Hearsay

Tax the Patriarchy With Abby Disney and Amy Matsui

Episode Summary

Your favorite billionaire might pay less in taxes than you do. And that’s by design! The U.S. tax code has sexism and racism baked right into it. But if we taxed the patriarchy, we’d have enough money for the things that really matter—from child care and health care to education and housing. We talked to activist, philanthropist, and filmmaker Abby Disney and NWLC tax genius Amy Matsui about why it’s past time for Taylor, Jay-Z, Elon, and Jeff to pay their fair share.

Episode Notes

Your favorite billionaire might pay less in taxes than you do. And that’s by design! The U.S. tax code has sexism and racism baked right into it. But if we taxed the patriarchy, we’d have enough money for the things that really matter—from child care and health care to education and housing. We talked to activist, philanthropist, and filmmaker Abby Disney and NWLC tax genius Amy Matsui about why it’s past time for Taylor, Jay-Z, Elon, and Jeff to pay their fair share.

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Episode Transcription

Jessica:

Hi, I'm Jessica.

Lark:

I'm Lark.

Hilary:

And I'm Hilary. And welcome to Hearsay where we deep dive into the cultural moments that live rent-free in our heads and probably yours too. And today we are coming for your favorite billionaire.

Lark:

Yes, we are.

Jessica:

Ruthlessly.

Hilary:

Yeah. Um, so today actually we're gonna talk about wealth. We're gonna talk about capitalism, we're gonna talk about billionaires, we're gonna talk about celebrities. And we're most, maybe importantly gonna talk about taxes, which

Lark:

Yes. 

Jessica:

is so exciting.

Hilary:

Yes. Most people are interested in the first topics. I would say , like they're into the money, 

Lark:

Stay with us.

Hilary:

The status, the private jets that we all wish we had. But taxes are pretty fun too, especially if you realize that we could all have better lives if we just tax these billionaires, uh, more fairly. So we're gonna talk about that today too.

Lark:

I'm actually excited. I feel like taxes are something I've been the most radicalized around at the law center. Mm-Hmm. . Like I truly couldn't have told you anything about the tax code or about taxes. I did my taxes, but that was it. And learning how screwed up our tax code is on purpose…

Hilary:

Yeah

Lark:

Of course, it is. I mean, everything's rigged like that. But that I think has been one of the most enlightening things I've learned since working here.

Jessica:

I think, yeah, like not, um, not to like jump the gun, but like realizing that we could all have such better lives if billionaires paid their fair share and that they were taxed regardless of like what they might be doing for representation, um, or for the culture. Um,

Lark: 

Looking at you, Tyler Perry

Jessica:

. No, but Tyler Perry's a whole separate thing. And I can, I can like he did. Did you see that interview He did recently or like in,

Lark:

No I think I have him muted. 

Jessica:

In July, he did some sort of interview about like, yes, I do tropey things, but like

Lark:

Eye roll

Jessica:

Yeah. But like also, but it's important to like share these stories or something like that. And it's like you are a billionaire because you write all your own scripts. And you don't, you're not sharing the wealth in terms of opportunities and you're also not sharing the wealth in terms of putting that money back in the community. You're just hoarding all this money. Same with Jeff Bezos. Same with, um, all these other rich people on this list that Hillary pulled up from Forbes.

Lark:

I know. Reading this list, you guys shouldve heard.

Hilary:

Well, I just took the like celebrity list. 'cause I think there's two pieces. There's like your classic billionaires, your Elon's Mm-Hmm. , your Jeff Bezos, your Bill Gates. Mm-Hmm. , your Warren Buffett. 

Jessica:

The fact That Dick Wolf is on this list.

Hilary:

You were jumping right to it. Yes. But Forbes put out a list of the world's richest billionaires that are celebrities only. Mm-Hmm. . And it's interesting because, you know, there are people we don't love on this list collectively. Hello Tyler Perry. Um, 

Lark:

Tiger Woods.

Hilary:

Tiger Woods. 

Lark:

Tough. 

Hilary:

We could cancel some of these people or have tried to and have failed. 'cause here they are on this billionaires list, but then there are others where they have genuine fan fans all around the world. Mm-Hmm. or even in this office, 

Lark:

Rihanna. 

Hilary:

Um, so Rihanna. Yeah. 

Lark:

Taylor Swift.

Hilary:

Taylor Swift for, yes, um, became, she might be the youngest billionaire on this list. She's 34. Um, but at the top you get Michael Jordan, who made most of his money after selling the Charlotte Hornets. Mm-Hmm. for, I don't even know how you calculate the profit there, but I don't know. For billions. For 3 billion. Yeah. Um, Steven Spielberg, who this is interesting, gets a cut every time someone buys a ticket at Universal theme parks because of Indiana Jones. 

Lark:

Holy crap.

Jessica:

That’s insane.

Hilary:

There's a lot of contract stuff here. And then George Lucas, which is just the legacy of Star Wars. Um, and Disney stock I guess. Just, you know, these are, these are pe but again, there are people in here we like and admire and we're like, appreciate the hustle, right, that got them here. 

Lark:

We'll have to think twice when we start to eat the rich.

Hilary:

And some of these people, I think we could look at Taylor as like a specific example, right. Who is, it's like there isn't a way to overstate how much media attention she has created in the last two years. But a lot of that has been at like, how can Taylor be like a good person still if she's a billionaire? Like that conversation came up with more with her than let's say Michael Jordan. Right. Um, but I think, you know, there's the good she does for the every local economy when she brings her tour there and the food bank stuff she does. And like, you know, that there's this real like, well let's offset the billionaire part with the good part. Mm-Hmm. . And I think the conversation I'm interested in is like, are there good billionaires and what would actually like, make us feel okay about these people having this much money? 

Lark:

Are all of these billionaires, especially the ones we like, have affinity to and feel like we would personally like, are they truly wanting to hoard their wealth and that's why they're not being outspoken and open about the inequality in our country? Or do they just not know and they're just like so rich and like you really can't be in the weeds of your like, finances the way we are, like checking our bank account apps, you know, like, is it. Like I think sometimes I even feel guilty of wanting to forgive them. You know, they can't even do it

Hilary:

How could they know?

Lark:

Right. Yeah. But of course they could. They think about all these other stuff and they're in the weeds on how they make the money. Surely they could 

Jessica:

You own a jet, you own a home

Lark:

Multiple jets. You could for sure care about other people in this country as much or half as much as you love making money.

Hilary:

I think the issue is this is, I mean, I thought about this a lot. You get more power with money and then you keep power with money. And I think for them at least, like you need to hold onto that power. Mm-Hmm. . And so your life requires more rarefied air every time to continue. 

Lark:

Yeah, that's true. 

Hilary:

But I, I also think at least when it comes to like conversations about taxes versus philanthropy and like how you contribute that money or share that wealth or deal with that inequality that like everyone in power, you're like, oh, I'll do it, but I'm gonna control it. Mm-Hmm. I'm in charge of it. I will determine who I give my money to and what it benefits and what policies it aligns with as opposed to a government taxing you and then making decisions for the common good as to where that money could go and help people. And so that's what philanthropy can be instead of, you know, taxes, which would Mm-Hmm. would take that decision making out of their hands, but would obviously benefit more people.

Lark:

Yeah. And I do think part of that, like keeping your power, when we were talking about some of the people on this list and who the women are, who the Black people are. Like that's part of it too. You know, I feel like we celebrate a lot. Like, oh, the youngest woman to be a billionaire. You know, or Taylor Swift finally, a billionaire like Jay-Z became a billionaire. Like good for the culture, like Jessica was saying. But like, no, that's actually not good . We actually don't need any of that.

Jessica:

And it like, promotes the idea of, I feel like, especially like in the Black community and communities of color, but I am gonna kind of call out the Black community for a second because it's the idea of like, we talk a lot about like generational wealth. Mm-Hmm. . And we talk about like the importance of like building generational wealth, like getting a house so that your kids can have it and things like, because white people have been accumulating wealth for years, which is very true. And I think at its core, like, because we live in a capitalistic society, like home ownership and wealth is important, but at the same time it's like we see that also, I feel like a lot of those narratives tend to come from people who are like very much idolizing. Yeah. Like up having a billionaire mindset. Mm-Hmm. A billionaire grind. Or like being like, I just have to embrace it and like if I work hard enough I can get to those places. And these people obviously did not start off as billionaires for the most part, but they were already inherently in positions that allowed them to get to where they are.

Lark:

Well and just it's, that's never gonna be you. Like I, all those memes that were going around when people, you know, like Elizabeth Warren and stuff, were talking about taxing again the billionaires fair share and there there was all these jokes and memes about like the dude from your high school, like against taxing billionaires 'cause he thinks he's gonna be one, one day. All of us are always much closer to being homeless than ever being a billionaire. Like you, you literally cannot Right. Work your way to that to Jessica's point. Like you have to, the circumstances have to be extreme and align in such a specific way. And that's why we revere these people. But we shouldn't revere them for being billionaires. We should revere them for their talents and what you would hope they've done for our culture.

Hilary:

Exactly. They're holding up an ideal, an American dream, if you will, that that is not actually an attainable thing. 

Jessica:

No. 

Hilary:

But we, but it's easier to like buy that delusion than accept the reality of the country you're in. And the systems we're under.

Jessica:

It’s so hard to even like pay rent right now and to like buy groceries, let alone like, you're like, I'm gonna become a billionaire. This would be a perfect time to talk about, let's talk about, would you rather have like a million dollars or 30 minutes with Jay-Z 

Lark:

Bunch of Jay-Z, like the fool would take

Jessica:

Have you ever heard that Hilary?

Hilary:

No, but 

Lark:

oh my God. 

Hilary:

I have a clear answer. Is it supposed be hard?

Lark:

The hustle culture men

Jessica:

Its.. they're like, would you rather get a million dollars or have, I think it, the number shrinks

Lark:

It's like 30 minutes. Yeah.

Jessica:

It's like, I think it's like 30 ish minute dinner with Jay-Z and all these, all these like grind, grustle..grustle

Lark

HA new word.

Jessica:

All these hustle mindset people are like, I definitely take the dinner only, like,

Hilary:

Because then I'll make $2 billion 

Jessica:

Because he'll give the tools I need. And I literally had a conversation with someone in DC like I was buying, I was at like a candle stand at a market . And it was like, um, like the one I liked the best was one that said Coffee with Jay-Z. So it was like a vanilla like coffee one. Didn't love the name, but it was like owned by like a Black woman. But it smelled really good. It was like my favorite one. It it wasn't that expensive. And she was like, yeah, I don't know if you'd like know, like I made this off of, as a rip off of like the would you rather have a million dollars or like a dinner with Jay-Z? And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I know that reference and like this as I'm at this point, like, I've given her my card, like I'm checking out. And she's like, yeah. And I, you know, I'm a business owner. I went to totally take the dinner. 

Hilary and Lark:

Nooooo

Jessica:

Like I would learn so much and I was just like, Mm-Hmm. .

Lark:

I gotta go.

Jessica:

It's like there's no helping you because what do you mean you're at a market selling candles for 10 and you're like, right Jay-Z let alone like, who's to say he even talks to you.

Hilary:

It's like Shark Tank. 

Lark:

Yes. 

Jessica:

And either way, like

Lark:

Grovelling. Yeah. And I do think there's, there's always gonna people that be people that fall into that. But I feel like in 2020 there was like a culture shift when that like guy was on TikTok showing in grains of rice, the wealth distribution Mm-Hmm. of like whatever the top 10 richest people and then the rest of the world. And this idea that when things get really bad, there's not someone to protect us. And there could be Right. All this money that we didn't have and that we needed, we actually could have had it and still could have it if we tax billionaires their fair share all of the stuff that we could pay for. You know, it's not like if we tax billionaires their fair share, we get one thing. Right. We, we only get free school lunch for everyone. No, you can get childcare, you can get healthcare, you can get all these things,

Jessica:

All the things that we,

Lark:

Everything that we all need to be safe and taken care of. And it's a choice our government makes every single day to not do that

Jessica:

Every single day. It's disgusting. 

Lark:

Fired up. Wowza. 

Jessica:

I Know Hillary's already planning her menu for her dinner, which is .

Hilary:

I'm not the right audience for that meeting. I accept that.

Lark:

Because you're, I'm just right in the head. You understand the wrongness of that.

Hilary:

I feel like it's too easy for me to say, you know, like I just, whatever I 

Jessica:

No, Lark and I are both take the money. 

Hilary:

Yeah. There's obviously a lot to talk about here. Um, and so we're gonna bring in two people who know a lot about taxes from two different perspectives. One is our colleague Amy Matsui, who is a tax genius and a delightful person all around, who's done a ton of research, um, and writing on taxing the patriarchy. Mm-Hmm. how our tax code could change and what it could mean for all of us. Um, she's coming with the numbers in hot and it'll be great. 

Lark:

She always does. 

Hilary:

Yep. But we're also gonna talk to, you know, through this, you know, we've been talking about all these rich people who have a lot of money and say like, what don't they know? Mm-Hmm. . Right? We're gonna talk to a rich person. 

Lark:

We are.

Jessica:

A concept.

Hilary:

But also someone we know who does know. Mm-Hmm. . And that's, uh, Abby Disney who is a philanthropist and activist and uh, a documentary filmmaker. And so we're gonna get to ask her those questions too and see how she would tax wealthy people. She's got, uh, ideas on that too. And so I think it's gonna be a great conversation and we're gonna, um, all come out radicalized, hopefully.

Lark:

Yes.

Jessica:

Can't wait.

Hilary:

Today I'm thrilled to be joined on Hearsay by Abby Disney, an Emmy winning documentary filmmaker and activist, her latest film, the American Dream and other fairytales co-directed with Kathleen Hughes made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and is excellent by the way. Everyone should see it. She advocates for real changes to the way capitalism operates in today's world. As a philanthropist, she has worked with organizations supporting peace building, gender justice, and systemic cultural change. She's chair and co-founder of Level Forward and founder of Peace Loud and the Daphne Foundation. Welcome Abby.

Abby:

Thanks.

Hilary:

I'm also excited to welcome my colleague and friend Amy Matsui, who is senior director of Income Security here at the National Women's Law Center and one of the co-authors of our series of reports on gender and the tax code. Amy's also one of the evil geniuses behind our tax the patriarchy campaign. Welcome Amy.

Amy:

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you.

 

Hilary:

So for both of you to, to start off, how do we get here in this bananas world where billionaires are taxed at a rate lower than most teachers? Abby, I'll throw it to you first.

Abby:

Yeah. It's a gross thing and it is the neoliberalism that kind of really crept into not just our world and our economic system, but into people's brains for the last 50 years. Um, people really absorbed and believed the idea that if you let millionaires or billionaires have more money, they'll create jobs, they'll stimulate the economy and everybody's gonna be fine, therefore tax them less. Capital gains tax rate especially went down. And then a lot of provisions were made exceptions for especially people in the hedge fund business who could get as income some interest in the deals they'd done. They could count it as capital gains instead of income and tax at a lower rate. That's the carried interest loophole. And um, they, you know, a lot of hedge fund managers are billionaires because of the carried interest loophole because they've been able to amass and hold onto much more wealth because it's taxed at a lower rate. It's the kind of bait and switch all over and up and down our tax code. And, and it has been just sort of bent to the purpose of leaving as much money as possible in the hands of the wealthy.

Amy:

Yeah, I will say, just to kind of add and underscore what Abby was talking about, overall the income tax code is supposed to be progressive and that means to a certain extent your tax rate is supposed to reflect your ability to pay your taxes. So if you're not making a lot of money, your tax bill is supposed to be a little bit lower. If you're making a lot of money, the tax bill is supposed to be a little bit larger proportionately. But there are so many ways baked into the tax code that the tax system treats wealthy people and the ways that they get their income and their make their living better and that makes it less progressive. And just to add a couple of examples to the ones that Abby mentioned, you know, she talked a little bit about the capital gains rate and this is an example of how income from wealth is taxed at a lower rate than income from work.

So for example, if you own stock and you get a dollar of income from your stock as a dividend, that tax dividend dollar is gonna be taxed at a maximum rate of 20%. But if you get an in, a dollar of income from work from showing up to your job every day, that dollar is taxed at a maximum rate of 37%. So that's one way that wealthy investor who makes income from stock portfolio could pay a lower tax rate than a secretary. If I have a huge stock portfolio and I don't want to pay myself a dollar of income as a business owner, I can borrow against the value of that stock and that's not gonna get taxed. And that wealth, if I never sell it, if I don't do anything besides borrow against it, is never gonna get taxed. And those are just a couple of examples that, um, show how the tax system treats wealthy people and income from wealth differently from income from work. And it's one of the reasons that people kind of inherently feel that the tax system isn't fair.

Hilary:

I, I thought this episode would be radicalizing, but I'm already very revved up. , just the idea that work, um, work is somehow more expensive than wealth. Uh, for Abby, you're someone with wealth which makes you unique in talking about this even. But could you tell just our listeners how you came to understand that the tax system was a driving force behind income inequality broadly?

Abby:

Well, you know, I just have to look around myself. The thing is that the, all the wealthy people I know have only gotten wealthier without really lifting a finger. And that's partly about the tax code. And it's partly about the nature of investing. You know, 90% of stock is owned by the richest 10% of the population. And then, you know, it's interesting, share buybacks are a kind of obstruse thing to talk about and people glaze over when you talk about it. But it's a really important thing. My grandfather in the 1960s was really proud of having a low share price because he wanted regular people to own Disney stock. And so it's a really widely held stock and a lot of people were like grandparents who bought a share of stock for their grandchild and they have it framed in a frame, you know, and give it to the family and whatever that was because my grandfather repeatedly split the shares of stock. In other words, if there were a hundred shares, he made them 200 each share half the value so he could keep the price down. It didn't change the value of your holdings, it only increased the number of shares. So along come the 1990s and things go completely bananas and it was illegal before the 1990s to buy shares back, which is the polar opposite of a stock split. You take shares off the market, the value of the stocks go up when you do that. And so therefore you're passing value upwards to your shareholders. Now Disney made about $80 billion over the years in share buybacks. So that was profits made on the back of their workers, which they chose rather than to raise their workers' salaries, give them bonuses, improve their conditions or anything like that. They took all that benefit from all those workers and passed it to people who own shares, most of whom are already wealthy to begin with.

Hilary:

So just so making sure I understand and and listeners do too. So I'm a a Disney employee, I may have one stock or something or it's passed to me from my family. At some point those shares were bought back and so you might get value in that moment, but it doesn't allow that money to continue to accumulate.

Abby:

No, it would if you had those shares that would increase the value of your shares that that's good news. Except that as an employee your conditions don't improve. Your pay doesn't go up because they're not deploying the money they're making as a result of their workers back into their worker pool. And so they're taking all those profits and they're just sending them straight up the, the food chain to the top.

Amy:

And if I could just jump in. So one of the things, you know, Abby mentioned this, um, kind of idea of trickle down tax cuts and that's the idea that if you tax the top and big corporations less that somehow everybody else is gonna benefit. They're gonna have more money to pay their workers to invest in their business. But that's actually the opposite of what research has shown has happened over the past 50 years. And specifically after the tax cuts that were passed in 2017 under the Trump administration, instead of investing in people or raising salaries or, um, you know, doing things that improve conditions or benefits, what we saw were a lot of these, these stock buybacks. And that means that the only downstream benefit of the tax cuts at the top was for the shareholders, the people who have that wealth already,

Hilary:

Which is not most people.

Amy:

Which is not most people and also not most women and also not most households of color.

Hilary:

I didn't have this kind of on my plan, but maybe we should talk about it anyway. These, the, the tax cuts. What do you think? Um, so if I understand this right, if Amy's taught me correctly, they end, they expire at the end of 2025, right? So we have a chance to kind of undo this, uh, in the future.

Abby:

Yes, yes.

Amy:

So this is like the tax Super Bowl that's coming up. This is really our opportunity to fight for the tax code that we want and deserve because as Hillary rightly pointed out, a huge chunk of the Trump tax law is getting ready to expire. The bad news for us was that they, you know, kind of structured a bunch of the tax cuts to expire in 2025 and it's kind of an accounting gimmick to make it look like it was less expensive. But what it does is open up this opportunity for us to say, wait a minute, is this really the direction that we want our tax code to go? Because you know, one, as we just talked about the benefits of the 2017 tax law really overwhelmingly went to the top, went to big corporations. With this big chunk of the Trump tax cuts expiring, really having the opportunity to take the, the tax code in a different direction. Not only can we let the tax cuts at the very top expire, ride off into the sunset, but we can also take the opportunity to even make the tax code fairer and more progressive.

Abby:

A tax code is an aspirational thing. It should build the society, motivate the things you want and dis motivate the things and activities that you don't want. I would love to see an aspirational tax code.

Hilary:

I imagine the list is long of what you would both do to the tax code to, to revamp it and and and build it toward the world that we want. But for each of you, what's one or two things you would, you would change?

Abby:

I might start with taxing capital gains at a higher rate because most people are using them as as income not as gains. Um, there's certainly not money getting reinvested because of that or it's not reinvested in a way that benefits workers. So that's the first thing I would have a negative income tax for people below the poverty line. You know, you end up with a negative number, the government's going to give you some money and then we need to start not taxing the things that we wanna have happen. So solar panels, you know, energy responsible jobs, you know, let's start like giving people a break for working in those things we want them to work at and, and start taxing, I don't know, the petroleum business, um, a lot more heavily punishing them a lot more. Well maybe we could stop giving them government subsidies. All the things, um, that are really actively hurting us. I would have a very hefty estate tax because it doesn't make sense that I can coast my life away without having to have worked for anything because my grandfather was smart. That doesn't make any sense to me and that's not a society I wanna live in. But when I do say that the angriest letters I get and pushback that I get is from working class people who say to me, if I ever make that kind of money, I would hate to have the government take it. And I keep saying to them, you're never gonna make that kind of money. And they've talked you into dreaming a dream that is just so far beyond the realm of possibility that you've gotta let go of that.

Amy:

I'd love to take a second to just kind of unpack a little bit of that. 'cause I feel like when Abby talks about this kind of dream that's been dangled in front of people and in a way we use that American dream to kind of brainwash ourselves as a, an economy and a society that the worst possible thing is having to pay taxes. And in fact, if we like just take a step back and think about what the tax code is for, it's to pool our resources for all of the things that we benefit for, whether it's roads and bridges or our educational system or if we really can like turn a corner and invest in people. How about universal child care or paid family and medical leave? But really thinking about ways to kind of fill in the gaps. You know, we don't pay people a living wage or we see wage gaps for women and people of color who are doing the really hard work that keeps all of us afloat. If we take a step back and think about taxes as the way we take care of each other, maybe we can like chip away at this idea that taxes is the government taking money that's mine. 

But to answer your actual question, there are a lot of different ways we could revamp our tax codes. So it's more fair. First and foremost, just like we've been talking about throughout this conversation, letting the tax cuts at the top expire in 2025 is key. That gets us on the right path. But we need to go beyond the expiring 2017 tax cuts to really get the tax code we want. We've had decades upon decades of tax cuts at the top, so it took us a long time to mess up the tax code as much as we have right now. And it's gonna take a while to turn it around and get us back to where we need to be. The good news is we know what we need to do. There are a lot of tax changes that we can make like increasing the tax rate that corporations pay instead of trying to push that rate even lower, this will get us closer to the tax code that we need. 

One other very important way that we can make the tax code fairer and work better for women and families is to expand refundable tax credits like the earned income tax credit or the child tax credit. If we bring back some of the expansions that we had to the child tax credit in 2021, it would be more available to the families who need it most. And we could see the dramatic reductions in child poverty and more families would get the income boost that helps parents go to work, kids succeed in school. And then the last thing that I wanna mention, you know, I know we talked about this episode kind of radicalizing people a little bit around taxes. And I'm gonna turn that up just one more notch and talk about IRS funding. Really wealthy people have armies of lawyers and tax accountants and their entire goal is to help keep their taxes as low as possible. Until recently, the IRS just couldn't keep up. They got some funding in 2021. And so the IRS reported that this is the first year that the IRS even had enough funding to go after some of the people who don't even file a tax return. 25,000 tax filers with incomes over a million dollars didn't even file tax returns in at least one year between 2017 and 2022. This represents millions of dollars in taxes that were never paid under the tax system we have right now. We don't have to change any laws, we just have to give the IRS the tools to do what it needs to do.

Hilary:

So with a little more money and a little more enforcement, we could recoup so much that we're already owed even under this weak tax system.

Amy:

Even under the tax system that we have right now.

Hilary:

Talking about changing hearts and minds. I think one of the ways we've been thinking about this, or at least the conversation around kind of billionaires especially has come up in pop culture lately is because a lot of billionaires on the list are celebrities now. They're pop culture icons. And I think it's an opportunity to kind of reshape how we get people to think about, you know, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Oprah, Jay-Z, Michael Jordan. I actually have like the list pretty memorized now. Uh, even George Lucas, uh, how we get them, you know, that their role in income in equality in the United States. And so I do either of you agree with me there's like a, a chance maybe to to, you know, can we get Taylor Swift talking about taxes?

Abby:

Uh, if you get me in front of Taylor Swift, I'll talk her into it. I swear to God and then I'll, I'll then I'll get her off her private plane.

Amy:

Yeah, again, I think this goes back to our thinking about equating what people earn with like their success and the value and what they've built and what they've contributed and just thinking about the infrastructure that helps people achieve that economic success. It's the roads, it's the bridges, it's the, you know, the cities and counties and it's the workforce. And so like the biggest um, kind of way to pay back the fans in a way is to support the society that we all live in, that we all contribute to, that we're all part of as an economy that we're interconnected. Um, and I'd love to be able to make the case that that's by paying your taxes.

Hilary:

Yeah. So Abby, how do we get more wealthy people to be like you? 

Abby:

Well, you'd be surprised at how many people feel the same way I do about this. You know, there's a general perception out there that wealthy people got wealthy by being uninterested in anybody else's wellbeing. And um, I'm part of patriotic millionaires and the Women Donors Network and other things like this which bring together like-minded people to talk about how to strategize around getting money out of politics. That's the root problem. And getting people to understand the benefits of taxation on the other. So we strategize a lot. I try to be as loud as I can be, um, because I understand the value of it being sort of weird and surprising that I would say the things that I say because it is really important to model what it looks like to actually care about the larger entity, which is my country rather than just my own narrow self-interest.

And also what is really galling to me is most wealthy people wouldn't even feel the change in the taxes. It wouldn't affect their lifestyle. They wouldn't have to make any hard choices, nothing would change, right? Except the bottom line, their net worth. And and that's what it really kind of enrages me. Like they're comparing an abstract number that that that never is going to mean anything. And I, you know, it's enraging to me to think that someone like Jeff Bezos knows there has to be job training and, and workers have to be retrained. And so he puts a million dollars into a job training program. Well Jeff, you know, if you paid in taxes a reasonable amount, the government could apply a better training program to a wider swath of people and you wouldn't have to do the damage that you do when you get out of bed every day. You wouldn't have to. 

Hilary:

How do we think race and gender play into the conversation around tax wealth and inequality?

Abby:

At every level, you know, there's, there's income and there's wealth, right? And the vast majority of people are concerned with income because very few people actually can amass wealth. So we know that there's a pay gap for women. We know there's a pay gap for people of color and for women of color it's out of this world, these gaps. So to start with the income people are able to generate through work is much more stressed, much smaller, more difficult to amass. Very rarely does it get transformed into wealth. A person of wealth has access to any number of different sweet deals they can get on the inside. Um, they get better in, better returns the more money they invest and so forth. And so there's a whole other world there of where wealth masses and it is dominated by white men, some white women, lower numbers. They also experience a pay gap. And then where you really, really, really amass insane amounts of wealth is where the risks are the highest. And this has been proven time and time again, women are not generally speaking, drawn to the fields that involve risk as an inherent quality. And so women tend not to either be looked upon favorably, people of color are not let in because so much of this is about like inner circles of people who already know each other, which are ipso facto, lacking in women and people of color. So it's a self-reinforcing circle around the wealth that keeps widening this wealth divide. So we're gonna have to tax wealth as well as income if we want to fix the enormous gap. Because if we don't tax wealth, then the wealth will just stay right in the hands that it's in. And if it's predominantly white and predominantly male, that's where it's gonna get passed. So we have to stop replicating the structures that have brought us to this point.

Amy:

The tax code is not race or gender neutral. And part of that, not coincidentally, is that the modern tax code was written primarily by really elite and wealthy white men. There wasn't a woman on the Senate Finance Committee, which is the, the tax writing committee in the Senate until 1995. And so like when they are thinking about this ideal worker's life or who this ideal worker is, they're not thinking about a Black home care worker or a childcare worker or even kind of a typical woman. They're thinking about someone who earns a paycheck and their pay goes up over time. They're thinking about someone who steadily gets increases in promotions and doesn't have to jump back into the workforce after five or 10 years to take care of young children or older parents. So, you know, even an example as um, simple as retirement savings. You know, the tax code tells us we're supposed to save, it's economically productive, we're rewarding savings, but it's not set up in a way that recognizes people may not have enough to make ends meet and they can't spare income to save or they're dropping outta the workforce for periods and they can't save through their employer. Or they're working for a childcare center or a restaurant or a retail company that doesn't offer retirement savings. And so when you put all of those things together, and this is grossly oversimplifying work that tax scholars like the great Dorothy Brown or Beverly Moran have been doing for years. The tax code is not race or gender neutral. It contributes to and exacerbates inequality.

Hilary:

I'm thinking too about if the tax code was written back by white men at a certain moment, like how do we now change that so that those perspectives are represented. And I think that I'm excited at getting to make taxes cool, getting people riled up, but also seeing where they can make a difference. You're both nodding. So I feel like

Amy:

, oh, I'm sorry. I forget that you can't hear nodding on a on a podcasts. No, but I think it's a, it is a, a really important thing to underscore this is exactly the thing that the tax code is designed to do. If we just increase the share that the wealthiest and big corporations pay, we would have the revenue to make the investments in people that would benefit all of us and make the economy work for everybody. And that's really the opportunity that a tax debate like the one we're seeing in 2025 offers us.

Hilary:

Well thank you Amy and Abby both for taking the time to join me today and talk about our weird, broken, terrible tax system, but also the opportunities to change it and make it better. And, and thank you both for your leadership on this.

Amy:

I just wanted to thank you, Abby. It's so exciting to be in conversation with you. We're such admirers of how you use your voice and your power to make change. And we're, we are just, I can't tell you, uh, we're a fangirling a little bit over here, but it's been so fun to be in this conversation with you.

Abby:

Oh, that's so humbling. But thank you, thank you so much for saying that and I just admire the work you guys do too. I thank you so much for everything you're working on.

CREDITS

Hearsay is a Wonder Media Network production in partnership with the National Women's Law Center. It is hosted and produced by Jessica Baskerville, Lark Lewis and Hillary Woodward. Our producers are Taylor Williamson and Abby Delk. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and Maddie Foley is our editor Show Art by Andrea Sumner.

BLOOPER

Jessica:

Hi, I'm Jessica.

Lark:

I'm Lark. 

Hilary:

And I'm Hillary . Oh my God. Let's do it again.

Lark:

Why? That was good. 

Hilary: 

I was so energetic. I just sounded like 

Jessica:

That was the whole point. Doesn't Taylor always like more energy? 

Hilary:

I don't think Taylor actually. 

Taylor:

Yes.

Hilary:

Damn it. You're on mute, Taylor 

Jessica:

No she's not. We hear you loud and clear