onlie. search will hurd, reboot on san antonio book tv.org. >> the vast majority americans, 71% believe the economy is rigged in favor of the rich and guess what? they're right. and they know that well and join us tonight to share an engaging and enlightening insider's tour of the nation's tax codes, which is where they say everything starts. morris pearl, a former managing director of investment company black rock is chair of the patriotic millionaires a group of hundreds of high net worth americans committing to making all americans better off. prior to blackrock, pearl had a long tenure on wall street where he invested some of the-- where he invented some of the securest technology for capital markets for consumers in need of credit. a csa charter member. new york society of security analysts and on the board of verified voting and the center for political accountable. erica payne is founder of patriotic millionaires and she's the author of the practical progressive, how to build a 21st century political movement published in 2008 along with make markets, be markets. a post crisis analyst of financial regulation and the u.s. banking system, which she co-authored with dr. rob johnson and an advocate for economic justice, payne has appeared on many mainstream media outlets from nbc to fox news. their book, tax the rich, how lies, loopholes and lobbyists make the rich even richer is the subject of tonight's talk. please join me in welcoming, morris pearl and erica payne. >> thank you so much, we're so delighted to be here. first of all, just, i'm erica, as meghan said, and we couldn't be more thrilled to be here. thank you so much to the folks at town hall for hosting us. she sounds like a fantastic organization when this pandemic gets over with, we'll come out and see you. a couple of people we want to thank about this book, sam quigley, who is the communications director of the patriotic millionaires and he was a fantastic, amazing research and writing partner to me and morris during this process, diane wachtel and the publishers of the book, the book exists because of them after we launched our tax the rich nationwide campaign with a conference in washington two years ago, diane came up and said, please turn this into a book, a guidebook for people who need to understand what's happening in the tax system. so this book exists because of her, thank you. and then the third group is our folks, our patriotic millionaire members who are out there every day, proud traders of their craft, working hard to make sure we have a system everybody can live in. i'll say there are 500,000 people in the country who make more than a million dollars a year, which is our level for membership, a million dollars of income or five million in assets. about 500,000 those million dollar incomes and in the country and we only have a few hundred members and we're deeply grateful and we have some recruiting to do. and some pursuading to do of the other millionaires, a little about me, my name is erica payne, i grew up in raleigh, north carolina, i went to chapel hill my for undergraduate and worked the early part of my career and then decided that i'd had quite enough of politicians so i went off to business school and i got an mba from the wharton school and my heart called me back to politics. i worked hard for advocacy and my return from the private sector and around 2010, in the middle of this work, it was the lame duck session of congress and it became clear that president obama was going to cave to republican demands to extend the bush tax cuts for incomes over a million dollars and it absolutely infuriated me, that here we had both of americans political, both american political parties working together to reduce the tax burden on millionaires. and so, i got a few millionaires together and they crafted a letter that essentially said for the good of the country, raise my taxes, and it absolutely blew up in the media. and from that beginning, we've built now an organization with a few hundred members and 1500 news stories last year in 75 countries and we met with countless, countless lawmakers to talk to them about what is going on in this country. and one of those signers was my friend and partner and co-author, morris pearl. morris. >> sure, thank you, erica, my name is morris pearl. i grew up a long ways away in a little town in upstate new york near the canadian border. my parents' home, i could see the tallest buildings in montreal in a clear night and my family, my grandparents and parents, owned some clothing stores. when i saw death of a salesman for the first time, i know willy loemann, he's a guy who was shlepping the sample case toss my dad's office once a month. and that's where i live and eventually i knew i did not want to live in a small town any longer than i absolutely had to. so i went to, also to the university of pennsylvania, and i spent decades working the finance business. as meghan said, i was connecting people who needed mortgages with the availability of capital from wall street. sort of giving america's home owners the advantage of the low interest rates that major investors were paying at that time. and then, when the financial crisis came along in 2007 or so, i was add blackrock, the largest financial management company and i had clients who were parts of the government. i spent two years delving into balance sheets figuring out how much the bailouts were going to cost the taxpayers of the united states and i did projects like that in the united kingdom, in the republic of ireland and finally in greece, and one day while i was working in athens, we were having a lunch break from a due diligence meeting from the top floor of a fancy bank in downtown athens, greece. and they were telling me, oh, we've survived the nazi invasion and the ottoman turks and we can get through this and i was hoping they could. so i picked up food from the buffet and walked over to the window so they couldn't see i was having two chocolate buttedings. and -- puddings, and i saw a parade, but it wasn't a parade, was a riot moving down the street towards the parliament and i turned back and walked, finished my pudding and walked back to the bankers whose hopefully jobs we were saving and i thought to myself, am i doing much good for rest of the people of greece beyond niece couple of dozen bankers? and a few months later, i decided to retire from blackrock and spend full-time doing policy and advocacy work because i was afraid of the united states becoming like greece was then, of people having riots and demonstrations, because of the gross inequality. because we're having the same level of gross inequality here. it happened in france a few hundred years ago, it happened in south africa, during my lifetime, the 1980's. neither of nos ended well for the rich people. americans think they're being treated as second glass-- class citizens and they're right, it's unfair. >> that's right. so, we really, we have a big problem, folks. we have the highest level of inequality that we've had in america in 100 years. this is the root cause of our social unrest. and it's really the definitional and predictable end to a society that continues to take away from poor people in the middle class and just keep piling all of the money on top of the rich. you get this unequal, things are going to blow up. a millionaire who agrees with me nick hanauer the pitchforks are coming for us. >> and they're not going to be pitchforks, but we have to dig in and address this. the human cost of the level of inequality in this country is staggering. as we speak 2.5 million americans are addicted to opioids. death to despair, death to alcohol and suicide and drugs have been at the highest point they've been in recorded history. for the first time in our life, segments of our life expectancy for our population are going down for the first time and we're in a bad spot. and what's even worse about it is that the way that we set up our economy, things are getting more unequal over time and they're getting more unequal more quickly over time. so you see everything that's bubbling up in this country right now, give it a few more years, this is going to be an even bigger problem than it is now. but how did we get here? that's the big question. morris, how did we get here? >> so, what happens is, that our politicians in the united states, they spend all of their time on the phone or in person talking to rich people because they need so much donations. and even the politicians who are the best, end up being experts in the problems of the rich people they have to spend all of their time with. and they slowly just kind of forget about everyone else. i was at a cocktail party once down the street here, i'm on park avenue in new york city, and a senator stood up and said, you know, it's a good thing i'm not a self-funder like this other senator is because it's only at things like this that i get to meet regular people and i thought to myself, we are nowhere near your state, you are at a $1,000 a person cocktail person and you think you're meeting the regular people. that is a problem. the economy is rigged by these people indirectly. even without trying, they just talk to each other and they discuss the problems of being super rich and having to pay taxes and how unfair it is. and they slowly get into the frame of mind, yeah, it is unfair that rich people have to pay taxes, too. and so, that is the problem of how we got here. erica. >> so, the thing is, we have a big economy, talk about the economy, what is the economy. there's all different pieces of it, but the easiest way to think of the economy in a way that's useful in understanding it, is to think of it as a big complex piece of machinery, like a car, that you can go in and it's constructed by human beings, if something goes wrong, change and do that. the tax code is like the engine block of that economy. what does the tax code do. let's look at what it used to do. after world war ii, the top marginal income tax rate in america was 94%. today it is 37%. in years past, corporations have brought in about 30% of federal revenues. today, those corporations are bringing in 7% of our federal revenue. last year, for the first time in america, billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate in every single other group of people in the country. are you kidding me? and during the pandemic, billionaires in america, the last i counted, they made 1.4 trillion dollars. it's probably gone up since then. and here is the deal. since world war ii, with those big tax rates, marks on tax rates and corporations picking up their share, now we're down where they don't do that, that is the change that's happened over decades and to be clear, who is in charge in washington has changed dozens of times during that 50 or 60, 70 year period, okay, and the tax, the direction of the tax rate for the richest people in the country, and for the biggest multinational corporations in america, has gone in one direction, down. >> so both parties have been responsible for this. and most tax policy changes eventually got bipartisan support and after all the haggling and arguing, most people voted for them. so it's really hard to blame, you know, one particular person or congress member or senator or something, but in 2017, finally the republicans had control of both houses of congress, as well as president trump, or president trump had control of the republicans, one way or the other. and they rewrote the entire federal tax code from top to bottom. and it passed with no democratic votes and almost every republican voting for it. so now we know exactly what that group of people, the republicans on their side of congress wanted to do because they did it and they're able to do it. so we know that's what happened. now president biden has proposed that he and the democrats are going to make major changes again. and they're going to rewrite things in their vision and we're going to see what's going to happen. and we will see. over the next few months, this tax cut is going to be front and center, and front and center, of the fight is going to be erica. [laughter] >> so, i mean, just to reemphasize what morris said, this is a fantastic moment, actually and it's a hopeful moment for america, because for decades wealthy people have controlled both sides of the political aisle and we've seen where that's gotten us, but now at last we know who is responsible. so, here are the republicans, this is what they wanted their tax code to look like, now, biden's got to decide what he wants his tax code to look like and we're embarking now on that enormous legislative fight. he's put out his plan for corporations first and he's going to file a plan for wealthy individuals, for their fair share. and this is a time for you to weigh in. it doesn't matter your political, call your lawmakers that we have and talk to them about taxes so that when they do this next re-rewrite of the federal tax code, it will be into -- it will develop a tax code that will create an economy that will produce results that are more equality, that are better to sustain our country. morris and i wrote this book with that back drop, okay? and what we want to do in this book is help ordinary people without accounting degrees figure out what in the world is going on. because here is the thing, it's-- they've of done it on purpose and it's not that complicated. it's a little bit of math and a simple story. rich people are standing at the drowning board and designing a tax system that rigs the economy in their favor and we show you in this book exactly how we do -- how they do that so this is what we did in the book. we basically explained how stupid the tax code is currently and it's the 2017 tax code. it's what the republicans put in place and we just explain it. this is what it incentivizes and what it does. we explain what's stupid about the tax code and why it exists, and the justifications for the stupidity in the tax code are stupid. not only is it not the way to do it, the reasons for you to do it, don't make any sentence anyway. and i thought tonight just for a little substance on the tax piece, let's go what biden has put out there, biden has put out a corporate plan with corporations, he wants to raise the rate and used to be 35% when the republican rewrote the federal tax code and they moved it to 21%, biden wants to take it up from there and he wants to change some issues about how people can show their profits and where they get taxed. you all might have seen the things that recently came out, that this year-- last year, 55 corporations of the biggest corporations, most profitable corporations in that country paid no taxes. okay? the year before, 91 of the biggest companies in the country paid no taxes. and they're reporting profits to shareholders and to the irs, they're saying they're broke. morris, how would they do this? >> well, there's a couple of different reasons. there's a bunch of different reasons and one of main ones that we talk about that president biden wants to address, the fact that they kind of pretend is the best word, they pretend they make their money in a different country than they actually make it. the example we used is starbucks. starbucks, mostly sells coffee in the united states of america, they started down the street in seattle, and they've expanded all over the country and to other countries, too. but what they manage to do and a lot of companies do this, they have something called intellectual property. those are things like patents, trademarks, the right to use a logo, things like that. and things that you can move with the click of a mouse as opposed to buildings and land that can't be moved. and then, a lot of these companies, and this is drug companies, and other companies, including starbucks, they say, oh, we have an affiliate in some other countries like ireland or lichten stein or some country with little or no taxes, and our intellectual properties are owned there so american company has to transfer its money to pay royalties to use any intellectual property. so we make less money in america and more money in these other countries, presto mago, no income in the united states. and president biden, and we believe correctly so, thinks this is ridiculous, that you can just say that you make your money in some other country because you have interrogatory intellectual property and hopefully in a whole will change the laws, and this and other reasons for the ridiculousness. >> let's flag this piece. you all can have a lot of influence. biden laid out a paper, this is all i want to do to fix the country and here is my tax plan a paragraph about exactly what he is talking about, his plan will be in legislative language and people ultimately vote on. between now and when somebody has to take a vote, everybody who has a dog in the hunt or skin in the game, whatever the expression is, they come in and weigh in on what they think about everything and use their campaign contributions. there's a stock of $5,000pac checks going to joe manchin and kyrsten sinema because they want to be on the table to write the new law the way they want it written. so it can get watered down over the course of the next few, or it can stay exactly as he's put in this little section about it, which will correct this problem of starbucks pretending that they make all of their coffee in ireland. the thing that makes me the craziest about this, one. explanations that corporations use and you'll see that about 200 corporations came out against the entire biden tax plan a few-- i guess yesterday or the day before. so, what they say, is that if you raise their taxes, you're taxing job creators, they are the job creators, morris, are these people job creators? >> that's the most ridiculous idea that anything. no, they're not job creators. >> and they employ thousands of people, isn't' job creator. >> if you're a barista in starbucks, the people that create your jobs are the people who are paying $6 for those cups of latte coffee not the people in seattle. >> and i live off of money from my investment portfolio, i do not create jobs for anyone, maybe besides anyone writing this book. i buy and sell stock, i own hundreds of thousands of stock in companies like apple and millions of dollars of stock in companies like amazon, but i didn't help create jobs for anybody. when i buy stock in a company, you know, that money goes to whoever is selling the stock that day. when i sell my stock, i get money, and then whoever is paying for it, gets the stock. the company doesn't do any better or worse because i own or don't own the stock. there's nothing i am doing that's creating jobs for anybody by investing in stock in the stock market. that is, it's just completely absurd to think that. >> and morris, but here is the thing, what if-- if we raise taxes on people like you, on these investors, they're probably going to stop investing their money and then what do we do? >> what am i going to do, take all of my-- sell all of my stocks and pay more taxes and then ask the bank to send over boxes of hundred dollar bills and put them under my couch? that's not going to earn me anything at all. and assuming the tax rates go up to 100%, no one is proposing, don't worry. assuming that tax rates don't go up to 100%, i'm better off earning money and paying taxes, than i would possibly do if i didn't earn any money at all. >> so when people say he raised taxes on invests, you're going to tank the economy, what would you say? >> you're not going to tank the economy. people don't make investment decisions based on taxes because you pay taxes on the profits from your investments whatever they happen to be. whatever the percentages of taxes, you still would rather make more money than less money. you'd still rather make, earn, a return on your investments and pay taxes on it than earn less money, so whatever the tax rate is, the decision how to invest is exactly the same. now, that's true. i've earned a lot more money between 2017 and now than i did in previous years because the companies i invest in have made more profits because the tax rate is lower and the amount they've made is lower. if you raise the tax rate, it's true. you'll lower the profits of those companies. less money for the-- more money for the government and more money for the people means less money for the owners. yeah, that's true. but they still will try to make as much money as they can. because they'd still rather make money and keep part of it than not make money. it's that simple. >> now, one of the things that we talk about in the book and i tell you, we name names and there are some good stories in here about some lines, line votes, line people. anyway, this job creator issue is a really big one and morris and i spent a lot of time on in the book. they have created a myth that they're job creators and therefore, you cannot mess with them. and let me show a way they're not job creator. the chairman of at&t was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the corporate tax cut in 2017 ran all over the country telling people the correlation between tax cuts and jobs was very, very tight. well, between 2008 and 2015, at&t, this is when the corporate-- the effective statutory rate for corporations was 35%. during that periods of time at&t paid an effective 8%. they didn't pay the 35%, they paid 8%, now according to randall stevenson during that period of time, with that tiny low tax rate, that company must have hired tons of people. did they hire tons of people? no, they did not. they laid off 80,000 people, and since the 2017 job creating tax cuts for corporations went into effect, at&t has laid off an additional 40,000 people, and they paid randall stevenson about 35 million dollars. okay. so this job creator myth is nonsense. morris, what about private equity folks. maybe people who buy private equity companies, do they provide jobs? >> no, that's a more ridiculous idea. the example we use in the book is the big toys "r" us deal. with toys "r" us, there was a profitable company taken over by private equity guys who raised money and managed to fund to buy out the previous owners, the shareholders and they did that. they ended up-- what they ended up doing was closing the stores in order to use the land to sell the land where the stores were, the buildings, to pay off their debts. and that's fine, perfectly legal, but it did not create any jobs. they claimed to have created 62,000 jobs when they were speaking, but they don't tell you that the company previously had 97,000 people at its peak. then it had 62,000 after they took over, and then it actually went to zero shortly after that. and through all that they made hundreds of millions of dollars and even the people who were making the arrangements for the deal, who didn't even put in any money themselves, they claimed through a loophole we call the carried interest loophole, that they were partners and so, the tax benefits of being long-term investors, they should get even though they're destroying an investment, not making an investment, but that's beside the point and they ended up making hundreds of millions of dollars and paying a lower tax rate than anyone who actually works for a living. no, they did not create any jobs, they did not do anything to contribute to society except for their own families becoming richer. >> so, this is on the corporate side and you're going to see -- i mean, millions upon millions upon millions of dollars on ad buys and lobbyists and corporations going into congress to try not get this thing fixed, that is easily fixable. that's on the corporate side. now, in a few weeks, you'll see biden's plan for the personal side. what does he want to do on the personal side? well, we talk in the book about kind of within of the biggest pieces of the tax code that rigs things this favor of the wealthy, and that's what we think of as their money versus your sweat. or i guess morris' money versus my sweat which is basically the differential and tax rate between ordinary income that you make when you go to a job, and investor income. and morris, tell me about the difference between your money and my sweat. >> well, i'm a little older than erica, so, humans didn't use that word when i was growing up, but that's okay. the difference is, no logical explanation for this except this job creator's myth that we have different tax rates depending how you earn your income. how you make money. so, people who work for a living, people who operate book stores or advocacy groups and get a paycheck every other week or every other month with some money taken out for taxes, they pay tax rates starting at 10% and going up to almost 40%, 36 point something. people like me, who don't earn any money at all and do volunteer work part-time, people like me, we pay tax rates of zero for the first 70, 100,000 or so, and then 15%, and then 20%. so i pay a far lower tax rate than other people and so, even if i make the same amount of money as somebody else who works for a living, i actually can spend more money or save more money and because i get richer, because i pay less taxes, that difference is even greater the following year, and that's why the rich get richer and everyone else, whatever. >> so, morris, let's break it down into numbers, let's say, one person works every, you know, 52 weeks a year, 40 hours a week, and they bring home 100,000 dollars. you sit in your new york apartment, go on an e-trade account and $100,000 goes into your account and you don't do anything for the other 364 days, how much richer are you at the end of the year than i am? >> well, i would pay zero in taxes. and you'd probably pay around after deductions or stuff, 8,000 or so. >> okay, now let's take it up higher. so that-- and that continues, you know all, it gets worse the more money you make, the tax advantage keeps kicking in and that's not the best deal on the tax code. let's say that i work all day long every, you know, minutes of the day, and i happen to make 11 million dollars. but morris, has a relative who dies and leaves him $11 million. morris, how much tax are you paying on that $11 million that you didn't do anything to earn except for waiting for someone to die. >> since i didn't anything to earn it, it's not earned income so no taxes at all. >> $11 million that somebody handed you u'going to pay zero dollars. >> sure. >> let's say i make $11 million next year, about how much am i going to pay in taxes? >> your tax rate would be in the 30-something percent, pay around $4 million in taxes, income tax. >> so basically you didn't do anything and i worked really hard and you end the year $4 million richer than me? >> yeah, that's true. >> and i guess, ladies and gentlemen, that's our tax code. and see with that, maybe we'll open it up for questions, i'll just direct you all to tax the rich.com. it's the website where we have a road show on there, a little power point presentation that kind of takes the book and puts it into a 22-minute, we think, pretty entertaining thing to break it down for you, and so, anyway, so we'd love to open it up for questions. let's see, should we bring megan. >> why don't you take the first question, erica. >> olivia? >> yeah, so the first question that we've got is about the power point comparison that you have on youtube. so first of all, could you just explain that to us a little bit? and just go into what that comparison of wage earners versus investors is. and then give us a little bit of insight about what we can do to get the word out, even if we're not a millionaire. >> yes, so we created-- what we tried to do is create about a 20 minute story line that tells you kind of from the beginning to the end what's going on with the tax code. okay, and so we compare to families, the workhearts and those are the workers every day and the others are doing events and golf and show you how the tax system treats them differently and then we talk about the stocks, the corporate tax, and what we've done with that, olivia, we've taken that around the country and hosted about 20 events so far, house members and starting to go into grass roots groups. we were in iowa and 7,000 people on a zoom call, seeing this power point presentation and seeing how this is unfolding. if you all go to tax the rich.com, take a look at the road show, and if you think it's interesting, and you'd like us to come speak to your community group, we would love to come speak to your community group. our goal is to get this message out as widely as as humanly possible, particularly during the next three to four to five to six months when they're unfolding their infrastructure plans and rewriting the tax code. so, that can show you something to do. you can also sign on there to be part of the friends of the patriotic millionaires and we tell people the inside skinny on what's going on in washington and we're talking to lawmakers constantly. so we're taking the temperature, where are you on this corporate tax cut. and we can help you figure out who you should be calling. so the political will is there, what, i mean, americans believe that multi-millionaires and billionaires and corporations are getting away with murder. everybody agrees with this. independents, republicans, democrats, and the only people who disagree about the fact that rich people should pay higher taxes and corporations should pay higher taxes are the people who are in charge in washington and that's because they're campaign contributors don't agree with it. you can change that dynamic to engage citizens. read the book so you can have a sense of it or watch the 20 minute power point presentation and it will tell you about it, also. . >> fantastic. our next question references something you mentioned earlier in the talk. the question is, didn't ireland crack down on apple on aren't a lot of shell companies starting to pull the rug out of the shell game? just a little information, is any of that changing in terms of the way that people are using international taxes to their advantage? >> sure. ireland's a very interesting country. i love ireland, it's a wonderful country. ireland, the whole country is about half the population of the city in which i live. if you go to dublin, you can tell the taxi driver because whole government is in one building, legislation and everything is in government house on marion street. and the thing is, they had no-- they didn't want to pull the rug out from anyone because them collecting money from apple for doing nothing was great. that was paying a huge amount of their budget. they had no interest in trying to do anything about apple paying them millions and millions of dollars every year for doing virtually nothing, having a small office, you know, along the river. but what happened was the european union regulators thought they were doing something unfair by treating apple differently than they're treating other companies. it was really the european union cracking down on the prime minister-- the government of ireland, they called it the guy in charge to do that and it wasn't ireland at all, it was the european union insisting that ireland not treat different countries different-- not-- that ireland stop treating different companies differently. so, no, the small countries that do this, they think it's great, because even a tiny percentage of these billions of dollars of profits is great for these little tiny countries. so, it's all in international pressure that sometimes, sometimes is capable of forcing these countries to do something differently. now, ireland legitimately has a corporate tax rate of only 12 1/2%, which is far less than the united states or most other countries. so, even if they do treat all companies equally and fairly, they'll still have a much lower tax rate in ireland than the other place. so, no, it's not a matter of a shell country's starting to pull the rug out from anybody, it's a matter of the bigger countries, the united states, or in this case, it was germany, insisting that these other countries stop doing things that are causing other countries to lose tax revenue. >> and olivia, i'll just pick up on that. janet yellin, the treasury secretary made a speech, last week, maybe more, where she called for a global minimum tax. this is a big deal for the u.s. treasury secretary to come out and she suggested the global minimum tax of 21%, the fact that the united states is for the first time calling for that kind of thing, back that's the sort of stuff that we need to see and there will be a race to the bottom. the fact is that the irs is underfunded by an absurd amount of money, the irs commissioner, i think, testified yesterday, released about a trillion dollars from tax cheats and it's largely the wealthy and corporations, so a bunch of this stuff can be addressed, it's just that we have to have the will to address it. and we've got a political system where the people have the will to address it, across party lines, it doesn't matter. okay? biden's infrastructure plan is more popular by about 10 points when you tell people that corporations are going to pay for it. you know? and they're going to correct this injustice. that's very interesting. you know, but we have to make the political will stronger than the owner will. that's the moment that we're in, because everything that you see in the u.s., it feeds into trade agreements and that's how the whole international system breaks down, and the leadership from america is critical. go ahead, morris. >> the decision our government collectively, our people collectively are making, is really that president biden is right, there's a race to the bottom. one side of the aisle just wants to win to the race and get to the bottom of the country. and the other side of the aisle wants to stop the race and say we should have some global minimum tax on corporations that applies all over the world essentially, and it's up to us, the people, through our elected representatives to make that decision. >> great. we have time for two more questions before we have to wrap up for the evening. the first one is, isn't private equity just a new spin on lbo's? can you explain to us that are reading this question from one of our lovely members of the audience. >> the answer is yes, private equity is name for people who do what we call leveraged buyouts. the basic thing what the private equity funds do, they often times do this successfully, they raise money from investors and they take that money and they borrow a whole bunch more money like when you get-- like when you are saving up money for a house and getting a mortgage, so part of the money is from you, and part is from banks loaning it. that's what the leverage means, they're leveraging their money and that's why it's called a leveraged buyout and they buy the stock of the company. they make the company become a private company owned by them by owning the stock and instead of being a public company anymore. that's why they call it private equity. so private equity firms. that's a name for leveraged buyouts or lbo's, so the answer is yes. >> and in that equity part. equity means ownership. so the private ownership. >> it used to be a public company owned by trading stock in the stock market, becomes a private company. it's all owned by one group of people. >> all right. so our last question for the evening is, could you talk about withholding tax, having a tax cuts high earners like ceo's and the companies that pay half of the holdings? i should have rewritten that question a little bit, basically i think you understand the question, it's about tax cuts for high earners and-- >> yes, that's correct, part ever your tax and a main part for many working people, a tiny part for rich people, is the fica tax, the tax that you pay for social security and medicare. that part is only paid for the dollars you earn until you earn 100 and-- i think it's 36,000. i forget the exact number, but only paid for the first part of your earnings. people who pay less than that pay a certain part of the percentage. if you earn millions of dollars you pay a smaller percentage because you don't pay anymore after you earn that much. the premise is correct, that's it's a regressive tax because people who earn lower amounts of money have a higher percentage tax rate than people who earn more money. yes, that's correct. >> one thing i think that people, sometimes politicians call for a payroll tax cut, or a payroll tax holiday, so the fica taxes will not go into the system and then they complain on the back end that social security is underfunded. so, you'll hear a phrase, scrap the tax, and essentially get rid of the social security tax cap, so that those earnings will continue and then social security would have no issue. >> that's correct. i'd like to end on a really simple question, but probably a really hard one. if you could only pick one thing, like one item to change, one thing to focus on and you could magically wave a wand and change this thing in the tax code right now tomorrow, what would that one thing be? what do you think the-- either the most taxable, the biggest priority, the thing that would matter the most to you, and answer the question however you like. >> you might ask it differently. i would say tax all money, any money you get in should be taxed at the same rates, regardless from wages, salary, investment income, inheritances and gifts from the almighty, whatever. >> no, no, that's what it is. i mean, their money versus your sweat is an enormous problem and making things worse. the piece that i would change and norris with his magic mind has fixed that piece. i would implement a substantial wealth tax and a global wealth registry so people cannot hide their money elsewhere, and so many americans pay a wealth tax and all of their money is it their home and here it your wealth and you pay property taxes on that, and so, wealth, you know, wealthy people, they don't pay a wealth tax, you know? and they don't pay a wealth transfer tax when they send their money to their kids when they pass, so that taxing of wealth and accumulated wealth is the piece that i would take care of after morris. >> those are the two pieces. >> fantastic. well, if you have any last thoughts, feel free to share them now, but thank you so much for the fascinating conversation this evening. >> buy some books and read the book and call your lawmaker as erica suggested after you read the book. >> and buy the book anyway, but go to the website, tax the rich.com. and if you want to host a thing in your neighborhood or for your community group, we'd love to talk to you, our goal is to get this message out as widely as possible, and we're here to help if you have tax questions, shoot us info and we'll get back to you. we're here to be a service and trying to build a country and i would close with this, morris is funny, he always says, you know, because people raise him for wanting to pay higher taxes and being a millionaire, he's great. and says often, i'm not anymorale-- anymore altruistic than the next guy, but we want good for our kids, good neighborhoods, good and fix that, let's do it and move on so we can do other stuff. let's go to mars or venus next. we can fix the tax code, it's not that complicated and the book is really funny, olivia, it has tons of cartoons in it and we had a lot of fun writing it. do pick it up. i think if you get the first chapter is what is rich. you know, we kind of laid out there, what is rich and the second chapter, what the heck is the economy. so we break it down for you, soup to nuts and anyway, that's our plug. thanks, you all. >> thank you so much and i will just say, it sounds like a great book. this was a great conversation, and please do pick it unfrom our partner bookstore, elliott bay books here in seattle, if you can. the link is in the chat. and again, thank you so much, morris and erica, have a great night, everyone. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> model and actress emily ratkowski, on her book. >> that essay is called transactions and an excerpt ran in the guardian, if you read that that's what i'm referencing. i was really interested in investigating my own judgment of women and how they navigate systems of power in regards to men, specifically, you know, in my, you know-- i could write a whole book just about that. >> victoria secret girl, a great character in the book. >> yes, she's a real life person, but you know, i was interested in-- i think that people kind of like do that in their marriage sometimes. i have friends who marry somebody wealthy and whatever, there's all kinds of negotiations, but in the industry, it's very specific, because as an unknown model, you're basically, you know, there's women who kind of are sent out to castings to recruit other young models to essentially go out with rich men and just like stand with them at a table and they're kind of hoping to have sex with you, but like, honestly they just want you to stand next to them and make them look cool. and it's funny, but it's pretty dark. and you know, it's a step away from the jeffrey epstein kind of world, to to be totally honest. and as now living in new york city, i don't really go to nightclubs, but a few different moments i've watched these groups of very underaged, clearly very young women walk in with like one guy who is a party promoter and the wealthy guys join. and also celebrity men, a whole kind of market around this, and you know, as an unknown model you don't get paid, but they essentially host a dinner, so if you're, you know, a working model in l.a., you're not making that much money, you're hungry, straight up. [laughter] >> and you go to these things and they know what they're doing, come to nobu, and the vibe, eat whatever you want, drink whatever you want, and so, a lot of models go because they just want a free meal and then they get a little drunk and then they're invited to the club and that is sort of when these wealthy men come into play. so had experiences of that, with are i felt extremely uncomfortable as somebody who, you know, had not -- was always very liked clear transactions and those were not very clear and the other part of that he is essay is the experience i had with now fugitive joe lo, malaysian who essentially, wolf of wall street and essentially stealing money from the people, malaysian government and the president was essentially working with him to have that happen. if you haven't read it, a book called i think billion dollar whale or something, it's really crazy. but you know, my manager got a call like, oh, and i had just moved into an apartment in new york that had bed bugs and like i was totally not-- i was living in the east village and i was new to the world. >> $25,000 is a lot of money. >> a huge amount of money and they were like, yeah, he just wants you to come to this super pool. what do you mean come to the super pool and my manager at the time, it's cool, jamie foxx will be there, leonardo dicaprio. >> how much did they get paid? >> i love to know, love to know. >> i do know that it's public record that like there were things seized from these actor's homes and whatever that gifts from joe loe. >> and just to show up at the super bowl. >> i didn't care about football. >> and did you cheer at the wrong moment? >> i have no idea what was going on at all and i wasn't pretending and that's the bizarre thing about these interactions, and you don't actually have to do that. and i wasn't being told to cheer or anything, but what was interesting in both of these experiences was watching how other women like saw opportunities and capitalized on them and i was like, okay, this guy obviously wants to have beautiful women around, houp can i -- how can i parlay into something larger at a certain point in my life i would never do that, meanwhile, i'm doing paid posts for toothpastes that are owned by the same type of men essentially. >> right. >> and maybe the transaction is a little bit more clear, but that was another instance of sort of like my own-- judging my own internalized misogyny and also, like, you know, kind of like realizing how we all exist on the spectrum of compromise. >> you can watch the full program anytime online at c-span.org just search for emily ratkowski. >> be up-to-date in the latest in publishing with book tv's podcast about books. with releases, best sellers and insider interviews. you can find books on c-span now, free mobile apps or wherever you get your podcasts. >> there are had a lot of places to get political information, but only at c-span do you get it straight from the source. no matter where you're from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here, here or here, or anywhere that matters. america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> we take you live to capitol hill for a brief session in the senate. lawmakers are on a two-week recess, no votes expected while they're away. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. the parliamentarian: washington, d.c., july 7, 2022. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable christopher a. coons, a senator from the state of delaware, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 3:00 p.m. on monday, july 11,