On all wealth above 2%, if you have wealth above $50 million, and 3% if you have wealth above $1 billion, and this would be annual, right? So every year, they would figure out what your tax bill is, and they would calculate it, they would calculate what your wealth is, and then they would expect a check. Demand a check, not a check. Demand a check from you for the amount of the tax. Now both of these proposals on top of many other proposals that have been submitted by academics, by economists, by politicians, over, I'd say, mainly the last 10 years, to try to solve a problem, and put the problem in quotes, that has been supposedly identified with the American economy and American society. And that problem, we are told, is that there is too much inequality in the world in which we live. In other words, the gap, the difference between how much people make at the bottom of the income, and how much people make at the top of the income scale, that gap, that difference is, according to some, too large. And this is creating, we are told, massive problems in our economy, in our society. Indeed, there was a period in which you could open up the New York Times at any given day, and you would find pretty much every problem in the world somehow blamed on income inequality. Income inequality, or wealth inequality, financial economic inequality, is the cause, we are told, by some for terrorism in the Middle East, for climate change, for stagnation of the US and the world economy, for crime rates, for pretty much every social economic problem. This is the problem that supposedly exists. Now there are a number of problems with this way of thinking. First, is that there is no real, there's no, there's never been proposed, an actual economic theory that shows us that the gap between poor people and rich people, the gap between low income people and high income people, that that gap causes any problems. Not Keynes, not neo-Keynesians, not any economists have actually proposed a theory of why this should be. And we'll talk about the fact that indeed, if you care about economic growth, if you care about income mobility, that is the ability of people to rise up from poverty, if you care about economic success, and if you care about economic freedom, then you want inequality. Then inequality indeed is a positive characteristic, not a negative characteristic. The second problem is that what are you going to do about it? How do we solve if there is such a problem? How do we solve it? The fact is that we are all unequal. I mean, look around the room. All different.  We're all different, dramatically different. I mean, isn't that what makes the world a pretty amazing place? Imagine if we were all the same, it would be unbelievably boring, even if everybody was like me. It would be, for me, unbelievably boring, never mind for you. We're different. And what happens to different people? Well, if you take a bunch of different people, you take any group of people, anywhere in the world, and you leave them free, just let them do their thing, whatever they want to do. You know, no lying, cheating, stealing, but other than that, go for it. Do what you want to do.  What do you think? Do you think everybody's going to be the same? Everybody's going to have the same? Everybody will have produced the same? For lots of reasons. Some people are smarter than others. Some people walk harder than others. Some people have interests that are associated with not making a lot of money. For example, your professors, they're all smart, right? They're really smart people. And yet they chose not to go into a profession where they can make money.  They're not going to become rich or it's very unusual to become rich. Why did they do it? They're smart. They could have gone to Wall Street. They could have gone and come out and worked in a corporation and lots of things. Why did they choose to become professors? Because life's not about money. Life's about doing what you love. Life's about pursuing your passion. And I can speak for myself and after them, but I can tell you, they're doing this with students, engaging with students, teaching, lecturing. It's much more fun than having millions of dollars in the bank. As hard as that is to believe. It's true. Many of us have given up the opportunity to have millions of dollars in the bank to do exactly this. Artists.  I told my kids, follow your passion. Stay followed their passion, which means they're poor. A couple of artists, they don't make any money. You know, maybe one day, but they're living their kind of life. They want to live. Okay. So there's inequality. Somebody else chose to go to Silicon Valley and work as an engineer. Guess what? They're making more money than my kids. Choices. Choices that make sense. So the second problem is that we're all massively different. Metaphysically so. And therefore we're all going to produce different amounts. We're all going to produce at different levels. We're all going to create different stuff. And therefore we're going to have different levels of wealth. And why should anybody care? Why does that matter? Okay. And if we want to fix it, what's the only way to fix it? Well, think about basketball inequality, right? Everybody talks about income inequality. What concerns me, what bugs me is basketball inequality. Like, I want to be able to get on a basketball court with LeBron James and score a basket. One basket. I'd be happy if I could score one basket. But you haven't seen me play basketball. But you can probably imagine that I ain't scoring anything with LeBron James on the court. LeBron is just better than me for lots of reasons. Because he was born with better physical attributes. He's more athletic. But you know what? He worked unbelievably hard at being the best athlete he could be. He still works unbelievably hard to be a great basketball player. I didn't. Now, I suspect that even if I had, I would have never been as good as LeBron.  I still want basketball inequality. I think it's not fair. We talk about fairness all that, right? It's not fair that LeBron is better than I am. So what do we have to do for me to be able to go on the basketball court and score some baskets when LeBron is playing against LeBron? What do we have to do? How would that happen? How do we fix this inequality? Tie his legs together. Tie his legs together. So he can parbo like this. You know what? He still beats me. Even if he ties his legs together, he beats me. And he beats every one of you, if my guess, although they might be some bunny basketball stars here. Who knows? What else? I mean, so tie his legs is not enough. What else do we have to do? Blindfold. Blindfolding would be good. Although, again, I suspect you guys are way too gentle. Excuse me, my audience is much more brutal. Blindfolding, I still think he would beat me, right?  He's lived on a basketball court. He could probably play the game blindfolded and probably dunk the basketball dunk blindfolded. That's how good he is. Yeah, you have to break his d-caps. Now you're getting real action, right? I mean, usually it comes out somebody will yell, break his legs. And just to be sure, maybe one of his arms as well. And then, then we would have basketball equality. And only then would we have basketball equality. So in order to achieve equality, what is necessary is violence. What is necessary is to break somebody's legs. Let me say that that's not the same, right? We don't break people's legs when it comes to income equality. So what do we have to do to create income equality? We have to take people's money. Now, I've often thought about this, right? Like, I used to live in California. I don't anymore because I object to the high tax rates. But I used to live in California. And in California, every year, they used to take 55% of my income. 55% of my income is taxed. Now, 55% of my income represents what? What are taxes represented? They're taking away what from you? Your money? But what does money represent? Work. And what does work represent? How much time do you think in your life you're going to spend in work versus anything else you do in life? 55%. 55%, 60% of your time in life is going to be spent working for that money.  So when they take 55% of their money, what are they taking from you? My money was. You're taking from you your time. They're taking from you your effort. They're taking from you your skill. Half of my work, half of my time, half of my effort, half of my skill is not going to me. It's going to reduce income inequality. And what's the difference being that in breaking people's legs? Like, think about it. I work hard. I make all this money. If I had a choice between somebody breaking my legs once a year or taking 55% of my income every year, I'm not sure which one I take. Like broken legs, they heal, they can fix, right? 55% of my income, I ain't getting that back. So the only way to fix the so-called income inequality is like AOC and Elizabeth Long suggest, significantly raise taxes on people who produce. Now some people say, and I saw a tweet somebody put out a tweet, billionaires don't make money. They just take it. They steal it. And if they steal it, then what? Then it's okay if we take some from them to redistribute because it wasn't theirs to begin with. They stole it. If you steal from Crook, it's not a bad idea, right? Is that true? Do billionaires steal their money or do they make it? How do you become a billionaire? The most important part of the lecture now because I'm going to give you the secret.  How do you become a billionaire? You work hard. Lots of people work hard. My parents worked hard. They became billionaires. I know a lot of your parents probably worked hard. They didn't become billionaires. You got to innovate. I know a lot of innovators who never became billionaires. I mean, I think you have to work hard. I think you have to innovate. But what's missing? What's that? If you're born with a billion, how many billionaires do you think a list of billionaires were born with it? I think it's less than 20%. Very few. The biggest names that were born with it are the Walters. Where did the Walters get their billions? From Sam Walton who gave a swarm up. His kids became billionaires, but Sam had to make it. How do you become a billionaire other than being born with it? Because that's tough. I didn't get to choose my parents. I don't know about you guys. It didn't work for me. You got to make small investments. But that's making the question, what is a small investment? You got to have a product and resource to sell. Go about making lots of selling products and resources. Billionaires. Last one. You got to create demand. And you got to create demand. But again, every business creates demand. The question is, what differentiates the billionaire from everybody else? And the main thing is, you got to create massive demand. You got to create something that everybody wants. You got to create something that everybody wants. Why do they want it? Why do they want it? Because everybody else has it. It's tough and stuff.  What does that mean? It means that your life, you think, is going to be better because you bought it. Now I don't know about you. I love my iPhone. The guy who made this iPhone, the guy who created this product, was a billionaire, Steve Jobs. And I pay, I don't know, a thousand bucks now for these new iPhones? A thousand bucks. I love this. Why do you pay a thousand bucks for a product? Because it's worth the money to you. Because you believe that it's worth the money to you. But how much does it worth to you? Enough to pay that. A thousand bucks? No, it has to be more than a thousand. Otherwise, I would have never bothered buying it. When you buy an iPhone for whatever price a thousand dollars is, because this is worth more than a thousand dollars for you. That's Econ 101. When you buy a bread at a grocery store, you pay three bucks for it. It's because the bread is worth more than three bucks that you will need to give up. Than three dollars in order to gain the bread. So if you're like better off a war sufferer, for having bought the iPhone, a bread, or any product that you buy, it should be better. Simple math. You gave up something less valuable and you got something more valuable. You gave up a thousand dollars, but this is worth more than a thousand dollars to you. So you're like improved. The only way to become a billionaire is to create product value services that millions and millions and millions, hopefully hundreds of millions of people want because it will improve their lives and are willing to pay you more than it cost you to produce so that you make a profit. The reason they do that is because they believe their life will be improved. So by logic the only way to become a billionaire is to improve the lives through trade of hundreds of millions of people. Think of the richest man in the world today Jeff Bezos has improved our lives dramatically by building Amazon. Think of Bill Gates who improved the world dramatically by creating Microsoft and all the products that Microsoft have changed the world. Think of Steve Jobs think of Sam Walton who's given us Walmart which has lowered the cost of living for so many people and therefore improved the quality of life. Billionaires are billionaires because they could use something that has improved the world around them. They have made the world a better place.  The money is made it's created it's not redistributed the values of my iPhone is actually worth tens of thousands of dollars to me don't tell Apple because they don't want them to raise the price just for me. My ability to face time with my family when I travel around the world my ability to do business 24-7 from anywhere my ability to look up every piece of knowledge pretty much that has existed in human history my ability to play every piece of music that I want to off of this thing all of that together is worth thousands and thousands of dollars that's why I'm happy not just willing but happy to pay a thousand dollars for this to not take their money they're not steal their money they're not they created it just as much as basketball ability is LeBron James' you have no more right to take their wealth that they created then you have to break LeBron James' legs what they made is theirs so on every front the argument about inequality makes no sense yet it has this real tug of the heart a real implicit appeal to so many people why is that? well partially because we all believe that equality is a good thing we believe equality is a good thing in some sense in the Declaration of Independence the funny fathers wrote that all men are created equal didn't apply it very well given that we have slavery but they wrote all men are created equal but what does that mean in what sense did they mean they were all equal equal in outcome well that can't be because we're not we're different and we produce and create different stuff so what did they mean what does equality take equal opportunity well do we really have equal opportunities I mean really we have different parents who sent us to different schools who might know different people who might create different opportunities as a parent I can tell you that a lot of what we do as parents is try to maximize the opportunities for our kids we work damn hard to try to give our kids opportunities it's just a form of outcome you can't equate them without penalizing my kids because they got lots of opportunities for the benefit of other kids it didn't get as much opportunities so it's not equality of opportunity although I know conservatives love to counter the left equality of outcome equality of opportunities but it's just as ridiculous standard as the outcome standard and just as negative sense that physical force breaking of legs have to happen in order to achieve it so what kind of equality did they mean what kind of equality is right is just should they be equality of natural rights so equality of I would say individual rights so the one area in which we should be equal is that we're equally free we're equally free to pursue our own life we're equally free to make choices for ourselves we're equally free to make decisions for ourselves and as long as we're not harming other people then it's none of anybody's business what we do, what we think what we say, how we act we equally have the right to life liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness we should be politically equal we should be politically free and we should be treated equally before the law so equality before the law the law should be class blind, race blind gender blind whatever else you want to include in that it should treat us all the same so the key to a free society the key I think to a healthy society is the idea of freedom the idea of individual freedom and that's what was meant by the context of individual rights today today we associate rights with we have a right to everything we have a right to the job we have a right to healthcare we have a right to pretty much anything we have a right to other people's work to other people's stuff to other people's labor we're told we have those rights but that's not the concept of rights as understood by the founders or as understood by the thinkers who created the first free societies rights are the idea of freedom, freedom of action each one of us is free to act on his own behalf and freedom what does freedom mean freedom is a nice word everybody's for freedom but what does it actually mean what does freedom mean what's that autonomy freedom captures somebody else what does freedom capture right to make your own choices at the end of the day what does freedom mean freedom means the absence of something freedom means the absence of coercion freedom means the absence of force freedom means the absence the absence of authority that can tell you how to live they can force you to live in a particular way in a particular manner and if you don't follow that authority what happens to you they use force against you you go to jail something bad physically happens to you freedom means the absence of force coercion authority and we all should be free our lives belong to whom who is your life belongs to who said that yeah your life belongs to you my life belongs to me i don't have ownership over you you don't have ownership over me but 300 years ago who did your life belong to 300 years ago who did your life belong to the king the tribe the council the state in every country in the world and to this day in some countries in the in the world the assumption is not that your life belongs to you the assumption is that your life belongs to some group to some tribe to some collective to some authority to the church to some authority to dictate how you should live what you should do what you should think what you should say and it's the breaking of that chain the recognition that your life indeed belongs to you not to anybody else that is the root of this idea of freedom you get to decide how to live your life nobody gets decided for you and once we allow for that freedom once you allow for freedom what happens we all go and do our thing we all go and exercise our mind pursue our values build create produce make stuff some of us get rich some of us don't but all of our lives improve if you look at the period in history about 300 years ago what was uh anybody know what uh like average income was about 300 years ago how much do we make our ancestors make about 300 years ago a couple of hundred a year they wish they wish two to three bucks a day does that turn out to be a couple of hundred a year yeah so he was right sorry I can't do math right put me on stage and I can't have us for like 10 for 100,000 years if you go back to 100,000 years basically income per capita was about two to three dollars a day and it was flat and it didn't change everything like it went up a little bit on the grease and roll and then went down once Rome fell and then went up a little bit maybe in the Renaissance but it basically stayed flat for 10,000 years 100,000 and then suddenly out of nowhere it went like that and after jump because it goes so high and that's what we are today at the peak of that then we are so damn rich we don't know how rich we are even the poorest in America a hundred times richer than the average was 300 years ago or than the poorest people today are in some parts of the world and this phenomenon is global how many people you think live on about two dollars to three dollars a day today in the world what percentage of the world population is what's considered extremely poor extreme poverty well what do you think percentage wise how many people in the world today are extremely poor just before yeah you're going to guess 30 anybody in the back yell it 25 18 all right so we got all over the place 30 is usually what people guess 25 30 the actual number is the first number we've earned it's about eight percent eight percent of the world population today is considered by the United Nations extremely poor anybody know what it was 30 only 30 years ago 30 years ago was 30 so over the last 30 years over a billion people have come out of extreme poverty how did that happen how is it that we went like that 350 years ago so and then over the last 30 years a billion people come out of extreme poverty just that just as a side note by the way this is like the best news in all of human history like this idea that a billion people have come out of extreme poverty should be something we celebrate this should be like a holiday around us this is great news yet nobody ever talks about it it's not reported in the media your generation is pretty pessimistic and you know things the world is falling apart and yet we live in the best of times fewest poor people in the world ever and nobody even knows about it just an aside what is it to cause people to get rich relatively speaking what do we come less poor yeah capital is a freedom about 250 years ago there was a freedom revolution everybody got free what happened okay so this is everybody poor right my two hands and then one it goes like this right some people get really really rich and what happens to the other people they get much richer than what they were but in relative terms they're not as rich as these people but everybody gets better off under freedom everybody is better off inequality is a feature of freedom not a bug not a problem not some issue to be addressed but a feature when you leave people free they produce stuff at different levels and it's fantastic that some people are so good at this production stuff and they produce such good products that they become billionaires all of our lives are better off as a consequence inequality is a sign that we are free it's a sign that you can produce huge values and it's a sign that some within our society are making the world a better place on a massive scale again inequality is a feature of freedom not a bug of freedom so i think this is a bogus issue now there are real problems in our economy in the global economy the real socioeconomic problems there is a lack of mobility it's harder and harder for poor people to rise up from poverty in America today economic growth is bleak you know last year was pretty good we grew it about four percent this year we'll probably grow it about two percent maybe a percent and a half that's pretty low by historical standards and it means that there are less opportunities it means that there's less wealth in our economy in spite of the fact that our employment is very low labor participation rate that is those people who actually work who are actually looking for it it's still fairly high or it's still fairly low so fewer people there's still a lot of people you know hopefully none of you future users who are sitting in their parent's basement playing video games rather than going out to work now it's a pretty pretty good situation to be in a culture where people can afford to do that and they're not starving because you couldn't do that in the past but it's not good so they are real economic problems in america today the solution to economic problems is not massive redistribution of wealth all you're doing there is taking wealth from people who are really good at investing it which means really good at creating jobs and giving it to government bureaucrats the waste the solution is not more controls more regulations the solution is the opposite the solution is more freedom less control less regulation less intervention when capitalism when freedom is allowed to thrive people get wealthier poor get richer and life gets better ability of people came out of poverty in asia and even in africa not because of redistribution of wealth not because of foreign age but because those countries adopted a little bit of capitalism and a little bit of capitalism goes a long way a lot of capitalism goes even further so if we really care about the poor if we really care about income ability if we really care about success then what we need is more freedom more capitalism less redistribution and the last thing in the world we need are 70 percent marginal income tax rates and a wealth tax what we need is a resurrection of the idea but this time followed through properly the idea that every individual every person has the right to life liberty property and the pursuit thank you so that's one question at a time because otherwise i'm gonna forget them and and not gonna be able to do so let's start with the marginal income tax rates then we'll go to pollution okay so so let's start with marginal income tax rates so yes the 70 percent rate will only kick in if you own over let's say 10 million dollars or something um so i think i think it's bad for two big reasons right one economically it's really stupid economic what what do what do uh rich people do with their money spend it you can't spend that kind of money so rich people actually don't spend a lot of their money they spend a very little bit of their money uh poor people spend all their money so if you look at income and and consumption the lower you are the income bracket the more you consume of your income and the more you make the more you save now saving is not hoarding i don't know any rich people who takes all the money you anybody see i don't know if your generation saw this do you see uh uncle scrooge remember scrooge mcduck you see scrooge mcduck he has this big vault with all his money and he goes swimming in it and he goes jumping on it rich people don't have vaults full of money what did they do with their money when they save it they invested or they put in the bank right and what does the bank do with that money they give out loans to small businesses the lives of businesses that mortgages to other people so the money enters the economy to product abuse or they invested in startups so they invested in the stock market which again goes back into productive use the last thing in the world you want so there you want more economic money saving is what drives economic growth again econ 101 saving is what drives long-term economic growth not consumption but savings so the last thing you want from an economic perspective is the tax savings that is the worst thing you can do for the economy and again those savings those investment create jobs which employ people which help everybody rise up so i think that having high marginal tax rates is economically bad actually from an economic perspective you want to have lower rates the more money you make so from a purely economic perspective a regressive tax system would be better or a sales tax system or if you don't want to tax sales then a flat system and and from an economic perspective the other thing you want to do is do away with all the deductions exclusions favors subsidies all the crap that the government hands out and you know let people deduct so that you're not trying to manipulate people's behavior you're just raising revenue that's all you do so that's an ideal taxes but i also think that a marginal income tax rate is morally offensive these guys have created something they've made the world a better place so their reward is we tax them even higher than everybody else so we're gonna punish people for creating wealth we're gonna punish people for creating jobs we're gonna punish people for making you know for making the great products that we all enjoy how's that right these are people who've taken their lives seriously applied in their mind gone out they've produced created the innovative and you want to penalize them and the more innovative they become which means the more wealthy they become the more we should penalize i mean that to me is morally upside down i want to if i have to meet if i need a billionaire i'm gonna thank them because even though they made a thousand dollars on my iphone it's worth tens of thousands of dollars to me so there's a gap and that gap is my thank you i think they appreciate second question responsibility in terms of taking care of the environment how do we balance that with free markets and regulating things like clean air and clean water i don't think anybody objects to clean and clean water making sure that we have clean and clean water um i don't think those are the kind of regulations anybody really objects to but the idea that jeff easels has polluted the world is i think so i mean he has made the libya products more efficient easier cheaper better i don't know what of that is actually polluting he instead of you driving to the store you now sit at your computer in order maybe you've actually polluted less because now you don't go wandering from store to store to store to buy a big deal to buy to get a good deal you just go to amazon or you go to ebay or you go to you go to online thanks for your polluting less maybe right so look i think at the end of the day business has only one social as much really and that's to make money because making money means that providing a value what happens when they stop providing a value we stop buying their products and they stop making money the best way to measure how well the business is delivering on providing us values is to look at the profitability i celebrate when companies make a lot of money it means they provide a huge amount of value other questions i can close that after all hey a couple of things one is i think if we had a freer economy if we had a more capitalist economy there'd be a lot more jobs there'd be a lot more opportunities so i form maximizing opportunities not equalizing opportunities but maximizing so people have as many opportunities as possible to make money for themselves and not be dependent on others and the question is this is a question i only asked right the question is does she have the right to impose that dependency on other people that is is it our does she have a way to take my money because she is she can't you know she can't legitimately work for herself or does she do it voluntarily that is should people voluntarily help and my view is just because you need just because you have a need does not give you a right to use force which is what the government does to take money from other people so people who actually need like your mother would be dependent on what they did before they were so security which is charity and charity is i think a legitimate form of helping people whereas government helping people always involves taking money from people without asking them without asking how it's being used without asking what it's being used for situation i would ask people to help me but i wouldn't have a right and i wouldn't feel that i had a right to pull out a gun and force them to help me now we live in a world we live in a world right now there is a gun not your mother doesn't pull the gun but the government pulls a gun on your mother's behalf if i don't pay my taxes guess what a gun shows up if i am if i'm in that situation in the world in which we live in today well of course i'm going to take the government benefits just like your mother does i'm not i'm not blaming your mother for taking the benefits i'm saying that this is not an ideal world for anybody something bad happened to us not no fault yeah something bad happens to people not before what happened to the right issue when that happened the neighbors came to the help family came to help but it doesn't give you a right because something bad happened to you it doesn't give you a right to somebody else as well to somebody else's stuff it's sad but it doesn't give you a right to take other people's stuff hey so um i was watching your uh your interview with jessie lee peterson and you were mentioning about how you don't like welfare and that got me thinking about how in preamble to the constitution it says uh that one of the reasons why they formed the constitution was to promote the general welfare and so that got me thinking about um is that an implicit uh obligation on anyone who agrees to the american society that they have to give up some little bit of their comfort to provide for the general welfare or is there a promotion that is separate from provision that um founders meant something very different by welfare than what we mean today there was no welfare state back then there was no redistribution of wealth at all for the first 50 60 years of the american state uh so there wasn't this idea of the the welfare meant redistribution as we understand it today well welfare meant was the well-being the general well-being of the people and the founders understood again inconsistently obviously they understood the general welfare meant freedom that the way to achieve the best outcome for the people was by leaving them free and that's what the rest of the constitution basically articulates is a methodology for establishing freedom of free society so we can't take that word and use the modern context for something that was written 200 something years ago in a completely different with a different understanding in a different context for it the founders and and then lots of debates about this in the in the in the early senate and the early house about whether redistribution or wealth is a legitimate function of government and they come out clearly on the side of no it's not taking from some to give to others is not what government is for if you want to help somebody help them voluntarily but it's not the government's job to do it forcefully get to the like her mother get to the pursuit of happiness and stuff if they do not i i understand opportunity is something that you're saying is different but how are they able to get any type of ability to get to that freedom of of of the pursuit of happiness that that we love so much if they're literally can't work you know they can't they can't do a job and they can't do that because they're truly physically disabled say someone like my cousin with down syndrome i mean i don't know how he will be able to do that without the support of the government well i mean i disagree with you that he can't do it without the support of the government and contrary on the contrary i think he could do it much better if the government didn't intervene because one we would be richer all of us would be richer because the wealth that we would all have would be substantially greater because there would be a lot more production because taxes would be a lot lower they'd be a lot more investment and a lot more a building economic success so his relatives the people surrounding him would be wealthier to help him out and i think charity would do just as good of a job if not significantly better at providing for such a kid than i think the government does the government is an incredibly inefficient mechanism and it's an immoral mechanism because the government uses force charity uses voluntary association you want to give to a charity you give you don't want to give you don't give and i always ask audiences how many of you would be willing to give a little bit of money to help the kid with the down syndrome or the school teacher that's fallen ill and everybody raises their hand everybody so why why does why does somebody have to come to my door with a gun to take my money in order to achieve that and what if i happen to be in the in the circumstances where i can't support your your nephew or your cousin or whatever right because my kid is sick right now and i want to invest in my kid or whatever right i've made a choice not to support your cousin who are you to force me to support you by what moral right do you force me to support you so we take away the choice the option of what to support who's the support went to support a waiver individual by standardizing over a welfare state by the government doing it in a sense for us inefficiently unproductively and with brute force greatest tragedy that actually exists in america today is public education it's the fact that we've given the government this responsibility to educate us and unsurprisingly it does a horrible job at it and it does the the worst job the poor you are that is the poor you are the poor the neighborhood the worst the public schools are so it's not like it's helping in the worst parts of the country it's actually harming in the worst parts of the country and for example one of the decisions public education is made or government schools are made is to get rid of trade schools which why i mean it's obvious though what we need are more trade schools not fewer trade schools indeed there's a massive shortage today in america in uh you know blue color skilled labor you know welders people who have a real skill at a particular blue color job and there's a shortage of them because there are no trade schools to train them you need to be trained for that so in my view if you want to help the poor in america you want to help poor kids in america the most urgent thing to do is to privatize education is to get the government out of the provision of education the government might you might keep them as the funders of education but get them out of managing schools running schools get the labor unions the teachers unions out and have private schools and if poor people can't afford them you know the government might be able to supplement for a while supplement their income so they can they can afford the schools get private schools competing and what happens when you get competition in anything quality goes up prices come down in everything quality goes up prices come down so if you want quality go up in education if you want the right kind of education that fits some modern economy then what you want is to privatize that education get the government out of it get entrepreneurs thinking about how to make money in education and by making money in education they would drive prices down in quality sure competition in Wyoming huge scandal apparently because we're getting $3,000 of the prize or is the man's we're getting $8,000 of the prize and everybody was outraged and the interview and everybody tried to face this thing and so that's a different kind of inequality here so i wanted to get your thoughts on that so this is this is the idea that in it's sports and we can talk about other fields as well but in sports women get paid a lot less than men so uh wnba players whether women basketball players get a lot less than the blonde teams and the men get uh i think women's soccer gets a lot less than men's soccer and the question is why and when you look at something like nba it's pretty clear why why do you think men get paid more yeah more people watch them now whether that's fair or not whether that's right or not that's a different question but the fact is that more people watch men's basketball than what's women's basketball and therefore there's more revenue from advertising and sponsorships on the men's side than the women's side is that fair absolutely because the men are producing value to more people more people are watching them and therefore they get paid more and i think the same is true generally in sports i can't think of a sport where we watch women more than men and if there is my guess is the women will get paid more figure skating and my guess is women get paid more than men if they're skating because we watch the women more than we do the men now the viewers said what they said uh there is an entry fee to get into business it's not what a committee decided is valuable and what's not heard it's what other people get from you so that is determined in sports by the viewers how many viewers they're getting the value from you but let's take out the fields because this issue of income across men and female is an interesting one um and controversial and i could easily get into trouble over this right let's take women and men female lawyers right and there's some discussion about this systematic women lawyers get paid less than male and then chemical evidence is suspect let's say but there's a common view that that is the case that of the same skill set coming out of the same schools a woman will get paid less than a man now let's assume for a minute that's true can anybody think of a way to make a lot of money from that fact higher women if they're the same skill and you're paying them less then an all-female law firm would make a lot of sense and if you did that enough like you wouldn't hire them at the same so what would happen if a male law firm would hire women over here so you in order to attract them to your firm how much would you have to pay them a little bit more right otherwise they'd stay right so a little bit more so by that you would push their wages up but to me the evidence that it's not the case that same level exactly same performance same everything are getting different prices is the fact that we don't have all-female law firms arbitraging the difference making money off the fact that I could get incredible skill to lower price so they might be other factors that are playing into the difference in wages similar to what's going on in sports there are other professions in which women probably make more than men the averages is a mistake because for whatever reason women tend to go into lower paying professions than men and you could say that's culturally you can say a lot of things about whether that's right i don't know but that's a fact so when we look at the average way to women and the average way to manage that's completely distorted because they're going into different professions the real measure is in the same profession same skill level is there a difference and the evidence there is that there isn't and where there is there's a great opportunity to some entrepreneurial creative entrepreneur and go make money by hiding lots of women all right thank you all


Welcome to Hawaii is my mainland on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Kaui Lucas. Today's show is Honolulu's bag ban bill, trick or truth. We're going to discuss whether the Honolulu City Council has a chance to redeem itself next Wednesday, June 7th, 2017 by passing Bill 59 CD2, FD2 from 2016 to really ban single use plastic bags. If you want to ask a question or participate in the discussion, tweet us at thinktechhi or call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Our guests for the show are Suzanne Fraser and Dean Otsuki, co-founders of Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawaii, or B-E-A-C-H. Welcome to Hawaii is my mainland, Dean and Suzanne. Well, thanks for having us on the show. Well, this has been a, for this particular bill, it's in its sixth form, its sixth iteration. Over two years, it's been through more machinations than is believable, actually. There have been so many listening to you give the history of this yesterday, Suzanne. It's stunning. It's really astonishing how underhanded politics can be in this town over something like plastic bags. Yes, a simple ban. So where are we right now in this moment? Right now in this moment. We're a few days away from the final, final hearing of Bill 59 at the city council. And there's now two versions on the bill. One is a floor draft one. And that version will actually put fees on all plastic and paper bags. It will ban compostable bags in 2018. But it won't go any further than just mostly a fee bill. The other one that's actually on the agenda for next Wednesday, a proposed floor draft two of the bill, that one's a much better version because it will actually do the fees on paper and plastic. It will ban the compostables in 2018. But it takes that extra step that's really needed, which is going to ban the thick plastic bags. So those are the bags like this one from Don Quixote that were made thicker. So about two years ago when there was supposed to be a plastic bag ban, what really happened was a plastic bag switch. So basically, this door switch from a thin yellow plastic bag to now a thick yellow plastic bag, meaning that's a great big loophole in the law. So that's why we're actually supporting the floor draft two proposed by Brandon Elefonte because it'll get the job done of clothes at least two of the loopholes in the current wall. OK, so let's talk about the actual legislators involved in this because that makes it clearer for everybody. And we want to know who wants what and what people can do about it ultimately before next Wednesday is to help this actually go through. Right. We really need it to pass. It's appalling. I think that Honolulu is the only county in Hawaii that doesn't have this. That's right. I mean, we have the most loopholes in our law, which has caused a failure of any sort of a ban to take place on this island. As I said, it's a switch, not a ban at the moment. OK, so the committee that this is in is in what, who's hearing this and when? Do we know any of the specifics? Well, it's the committee is this. I don't know exactly the name of the committee, but it's the public works and sustainability committee. And the chair of that committee is Carol Fukunaga. And she's the one that is pushing for the FD-1. FD-1, and that's the one that does not include these thick plastic bags or the. This is the one that is the fee bill where it's they're going to mandate business charge 10 cents or more for a plastic or a paper bag. Instead of doing a ban, right? Instead of doing a ban, right? But didn't you say that the the Elefante bill, the FD-2 bill also charges a fee? Yeah, so he's he's one also charges a fee, but he's going to sunset these thick plastic bags in 2020. So his bill takes an extra step to actually get rid of the bags. So just 20. Yeah, they wanted to give the stores plenty of time to get rid of their stock, although three years seems a bit excessive, but no one can complain. Like really, Brandon Elefante's version of the bill is a good win-win all around because it'll give the stores what they want. Apparently some stores want to charge for paper and plastic bags, so they will still have a charge on paper bags after 2020, but there'll be no more plastic bags. And is that charge set? Is the amount, or is it up to the stores? It's a minimum 10 cent charge, and many stores are already doing 10 cents on their bags. So it's really unnecessary in our view, and we did not support a fee bill. We were testifying against that all the way through the process because it goes to two committee hearings and three council hearings and excess other hearings if it gets held up, and all the way along until recently, there was nothing for us to cheer on because it was a fee bill instead of a ban. But luckily at the last council hearing, Brandon Elefante brought in another version of the bill, and that version does give us the ban that we've been seeking. However, there's still going to be more work to be done no matter which version passes because the additional loopholes allow these sorts of bags to be used for prepared food and drinks. So that is not going away, and neither are... So how is that regulated, prepared food and drinks?  They would probably be allowed to give you a bag like that, yes. And then if you go to a farmer's market, you're likely to get one of these as well if you don't bring your own bag. So that's another loophole. These are called t-shirt bags. I'm not quite sure why, but I suppose they look like a t-shirt. I don't know. But the trouble with these bags is that... I don't know if you've ever seen them when they're hanging up at the farmer's market, but they have a little piece at the top here. And when they rip it down, the little piece of plastic ends up on the ground. So there's a whole lot of pieces of plastic on the ground, littered all over the ground at the end of a farmer's market, which is the right size to get eaten. So this is why we actually really want to see a ban on all plastic checkup bags, no matter how thick or thin all of the plastic checkup bags are unnecessary, wasteful and harmful. So that's why we want to see a complete ban. Okay, and so the current... What's going to be heard on Wednesday, there's two versions of the bill, but are they going to hear both versions? We hope so. Yeah, they're both on the agenda, which is the good news. So we'll see what happens, I guess, on Wednesday. It's actually the day before World Ocean Day, so we're really hoping that... Wouldn't that be fantastic? Wouldn't it? Yeah, I really would. And I was doing a little research for this show and googling around. I came across all of these articles saying, oh, why you passed the bag ban back in 2012? Actually, a lot of nonsense. Yeah, that's not even true. It's like me saying I'm going to go gluten-free and I'm going to switch from thin wheat noodles to thick wheat noodles. Have I gone gluten-free?  Like, we switch from thin plastic bags to thick plastic bags. How is that a plastic bag ban? Like, I just... I don't know. It's appalling. I can't believe that we've allowed this to persist. Now, speaking of bags and so forth, wait, we have a few other things on the table here that maybe need some explanation. So, Dean, would you like your... These are actually plastic bag knots. Okay, we find these at cleanups along all the beaches here in Hawaii. This is what's left after marine life, they'll eat in the rest of the plastic bag. They can't eat the knot, so that's what these are left over. You want to hold the black one and you can see that better. So, what ends up happening is that someone has tried the bag in a knot and the marine life had eaten off all the ends and sides of it and every piece of it and left just the knot remaining. So, this is what washes up on our shorelines out of the Great Pacific garbage patch. So, we hardly ever see the whole bag. This is all that remains of the bag. Wow, that's really bizarre. And why are you wearing a glove, Dean? Well, what happens with plastic in the ocean is that it attracts these chemicals called pops or persistent organic pollutants or pops for short. These are things like oil-based things like pesticides, DDT, PCBs, and dioxins, which are very toxic to everybody, really. So, when we're handling this, you always need to use gloves, so it won't get on your hands. So, what happens to plastic in the ocean is that it accumulates those pops up to one million times more concentrated on the surface of the plastic than the surrounding seawater, meaning that plastic marine debris is toxic plastic because it acts like a sponge and just soaks in all of these toxic chemicals. So, you should never handle marine debris without a glove on. Wow, wow. I'm thinking of all the pounds of marine debris I've handled over the years. Yeah, so it gets into your skin, you know. Lovely, it gets into your skin. Yeah, yeah, because that's why, you know, when you rub creams on your skin, it absorbs in. Sure. So, really, what these toxins do is they're endocrine disruptors.  So, it's very dangerous stuff. Well, in a strange way, though, the plastic is cleaning. In a way, yes. It's cleaning the ocean. If you can get it out of there quick enough, yeah. But as you can, I don't know if you guys can zoom in on here at all. Can you see those little pieces that have broken down? Oh, yeah, I think they can.  That's little pieces of plastic dust, okay? And that's what happens all the time is that the plastic marine debris is so brittle, even though it's absorbing the pops, but it's also breaking down and photodegrading in the sun. So, this stuff gets eaten by the base of the food chain like the plankton and they pass the chemicals, they bioaccumulate up through the food chain from plankton all the way to humans and other larger mammals. Yeah. I had no idea. Yeah, so the fish that, if you eat fish, or, you know, it could, you may not see the plastic, but it could contain the chemicals that we've actually put in the ocean into the fish. Right, so this is why plastic bags aren't just harmful to sea turtles, but they're also harmful to whales. They ingest the whole bag. They're harmful to the plankton, the fish, and even ourselves if humans are eating fish, they're getting those chemicals in their food. Well, do we know how those chemicals are getting in the ocean? Well, with the DDT and DDE, it was actually banned in, I think, 1972 in the US, but it's still used in developing countries to control malaria. And also the reason it's called persistent organic pollutant, by the way, don't see that word organic as being good, is because it stays in the ocean. It stays in the environment. You can't get rid of that stuff. So even though it was banned in 1972, it's still out in the ocean. So it's accumulating onto the plastic. Wow, well, on that cheery note, we're gonna take a little break and then come back. Aloha, my name is Steven Philip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at three o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. This crazy world, so caught up in the confusion. Nothing is making sense for me and how to make a product. Welcome back to Hawaii Is My Main Land. I'm Kaui Lukas. And with me today is Suzanne Frazier and Dean Otsuki of Beach, which I forget yet. It's an acronym for... Yeah, Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign, who are? Oh, you put it on your t-shirts. I should have looked. Thank you, that's really handy. So we're talking about the city and county of Honolulu. The derelict county has not been able to get its stuff together to pass a decent bag ban. But now, bill 52. Nine. Nine, 59, 59. CD2, it's got two FD versions, floor draft versions, one and two. So those have both been voted on. No, the FD1 is the current version of the bill. Yes. The FD2 is a proposed version. Okay, so FD1 was voted on. Last month. Last month. And who voted for it? So who voted for it were council members, Pine, Anderson, Manahan, and Elefonte. Do we have... Oh, sorry, which one did you ask about? FD1. Oh, scrap that, totally wrong. Okay, who voted for FD1, right? The floor draft one. Okay, Martin, Manor, Kobayashi, Ozawa, and Fukunaga. Okay, and that's the one you don't want. Yes. Okay, so that one passed, and then how did FD2 happen? FD2 is a proposed version that was presented at the last council meeting. So complicated because at the last council meeting, it was actually, Carol Fukunaga's bill was actually called CD2, committee draft two, and Elefonte's proposed version was called floor draft one. So her version had passed committee and he walked into the council member, he brought into the council meeting a floor draft one. But then to trick things up, she walked in with a floor draft one as well. So there were two floor draft ones at the last meeting. And the council had to decide which one they were going to change the committee draft to. And they ended up voting for Carol Fukunaga's floor draft one. What happened, however, was that she only presented her floor draft that day. So it was under the 48 hours and there's some sort of rule that if there's 48 hours, less than 48 hours, you have to have another vote to see if that can be waived. And so when that vote was taken, four council members were objecting to a waiving the 48 hour rule. So those four council members, sorry, I read their names before, are Pine, Anderson, Manahan, and Elefante. So they were objecting because they support a plastic bag ban and they spoke very eloquently about why we need a plastic bag ban. And I was so heartened by that because previously there'd only been one or two council members supporting the bill, but now there were four. So again, those four are Pine, Manahan, Anderson, Anderson, and then the guy, Elefante, Elefante, granted, we love Brandon, who has really stepped up to the plate on this. Yes, he has, because the original bill is his bill, but it went to Carol's committee and she's made a lot of changes to that bill. So he's continuing to try to get a better version out there and that's why he tried at the last council meeting to bring in a floor draft. However, his floor draft didn't get heard because she brought in a floor draft. So that's why hers is now called floor draft one and he's trying again. So he's bringing in a floor draft two to try again. And it's on the agenda, so it will be heard. Well, it can be heard, it's up to, I mean, who knows, there could be the same thing happen where Carol might show up with a floor draft two and we'll be back to the same problem again, which one do they pick? But every meeting we've been to lately, Carol has brought in another version of the bill right on the day of the hearing without us being able to see it go. So would that kick in the 48 hour rule again? It might, yes. So what happens with the 48 hour rule that I found out was that if they're able to waive the 48 hour rule and if they're able to vote finally on that bill, they actually have to get, instead of a majority vote of five out of nine council members, they need six out of council, six out of nine to pass the bill. And because they had four people objecting last time, they didn't have six votes. And that's why it got held over to this month to be heard again. Okay, so the thing that people can do to really help make a substantive bill happen next week is especially those people who are in areas that are represented by those who did not vote for Elefante's bill. So again, those are... Oh, those are in the area of Mililani, Waikele. Just the names. Oh, okay, Ron Menor's area, Anne Kobayashi, Trevor Azawa, Carol Foukenaga, and Ernest Martin. So just quickly, it's the North Shore, Mililani, the Kaimaki area and Palolo, the Waikai area, and the Nuanu-Kalei area. So those are major areas on the island that really need to step up and call their council member, tell them that they support a ban on plastic checkout bags. And would their council member please also support a ban on plastic checkout bags? Okay, that's one thing they can do. That's one thing they need to do. They can also do online testimony that's open right now. And they can also testify in person down at the council hearing on the 7th of June. The meeting starts at 10, but guess what, the agenda's 45 pages long and bill 59's on page 35. So we're estimating, I'm just estimating, but maybe around five o'clock in the afternoon to head down there to Honolulu-Halei. They've also been known to change the order. They have, that's why I said, I'm estimating. So best thing for people to do if they wanna give verbal testimony, which we'd really love people to do, is to keep an eye on the proceedings Honolulu or they can go online. It's broadcast live online. Wow, that's a lot. But in the meantime, they can submit testimony online too. And the information for that was on that screen that we were just showing. Oh, it was? Oh, good, I didn't see it. There it is. Oh, great. There it is again. Yeah. Tell them to vote no on bill 59, FD1 and yes for FD2. Perfect. It's very, it's, I haven't heard about this situation where you have two versions and it gets, I'm not terribly familiar with the counsel's process anyway. Well, I think anyone can bring in a proposed floor draft. Anyone can. Luckily, Elefante's floor draft got put on the agenda. So by putting it on the agenda, several days ahead of the meeting means that he will only need five votes. That means we're looking for just one more council member. One more. Yes. Oh, come on. Maybe Trevor, my council member. He's our council member too. Yeah, so there's, you've got three votes right here, Trevor. Anyway, yeah, and my gosh, when you think about the coastline involved in Trevor Ozawa's district, it's amazing. Well, it runs from Waikiki all the way to Sandy Beach, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. If there's ever a stretch of Hawaii's beach that needs this, it's certainly, certainly that. Definitely, definitely. Okay, and we have, I don't know that we need to have any more reasons, but if you were gonna, in the last minute, say one more reason why it's really important for this bill. Well, we're a little island in the middle of Pacific surrounded by water with endangered and threatened species in it. And they include sea totals, like the leatherback sea turtle that could go extinct in the next 10, 15 years. So we need to protect those marine animals. It's super important that the FD2 passes and that we get rid of plastic damage. Oh, thank you both for coming. That brings us to the end of another episode of Hawaii Is My Main Land. I'm your host, Kawi Lukas. My guests have been Suzanne Fraser and Dean Otsuki. Learn more at www.b-e-a-c-h.org Thanks to our production engineer, Robert McClain, our floor manager, Cindy Manufekai, and all the people who care and contribute to our ThinkTech productions. If you want to see or share this show, go to thinktechhawaii.com or youtube.com slash thinktechhawaii. There will be a link to more shows just like this one. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll see you in the next episode. There will be a link to more shows just like this one. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Aloha.