00:00:11.060Privilege or wealth is a disconnection drug. It keeps people apart from one another and
00:00:16.500from building authentic, real connections and communities. When you have that kind of
00:00:21.120wealth, you don't really have to ask for help. You can buy all the services you need, but
00:00:25.020then you miss out on reciprocity, that important part of human existence, which is, I need help.
00:00:31.260Can you help me? And the vulnerability and connection that is created by that.
00:00:37.680Chuck Collins is co-editor at inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies and author
00:00:43.960of numerous books, including Born on Third Base, The Wealth Hoarders, and Economic Apartheid in
00:00:49.640America. Alter to an Erupting Sun is his first novel.
00:00:55.020Oh, well, Chuck, thanks so much for joining us today. I really want to get the nitty gritty with
00:01:03.280you. So I'm excited. Me too. Thanks for having me. When I heard about your work, I had so many
00:01:09.580questions pop up right away. And I thought, oh, I really want to interview this person. You've
00:01:14.840done such vital work exposing the contours of inequality in this country. And I just would
00:01:22.020love to begin by discussing how growing inequality simultaneously leads to growing instability,
00:01:30.220especially in the face of the climate crisis. Well, that is a very important framework. You
00:01:36.600know, and I spent a lot of time just looking sort of at the very narrow growing income and wealth
00:01:42.720gap. But when you realize as wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, it kind of has all
00:01:50.860kinds of disruptions it disrupts democracy it disrupts sort of economic stability having some
00:01:58.800people have so much wealth and a lot of people have nothing kind of fuels speculation and
00:02:05.340instability and then another form of concentrated power is in the industries that kind of drive our
00:02:13.720energy policy, oil and gas and coal and the sort of financial enablers that provide the financing
00:02:22.240for kind of extractive capitalist economy, they have seen their wealth and power
00:02:28.880radically concentrate over the last 40 years. So that's one of the ways that it kind of affects
00:02:36.260our environment is it makes it very hard to kind of shift the trajectory of where we're going.
00:02:43.720Hmm. Yeah. Well, I want to get more into the details of that response. And in listen, billionaire doomsday preppers for inequality.org, you write, quote, our current system of extractive capitalism is preventing the transformation required of us. We need to rewire ourselves as a species and change the economic system that is destroying nature and producing escalating inequalities, end quote.
00:03:11.040So how does the machinery of inequality mirror the machinery of the climate crisis?
00:03:19.380I think of them as kind of interwoven machines or systems.
00:03:23.940the sort of more i dig in and learn the more i realize really starting a century ago with this
00:03:30.920kind of rise of the texas oil billionaires and the oil fortunes you had a segment of business owners
00:03:39.600who invested heavily in shaping our political system and that included kind of an aversion
00:03:47.680to taxation, government regulation, and kind of a clear path for unbridled energy extraction
00:03:55.200in the fossil fuel sector. So you have this one powerful segment of the economy and individuals
00:04:02.640in the economy kind of rigging the rules, if you will. And, you know, it's hard to envision this,
00:04:09.120but, you know, in coming out of the Great New Deal and even under President Dwight Eisenhower,
00:04:13.800a Republican. We had a very progressive tax system. Wealthy people paid high taxes. And
00:04:20.760there was a kind of, we were kind of beginning to grow together as a society after becoming
00:04:26.260very unequal. And even in terms of the racial wealth divide, you started to see by the early
00:04:32.4601960s, a narrowing of the gap between white and non-white households. The concentration of wealth
00:04:39.360among the 1% being let's say 9% of all the wealth as opposed to 36% today. So you had a period of
00:04:48.140relative equality, not perfect in any way and still racially and economically polarized. But
00:04:54.600then this kind of reactionary fossil fuel sector really captured our political system, pushing
00:05:03.140their candidates pushing the parties pushing the whole system so when you use the word ayana the
00:05:10.160machinery it really was about capturing government and using the government to kind of advance their
00:05:18.180interests you know anyone today who is sort of looking at this kind of collision course we're on
00:05:25.260between, like, as we see more and more of the kind of disruptions, we realize our political
00:05:33.240system is completely ill-equipped to respond to the level of the crisis. And if you sort of
00:05:40.820dig into that, let's say you're saying, well, geez, why is Congress going to include the
00:05:48.160mountain valley pipeline in the debt ceiling agreement you know why why a pipeline project
00:05:54.540why a plum for the fossil fuel industry and you realize these folks really do have extraordinary
00:06:02.840power and they've used that power you know and you could say a couple decades ago it was about
00:06:08.700seeding denial oh there is no problem and then it was about seeding doubt and promoting sham science
00:06:15.180And along the way, blocking alternatives, you know, blocking to put a cap on carbon emissions or transition to global energy. The same industry used their power to block those. And finally, here we are delaying. We know we need to rapidly transition away from oil, gas and coal, but we can't.
00:06:37.180can't but even as part of you know a debt ceiling negotiation over the deficit the fossil fuel
00:06:43.980industry has its way with our political system and personally i experienced this you know trying to
00:06:50.060prevent a gas pipeline from being built in my neighborhood in boston you know building the
00:06:55.660what was called the atlantic a pipeline that came up the atlantic coast bringing
00:07:00.540fracked natural gas to export terminals along the East Coast, but they were building this pipeline
00:07:07.420right into my Boston neighborhood. And so I got very involved in that, but I was sort of looking
00:07:12.660upstream and realizing we're not going to be able to stop this because the game is entirely rigged.
00:07:18.400The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, is a captured regulatory agency. It does the
00:07:25.840bidding of the industry it supposedly oversees. So all along the way, we see how the rules and
00:07:33.640the regulations are tipped against those of us who are trying to create a habitable earth.
00:07:39.580Oh, absolutely. I'm in the midst of that right now with the campaign to stop an acid-generating
00:07:47.160mine up here in Alaska. And it's incredible how much our systems, government, policy,
00:07:55.520legal, and otherwise is literally set up to take from the earth and pollute. It's truly
00:08:01.100shocking, but not shocking at the same time because we look around and we see
00:08:06.020what has become of these policies and governmental agencies, etc.
00:08:11.940so well there was a quote in your author q a and you explain when we look at the u.s congress today
00:08:20.000we have to appreciate that we are looking at the end product of almost a century of industry
00:08:24.400manipulation and political capture when a powerful industry oil gas coal use their wealth and power
00:08:30.520to shape and warp our current political environment for over 70 years this is what it looks like end
00:08:35.800unquote. So yeah, maybe there's like two questions here, which is who actually has the visible and
00:08:43.400invisibilized power to make broad decisions about resource use? And how does inequality at this
00:08:49.260level undermine both democratic process and corporate and government transparency?
00:08:56.020Yeah, great question. Maybe on the latter point, I think when we think about inequality of wealth,
00:09:01.740It's really about inequality of power.
00:09:04.520It's the power to influence our democratic system, the power to block things, which has
00:09:12.540been considerable over those 70 to 100 years, preventing us from taking soft energy paths,
00:09:29.120And, you know, the quote you mentioned makes me think, you know, also about the culture. You say, well, you know, 30% of Americans are not going to want to give up their large trucks or whatever. We have to understand that all we've been serving on the menu is carbon products.
00:09:46.820If most of us had known what Exxon and Shell knew 40 years ago and our elected officials knew, we'd probably have more things on the menu.
00:09:56.980You know, you'd be able to take light rail or mass transit or be able to use an electric vehicle that was created 40 years ago and has been perfected.
00:10:06.200Or a decarbonized energy sector would, we would at least be more like Europe where we have many more efficient appliances and vehicles and choices.
00:10:16.820But we couldn't even become Europe in terms of per capita energy consumption, because the fossil fuel industry at each step of the way, use their wealth and power to block alternatives. So it's like going to the diner and all there is is one type of food on the menu. And kind of like, well, what's the choice here? This is all we have.
00:10:41.300So even the notion of what choices we have has been kind of constructed and manipulated over these decades. And then I think on the visible power, I think we can identify a couple dozen major global energy companies, and at this point, just a handful of major financial institutions that sort of prop up the whole sector.
00:11:05.220although you and i can talk about where the cracks or the weak spots in the system are where the
00:11:10.280potential pressure points are but you can see these the dozen biggest oil companies and then
00:11:17.500the natural gas players and the shrinking but still globally significant coal sector
00:11:24.340all of which just have record profits even during the pandemic they were just seeing their
00:11:31.820profits reach unprecedented levels in 2021 the oil industry's profits doubled over the previous
00:11:39.460several years so they're making a lot of money along the way oh i guess going off you know what
00:11:48.820you just spoke to i want to talk about how staggering inequity is normalized and there was
00:11:56.940another interview that you did with NPR and you say, quote, Jeff Bezos was the first
00:12:01.600centi-billionaire maybe in 2017. It's a new trend. I mean, just for perspective, in 1983,
00:12:09.020there were only 18 billionaires in the United States and now there are 657 today. So I don't
00:12:14.680consider that a good economic indicator. I think it's a troubling sign that too much of society's
00:12:19.460wealth and income is flowing upward to that small group of people, unquote. And gosh, it's kind of
00:12:26.300hard to wrap my mind around how dramatic this change is just across a few decades.
00:12:33.420And it makes me question, how is extreme and growing inequality continually normalized?
00:12:39.820And how has this wealth been consolidated so quickly anyways?
00:12:44.120Yeah, you know, it is interesting. I mean, part of it is over 40 years. I mean, if it had happened
00:12:50.560maybe over five years, we would have been more alarmed. But, you know, it has been a steady
00:12:55.660growing updraft of wealth, not just to the 1%. We talked about the 1% in 2009, the Occupy
00:13:04.620movement, but we're really talking about the one-tenth of 1%. People with $30 million or more
00:13:11.260all the way up to the billionaire class, that is where almost all of the economic gains of the last
00:13:18.160couple decades are going. They're flowing almost all the way to the top. And then during the first
00:13:24.600two years of the pandemic, there was almost like a tragic concentration of wealth, you know,
00:13:29.620where the U.S. billionaires saw their wealth go from $2.9 trillion to $5 trillion in two years.
00:13:36.160And I think popular culture sort of mirrors it and somewhat normalizes it. You know,
00:13:42.360if you just look at the billionaires that show up in every movie now, whether they're
00:13:47.500creating dinosaur islands or dominating some conversation or political process,
00:13:53.640There is kind of a strange normalization along with kind of a myth that people are where they are because they deserve to be where they are, meaning that somehow these folks have created something innovative and we're all benefiting from it, whether it's Elon Musk creating a Tesla or Starlink.
00:14:13.420well geez don't these people shouldn't they be well rewarded for what they're doing so there's a
00:14:18.400there's even sort of a story that goes along with it that justifies the extreme concentration of
00:14:25.280wealth yeah i think it's really interesting in popular culture as well that people simultaneously
00:14:35.020are being like people want to be billionaires and want to hate billionaires at the same time
00:14:42.520it's really confusing what our culture conditions us to believe and want. You look at music or
00:14:51.000movies, basically any media, and it's truly about wanting this luxury lifestyle with the private
00:14:59.580jets and the yachts and the access to anything at any time, anywhere, but then also building up
00:15:06.980a understandable frustration and even hatred against the people who do hold this kind of
00:15:13.200wealth. So it's kind of love and hate. And then of course, the absolute majority of us will never
00:15:19.580be able to reach that anyways. But so many songs are money, money, money, money. And then you grow
00:15:25.460up singing those songs. I think we're really being bamboozled. And I think we are in so many ways,
00:15:32.480but definitely around wealth and wealth accumulation. I can understand why so many
00:15:39.180of us are confused, even if that's unconsciously. Yeah. A funny little story, which is once I was
00:15:46.420giving a talk to a very large group. So I said, well, I'd like to do a poll here. How many people
00:15:50.780here admire America's billionaires for things that they've created? Half the people in the room
00:15:56.720raise their hand. How many people here are suspicious or even resentful toward billionaires?
00:16:02.480half the people raise their hand. How many people would like to be a billionaire? Everybody raises
00:16:06.320their hand. So, wow, that's complicated. I think one thing that happened during the pandemic was
00:16:12.020people sort of saw how the game was rigged and that inequality wasn't just sort of,
00:16:19.000there was something about unequal sacrifice and the fact that the billionaire class globally and
00:16:24.940in the US was seeing their wealth accelerate during a time of hardship for a lot of people.
00:16:30.220And that fueled some sense of like, okay, the system is broken. Like we shouldn't have a society that funnels so much of our societal wealth to the top. There's something broken here. And that's where I think, you know, just in the last couple of years, you have a current president who proposed a tax targeted on billionaires.
00:16:52.300Well, that's the first time in modern history where you've ever heard that kind of policy proposal. And it's because such proposals are very popular across the political spectrum. People think that the super rich are not paying their fair share of taxes and should pay their fair share and we should tax billionaires and we should discourage these undemocratic concentrations of wealth and power.
00:17:16.840So I think there's a little more critical thinking now about whether this is a good thing or not.
00:17:24.500Absolutely. I think there is definitely critical thinking, frustration, questioning, which is, of course, we need that. It's the basis for change.
00:17:34.880but i think also it can feel overwhelming and a lot of us can feel powerless like what could
00:17:42.120we possibly do to change or shift this really corrupt system that is so entangled and i want
00:17:53.760to talk a bit more about the wealth hoarding and how some of this has even become possible
00:17:59.280in your book, you discuss the wealth defense industry. So it'd be great if you could explain
00:18:06.000a bit more of the frameworks and structures that make up this industry and the ways that laws and
00:18:11.240banking structures are designed to enable wealth hoarding. Well, as wealth concentrates in fewer
00:18:16.520hands, those folks will hire their professional helpers, if you will, their enablers to minimize
00:18:24.820their taxation and maximize transferring wealth down their narrow family line.
00:18:30.980So again, think of people with $30 million or more, which in my view is plenty of money
00:18:38.060But at a certain point, it's about legacy.
00:18:41.000It's about how can I accumulate as much as possible and leave it to my unborn great-great
00:18:46.620grandchildren so they don't have to work.
00:18:48.240So these are folks that have the ability and money to hire tax attorneys, wealth managers, accountants. I call it the wealth defense industry. Their job is to preserve the capital, minimize tax, and create trusts and other mechanisms to transfer the money down the line. And it's a fairly significant sector.
00:19:12.640We're talking tens of thousands of people who pretty much get up every morning and say, how can I help global billionaires keep their money and get richer, accumulate more? And so they have a bias against tax. And they spend a lot of their days designing various loopholes or transactions or various forms of ownership and trusts that sort of masks.
00:19:33.700And so at this stage, we estimate somewhere around $30 to $40 trillion owned by this ultra-wealthy group is now in the shadows. It's pretty much off the ledger. It's not reachable for taxation or accountability. And the wealth defense industry will say, well, we're just helping our clients obey the law. But in fact, they're actively writing and manipulating the law.
00:20:00.320So here we have a situation where in the United States, the Internal Revenue Service, not a very popular agency generally, but important in terms of making sure everybody pays their fair share, well, they're completely outgunned in their ability to follow all these tax shenanigans that this wealth defense industry creates.
00:20:22.780You know, here they're up against some of the most powerful law firms and skillful attorneys. And, you know, these wealthy families even create what they call family offices, which basically just run their affairs. So this is kind of what an oligarchy looks like, you know, when you have a wealth class for whom taxes is almost optional.
00:20:43.520They've pretty much opted out and delinked from the rest of society, and that's part of the problem, including as we talk about the ecological problem. They think that they can hop in a private jet and avoid the worst consequences of ecological disruption. I would argue that's delusional, but nonetheless, people have this idea that they have enough wealth, they can maintain residences in six different parts of the world and avert the worst aspects of social and climate disruption.
00:21:13.520oh it's so complex the systems are truly set up to allow resource extraction to happen by any
00:21:29.940means possible and for those who know how to play the game the wealth hoarding game or whatever we
00:21:36.020want to call it to keep playing it and to keep getting more and more powerful because of course
00:21:39.960They all collude together. And so it's really a rigged system that's working really well for a small amount of people. And I sometimes get trapped in what the solutions could be or what the changes could be to halt this or start to shift this in a more equitable, supportive direction for the majority of us.
00:22:07.820And of course, the earth and the more than humans that call this their home as well.
00:22:12.800And I know that taxes are something that has been brought up as a way to start to balance out the inequality, like a wealth tax or something like that.
00:22:24.940And in an interview with El Pais, you say, these are our tax dollars at work in the United States.
00:22:30.340If I'm a billionaire and I give $1 to my private foundation, I get 73 cents in tax reductions.
00:22:36.060we as taxpayers subsidize the charitable giving of billionaires we should be skeptical and we
00:22:41.860should say well maybe they should pay higher taxes and society should decide how the money
00:22:46.540is invested so i guess the first question here is how can we resist them so that taxpayers are
00:22:53.020not subsidizing the wealthy and so that taxpayers are also not paying for extraction and funding
00:23:00.160the kinds of systems that have led us to a place of such stark inequality and instability.
00:23:07.140And just to get a little more detailed here, we could say, oh, we want a wealth tax. And we
00:23:12.680say, you know, philanthropy is the breadcrumbs of capitalism. It's BS. It's a way for people
00:23:17.460to hold more money. And then they get to decide where those monies go. And a lot of times
00:23:22.180where philanthropy goes is into more programs that are actually not so great for the earth
00:23:28.480are for people. And so we say, well, we want a wealth tax, but so many of us are really discouraged
00:23:35.180about how our taxes are spent. You look at the Tongass National Forest, our taxes were used to
00:23:39.980subsidize old growth logging up to a billion dollars, literally paying to log the last
00:23:45.100remaining old growth left on the planet in our national forest because it wasn't profitable,
00:23:50.000actually. Obviously, the war machine, our taxes are being used for that. So I think to me,
00:23:56.800wrestling with this tax question. It's not that I don't want billionaires or really wealthy people
00:24:02.420to be taxed more, but I don't even like where our taxes go now. So I guess I'm kind of throwing it
00:24:08.620all at you in one big splatter. And so I'm sorry for not being more succinct here, but I definitely
00:24:14.740kind of mired in this. Yeah, I'm with you there. The first thing, and just to set the context,
00:24:22.500I kind of weighed out a kind of dismal picture. But what I see are all kinds of cracks in that
00:24:29.680system, including people who work in this wealth defense industry who have kind of reached the end
00:24:35.940of their careers and are sort of feeling like, huh, all I've done with my life's energy is help
00:24:42.160the rich get richer. And so there are all these whistleblowers stepping forward. Pretty much
00:24:46.400everything we know about this system is because of leaks made by people working inside law firms,
00:24:54.080inside wealth management firms, who've given journalists the Pandora Papers, the Panama
00:24:59.260Papers. A number of them have reached out to me, and I've worked with them to get their stories
00:25:04.500out. So just on the upbeat note, there are cracks in the system, and we're learning more about it,
00:25:10.540and we've learned that, okay, we know that a wealth tax would be good, but we have to start with
00:25:16.400dealing with some of the loopholes and the trusts and all these sort of complex ownership systems
00:25:21.700that the super wealthy use that are deliberately complicated. Hard for you and I to sit here and
00:25:27.320talk about because they're designed to be misunderstood or not well understood. So that's
00:25:32.940just one context. Your point about philanthropy is important, which is wealthy people are moving
00:25:38.840money to the shadows, into trusts, into offshore corporations, into shell companies in different
00:25:45.860countries or in the U.S., they're also moving it into the charity sector. And some of that is going
00:25:52.100to good things. And now we're talking about the billionaire class, but it is another form of tax
00:25:59.660reduction and a way that people can concentrate their wealth and power and hold on to control.
00:26:06.200So philanthropy more and more is kind of becoming more top-heavy, more dominated by,
00:26:11.360you know, the ultra wealthy. So yeah, we should be skeptical about it. And we should
00:26:15.840change the tax laws around charitable giving. So people can't just completely opt out of paying
00:26:22.020taxes. But you know, there's the problem of how do we raise our money? And then the problem you
00:26:26.880point to, Ayanna, how is it spent? And that is another form of our democracy problem. You know,
00:26:32.460it's, it's hard to get excited about taxes when we know, you know, so much goes into the military,
00:26:38.220so much goes into sort of the corporate agenda that isn't helping, it's actually causing harm.
00:26:44.880So we have to both struggle around the priorities of government, reasserting democratic control over
00:26:50.780how money is spent, as well as a better system for making sure everybody's chipping in their
00:26:56.780fair share. So there's the revenue side, and then there's the spending side. And I argue, hey,
00:27:02.800we need to have a fair tax system. Well, we also need to come back and make sure that the resources
00:27:07.540are used well. You know, even in the last couple years, four years ago, Congress was debating
00:27:13.640a $4 trillion investment bill that would have had huge investments in climate mitigation,
00:27:20.860permanently affordable housing, creating a modern childcare system. I mean, that was a visionary
00:27:25.800bill. You had a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president, and it was, you know,
00:27:32.160stopped really just by two votes in the Senate, you know, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. I mean,
00:27:38.160that's how close we came, we as a society, to passing a really big, bold, progressive spending
00:27:45.480agenda. So that's important to remember that because it was a near miss, but we may have
00:27:50.140another shot in the coming years. But it is hard to be excited about taxes when we see that the
00:27:56.640political capture and manipulation is spending the money on the wrong things.
00:28:01.820Yeah, it seems like tax itself is certainly not the democratic solution it's pitched as,
00:28:09.100especially considering the immense amount of lobbying that goes into deciding tax code and
00:28:13.340corporate tax breaks. And I guess it's just this question of in our current system is just taxing
00:28:20.300even possible because I'm not sure how we can ensure or hold accountable that the resources
00:28:27.500actually go to communities. Who are the watchdogs? How do we actually speak up when we do see things
00:28:35.100that are unjust? Because things are really hidden. Whether it's the billionaires hiding their money
00:28:41.520or whether it's the government hiding within bills and hundreds of pages where percentages go,
00:28:47.840it's so convoluted and so i almost want to talk about like how to reform tax code for dummies or
00:28:55.900something you know it's like i want it like really spelled out of what are steps we could take you
00:29:01.480know and i will add something about the philanthropy and i don't know these statistics but i could
00:29:05.980imagine the majority of philanthropy is kind of questionable and the non-profit industrial complex
00:29:11.980has its own issues, of course. But a lot of these programs and projects wouldn't be happening if it
00:29:20.260wasn't for some philanthropy. Like who's going to fund people fighting mining and old growth logging
00:29:26.800and coal? There are some nonprofits out there that are actually the kind of warriors for the
00:29:34.260climate, for the earth. Who's going to fund resistance movements if it isn't for philanthropy?
00:29:38.860And so I know these are two separate questions of getting more into the nitty gritty of philanthropy and what it funds in a beneficial way. And then also this question of how do we even begin to hold a type of tax reform accountable to make sure that the taxes are being used for our communities and that it is a just tax system.
00:30:02.920You know, I think we should celebrate and lift up the segments of philanthropy movement that are thinking about change, not just reinforcing the status quo. And we had a group of wealth advisors come to visit and talk to a really inspirational woman from the United Kingdom named Stephanie Broby, who's a wealth advisor.
00:30:23.840She worked for many decades, you know, in the traditional sector, helping rich people minimize tax and pass on inheritances. And she jumped the rails. And now she works with wealthy individuals who are trying to minimize their wealth, you know, give away substantial amounts of capital and give it in ways that heal the harms caused by the extraction of the capital and also to pave the way toward a different energy policy.
00:30:51.560So it's very far thinking. And we are so thankful that there are people doing that work. So that is part of the contradiction here. I guess people sort of jokingly say, well, we're in the late stage of capitalism. And we're at this weird point where some of the people who have benefited from the system are also seeing its harms and rebelling against it. And I take some encouragement in that in the same way I see people defecting from the wealth defense industry.
00:31:19.200You know, and I think on a simple level, for 40, 50 years, the rules of the tax system have been rigged to benefit capital, to benefit wealth holders at the expense of wage earners. And what we need to do is basically reverse that. We need to tax wealth. We need to tax work lower than we tax wealth. Low and middle income people should keep more money in their pockets and wealthy people should pay a fair share.
00:31:47.300Again, it's really interesting. There's this big fight over the budget deficit and the debt ceiling that, you know, has been recently debated. And, you know, the Republican priorities were dismantling the investment in the Internal Revenue Service that was being made to enforce tax laws.
00:32:05.820That was their priority, along with, you know, getting Joe Manchin's Mountain View pipeline rammed through. So that's one party's agenda and pretty much, you know, one and a half of the political parties, that's their priorities. But, you know, that was the money that we were going to invest as a society to ensure proper enforcement and that the wealthy weren't just loopholeing their way out of paying taxes.
00:32:30.480So yeah, enforcement is important, good tax rules, and going after these kind of hidden wealth systems. And there's work sort of happening in each of those areas.
00:32:41.240Another area that I take encouragement is taxing luxury consumption. We just did a report in the last month about private jets. It's not surprising to you that private jets are one of the worst causes of carbon emissions. And we as taxpayers effectively subsidize the private jet class. And it's growing rapidly.
00:33:03.660You know, where I live, there's an airport that, you know, they're proposing to expand it four times simply to handle private jet traffic, private jets owned by the super rich. So that's a place where there's a good populist pushback. You know, yeah, we should tax private jets. We should tax the fuel and we should tax their sales and we should discourage private jet travel.
00:33:28.240And if we can't outright ban it, we should make sure the fees are very steep to cover the real costs of their harms they're creating. So I see a lot of interest and pushback and movements growing and making these kind of tax demands central to how we fix the climate and how we fix the future in many ways.
00:33:49.040mm-hmm yeah i think it could be central if our value systems shifted and i think there's something
00:33:58.300i get really focused on which is the roots of the problem for instance if our taxes
00:34:06.040were paying for protecting the earth protecting our food systems our soil
00:34:13.600our waters, making sure we had access to healthcare that wasn't just the pharmaceutical
00:34:19.360industrial complex or the medical industrial complex, then I mean, I don't want to go into
00:34:26.340socialism here, but a lot of reason those of us in not the wealthy class need to make money is
00:34:33.980because we actually need to pay for things that could be considered common goods or just living
00:34:41.320a sustainable life, a healthy life with our families. And so I think if our taxes were
00:34:48.380actually going to maintaining or securing a healthy planet and a supportive culture,
00:34:57.280then probably even those in the middle would be really glad to pay taxes because the taxes would
00:35:03.840be supporting them in ways that they were agreeing to. But even trying to get to a place where we
00:35:10.600agreed on what we need is complicated. I was thinking about, okay, well, what if the wealth
00:35:16.800tax, you could decide off of a certain amount of categories where the money goes. It's just so
00:35:22.760hard. I mean, the corruption is so thick. And whether it's in the nonprofit world or the
00:35:29.620government or even things that have good websites that make you believe that beautiful things are
00:35:35.220happening, you look a little deeper and then you go, wait, what is going on? This is not what I
00:35:39.920that I was donating to even my $20. You know, and I'm not saying this because I think there's no way
00:35:44.660out. I'm just somebody who wants to overturn the rocks and get to the root because I feel like,
00:35:49.820and I'm not saying people shouldn't work on whatever they're working on to try to reform
00:35:53.540these systems. But I find when we work on the surface, we can kind of change things. But if
00:35:59.160our value systems don't change, then it's not that we're doing nothing, but we're not actually
00:36:04.500shifting it. And I think there's something really important too about philanthropy and power. And
00:36:12.760there was an interview with NPR and you explained, quote, it's not just about wealth. It's about the
00:36:17.380power that goes with it to shape the culture, including philanthropy and how they use their
00:36:22.560philanthropy and political giving to rig the rules of the economy, end quote. So wealth and taxes and
00:36:29.480the government are all in cahoots to shape culture and shape our value systems and shape
00:36:36.000our desires even. And so if we are wanting to reform philanthropy tax as well, how do we
00:36:44.160actually speak to the value systems that will help us create reform in ways that are truly,
00:36:52.940I don't even know the words. I hope any of this is making sense and that I'm not just
00:36:56.700babbling into the ether. I think it makes a lot of sense. And in some ways, I think about where
00:37:02.860do we have agency to enact the values? And it's not surprising that people trust their local
00:37:09.360government or their state more than they do the federal, because the federal government is kind
00:37:14.600of where the big corporate players have really exercised their power to capture it. And some
00:37:20.300states have gone really different directions. But it's interesting to look at states that are
00:37:25.300kind of doing a better job of collecting money in a fair way and investing it in a way to create
00:37:31.660healthy communities. And, you know, where the focus is on, let's relocalize economic activity,
00:37:39.360let's build regenerative agriculture systems, let's educate people for livelihoods that are
00:37:45.220in this region that are not based on sort of harmful sectors. You know, I always go back to
00:37:50.980Think about Joanna Macy's framework, which is, you know, we need to stop the bad. We need to build the alternatives and we need to shift our culture. And that can be done within philanthropy. We really need philanthropy, social change oriented funders to help fund organizing to stop the harms, not just let these corporations have their way.
00:38:10.280But we also need to be kind of seeding the new economy, the new society in the shell of the old. So how can we create healthy agricultural practices, regional economies, and then how do we shift the culture at the same time?
00:38:26.180One of the things, I wrote a novel that came out this month, and it's, you know, partly it's about what would it look like if some of these powerful local alternatives kind of played out and moved to a bigger scale over the next decade.
00:38:42.240communities are coming together to face climate disruption are creating a culture of mutual aid
00:38:48.000a culture of local face-to-face celebration as opposed to you know everything on television
00:38:53.320you know looking at land and access to land and reparations and who's been excluded looking at
00:38:59.940affordable housing and building permanently affordable housing that's outside the speculative
00:39:04.320market so i see that in the region where i live and i kind of tried to in a fictional way as a
00:39:11.740positive vision, sort of spell that out. What would it look like in the decade ahead? How does
00:39:16.820that play out? So I think it's helpful to have visions that are based on that different sense
00:39:22.620of values, along with all of our important work to kind of stop the big harms from rolling everything
00:39:42.500Well, thanks for getting into the weeds with me there.
00:39:46.100I think in a lot of ways, we're talking about dreaming into another world.
00:39:50.440And I guess there's this question of who gets to dream.
00:39:53.680You know, in a healthy society, we all do.
00:39:55.840We all get to have an affirmative vision and think ahead.
00:39:59.180When I was reading these columns about these billionaires who were kind of paying attention to the upcoming ecological and social breakdown,
00:40:08.380And their response is to go and, you know, build a bunker in New Zealand or kind of a very privatized, personal, protect myself and my family, but not the rest of the world. And that's what I was saying is that's delusional because, you know, unlike a lot of other problems, the ecological breakdown, there is no planet B, there's no, you know, maybe that's why some of these billionaires are interested in outer space.
00:40:34.140But the reality is, we have this amazing, beautiful planet that we need to take care of. And my rap to these billionaires is, look, you're not going to be able to find a private, personal, opt-out solution like you have for many other societies' problems when it comes to the climate crisis.
00:40:53.040You're going to have to rejoin humanity, bring your wealth home, bring it out of the shadows and out of the speculative casino marketplace and reroute it in local economies and in place and use it to repair the harms from the extractions globally.
00:41:11.760So you have to think not just about your own backyard, but other people's backyards, but bring the wealth home.
00:41:18.180And, you know, part of my interest in the hidden wealth system is, well, there's $40 trillion. There's the losses and damage fund that those of us in the higher income global north owe to the parts of the world that haven't burned as much carbon, that haven't extracted for their own selfish interests, their earth's bounty.
00:41:39.960we need to pay restitution and reparation to a lot of the society. So, you know, the wealth of
00:41:46.100nations is hidden in the offshore accounts of the ultra wealthy. We need to bring it out and bring
00:41:53.260it home. And it's really an invitation to the individuals too, is you're not going to flourish
00:42:00.020and your grandchildren are not going to flourish in that privatized security model. You're going
00:42:05.340to have to rejoin humanity, warts and all, pay your taxes, stop extracting in the way you are.
00:42:11.920And then at the same time, we as a society have to demand that. So there's a voluntary invitation,
00:42:17.900and then there's the rest of the society saying, how do we organize to defend ourselves
00:42:21.880against these extractors who are bringing us to the brink of societal collapse? And there are
00:42:30.480people who are hearing that, and there are people who are stepping out of their privilege bubbles
00:42:34.820and trying to find ways to rejoin humanity
00:42:37.940and redeploy the wealth that they have in healthy ways.
00:42:41.620So that gives me some hope as I see those trends.
00:42:59.620a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption
00:43:02.760in the critical decade ahead, end quote.
00:43:04.820Yeah, I'd just love if you could give us a brief introduction to the novel.
00:43:07.700Yeah, it really is the story of a community in New England that is trying to prepare and practice mutual aid and figure out how to live within the Earth's boundaries and restore soil and sequester carbon and die differently.
00:43:26.280Think about death and dying very differently than we as a culture do, at least in sort of U.S. Anglo culture.
00:43:32.240Well, and I should say it's in the tradition of, you know, there's a lot of great visionary fiction that isn't just sort of zombie apocalypse dystopia, but, you know, Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson and Octavia Butler and others who have, you know, painted visions of the future that show us possible ways of how we can be together and live in harmony with the earth.
00:43:54.680So I'm kind of writing in that same spirit. But one of the purposes of the story is, well, how do people respond to this impossible news of the moment that we're in? And my main character is a lively woman named Ray Kelleher, who is kind of the life of the party. She's the weaver of social movements.
00:44:15.540She's a longtime nonviolent direct action trainer. She's kind of like a Starhawk. People know Starhawk and who also wrote a great visionary novel called Fifth Sacred Thing. And Ray Kelleher is at the end of her life. This is not a spoiler alert because this is how the book begins, but she's facing down a terminal illness and she has been a kind of a death doula and a death and dying, conscious dying kind of support advisor to lots and lots of people.0.73
00:44:45.000she decides she's going to go out taking her own life and the life of the CEO of a fossil fuel
00:44:51.540company who she believes is acted to delay humanity's response to the climate crisis.
00:44:57.400So she goes out with the shocking, horrific act of violence, which is completely outside of her
00:45:03.720life experience. I mean, this is somebody who Ray Kelleher, most of her adult life participates in
00:45:09.700the salamander crossing guards you know the here in new england in the warm first nights of march
00:45:16.900the rains fall and the salamanders and the frogs come down the hills and cross roads and to get to
00:45:24.460their spawning ponds for their their orgies and so that they get run over and so ray is part of
00:45:31.040this group of people who have such a respect for life that they stand out with reflective vests
00:45:37.040and flashlights and try to help these critters get across the street. So that's just like who
00:45:42.180she is. So part of what the book then does is say, well, let's look ahead. What's happened as a
00:45:47.320result or what ripples has this action had looking forward? And not surprisingly, there's tremendous
00:45:54.260negative blowback. There's a criminalization of dissent and movements to face the climate crisis
00:46:01.420are set back in some ways because of this. And on the other hand, there's a laser focus on the
00:46:08.320role of the fossil fuel industry in doing what you and I have been talking about here, which is
00:46:13.180to pretty much block the alternatives. And so that creates a new conversation and new openings there.
00:46:21.980And then, you know, seven years later, we get to see how things have shifted. And at kind of a
00:46:28.060birthday celebration seven years later, her friends and family sort of ask, well, why did
00:46:34.040she do this? You know, what in her life shaped her and formed her? And so then it's really also
00:46:39.220a story of formation going back to her being 19 years old and living through the social movements
00:46:46.540and forces of the last 40 years. So it's about her formation and how she, while she's deeply
00:46:52.420rooted in sort of nonviolent tradition, her understanding grows of how this particular
00:46:57.280industry has manipulated everything and how she believes that they are responsible in a higher
00:47:04.520level way than just all of us are responsible. So anyway, that's the theme. And it's been an
00:47:09.820opportunity to discuss, and this is what her daughter says at the end of the book, what my
00:47:14.880mother, what Ray did was wrong, but what bold action will you take to defend our one and only
00:47:21.200home, the planet Earth? And that's really the spark for the conversations that have come out
00:47:27.000of the book. Beautiful. Well, I'm excited to curl up with that book. And I really appreciate
00:47:35.560the focus on community building. And in an article you wrote for Yes magazine called
00:47:41.540One Way to Skip Wall Street and Invest in Your Community, you write, instead of opting out of
00:47:46.260the community, opt in with gusto by relying on public transportation, education, recreation,
00:47:51.080and other community resources, end quote. So yeah, I'd love to dream into what it might look
00:47:58.080like to intentionally invest in diverse communities and to focus on sharing wealth
00:48:03.020within localities. I think that there are great examples emerging of people who won the lottery
00:48:09.920at birth, you know, inherited substantial wealth or started a company and received a windfall of
00:48:16.580rewards financial wealth coming at them and who are kind of asking that question of like wait a
00:48:22.880second what do i do now and i have sometimes said privilege or wealth is a disconnection drug
00:48:29.240keeps people apart it keeps people apart from one another and from building authentic real
00:48:36.120connections and communities and when you have that kind of wealth you don't really have to ask for
00:48:40.660help you can buy all the services you need but then you miss out on that important part of human
00:48:45.820existence, which is reciprocity. I need help. Can you help me? The vulnerability and the
00:48:52.220connection that is created by that. So I've kind of tried to make the case to young folks who are,
00:48:58.900you know, won the lottery at birth that it's entirely in our selfish interest to shed this
00:49:06.280wealth and the privilege and straitjacket that goes with it and come home. And coming home is
00:49:12.760being based in a community, not an elite enclave, but a community of authentic reciprocity and
00:49:20.700where people depend on one another and invest that wealth in institutions, in organizations,
00:49:27.260in enterprises, yield control of the wealth to others. And I see that happening in lots of places
00:49:35.320and you see formation of cooperatives, you see new farms, you see younger people getting involved
00:49:40.920in food production and all the sort of value-added enterprises. How do you build a new economy in the
00:49:47.880shell of the old? Well, capital is part of that, but capital doesn't necessarily run the show.
00:49:54.060Capital should be subservient to the community and to labor and to work workers. And once we
00:50:01.520understand that capital is a useful thing, but it doesn't get to call the shots, you have a very
00:50:06.520different framework for how you build an economy. I don't know if you call it socialism or
00:50:10.680decentralism. I think it's just a better new system. It doesn't have an easy tagline,
00:50:16.920new economy, some people call it, or solidarity economy. But yeah, I think that bringing that
00:50:21.340wealth into place, again, recognizing that we have to support places in other parts of the world
00:50:27.540where the wealth has been extracted and wealth needs to return to those places as well. But yeah,
00:50:32.840I see a lot of exciting work in that kind of new economy space that also addresses sort of historic racial inequities, a sort of a form of reparations.
00:50:43.620Yeah. I was thinking about back to the conversation we were having about accountability kind of makes me think also of the morality or the propaganda of wealth.
00:50:55.640And I think that there are these cultures of belonging that you're speaking to that's about investing in each other. And then the kind of rugged individualist culture that so many of us are conditioned in, which are kind of like pull yourself up by the bootstraps, or if you just work hard enough, you'll get it, or everyone has the same opportunity.
00:51:16.340And so, yeah, I would like to debunk this with you a bit and maybe talk about the difference between those who believe that if you work hard, you'll become wealthy.
00:51:31.140And if you're not doing well financially, it's because you're lazy or something versus those who invest in each other in their communities.
00:51:39.120It's kind of like, how do we culturally shift to see beyond the veil of this morality that surrounds ideas of wealth country?
00:51:46.340Yeah, it does. It does go to this myth of deservedness. People are, if you have a lot of
00:51:52.880wealth, it's because you deserve it. You got up in the morning, you worked hard, you, whatever
00:51:56.860did to create that. And if you don't have wealth, or even if you're economically struggling, well,
00:52:01.820you deserve that condition because you haven't worked hard or there's some limitation or failing
00:52:07.320on your part. And that's just a cruel societal myth that is promoted. People will promote that
00:52:14.040narrative of deservedness to justify these extreme inequalities and racial differences.
00:52:21.360And one of the things I've seen is people stepping outside of that. Well, what help did you get?
00:52:27.040What role did society play in your having a decent life? Did you go to a high school that had
00:52:33.500public investments that helped you in any way? So hearing some of these patriotic millionaires
00:52:40.420and billionaires talking about how, instead of just talking about, oh, how I invented this
00:52:46.520new technology or whatever, talk about all the ways they got help. And I think of it's kind of
00:52:52.040like seeing the web. And this is a little bit genderized. I think men tend to start with the,
00:52:58.220I did this, I did that story. And there's a sort of web that other people see. It's like, well,
00:53:05.740we're all part of this web. There is no rugged individual. None of us were raised by wolves in
00:53:11.680the woods or whatever. We exist entirely because of this web. It is sometimes invisible and sometimes
00:53:20.300money renders it invisible deliberately or undeliberately. But the reality is no one does
00:53:26.100it alone and no one is going to make it alone. And the more wealth people have, the more they
00:53:31.460forget that. So I think that's part of how we debunk the myth is say, let's tell true stories
00:53:37.880of how interdependent we are for starters and critique the sort of great man theory of wealth
00:53:45.720creation or the mythology of you are where you are because of something you did. And the more
00:53:51.960you look into that, the more you realize how multi-generational advantage works and multi-generational
00:53:59.340advantage and disadvantage, that it goes back multiple generations. Trauma flows over generations
00:54:06.560and privilege and opportunity flows over generations. So no one can be born and say,
00:54:12.960I'm here because of something I did. There's all wind blowing one way or the other. It's either
00:54:18.040blowing into your face or it's blowing at your back. And debunking that mythology is absolutely
00:54:22.940critical to this project of building a more equitable society yeah i really appreciate that
00:54:30.480you spoke to this myth because i think it's one of the underpinnings it's part of the roots of
00:54:37.640our value systems and how we feel about each other and also just respecting each other or
00:54:44.840not respecting each other and yeah there's a lot more questions to ask but i know we're coming up
00:54:49.600on our time. So I'm not sure if there's something that you'd like to end on.
00:54:54.200What's on my mind coming out of the conversations from the novel is, where do we have room to move?
00:55:00.880You know, I think there's a certain amount of despair and a sense of loss. And if you kind of
00:55:07.300look at the objective moment we're in, it sort of feels like, okay, we're in the backseat of the car
00:55:13.260and the car is heading to the cliff and we can't even affect the steering wheel or whatever, you
00:55:17.540know. And as an organizer campaigner, I'm always sort of looking out for the pressure points or the
00:55:24.180places where we have some room to move. And I think there is a lot of room for us to move. I
00:55:29.560think, you know, there's withdrawing money from the fossil fuel sector, the divestment movement,
00:55:35.000and the movement to put pressure on the lending institutions. There's all this interesting work
00:55:40.700around getting insurers to stop insuring the fossil fuel sector. There's a move to say,
00:55:47.340what if we did like an international or at the national level, a tribunal that looks at
00:55:53.440sort of the climate, the role of the fossil fuel industry and funding doubt, delay, denial,
00:56:00.960just so we get clarity that this is a rogue sector that is incapable of stopping the harms
00:56:07.440that it's creating, that we have to figure out whether it's through nonviolent direct action
00:56:12.080or through withdrawing social license or creating authorities to buy their assets
00:56:20.560We should zero in on the pressure points where we do have some ability and room to move
00:56:26.500and realize that each year it's going to be more obvious how the planet is being disrupted,
00:56:33.980the flooding or the heat waves or the smoke in your eyes or disruption to our food system,
00:56:39.600And that that, at each moment, as people wake up and realize that, there's going to be an opportunity to sort of focus attention on the role of this industry in bringing us to this point and essentially halting and reversing.
00:56:53.220So I think there's all kinds of things we can do to focus on sequestering carbon and building soil fertility and regenerative agriculture and the tools and things that we consume, but there's also stopping this industry that's bringing us to the brink.
00:57:09.000So that's the conversation on my mind lately and looking for the places where we could each make a difference in that space.