Episode 61: Should The Wealthy Pay For COVID?

Announcer:

This is The WealthAbility® Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes.

Tom Wheelwright:

Welcome to The WealthAbility® Show where we’re always discovering how to make way more money and pay way less taxes. Hi. This is Tom Wheelwright, your Host, Founder, and CEO of WealthAbility®. Today we’re going to discuss how to best pay the cost of the pandemic. Should the wealthy fund the pandemic? And we have a very special guest, Morris Pearl, and I’m going to let Morris … I’m going to let you give your background. It’s a very impressive background, former Managing Director of BlackRock. I’ve always been so impressed with what BlackRock did and has done over the years. It’s a very impressive organization and you have a very interesting mission that you’re on right now. So go ahead and give us a little bit of your background and tell us about your new mission here with Patriotic Millionaires.

Morris Pearl:

Sure. I’ll start at the beginning. I grew up the son of a clothing store owner in upstate New York, born in Vermont. When I saw death of a salesman I said, “I know that guy Willy Loman, he was in my father’s office every month with those big sample cases selling stuff.” And whenever my dad needed to make a decision, he had to talk to the accountant. And I don’t know if I ever met the accountant, but I decided I’d much rather be the accountant than be the storekeeper because that sounded more interesting. So I went to the University of Pennsylvania and then I discovered computer engineering and I thought that was way more interesting than accounting. So I started doing computer engineering work, but combined that with my business interests. And I eventually ended up doing big securitization deals for Wall Street investment banks for quite a while in the 1980s. But inventing technology that we use to build the big computer systems we could use to analyze thousands and thousands of mortgages.

I tried retiring once, becoming a professor at Columbia University, but that didn’t work out. So the phone never rang, no one needed any services so I went back to work at BlackRock. And for about 10 years my clients were mostly governments. We were traveling around trying to figure out how much the bank bailouts in Greece and the United Kingdom and in the United States were costing the taxpayers. And one day I was at a due-diligence meeting in the top floor of a big bank in Greece and I picked up some dessert from a buffet during the lunch break and I walked to the window so people wouldn’t see I was eating two desserts. And for a minute I thought I was watching a parade and then I realized I was watching a riot going down the street towards the Parliament Hall. And I turned back to the due-diligence meeting and I thought to myself, “Am I really doing any good for the rest of the people of Greece? Other than these couple of dozen bankers who are getting bailed out by the IMF and the European Commission?”

So shortly after that, it was late 2013, I turned my other interest of policy and politics and advocacy and I’ve been running with Patriotic Millionaires ever since then. For the last six years I’ve been the chairman of the board and we’re basically a group of hundreds of wealthy business people investors. And we’re very concerned that we’re moving towards a situation, not just in Greece but here in the United States too, where we’re having a few rich people and lots of poor people.

And frankly most people are not going to put up with that. They tried that in South Africa for a while the 1970s and ’80s, that did not end well for the rich people either and we want to make sure that we don’t have the United States going that way. We’ve been advocating for more progressive taxation. People who make more money paying higher tax rates than people who have to work for living, kind of the opposite of the changes that were made in the end of 2017. We’re also advocating for higher wages and for lessening the influence of money and politics, kind of the campaign finance reform rules that are in H.R.1 and have worked well here in New York for many years. That’s kind of where I am.

Tom Wheelwright:

I appreciate that. I think a lot of us would, and a lot of our listeners, would appreciate your work on getting money out of politics. That’s for sure. The lobbyists certainly-

Morris Pearl:

I’d like to get my money out of politics.

Tom Wheelwright:

Our listeners would probably like to get their money away from the federal government frankly. And we’ll talk about that. But first question I have, and this is a question that first came up when I first heard Warren Buffet talk about him paying less tax rate than his secretary. And I’m going, “You know? There is a provision right on the tax form where you can donate money to the federal government.” And my question for you is how much money has Patriotic Millionaires donated to the federal government?

Morris Pearl:

Look, well I don’t know what our hundreds of members do. Some of them are philanthropists who donate huge amounts of money every year and some are-

Tom Wheelwright:

Do you know? Does any of it go to the federal government? You’re advocating higher taxes. Right? Which is basically giving money to the federal government. My question is I’ve just never heard anybody talk about it. It’s kind of like when the pandemic first started there were conservative talk show hosts who said, “You know what? We should just let this thing go on. Not shut down the economy because there are plenty of elderly people that would happily give their life for the economy.” And my response to that was, “You first.” Right? I mean just going, “Okay. If you believe that, go out, get the virus, you die. The rest of us may not want to die.” Okay? I have the same question on this issue so.

Morris Pearl:

Personally, I don’t want to pay more taxes.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay.

Morris Pearl:

Same way if I’m a member of a country club I don’t want to pay higher dues, but I want the benefits of being able to swim in the swimming pool. So I want to have a general meeting once a year and have everyone decide we’re all going to pay dues to pay for having the swimming pool operated and the bartenders and the lifeguards and everyone else and we’re going to do that in some fair way that we each pay our fair share. And the same way with our country I want to have elections and elect representatives or board of directors, whatever you call it, who makes some decision that everybody will pay their fair share of the cost of running the country. What I was saying before, it’s not I’m concerned about the absolute level of dollars. What I’m concerned about is a level of inequality.

Tom Wheelwright:

Sure.

Morris Pearl:

What I’m concerned about is that having millions and millions of unemployed people who can’t make their August rent, who aren’t going to be paying for premium ice cream and expensive shoes and organic groceries and all the other things that help make our people rich. That’s what I’m concerned about is all of these people not being able to pay their bills while a few people are making millions and millions and millions of dollars. That’s the inequality I’m concerned about. So it’s not that I personally want to pay more taxes. No, of course not. Nobody does or nobody I know of does. But I want less inequality in the country. I want my children and now granddaughter to grow up with the kind of opportunities that I grew up with. That’s what I’m looking for.

Tom Wheelwright:

So basically you’re thinking the best way to do that is through higher taxes.

Morris Pearl:

Yes. The current system is that investors like me, we have tax rates in the teens because long term capital gains have tax rates of 0, 15, and 20%. I could make hundreds of thousands of dollars and pay no taxes at all whereas somebody who has to work for a living, they pay far higher tax rates than I do. And that means the rich people, the investors, the people who don’t have to work by definition, people that have enough investments they don’t need to work, are fairly wealthy. They are paying lower tax rates than the people who are working and they’re getting richer and the working people are not. And that’s not fair.

Tom Wheelwright:

Alright. So let’s break this into two pieces here. The first question I have for you is how would you raise taxes? Because if you listen to Joe Biden, for example, what he wants to do is get rid of all the incentives. Okay? Whereas if you looked at Hillary Clinton’s plan four years ago, when she ran she was looking at surtaxes. Okay? So a surtax over a certain level, not eliminating the incentives but rather … other than the big carried interest incentive that she talked about, but besides that and which I think certainly for Wall Street that is kind of … I would happen to agree that that is not an appropriate incentive for Wall Street, maybe for real estate syndicators, but not so much for Wall Street. But with respect to the question is, are you proposing that you do it through higher rates or eliminating incentives? Because I think they have very different impacts.

Morris Pearl:

Things were supporting include higher rates. Higher rates not just a few hundred thousand dollars, but millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars. So we believe that someone who makes $10 million should pay a higher tax rate than someone who makes $1 million. And we believe that people who earn their money through one way should not have lower taxes than people who earn their money from another way that involves the actual sweat of the brow.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. So you would actually propose both sides. So you would propose eliminating incentives as well as raising rates. I just want to make sure I’m understanding.

Morris Pearl:

Look, I mean it depends what you mean by incentives.

Tom Wheelwright:

Well, let’s take a good example. Before we started recording you were talking about the 2017 Tax Act. Okay? So lots of incentives in that. In fact I wrote a book called Tax Free Wealth that the fundamental idea behind the book is that the tax law is a series of incentives. In fact 99% of the tax law is a guide to reducing your taxes. Okay? I mean there’s one line that says all income is taxable, another line says nothing is deductible unless we say it is. So basically you have most of the tax law is incentives, whether it’s real estate, oil and gas, other natural resources, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s business. There are all sorts of incentives in there. So the question is, I happen to agree. First of all I want you to know I happen to agree that over a certain level I totally agree that there should be higher tax rates.

First question is what level? Because you make a really interesting point. I think a lot of our listeners are very concerned that when you talk about … typically when people talk about the wealthy, Obama talked about the wealthy being somebody making $250,000 a year. I don’t think that’s wealthy. Personally I think that’s getting by okay, but it’s certainly not wealthy. Okay? Where you come from a world, not my world, you come home from a world where people make tens of millions of dollars or billions of dollars a year. And the question I have is at what level do you think people stop worrying about taxes when it comes to production? Is it $1 million? Is it $5 million? What is that level? Because I mean most of our listeners, our clients, they’re making under $1 million a year net or they’re making under $5 million a year. At what level do you think that the high tax rates actually disincentivize production?

Morris Pearl:

I don’t think that most people I talk to make most decisions about running a business or not running a business based on their tax rights. One of the people complaining most about taxes has been Ken Langone. He was one of the founders of Home Depot, well-known big business. There’s a Langone Hospital over here in the East side behind me. That’s great. When he was doing the bulk of his work he was paying a tax rate of 70% on his marginal income above $100,000 a year and that did not dissuade the people who founded Home Depot from building a huge business, making billions of dollars, and paying a lot of taxes.

So I believe that most people would rather have a percentage of a billion dollar business than nothing. So no, I don’t believe that higher taxes disincentivizes people. I think that people who start businesses are generally people who have something to fall back on. Look at the people who started Facebook and Microsoft and some of those successful businesses that we have. Those were all people who had huge amounts of backing from their very wealthy parents. So they knew they could start a business, they could run it for months or years without making any money at all, and they could still pay their bills every month and they didn’t need to have a nine to five job. They had to worry about their health insurance or their student loans.

Tom Wheelwright:

I understand that, but most of Main Street isn’t like that. I didn’t grow up with wealthy parents. Most of my clients didn’t grow up with wealthy parents. And so if we don’t make money, we don’t have that fallback. We don’t have a cushion from wealthy parents. So most of Main Street I would argue is these are people who have bootstrapped. They bootstrapped their business, they’ve started from nothing and they built something and they’re going, “Look, I don’t want the federal government to take away what I’ve built.”

Morris Pearl:

Well I think we all … the same way that their employees pay a certain percentage of their income to the federal government to pay for running the country, those people who started the business should pay at least the same percentage of their income to the federal government to pay for running the country. We don’t believe that the people who are the entrepreneurs should have lower tax rates than the workers for that reason or any reason.

Tom Wheelwright:

I’ll get back to this in a second. Hey if you like financial education the way I do, you’re going to love Buck Joffrey’s podcast. Buck is a friend of mine, he’s a client of mine, he’s a former board certified surgeon, and he’s turned into a real estate professional. So he has this podcast that is geared towards high paid professionals, that’s who he’s geared towards. So if you’re a high paid professional and you’re going, “Look. I’d like to do something different with my money than what I’m doing. I’d like to get financially educated. I’d like to take control of my money and my life and my taxes.” I would love to recommend Buck Joffrey’s podcast, which is called Wealth Formula Podcast With Buck Joffrey. I hope you join Buck on this adventure of a lifetime.

Let me throw something out to you if I could.

Morris Pearl:

Sure.

Tom Wheelwright:

So my theory right now is that since 2017 we’ve really become a consumption tax in the United States, not an income tax. And the reason being that if you take your money that you’ve made and you reinvest it into productive assets, I’m not talking about the stock market because I don’t consider that in the same category. But you reinvest it into your business, you reinvest it into agriculture, you reinvest it into natural resources, you basically get a tax deduction. I mean these days you can get a tax deduction if you reinvested into real estate. Right?

Morris Pearl:

Yeah.

Tom Wheelwright:

So the only money you’re being taxed on is what you consume. Right? It’s either what you save or consume. Money that you put back into production is not being taxed. So the question is, and there’s no question that since 1944 when we started taxing employees. Right? Which we didn’t tax before 1944. There’s no question that there’s been this huge evolution of the tax law to go from taxing the investing to taxing the worker. Okay? There’s no question about that. I mean nobody’s going to argue with you on that. My question is, do you believe that the incentives of putting money, of rewarding reinvestment are not working?

Morris Pearl:

Well I don’t believe that it’s necessary or appropriate that people who invest should pay lower tax rates. I believe that people who are investing in businesses when tax rates were much higher than they are now. And so I don’t believe that it’s necessary in order to have especially low tax rates for investors in order to get them to invest.

Tom Wheelwright:

So when you talk about … Excuse me. When you talk about low tax rates though you’re talking about capital gains rates? Because business owners generally play … I mean, outside of this-

Morris Pearl:

Yeah. That’s what we’re talking about is capital gains.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. So you know about capital gains. Okay. Okay. That’s what I want to make clear of because my income from my business gets effectively taxed at the same rate as an employee’s income with the exception of this 20%, weird 20% deduction. Which I think is weird deduction, but it’s kind of a corporate equivalent type deduction. So the question is then you’re talking about just rates and capital gains rates. So what would you do when it comes to capital gains?

Morris Pearl:

Well I think that people who make their income from capital gains should pay the same tax rates as people who make their money from other sources based on their labor. I don’t see any reason why I should sit here and look at my stock market portfolio going up and pay a lower tax rate than you who is actually working for a living.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. Because capital gains is an interesting question. I mean to me it’s a different question than other incentives. So on the capital gains you don’t think that incentivizes people to put money into the stock market because they’re going to get a lower tax rate. You think they’d do it anyway?

Morris Pearl:

I think that people invest their money … I have capital, I know it’s going to earn me zero if I put a pile of money in my desk drawer doing nothing. So I would rather invest in whatever I invest in, be it real estate or my case it’s mostly the public stock market, and whether I get 80% of the profits or 90% of the profits or 50% of the profits. Well that’s still a lot more than zero. And so I don’t believe that many people would make a decision that they’d rather get zero than earn a certain percentage of the profits of their investment.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. So let me ask you a question. So do you think that 401(k)s incentivize people to invest in the stock market?

Morris Pearl:

Well I think 401(k)s do incentivize people to invest. Yes.

Tom Wheelwright:

Because otherwise, what would they do with that money?

Morris Pearl:

Yeah. 401(k)s honestly are not significant at all to the very wealthy people we’re talking about.

Tom Wheelwright:

No question, but pension plans are. But pension plans are.

Morris Pearl:

Yes. For people for whom the $8,000 or $15,000 they put every year in their 401(k)s are yes, I think 401(k)s are great. And I think it has been very effective in incentivizing people to invest and get matches and that sort of thing.

Tom Wheelwright:

No, and I appreciate this. And by the way Morris, I really appreciate this discussion. Like I told you before, I’ve been dying to have this discussion since Obama’s first election. So it’s not incentives per se that you’re against, it’s particularly the capital gains rate or are there other incentives that you think should be undone?

Morris Pearl:

Look I’m not against incentives at all. You keep using the word incentives. I’ve never used the word incentives in any of my talking. What I think is that people who make more money should have higher tax rates than people who make less money.

Tom Wheelwright:

Got it, got it.

Morris Pearl:

That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. No, I appreciate that. So let me go back to the question. What do you think the levels should be? I’m really curious about this because $1 million isn’t what it used to be, for sure. Okay? I mean if you make-

Morris Pearl:

I’ve noticed that.

Tom Wheelwright:

If you make $1 million dollars right now you’re already paying $500,000 in tax or close to that if you’re paying ordinary income rates. Okay? You’re earning the money. And so you have $500,000 left which people think is a lot of money and it is compared to somebody making $100,00, but compared to somebody making $5 million that’s not a lot of money.

Morris Pearl:

Exactly, that’s my point is that the people making $5 million, $10 million, $100 million a year should be paying higher tax rates than people who make $500,000 a year and $1 million a year. That’s exactly the point that we’re trying to make.

Tom Wheelwright:

So you’ve obviously studied this a lot. So what do you think those tax rates should be at those levels?

Morris Pearl:

Well we’re honestly not making a position about what the tax rates should be. We’re simply saying the tax rates should be different at those different levels. Currently I think we only have a few tax brackets and we think we should have additional tax brackets at higher levels of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tom Wheelwright:

Frankly I’m not opposed to that which is a little surprising for somebody who talks about tax reduction all the time.

Morris Pearl:

Neither is almost anyone else actually.

Tom Wheelwright:

But I mean I look at, “Okay, $1 million maybe has a different tax rate than $500,000 and certainly $5 million would have a different tax rate than $1 million and $50 million may have a different tax rate than $5 million or $10 million. I think you’re right, that there’s a big disparity clearly. I think the primary issue and the disparity is education. I don’t think the primary disparity is tax rates, I think the primary disparity is education. However my question for you is, in your mind, because there’s all this discussion always in politics about wealthy and the wealthy should pay more tax. You’re saying just, “We should have more tax brackets up the line,” if I’m hearing you correctly. Do you have an idea of what do you think wealthy means in the world today?

Morris Pearl:

Well I mean the discussions we’ve been having earlier in the year with different presidential candidates, we were talking about wealthy being people with wealth of billions of dollars. Over $1 billion.

Tom Wheelwright:

Oh, okay. Well I’m certainly you’d be … I think you’re right. I think you’d be hard pressed to say that anybody making over $1 billion should not contribute more. Because I have no question that once you get over a certain level I don’t think you’d ever do anything for money. I mean at that point you’re really doing it because you like doing it or because you want the success, et cetera.

Morris Pearl:

Exactly. I mean as you said, our tax system has been moving towards a consumption based system. And someone who is just getting by, their consumption is equal to all of their income essentially.

Tom Wheelwright:

Right. That’s true.

Morris Pearl:

But for a billionaire their consumption is a tiny fraction of their wealth either way you look at it.

Tom Wheelwright:

Correct.

Morris Pearl:

And so they’re essentially paying a much lower tax rate than the guy who’s just getting by. And so they’re getting wealthier every year. Take even me, I’m not a billionaire, but I’m more wealthy now than I was when I stopped working. I’m more wealthy now than I was when the pandemic started in fact. And I don’t actually contribute to society [crosstalk 00:00:24:32].

Tom Wheelwright:

I appreciate that. I appreciate that honesty. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So what do you think … so I get you’re looking at policy, anything you think individuals should be doing here?

Morris Pearl:

Well I think we should be supporting policies and elected officials who are in favor of reducing the gross inequality between the few billionaires at the top and the rest of us who are trying to invest in businesses and create businesses in the rest of the country.

Tom Wheelwright:

And what would you say, especially since most of our listeners are business owners, what would you say to business owners? What would be your advice to business owners here? I mean you’ve come from probably the most successful, one of the most successful businesses of all time. What would you say?

Morris Pearl:

I’d give you one piece of advice for a business owner, almost all business owners make money by selling something to customers. And what’s the important thing for a business that’s selling something to customers is how much money the customers have. How much money all the people in the bar drinking on Friday night have is a lot more important than the wages of the one guy standing behind the bar pouring the beer.

Tom Wheelwright:

Ah, interesting. Interesting. And how do you feel about the inequality between CEO compensation and average compensation?

Morris Pearl:

Well I don’t need to pick on any one person or individual and it’s not that I’m against people getting rich, but I do feel there’s too much inequality in our system in general. I don’t think it’s … I mean, I don’t know if it’s … it’s not that a few hundred CEOs of large companies are causing the problem necessarily. But yes, I do feel there’s too much inequality in general. But it’s not just a couple of hundred CEOs in the country, it’s the thousands and thousands of very wealthy investors and people versus the millions and millions of unemployed people who aren’t able to work at all during the pandemic. That’s what I’m worried about.

Tom Wheelwright:

So one last question before we finish Morris if we could. Wealth tax, your thoughts?

Morris Pearl:

Well yeah that’s what … I mean, we’ve been talking about-

Tom Wheelwright:

Not income tax. I’m talking about a wealth tax, like has been proposed a tax on assets. So a property tax basically on assets as opposed to an income tax.

Morris Pearl:

Yeah. I mean most people, including your listeners, already pay a wealth tax because much of their wealth is tied up in their real estate, their homes or their other real estate.

Tom Wheelwright:

They do, they do.

Morris Pearl:

So we think that billionaires should also pay a wealth tax on their wealth.

Tom Wheelwright:

Okay. I just wanted to hear it. Thank you.

Morris Pearl:

Yeah.

Tom Wheelwright:

Obviously some practical issues with how you do all those evaluations, but nonetheless I appreciate it. Morris really appreciate your time, really appreciate your being on the show. If somebody wants more information about you and Patriotic Millionaires where would they go?

Morris Pearl:

Patrioticmillionaires.org, that’s patrioticmillionaires.org. We have a website, you can see what we’re doing, see who we are, and join up if you like.

Tom Wheelwright:

Awesome. Thanks very much. And just remember everyone that we’re talking primarily today about tax rates and we always have to distinguish between tax rates, tax incentives. And there are certain things that the federal government actually does want us to do. They encourage us to do those through certain incentives. And when we learn what those are, when we get educated just like we’re getting educated here today by Morris Pearl, we’re always frankly going to make way more money. And in the end we’ll pay way less tax. Thanks everyone.

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You’ve been listening to The WealthAbility® Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes. To learn more go to wealthability.com.