people's wealth in America is in their house. And so a lot of incumbents like to keep the people who already own a home like to actually keep housing values up and sometimes oppose the development of additional housing in their neighborhoods, etc. But we're really living through one of the problems with that whole system, which is today the average age of a first-time homebuyer in the United States is 40 years old. Rents went up 30% from 2020 to 2023, and they've stabilized since then. And in some markets, they're coming down, but people overall have got a rent shock and a housing shock. And I think it really does say a lot about the president, which is, I think, the people he talks to on a regular basis, maybe the wealthiest Americans, really want to keep housing values up because it is key to their wealth. But for working class Americans, middle class Americans who are trying to buy a home or trying to just make ends meet by having an affordable rent, to say that you don't want any more housing means you want housing prices to go up. You want to make it harder to buy that home. You want to make it harder to afford the rent. That is what that means. And, you know, I think it's just kind of a classic thing here, which is on tariffs, on this policy, on so much more, you know, the great irony here is the president is making life a lot harder economically for working class, middle class Americans. Do you think that that quote actually means that we are going to have a policy under Trump of not building more housing? because, I mean, I guess something that's been interesting to me is I thought that there were just debates over what to—I thought we all agreed we want to get housing prices down. And then the debate or the divergence was like, how do you do that? Do you do it by addressing interest rates? Do you go out and buy mortgage bonds, as Trump has proposed? Or do you—you know, he's even proposed that institutional investors can't buy single-family homes. Do you just build more housing? That's been the whole abundance thing coming from Ezra Klein. And yet then he just says outright, no, actually, that's not our difference of opinion here. I want them to go up. Does that mean that we're actually going to see policies, you think, that will actually increase the price of housing intentionally? Is that what that means? My interpretation of what happened here is the president might have been talking about lowering housing costs because his advisors tell him to say he wants to lower housing costs. It is a really deep concern for Americans. It's a really deep concern for young people, like, you know, people who are trying to buy their first home. People are in their, like, 30s, 40s. It's like a lot of his constituents, it's people who voted for Donald Trump, think housing is too high. So I think that is why his political advisors had told him that. And then I think maybe he was at Mar-a-Lago on a Saturday night where a bunch of really rich people said, well, you know, more housing means that in my neighborhood, like Scarsdale or wherever people live, you'd have more housing. And that, you know, that nobody wants that. Nobody wants housing, more housing in my neighborhood. Nobody wants to devalue like my house. And I think this is an issue where you kind of have to choose. I mean, this is the issue about policymaking. And when you work in policy, you have to make a choice, oftentimes between two different groups. And, you know, I thought that clip kind of just, in a way, perfectly captured the president's interest, which has been a hallmark of his administration, which is to do what he needs to do for his supporters, donors, network, whatever you want to call it. We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend and please follow us if you haven't already. Support for the show comes from Fundrise. Investing in companies already in the S&P 500 can sometimes feel like you're being served someone else's leftovers. It's still a great meal, but it's hard not to imagine what the food tasted like when it was fresh out of the oven. Historically, only venture capital investors were served access to the best tech companies in the world that hadn't gone public yet. 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Announcing Project Swagger, my new weekly podcast, your transformation toolkit. I'm going to cut through the noise and give you actionable takeaways each week in under 30 minutes. Elevate your hustle with routines, strategies and mindset shifts that I have pressure tested. I have burnt down this Beyonce candle, like, all the way to the bottom. We have been trying to manifest. Carves are not the enemy. I probably have a piece of bread or a bagel with me at all times, and I am not exaggerating. Tune in on February 24th for episode one, Building the Skill of Self-Talk. This is the foundation. Follow Project Swagger wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go. Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, the one and only Flaje Johnson joins us to talk about leveling up for the WNBA, managing NIL money, and how she's nurturing her music career. We're also taking a closer look at why participation in girls' sports is declining. Surprising, we know. And we're giving some love to Valentine's Day and what it's like dating a pro athlete and who's the best athlete couple of all time. Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. We're back with Prof G Markets. I think one thing that I always find and that we always find whenever we try to dig into healthcare is we like try to figure out why are healthcare costs still so high? Why are they so much higher in America? And then we kind of do the digging and digging and then it always comes around to some answer of oh there a lot of just complexity in the middle somewhere There the pharmacy benefit managers There the insurance companies No one can see eye to eye on this stuff The whole thing is just like oh it really complicated Like, that's the explanation. Could you just give us like a 101 on what is going on with healthcare policy in America right now? And why hasn't America really gotten its act together in terms of bringing healthcare costs down? The way I bottom line healthcare costs in America is the per unit cost of things in America is much more expensive. Going to a doctor, getting a medical device, getting a surgery is much more expensive here than in Europe or other places. Just anything you do is a lot more expensive in the United States. And the reason why it is a lot more expensive of the United States is essentially you have a variety of forces, hospitals, insurers, PBMs, drug benefit managers like middlemen, the drug companies, all like very few of those forces are transparent. And so it basically, the fractured system allows a bunch of people to drive up costs. A big area where things are just much more expensive in the United States is hospital care. And those hospitals often have a monopoly. And no individual group has enough market power to really drive costs effectively down. So it's a very inflationary system. So I don't have like a much better answer than it's complex. And that's what makes it more expensive. But essentially of a system that is super fractured. And in a way, everyone looks at somebody else to lower the to be transparent. What we should do is have everyone be transparent. And the hospital should be really clear on what it costs. And, you know, I do think that there is an additional problem in the United States, which is because people don't have health insurance, there are a bunch of forces. Like hospitals shift costs. I mean, we've insured a lot of people in the United States, particularly after the ACA, but there are some people who still don't have coverage and they shift costs to others to sort of pay for that. So it's two complicated things. But what we should do is have radical transparency everywhere, get rid of the PBMs. There's a lot of self-dealing in the system as well, and that would make it a lot better. What could government do about this? Like, what I'm getting is, like, all of these, this fractured system, all of these independent actors, everyone's blaming it on each other, pointing fingers, being opaque. Like, I feel like that's exactly the domain of the government to get in there and just figure it out. What would that look like? There are states that have done really effective things. And I'll give an example. So it's to use the power of the government, not to set price caps, but to basically try to negotiate with all the insurers. Insurance is regulated in the United States basically at the state level for the most part. And so very similar to the German model where you have kind of bargaining between all the employers and all the insurers to set that the government kind of oversees to set lower prices for insurance. And they do the same thing with hospitals. And essentially it helps bring the whole price system down by taking negotiating power and concentrating it. And this is why I think it's important for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, because you have something that has a lot of market power able to match the power of like near monopoly prescription drug companies. So I think, you know, other countries have used that model. Other countries have also done single payer. but in a system that's going to be, that you imagine, short of single-payer, having the government help, you know, basically negotiate with employers and, like, bring all the employers together and renegotiate rates down in a way where companies can still be profitable, but you actually are concerned about consumer costs as well. You know, I think that's an important step. What is Trump, is this administration doing on healthcare policy that you think is either a good idea or a bad idea? I think the one thing that I'm kind of interested in particularly is Trump Rx. And from my understanding, it's this policy to theoretically get the cost of drugs down. That's also part of his whole great healthcare plan. The details are not very clear as to what he's actually going to do there. But just on health care, what do you make of what this administration has either gotten done or not gotten done so far? The Trump administration is trying to lower health care costs and actually lower the level of federal payments to Medicare Advantage plans. So the Trump administration recently, you know, tried to put the brakes on some overpayments to Medicare Advantage, which Medicare Advantage is a private insurance in the Medicare system, which historically has been, you know, overcharging the federal government vis-a-vis, like much more than, you know, it pays for traditional Medicare, fee-for-service Medicare that the government is just handling. handling. So that's that's one area. And and Trump are like. Basically, the Democrats in Congress passed Medicare drug negotiation. They have not undone that. And in some ways, it seems like they're trying to act like they're building on that by lowering drug costs. But, you know, whatever, that's good. It's good. This is an area where they are trying to continue that work, and there are plenty of areas that are not continuing important good work. So, you know, I think that's a really important step. I think the fact is that even Donald Trump recognizes Americans pay more for drugs, prescription drugs, than anywhere else in the world. And we do that at the same time where we spend the most money on research for prescription drugs. So consumers are paying on both ends. And I'm glad he's trying to take some steps there. We'll be right back. And for even more markets insights, sign up for our newsletter at profgmarkets.com slash subscribe. as an activist dating back to the 1970s when she was protesting the Vietnam Roar to her ongoing fight for climate, free speech, and ultimately our democracy. Here's a taste of what she had to say. Hope is very different than optimism. You know, optimism is everything's going to be fine and you don't do anything about it. Hope is a muscle. Hope is when you fight. Hope can be rage-filled. breaking down the door with a battering ram. This is a wonderful conversation, and I am privileged to be able to talk to people like this. Jane Fonda is the bomb. She just is. She's always been that way. She remains that way. She will go down in history as that. You can listen to wherever you get your podcasts and search for us, too, on YouTube. And be sure to follow On with Kara Swisher for more. We're back with Prof G Markets. I want to take advantage of the fact that you are sort of at the intersection of kind of a think tank. Is that how you would describe your group right now, policy group think tank? Yes, I would say the Center for American Progress is an action-oriented think tank. An action tank. So the—and the fact you've worked in the Obama administration, you have a solid understanding of economics. What I want to do is sort of a lightning round here. I want to propose a series of policy ideas and get your sort of quick 30,000-foot action-oriented reaction. Are you ready? Single payer or national health care? If America could start over again, there'd be a lot of benefits to single payer. It works well in other countries, but it would be a radical transformation today. So I we support I support more of a public option to people that would create competition for insurance companies. And they'd actually have to compete on lowering costs vis-a-vis the government. Mass distribution of GLP-1 drugs. That would be great. I mean, GLP-1 drugs are, they have many facets, one of which is the drug companies just kind of discovered, like, they basically struck gold with these drugs. They weren't expecting to, you know, they didn't invest to have this kind of benefit. They are exceedingly expensive. They have huge costs, huge health implications. they would make Americans' lives much, much better on a whole range of issues. We're discovering health, sleeping, heart conditions, as well as weight loss. So it would be fantastic to get wide distribution and much cheaper price. Federally mandated minimum wage of $25 an hour. I think, you know, we're looking at things like a $20 an hour. I think the most important thing to think about here is how you set a wage that people can live on and do it in a way that creates more job opportunities and doesn't give people an excuse to get rid of jobs. So, I mean, you could do $25 minimum wage and think of some regional variation. But I think the impetus to drive the minimum wage up is really crucial and hugely necessary. Just in much of the land mass of the country it is still just as a reminder So think about what that like In most of the South it still In much of the West it still And I think that is outrageous, frankly, in this day and age. Elimination of capital gains and mortgage interest, one basic income tax rate, and similar to what Reagan did. I think the country over the last 20 years has seen a big increase in wealth that goes towards capital versus labor. And I mean, there's been some studies that show when you really raise capital gains that, you know, people play games around that. But fundamentally, I think we should raise, we should have, we should not have this big differential between capital gains and traditional income that benefits very wealthy Americans. Last one, alternative minimum tax of 50% for anyone making over, say, $3 million a year. Yeah, that sounds good. I think what I'd say here, and you know, you've talked about this yourself, I think we have a real kind of cancer in the country in declining opportunity. And I'll also say, you know, we had Raphael Warnock here at CAP a few months ago, and he was talking about, you know, essentially a spiritual crisis in the country. And he identified it really with a sense that millions of Americans, most Americans, in fact, don't think that they can, that they have a real fair shot in the country. And they might think that because it's true that upward mobility has really declined. We have less economic mobility than Canada, almost half. We have less than most countries in Europe. This was a country that used to be a place where you could go as far as your talents can take you. So I think we have to transform our institutions to make them put that issue, like opportunity for every American, at the heart of what they do. And those ideas are part of that. Last question for me, just along the lines of the lightning round. What do you think of the idea of the notion of mandatory national service? I love it. I wish we could get it done tomorrow. I would add one proposal to the lightning round. This has gotten a lot of tension recently. It's very controversial. It was proposed in California, and that is a wealth tax. Specifically, the one that was proposed in California would be a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Basically, for those wondering what is a wealth tax, it's just take your net worth and lop off 5%. what do you think of wealth taxes? Do you think they make sense? Do you think they will address inequality? What do you make of them? Well, I think it's hard to do at a state level. I will say that. I think the fundamental impetus to me is how you address the inequality in the country. And I want to say a little bit more about that, which is I think we've had an important conversation about inequality for over, you know, 15 years. Piketty's book came out like 15 years ago. And I think that we lose sight of how it's a corrosive effect, not just on our economy, but our democracy. I mean, and that billionaires today have the ability to have a billion times wealth of other people is one thing, but they also have a billion times more political power. So I think it is very corrosive. Now, you know, I hate to be a policy wonk here, but there is some concern that a Supreme Court will never approve of a wealth tax because we needed an amendment to even get an income tax. So I think to me, the most important question is how do we use, how do we, what ideas can we have, which there are many, to reduce the kind of overwhelming political power and economic power of the very wealthiest people in America. And, you know, I would just also note, you know, if you just look at, say, the 1995 tax code, okay, was in the heart of the Clinton administration. It had pretty high taxes and the economy was doing very well, okay? We were still able to have a tech boom. We had pretty high tax rates on income. We had pretty high tax rates on the highest end and on capital gains. And, you know, we didn't do these three rounds of tax cuts that George Bush did on dividends and all these other things. We're just a wealth of areas that we have cut taxes on over the last 20 to 30 years that we could undo without the Supreme Court challenge or other challenge that a wealth tax would raise. And so it might be easier to start doing those and see where we'll end up. I mean, yeah, I think this is hitting on what Scott often talks about, which is the difference between being right and effective. And, you know, maybe a wealth transfer fixes things, just a one-time wealth tax. But is it actually going to get done? To your point, probably, almost definitely not. Are you proposing higher taxes in general, just higher tax rates? What are some of the ideas that you think are more likely to happen that would be more effective, more probable than a wealth tax? So I think we should start with what our values are, right? Like, I think, you know, we should reward merit in our country. We should ensure that like people can rise, etc. We shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't make it so much easier to have benefits of capital over labor. You know, you should reward work. Um, so if you like those values to me mean that you would eliminate things like stepped up basis, which is a way in which really wealthy people kind of hide money from taxes and enrich their errors. You should have a higher estate tax, in my view. You should have raised capital gains, you know, increase, not lower taxes on dividends. You know, there's just a whole way. There's a whole range of ways that tax code, particularly over the last 30 years, has benefited super wealthy Americans and benefited capital over labor. People are investing instead of people who are like working paycheck to paycheck. And from my perspective, I think we should start. I mean, like, you know, I think we should have a rich debate about a wealth tax. Sure. But it's complicated. It's really hard to do. It's people can still hide assets and income. And so I think we could just start off making the tax code a lot fairer by unrigging it in many ways that it's been rigged over 30, at least particularly the last 30 years. If you were the emperor of America for a day, so there's no Congress, there's no checks, no balances, you can basically just do whatever you want. You've got a day to do it. What would you change in the law? What would you implement and why? I would ensure that we built mixed income housing in the suburbs and wealthier parts of America. And I'll say why I think that, you know, essentially what we've learned about poverty in America is that people who have access to like wealthier places, poor people who have access to wealthier places, their upward mobility goes up like this. Rod Shetty has done a lot of work in this space. And, you know, to be candid, this actually is a bit the story of my life. My parents got divorced when I was really young. My father left just as a kind of accident of policy. Massachusetts had passed this encouragement of low-income housing in suburban areas. My mom was able to move into an apartment. We had really good schools. if she didn't have that apartment in a middle-class town, I could have grown up in a place where no one went to a college. I grew up in a place where everyone went to college. I went to college. I went to eventually law school, and I'm here because of all those decisions. So if I could change one thing in America just for a day, there'd be a lot of opposition from some, like, wealthy homeowners, but I would have a system in America where we integrated housing a lot more, allowed much more mixed-income housing in places that are wealthier in the country. And I think you'd have a lot more opportunity for everyone. Neera Tanden is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress. Before leading American Progress, Tanden was the domestic policy advisor to President Joe Biden and director of the Domestic Policy Council, overseeing some of the administration's signature achievements, including its efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs and expand health insurance coverage. Previously, she was senior advisor and staff secretary in the White House. Neera, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time. Thank you. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Shilan, Isabella Kinsel, Christian O'Donoghue and Mia Silverio. Drew Burrows is our technical director. And Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday. Lifetimes You have me In kind Reunion As the world turns And the dark flies In love, love, love, love