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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Imagine there's no billionaires

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.610.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How much money is too much? In today’s episode, political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns tells Sean that we need to cap the amount of wealth a person can accumulate. They talk about how extreme inequality affects democracy, the role of money in politics, and why limiting personal wealth benefits everyone, including the super rich. Host: Sean Illing (⁠⁠@SeanIlling⁠⁠) Guest: Ingrid Robeyns, ⁠⁠professor⁠⁠ and author of Limitarianism: ⁠⁠The Case Against Extreme Wealth⁠⁠ This episode originally aired in January 2024 We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email [email protected] or leave a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. You can watch new episodes of ⁠⁠The Gray Area on YouTube⁠⁠. Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: ⁠⁠vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

What did the Supreme Court's recent decision on affirmative action actually change?

0:05.7

And what does it mean for who gets into elite colleges?

0:08.8

I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, Yale Law Professor Justin Driver joins me on Stay Tuned with Preet

0:14.0

to trace the history of affirmative action and explain where we are in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in SFFA versus Harvard.

0:22.3

The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:30.1

If you've ever heard the line, every billionaire is a policy failure. It might hit your ear as

0:36.6

just another empty or vague catchphrase,

0:40.0

or even worse, a useless hashtag. But is it actually vague? And more importantly, is it actually

0:47.2

useless? Beneath the sentiment is a serious policy question.

0:55.0

Is the existence of billionaires a sign that we've engineered unsustainable levels of inequality?

1:03.0

The word unsustainable is key there, because if we set aside for the moment moral questions about

1:13.1

what's right and wrong and just ask if this kind of inequality represents an existential threat

1:19.4

to democratic societies, it's not clear what the answer is, or at least it's not simple.

1:27.4

But I do think there's more than enough reasons to suppose that what we're or at least it's not simple.

1:27.9

But I do think there's more than enough reasons to suppose that what we're doing now isn't

1:32.8

sustainable.

1:34.9

And if that's true, what should we do about it?

1:41.6

I'm Sean Elling, and this is the gray area.

1:56.1

Today's guest is Ingrid Robbins.

2:02.6

She's a political philosopher and economist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. And she's just written a new book called Limitarianism, the case against extreme wealth.

2:09.6

The basic argument is that we should impose limits on how much wealth and resources an individual can accumulate.

2:16.6

And not just because it is the right thing to do,

...

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