Taxation Policy and Personal Wealth Management Diverge

Key Quotes

"my view around taxation is that the moment you start taxing specific industries you weaponize special interest groups to come to their defense and you also create some confusion around like is oracle ai you know if if i mean at what point what qualifies as an ai company and not an ai company is microsoft an ai company what i'm a big fan of and i think that the caller is alluding to i want to go back to reagan era taxation and that is there's no difference between i think the capital gains tax deduction is nothing but a transfer of wealth from young to old because somehow we've decided that sweat is less noble than money and that is the money i make on money gets taxed at a lower rate than the money that young people make on sweat so i would like to see an elimination of the capital gains tax deduction and raise those rates to current income and restore a progressive tax structure in my view you do it across all income and all firms because i think the moment you start getting into this notion of let's put a super tax on this type of firm i think that's i think you regulate them i think you have an epa you have an ai act you have privacy you have laws but in terms of taxation i just think you say look above a certain level of profitability when you sell a stock you pay this much in tax i think taxes need to go up i think we need to do away we need to raise long term capital gains from 21 to 37 it makes no sense and i'm paying lower taxes than people actually working for a living but i think you apply it to every company because a lot of a lot of for example the ai boom is going to make a lot of people in the construction industry very very rich it is that's one people that group of people that are benefiting yeah would you tax them right would you tax oh my attitude there's so many loopholes right now the only way we get there is with an amt there should be an amt anything above 10 million anything above 3 million you pay a federal amt of 40 because what happens is guys like me weaponized the tax code and do 1202 and buy assets and we end up paying high teens in tax rates so the stated the stated we focus too much on tax rates not on the tax code and enough already there is no reason why someone working for money should be taxed at a higher rate than someone who is making money from investments although i don't see any wrong taxing robots if they're workers i don't know it's an interesting one yeah yeah i just when he said it and i thought oh bill gates and then i thought oh actually he's really smart and i forgot anyway it's an interesting question we have to deal with all these things and what happens with displaced workers and how we're going to pay for that or get them different jobs so there's going to be a lot of rethinking of all the way the workplace is taxed how it's conducted what people get paid um and obviously the damage that some of this ai is going to do there's going to have to be some mitigation"

Scott Galloway argues against taxing specific industries like AI, suggesting it leads to weaponization by special interests and confusion. Instead, Galloway advocates for a broader tax reform, specifically eliminating the capital gains tax deduction and restoring a progressive tax structure across all income and firms. He believes focusing on loopholes and the overall tax code, rather than just rates, is crucial for a fairer system.

"if i could overturn citizens united i would i think a lot of our problems stem from the weaponization of washington by corporate interests and corporate money oh wow um and then wow bernie sanders i like that answer well i mean it's just true there's more there's more full time lobbyists living in dc working for amazon than there are sitting us senators huh"

Kara Swisher identifies the Citizens United Supreme Court decision as a root cause of many problems, arguing that corporate money and interests have weaponized Washington. Swisher supports this by noting the disproportionate number of lobbyists in D.C. compared to senators, implying that corporate influence overshadows legislative action.

"my approach to spending money is that we don't own money we rent it and also you collide that with my atheism you know i believe that this is all coming to an end pretty quickly for me so i spend a great deal of money i spend between three and 400 000 a month i own homes all over the world i uh have a plane and i spend most of my money on homes and experiences not gifts for kara just please but along those lines the way i try and keep in check is i think hoarding money is a virus when i hit my number eight years ago i decided anything above that number i would give away and what i do each year is i look at my total spending and i match it and i give that amount of money away and it keeps my my net worth has not increased in eight years and because i think hoarding wealth is a virus there's no reason anybody needs to be a billionaire but there's no i can't stand it when wealthy people can't aren't good at spending money i have an amazing time yeah i do things for my friends and family to get us all together in the same place i never let money get in the way of a good time i'm spending money like a 50s gangster just diagnosed with ass cancer"

Scott Galloway explains his philosophy of "renting" money, driven by his atheism and belief in enjoying life now. Galloway spends significantly each month on homes and experiences, and he has committed to giving away any money earned above a certain threshold, effectively capping his net worth increase. He views hoarding wealth as a "virus" and emphasizes spending money on people and experiences rather than accumulating it.

"i grew up with a lot of money and so i guess i don't care i've always had money um you think about money less than almost anybody i know i know you get mad at me because i don't i don't i have enough i like i don't also let me point out my mom was a spendthrift and it upset me and made me my brothers and i are very hard workers and we don't spend a lot of money all of us are very we like my brother built a beautiful house in pennsylvania where he lives and it's beautiful and he didn't it's it's gorgeous and he loves it and so that's what he spends money on and i love that because i feel like it was money well spent because he enjoys it and it's quite beautiful it's beautiful settings so we always spend money on homes but not extremely like not like ridiculously"

Kara Swisher contrasts her approach to money with Galloway's, stating that growing up with money has made her less concerned with it. Swisher notes that her mother's spendthrift habits influenced her and her brothers to be hard workers who do not spend excessively. She finds value in spending money on homes that provide enjoyment and beauty, but avoids excessive or ridiculous spending.

"unfortunately if you were to reverse engineer a young man's problems to a single point