But this is specifically designed, as

Bradley astutely pointed out, to

villainize the rich, to villainize

successful people. And when they hear

that you want to put the eye of every

socialist lunatic in New York on Ken

Griffin's house, or you want to

villainize Larry and Sergey,

uh they leave. They don't want to be in

a state where they're not wanted.

>> [music]

>> And also, it's dangerous. We've now

tipped over with the United Healthcare

CEO Brian Thompson being murdered.

They're literally putting targets on

people's back. And the target they're

putting on their back is this person's

successful, [music] and you should hate

them for being successful.

Welcome to [music] Prop G Markets. I'm

Ed Elson. It is May 20th. Let's check in

on yesterday's market vitals.

The major indices ended the day in the

red with tech stocks declining ahead of

Nvidia's earnings due tonight. Brent

crude climbed back above $110 per barrel

with no progress on Iran, and the yield

on 30-year Treasuries hit its highest

level since 2007 on long-term energy

inflation expectations. Traders are

increasingly anticipating a rate hike

from the Federal Reserve, and on

Calc-U-Late, the odds that we will see a

hike this year have climbed to 43%.

Okay, what else is happening?

Billionaire wealth has more than doubled

since 2019, and now voters want to tax

it. The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act is

officially on the November ballot in

California. It would impose a one-time

5% tax on the assets of Californians

worth $1 billion or more. The union

backing the measure says the goal is to

prevent hospital closures across

California and fund state programs, but

the proposed tax has drawn fierce

opposition. Critics argue that wealth

taxes target the people driving

investment and job creation, and could

push them out of the state. And

California is just the start. Senator

Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna

have introduced a federal version that

would go even further with a 5% annual

tax on every American billionaire. So,

we figured that this was a good time to

have a discussion about the wealth tax

with two people who have thought very

hard about it. Today, we are speaking

with Jason Calacanis, investor and host

of the All-In podcast, and also Bradley

Tusk, founder and CEO of Tusk Ventures.

Jason and Bradley, thank you so much for

joining me here on Prof G Markets.

Bradley, I'm going to start with you

because you've just written about this.

I'd like to just sort of set the stage

here.

We're thought talking about taxing

billionaires, not just in California,

but also across the rest of of the

nation or at a federal level. How did we

get here? And when you look at

California, what are the chances that

you think this will actually go through?

Yeah, there is, in my view, no question

that we have an income inequality

problem in the United States. Um the

question is, how do you best go about

solving it? And to me, you know, there's

half a dozen ideas that are a lot better

than a billionaires tax. And I'm saying

this is someone who ran the state of

Illinois. I was the deputy governor. I

oversaw the state's budget and

operations. And so, every year, I had to

figure out how we were going to take in

money, and then how we were going to

distribute it. And I know for a fact

that every time that someone like Ed

Ellison sent us a dollar in tax revenue,

by the time that money reached the

people in need, 30-40 cents on that

dollar was gone. And so, sure, we could

make billionaires pay more in taxes, but

odds are a lot of that really is just

about, you know, further full-time

employment for the public sector and

public sector unions, who are big

Democratic donors. And so, I do think

that people who have more should have to

pay more. I don't think that this is the

way to do it. Um but the reason we're

here is there is political opportunity

in exploiting the anger of people, and

you see that from both sides. Trump is a

master out of that at the right, and

people like Sanders are masters out on

the left. And when you take people's

frustrations with their lives, and you

stoke their anger, and you promise them

revenge and justice, they will vote for

you. And therefore, the more they vote

for you, and the more they pay you

attention, and the more they donate

money, the more you do it. And so, we're

in this self-fulfilling cycle now, where

both sides are incentivized to be as

demagogic as possible, and ideas like

billionaires taxes or whatever else

become very popular. In terms of your

second question out of will this pass,

I'm not sure. So, the latest polling

that I saw did have it at about 50%

support, 28% opposed, and the other 23

or whatever it was undecided. But if you

look at Cal Western polling market, it's

much more like two to one against. Um

so, that kind of gives you a mixed

thing. On a more basic level, on the

30-something years I spent in politics,

the way I would look at this is to say,

the average person, when they see the

ballot question, is going to say, um

does this affect me? No. Do I think

billionaires should pay more? Yes. Do I

want to see healthcare cut? No. And so,

that would argue that people will vote

for it. However, there were some pretty

fatal flaws, whether it just out of sort

of greed or stupidity by the proponents.

And one of them is that it allows the

California legislature to expand this to

any group they want, as long as

consistent with the intents and purposes

of the referendum, which means that 1.1

billion could fall to 110 million, or 11

million, or 1.1 million. Once you're 1.1

million, that's every homeowner in

California, pretty much. And so, um the

opposition will have a lot of money uh

to spend. And I think that if they can

craft the right message, they can win

this thing, but I think it's probably

going to be pretty close. Jason, you

speak with politicians, lawmakers, and

you also speak with many Silicon Valley

investors and Silicon Valley

billionaires on your podcast and through

through your investing. What do you make

of their reactions? How are they

reacting to this and then what do you

think about this California tax?

So, I think first you have to understand

it's not a

tax in the traditional sense. This is a

seizure.

So, they're not just saying, "Hey, you

got to pay 5% more." If it was, I don't

think they would have had any reaction

to it. If they said anybody with

equities that are valued over this

amount or if it was, you know, wealth

over a certain amount, nobody would have

complained. You might have had some

hand-wringing, but generally they've

been boiling the frog in New York and in

California where people pay over 50%

When I lived there, I paid well over

50%. I think New York's up to 54%. 54.

Yep, 54.

>> 54, yeah. So,

people are not complaining too much

about that. If they want to opt out of

it, they can. They can move to a no-tax

state and save 14, 15, 16%. Okay, great.

This is Tell me everything in your

house, Ed. Tell me every painting. Tell

me every car. Oh, you have the first

Model S. What's it worth? Okay, go find

somebody to appraise my two,

you know, classic cars. What are they

worth? And then we want 5% of those. So,

and then what do you have in private

companies? So, it's a seizure of assets.

I've already paid taxes on all of my

wealth

and so why am I then having to organize

everything, hire auditors? It's just

impossible

to execute on these.

In addition, the way it was written,

people who have preferred shares or a

found what's called founder shares like

10 to 1 super voting rights, would get

valued at the voting rights, not the

actual asset. That's why Larry and

Sergey, Zuckerberg, immediately left.

Travis has left, David Sacks has left.

The list of people leaving is huge. Why?

It is incredibly disruptive to have to

then go, make a list of everything you

own, and pay 5% of it. Nobody is upset

about paying more taxes. So, it's the

seizure part.

So, it's incredibly poorly constructed.

The second piece is

everybody knows that once you start a

tax, you never take it away. It is

incredibly hard to get rid of taxes. And

if you smoke cigarettes, or you stay in

hotels, you see the taxes, they never

come down. Nobody's eliminating taxes.

In some Republican states, they do lower

taxes when they have a windfall, or

they'll do like a tax moratorium for

some period of time if they have a

surplus. Things like universal health

care, the minimum wage, there are things

that we can do. But this is specifically

designed, as Bradley astutely pointed

out, to villainize the rich, to

villainize successful people. Being a

modestly successful person,

uh and knowing a lot of people who are

extremely successful, they're astute

people.

And when they hear that

you want to

uh put the eye of every socialist

lunatic in New York on Ken Griffin's

house, or you want to villainize Larry

and Sergey, uh they leave.

And it's partially because

well, they know it's going to get worse.

They don't want to be in a state where

they're not wanted. And also, it's

dangerous. We've now tipped over with

the United Healthcare CEO, and Brian

Thompson being murdered.

This is uh basically politicians like Ro

Khanna and others,

uh Mondami in New York,

Bernie, they're literally putting

targets on people's back. And the target

they're putting on their back is this

person's successful and you should hate

them for being successful. Full

disclosure, we were going to have Ro

Khanna on to discuss this.

Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have

to step in and and play the the devil's

advocate here. I was hoping that Ro

Khanna could do it, but I'm going to do

it for him and hopefully we'll have Ro

on another time and we can discuss this.

I think one response to your points,

Jason, would be that there is this

question of would it be effective? The

idea of can you appraise everyone's

assets and do that every year and count

up how much your art is worth and your

cars and your private companies and

would you do all of that and does that

make sense? Does it Is it possible?

There are very, very big questions

there.

But it does seem that it in a lot of

ways it seems like the the very richest,

the the centimillionaires, the

billionaires, in a way I think a lot of

people would say that that is an excuse

in order to not be taxed properly. And

the things that people would point to in

terms of the reason that you need

something like this, the reason that you

would need something quite dramatic, is

the fact that wealth inequality has

gotten, some would say, way out of

control. The top 19 households owning 2%

of all the household wealth up from 0.1%

just around uh 20 to 30 years ago. The

fact that the top 1% owns more of the

household wealth in America than the

entire middle class, that wasn't true 30

years ago. There are things that have

changed here. And it seems as though

this wallet might not be the most

>> [laughter]

>> effective or or easiest way to do it, to

Bradley's point. This is something. And

then when we propose something, then

suddenly the billionaires say, "This

isn't possible This isn't fair. I don't

like this. I'm out of here." Some would

say, "Maybe you just don't want to pay

taxes." What would you say to that

argument?

Uh well, I want to let Bradley get in

here, but I'll answer it as quickly as I

can. I don't want to monopolize the time

but um what I would say is if you think

there's a better way to tax then we

should do that as opposed to

villainizing folks and doing something

completely impractical that's

unconstitutional. I actually have some

recommendations here

and as a free market capitalist myself

I've invested in 700 companies some of

them have gotten very big and I invest

in 100 new companies a year. I do this

week in startups. I've done 2500

episodes where I interview startups. I'm

a fan of entrepreneurship. It is the

greatest force for change in the world.

Uh there's very simple things you can

do. You can look at something like

>> just Jason, I just want because I would

like to get to solutions. I think it's

important. I just want to understand

where you stand on this. Do you believe

that that billionaires that that the

richest in our society that there should

be more redistribution, that there

should be more taxation, that they

should be paying more in taxes just

generally?

>> Yeah, the the the biggest challenge is

So the the short answer is yes

and the the reason is capital gains has

not anticipated the concept of capital

gains which we want. We want people to

be investing. It wasn't really designed

for people to have large amounts of

wealth and to be able to set up margin

loans. Anybody who's got more than 10 or

20 million dollars can just set up a low

interest mortgage a low a low interest

margin loan for people who don't

understand what that is.

Essentially like a a credit line you

might have against your home like a home

equity line except it's against your

stocks. And you can just draw down from

it, pay it back and if your stocks are

growing more than 10% a year, 6, 7, 8,

9, 10% a year and your margin loan is

mine was as low as 2% which is

essentially free money. Now it's maybe

more like 5% given the but which is

still kind of free money. You know that

is a an actual loophole and people will

just keep drawing down on their margin

and their equities keep going up. Very

simple solution to all this is to look

at capital gains and income tax and find

something in the middle where we move to

sort of a flat tax and then

when you take out and you originate a

margin loan you you could put a tax on

it. So, let's say you had 10 million in

net worth you had 2 million

a 2 million dollar margin loan just to

make this easy

you could pay the capital gains on that

2 million margin loan or pay half of

them and then if you pay the margin loan

back you would get the credit for the

tax in the future. Very simple solution

and then finally I'll just say I think

we should really have a conversation

about minimum wage in this country which

I didn't used to think but my thinking

on it's evolved but I'll I'll let

Bradley jump in here. Yeah. Yeah,

Bradley so two suggestions there it

sounds like Jason's advocating for maybe

equalize capital gains versus income tax

also some sort of borrowing tax. What do

you make of Jason's thoughts and what do

you agree with or disagree? Yeah, I mean

I I think those are those are both good

good ideas but let's take a half a step

back if that's okay which is

if you take your devil's advocate

position the question is what are you

solving for right? So, there are two

different things. One would be

giving people who have less more and the

other would be promoting a concept of

fairness and I would say these two

things are at the moment not linked

together. So, for example in New York

City in 2012

we had 12.7% of America's millionaires.

In 2022 after tax increases a really bad

way to handle COVID excoriation of

people who are successful more

regulations everything else that fell to

8.7% and I'm sorry I meant millionaires

not billionaires. The resulting

differential in money for New York

City's and state budget was 13 billion

dollars a year in less tax revenue. So,

if you take Mondavi and all of his ideas

and all of his plans and his deficit all

of it would have been funded if we had

just maintained our percentage of

millionaires and this is why

jurisdictional tax increases tend to not

work particularly well because as Jason

said, people can move. People have been

moving already. And then if you are a

poor person, right, and you need public

housing, you need Medicaid, you need

food stamps, you don't care about social

justice, you care about the money being

there on the budget to provide you with

these things. So if California, which I

believe it would at the law at the

conclusion of if they do enact this tax,

or New York right now has the less money

to be able to help the poor,

then you're not solving for the problem

of inequality. You might be solving to

make people who are upper middle class

and highly progressive feel better

emotionally because they feel like now

the people who did better than them are

being justly punished. I don't care

about their emotional state or needs. I

care about helping poor people. So, the

two ideas Jason threw out there I think

are good ones. I'll throw some more out

there. Um I think that universal basic

income, where you give someone a dollar,

is a lot more effective than a system of

taxation and then appropriation. Now you

need taxation and you need government

for things that require collective

action, a military, a hospital, building

a road, things like that. But most

social services, um to me would be

unnecessary and you could make

government smaller, you could reduce

that part of the tax burden and instead

direct that money and more into a system

of a direct wealth transfer where if

people need money for rent or food or

clothes for their kids or whatever it

is, they would get it. And by the way,

let me give you a couple of ideas, of

which I'm an independent at this point.

So to to Jason's point, I left the

Democratic Party about 15 years ago. So

I have ideas that offend both sides,

right? So I think universal basic

income, I think Bernie was right about

Medicare for all. It is a successful

government program and there's no reason

not to let more people have access to it

if they want. You should still have

private insurance as an option as well.

Um I think we need to take things that

would really make life more affordable.

Um that includes tort reform. We have

$367 billion a year years on frivolous

lawsuits that results in all of us

having higher insurance premiums. I

think you need a lot more affordable

housing and as a result that means

taking a lot of the sort of, you know,

sacred cows of the You sound like you're

running, Bradley.

You know I'm not, but but I certainly

have a platform if I ever did.

Like endless environmental review,

endless community review, having to use

unions to build everything and and not

doing that.

>> though about people moving in geography.

This is the truth in today's era. The

people who are on the top half who are

business owners and who have equities

are running away with it. The people on

the bottom half of society who don't own

equities are stalled because America is

the greatest wealth creation machine in

the world. Our equities are phenomenal.

That's the win of America. So instead of

talking about how do we take more money

from the rich, we should be really

concentrating on

how do we get rid of waste which is

about 30% of all these budgets we found

out.

And then number two, how can we look at

the systematic things that people in the

lower half, non-equity holders, how do

we make them equity holders? That's what

this Trump accounts, America USA

accounts, they'll handle that. That's

going to take a 20 That's a 20-year

story. So we close that gap from kids up

and then we have the rich. So what do

you do with the people in between? I've

been studying minimum wage and you know,

I travel all over the world and in New

Zealand, Australia, the Nordics, it's 15

to 20 bucks.

You know, in US dollars as high as 20 to

25 dollars. I think Switzerland or

Norway might be the the leader right now

in the in the low 20s. In America it's

still federally seven and in different

locations it's 15 to 18 dollars, you

know, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco,

New York, etc.

We really should be looking at that

because when they raised the rates in

those other countries there was a lot of

hand-wringing that it would have a

negative impact on employment and it

would have a negative impact impact on

the economy. And what these studies

showed in those markets and they're not

perfectly analogous but they're worth

studying and considering and I'm not

finalized in my thoughts on this

but it turned out there was no

discernible increase in the cost of

goods it like added 50 cents to a cup of

coffee or a dollar to a hamburger in

other words it was no big deal it did

you got rid of tipping because people

were living had a

livable wage and then what happened for

the companies because everybody did it

in unison they were forced to do it

because of regulations

we had more customers who could afford

to go to Starbucks and buy a $5 coffee

or could afford to buy the next pair of

Nikes see actually take the

if you were in the bottom half of

society if you make over under $100,000

a year you're probably saving zero

except for mandatory savings like social

security you're saving zero so you spend

it all so then you just make more

consumers which is good for the rich

people and you get the virtuous cycle

going and I it's really like if I say on

all in I'm for reassessing the minimum

wage all you're a libtard whatever I'm

I'm a moderate independent every time I

bring this up rich people have

you know a very dogmatic approach to

this minimum wage has to be free market

it doesn't it doesn't it isn't right now

and so what would it kill society to try

raising it $1 a year for 5 years to go

from 7 to 12 dollars I can tell you none

of these [ __ ] would last

a week making $7 an hour or $15 an hour

because they'd be taking Uber Black and

ordering Door Dash and spending 150

bucks you know for their lunch and and

to commute so I think that's like where

we need [music] to spend our cycles

We'll be right back and if you're

enjoying the show be sure to subscribe

to the Profitt Markets YouTube channel

at the link below

>> [music]

[music]

>> We're back with property markets. I

think Jason, your point that when you

suggest raising the minimum wage and

then you're immediately dubbed as a

libtard gets to something important

here. Which is that a lot of people

would say that the same thing could be

said for one, the wealth tax, but we

could go a step further and say, you

know, for example, Zoran Mamdani's

recent pied-a-terre tax proposal. Which,

you know, a lot of people have have been

making the point where if you raise

taxes, then they'll leave. And then

Mamdani says, well, why don't we tax

people who have already left? This is

their second home. They're already gone.

Their tax dollars are gone. Why don't we

tax this? And then again, the response

is this is a libtard. This guy doesn't

know what he's talking about. I think on

the other side, the way that people

start to feel is that we're just

shooting down as many ways that we can

tax rich people as possible. And we're

using things like this is ineffective,

you're a libtard, you're a communist,

you're a socialist. To the point where

are we going to do anything? But I think

a lot of it again gets to the question

of are you trying to solve problems or

are you just trying to score political

points? So, you know, I came out in

favor of the pied-a-terre tax in New

York and said that I wasn't going to

oppose it or run any campaigns against

it. But when Mamdani then chose to make

Ken Griffin the face of it, which was

totally unnecessary because the

the the issue is not up for debate. Like

everyone supports it. So, he didn't need

to do anything. Now Griffin, who was

planning a $6 billion donation of 350

Park Avenue, might instead do that in

Florida, in Miami, which would mean

15,000 jobs that would have gone to New

Yorkers going to people in Florida

instead. And so if you care about New

Yorkers and their well-being, you

wouldn't take away 15,000 jobs. But the

reason why Mamdani did it, and I

understand politically why he did it, is

he ran for office promising social

justice, promising to tax the rich, and

that was an appealing message to help

get him elected. He thought he'd be able

to bully Kathy Hochul into doing an

income tax increase. He was totally

wrong, wasn't able [snorts] to do

anything. He got this effectively pretty

meager tax increase, and he had to make

it feel meaningful to his base so he

could get political credit for it

because otherwise it would look like he

failed. It was performative. Well,

right. And the way to do it was to make

it as controversial as possible. So, he

deliberately picked a fight with Ken

Griffin knowing that we'd all then talk

about it constantly.

>> is the next person who gets shot by the

next Mangione? And that is like

literally what people are thinking. I

can tell you like everybody working in

Silicon Valley, the number of people I

see with security teams now, and I'm

like, "Do you really need like I'll go

to dinner with five people and there's

15 security people." And I'm just like,

"What do we What are you guys doing

here?" And they're like, "Oh, I just had

a death threat. Oh, somebody just shot

the front of my house. Somebody threw a

firebomb at my house. Oh, somebody sent

a dead, you know, whatever." This is

like really happening, and the answer to

your question Ed earlier, which is

important, is if we're villainizing

everybody,

that's not helpful. Just to interrupt

Jason because agreed, we should not be

villainizing people. We should not be

posting images and videos of where Ken

Griffin's house is. But,

we shouldn't also assume that the anger

there is just because media people have

decided to villainize rich people. I

think we could also assume that the

anger there is real because of a

dissatisfaction in the system and a

dissatisfaction in the inequality that

has gotten worse and worse. You know, I

was just saying the bravest thing for a

politician to do is say, "Hey, I know

it's frustrating that some people are

making a lot of money, and we should

look at the tax code and figure out ways

to uh increase their taxes, and we think

there's a big win for everybody here. If

you own a pied-à-terre, we're going to

ask you to pay 5% uh or or 2% Normally,

you'd pay 1 and 1/2% taxes on that

place. We're going to ask you to pay 5%.

Why are we going to ask you to pay as

5%? Because we have

a crisis in New York of it's not

livable.

There's not enough homes, rent is at a

record high. Yeah. So we think it's

reasonable for you to either sell your

place and let a renter live there

or put it into Airbnb or whatever you

want to do or just pay that 3 and 1/2.

We're taking that 3 and 1/2 by the way

and we're assigning it to

you know, this pressing issue which is

building more affordable housing. So you

can feel great about paying that extra 3

and 1/2. If Mondami presented it like I

just presented it,

you would win 95% of people. Even the

rich people. They'd be like, "Yeah, I'm

rich. Who cares?" Prof G even said this

on the pod. He's like, "I got a $10

million house. If I pay an extra 100K,

what what do I care? It's no big deal."

I have the same position.

But if you villainize people, if you put

a target on their backs and

you make a billionaire's tax that isn't

really a tax, it's an asset seizure,

that's when people go, "You know what?

We live in the United States of America.

There are 50 options for me.

I'm going [snorts] to make a list of

the best options and I have a plane and

I already have four homes. So I already

summer in Aspen and I go to California

for 2 months in the summer and I go to

Hawaii. This makes no sense. I'm just

going to domicile myself in Austin which

is 3 hours away from every other city in

America. It's like being in Dubai. It's

like the perfect central location to be.

Spend 6 months here, spend the other 6

months wherever you feel like it. So

that's what politicians have to realize

is rich people have options. Bradley,

you were going to jump in there. Look,

ultimately, if you know how to get

elected in a world of 10% primary

turnout and you know who you need to

appease and things you need to say, that

going up to 30-40% is terrifying to you

even though it would actually free you

from being hostage to the extremes which

most politicians would actually probably

like, but nonetheless, uh know, I ran

legislation in five different states

this year and lost in all of them

because fundamentally I was asking the

system to choose to reform itself and

it's not going to do that. So, that now

puts me in the position where I've just

got to try to build a big national

grassroots movement stoking the anger of

people uh across the board and say, "If

you want to keep living in a world where

we ignore all the solutions and just

keep screaming and tweeting instead,

then just keep things the way they are."

But, you know, if most people by

definition are moderate and if people

could vote on their phone, we could get

turnout up to 30, 40, 50% in primaries

and then politicians, just because they

want to keep their jobs, not because

they become better people in any way,

move to the middle and start working

together and compromising simply because

that's what the people now voting in

their primaries expect of them and want

from them. And so, like, in order to

sort of actually seriously debate,

discuss, and implement the kinds of

ideas that the three of us have been

throwing around around reducing

inequality, you've got to have a

political system that actually is

incentivized to want to have change in

the first place and you only do that

through changing the composition of the

electorate. And so, to me, that's why

something like mobile voting they're

working on, and you can go to

mobilevoting.org if you want to learn

more about it, um is so necessary

because otherwise, you know, we're

having these great conversations, but we

might as well be sitting in the ivory

tower cuz none of it's actually going to

happen. No, we're going to reach

millions. We're going to reach millions

here. I just got to try to

wrap this up, tie a bow on this. Come

next time, Ro Khanna. I like [laughter]

Ro, actually. Um but, he's a politician

doing politician things. Yeah, right. I

I and you know, it is a shame and I'm

sure

the audience will might wish that there

was someone there was someone like Ro

pushing back. I I hopefully have done a

little bit of that job.

>> Or AOC or

or Ro. Ro, we would love to have you on

the show to discuss this at some point.

>> need some stock tips. Did you see his

stock tips, Ed?

>> Enough.

>> [laughter]

>> I think one thing we can all agree on

here is that if this wealth tax does

doesn't go through or if it I mean it

sounds like we all agree that it's

probably not going to work because it's

not actually going to be effective, it's

going to be cumbersome, and it probably

won't even go through for a lot of

reasons.

But I think what we can all agree on is

that if the system doesn't change itself

or reorganize itself in some way, then

we will continue on this path and this

trajectory where Jason is going to

dinner and there are five security

guards behind him because his dinner

buddy literally got shot at at his home

the other week because there is so much

anger and because of anxiety. Well, he

he needs the security guards just to

keep all the fans away. I mean all the

paparazzi, all the all the fans. And

that's that's also true. I don't need

it. People love me. I'm funny.

>> [laughter]

>> People love me. I I'm not creating a

super intelligence to take all the jobs.

>> [laughter]

>> But no, you're right. But what we need

then

we need a message that other people that

everyone can sort of get behind. And I

guess the question for for politicians,

the question for lawmakers, and anyone

listening this podcast, and let's end

with your thoughts both of you on what

that message should really look, sound,

and feel like.

Okay, so number one

we should get rid of waste, fraud, and

abuse because that's 30% and everybody

can agree on that. Number two, we should

really look at the minimum wage and I

think everybody can agree that wouldn't

kill the system to just make modest

increments there. Number three, I think

rich people should be donating more to

these America Trump accounts and should

there should be greater philanthropy

in America by the top half of Americans.

Doesn't mean giving to NGOs or

nonprofits, just doing interesting

things with your money that helps

society.

And then finally, for technologists, we

need to change the view of AI. I don't

know if you saw this week all the

commencement speeches getting booed when

every anybody evoked AI. AI could be a

profoundly powerful force if we can

solve a small set of problems that make

people who are poor

or lower middle class anxious and

frustrated with their lives. And I come

from a lower middle class background and

my parents were basically living

paycheck to paycheck. And the things

that are breaking people

are the cost of education,

the cost of health care,

and the cost of homes. These are three

areas that are the high highest

regulation in the country. And this is

where the opportunity lies at. If we

could have

the government start taking out the

regulations for accreditations at

universities, for building homes faster

like we do here in Texas and Nevada and

Florida do as well, and we could spread

that to the Democratic cities and GOs,

and then we could look at health care

and use the power of AI and the power of

you know, individually led health care

where individuals are driving it, we

could lower the cost of these three

things so dramatically if we unleashed

the same entrepreneurs who are being

vilified. Those same entrepreneurs could

solve those three things. Why don't

they? Why don't they attack those three

categories? I've had investments in all

three of those categories.

The regulation [snorts]

and the roadblocks the government puts

on any company that wants to work in

housing,

education, or health care is insane.

And then venture capitalists and

entrepreneurs

just say, you know what? Not worth it to

go after those three. And the government

has a monopoly on them. We need to break

that monopoly, dramatically lower the

cost of homes, education, and health

care, and then people would appreciate

entrepreneurs because they would feel it

every day. Oh, my kid's getting

educated. Oh, my daughter has a house

near us, not

2 hours away or in another city. And oh,

I can go get, you know, a scan or a

blood test for free or close to free and

a body scan instead of Prenuvo being

$3,500, it could be $300 or $30. That's

what technology could achieve and that's

where I think,

you know, if I do run for office, which

I've been considering, um I would run on

that platform is unlocking those three.

Bradley, your message and then we'll

wrap.

>> I I'd probably a little simpler even,

which is just there are reasonable,

achievable solutions to almost every

single problem we face, whether it is

education or health care or taxes or

climate or guns or immigration or

anything else, but the only way we can

do that is to take power away from the

extremes who currently dictate and

control the agenda and give it back to

the middle and the very people who are

screaming loudest right now are doing so

because they are the ones that are the

extremes and they are the ones that are

using their power to to empower

themselves at our expense. And so, if we

want our country back, if we want to

solve these problems, we don't need to

come up with these brilliant new ideas,

they're already there, but we have to

choose to finally take the power back,

and participate in elections, reform the

system itself, and and make it possible

so that all of the ideas that could

actually work, the ideas that Jason and

you and I have sort of already, you

know, explained on this podcast, um can

actually happen.

Bradley Tusk is the founder and CEO of

Tusk Ventures. Jason Calacanis is the is

an investor and host of the All-In

podcast and also a

potential future presidential candidate,

we just learned on the podcast

yesterday, Jason.

>> mayor,

I think that should be a [laughter]

little bit more

accessible. Like, sure,

presidentjason.com.

I go for mayorjason.com.

Sign up for my email.

>> Future mayor. Jason and Bradley, thank

you so much for joining me on [music]

Profiting Markets. Appreciate it. Ed,

thanks for having us. Pleasure.

Okay, that's it for today. A lot in

there. We appreciate you joining us for

another Profiting Markets panel. If you

have a guest who we should speak to on

this topic or any other, please drop us

[music] a line in the comments or email

our producer Claire at

markets@propertymedia.com.

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>> [music]