Is America an Oligarchy?

Is America an oligarchy? This debate between Andrea and Felix Salmon, author of The Phoenix Economy: Work, Life, and Money in the New Not Normal, took place over the summer, but was delayed due to Biden dropping out of the election and Kamala Harris taking his place. We're revisiting it this week to assess how well it has aged.

America’s twelve richest men are now worth a combined $2 trillion. One of them, Jeff Bezos, reportedly interfered with the independence of the Washington Post, triggering a mass exodus after he blocked the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Another, Elon Musk, is threatening Republicans in Congress—one of the last remaining checks on our political system—warning that they must submit to Trump’s White House or face his warchest in the GOP primaries. Musk spent over a quarter of a billion dollars on Trump’s election and has been rewarded by being a sidekick President, meeting with world leaders, including Trump’s recent call with Zelensky.

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this year revealed that “the top 10% of wealthy Americans now control 60% of the nation’s wealth, while the poorer half of the country holds only 6%.” America braces for the impact of a second Trump White House, packed with billionaires and a PayPal mafia shadow presidency. Deregulation, monopolies, and tax cuts for the rich will exacerbate America’s income inequality crisis and fuel further political unrest.

Luigi Mangione, also known as the alleged Claims Adjuster assassin, sparked a national conversation this week in America. For a brief moment, Americans across the political spectrum set aside their differences and united around horror stories of insurance company greed. If we resist getting drawn into Republican-driven culture wars, we have the potential to unite with people from all sides of the political divide against a common enemy.

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Show Notes

The Phoenix Economy: Work, Life, and Money in the New Not Normal by Felix Salmon https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-phoenix-economy-work-life-and-money-in-the-new-not-normal-felix-salmon/19257986?ean=9780063076280

Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris, paper reports https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/business/money-report/jeff-bezos-killed-washington-post-endorsement-of-kamala-harris-paper-reports/4009739/

Trump selling deregulation https://x.com/samstein/status/1866574253534876026

Elon Musk warns Republicans against standing in Trump’s way — or his https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-politics-trump-7e26c829af224a1f9d67c27cea085e68

America's 12 Richest Men Now Worth a Combined $2 Trillion https://www.newsweek.com/americas-12-richest-men-worth-combined-2-trillion-1995950#:~:text=An%20analysis%20by%20Forbes%20showed,of%20more%20than%20%242%20trillion

Elon Musk spends $277 million to back Trump and Republican candidates https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-277-million-trump-republican-candidates-donations/

Wall Street continues to roll higher in wake of Trump victory https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-11-11/stock-market-today-wall-street-rolls-higher-as-bitcoin-bursts-above-87-000

America's top 10% controls 60% of the wealth. The bottom half holds 6%. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/10/24/americas-richest-10-percent-controls-60-percent-of-wealth/75790850007/

Trump’s Truth Social is now a public company. Experts warn its multibillion-dollar valuation defies logic https://www.newsweek.com/americas-12-richest-men-worth-combined-2-trillion-1995950#:~:text=An%20analysis%20by%20Forbes%20showed,of%20more%20than%20%242%20trillion.

Slain UnitedHealth CEO faced ongoing court battles, threats Common complaints against insurer denials were written on bullet casings found where Brian Thompson was killed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/12/06/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-threats-court-battles/

Exclusive: Luigi's Manifesto Read the manifesto the media refused to publish https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

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Transcript

Andrea Chalupa (00:00):

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(00:41):

Hey everyone. Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. And today we have a special debate is the US and oligarchy. Spoiler alert. Yes it is. I'll be going up against Felix Salmon, author of the Phoenix Economy Work Life and Money and the New Not Normal.

(01:05):

This conversation was recorded during the election, during the summer. So much was happening then, obviously with Biden dropping out and Kamala replacing him. So this conversation got pushed, but I think now is a perfect time to run it.

(01:17):

Why? Because Americans across the political spectrum have been united in a love affair of a young assassin nicknamed the Claims Adjuster. This is a phenomenon. So this Robinhood type folk hero. And yes, there's all these TikTok videos of folk songs in tribute to the Claims Adjuster that are online. Some of them are being taken down. And I am sharing all this with you to remind you all that what we're witnessing happened in the 1920s, 1930s during the Great Depression. Another time like today with historic levels of income inequality, with rising threats of fascism. Because remember, what are the three main ingredients that produce fascism, income inequality, huge historic levels of income inequality, political instability like January 6th and rampant disinformation and propaganda.

(02:20):

And that's what we had back then leading up to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and ultimately World War II, and that's what we have today in America. But during that period of the Great Depression of that rampant historic levels of income inequality, you had these folk heroes like Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger. Outlaws, who were seen as standing up to the greed of big banks and federal in action by robbing these banks. And that same sort of Robinhood folk energy has been surrounding the assassin, nicknamed the Claims Adjuster whose bullet casings the scene of the crime where he gunned down the United Healthcare CEO, the largest health insurance company in America whose CEO is under all sorts of investigations from insider trading and so on, who is just been destroyed online even before his murder for horrible levels of denying coverage. His wife who was interviewed said that she believed that her husband's life was under threat because of claims not being met by his insurance company.

(03:31):

And the bullet casings that have seen the crime, as you know by now said, deny, defend, depose. And that's similar to the book Delay. Deny Defend, Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It by Jay Feynman. So this gunman also left a backpack in Central Park with Monopoly money in it. Monopoly being a game that was invented to be a satire on rampant greed and capitalism in America. So we felt like as a nation, like, oh my God, we have our very own joker here from Batman. And then when surveillance photographs of him were released, the jackets you were wearing, reportedly were selling out online. A men and women were posting videos, offering a cook for him, offering to be a sex slave. And people across the political spectrum seemed united. Okay? It's like we put aside our differences to cheer on this guy.

(04:24):

There was a lookalike contest for him in Washington Square Park where there had just been a lookalike contest for the heart throb actor Timothy Chalamet and Terrell Starr and I were at a dinner on Saturday night at a Georgian restaurant in Brooklyn celebrating the Syrian people, the Georgian people, all people standing up to brutality. And the woman seated next to us who we started chatting with, who took a photo of us who made small talk with was saying that she had just come from the Washington Square Park lookalike contest for the Claims Adjuster assassin as he was lovingly nicknamed by the internet. So this has been quite a moment in this country, especially following such a horrible election that the letter country towards the brink of civil war, and now we have the claims adjuster to bring everybody together. Now, if you're feeling sick to your stomach because of the violence that was perpetrated, I want to just remind you, if somebody were to go shoot up, let's say a synagogue, a mosque, a gay nightclub, that would be genocide, that would be ethnic cleansing.

(05:26):

But to go after someone who is going after you who is denying you lifesaving help, who's being predatory towards you in your weakest moment, who is enriching themselves, offer your own misery. At a certain point, people get cornered. They're either dead. If they do, they're dead if they don't. That's what we saw in Syria. The Syrians had no choice but to organize and fight and overthrow sod. They're dead either way. And that is what is happening in America today with these historic levels of income inequality. And instead of the rich getting together and saying, enough is enough, we need to come up with a sensible tax plan, not paid for by the poor and middle class. We need to come up with smart public safety nets or else our heads are going to be on the chopping block. Instead of doing that, they're investing all their money in billionaire bunkers to hide from us, to hide from people.

(06:16):

They're investing their money into rockets thinking they could escape us into space. And we know this to be true. When Black Lives Matter happened, that big movement for George Floyd, an architect friend who works for the Uber rich, got a big influx of phone calls from clients wanting bulletproof walls, wanting panic rooms. So instead of giving back much of their stolen wealth, their wealth has squeezed from us because the people in America are treated as they say in Grant about the oligarchs, like the ship they grow their money in. It's called the Ification of America. All these services plummeting down in quality just like with our health insurance. It's insane the stuff they make us pay for. Now, all of these monopolies that are gobbling up all of these companies, so you can't even fight back. You don't like one service. Well, if you go to the competitor, it's owned by the same corporate giant.

(07:07):

So that's the big threat that we're all under. It's not Putin, it's not Asad, it's the corporate greed that is the big enemy. And if you work in media, large or small, if you're an activist, the best thing you can do is focus on that because that is the way you're going to force through sunlight. That is the way you're going to force through reforms. That is the way you're going to unite this country. Because if we can take anything from this tragedy, if we can take anything of good of value out of it, it should be this that we saw for a moment that Americans could be united and what they want to be united about is being treated fairly and with dignity and that their lives are safe. And the corporate greed right now is endangering our lives and there's going to be more copycats.

(07:55):

Just like Luigi Mangione, the young man that was arrested for being the Claims Adjuster assassin, just like he turned to Ted Kozinski, the Unibomber and was essentially a copycat of Ted Kozinski, the Unabomber, leaving some heartfelt review about his book online and basically saying, it's time that we take action. Violence is the only answer. That's the only way you fight back against these predators. Just like Luigi Mangione was a copycat of the Unabomber, there's going to be more copycats coming. There's no place to hide from this. You're all scrubbing your websites, taking your photos down. You're calling up all of these private security firms. Are you going to live your entire life in a prison in fear because you want to fatten your wallet even more? You want to buy five more homes, more yachts, private island? Where does it end? At a certain point, as a society, we have to come together and say that this level of greed that we're collectively suffering under no matter your political affiliation, is a form of mental illness. It is a form of mental illness. And now this young man, Luigi Mangione, who yes, was born into a rich, old, politically established family, was given life on a platter, the best private schools and Ivy League education. He could travel the world as he did to Hawaii and Japan. He had all the leisure to be.

(09:18):

I see people online are trying to peg him. He commented on a Tucker Carlson video. He made fun of this person, that person. It's like he's not of the left or right. He is a human being first and foremost. There's no label to put on this guy. There's no larger conspiracy of him as a human being. He is just a kid that was taught that his voice matters in the world, that he matters. He was valedictorian. He gave speeches, and then when reality hit him through a bad back and bad back surgery, he finally just snapped. But he was somebody that was raised in an elite environment who was told that he mattered. His voice mattered. And so that's likely why he felt empowered to take this matter in his own hands and fight back just like the Unabomber. Ted Kaczinski came from an upright background.

(10:08):

And obviously when black people do it, all of them are rounded up and shoved into the military prison complex, right? Oh, you're suspicious. We're going to let you die in solitary confinement, right? There's so many stories of that that came out, especially with George Floyd. But when you have a white boy do it, suddenly everyone takes notice and they become a folk hero and his life is destroyed. His family's life is destroyed as well as his victims. So let's bring something positive out of this, and let's focus on the fact that what we witnessed this week is that we are far more united than divided as a country, and it's time to push aside the narcissistic clowns that are trying to distract us from the real villains, and that is the corporate greed machine that has both parties on tight leashes. We need to start moving the lens deeply onto those people and forcing through reforms and working with so many different Americans across this country, no matter what their affiliation is, no matter who they voted for and joining together to force through these reforms.

(11:12):

The reason why the far right pushes these culture wars and scapegoats trans people, scapegoats, gay marriage, scapegoats women, and abortion healthcare, the reason why they create these culture wars is to divide us and keep us bickering online instead of building real lasting reforms, which is economic reform for everyone. A free, fair, livable future for all is the United States and oligarchy. Yes. And it's only going to get worse unless we unite as a country and stay united and focusing on the real enemy, which is the corporate greed. I staunchly stand against violence. I'm a hundred percent nonviolent. The Gaslit Nation action guide opens with Martin Luther King's memoir, as I've been saying for years now, at a certain point, people snap. That is just how these patterns work throughout history. I've seen it before in my research and it's coming back around again. Now, here's Felix Salmon, author of the Phoenix Economy, work Life and Money in the New Not Normal.

(12:23):

So Felix Salmon is the author of the must-read book, The Phoenix Economy, Work Life and Money in the New Not Normal. If you need a guide to help you navigate this time that we are in, and he is also a stellar human being. I want to share some personal favorite stories about Felix all carefully curated for mass consumption. So Felix one time, let me show up at his house with boxes to collect as many books as I wanted, and he kept throwing more and more books at me that I then donated to a business school in Aviv, Western Ukraine during the early years of Russia's invasion. That was very kind of you, Felix, I left your home with just boxes, an entire library of business books thanks to you. And then when I was in Poland, a totally bright-eyed and bushy tailed first time screenwriter, about to be embark on a journey of getting my film produced by the Great Neka Hall. And as director, I was scared out of my mind and the wonderful props department and art department because it was a very indie production and kept calling on me to help them with their English props. And so I called on Felix back in New York for his help and just to give you,

Felix Salmon (13:44):

You know how to write an Englishman's letter. I'm like, I have no idea.

Andrea Chalupa (13:48):

No, but people have to understand in the film, Mr. Jones, in the very beginning where James Norton is receiving a letter of recommendation from World War one, prime Minister Welsh statesman Lloyd George, he has handed a letter. I wrote that letter and then a props person typed it up. And the letter that I drafted in a Google document from what would Lloyd George write at the time for a young Gareth Jones, I then sent to five different British friends and they all maybe tweaked one or two things. Felix Salmon sent it back to me with track changes and 12 different editing bubbles. He did a full on chiropractic overhaul of this letter, and that was the draft that was ultimately in the film, which you don't even see, but that's the letter of detail that went into this masterclass production.

Felix Salmon (14:40):

There you go. And I didn't even get an executive producer credit.

Andrea Chalupa (14:43):

Seriously. I'm pretty sure I crammed your name in a long list of names, but if not, this is it. Consider it this. And there's so much more to our story can we can do an entire podcast about it, Felix, because I've grown a lot as a person getting to know you. When I first met you, I experienced about a xenophobia towards the English.

Felix Salmon (15:01):

Understandable

Andrea Chalupa (15:02):

Because, and that taught me a lesson that xenophobia is always wrong because I ended up ignoring your advice on something because I couldn't stand you at the time. But then I worked through those feelings and I understood that you're ultimately right and that a xenophobia is wrong. And now I love all English people except for the fascist.

Felix Salmon (15:21):

Except for everyone who voted for Brexit.

Andrea Chalupa (15:23):

Exactly right. Those people can go to hell as well. Oh, and I one time got a deal on an apartment, thanks to you people have to know this. Sorry, sorry. So listen to, this is really, I feel like summon appreciation hour.

Felix Salmon (15:37):

I'll take it. I'll sit here and just listen to how wonderful I am for an hour.

Andrea Chalupa (15:42):

Awww. But the final, but I want to share, I was desperate to find an apartment in New York City, and I was going around trying to avoid those apartment fees, real estate broker fees, and I found a young man who was willing to sublease his place. And I casually mentioned that I was working at Connie Nass portfolio at the time, and he's, oh my god, Felix Salmon works there. I'm like, I'm like, I know I'm, you want to meet? You want to meet Felix? And so I got this apartment and you gracious, I called you, I'm like, Felix, you got to meet this guy so I can get this. And you did, and you graciously did. And I scored an amazing apartment. Thanks to you, your dear friend, your dear friend. I love you dearly. Now, let's get down to the brass tacks. What is going on with Trump's truth? Social? And yes, it is a money laundering operation, isn't it?

Felix Salmon (16:28):

Probably not yet because it has almost no revenues. If and when it starts selling a bunch of ad products or whatever it is, it's supposed to be selling to a bunch of foreign states who claim to just be buying advertising, but are really just trying to funnel money to Donald Trump because he owns most of the company, then that looks skeevy as all hell. But that hasn't happened yet. Right now the revenues are broadly non-existent. So insofar as it's a money laundering operation, there ain't a lot of money passing through it to launder. It's a very small scale money laundering operation, but it does have the potential to become one for sure.

Andrea Chalupa (17:12):

But wouldn't you be buying access to him and getting in his good graces by putting money into that black hole of an operation?

Felix Salmon (17:20):

Yes, absolutely. So anyone who is giving money to truth social, who is buying their ads or I have no idea what truth social's revenue model is, but it doesn't have many revenues. But anyone who is giving revenues to truth social is indeed effectively giving money directly to Donald Trump without having to declare that. So insofar as anyone is giving money to truth social, which as I say not very many people are doing right now, but insofar as they are, they know that that money is effectively a way of giving money to Donald Trump without having to go through various disclosure requirements that you would if you normally gave money to a politician.

Andrea Chalupa (18:04):

And he's had some shady people putting money into it like a Russian American who's under criminal investigation. Are you familiar with this?

Felix Salmon (18:16):

I am not.

Andrea Chalupa (18:17):

Okay. Well then I'll read that article in the intro to this interview so people get the context. But would you say that this is a similar dynamic with Hunter Biden and his paintings, which have been selling for pretty astronomical amounts for an amateur artist

Felix Salmon (18:33):

Except for Trump as a politician and Hunter Biden isn't right. So if you buy one of Hunter Biden's paintings, the gallerist will get a cut. Hunter Biden will get a cut. But the kind of pass through to Joe Biden is not at all obvious and

Andrea Chalupa (18:52):

Oh no, absolutely not at all.

Felix Salmon (18:53):

So it doesn't feel like a way to give money to a politician in the same way that spending money on truth social ads, it's a way to give money to Donald Trump.

Andrea Chalupa (19:04):

But wouldn't you get into Hunter Biden's good graces? I'm sorry. I'm not joining the Hunter Biden bandwagon by any means, but I just find the dynamic of his painting selling interesting. And I don't know if that's just the American culture obsession with celebrity, but probably is, in his case,

Felix Salmon (19:21):

It's probably worth assuming that Hunter Biden knows the identity of the people who have bought his paintings. And if you've spent a lot of money on his paintings and he knows who you are, then obviously you are going to be in his good graces for having given him a decent chunk of his income for this year or last year or whenever it was. He sold the paintings. If you want to cozy up to Hunter Biden, that's one way of doing that. I'm not quite sure what cozying up to Hunter Biden really gets you in the grand scheme of things. It's not clear that Hunter Biden has any real ability to give you anything meaningful in return, in stuck contrast to Donald Trump, who if he becomes resident, has an enormous amount of ability to do favors for people who gave him money,

Andrea Chalupa (20:07):

Right? He is transactional through and through, and we've seen that repeatedly.

Felix Salmon (20:11):

But also as president, he has an astonishing amount of power to do things for people. As Hunter Biden, he has almost no power to do anything for anyone.

Andrea Chalupa (20:22):

He's just a great artist and God bless you for buying those paintings. I'm sure he needs it for his legal fees because what he's been put through is just bizarre. You don't really get that treatment unless you're the president's son. And Republicans hold a lot of power right now, but it's also the DOJ doing it, which is weird. Another testament to Merrick Arlen, we're going off track of what I wanted you here for, but this is me very comfortable with you as a guest and just sort of shooting the shit we normally might. So question for you though about truth social. Is this something that would you see regulators potentially shutting down because of how odd it is that this black hole, it's certainly not a money maker, certainly not like Financial Wizard, Jared Kushner, who tracked all those billions from the Saudi, but so wouldn't the feds have reason here to look into truth social,

Felix Salmon (21:13):

It's not illegal to lose money. Normally companies that lose money shut down if their own accord just because they keep on losing money. But the thing about truth social is that it has an astonishing share price, right? That because its equity is worth over 3 billion, it has the ability to borrow money against its equity or to issue new equity or those kind of things. So I don't see it sort of just running out of steam and closing down anytime soon.

Andrea Chalupa (21:46):

So you don't see this as some sort of like the SEC might be like, why the share prices so high? What is the end game here? Is this just a Ponzi scheme? At the end of the day, you don't see the SEC going in on this or any sort of thread that they could pull?

Felix Salmon (22:05):

Look, I mean, meme stocks are not illegal, right? There are lots of stocks that trade at crazy valuations, and there's nothing illegal about that. A stock price is just what someone is willing to pay for it, and there is no suggestion that there's anyone doing anything untoward in the stock market in terms of the supply and demand for TJT stock. People are buying and selling it every day on the open market anonymously, and anyone who wants to buy it can buy it, and anyone who wants to sell it can sell it. And there's no particular reason why the SEC should have an issue with

Andrea Chalupa (22:40):

That because the SEC really doesn't do much at the end of the day, does it?

Felix Salmon (22:43):

The SEC does a lot.

Andrea Chalupa (22:44):

Doesn't it, Felix?

Felix Salmon (22:45):

Yes, it does. I mean, the SEC is, it cracks down on frauds and Truth Social or Trump media and technology group as it's known, it looks like a kind of barely competent company that is losing money and no one in their right mind would ever buy shares in. But that's not illegal. And in fact, the SEC really dragged its feet on allowing it to go public. The SPAC announcement, the way that it went public by this thing called the spac, the SPAC announcement, was years before the SEC finally said, okay, yeah, we'll let you go public. The SEC really did apply a lot of scrutiny to this, and the final listing of the company was delayed for a very long time. But yeah, they did that. They allowed it to go public and now it's public.

Andrea Chalupa (23:40):

Rupert Murdoch's, Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch's, notoriously Republican editorial board, Justice Alito running to the Wall Street Journal to try to defend himself. When Jesse Eisinger and his team at ProPublica was investigating Alito and Thomas for their corruption on the Supreme Court, accepting money from all sorts of Republicans and dark money groups that associated with cases that they were going to chime in on and so on. Rupert Murdoch has worked so hard using disinformation, using oligarch ownership of media that he's swallowed up to push America towards a cliff of dictatorship. He wasn't a huge fanboy of Trump. He was friends with Jared Ivanka. And it just goes to show that the Wall Street Journal editorial board, its owner, the Supreme Court that relies on it for protection, all of those anti-democratic forces, what they ultimately are driving us towards is dictatorship here in America. What are your thoughts?

Felix Salmon (24:48):

I think that Rupert Murdoch is a very complicated human. I think that he is mostly motivated by money and not by ideology. I don't think he's particularly ideological.

Andrea Chalupa (25:03):

His father though, was a eugenicist.

Felix Salmon (25:06):

The real right winger in the family is actually his son, Lachlan. He is much more of an idea ideologue than Rupert Wats. Remember the Rupert supported Tony Blair in 97 in the uk?

Andrea Chalupa (25:16):

Well, that's because Blair was compliant as George W Bush found out.

Felix Salmon (25:19):

Well, I mean, that's the whole point. Rupert likes politicians who will do what he wants them to do and who are going to be good for his business, and that's much more important to him than what their politics are. And he famously broke off an engagement with Ann Leslie Smith or whatever her name is, when he realized that she was a completely batshit Republican who thought that Tucker Colson was the second coming of Christ. And he doesn't like Trump very much, and he doesn't have a lot of patience with bullshit, but he does love money. And he does know that in the American media universe, there's a lot of sort of left liberal slash kind of centrist publications, and there's very little on the right. And he made an absolute fortune by creating this product, Fox News that took advantage of that vacuum and just became the place that everyone on the right decided to get their news.

(26:18):

And that made him over a billion dollars a year, and it was the billion dollars a year that he liked much more than the politics. The politics of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, long predate the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch that was there for decades before Murdoch took over. And I can assure you that if the Wall Street Journal was still owned by the Bancroft, then Murdoch had never bought it, they would've published exactly the same thing. So yeah, Muroc is complicated. I'm not saying you're wrong. And I do think that someone like Donald Trump is going to be much more likely to lock up journalists than someone like Joe Biden. That's absolutely true. And I'm quite sure that were that to happen to any member of Murdoch's journalists, publications. He would be very, very cross about that and calling up the president and saying, you got to release this person. But yeah, I think your point is well taken that locking up journalists is one of the many, many risks of electing would be autocrats.

Andrea Chalupa (27:30):

And what do you say about Wall Street lining up behind Trump? What do you seeing there and why do you think, I mean, it's just money at the end of the day. I already know I'm asking you questions I know the answer to because it's just fun. But what are you seeing there with Wall Street, just like they can't wait to get Trump elected and protect their tax cuts, which are deepening the US debt and so on? My question to you is really this, it's insane how Wall Street would do this. So many are fundraising for him and on team Trump, despite the fact that we all witnessed him try to violently overthrow our democracy. And you see these business elites again and again in the rise of fascism, they're there with Hitler and Pinoche and Mussolini and so on. They're so going against their own self-interest because as we see with Putin's Russia, you lose autonomy.

(28:23):

If you have a fortune, you lose autonomy. Your fortune could be seized if you dare to step out of line. We've seen that again, again under Putin's Russia. But so my question is, at a certain point, the level of money that they have and just not acting in their own self-interest here when it comes to Trump, because it would harm them too if we were to become a dictatorship and put them at risk and their children's future. Certainly at a certain point, the amount of money that they have cannot buy sense. So what are your thoughts on that? What their motivational ultimately is?

Felix Salmon (28:53):

I'd ask you who you are talking about.

Andrea Chalupa (28:55):

Let's see, John Malone, I believe it was, and then there's a whole list.

Felix Salmon (28:59):

John Malone is not my idea of Wall Street. There was a period, call it the Clinton Obama years where the Democrats made serious inroads into Wall Street, which was historically a very Republican neighborhood. And you got dated from when Clinton appoints Bob Rubin as treasury secretary who came over from running Goldman Sachs. And then all the way through the various Wall Street friendly treasury secretaries that Clinton and Obama appointed, and the way in which the Democrats started getting a reputation, fiscal responsibility compared to the Republicans who just seemed to spend a lot of money on tax cuts and wars and never really did anything about national debt. And so whilst we didn't like that, and so by the time you get to the Trump Clinton matchup, wall Street is really kind of behind Clinton. Clinton is a known quantity. Trump is a chaos monkey. And Wall Street is like, yeah, we'll support Hillary. But then after Biden gets elected Biden sort of tax to the left, and it's much less Wall Street friendly than Clinton and Obama had been. And the natural state of Wall Street is to be Republican. So I would say that insofar as there has been a move back towards the Republicans on Wall Street, that's kind of mean reversion, but also you still have a lot of support for Democrats on Wall Street and for Biden in particular. I wouldn't say that Wall Street as an industry is overwhelmingly, I don't think it's,

Andrea Chalupa (30:42):

Well, you have Blackstone Group ceo, EO Steven Schwartzman who's supporting him, and then you have hedge fund executive Nelson Peltz and Robert Bigelow and on and on the list goes and Citadels Ken Griffin, billionaire, bill Ackman, on and on and on. I mean, it's a who's who though of top American financiers. Who does Biden have? Jamie Diamond maybe. Maybe.

Felix Salmon (31:10):

Yeah, it's not clear. Most of these people that you just named with the possible exception of Ackman, who's gone a lot of it off the rails recently are lifelong Republicans who were supporting Trump last time around as well. That's not a change. The interesting thing is whether there's been a change this time around, and Wall Street is more whether people are supporting Trump this time who weren't supporting him last time. And I think there are, people are, and Ackman might be one example, but suddenly Schwartzman isn't. Schwartzman was always a Trumpist.

Andrea Chalupa (31:41):

What about Biden? You mentioned that Wall Street Biden hasn't been great for Wall Street. In what ways?

Felix Salmon (31:47):

Oh, but I mean, Biden has been great for Wall Street in the way they love the most, which is that the stock market has gone up and they've all made lots of money and they have nice fat interest margins and generally Wall Street as an industry, the financial sector broadly is doing very well. There was a big rate hike a couple of years ago, and Silicon Valley Bank imploded, and the bunch of bank balance sheets look a bit dodgy because of market to market mechanisms when rates go up. But broadly speaking, Biden has not been bad for the markets. He's not been bad for Wall Street. So I, I do think he appointed Lena Khan to run the FTC. He's been by far the most aggressively pro-labor president that I can remember in my lifetime. And ultimately, if what you are looking at is the great back and forth between labor and capital, where is the power held? Is it held with capital? Is it held with labor? Biden is absolutely unambiguous that his sympathies lie with labor. So the owners of the capital are going to not like that.

Andrea Chalupa (32:57):

Okay, so let's now brace ourselves. I'm going to ask you a question. I know what your answer is already. We talked about it before you came on the show, and I know where I stand. I know where you stand. And no matter what, we love each other. Okay? Okay. Okay, here it goes. Is the US an oligarchy, yes or no? Yes. Whoever answers first wins the debate.

Felix Salmon (33:17):

Congratulations non winning the debate. So yeah, I would say no. The first question being, who are these putative oligarchs?

Andrea Chalupa (33:29):

Jeff Bezos, who's destroying the Washington Post right now by hiring all these illegal British hackers? For one thing, go on Elon Musk. I can go on and on Felix, but go on.

Felix Salmon (33:39):

But no, let's be serious here. You can't go on and on because you've just named two of the top five richest men in America, and by Russian standards or by the standards of any normal oligarchy. They own tiny proportion of the national wealth.

Andrea Chalupa (34:00):

But it's impactful though. We literally are stuck under oligarch ownership of our media. Ukraine has been suffering under that with Kremlin corruption coming into Ukraine. I would argue it's what they own that matters. That makes a difference.

Felix Salmon (34:15):

Let's be absolutely clear about this. Where do most Americans get their news? The answer is the vast majority of Americans get their news mainly from broadcast TV networks. There are three main broadcast TV networks, ABCs, C-B-S-N-B-C, none of those are owned by an oligarch. There is also big radio networks, a PM and NPR not owned by oligarchs. There's basically one big national newspaper, the New York Times not owned by an oligarch. There is a lot of smaller newspapers, some of which, I mean, I guess you could make the case. You did make the case that the Washington Post is owned by an oligarch, although Jeff Bezos, by all accounts, has not meddled in the coverage in the way that someone like Rupert Murdoch would,

Andrea Chalupa (35:05):

But his recent hires are creating a crisis there Washington Post.

Felix Salmon (35:09):

So there's a mini crisis at the Washington Post right now with Will Lewis, and they'll get through that one way or another. But to point to there's a mini scandal. And by the way, just to be,

Andrea Chalupa (35:19):

Well, I'm not done. We're just starting the conversation. I've got more examples here

Felix Salmon (35:24):

Who published a four story byline going deep on all of the problems with Will Lewis and his history with phone hacking in the United Kingdom, the Washington Post, the Washington Post. That is not the behavior of they're

Andrea Chalupa (35:37):

Independent as of this time

Felix Salmon (35:39):

Of a newspaper that is owned and controlled by an oligarch. You wouldn't get Sarah Allison out there reporting, doing tough reporting on her own boss. You wouldn't get that at a Murdoch paper. Murdoch would never allow that kind of behavior.

Andrea Chalupa (35:53):

So I would look more than, I mean, it's all taken together. Do I think America's Russia, no, Russia has entered totalitarianism. That's where Russia is. But the US is certainly heading towards oligarchy, but it's not there. Now, if you look at income inequality, highest levels since the Gilded age, not true even higher,

Felix Salmon (36:13):

Absolutely not true.

Andrea Chalupa (36:14):

Absolutely true.

Felix Salmon (36:15):

And the income inequality has been coming

Andrea Chalupa (36:17):

In the US income inequality is higher than it was even in the Gilded Age. And I'll check my sources.

Felix Salmon (36:24):

Income inequality has been coming down.

Andrea Chalupa (36:27):

I just finished Thomas Pickety, his equality. And yes, I understand in the larger scheme of things that more and more people are being raised out of poverty, and it is a miracle where we are today in the world. But I'm talking about

Felix Salmon (36:39):

The US specifically. I'm talking about specifically, I'm talking about the huge change that we've seen in the US since 2020, basically since the pandemic hit has been the largest decline in inequality that we have ever seen. Now, what happened is that you created this massive labor shortage for reasons that we can go into effectively the defacto minimum wage in this country doubled from $7 to $15

Andrea Chalupa (37:07):

Thanks to grassroots power and pressure. Yes, go on.

Felix Salmon (37:09):

Yeah. And so what that did is the way you measure income inequality is you look at how the rich are doing, but you divide it by how the poor are doing. We have brought the poor up over the past four years, more impressively than at any time in the past 50 years. And income inequality has declined as a result. And the bottom 40% of the United States population by income has never done so well as they have done in the past four years. And if you are worried about income inequality and you should be, then you should be cheering the incredible progress that has been made in the past few years.

Andrea Chalupa (37:54):

Where is that coming from specifically?

Felix Salmon (37:56):

It's coming from the fact that we used to live like pre pandemic. We used to live in a world where demand for jobs exceeded the supply of jobs, and especially what's known as low skill, entry level, low wage jobs. And so employers could screw over their employees and pay them nothing, and the employees just had to accept whatever they were given. And then that entire dynamic got flipped on its head, and there weren't enough workers to go around. And all of the McDonald's and Amazon warehouses and Walmarts and fast food joints and everything, they were all competing for a small pool of workers. And the workers started agitating for $15 minimum wages and sometimes much more than that. And they started receiving them because that was what the employers needed to do in order to find those workers. It was just exactly what I was talking about earlier, the pendulum swinging away from capital and towards labor, and the people who really benefited from that were the people with the labor, the workers, and especially the low paid workers, the hourly workers. They did really well over the past four years.

Andrea Chalupa (39:11):

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think I do agree with you did see this pushback of workers or the labor force because my husband was trying to hire during that time, they had to pull out so many greater perks to bring in top talent. And so it is very much a workers market.

Felix Salmon (39:29):

It's not just a top talent thing. You kind of needed to do that to bring in top talent, but you really, really needed to do it to bring in bottom talent. It was the everyday workers who found themselves with the power because it was the people who had been working in hospitality for years and these miserable jobs and never really stopped to wonder whether there was an alternative. And then they all got laid off in March, 2020, and then they realized, why do I want to go back? I can do something else instead, I can go back to college. I can move to a different state. And so by the time those employers reopened in 2021, all their workers had disappeared and they couldn't find anyone to replace them.

Andrea Chalupa (40:07):

Citizens United look at all of the dark money that can flood our elections. If you look at the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, he got a billion dollar war chest donation to continue to pack our courts with ideologues and on and on it goes. I mean, citizens United is a pretty perverse thing that has impacted us. We now have to work harder and raise more money, and it's exhausting. It's really straining our elections and our politics, and it's what helped bring Trump to power in 2016.

Felix Salmon (40:39):

A couple of things about that. Citizens United was huge and a big deal, and I don't disagree with that at all, but one, it is not obvious to me that money decides elections. It certainly didn't in 2016, Trump was massively outspent in 2016, and he still won number two when you talk about,

Andrea Chalupa (41:04):

Well, he had a lot of shocking help from the Kremlin with those email leaks and things and with the media hanging all over the latest batch of Podesta emails. There's a lot that he broke the law in several ways in 2016. So not a great example, Felix.

Felix Salmon (41:21):

No, that's a plain example of what I'm talking about. The prime example of what I'm talking about is that the way you win elections is not by spending money. And your point about Citizens United it

Andrea Chalupa (41:30):

Breaking the law, just kidding.

Felix Salmon (41:31):

Your point about Citizens United is that money helps determine the outcome of elections. And I think money increasingly does not determine the outcome of elections. And I think this is something that Democrats have been struggling with. I think they keep on raising huge amounts of money and it doesn't get them elected. So that is one, I mean, I do think Citizens United is important, but I think that if you look at the way in which every country in the world is throwing out its incumbent and is voting for weird and crazy people, Javier Millet did not win in Argentina because he had lots of money. Marine Le Pen is not going to win in France because he has lots of money. Stan is not going to win in the UK because he has lots of money. The elections are not really a function of money.

(42:15):

I think that Citizens United is important, but it's not as overarchingly important. And the other thing is that, again, going back to this question of labor versus capital, absolutely. Capital has a huge amount of power, always has, and the pendulum swings back and forth a bit, but it's never massively on the side of labor. Capital is important and powerful, but I think it's facile to conflate a large amount of power in corporate America with that ipso facto being oligarchy. We live in a country with the deepest and most liquid capital markets in the world. We live in a market in a country with the vast majority of big companies are publicly owned, which means they're owned by millions and millions of small individuals in one way or another. They're owned by pension funds, they're owned by insurance companies and via direct and indirect forms of share ownership, Americans in general participate in capitalism in that way. Just because a company has power and political power through Citizens United does not mean that an oligarch has power. Most companies are not run by oligarchs. I don't think that Tim Cook is an oligarch. I don't think that Satch Nadella is an oligarch. You can run a trillion dollar company that doesn't make you, I don't think that Sundar pitch is not oligarch.

Andrea Chalupa (43:40):

They hide their cash abroad. Tim Cook certainly does hides Apple's cash abroad. They're wealth hoarders and they're keeping it from being taxed. And there's this entire, it's not just a libertarian war against paying taxes, but it's become, it's

Felix Salmon (43:57):

Let's not personalize this Andrea, this is the point of who's

Andrea Chalupa (43:58):

Who's personalizing it.

Felix Salmon (44:00):

No, you're saying Tim Cook hides. The point is Tim

Andrea Chalupa (44:03):

Cook is

Felix Salmon (44:03):

Tim Cook pays his US taxes.

Andrea Chalupa (44:05):

Tim Cook is a tax dodger who has the head of Apple has hid massive amount of cash abroad, and they all do this. It's a larger culture of wealth hoarding where they're protecting it from taxes, and that's money that's being starved from the people to pay for public schools to pay for our roads, greater infrastructure to pay for greening our economy faster and so on and so on. It goes. So for instance, here in New York City, my neighbors and I are being squeezed with this well-meaning collective mission to get rid of our gas boilers, go gas free electrify. That's all very well-meaning. It's radical. It's revolutionary New York. It's on the forefront for doing this. Meanwhile, we're looking at the 100 or so corporations that are really the ones driving the climate crisis, and they're so big and difficult for us to take on and reform that the pressure comes on us, the little guy, to have to make these changes to try to force the upper markets to change.

(45:04):

We put in solar panels where therefore contributing to green jobs and improving that market. So my point is, where the hell are the reparations for the rest of us for the climate crisis? Why can't these big corporations, with all the wealth that they're hoarding in these tax shelters abroad, why can't they write buildings like ours, a big fat check to pay for all these environmental efficiency upgrades? Why does it fall on us, the consumer to do it? And that's why I just think it's undeniable that the immense wealth and power that we're up against and the burden that is meant for us to shoulder that we are in some sort of perverse situation. Maybe it's not an oligarchy by some strict definition, but it's certainly something where it defies common sense logic of where we are. And I feel like the Tim Apples of the world, and he's just the one of many of these guys, it's a larger culture of greed that we're up against. And that's really my larger point.

Felix Salmon (46:00):

You can rebrand capitalism as culture of greed, and I won't argue with that. And that's fine. It is absolutely true that Apple keeps a lot of money abroad. It is also true that Apple is a global company and it makes a lot of money abroad. And what you are saying is that it is not when it makes profits abroad, it doesn't repatriate those profits and therefore pay American tax on it.

Andrea Chalupa (46:29):

Them like an individual would have to. If I were to move abroad live abroad, I'd have to pay taxes to the US.

Felix Salmon (46:34):

The United States is unique in that respect. No other country does that. If you were not a US citizen, then if you lived abroad, you would not have to pay taxes in the us. Let me put it to you this way. Let's say that you are French and you have an iPhone and you use a bunch of apps on your iPhone and you pay for a bunch of apps on your iPhone, and Apple gets 30% of the revenue from the app store. And that added up among all of the millions of French people who have iPhones turns into billions of euros that is spent in France on apps, and Apple makes a bunch of profit from those transactions. My question to you is, who really has first dibs on taxing those profits? Is it America or is it France?

Andrea Chalupa (47:32):

I'd give it to the French because they'd spend it better. I trust them to spend it. They spend it on social services.

Felix Salmon (47:38):

But that's why the money that Apple keeps abroad, it's US revenues that all in the us. It doesn't send any of its US revenues out of the us. The money that you are talking about is all money that Apple has made outside the us.

Andrea Chalupa (47:54):

They should be taxed on it, just like an American citizen living abroad. But I think it's also just the astronomical difference between what A CEO earns versus the average worker in their company. Is there a metric for measuring greed or understanding greed within these companies? Sort of like the average ratio between the average worker salary versus the CEOs would tell you some sort of metric that would be the greed index for that company.

Felix Salmon (48:22):

And that's actually a number that companies have to report now. And so they have to report the ratio of CEO pay to median pay, and it's very high. It's like over 300 on average.

Andrea Chalupa (48:37):

Has reporting that led to raising pay for workers, has there been any sort of positive outcome from that metric being forced on them?

Felix Salmon (48:45):

Unclear. But as I was mentioning earlier, workers pay has gone up,

Andrea Chalupa (48:50):

Right? We had a pandemic and we had a sort of a kumbaya moment like, oh, we're all in this together. And people did find the heart in that rise that occasion. And workers did say, I'm not going to die for my job. There was a big cultural shift. Certainly. I don't know if it's sustainable though, given the larger trend of us still being stuck with the greet as good Reagan revolution. That's where we are.

Felix Salmon (49:13):

I don't know if we are stuck with it. There's the popularity of socialism in America has never been higher. The number of people who say they're upset with capitalism has never been higher. I think you see this on both sides of the aisle. I think that there's a strong anti-capitalist sentiment in the Republican party in particular. That's one of the reasons why it's so unrecognizable to the never Trumpers in the rhinos, is that Trump doesn't quack like a Republican or look like a Republican in any general sense of the term. If you look at the labor union votes, they're hitting record highs. If those votes are coming out in favor of unionizing, I think we're running at about 73% so far this year. It's a record high, but one of the reasons for that is that Republicans more than ever are voting to join unions.

(50:05):

And that kind of anti-capitalist sentiment is something that you see very much on the Republican party as well as in a Democratic party. And you do have this, what you might call post neoliberal consensus, that the kind of neoliberalism that was practiced by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton has had its day that globalism has gone too far. We're going to sort of going to onshore. We're not going to rely on China for everything we consume anymore, and so on and so forth. And yeah, I think that the kind of red and tooth and claw capitalist doesn't really have a party anymore and has less political power now than they've ever had. They don't have a lot of power in the Democratic Party, and they don't have a lot of power in Trump's Republican party either.

Andrea Chalupa (51:03):

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(52:11):

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