Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's tax season, or, as Donald Trump calls it,
Speaker 2: would you get off my back already? And the Biden
Speaker 2: administration has been making a big effort to make tax
Speaker 2: season a bit less painful. The Inflation Reduction Act, which
Speaker 2: the President signed lasts August, includes eighty billion dollars in
Speaker 2: new funding for the IRS to hire new employees and
Speaker 2: upgrade its technology. And it's working. The IRS is doing
Speaker 2: much better at processing our returns and answering our questions
Speaker 2: about how to file correctly, and that's great. Better enforcement
Speaker 2: of tax laws means more money for all the many,
Speaker 2: many things the government does, Social Security, Medicare, infrastructure, not
Speaker 2: to mention scraping off the feces smeared on the Capitol
Speaker 2: walls by the crowd boards. Clearly, the new funding is
Speaker 2: long overdue. In addition to paying for immensely popular programs,
Speaker 2: it will help reduce the depths to so everybody's got
Speaker 2: to be happy about this. Everybody, right?
Speaker 1: Am?
Speaker 2: I right?
Speaker 3: Democrats want to spend eighty billion dollars to hire eighty
Speaker 3: seven thousand more armed IRS agents to terrorize Americans.
Speaker 1: They want to add eighty seven thousand IRIS agents that
Speaker 1: can use deadly force to go after American families.
Speaker 2: I want to turn the IRS into the Gustapo. They
Speaker 2: are arming up the IRS like they're preparing to take Fallujah.
Speaker 1: A little like James Bond. But instead of hunting down
Speaker 1: evil maniacs, these agents hunt down and kill middle class
Speaker 1: taxpayers that don't pay enough.
Speaker 2: What on earth are these people talking about? If you
Speaker 2: forget to carry the one while you're calculating your return
Speaker 2: with the IRS, actually come to your home, break down
Speaker 2: the door, and gun down your entire family in a word, no,
Speaker 2: in six words, of course, not, you Republican idiots. So
Speaker 2: let's talk about what the IRS money is really going
Speaker 2: for and another installment of long story short. The administration
Speaker 2: is trying to fix a whole host of problems that
Speaker 2: began back in twenty eleven after Republicans in Congress started
Speaker 2: cutting the IRS budget. Since then, the IRS's audit rate
Speaker 2: has dropped almost sixty percent, and the number of IRS
Speaker 2: agents the same number we had in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: when the country's population was half the size it is today.
Speaker 2: And pediatricians treated six children by prescribing them menthol cigarettes
Speaker 2: and the combination of under staffing and stone age technology
Speaker 2: has resulted in a very weird situation. You are more
Speaker 2: likely to be audited in the United States if you
Speaker 2: make twenty thousand dollars a year than if you make
Speaker 2: five hundred thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Less money you have, the easier it is for the
Speaker 1: IRS to come after you. This is because the IRS
Speaker 1: doesn't have enough money to hire the highly trained investigators
Speaker 1: needed to go head to head with the wealthy. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it's easier for them to audit lower income people because
Speaker 1: it's cheap, can be done by mail, and doesn't take
Speaker 1: a lot of time.
Speaker 2: Can you believe that the IRS is so understaffed that
Speaker 2: they audit poor people more than the wealthy because they
Speaker 2: just don't have the experts to handle the most complex returns.
Speaker 2: They're going after poor people because it's easier. It's like
Speaker 2: a comic who only does your mama jokes. Sure it's easy,
Speaker 2: but at what cost to my mama? Her life? Her
Speaker 2: life is difficult enough, do you know? Do you know
Speaker 2: how hard it is to find a belt the size
Speaker 2: of the equator? So how much money in lost taxes
Speaker 2: are we talking about here? According to the former head
Speaker 2: of the IRS, it could be as much as one
Speaker 2: trillion dollars a year. To put that in perspective, if
Speaker 2: you stacked a trillion one dollar bills on top of
Speaker 2: each other, it would it'd blow away. It'd be ridiculous
Speaker 2: to even try that. The solution is pretty simple, and
Speaker 2: it's a bargain comparatively, comparatively speaking, Just adequately fund the
Speaker 2: IRS so it can improve its enforcement capabilities and collect
Speaker 2: that extra trillion dollars. Now you would you would think
Speaker 2: Republicans would love and extra trillion dollars in revenue. They're
Speaker 2: the ones who are always complaining that America is spending
Speaker 2: money that we don't have.
Speaker 3: Politicians in Washington cannot stop spending money that we don't have.
Speaker 2: Let's live in reality.
Speaker 1: We have a spending problem. We have a dramatic spending problem.
Speaker 2: If you had a child, you gave him a credit
Speaker 2: card and they kept hitting the limit, you wouldn't just
Speaker 2: keep increasing it. You'd first see what are you spending
Speaker 2: your money on. So we're going to look at every
Speaker 2: single dollar spent.
Speaker 3: We're going to audit. If you're going to have a party,
Speaker 3: you have to pay the band.
Speaker 2: Come on center. You don't have to have a band
Speaker 2: at a party. Just hire your nephew's roommate to be
Speaker 2: a DJ. Just think what we could do with an
Speaker 2: extra trillion dollars a year. We could begin to retire
Speaker 2: our national debt and balance our budget. Or we could
Speaker 2: do some new things that would be worthy of a
Speaker 2: great nation. We could have universal pre K or subsidized
Speaker 2: childcare like they do everywhere. We could eliminate federal income
Speaker 2: taxes completely for the bottom ninety percent of American household.
Speaker 2: And this isn't just lefty liberal pie in this sky stuff.
Speaker 2: With a trillion dollars we could do we could fund
Speaker 2: an entirely new I rock war. And why are we
Speaker 2: the only borking developed country that doesn't have universal health care?
Speaker 2: And it doesn't have to be single payer. We can
Speaker 2: have a public option, which we should have being done
Speaker 2: in the first place, adding Labormen. The point is polling
Speaker 2: shows that ninety three percent of Americans believe it's every
Speaker 2: American civic duty to pay their taxes. And I think
Speaker 2: you can guess who the other seven percent are. So
Speaker 2: let's let's give the irs the resources to make sure
Speaker 2: that everybody does what we all should do for the
Speaker 2: right of living in this great country, a nation we
Speaker 2: can make even better if we do the rational thing
Speaker 2: and collect the taxes that people actually Oh. My guest
Speaker 2: tonight is an author who's New York Times bestseller The
Speaker 2: Some of Us has just been adapted for young readers.
Speaker 2: Please welcome, Heather McGhee. Good to see you here. You know,
Speaker 2: I've been doing podcasts, very prestigious podcast uh for uh
Speaker 2: for about four years. Now you're my You're my favorite guests.
Speaker 2: You've been on three times. You're my favorite guests. You
Speaker 2: are so brilliant. Now you're an economis you and you
Speaker 2: The first time we met was during the banking crisis,
Speaker 2: and we talked a lot about that. Subprime loans, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And housing has always been a big part in the
Speaker 2: gap in terms of wealth between blacks and whites. Can
Speaker 2: you explain where that's where that kind of started?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely. I mean I always say wealth is where
Speaker 3: history shows up in your wallet. So today, the average
Speaker 3: black college graduate has less wealth on average than the
Speaker 3: average white high school dropout. Makes no sense.
Speaker 2: Say that again.
Speaker 3: Yes, So if you're the average white high school dropout,
Speaker 3: you are wealthier than the average black college graduate. So
Speaker 3: that's his t's be showing up in your wallet, right.
Speaker 3: We're talking about wealth, not a paycheck. We are talking
Speaker 3: about your home equity, your stocks, your bonds, your inheritances.
Speaker 3: And that all dates back to that massive racial wealth
Speaker 3: divide that we have today, dates back to when most
Speaker 3: middle class Americans' wealth began, which was in the New
Speaker 3: Deal era, coming out of the Depression. The progressive FDR
Speaker 3: government said we want to commit to affordable housing and
Speaker 3: mass home ownership, and they created this massive system, this
Speaker 3: system of public subsidy, and they based it on the
Speaker 3: never substantiated assumption that black people would be too much
Speaker 3: of a credit risk. And so they commissioned maps of
Speaker 3: the entire country's largest cities and surveyed them down to
Speaker 3: the block level for their racial and ethnic character and said,
Speaker 3: if there was a high Negro concentration, we're going to
Speaker 3: circle that with a red line and say banks do
Speaker 3: not lend here. And that really only ended in the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, and it was quickly replaced by what people
Speaker 3: call reverse redlining, which is when those contiguous communities of
Speaker 3: lower wealth black communities were targeted with those high cost loans.
Speaker 2: But that's what we were exactly.
Speaker 3: And that's how we met. Eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, the redlining started during the Progressive FDR
Speaker 2: in the early thirties.
Speaker 3: That's right, And you know the way I see it,
Speaker 3: And this is really the kind of core idea of
Speaker 3: the some of Us. You know, you and I met
Speaker 3: not just because black families were being disproportionately targeted early
Speaker 3: in the subprime crisis, before it was a household word.
Speaker 3: You and I met once everything had fallen apart, right,
Speaker 3: once Lehman had gone bankrupt, once trillions of dollars in
Speaker 3: household wealth and eight million dollar jobs had disappeared overnight.
Speaker 3: And for me it was such an object lesson in
Speaker 3: the way in which racism can ultimately have a cost
Speaker 3: for everyone. We ignored the canaries in the coal mine,
Speaker 3: what was going on with black and brown families early
Speaker 3: in the crisis, and banking committee members just weren't focused
Speaker 3: on it. And then obviously we know how the story ended.
Speaker 2: Well, The Some of Us is about how race intersects
Speaker 2: with economic inequality. And it became an instant New York
Speaker 2: Times bestseller. And now you've done a book that's for
Speaker 2: school children, for milliers, not for toddler, for middle school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, school high school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and how do you explain this to them? How
Speaker 2: do because these kids are able to understand this, right,
Speaker 2: I mean I noticed this is the book and it's
Speaker 2: a little shorter than the other, but it seems pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's we really didn't dumb it down. That was
Speaker 3: the lesson I got. We did sort of casual focus
Speaker 3: groups of educators and middle school students, and they were like,
Speaker 3: don't dumb it down. Actually have access to all the
Speaker 3: same information you do, and we have the same kinds
Speaker 3: of questions. Right, The core question at the heart of
Speaker 3: the Some of Us is why does it seem like
Speaker 3: we can't have nice things in America? Nice things like
Speaker 3: not like flying cars, but nice things like universal healthcare
Speaker 3: and paid family leave and childcare and a great school
Speaker 3: in every neighborhood. And they have those questions too, And
Speaker 3: so in the Some of Us, I use a lot
Speaker 3: of data and a lot of history, but ultimately it's
Speaker 3: a series of stories, like the story of the drained
Speaker 3: public pool and that.
Speaker 2: Now the cover of this is the boy jumping in
Speaker 2: a pool. A white boy looks like and I think
Speaker 2: of a black child there. Tell that story because that's
Speaker 2: the first story you tell these kids, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. It's the story of what happened to
Speaker 3: many of the country's nearly two thousand lavishly funded, grand
Speaker 3: resort style public swimming pools that were built in that
Speaker 3: same New Deal era of public goods, around when the
Speaker 3: big housing subsidies were happening. And I like to get
Speaker 3: the kids to picture what it would look like to
Speaker 3: have a community pool that was free and could hold
Speaker 3: over a thousand swimmers at a time. And most of them,
Speaker 3: you know, they kind of gasp and they're excited about
Speaker 3: the idea, and then I tell them that they were
Speaker 3: usually for whites only, and they're sort of like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, And then I say, but then in the
Speaker 3: Civil Rights movement, black families began to say, you know what,
Speaker 3: it's our tax dollars that have funded those public pools
Speaker 3: all along. We want our kids to swim. And the
Speaker 3: court sided with them and progress was made. And then
Speaker 3: many towns and cities, not just in the Jim Crow South,
Speaker 3: decided to drain their public pools rather than integrate them.
Speaker 3: They literally drained out the water and backed up truckloads
Speaker 3: of dirt. And I really see in the conversations they
Speaker 3: have the questions they.
Speaker 2: Asked, and they get it so unblievable, and they did
Speaker 2: that all over them.
Speaker 3: All over the country. Yeah, in Ohio and West Virginia,
Speaker 3: all over the country. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so and then they planted over it.
Speaker 3: Yep. So just so.
Speaker 2: Black and white people couldn't swim together.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. It's this zero sum story, this old
Speaker 3: story that says that progress for people of color has
Speaker 3: to come at the expense of white people, that we
Speaker 3: can't all sort of share in well being, that we're
Speaker 3: in this competition for dominance and status. And you know what,
Speaker 3: young people get it. It's this story that is of
Speaker 3: course unbelievable, but they've lived in America long enough to
Speaker 3: know that it's actually quite believable because they understand that
Speaker 3: over their lifetime, public goods have really beenen atrophying, that
Speaker 3: they don't have those big, beautiful swimming pools anymore, that
Speaker 3: there isn't free college the way there was that was
Speaker 3: a kind of a public pool that was funded by
Speaker 3: the government. And they know that as the college going
Speaker 3: population got more diverse for them, right, they're already in.
Speaker 2: A generation zero sum.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Idea is basically that wealthier whites taught poorer whites that
Speaker 2: anything that helps African Americans hurts them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's zero sum, that's right. And the some of
Speaker 2: us is about we all do better when we all
Speaker 2: do better, which is what Paul Wallston is to.
Speaker 3: Say, the Late Great, the Late Great. You know, it's
Speaker 3: the part of the book that young people really resonate
Speaker 3: with is the hopeful part. Right. They want to hear
Speaker 3: that we can fix this. And I truly believe that
Speaker 3: everything about the world that we see now, all the dysfunction,
Speaker 3: it's because people made decisions to make the world as
Speaker 3: it is, and so people can make better decisions. And
Speaker 3: the core message is that through collective action, people coming
Speaker 3: together across lines of race, finding solidarity, recognizing that we
Speaker 3: all do better when we all do better, and that
Speaker 3: we all want big, beautiful public pools can really win
Speaker 3: and take on powerful interests, but we can't if we're divided.
Speaker 3: And they get that. And it's been a really fun
Speaker 3: trip across the country, schools, libraries, middle.
Speaker 2: All over the country, finding communities where this is happening.
Speaker 2: In Minnesota, yeah, we have a town Wilma, Minnesota. It's
Speaker 2: in Kanday, Ohio County. It's the biggest turkey producing county
Speaker 2: in Minnesota, which is the biggest turkey producing county. It's
Speaker 2: the town I went to the graduation there. About half
Speaker 2: the class German, Scandinavian, about a third of the class Hispanic.
Speaker 2: There's a big meatpacking plant there, about fifteen percent Somali.
Speaker 2: This was the most beautiful thing I'd ever gone to
Speaker 2: in the time that I was in the Senate. This
Speaker 2: town just worked together. Lewiston, Maine is doing that all
Speaker 2: over the country. This works when we all when we
Speaker 2: realize as the some of us, that's how we create wealth.
Speaker 2: That's how we create prosperity. That's how we create a
Speaker 2: good life for all Americans.
Speaker 3: That's right. You should really run for office for her.
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