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The future of America is

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podcast, Future Hindsight, we take big ideas

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about civic life and democracy and turn

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them into action items for you and

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me. Every Thursday, we talk

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Find us at futurehindsight.com or wherever

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y'all. I'm Erin Haines, the host

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podcast on gender, politics, and power brought

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Wonder Media Network. You've

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probably heard the news that this election year,

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our democracy is at stake. On

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actually means, specifically for the marginalized folks

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who depend on our democracy the most.

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This is a show that dives past the headlines

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and gets clear on the unfinished work of

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our democracy. Listen

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to The Amendment now wherever you get your

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podcasts. The

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views of people are often far more reasonable than

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the politics we get, and that is, on the

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one hand, very encouraging and optimistic. On the other

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hand, it asked us what do we

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need to do about our systems so that they can

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represent our people. What

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could go right? I'm

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Zachary Carabell, the founder of The Progress

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Network, joined as always by Emma Varvalukas,

1:42

the executive director of The Progress Network.

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What could go right is our weekly

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The Progress Network. and it

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weekly and gives you a dose of

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things that are going on in the

2:07

world that are pointing in a more

2:09

positive direction for a collectively constructive future.

2:11

We're going to talk about something that

2:13

affects all of our lives intimately that

2:15

weirdly enough, we don't actually talk about

2:17

enough, which is taxes. Taxes in the

2:20

United States, why do we pay them?

2:22

Should we pay them? Do we pay them? What

2:25

are our attitudes towards them? And we're going

2:27

to take a deep dive and I think

2:29

some of what at least we

2:31

will talk about and some of what our

2:33

guests has found will surprise many of us

2:36

who tend to have a particularly

2:38

negative experience of taxes and taxation. So

2:40

Emma, who are we going to talk

2:42

to this week? Today we're going to talk

2:45

to Vanessa Williamson. She's a senior

2:47

fellow at the Brookings Institution for

2:49

Governance Studies as well as the

2:51

Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center where

2:53

she studies taxation, redistribution and political

2:55

participation. So as Zachary said,

2:58

we're going to talk to her about taxes today.

3:00

She wrote a book about this back in 2017

3:02

called Read My Lips, Why Americans Are Proud to

3:04

Pay Taxes. She's the author of other books, but

3:07

we're primarily going to talk about one of the

3:09

two things that are certain in life,

3:11

that's taxes. I'm not going to talk about that,

3:13

so we're not that negative. Different episode, we'll

3:15

do another episode. All

3:17

right, let's do it. Vanessa

3:21

Williamson, a pleasure to have you with

3:23

us today. You've done some really cool

3:25

work over the past years about Americans

3:28

and taxes. You've done other work too,

3:30

which we can certainly touch on. But

3:33

given that there is such a popular

3:35

cultural perception of

3:37

UGG taxes, or

3:40

what can I do for the wealthy? Like,

3:42

what can I do to pay less

3:44

taxes or avoid taxes or hide

3:47

my money from taxes? And

3:51

certainly in an election year,

3:53

where the kind of common understanding

3:55

of the two parties in part,

3:58

I think, remains relatively... unchanged

4:00

over the past 40 years, right? Democrats

4:03

want higher taxes and more government and

4:05

Republicans want lower taxes and less government.

4:07

That's just the popular trope, not

4:09

actually commenting on whether that's a fair one or not.

4:12

But you wrote and have done a lot of work

4:14

actually looking at the way most people think

4:16

about actually paying taxes versus this trope

4:19

and you've come up with a rather

4:21

different set of observations. So

4:23

why don't you tell us a little bit

4:25

about what those are? Americans are actually remarkably

4:27

proud to pay taxes and this is a

4:30

fighting that's really consistent over a very

4:32

long period, 40 years of survey data. And it

4:34

doesn't really matter how you ask the question. If

4:36

you ask people, for example, do

4:39

they think that it is every American civic duty

4:41

to pay their fair share of taxes, you get

4:43

a level of agreement that is almost unheard of.

4:45

It's 90 plus percent, sometimes as high as 95.

4:47

I looked into survey data to try and find

4:50

other questions where you get 95% of

4:52

Americans agreeing and you have to ask them things like,

4:54

is Elvis alive or did we land on the moon?

4:56

So this is really a very, very

4:59

high level of agreement that taxation

5:01

is an important civic duty. It's

5:03

something that people even describe it as

5:05

patriotic. When citizens are speaking to government officials,

5:07

they often describe themselves as taxpayers, right? Which

5:10

is sort of a funny thing to take

5:12

pride in. It's sort of like saying, I

5:14

didn't break any laws, right? It's mandatory to

5:16

pay taxes and everyone does. But it

5:19

is a really strong sentiment that Americans call and

5:21

you can actually also see it in something called

5:23

our tax morale, which is a sort

5:25

of jargony term. But what it means is that

5:27

compared to people in other countries, Americans are better

5:30

about paying their taxes than other countries, right? We

5:32

pay more of our taxes and more of it

5:34

on time. We pay far more taxes than actually

5:36

can be explained by the level of enforcement of

5:39

our tax laws that exist. If you ask people

5:41

what bothers them about taxes, again,

5:44

survey after survey after survey will tell you the

5:46

number one and number two concerns are

5:49

that corporations and the wealthy aren't paying their share. Those

5:52

always outscore by, you know,

5:54

something like three-fifths of Americans pick those ways and

5:56

those answers. Then something like 10% of Americans will

5:58

say the amount of people that they pay.

6:01

There's an enormous misconception currently about

6:03

tax attitudes in this country. And

6:05

I think that it stems from looking at our

6:08

politics, but our politics do not represent the attitudes

6:10

of most Americans. Does this enthusiasm

6:12

coming from Americans to pay their taxes, is

6:14

it because they have faith in what the

6:16

country is doing, what the government is doing?

6:18

And I ask that because I am recording

6:21

here from Greece where everyone knows it's a

6:23

huge challenge to get people to pay their

6:25

taxes. And I always make the assumption

6:27

is because people don't trust the government, they don't think

6:29

that their money is being spent in good ways. So

6:32

I'm wondering if we could do the reverse extrapolation for

6:34

Americans or is it coming from something else? So

6:37

a trust in government in the United States

6:39

has declined significantly over many decades. It used

6:41

to be that most Americans thought they could

6:43

trust politicians to do what's right most of

6:45

the time. That was true in the 60s.

6:47

And it has sort of sexually declined since

6:49

then. Compared to what Americans have in the

6:51

past thought about the quality of their government,

6:53

it is certainly lower. But by a comparative

6:55

standard looking at other countries, Americans have a

6:57

lot of pride in their country and in

6:59

the institutions of their government. The version of

7:01

the government you learn about in the, you

7:04

know, how a bill becomes a law or,

7:06

you know, in your high school history class, people have a lot

7:08

of pride in that. Most people

7:10

when asked believe or feel like

7:13

there's something unfair about the tax

7:15

system whereby the wealthy and the

7:17

corporations aren't paying their share. And

7:19

maybe we could separate those two because it's not like

7:21

the tax rates or the way in which we calculate

7:24

taxes for corporations and the wealthy are the same at

7:26

all, even though they're lumped and

7:28

kind of pop their imagination as a generalizable, you

7:30

know, I'm paying too much, they're paying too little.

7:33

That perception of the wealthy not paying their fair

7:35

share, I mean, the wealthy has

7:37

an aggregate, right? The top, I think 1% in the

7:39

United States pay about 45% of all income

7:43

taxes in the United States. I mean, it is

7:45

a graduated tax system. Now we could argue about

7:47

whether or not billionaires proportionally are paying enough, but

7:49

usually when people are talking about the wealthy, I

7:51

mean, maybe there, I don't know, like illuminate us

7:53

about this. Are they talking about only

7:55

the very, very like the thousand

7:57

people who have close to a billion

7:59

or billion? billion dollars or is it like

8:02

everybody above? So,

8:04

when Americans talk about the wealthy, it really depends

8:06

and it depends how you ask the question. But

8:08

if you encourage people to think specifically about the

8:11

extremely wealthy, the sort of billionaire level of wealth,

8:13

there's a lot of concern there that folks in

8:15

that bracket aren't paying their share. And

8:17

that's backed by the data. So if you look

8:20

at our tax code as a whole, it is

8:22

marginally progressive. The income tax is quite progressive, but

8:24

our state and local taxes tend not to be.

8:26

So on net, if you think about all the

8:28

taxes people pay, the system is marginally progressive across

8:30

the range of incomes among people who you know,

8:33

for most audiences. So people who don't

8:35

make very much, people who are a doctor

8:37

or something like that. It's a progressive tax.

8:39

But at the very top, once you're talking

8:42

about people who are making millions and billions,

8:44

the amount of tax they pay is actually

8:46

lower than people who have less money. That's

8:48

a product of tax on capital is lower

8:50

than the tax on income. If the money

8:52

that you're living on is primarily a product

8:55

of gains you've made on your money, then

8:58

your tax rate is lower. If the money you live

9:00

on, even if it's a $10 million salary for the

9:02

CEO of a bank or a Fortune

9:04

500, if that is primarily

9:06

income, then it is a

9:08

progressive system. Yeah. Is that

9:11

fair? That's right. So if you think about, if

9:13

we could be taxing wealth or we can be

9:15

taxing work, right? And because

9:17

we tax work more heavily than wealth,

9:19

what that means in practice is that

9:22

people have to work for a living

9:24

or you are paying at this higher

9:26

rate. And it also means that people

9:28

who have large stores of wealth, which

9:30

for example, is like a deeply racialized

9:32

category of people, right? Like black Americans

9:34

have lower wealth than white Americans. So

9:36

when we tax wealth less, we're also

9:38

creating sort of racial inequities. I think

9:40

the common narrative on the left when

9:43

this topic gets brought up is like

9:45

Republicans, goddamn Republicans, you

9:47

know? Is that true? I

9:49

mean, is that like the history? Like it

9:51

really is just Republicans became anti-tax period.

9:54

Was that always the case? When did that happen? I'd love to

9:56

hear a little bit about that development. We have an income

9:58

tax that is a matter of $10 million. a mass

10:00

tax that is to say that most people pay

10:02

an income tax thanks to World War II. Right?

10:04

This is how Roosevelt decided to raise the kind

10:07

of money we needed to fight the Nazis. And

10:09

so we've had a progressive income tax ever since.

10:11

Before that, there was an income tax, but it

10:13

was only paid by very rich people. What's interesting

10:15

is that between the 40s and the 60s, taxes

10:18

were actually not a particularly controversial

10:20

subject between the parties. If you look

10:22

back at old party platforms, Republicans and Democrats

10:24

alike, they have a couple of sentences about

10:26

taxes, but it wasn't seen as a major

10:28

dividing line between the parties. It was a

10:30

kind of technical issue. People really respected people

10:32

who had expertise in how we would handle

10:34

this very technical, not terribly political issue. And

10:37

that changes, right? That changes in the 1970s

10:39

and 80s. As

10:41

Republicans, as you say, become very dedicated

10:43

to an anti-tax perspective, and that becomes

10:45

kind of one of the key mobilizers

10:47

of Republicans and also one of the

10:50

sort of key rhetorical tropes

10:52

of Republican party politics. So let me

10:54

talk a little bit about the reason

10:56

Americans, I think in general, are

10:59

proud to pay taxes because there's a kind

11:01

of a generic recognition that we

11:03

have this thing called the commons. I mean,

11:05

even if there isn't a recognition of calling

11:07

it the commons, there's this idea that there

11:09

are shared goods that the market doesn't usually

11:11

pay for, right? But do people actually think

11:14

that way or is it just kind of

11:16

a more generalizable civic spirit? So I don't

11:18

think people have a lot of the rhetoric

11:20

that you're suggesting, but that doesn't mean

11:22

they don't have a sense of

11:24

those ideas. The kind of rhetoric of the commons

11:26

is something that people don't hear very often,

11:28

right? So when I asked people, I did interviews

11:30

with folks about tax paying, and I asked them,

11:33

what is tax paying like? Like, what activities is

11:35

it similar to for you? The frequency with

11:37

which they tell you helping their neighbors, you know, and

11:39

they'll tell you a really specific story. They'll be like,

11:41

well, you know, my neighbor's across the street,

11:43

they're getting older, so I shovel the snow out of

11:45

their driveway for them. I help my neighbor, like, get

11:47

her groceries up the stairs. And so

11:50

they tell a story that's about care

11:52

and community, and often a

11:55

very, very personal story about care and community,

11:57

which was interesting for me because sometimes when

11:59

you talk to... people about political issues,

12:01

you hear a party line or you

12:03

hear an advocate's language

12:05

coming out of a person's mouth, right? And that's

12:07

evidence that the advocate or the party is doing

12:09

a great job reaching the public, right? But

12:12

on this question, they didn't have an answer in

12:14

their pocket and they had to think it over as

12:16

a rule. And I thought the

12:18

sentiments that people brought to bear were really

12:21

heartwarming, frankly, that they would see this thing

12:23

that is this annoying process, inconvenient, and so

12:26

much negative rhetoric about it in politics. But

12:28

when you ask them what it's like, what

12:30

they come up with, you know, is something

12:32

that really is evidence of

12:34

your contribution, that you're doing your

12:36

part. And I think that's

12:39

lovely, frankly. That's so interesting,

12:41

giving how politicized where your tax

12:43

money goes has become, right? If

12:45

you talk to people about benefits

12:47

or welfare or something like that,

12:49

it's an intensely toxic discussion. What

12:51

explains that? So I think, to

12:54

some extent, I'm sure you've talked about this

12:56

many times on your show, you're living in

12:58

a very long backlash to the civil rights

13:01

movement. Welfare has never been popular in the

13:03

United States. Welfare for poor people has never

13:05

been popular. You go back to the 20s

13:07

and 30s, concerns about single mothers are absolutely

13:09

present there too. But all that kind of

13:11

rhetoric, that kind of doubt about whether poor

13:13

people are deserving is

13:15

basically on steroids once racial

13:18

resentment is activated, right? So once

13:20

black Americans have access to ballots

13:23

across the South, once welfare programs

13:25

do not discriminate, suddenly

13:27

the rhetoric about those people, poor

13:29

moms who have too many kids,

13:32

those people, they're not the taxpayers,

13:34

they're taking money from the taxpayers,

13:37

that rhetoric resonates in a whole new

13:39

way with a lot of Americans. Everyone

13:41

knows Reagan's welfare queen, instead of the

13:43

classic example of a sort of... He

13:46

would change the story, the details of the story

13:48

from speech to speech, but this woman who was

13:51

defrauding the welfare system he talked about, and

13:53

he always compared it to the taxpayer, right?

13:55

The hardworking taxpayer who was chipping in and

13:57

doing their part. It is a toxin in

13:59

our politics. and we haven't figured out how to get

14:01

rid of it. Hey

14:13

everybody, I'm Scott Schaeffer. And I'm Marisa Lagos. We're

14:16

the hosts of Political Breakdown, a show that

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pulls back the curtain on the people and

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forces driving politics in the Golden State from

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now, ahead of the 2024 election, we are bringing you

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even more. More

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young people and say, know how important your

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participation is. And I think it's the time

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for this generation to put forward new voices.

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More reporting with analysis. It's

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been a very good session for organized labor. Hot labor

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summer. Hot labor summer, it's turning

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January 8th. Hey,

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it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you

16:26

get your podcasts. Emma,

16:31

if you were to ask like a group

16:34

of people in Athens, what they felt

16:36

about taxes, what do you think as

16:38

a total thing? Oh my God. She

16:41

lasts before I even answer the question. Trauma,

16:43

traumatic. I mean, the austerity measures that were

16:45

put in place, you know, during and after

16:47

the financial crisis were selling parents that

16:50

people felt, I think, betrayed by the

16:52

government, betrayed by the EU. And

16:54

nowadays, I think it's just a practical lack

16:57

of ability to pay your taxes, which is

16:59

why I can't remember if I've mentioned this

17:01

live on the show before, but the Greek

17:03

government will pay you to pay your taxes

17:06

on time. There is a discount. I think

17:08

I got 500 euros last year for paying

17:10

my taxes on time. I don't think there's

17:12

a sense of pride at all that Vanessa

17:15

is talking about. In fact, there's the opposite

17:17

sense of pride in avoiding your taxes and

17:19

individual aunties that go

17:22

around making sure that people, it's called cutting

17:24

you a receipt here and make sure they cut you

17:26

a receipt so that they are reporting that they actually

17:28

have income to the government. Cause many people just report

17:31

that they don't have any income. But that's

17:33

a source of pride that you're cheating the

17:35

government because screw the government. Yeah.

17:38

I mean, it is fascinating because obviously, you know, we

17:40

live in the reality we live in. So if you

17:42

are a citizen of the United States,

17:44

if you're one of the 340 million

17:47

or so people, and you're focused largely as human

17:49

beings do on your own country and your own

17:51

politics and your own world, you lose sight of

17:53

what you're talking about Vanessa, which is how

17:56

somewhat unusual it is to have this level

17:58

of compliance and this amount of. money

18:00

collected without primarily the threat of punitive

18:02

action. I mean, it's there, right? I

18:04

mean, people certainly pay their taxes in

18:07

part because they are aware that there

18:09

will be negative consequences if they don't.

18:11

Even if the enforcement capacities of the

18:13

Internal Revenue Service are, you know, underfunded

18:16

and could potentially get away with it for a

18:18

long time, there, I do think that the threat

18:20

of that has a fact it's not purely like

18:22

we're all just lining up, hosanna, hosanna,

18:24

voluntarily doing it. But the

18:26

point remains, if a lot of people just suddenly decided kind

18:29

of, voila, I agree, we're not going to do it, it

18:31

would be very hard. It would take a long time to

18:33

catch up with everyone not paying. I should say,

18:35

look, I do think there is a less binary

18:37

or ideological perspective of I grew up with very

18:40

little money, I live in New York City, I

18:42

now have a lot of money, I pay very

18:44

high taxes, and I pay them quite, I guess,

18:46

in line with what you're saying quite willingly. Like,

18:48

I think it's the right thing to do. I think

18:50

we do live in a commons. I think there are

18:52

things manifesting that the market does not take care of.

18:54

I do object to, you know, government

18:57

inefficiency and incompetence at the level of

18:59

wasting money that could be used productively.

19:01

It doesn't mean that I think the

19:03

market necessarily would, it just means there

19:05

should be some expectation that that money, if collected, is

19:07

then spent well. So that's number one. I think there's

19:09

a legitimate feeling of like, I don't want to pay

19:11

really high taxes if it's just going to be used

19:13

badly. And honestly, and I

19:16

felt this, you know, on the other side of the equation

19:18

too, where high taxes on

19:20

people doing better start to feel

19:22

that they're driven by punitive desires

19:25

or to address some sort of

19:27

generalizable feeling of injustice. I

19:29

also sort of push back on that. Like

19:31

I don't think tax policy is the way to make

19:34

a statement about general inequities and injustice

19:36

as a kind of a marker. And

19:38

I wonder what you feel about those

19:42

questions about taxation. So

19:44

one of the most important thing about taxes is

19:46

that it gives you a state, right?

19:48

That feeling you have that you don't want that money to

19:50

be wasted is one

19:52

of the reasons that taxation

19:54

encourages the development of representation,

19:57

right? Taxation without representation, very classic thing

19:59

in the United States. turn the world over. When people

20:01

are attached, what they develop is a desire to

20:03

be able to have a say over where the

20:05

money goes, right? And so, you know, you've undoubtedly

20:07

heard of countries that have what's called a resource

20:09

curse, right? They have some sort of national

20:11

resource that makes them rich, but the country doesn't develop,

20:14

right? They don't get... The economy is

20:16

really limited. They tend to have a lot

20:18

of poverty. And why is that? Well, it's

20:20

actually the curse of low taxation, because the

20:22

government can operate outside of accountability. But when

20:24

the government has to come to you and

20:27

tell you, like, these are your taxes

20:29

and no government can actually enforce the

20:31

tax system completely, right? It is always

20:33

reliant, to some degree, on voluntary compliance.

20:36

Then you get to negotiate with

20:38

the government itself. You get to negotiate with

20:40

other people who are also paying about what

20:43

qualifies as what government should do. And so,

20:46

it is incredibly important that there's that feeling

20:48

that, well, I have a say now, that

20:50

I have a right to say something about

20:52

what this government's doing because I chipped it.

20:54

There's an amazing old song. It's an Irving

20:56

Berlin song. It was written during World War

20:58

II, when people first had to pay income

21:01

tax. Most people first had to pay income

21:03

taxes. People don't have calculators. They're

21:05

rolling out an income tax.

21:07

You're going to do it on paper. Millions and millions of

21:09

Americans are going to have to pay. And by the way,

21:11

we're trying to win a war, so they'd better get it

21:14

right. But Irving Berlin writes this song. I paid my income

21:16

tax today. I paid

21:18

my income tax today. I

21:22

never felt proud before to be

21:24

right there with millions more. Who

21:27

paid their income tax today?

21:32

I'm squared up with the U.S.A. And

21:37

it's this idea that they did their part. And

21:39

so then, you know, later in the song, the

21:41

singer calls out the Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, and

21:43

says, care for Mr. Henry Jr., that's my dough.

21:45

I paid my income tax today. It's a patriotic

21:47

song. It's a piece of propaganda to try and

21:49

get people to, you know, understand that they had

21:51

to get this check in the mail, was it

21:53

worth? They really, I think, touched on that idea

21:55

that you're talking about, that when you live in

21:57

a society where you're paying taxes to a government.

22:00

It invests you. And that's really great.

22:02

The alternatives are really bad. You know, and

22:04

this is something that I think people don't

22:06

sometimes realize, but despots are quite bad at

22:08

raising taxes. Representative governments are

22:10

extremely good at it. There's a strong

22:12

correlation with the quality of your democracy and the

22:14

amount of money you can raise. And

22:16

you can think about that in the European example,

22:19

right? Like where are the countries where you raise

22:21

just phenomenal sums to run enormous welfare states? It's

22:23

places where the democracy runs really quite well.

22:25

So that's the one thing. The other thing

22:28

I'll say on the question of injustice, I

22:30

think that one of the genuinely negative effects

22:32

of the anti-tax politics of the era in

22:34

which we live is that it has made

22:37

it seem like, you know, if you imagine like

22:39

a legislator opening a toolbox full of policies and

22:41

they look inside and I swear to God, the

22:43

only thing they see is taxes. Like they have

22:45

no other tools at their disposal. But the reality

22:48

is, of course, the government is constantly

22:50

involved in the economy in a million different ways.

22:53

And so I think taxes became this

22:55

lightning rod. Taxes are going

22:57

to cut taxes and Democrats are going to cut

22:59

taxes, but raise taxes may be at the very

23:01

top. When in fact, regulatory power of the state,

23:04

like things like the post office, there are so many

23:06

ways that the government is actually involved in the economy

23:08

and we get over focused on taxation, even though it's

23:10

my personal issue that I love to talk about. I

23:12

think maybe other people should talk about something else. You

23:15

know, it's such a lightning rod that even the funding

23:17

to the IRS is a lightning rod now. We've

23:33

spoken a few times about levels of compliance

23:35

in the US being higher than in other

23:37

countries, but what are the actual levels of

23:39

compliance in the United States? Like how many

23:41

people are shirking their taxes and

23:43

is it the wealthy that are doing it

23:46

more often that that's what you often hear

23:48

right there. They've got fancy accounts and they've

23:50

had to skirt around different laws and things

23:52

like that. So there is a

23:54

tax gap. That is the technical term for this. That

23:57

refers to the amount of money the IRS believes

23:59

it should have collected. That has not

24:01

come in on time. And it's something like 17%. It

24:03

depends on the year. That's the missing money. And you

24:06

might think maybe that's a lowball estimate

24:08

because presumably the IRS doesn't know about all the money

24:10

it's supposed to receive but doesn't. Some of that is

24:12

too well hidden, let's say. It

24:14

is absolutely wealthier Americans who are responsible for

24:16

that. And in large part, that's because people

24:18

with a regular job, a salary job like

24:20

me, for example, my taxes are with help

24:22

largely, right? So there's not as much wiggle

24:25

room and it's also simpler for lower income

24:27

people with wages and salaries to pay the

24:29

bill on time. Speaking more

24:31

generally about why people are doing their part,

24:33

I think it's actually the enforcement is really

24:35

critical, right? And some of the most interesting

24:37

things is the IRS does two things, right?

24:39

It enforces, yes. But it also does what

24:42

comes down to customer service, right?

24:44

They help you file your taxes, right? Do

24:46

they? Do they? Well,

24:48

that, huh? But that's what they're trying to

24:50

do this year. And if there's a really

24:52

interesting pilot running right now, I think something

24:54

like 60,000 Americans have participated. You

24:56

can use a thing that's like a TurboTax,

24:58

it's a set of screens, right? But it's

25:01

public. It's the IRS's website. And

25:03

you can fill in your taxes on a

25:05

free public service. And so one of the

25:07

really interesting things to watch looking forward is

25:10

whether that gets to grow, right? Into something

25:12

that any American can use, whether

25:14

it becomes what's called pre-populated. That is to

25:16

say that the IRS puts in the numbers

25:18

that they have from your, you know, your

25:20

W-2s and all the paperwork they're receiving from

25:22

your employers, puts those numbers in for you,

25:24

along with your name and, you know, how many... You know,

25:27

they could do a lot of the work. And so if

25:29

we could move to a system more like that, we could

25:31

really massively reduce the

25:33

amount of hassle that Americans face each year and

25:35

also save people quite a lot of money. Adamus

25:38

Although it was interesting to hear over the

25:40

past couple of years, some of the opposition

25:42

to the IRS developing these tools, many

25:44

of which just were odd lightning

25:46

rods for other issues. There

25:48

was a whole privacy concern, like, oh my God, the

25:50

IRS, you know, like around this, which

25:53

is somewhat ludicrous on the face of it, because I

25:55

have all this data anyway. So the privacy concerns made no

25:57

sense, but it became a thing like, oh, I don't

25:59

know if I want the IRS to pre-populate

26:01

my form, you're like, well,

26:05

it's not like they're pulling the data. They have the

26:07

data, they're just filling out a form for you. So

26:09

there was that issue, right? Then there

26:11

was the creeping socialism argument, like somehow

26:13

it was going to be big brother

26:15

doing it for you rather than I

26:18

suppose paying TurboTax or QuickBooks or EF

26:20

Hutton to do it for you. Another one that made

26:22

very little sense. But it touched on all these other

26:25

kind of emotional issues that people have in government

26:27

and then that they were going to be incorrect, right?

26:29

They were going to take more money than should be

26:31

taken without also recognizing that you do actually

26:33

get to correct the form. It's not like they just send

26:35

you the form, which in a lot of

26:38

European countries, they just, you know, they take the money,

26:40

right? You have to then appeal for, excuse me, you

26:42

took too much and it takes however long to get

26:44

it back. I just thought that was, it

26:46

was kind of a fascinating set of objections to this

26:48

program. And it's been ready to launch,

26:50

right, for years and it kept getting

26:53

one objection after another to it. Do we have

26:55

any sense how it's going? And is it sold

26:57

too soon to tell? Well, yes.

27:00

So to begin with, the IRS has

27:02

talked about doing this for literally

27:04

decades, right? Obviously with the sort of advancement

27:06

to online filing that made this process far

27:09

more plausible, right? Now they've been talking about

27:11

since even before most people would have had

27:13

an internet net connection. So yes, pre-populating forms

27:15

is something that's been on people's minds forever.

27:17

It seems sort of obvious, right? Why are

27:19

you asking every individual to do something when you know

27:21

the answer to the question that you're going to ask

27:24

them and you're just sort of inconveniencing people? Yes. So

27:26

they've been thinking about it forever. The evidence so far

27:28

is that it's going remarkably well. They fill out the

27:30

form and it seems to work. And the main complaint

27:32

is where has this been all this time? Like why

27:34

wasn't this here 20 years ago? What has been going

27:37

on? Now that I know this could be done, I

27:39

can't believe that they haven't done it earlier. It's very

27:41

reasonable in a sense. So far it seems to me

27:43

it had been going very well. But the big test

27:45

will have been the week ahead before test because

27:49

that's when all the procrastinators out

27:51

there are getting the job done. And so you

27:53

might see a big spike and I'm sure that

27:55

at the IRS they are stress testing the system

27:57

as we speak to try and get that done.

28:00

It's definitely true that starting under Obama and continuing

28:02

under Trump, the corporate tax rates were lowered.

28:04

So there has been this effort to kind

28:06

of create a global minimum, basically prevent companies

28:08

from easily shopping for where they're

28:10

going to pay taxes. I mean, this doesn't

28:13

do any good if you're a hardware store

28:15

operator on the corner. It's really a multinational

28:17

issue. That is something that I feel gets

28:19

missed in the debate. US corporate tax policy

28:22

is not globally in isolation, right? And that's

28:24

why I feel like Americans still probably think

28:26

too much of themselves, meaning too much of

28:28

their place in the firmament that there is

28:31

a world out there where business does in

28:33

fact try to find the best deal. Do you

28:35

have any idea how people might resonate

28:37

with that, if that's ever brought to the

28:39

fore? So Americans are very angry, if you

28:42

ask them about the concept of offshoring, upset

28:44

both about the offshoring of jobs and about

28:46

the offshoring of taxes. These are

28:48

both concerns that people have in their minds. This

28:51

is a concern that extends to individual taxes as

28:53

well, that there's a sort of sense of, oh,

28:55

is it worth it to even try and raise

28:58

taxes on rich people? They'll just find a new

29:00

loophole. Their lawyers are going to be better than

29:02

the IRS's lawyers. They can pay infinite money for

29:04

this. So I think

29:06

there is real concern that on some

29:08

level, it's just too hard. The

29:10

investment in enforcement will

29:12

pay off six to one, is the

29:15

conservative estimate of how much money you get

29:17

back from raising enforcement rates on

29:19

wealthy individuals, both because there's a lot of

29:21

money there and because the

29:23

deterrence factor is very serious. Enforcement

29:26

does in fact work. You can't do it for everyone

29:29

all the time. We need to have a voluntarily compliant

29:31

system. But yeah, no, I

29:33

think people are concerned that the government isn't in

29:35

a position to actually enforce the laws or could

29:37

pass laws that simply result in the kind of

29:39

offshoring you're talking about. Yes. And

29:42

then is the how we raise the enforcement rate question

29:44

answered just by the, we need to fund the IRS? By

29:47

and large, yes. They were operating with the number of employees

29:49

that they had in the 50s. They

29:51

were a much smaller country with a much simpler

29:53

economy. And this is partly because

29:55

Congress really pushed for greater audits of earned

29:57

income tax credit recipients, which is the fundamental.

30:00

tax credit that goes to low-income Americans. So

30:02

they push for greater concerns about fraud in

30:05

that area. And so what happened was the

30:07

IRS was auditing poor people the same way

30:09

they were auditing millionaires because it's easy to

30:11

audit the poor, right? You send them a

30:13

letter and they

30:16

don't have a lawyer. Again, that

30:18

had really racially disparate impacts, right?

30:20

The thing that raising enforcement funds can do

30:22

is mean that they can hire the kind

30:24

of talent that they need to enforce

30:26

the tax code for people who have

30:29

lawyers, people who have accountants. It has

30:31

real equity implications that sometimes get lost.

30:33

Right. This is about ensuring that the

30:35

government isn't just a government that applies

30:37

penalties to the poor, but in fact

30:39

obliges the rich to follow the law

30:41

as well. Yeah, it's weird because it doesn't

30:43

sound like a sexy political topic, but it kind

30:45

of is a really sexy political topic when

30:48

you say that. Look, speaking

30:50

to the choir here on how interesting

30:52

taxes are. I have a question that's

30:54

completely unrelated to taxes, so we're going to

30:56

whiplash us a little bit toward the end

30:59

of the conversation. Hopefully people don't mind. It

31:01

has a really interesting new research out about

31:03

climate migration and about the millions of people

31:05

that will likely have to migrate due to

31:08

climate change, which brings to mind for me

31:10

a lot of climate apocalypse images. But

31:12

the interesting thing about the research was that it was

31:14

oddly uplifting, pulling on the history of the great migration

31:16

and some of the surprising knock-on effects from that. So

31:18

I was just wondering if you could just tell us

31:20

a little bit about that. It's really hard

31:22

to hit the right tone when you're talking about climate, right?

31:25

Because the situation we're facing is

31:27

obviously dire. That's indisputable for many,

31:29

many people. The coming years

31:32

will be very difficult. And one of the things that

31:34

that's going to result in is that people are going

31:36

to move, right? Move from places that are too hot,

31:38

move from places that don't have the kind of rain they

31:40

used to have, move from places that are getting too much

31:42

rain, move from places that are flooding or hurricanes, all

31:44

these things, right? You can imagine that we're going to

31:46

see really substantial migration within the United States. So a

31:48

question I've been asking myself is, well, what do we

31:50

know about really substantial migration within the United States?

31:52

I spent some time thinking about the great

31:54

migration, right? This is the movement of millions

31:56

of African Americans out of the South, the

31:59

Jim Crow South. South and into the

32:01

North and the West primarily, often in the

32:03

big cities. And it's an

32:05

enormous population shift, right? Millions and millions

32:07

of people. And it happens relatively quickly

32:09

over a few decades. And the

32:11

consequences of that are enormous. Now there are

32:14

consequences that are deeply troubling that continue

32:16

to plague our politics today, right? The

32:18

white flight, the war on crime, redlining.

32:20

There are a whole set of things

32:23

that are the kind of

32:25

policies that I could imagine coming into

32:28

play again. The other thing that

32:30

great migration did was allow for the

32:32

civil rights movement to occur. For a

32:34

moment, let's sit back. Let's imagine it's

32:36

1925 and you believe in racial justice.

32:39

It is not a good time, right? The

32:41

second plan is peaking. The Republican Party, the

32:44

party of Lincoln, the party of freed people.

32:46

It doesn't exist in the American South. Those

32:48

are one-party autocracies. The Democratic Party, people who

32:50

are progressive on the economy, like Woodrow Wilson,

32:52

believe it or progressive income tax, for example,

32:55

were often profoundly racist,

32:57

right? Wilson famously screened Birth

32:59

of a Nation, right? The

33:02

movie celebrating the origins of the Klan at the

33:04

White House. So things look

33:07

pretty dire. And if you're going to ask, if

33:09

you said, you know, imagine you, you know, political

33:11

observer in 1925, what's the president's

33:13

party for the next president that signs civil rights legislation?

33:15

Well, I think people would say, well, I don't think

33:17

that's going to happen. But if I had to guess,

33:19

I suppose the Republican Party is still the party of

33:22

Lincoln. They'll do it. And you're

33:24

like, no, no, it's not the Republicans. And I

33:26

genuinely think that a pundit, and I think, you

33:28

know, jazz age pundit, as it were, would think

33:30

for a moment and say, well,

33:33

I guess the communists are going to win

33:35

because the Communist Party opposed racial segregation, right?

33:38

Well, it seems unlikely we're going to have a communist president. But

33:40

if you ask me, it's not the Republicans who are going to do

33:43

voting rights. Well, I guess, I guess

33:45

there's only one other choice. But the reality is

33:47

the Democrats, as we all know, of course, the

33:49

Democrats desegregate the military under Truman, the Democrats. You

33:51

know, Johnson signed civil rights and voting rights laws,

33:53

the first black president and the Democrat. How

33:55

does that happen? How does the Democratic Party, the party

33:57

of Jim Crow, the party of Woodrow Wilson,

34:00

Right? How does that party, the solid

34:02

set, how does that party become the party of

34:04

civil rights? It's because black Americans moved to

34:07

the cities in the north. And two things

34:09

happened. Black Americans recognized that they had

34:11

political power there and started to exercise

34:13

it. And Democrats who were

34:15

used to losing in the north in places

34:17

like Pennsylvania, yeah, they weren't all racial liberals,

34:20

but they recognized that there were voters there

34:22

that they could appeal to. What you start

34:24

to see is large swathes of black Americans

34:26

who had traditionally voted in. Turning

34:29

Lincoln's portrait to the wall is one of the ways

34:31

it was described at the time, right? These were dedicated

34:33

Republican voters. But they started voting for the Democrats because

34:35

they saw in the New Deal something that

34:37

was going to help working people, black

34:40

Americans surely were. And they also, there

34:42

was movement in the industrial union movement,

34:44

unlike the previous union movement, had been

34:46

extremely committed to segregation, to exclusion of

34:49

black Americans. The industrial union movement looked

34:51

at these factories that were 25% black

34:53

and recognized that if they wanted to

34:56

win, they were going to have to

34:58

be multiracial. And so through the union

35:00

movement, through city politics, the Democratic Party

35:02

is converted on what was, at

35:05

least in the south, the most fundamental plank

35:07

of their politics, right? They

35:09

moved from the party of segregation, the party of Jim Crow,

35:11

to the party of civil rights. And

35:13

to me, if you're thinking to yourself, we're looking

35:16

down the barrel with climate change, right? And there's

35:18

no way to pretend that's not what's happening. And

35:20

you're thinking about these mass migrations and you start

35:23

to have apocalyptic thoughts, which I think we all

35:25

do. You could think to yourself

35:27

that we don't know what migration can cause,

35:29

but it can cause genuinely

35:31

amazing progress. I love that. It's

35:34

so unexpected. It is, right? I think it's a story

35:36

that deserves to be told. The people were

35:39

involved in it, are amazing, underappreciated

35:41

Americans. And also because I think that it

35:44

can be so easy to flip up. And

35:47

that's not actually an option. You know,

35:49

it also reminds me as we wrap up, and that's

35:51

a great note to wrap up on, that replacing

35:54

the future of any of these parties is also really, really difficult.

35:56

I have a 21 year old son who's trying to kind of

35:58

figure out how to make a difference. out. There's

36:01

aspects of both parties that are deeply unappealing

36:03

as I think that's true for most Americans,

36:05

right? And thinking like you have to make

36:07

this choice and without the awareness of

36:09

like 20 years from now, we have no idea what

36:11

the political alignment is going to look like for either

36:13

the Democrats or the Republicans. I love what you just

36:15

said. I mean, if you'd sort of asked what was

36:17

in the 1930s what the future

36:19

of these two parties were, you wouldn't necessarily

36:22

have come out where you were in the

36:24

1960s, or let alone what you said from

36:26

the Wilsonian time. So things change. They change

36:28

demographically. They change geographically. They change culturally and

36:30

often for the better. Sometimes for

36:33

the worse, of course. Anyway, I want to

36:35

thank you for your observations, comments, work. You

36:37

know, this is one of these like hiding

36:39

in plain sight issues. You know, it's vastly

36:41

important to understand the American politics. And I

36:44

think what a lot of your work does

36:46

is indicate what so many of us continue

36:48

to pound the table about that there's these

36:50

huge swaths of kind of citizen consensus in

36:52

the United States with this overlay of just

36:55

intense, bitter, tribal, anti-Nirvian partisanship

36:57

that we focus entirely on.

36:59

And we forget the degree

37:01

to which there's this very

37:04

historically odd and globally

37:06

still unusual consensus, that whole series

37:08

of things in the United States.

37:11

But if all you did was pay attention to

37:13

the rhetoric and the noise of an election year,

37:15

you would have absolutely no sense of that. Right.

37:17

And your work points very powerfully to, you know,

37:19

there's a lot, I guess, you know, for lack

37:21

of a better cliche, there's a lot that unites

37:23

us and maybe more of the United States than

37:25

the Bantos. So thank you. The

37:28

views of people are often far

37:30

more reasonable than the politics we get.

37:32

And that is on the one hand, very encouraging and optimistic.

37:34

On the other hand, it asked us what

37:36

do we need to do about our systems

37:39

so that they can represent our people. Right.

37:41

Maybe we'll have you back for

37:43

that conversation. But in the interim, thank you for

37:45

this one. Thanks, Vanessa. Thank

37:47

you. So,

37:49

Emma, I do find a lot of Vanessa's

37:52

work heartening. And that's why I mean,

37:54

I do share that feeling

37:56

of I've yet to get to a

37:58

point where I resent. I

38:00

do occasionally, as I

38:03

said, don't like either the

38:05

feeling that those taxes are being

38:07

done as a political or moral

38:10

statement rather than how do

38:12

we improve our commons. But there is this kind

38:14

of odd, you know, and I think you moving

38:16

to a society where that's

38:18

completely, well, maybe not completely alien,

38:21

largely alien is an idea, as

38:23

it is in many countries is something we lose sight

38:25

of a lot in the United States. Well,

38:27

it's interesting what she was talking about. I

38:30

mean, I wouldn't call Greece resource curse, but

38:32

there is this kind of curse,

38:34

I guess, or trap that government falls

38:37

into, which is that people don't want

38:39

to pay taxes because they don't see

38:41

that their government is doing well for them,

38:44

a la, you know, Scandinavia. But

38:46

then the government can't do well for them either if they

38:48

don't collect any taxes. So that's the trap that Greece has

38:50

been in. You know, I think they're kind of climbing out

38:52

of it now, but it's hard.

38:54

It's hard to escape that vicious circle

38:56

and it can work the other way.

38:58

It can be a positive feedback loop.

39:00

But how you go from vicious cycle,

39:02

not circle, vicious cycle to positive feedback

39:04

loop, I don't know what's

39:06

that past. Someone did this study, I

39:08

guess, around the time we were talking about when there

39:10

was was there going to be a Greg's Day? Was

39:13

Greece going to crash out of the European Union? I'm

39:15

going to get the numbers wrong, but directionally, they're

39:17

right. There was something like

39:19

30 people in Athens who declared that

39:21

they had a swimming pool because there was some property

39:23

tax that came with swimming pool. And

39:26

then there was some aerial shots saying there's like 8,000 pools,

39:28

you know. And

39:31

it was just a perfect iteration of, you know,

39:34

whatever people were doing in

39:36

terms of what they were declaring versus what reality was.

39:38

It was not a huge disconnect. And that was part

39:40

of the problem, right? You know? Oh,

39:43

that's not the least of it. I mean, at least

39:45

those are individuals. I mean, you have businesses here like

39:47

you go to a tavern, right? Lots of businesses were declaring

39:49

that they had zero income and yet you could go

39:51

and have a lunch and you paid them for your

39:53

meal. But they were reporting zero income

39:55

for years, you know. So

39:57

it's gotten better. It's gotten better. Sometimes

40:00

I feel like I'm too negative about Greece on this

40:02

podcast. Maybe we should have a positive Greece episode. No,

40:04

but I mean, I think that attitude, I mean, Greece

40:06

is better than... I mean, there are numerous

40:09

Sub-Saharan African countries. There are, you

40:12

know, until recently some Asian countries, not

40:14

the East Asian ones, which just

40:16

can't collect taxes. They don't even

40:18

have a tax collection functional group

40:20

to collect taxes. And

40:24

you know, that's, as you just said,

40:26

it's the catch-22 of if you

40:28

want more state capacity, you have to pay for it. Well, how do

40:30

you pay for it? You have to collect taxes. Well, how

40:32

do you collect taxes if you can't collect taxes?

40:34

And that, you know, and then you look

40:36

for foreign aid or you look for other stuff. So you know,

40:39

it's a... I think we forget just how,

40:41

not just affluent the United States is, but in

40:43

that sense, how affluent our government agencies are. And

40:46

I think the left misses that in the United States

40:48

because the left always feels that everything is starved for

40:51

money. But relative to almost

40:53

everywhere in the world other than Scandinavian countries,

40:55

we're not really starved for money. I mean,

40:57

even these agencies are astonishingly

40:59

well-funded relative to correlates

41:02

around the globe, maybe not relative

41:04

to what they should be or how they should be.

41:07

And that too, I think, is obscured

41:09

in our political debates. Even

41:11

low-tax Americans are still... It's

41:13

a very well-funded public sector in the United States,

41:15

no matter what part of the political spectrum you're on.

41:18

Yeah. I think this is just so hard to go and look

41:20

at. Why is there

41:22

no main page that's like, okay, the budget

41:24

for the National Institute of Health is this

41:26

many billions. The whole system is

41:28

so Byzantine and I think a lot of people don't

41:30

even know exactly how the National Institute of Health relates

41:33

to the CDC and this, that and the other thing.

41:35

But if there is some common page that's

41:37

like, here's the whole budget breakdown, at least

41:40

on that high level thing, that would

41:42

help in my opinion. Well, I mean,

41:44

that exists. It's just no one knows where to go

41:46

to find... Where? I don't know,

41:49

like go on a Google and type in breakdown

41:51

of the federal budget. I'm sure

41:53

it's there under the tax policy or whatever

41:56

else. Look, infographic,

41:58

federal budget. Which does it

42:00

have? I mean, how much of a breakdown does it have? Medicaid,

42:03

Medicare, non-defense, defense, other. Yeah,

42:05

but that's like super high

42:07

level. I mean like a slightly...

42:09

Other. Yeah, other, okay.

42:11

All right. All right. We're proving

42:13

my point. Let's click Google search, I think. Other

42:15

is $520 billion. And

42:17

it was a third party that put the infographic

42:19

together, right? It wasn't like that was the

42:21

government. I'm sure. Well, no, that was

42:23

a Congressional Budget Office. Oh, that was. Okay.

42:27

Okay. Well, the other categories are really helpful. Tax

42:29

Policy Center. That was... You know,

42:32

that's like discretionary mandatory. I mean, you're right. There's

42:34

not a great one agency by

42:36

agency. You have to really want to find it.

42:38

Yeah. You need to put in some work.

42:40

You have to put in some work. That's absolutely true. Okay.

42:44

News of the week. All right. All right.

42:47

So, I'm here with the good news of

42:49

the week. Unfortunately, Zachary is not going to

42:51

be with us for this section, but he

42:53

is going to be back next week. So

42:56

let's start with some interesting statistics

42:58

about England and Wales, where

43:00

70% of people think that crime

43:02

has gone up in the last few years.

43:04

But in a similar story to the US,

43:06

where a lot of people think crime has

43:08

gone up and actually crime has gone down,

43:10

despite a little bit of a up and

43:13

down situation during the pandemic, this article in

43:15

the conversation, which is really interesting, says that

43:17

violence, burglary, and car crime have been declining

43:19

for the last 30 years, close to 90%.

43:22

So virtually disappear the rise that they

43:24

had during the late 90s, like many

43:26

other countries. This drop of violence also

43:28

includes domestic violence, other violence against women,

43:31

anti-social behavior has also declined.

43:34

And the article talks about how now most of the

43:36

crime that's going on at England and Wales is actually

43:38

fraud and computer misuse. Essentially, like better

43:40

security measures in cars and malls, just

43:42

kind of across society has made people

43:44

less interested in doing crimes, and they

43:46

just kind of moved to hyper

43:49

crimes. But still, crime overall

43:51

is down. So good for England

43:53

and Wales, hopefully public perception catches

43:55

up with the staff there because

43:57

that is a wild, wild decline.

44:00

So let's move on to Japan.

44:02

We had this story featured in

44:04

the newsletter recently, kind of as

44:06

entertainment value. A story in late

44:08

April circulated around the internet about

44:10

the Yakuza, which is Japan's kind

44:12

of mafia. But using Tokyo Vice

44:14

or any of the like classic

44:16

infusible movies, you know, these Japanese

44:18

gangsters that have suits, a chain,

44:20

dark sunglasses, tattoos everywhere. Sometimes

44:22

they cut off parts of their finger, either

44:25

as an initiation ritual or punishments of those

44:27

guys, if you have any conception in

44:29

your head. They had a

44:31

high ranking member of one of the

44:33

Yakuza gangs arrested for stealing something. But

44:36

what he was stealing was Pokemon cards.

44:38

So this article kind of, you know, made

44:40

the rounds around the internet that the Yakuza

44:43

have been demoted. They have fallen to such

44:45

an extent that they have now been

44:47

reduced to stealing Pokemon cards. But behind

44:50

a kind of like plenty entertainment value

44:52

of, you know, one commenter posted, oh,

44:54

instead of catching them all, he got

44:56

caught. Behind that is actually a very

44:58

interesting story about how the Japanese government

45:00

actually had this tough on crime approach

45:02

that really works for organized crime in

45:04

Japan. Instead of making it illegal

45:07

to be part of the Yakuza, they

45:09

essentially made participating in

45:11

modern life for Yakuza members so

45:13

difficult that people just

45:15

stopped wanting to join the Yakuza.

45:17

Before they were stealing Pokemon cards

45:19

and doing things like illegal CQ

45:22

thumper fishing, which they're doing nowadays.

45:24

CQs were highly involved in crime

45:26

trafficking, sex trafficking, real estate scams,

45:28

all kinds of illegitimate and

45:30

legitimate CD business. And

45:32

the Japanese government had really gotten tired of

45:35

this. So in the 90s, they passed a

45:37

series of laws that were like anti gang

45:39

laws. But the more interesting ones were

45:41

a series of ordinances called the social

45:43

exclusion ordinances, I believe, they couldn't buy

45:45

a car, they couldn't rent a house

45:47

or an apartment, they couldn't have a

45:49

cell phone because they just allowed the

45:51

cell phone companies from signing contracts with

45:53

the Yakuza member, they couldn't apply

45:55

for a credit card, they couldn't open a

45:57

bank account. And they also instituted fines and

45:59

other violations for interacting with an

46:02

Yakuza member either as a private

46:04

citizen or as a company. So

46:06

they essentially irritated the Yakuza out of

46:08

existence because people didn't want to join

46:10

up anymore. Back in the early

46:12

millennium, the Yakuza numbered at 90,000. It's

46:15

now under 25,000 and the average

46:17

age of the Yakuza is a bit over

46:19

50, so they're essentially going to age and

46:22

die out. Very interesting phenomenon. Having heard of

46:24

that approach being used anywhere else in the

46:26

world probably will come a day pretty soon

46:28

that the Yakuza are not a thing anymore,

46:31

so we'll only be seeing them in the

46:33

movies and TV. So

46:35

moving onward from Prime, Hannah Ritchie from

46:37

Our World in Data, and if you

46:40

aren't familiar with the website Our World

46:42

in Data, it's a really fantastic place

46:44

to go check out stats from literally

46:47

the entire world. She's

46:49

a researcher there. She has great new

46:51

posts about the world as

46:53

probably past peak pollution. So

46:56

this is really a trend that's

46:59

been carried by rich countries. Pollution

47:02

in lower and middle income countries is

47:04

still increasing, but the

47:06

process by which countries industrialize,

47:08

get richer, pollute everything, and

47:11

then figure out how to drop their pollution is something

47:13

that's already been figured out by richer countries. That means

47:15

that lower and middle income countries are going to go

47:17

through that process a lot faster. And

47:20

so we think that we've reached our zenith

47:22

and we're only going to come down from

47:25

here. So this might, like I

47:27

said before, it might be a different story

47:29

regionally, but we're moving into a

47:31

world where we figured out how to deal with pollution.

47:33

It means a lot of lives are going to be

47:35

saved. A lot of people actually die every year because

47:37

of pollution. So this is a good trend. So

47:40

last but not least, we are

47:42

going to move to Brazil, where

47:44

deforestation in the Amazon has hit

47:46

a five year low. Conservation

47:49

efforts essentially began in the 80s and

47:51

90s when President Lula, who's the president

47:54

now, who's also the president back around

47:56

2010, deforestation was at a all-time

48:00

low from when it began anyway, obviously,

48:02

before it began. It was lower then.

48:04

The day was at an all-time

48:06

low. The Lula's kit was the left

48:09

office and Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro, the very

48:11

same came in. Around 2014, deforestation

48:15

in Amazon skyrocketed.

48:17

Lula came back into office in January

48:20

of 2023 and since then, there's been

48:22

a pretty precipitous decline. We're

48:24

at a point right now that the rise that

48:26

occurred between 2014 and 2023, during the

48:31

tenor of Bolsonaro, he's reversed

48:33

half of the deforestation increase

48:35

that occurred during those

48:37

years. So still not quite

48:39

at the all-time low that

48:42

was happening between 2010-2014,

48:44

but they are moving

48:46

there extremely quickly. In fact, I'm

48:48

not even sure how they're moving this

48:50

quickly. It's a bit of a contentious

48:52

issue in Brazil because, of course, a

48:54

lot of people rely on Amazon to

48:56

really clearing the Amazon to do various

48:58

different economic activities. Hopefully, Lula is also

49:00

doing a good job making sure that

49:02

those people are being taken care of.

49:04

There's space for them and the economy

49:06

that doesn't involve clearing and lobbying the

49:08

Amazon. But overall, for the world, the

49:11

Amazon used to be the largest carbon sink in the world. It

49:13

is no longer because of all the deforestation that

49:16

has taken place. We'd love to see it become

49:18

the world's largest carbon sink. Again,

49:20

this is just

49:22

one piece in the very, very big puzzle

49:24

of climate change. So it's good to see it

49:27

moving in the right direction. I

49:29

hope that you enjoyed a little good

49:31

news tour. And we will see

49:33

you next week. Thank you so

49:35

much for listening. As always, thank you to Zachary,

49:37

even though he's not here. And thank

49:39

you so much to everyone for spending your time with

49:41

us. If you have any thoughts, concerns,

49:43

things you would love for us to

49:45

talk about, things that you would love

49:47

for us to stop talking about, you

49:50

can email us at hello at the

49:52

progressnetwork.org. And of course, feel

49:54

free to sign up for our newsletter

49:56

at the progressnetwork.org. All right,

49:58

thank you so much. What

50:00

Could Go Right is produced by

50:03

the Podglamorant. Executive produced by

50:05

Jeff Umbro. Marketing by the Podglamorant. To

50:07

find out more about What Could Go

50:10

Right, The Progress Network, or to subscribe

50:12

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50:14

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50:18

Thanks for listening.