America's Tax System Is Broken
From Plain English with Derek Thompson by The Ringer
March 24, 2026 · 1h 5m
About this episode
The episode discusses the broken tax system in America, focusing on tax inequality and billionaire tax avoidance with expert Gabriel Zucman.
If you're a typical worker with a salary, you have almost no control over how much tax you owe. But if you own a company worth billions of dollars, the income tax is, in the words of my guest today, "largely optional." Countries around the world struggle to get billionaires to pay a higher tax rate than middle-income families. Gabriel Zucman is one of the world's leading experts on tax inequality, the economist who first rigorously measured what U.S. billionaires actually pay—and he found that it's less, as a share of income, than what a middle-class American pays. He's advised Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on wealth tax proposals and recently published sweeping new research showing that the problem is global. Today, we get into the mechanics of billionaire tax avoidance, the history of failed wealth taxes, and whether the AI era is about to make all of this dramatically worse. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishwithDerekThompson If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Gabriel Zucman Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices…
People in this episode
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Gabriel Zucman
Topics covered
- tax inequality
- billionaire tax avoidance
- wealth tax proposals
- AI impact on taxes
- global tax issues
Keywords
- tax system
- billionaires
- middle-class
- wealth tax
- tax avoidance
- Gabriel Zucman
- AI era
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, The Ringer
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