We’re back to our favorite topic this week—TAX THE RICH! Beyond all the benefits that come from a well-funded social safety net, taxing the wealthy would lessen inequality, which would make most people—including the extravagantly wealthy—happier. Super-rich Danish entrepreneur Djaffar Shalchi shares the wisdom that Denmark understands: Inequality is bad for everyone.
Djaffar Shalchi is an entrepreneur from Denmark and founder of Millionaires for Humanity, a network of wealthy people who advocate for raising taxes on wealthy people. He is also the founder and Executive Director of Move Humanity, a global initiative to mobilize at least one percent of the wealth of the world’s super-rich for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Twitter: @djaffarshalchi
OPINION: I’m a millionaire who wants to be taxed to pay for COVID-19: https://news.trust.org/item/20210329080742-gpnj6/
The American dream is now in Denmark: https://the.ink/p/the-american-dream-is-now-in-denmark
Dear Mr. Deutsch: Come to “F***ing Denmark.”: https://medium.com/@humanact/dear-donny-deutsch-come-to-f-ing-denmark-ea6995bb684d
Biden will seek tax increase on rich to fund child care and education: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/business/economy/biden-taxes.html
Website: https://pitchforkeconomics.com/
Twitter: @PitchforkEcon
Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics
Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer
David Goldstein:
Hey, Pitchfork listeners. We’re working on another Ask Me Anything episode, and we need your questions for Nick and the team. What do you want to know? Call us at (731) 388-9334. Leave us a voicemail, asking your question. And we might just answer it on our next AMA episode of Pitchfork Economics. Again, that’s (731) 388-9334. Looking forward to hearing your questions.
David Goldstein:
We get to talk to another class traitor.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. We’re going to talk to Djaffar Shalchi, who is a Danish entrepreneur, and the founder of Millionaires for Humanity.
Djaffar Shalchi:
When rich people say I’m self-made. I always say that’s bullshit, because nobody is self-made.
Nick Hanauer:
How popular is your view among your peers in Denmark? It certainly got to be more popular than my peers here in the United States.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah, but you will be surprised.
Voice over artist:
From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle. This is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer; the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why?
Nick Hanauer:
I’m Nick Hanauer founder of Civic Ventures.
David Goldstein:
I’m David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.
So Nick, on this week’s episode, we get to talk to another class traitor.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. They come from all over, and we’re going to talk to Djaffar Shalchi, who is a Danish entrepreneur and the founder of Millionaires for Humanity; a network of wealthy people who are advocating for raising taxes on wealthy people.
He’s a super interesting, cool guy and definitely a fellow traveler.
David Goldstein:
Yeah. And it’s great timing too, because Biden’s tax plan has just been revealed, and it looks like he’s going to propose eliminating the part of the Trump tax cut that lowered taxes on rich people like you. So, there’s going to be a slight raise in the top marginal rate of the income tax from 37 to 38.6%. And the bigger news is, essentially, the elimination of the preferred rate for capital gains. You would be paying capital gains tax at that top rate as well.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right.
David Goldstein:
And I just got to ask you, Nick. If they eliminate that tax break for capital gains, where will you have the incentive to speculate in Bitcoin?
Nick Hanauer:
Exactly.
David Goldstein:
I mean, that sounds terrible.
Nick Hanauer:
It does.
David Goldstein:
It’s going to destroy our entire crypto economy.
Nick Hanauer:
It will. But you know, I’ve been a big advocate, for a long time, of equalizing income from investing in income from work. And just to be clear, he’s not wholesale proposing increasing the cap gains rate. It’s on income above a million a year. So, for a lot of people who have a capital gain, it will continue to be a relatively low rate. It’s just for folks who make tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, or billions in some sort of capital gains windfall, they would have to pay at a rate equaling the rate that a firefighter has to pay on their hard earned income too. And I think that’s totally appropriate. And I don’t think, at all, it will disincentivize people from starting companies and trying to build wealth. In fact, using the usual neoliberal logic, it will make people work harder because now you will have to work 25% harder to make the same amount of money. So, all those rich people, like me, will now have to work even harder to create wealth, which is what the incentive system is supposed to do.
David Goldstein:
And you’ve made another point over the years, Nick, that when you’re as rich as you are, it’s not about what you can buy with all that extra money. It’s really just score-keeping, right?
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. It’s how much you have relative to other people that matters. And this is why I think that a reasonable increase in the tax rates that wealthy people pay, isn’t going to have a material difference on anybody’s lifestyle. At the end of the day, the society will be better off. But, there’ll still be a pecking order. And if $100 million apartments in New York City now can only fetch 60 million because people have to pay a little bit more tax, the same people will be buying those apartments. But the world will not be worse off as a consequence. Maybe some property developer will be slightly worse off, but-
David Goldstein:
Well, worse off in an accounting sense-
Nick Hanauer:
Yes. That’s right.
David Goldstein:
…but not in a real lived experience sense. If Jeff Bezos has to pay more capital gains tax when he sells some shares to-
Nick Hanauer:
There’ll be no difference in his life.
David Goldstein:
No difference in his lifestyle. And same with you. I mean, it’s not just the billionaires; it’s the multi-millionaires.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. No, it won’t make a big difference. We’ll have slightly less, and it’ll be fine, and we’ll get by it. But the cool thing is that, by reinstating some corporate taxes and reinstating some taxes on wealthy people, you could pay for… To the extent that you need to pay for these things, you could absolutely pay for, for instance, the American Family Plan that the Biden administration is proposing, which is 1.5 trillion in new spending, to fight poverty and reduce childcare costs, and big pre-K and community college free for all. And, there’s a lot of really incredible things that that money can go for, that, honestly, I truly believe will improve the lived experience for every American. It’s nice to live in a society where people are not living on the street.
David Goldstein:
And you raised an interesting point there. You also said, “to the extent that we need to pay for it.” And we’ve talked about this on the podcast, that, right now, we’re in a situation where we can afford to do a lot of things, regardless of the taxes. We can afford to run large deficits right now to make the investments we need to, without worrying about inflation. That said, there is an economic, political, and social good that comes from closing the huge wealth and income inequality gaps, just in and of itself.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right.
David Goldstein:
Raising taxes on the wealthy, even if we don’t need the money, is a net positive because it is that huge and growing inequality that is corrupt and dangerous to a functional democracy.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. And, when you have a class of people who live entirely different lives from the vast majority and have so much wealth and power, it’s just not good for any society. And the other thing is, there’s this very pervasive, neoliberal view that, taxing the rich is somehow punishing them. And it’s all about envy. But the truth is that human beings were evolved to be social creatures. And we judge ourselves in relation to one another. And the higher amount of inequality that you have in a society; the farther apart you stretch the rungs of the ladder of opportunity so that people can’t climb up that ladder, they basically have to leap from rung to rung, and it just gets harder and everybody gets more antagonized.
And that sense that the system is rigged and there’s no possibility of moving up that ladder, is what drives all of the cynicism, and hate, and political polarization we find in our society. And there’s a reason that places like Sweden and Denmark are just more socially stable than the United States. And that is that, the vast majority of citizens feel like the system works for them and that they have a big stake in it. And that’s the high order bid, I think, for the United States right now, is to persuade at least two thirds of the country that the system works pretty well and treats most people fairly and is worth supporting. But given that, it will be fun to talk to another person who feels strongly like wealthy citizens should contribute more to the common good.
David Goldstein:
Yeah. And, just to be aware to listeners, Djaffar is Zooming from Denmark. So if the audio quality is a little shaky at times, please forgive us.
Djaffar Shalchi:
My name is Djaffar Shalchi. I was born in ’61 in Tehran, Iran. But when I was only eight years old, my mother took me and my four siblings to Austria, Vienna first of one year. And then Copenhagen. So, I lived in Scandinavia for the last five decades. I am a building engineer, and work in the real estate. So I make properties, apartments and so on. And in 2015, at the same time that we had the 17 SDG goals adopted the UN, we started our foundation called Human Act. And we are now pursuing this by a new network called Millionaires for Humanity.
Nick Hanauer:
So Djaffar, like me, you’ve been outspoken about advocating for higher taxes on the rich. What’s wrong with us?
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah. You mean what wrong with us people, human beings?
Nick Hanauer:
No. You and me.
David Goldstein:
No. The two of you, class traders.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Do you know what? I just think that we are not civilized yet. And the rich people are just that they have this sickness called greed. We cannot have enough. We just have to have more until we destroy our planet. So, that is some of the things that is wrong with us. And we are very good to manipulating the governments, manipulating the set system. Some of us don’t pay at all in taxes. So, I could actually go on for hours about what is wrong with us.
David Goldstein:
So, we’ve had on the podcast before, Abigail Disney, who was born into wealth, and is advocating for higher taxes on the wealthy. That’s not your story. You weren’t born into it. Tell us a bit about how you built your own wealth, and how much of that was your own initiative, and how much of that was the society you were raised in.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah, first of all, she is a wonderful woman. I met her in New York in 2019, and she’s also inspired me of what I am doing today. As I told you before, I came to Denmark when I was only eight, nine years old. And soon after we came to Denmark, actually, my parents divorced. So, the first year, I was in orphanage with my siblings. And then after, when my mother find a job as a hotel cleaner, we get back to her and live with our mother the rest of the time. But the incredible thing was that we was just placed in one of the most beautiful places on this planet. And it was Copenhagen, a part of Scandinavia where we have what we call the welfare system.
As my mother said, you can do whatever you want to do because the society, the welfare system in Denmark. You can have free education, health care system. You have good security, good workers, and so on. So I just got to school and worked hard, and became a building engineer, and started my own business. And in ’99, after I had worked for more than 10 years, the big building company to learn the job. So, I will say that the society, maybe generation before me, that had built the system in Denmark, has a big part of it. So, when I hear, especially the rich people say, “I’m, self-made,” I always say, “That’s bullshit,” because nobody is self-made. Everybody is directed by the society, their friends, and so on. And in Scandinavia, we had the system to thank for. So, it was just, for me, normal to give back and do the right thing because we made there, I worked hard and so on. So, we really have the American dream in Scandinavia.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. So self-made like Donny Deutsch is self-made?
Djaffar Shalchi:
That was actually quite funny when I-
Nick Hanauer:
Would you tell that story? It’s just so good. It’s so good.
Djaffar Shalchi:
The story is actually that, one of our friends in the US, had told me that he went to national television in the US and said that… He used Denmark as a scaring picture, and that we was commoners, and that the US should never look like Denmark. And I said, “Hey…” I had to do something about this. So I just sit down and put some words on the paper and cut it out to social media. And it just get, I think more than a hundred thousand likes, and it was all about: they didn’t knew anything about what’s going on in Denmark, or in Scandinavia. And he don’t know anything about the welfare system.
Nick Hanauer:
But I think the key point here was that your antagonist; this guy, Donny Deutsch, in his interview on Bill Maher, said, “My dad was a cop, and we worked hard, and here I am,” but the truth is, his dad may have been a cop. But after that, he started and ran a giant advertising company that his son inherited largely. And that’s where his success came from, not from… It just was so disingenuous.
Djaffar Shalchi:
I was shocked when I heard what he’s has to say, but, it was funny. But he didn’t… He never… I invited him back to come to Copenhagen, but he never answered me. And I tried some several times, but yeah, let’s see.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s a funny story. But it is, I think, deeply typical of the view that people have about themselves. And, psychologists will tell you- and this is paraphrasing- that everyone needs to be the hero of their own story. And so, people create narratives around their success that make it moral. And the richer you are, the bigger that story needs to be, to justify the circumstances you find yourself in. And so, it’s really hard for people to admit that the ridiculous success that they have, may not be a consequence of their own actions or, their own efforts, or talents. And, mostly, as a consequence of circumstances, or luck, or birth or whatever it is. To be clear, this is true of all people, not just rich people. People always tell stories about themselves in this way, but this whole, “Hey, we worked hard and deserve it,” story is very… That’s a very common theme.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah. I think you’re totally right, because it’s so hard to stand in the morning and see yourself in the mirror when you’re brushing your teeth, and you just don’t like to see the true you. You like to make this narrative that… creating something else, but the truth. Because the truth can be so hard to see, especially if you are very rich and doing nothing.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
David Goldstein:
While we’re talking about Donny Deutsch, in his words, can we move on a little bit to “fucking Denmark”?, as he referred to your country. Let’s talk a little bit there. As a rich person, living in fucking Denmark, how high are your fucking taxes?
Djaffar Shalchi:
I pay more than 50%. And then from the last of what I’m earning, I can go as high as something like 70%.
David Goldstein:
And, what’s it like to live in a country like that, that taxes you at such a high rate? What do you get in return for it?
Djaffar Shalchi:
I get them return. I don’t see people sleeping in the streets like I see in many other countries; in US, in New York, in Rome, and so on. We don’t leave anybody behind in Denmark. Everybody can make a pretty decent living. And we have security, that is extremely important for everybody. And we have a balanced world, where everybody can come to my home. I don’t have any locks on my garden, just flowers. Anybody can come just right in. So, that kind of thing, you can’t buy for money. That’s some of it. And then of course, everybody can go to schools, healthcare, and so on. And that’s why we are always among the top 10 in the world when happiness report come out every year. We always compared with each other: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the taxes in those countries are the highest in the world. So, that is something, maybe, other countries should look into and say, “Hey, what is going on in Scandinavia?”
David Goldstein:
And let’s be clear, these are democracies. If people there were really unhappy paying such high taxes, they’d vote people out and go for lower taxes. But it’s not controversial in Denmark. Right? I mean, this is the norm and people accepted and embraced it.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah, because they can see they get something back off it. They can see there’s some public good that they get, and they can see… I can see, I get high qualified workers for my business. They come, they’re healthy, they’re clever. And, when everything is okay at home, then they can… I can activate them another way, than if I was living in Africa, in a country where the health system is another thing and so on. So we get a lot of thing back from our tax money, and nobody is escaping from Scandinavia because we are paying high taxes.
Nick Hanauer:
One of the things you’ve said that I really liked was: better to have happy taxpayers than generous philanthropists. I think you’re right. But tell us why you think that.
Djaffar Shalchi:
It’s pretty simple. The total philanthropy globally is only about through $24, $25 billion. Is not enough to, at all, address the global problems. Just to take the gap at the 17 SDG goals, you have a financial gap of $3 trillion. So what can $24 billion do? And, many of the philanthropy work is mostly going to the art, or sport, and so on. But we need, first of all, to save the 1 billion people who living under $2 per day, the extreme poverty. And, another thing, numbers that always pain me so much is that we have 6 million children under six year that die every year because of poverty. And that is so extreme, the high number. And nobody’s talking about it, and you can easily remove that by a simple 1% well taxed on the top 1%.
Nick Hanauer:
Globally?
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah. Globally. Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. I’m not sure what the philanthropy number you used was, but I think you said 27 billion. That must be for a particular global giving in one dimension. Certainly philanthropy is bigger than that. But it does pale in comparison to the problems that we face as a nation, or in the world. And certainly, in the United States only, approximately $50 billion annually is given away for things; philanthropy focused on things associated with poverty. But the $15 minimum wage, for instance, the delta between what people are paid now, or paid then, would be in the $400 billion a year range. So, the basic point is that, as generous as some people may be, or may appear to be, the size of the problems are always so much larger than the scale of philanthropy available to address them, that you just can’t get there any other way if you really want to address these problems.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah, exactly, Nick. And, the other thing is that you have to see this globally because our climate change problems don’t know any borders. Our human equality, and extreme poverty don’t know any borders. We have Africa pretty close to Europe. If we don’t address those problems, we will have a security problem. We will have people that just ran over. So, we have to do something to address that. And that’s why I think our [inaudible 00:22:14] SDG goals has to be addressed now that every country has signed it in 2015. We just have to find the money for it. And actually, at 1% of the top, 1% is close in three years to be about 300 trillion. And so 1% is 3 trillion, actually is enough. So yeah, if you look at the Credit Suisse’s report, the total wealth on this planet is about 400 trillion. And it’s a 1%, is closing up to have about 300 of it. So, it’s just the so big numbers, and it’s just not right. That big money is in the hands of few people.
Nick Hanauer:
So, tell us about the experience of the COVID pandemic on both your thinking and life in Denmark. Certainly here in the United States, it made it ever more obvious how big the gaps are, and how many people are living hand to mouth. How fragile the economic lives of people are here, but in Denmark they’re less fragile. So, tell us how that evolved your thinking.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah, it’s less. But still I can see the last three and four decades in Denmark or in Scandinavia, the welfare system is slowly going down because you also have the trickle down economy where… Or the benefits goes to like us, like me. And, under the pandemic, it has been more clearly now also in Denmark, that, why is all that money going to the top one or top 10%? And why is that benefiting everybody?
So when I was talking about this issues in 2016, 17, 18, it was really pretty hard to get through this huge noise, and to the media. But the end 2020, when the pandemic came, it suddenly, was quite easier to get out there. And when our prime minister in Denmark just get the questions a few months ago, how much had been used? And she said, ” [inaudible 00:24:29] just borrowed hundred billion dollars to address this problem.” And the question was, who was going to pay this? And that was all of us, of course. So, we still have the problems and we have a lot of small businesses that is a trouble Denmark. They are not so bad as the US, but still the most of the money goes to the top also in Denmark, unfortunately.
Nick Hanauer:
So, what do you say, that other wealthy people who say they don’t want to be taxed because they would rather choose to give their own money away? They want to decide where it goes. What’s your rejoinder to that?
Djaffar Shalchi:
We can’t have a society where the rich people decide who should have the money and who should not have the money, and how the society should run. You have to have the public good. You have to have some kind of welfare system. So, I don’t believe in philanthropy. I do it, and it’s beautiful. We should do it. But to solve our common problems, we need a systematic change. We need a tax, and we need to address that. Is it morally right that we have people with that kind of money in their hands today? There’s another thing to think about, I think; how the system has shrunk the last four decade.
Nick Hanauer:
How popular is your view among your peers in Denmark? It’s certainly got to be more popular than my peers here in the United States, but I just… I wonder.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah, but you will be surprised. It actually, I will say, nearly the same. Or maybe it’s a little bit bad, because there is people in Scandinavia saying, “Hey, our tax are high. Why should we pay more?” And when I say, “Listen, the last three, four decades, the taxes has gone down on us, 20% down minimum.” At a total taxes, maybe something like between 35 to 40% down. I would say it’s pretty much the same actually, it’s a really hard job to get them get around this. It’s not easy, but the… Unfortunately COVID came last year, it had been much more easier. Late summer last year we had globally won, more than 200 people signed it. But again, unfortunate, not so many from Scandinavia still. We have a few, but yeah, no good news from here. Yeah, sorry to say that.
We are [inaudible 00:27:04] the same. It’s globally much more the same. I calculated earlier that I think we can have something like 5% of the wealthy people with us, but that’s also pretty good if it can get that.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Well, there’s no right answer to any of these questions-
David Goldstein:
Well, it shows you the failure of philanthropy right there. Your philanthropy towards getting rich people to support higher taxes-
Nick Hanauer:
Has been a failure.
David Goldstein:
Has been a failure. It’d be much better if we could just tax them to towards that end.
Djaffar Shalchi:
But I think ours is extremely important because when we go out to talk, we reactivate the general population in our countries. And when we do that, and we go to the social media and get all that people behind us, they actually go out and go to the right people to go into our parliaments. So, I think it’s extremely important. And the media love the rich people to talk about this. And that’s why Millionaires for Humanity network, that we started last year, is getting so well off because we’re getting members every week and people just love it. So, I think a few from 5% of the top; the rich people going out and saying what we are saying, really can activate millions of people below who can go actually and work the right people inside our governments.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
David Goldstein:
Well, you class traders make a great story.
Djaffar Shalchi:
I love that. I love it.
David Goldstein:
Yeah. And I can tell you, not being one of the really rich people in this conversation, how incredibly useful it is to have people like you and Nick out there making this argument, because you’re taken seriously in a way that somebody like me just would not be.
Djaffar Shalchi:
You’re totally right because, as I said before to Nick, he really inspired me when I saw him first time, five years ago, and what he was doing. So, he’s definitely one of those who had inspired me to do what I’m doing. And I just, from 2015, 16, been hundred percent only doing this, and not out and make normal business and earn money, because I can’t do that anymore because I have to do something for my children also, and the next generation.
Nick Hanauer:
Oh. So did you retire from your business work, your business stuff?
Djaffar Shalchi:
I work 90% at the foundation, and 10% with my people about the normal business stuff.
Nick Hanauer:
Interesting. Me too. More or less.
Djaffar Shalchi:
But the interesting thing is that the business is going better than before. No really, I mean it.
Nick Hanauer:
There’s a lot there.
Djaffar Shalchi:
No, because it means it’s just incredible how people are taking [inaudible 00:29:59]. Everything we do, 90% go to the foundation to go to do good in extreme poverty, and so on. So it’s people coming all together and working harder, and just get sense of all of it to do the right thing, and to just help your next.
Nick Hanauer:
Oh, that’s really interesting. That’s good. Good for you. So, I have to ask, did you grow up in a civic family? I mean, was public service and these sorts of things, a part of how you were raised?
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah. I was raised by my mother, and I was with my three brothers, and one sister, in Copenhagen. We just go to public school, just totally normal the living. So, because we have the same opportunities as every kid in Denmark. We go to the school and university and everything, because all of it was free. And the state helped my mother to get a job, and so on.
Nick Hanauer:
But, did you start doing this political activism as a younger person? Or is this relatively new for you?
Djaffar Shalchi:
I will say that I got inspired by Che Guevara in very young age. I had it printed on my bag, actually. So, I always fight for justice and poverty. My belief is that the people are beautiful, all of them. It doesn’t matter where they’re living. But there’s some of the systems that we have today. It has to be changed, to serve the common good and leave no one behind, and so on.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. No, for sure. What are the focuses of your foundation, other than this? What else are you working on?
Djaffar Shalchi:
The focus is… We have two pillars in our foundation when we started. One is, we make a normal, philanthropic work. We make schools, orphanage, health in some countries in Africa, and so on. But our main project is our Move Humanity, that’s going out to say 1% wealth tax on the rich. And to support that, we started Millionaires for Humanity last year, to advocate for 1% of wealth tax.
David Goldstein:
Do we want to get to the final question, Nick?
Nick Hanauer:
Absolutely! Go for it, Goldie.
David Goldstein:
Okay. We ask this of all of our guests. Why do you do this work?
Djaffar Shalchi:
I do this, first, because this is the right thing to do. The second is, the societies, the [inaudible 00:32:37] that have built the system. It’s normal for me to give back, at least assist them. That is not [inaudible 00:32:43] than when I got it. And then I have two children. And my daughter also give me two grandchildren. So, I have to look them in the eye and say, “I try to do the best I could,” and leave something behind that was, maybe not better, it’s too late. We have done too bad things the last four decades, but then we can try to fix it. And I think it’s possible because we have all the means, and we have the technology for it. You just need the human will to come together.
And the last thing is, I always get the more happier by giving, and not only taking. And that have made me happier, my family happier, my children happier. And since when we got all in from 2015, I would say myself and my family had never been happier than we are today. So, this is one of the things I want to give to rich people to say, “Come on, go out and try it. You have nothing to lose, but extremely much to gain. And happiness is one thing every person in this planet is running for, everyday. So, this is one way to do it, just by giving into it good.
Nick Hanauer:
I love that. well, Djaffar, thank you so much for being with us today and thanks for your incredible work and leadership on these issues. I know it can be lonely.
Djaffar Shalchi:
Yeah, exactly. But I am very happy to be here and very grateful that I got in touch with you. Let’s see what we can do together in the future.
Nick Hanauer:
I love it.
David Goldstein:
I have to say, I’ve been to Denmark and it is a beautiful country and there are no people on the streets.
Nick Hanauer:
It was fantastic.
David Goldstein:
Living on the streets, I have to say. There’s lots of people on the streets. It’s a beautiful country. And, when I was in my twenties, I went and did the backpacking through Europe thing and spend about a week with a family in central Denmark. And, he was an engineer, not rich like you, but professional class. The way I was raised; my father was a doctor and, they had a modest but well appointed house. And I asked them at the time, what they paid. And they paid 60, 70% in taxes, and were perfectly happy with it.
It was a well-ordered country. The, the infrastructure was great. Everybody had health care taken care of. Their kids had a couple of kids around my age, gone to college for free. And when they graduated college, if they wanted to be an artist, they could get a little a subsidy for an apartment and there’d be jobs for them. And there wasn’t the type of insecurity and stress that goes along with being an American.
Nick Hanauer:
For sure. And, the truth is that we’re probably not going to end up in a country as egalitarian as Denmark. But the truth is, Goldie, you don’t have to have tax rates at 60 or 70%. If we raised taxes on all income to 45%, and reinstated some reasonable corporate tax rates, and closed all the international loopholes, and did a bunch of stuff around wages; raise the minimum wage and impose a reasonable overtime threshold, two or three other things, 90% of these problems would melt away. We don’t have to go all the way to Denmark to create an economic system that is radically more inclusive than the one that we have today. And it would not include a huge amount of trade off for the wealthiest citizens or the biggest corporations. Just wouldn’t.
David Goldstein:
And, I also want to add a little support for higher taxes from somebody who’s not a member of the super rich. And you know, Nick, that before I went to work for you, I’d spent the previous decade as a blogger and activist and all weekly journalist. And I did not make a lot of money. And it was a struggle. And I got to tell… You pay me much more generously than blogging for free did, or working at a newspaper did. And I got to tell you, it is so much better to pay taxes than not to pay taxes. It is great. I mean, the fact that I pay substantially more taxes than I did seven years ago. Oh my God! My life is so much better, because it means I’m making more money.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, no, it’s all good.
David Goldstein:
So thank you, Nick, for making me pay more taxes.
Nick Hanauer:
There we go.
David Goldstein:
It has made my life a lot more secure and less stressful than it was before. So Nick, count me as one of Djaffar’s happy taxpayers.
Nick Hanauer:
There you go. Me too.
Voice over artist:
Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook @civicaction and Nick Hanauer. Follow our writing on Medium at @civicskunkworks, and peek behind the podcast scenes on Instagram @Pitchforkeconomics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.