YouSaid · the spoken record

Gabriel Zucman

lines on the record: 63
first: 2026-07-12
most recent: 2026-07-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Taxation, wealth taxation is not about people. It's not about their characters. It's about money. It's about budget. It's about how we organize our collective spending. And so The fact that they've been operating in this or that industry, I think, should not matter. They've all benefited from governance spending. In many, many ways, like space X would not be possible without all the investments, but it was capable.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's part of the story to be sure the rise of tech and In California, you talk about if you look at the world as a whole.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“say a billion pounds and of course taxpayers then could make corrections and amendments and that's okay but the opening did if you want has to be made by the tax administration”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Send a pre-populated wealth tax return based on the information that government HMRC in the UK already collects and the government has access to a lot of data on wealth there's the land registry for real estate there is now an automatic exchange of bank information between countries so HMRC actually receives data on the wealth held by Britons in foreign banks there's been for a long time an automatic exchange of information between domestic financial institutions and the tax authority so the right way to proceed in my view is HMRC should use all that information send the pre-populated return saying okay based on what we know and based on the assessment that we've made of the value of the businesses that you own we think that your wealth is X”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, you have to avoid a mistake that was done in the past by all the countries that used to have wealth taxes, which is to let people self-report. You know, if you let people self-report on their wealth, some of them are going to report honestly, but there's also going to be sometimes the temptation to forget about some assets or to undervalue others. And so the better way to proceed is to have the government.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not listed on the stock market, but not very complicated to value because we know how to value big companies. We look at how similar businesses that are listed on the stock market are valued by the stock market. And let me just finish by saying that, of course, there is a bit more than that. So for instance, the billionaires, they have paintings, the picasos, the yachts and crypto. All of that exists. First, it's only a small fraction of their web. And second, even those forms of assets are not very hard to value. For instance, if you own a very valuable painting, there's an insurance value. It's insured. And so you can use that as a base for the wealth.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is wealth? Wealth is the value of everything that you own, financial assets and non-financial assets, net of debts. So you increase everything. It includes for billionaires, primarily its shares in companies, its equity in the businesses that they own. For the super rich, there is sometimes this view that wealth is very complicated, but the reality is that it's quite simple. About half of it globally and in the UK in particular corresponds to shares in publicly listed companies that are listed on the stock market. So very clear observable value. And most of the rest corresponds to shares in big private companies. But because we're talking about billionaires, these are going to be large corporations.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so there's just a big hole in the budget of California for healthcare. And so they want to need more money. What's interesting is that it's both very big in terms of potential tax revenue, but it's also really tiny alternative to the wealth of the billionaires or the explosion of their wealth. Because over the last two years, their wealth has increased 150%. So you take 5%, absolutely nothing is going to...”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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 medicate funding, which is a federal program for health insurance for low-income Americans.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's happening today in the US. I think even people who are skeptical about the path of the US economy 10 or 15 years ago, none of them could have imagined what's happening today with Trump and how is it 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.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me, what's been important is I've spent about 10 years in California, in Berkeley. And this has radicalized me a little bit because in the Bay Area of San Francisco, you have extreme wealth. You have the world's top billionaires, and you have extreme poverty, tens of thousands of homeless people. And year after year, I had the impression that this was getting worse and that the Democratic Party in particular was not able to propose some solutions to that problem. And so I've seen the explosion of US inequality, the consequences that this has for politics and for democracy in the US. And I think it's really extreme. If you look at the level of plutocratic capture,”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a basic question of equality before the law. And the fact that they might threaten to leave, that shouldn't serve as an excuse. They don't pay income tax. They don't pay that income. The holding companies don't pay corporation tax.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The wealth of billionaires has exploded. It is the most important challenge in the 21st century. The proposal is for people who have more than 100 million towns. You should be paying a minimum amount of tax equal to 2% of your wealth.”
2026-07-12 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 197. The Billionaire Tax Debate (Gabriel Zucman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source