Prioritizing People in the Age of AI

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It would mean that we had federal active duty troops patrolling our streets which is concerning because the way ice does its business is then proven over and over again to be deeply problematic. New episodes of today explain drop every day of the week wherever you get your podcast and you can now watch our Saturday interviews at youtube.com/box. Do ever look back on something you posted on the internet and think well that was cringe. Yeah I mean I look back at that stuff and I'm just like it's so emblematic of the era and it's also just like why did I think this would age well like in the slightest. This week unexplained to me from box what to do with your online regret? New episodes on 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 and Alpine Skier who learned to ski in a Dubai shopping mall. Choose to read. 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 the sexist. Stokes look pretty attractive something's going to break forget about it. What do you think had you really give me time to laugh just immediately what do you think? You got you got to give it a moment this is where they teach you in in comedy school you got to wait a beat and wait for the audience. So they teach you in comedy school you're talking of most comical at university high school so in bitch the reason I was a virgin until nineteen and not till forty is because of this rocket sense of humor. You can always improve 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. That's true. That's not a joke that's just a joke. That was social commentary in the form of humor. How are you Ed? 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've kind of started a movement and I'm about to go on Jake Tapper and then anyways I'm I unsubscribe I know you want to know more about me. I unsubscribe from Uber last night and I love Uber this was 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 signal all the fucking time you little hipster Brooklyn sandal dyed weirdo but I unsubscribe from Uber in the last screen you said you see it tells you how many Uber eats you've ordered and how many Uber rides you've taken. Okay I guess how many Uber how many times I've ordered from Uber Eats. I think it's got to be like a thousand is that am I put going to I. Thirty seven I'm not a big okay delivery guy and I usually use caviar for some reason I'm using interface in the last 10 years how many Ubers have I taken that's got to be over a thousand for sure thirty seven hundred and fifty six 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 twenty bucks or an Uber to cost them forty they try and consolidate the market and then they slowly but surely start raising prices so I take Uber Luxe the average Uber Luxe ride in 2015 was between forty and sixty dollars today by the way Ubers raised its prices once they consolidate the market seven to ten percent a year twice or three treble times the rate of inflation now the average Uber Luxe ride is eighty two hundred and twenty dollars so three hundred and fifty rides a year at an average price of about a hundred bucks because I'm usually going back and forth from the airport I am spending every year thirty five thousand dollars 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 some weird people and also the people on that hot on the train that's the only thing I would I would I would suggest fixing we need more hot people on the trains yeah they can make like a hot girls train maybe that would fix things or hot dudes I'm fine with the hot guys I got equal knocks at this point I just want hot so I figured out with the money I'm gonna save no joke I could lease including parking and insurance with the money I'm gonna 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 because it's all along with the 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 increase their pricing and you don't realize how much it's costing you anyways I'm getting just to really stick it to the man I'm gonna go buy a Range Rover but it is the I mean here's the question because I mean how are you getting around are you not are you switching to lift because I know you're doing this thing where you you have two different subscriptions and you get rid of one of them is that is that what you're doing here I'm not exactly I'm 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 now I do the lift the cheap lift one lift it's called lift walmart or something or lift lift life has not worked out the way I'd hoped but in a guy who doesn't know how to use ways and is on an Android phone god it's like such a huge bag right now but I've been taking the subway it's incredible it's a $35,000 that's pretty good so anyways I'm 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 love from Amazon what have you unsubscribe from given I know that how emotionally invested are you you are in this movement I haven't unsubscribed yet but I'll I'm happy to hear from you what you think I should unsubscribe from get maybe go between left and uber memo hold on hold on one second one second add one second memo to fall file read edelsen review and compensation does not lack act like an owner is poor from a row music does not match the words at disappointing our audience we'll see it we'll see how disappointed everyone is you have let me get this your boss and a person you you constantly say on your role model has started a movement and you have yet 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 abortizer whose rhymes with snapple and we just lost or I lost another telco advertiser that rhymes with mint mobile anyways nothing's for free add courage is 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 at all right here's our conversation with near a tandem president and CEO of the Center for American Progress near a thank you for joining us on Prof. Markets thanks for having me so I just want to start with a quick buyer of who you are so you are the CEO of the Center for American Progress you've also worked in the White House you're 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 policy maker how would you rate the performance of this administration one year it 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 cost overall in the economy but it's 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 you know things like health care it's an even stärker picture so there the president is really president Trump is a first president in my lifetime who has actually successfully taken health care away from people he's 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 affordable care act premium tax credits is also fundamentally about affordability as well so I'm gonna go with an F so that coming I know that my shock people that might be I just was like I was really changing it up there but yeah I'm going with the feeling great 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 gonna play these two clips fear and I'd love to get your reactions so much talk about oh we're gonna 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 gonna happen we're going to give guidance at some point to see what is a mom and pop that someone maybe your parents for their retirement about 5 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 the clip that I'd really like to get a reaction to is Trump saying that he actually wants housing prices to go up which is quite remarkable because it's 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 and every once in a while you he will just honestly tell you what he thinks about an issue and I think this is 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 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 that whole system which is today the average age of a first time homebuying 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 are coming down but people overall have got a right 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 they're 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 paying having an affordable rent to say that you don't want anymore 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 on the Trump of not building more housing is I mean I guess something that's been interesting to me is I thought that there were just debates over what to either 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 as recline 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 and said it's a really deep concern for young people like little you know people are trying to buy their first home people are in their like 30s 40s it's like a lot of his constituents it's a people who voted for Donald Trump think housing is too high so I think that is why his political advisor said told him that and then I think maybe he was at Marlago on a Saturday night where a bunch of really rich people said well you know more housing means that in my neighborhood like Scarsdale wherever people live we would have more housing and that you know that nobody wants that nobody wants housing more housing in my neighborhood nobody wants to value 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 capture the president's interest which has been a homework 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 fund rise investing in companies already in the S&B 500 can sometimes feel like you're being served someone else's leftovers it 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 reserved access to the best tech companies in the world that hadn't gone public yet and that meant the rest of the world simply had to sit on their hands and wait for an IPO fund rise says they're completely upending that dynamic with its new venture capital product with just a $10 minimum investment fund rises mission is to get everyone the access required to invest in the best tech and AI companies before they go public there's nothing wrong with leftovers but now if you want with fund rise you can take a seat at the table alongside the biggest names in tech investing visit fund rise.com/provG to check out fund rises venture portfolio and start investing in minutes all investments involve risk including the potential loss of principle past performance is not indicative of future results this is a paid advertisement it may not feel like it but Trump's approval rating is some of the lowest and recorded history and it's fallen to new lows in recent weeks as the nation reals from recent killings of two anti-ice protesters in Minnesota but not everyone thinks he's failing this week we're hearing from Trump voters it is very unfortunate that it happened but it's also unfortunate that the ice is being blamed for like just murdering somebody who is just so innocent which isn't the case whatsoever they were provoked be he got ran over and you know it just it's hard to tell what's real and what's not anymore he's delivered on virtually every promise he's made the economy is booming right now he closed the border we're not getting any more illegals in that has been done that was a major promise that's been done today explained listen wherever you get your podcast this week on net worth until i'm talking about what happens after you've mastered the basics how to build wealth that actually lasts for generations with the top one percent holding nearly a third of the nation's wealth and 98 percent of them being men breaking into generational wealth isn't just about getting rich it's about changing who gets to stay rich plus i'm explaining the great wealth transfer $124 trillion about to change hands over the next 25 years and what it means for you i'm answering your questions about calculating your net worth whether you should rent your buy to build wealth and how to pass your retirement accounts to your kids without losing them to probate court whether you're just getting started or already maxing out your 401k this episode will show you how to think bigger than just making money today listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com/yourrichbf we're back with profty markets i think one thing that i always find and that we always find whenever we try to dig into health care is we like try to figure out why our health care costs still so high why are they so much higher in america i think we kind of do the digging and digging and then it's always comes around to some answer i've oh there's a lot of just complexity in in the middle somewhere there's the pharmacy benefit managers there's the insurance companies no one can see eye to eye on this stuff the the whole thing is just like oh it's really complicated like that's that's the explanation could you just give us like a a 101 on what is going on with health care policy in america right now and why hasn't america really gotten its act together in terms of bringing health care costs down the way i bottom line health care cost 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 in the united states is essentially you have a variety of forces hospitals ensures p_b_m_s a benefit manager for drug benefit managers like middleman 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 a big area where things are just much more expensive in the united states is hospital care it's just and those hospitals often have a monopoly and no individual group is using their it has 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 one 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 the hospital should be really clear on what it costs and you know there 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 there's remain we've insured a lot of people in the united states particularly after the a_c_a_ but there are some people who still don't have coverage and they shift costs to others to sort of pay for for that so it's it's it's too complicated things but um well we should do is have radical transparency everywhere get rid of the p_b_m_s 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 the the what i'm getting is like all of these this fractured system all 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 of the government not to set price caps but to basically try to negotiate with all the insurers insurances 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 a kind of bargaining between all the employers and all the insurers to set the government kind of overseas 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 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 pair but in a system that's going to be that you imagine short of single pair and having the government help you know basically negotiate with employers and like bring all the employers together and we're negotiate rates down in a way where companies can still be profitable but you actually are concerned about consumer cost as well you know i think that's an important step what is trump is this administration doing on health care policy that is 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 i'm from my understanding it's you know this policy to theoretically get the cost of drugs down that's also part of his whole great health care plan the details are like not very clear as to what he's actually gonna 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 and the medicare system which historically has been you know overcharging the federal government vis-à-vis like much more than you know it pays for traditional medicare fee for service medicare that the government is just handling so that's it that's one area and and trump rx look basically the democrats in congress past 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 the that work and their plenty of areas are not continuing important good work so and you know I think that's a really important step I think the fact is that even Donald trump recognizes americans paying more for drugs a 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/subscribe we're back with profg 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 we have you described 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 in the fact you've worked in the above administration you have a solid understanding economics what I want to do is sort of a lighting around here I want to propose a series of policy ideas and get your sort of quick 30,000 foot action oriented reaction 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 g op 1 drugs that would be great I mean g op 1 drugs are they have many facets one of 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 invest to have this kind of benefit they are exceedingly expensive they have huge costs implicate huge health implications they would make americans lives much much better on a whole range of issues we're discovering health sleeping hard conditions as as well as weight loss so 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 $7.25 just as a reminder so think about what that's like in most of the south is still $7.25 in much of the west it's still $7.25 and I think that is outrageous frankly in this day and age elimination of capital gains and mortgage interests one one basic income tax rate and somewhat of what regended 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 it 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 percent for anyone making over say three million a year. Yeah that sounds good I think what I'd say here and you know you've you've talked about this yourself I think we have a real kind of cancer in the country in declining opportunity and also say you know we had Raphael Warnock here a 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 and 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 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 them. I last question for me just along the lines of the lighting around what do you think of the idea the notion of mandatory national service? I love it I wish we could get it done tomorrow. I would add one proposals the lightning round this has gotten a lot of tension recently it's very controversial was proposed in California and that is a wealth tax specifically the one that was proposed in California would be a one time five percent wealth tax on billionaires basically for those wondering what is a wealth tax it's just take your net worth and lop off five percent 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 would say that I think the fundamental impetus to me is how you dress the inequality in the country and I 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 the kiddies book came out like 15 years ago and I think that we lose sight of how it's a it's a corrosive effect not just on our economy but our democracy I mean and 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 want 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 yeah 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 it was in the heart of the Clinton administration it had pretty high taxes and the economy was doing very well okay we had we were still able to have a tech boom we had pretty high tax rates on income we had pretty high tax rates on for 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 we could we could undo without the Supreme Court challenge or other challenge of the that a wealth task would raise and so it might be easier to start doing those and see where I land up I mean yeah I think I think this is heading on what Scott often talks about which is different 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 the ideas that you think all 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 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 have to you should have our 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 the 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 unwringing 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 poorer people who've access to wealthier places their upper mobility goes up like this and Raj 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 and 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 um in places that are wealthier in the country and I think you'd have a lot more opportunity for everyone near 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 nearer thank you so much we really appreciate your time thank you this episode was produced by Claire Miller and Allison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer our research team is Dan Schlaun, Isabella Kinsel, Christian O'Donohue and Meir Salverio, Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer thank you for listening to 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