Michael Barbaro (host)

And yet you're meeting with many of these people at their offices, at their homes in some cases.

What have you said to those leaders in your meetings with them?

And what have they said to you?

The socialist utopia of New Jersey.

You were joking about that, just to be clear.

I mean, it feels like what you're saying to these business leaders is, look, I'm going to be making changes to the system, but I'm not turning New York City, the center of American capitalism, into a socialist utopia, if I'm kind of hearing you correctly.

Let me just get specific about a particular policy, and I want to understand your fidelity to it.

The idea of what is being called a millionaire's tax, 2% tax on income over a million dollars, which feels very central to your agenda, felt very integral to the campaign in the primary.

Since the primary, my sense, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that you've expressed an openness, and I don't know if this flowed from your conversations with business leaders, to fund your agenda outside of that campaign.

kind of a tax.

And you know this, and our listeners may not as well, New York and New York City are funky.

The governor and the state legislature control all taxes but property tax.

And the two taxes you just mentioned therefore require the participation of the governor, who says she does not want to participate in these so far, and the state legislature.

So you seem to now be saying it doesn't necessarily matter where the money comes from.

But for democratic socialists and for this agenda that you are an avatar of, isn't taxing the rich more, as a principle, important?

Isn't the method here important?

Or are you being more pragmatic about it?

Right.

So the method does matter, but it doesn't have to be this method that gets there.

I mean, it does strike me that you're already starting to confront some of the challenges that