Gabriel Zucman

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485 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 12 Jul

Gabriel Zucman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · 12 Jul 2026 podcast

And so I've seen the explosion of U.S.

inequality, the consequences that this has for politics and democracy in the U.S.

And I think it's really extreme.

If you look at the level of plutocratic capture

that's happening today in the U.S., I think even people who were skeptical about the path of the U.S.

economy 10 or 15 years ago, none of them could have imagined what's happening today with Trump and how he's governing.

So this has encouraged me to work more on these issues.

And what I want to emphasize is that the explosion of billionaire wealth is not just in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's a global phenomenon.

And in fact, it's probably one of the defining features of the world economy of the last 15 years.

So, first of all, as we speak today, it's not yet 100% sure that the California billionaire tax is going to be on the ballot in November.

But there's a fair chance.

And so what is it about?

It's a proposal to create a one-off, a one-time proposal

5% wealth tax on the wealth of California's billionaires.

The billionaires of California, you have about 200, 250 of them, they own in wealth, wealth equivalent to 50% of California's GDP.

That's really an enormous amount of wealth.

And if you tax them at only 5%, the state of California could get about $100 billion in tax revenue.

And they want to use that to offset the deep cuts that Trump has made to Medicaid funding, which is a federal program for health insurance for low-income Americans.

And so there's just a big hole in the budget of California for health care, and so they need more money.

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