How To Fix The American Tax System - ft. Ray Madoff
Capitalisn't
University of Chicago Podcast Network
4.5 • 584 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | There's a statistic that's often used to confuse people, right, that the top 1% of earners pay 40% of the taxes and 40% of Americans pay no income taxes at all. |
| 0:13.1 | But that talks about the high income earners, not the high wealth owners. |
| 0:18.3 | Because as we talked about, the high wealth owners can have no income. |
| 0:22.2 | They're just as likely to be in the 40% that pay no income tax as they are in the top 1% |
| 0:29.4 | that pay all the taxes. So many people are like, wow, this made me enraged. I'm a sucker. |
| 0:35.6 | I think one of the big problems is that the high income earners |
| 0:38.6 | have thought that they were aligned with the high wealth owners. They thought that they were rich |
| 0:43.3 | maybe because they have a couple of million dollars and, you know, a house and things like that. |
| 0:48.0 | They have nothing to do. High income earners have nothing to do from a tax perspective with high |
| 0:53.1 | wealth owners. |
| 0:55.6 | I'm Bethany McLean. |
| 0:57.3 | Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea? |
| 1:02.5 | And I'm Luigi Zengalis. |
| 1:03.9 | We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor. |
| 1:09.4 | And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism. |
| 1:13.4 | First of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? |
| 1:17.8 | And most importantly, what isn't? |
| 1:19.9 | We ought to do better by the people that get left behind. |
| 1:22.8 | I don't think we shouldn't kill the capital system in the process. |
| 1:26.8 | More and more people are throwing around the world feudalism these days, especially when they're talking about capitalists. |
| 1:33.0 | But a lot of important distinction are getting lost. |
| 1:35.8 | In a capitalist system, wealth is accumulated. |
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