In a debate with William F. Buckley in the 1980's, Lester Thurow of MIT said: "If my taxes go from 20% to 30% and my total share of wealth goes from 20% to   40%, I got a tax cut! And that's exactly what's happened in the United States." (applause).

Yay!!! I’m American and so glad to see more Americans pick this up. TAX WEALTH NOT WORK! 🔥🔥Let’s go! (But then also, let’s have gov use those new funds to help supplement working families with health care, child care, increased standards of education, etc.) we can do this!

Every single aspect of a human life has been monetized and turned into a wealth extraction sceme.

Tax wealth, not work! Nice to see Gabriel Zucman going around and pushing the message.

It's good to have an in depth interview from such a knowledgeable fellow. So often we have to suffer a low level slanging match which does not enlighten.

In the Reagan years we were all very aware of the nature and degree of the tax cuts on the wealthy effected by the right, but I don't remember projections of what the cumulative effect on the wealth of the very rich over the succeeding decades on such areas as politics.  Now that the future has arrived the threat to democracy is very evident.

To be blunt, extraction tends in the direction of criminality. I have only the most criminal president in USA history to cite as my example.

to quote Gary 'drunk on comfort' - all those who object to taxing obscene wealth

Thanks!  I support taxing wealth not work.

"Reagan ruined everything".

Post WW2, 1 in 4 Americans worked in factories.  These were well paid, usually Union jobs that provided health care benefits, pensions and paid holidays.

CEO pay was 4 times worker pay, taxes were more progressive, education was affordable (SUNY and CUNY), and banks were lending for mortgages.

It wasn't necessary to have two incomes.  Monopoly, extreme wealth concentration has bought political influence.

We need to get rid of the idea that countries devolop best under international competition. This idea just favours big cooporations and makes us think that we have to fight other common people elsewhere. Please continue this international discourse, it is worth so much. Schöne Grüße from Germany!

We need unions to fight for more equitable distribution of wealth on the front end and wealth taxes on the back end

The wealth of everybody else including governments has diminished as the wealth of the billionaires has exploded this is not only reasonable but crucial if we want to maintain any semblence of fairness in our societies.

A worldwide tax on billionaires would take away the incentive to move to other countries, though I'd also advocate that the money generated be spread equally to all countries on a per capita basis to fund social services and encourage the creation of small businesses.

Delightful interview, thank you. Conversation about this topic has been deliberately avoided for far too long.

Let's talk about billionaire free-ridership and how they "earned" their wealth by exploiting systems like transportation networks (airports, waterways, and roads) without paying diddle-doo into their maintenance. The massive money boom for the billionaries hasn't netted any authentic R&D or innovations since Jobs rolled out the first iPhone. Whatever improvements since then are just tweaks like better qualtiy cameras. I also could argue that the hyperventilating behind artificial "intelligence" being a great boon to humanity is nothing but b.s. being rammed down our throats.

One trick billionaires have used globally is to buy the media. Then they use the media (and social media) to persuade the majority of the populations that they should bear the burden of taxation. It's indoctrination of the most irrational kind.

America, the UK and elsewhere have allowed Australians, South Africans and others to totally rig the media bias.

I find it astonishing that most Americans don't realise foreign billionaires have indoctrinated them.

What a great guest!

This current stock market is NOT a measure of a healthy economy. I'd love for countries to get back to the concept of measuring an economy's success by how well the lowest on the class systems are faring.