Why a National Wealth Tax Would Bury California | Steve Moore

**Guest:** Stephen Moore, Economist; Co-Founder, Committee to Unleash Prosperity **Guest Bio:**  Stephen Moore is one of the country's best-known free-market economists. A co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and the Club for Growth, and a former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, he served as a senior economic adviser to Donald Trump and, with Larry Kudlow, helped craft the tax cuts that passed in 2017. He first came to Washington in 1983, when the national debt was $1 trillion, and today he also sits on the board of Lightspeed, a company building houses with robots. **Show Summary** California's billionaire tax is headed for the November ballot. Moore's answer starts with a construction worker's line he loves to quote: "I was never hired by a poor person." His new Committee to Unleash Prosperity project puts a number on it, finding that a billionaire's benefit to everyone else, in jobs, wages, and taxes, runs about ten times what they keep. Tax billionaires, he argues, and you simply get fewer of them, and he explains why the national wealth tax Ro Khanna wants, with the floor dropped to $50 million, would put California in an even deeper hole. Moore runs through the rest of the fiscal picture with the same bluntness: a federal budget he says could be cut by a third, a Social Security system he calls the worst investment of your lifetime after comparing his own $3,500 monthly benefit to the $10,000 an index fund would have paid, and a broken health care market. The conversation closes on the two forces he thinks decide California's future. First, AI: the farm-tractor logic of creative destruction, the data centers he calls the ignition switch of the economy, and the cancer cures he expects within 15 years. Second, taxes: his advice to the next governor is one Prop 13-sized reform - a 5% flat tax, that he says could set off another California gold rush. **Chapters** 00:00 – Welcome: Economist Steve Moore 00:11 – The $40 Trillion Debt: How Bad Is It Really? 00:48 – The Least Rotten Apple in the Cart 02:15 – Houses Built by Robots: The Productivity Boom Ahead 03:29 – Crafting the Trump Tax Cuts with Larry Kudlow 04:30 – Cut Washington by a Third, Get Better Government 05:40 – The 12% Fix: Social Security as a 401k 06:49 – The Worst Investment of Your Lifetime 07:27 – Insurance Companies Are Ripping Us Off 08:17 – The Question No Patient Asked in 30 Years 08:50 – No Prices, No Market: Health Care Transparency 10:32 – Iran, Oil, and the Price at the Pump 12:21 – "I Was Never Hired by a Poor Person" 12:35 – What Is a Billionaire Worth? The 10x Math 13:46 – The Myth of the Robber Barons 16:29 – Why a National Wealth Tax Buries California 18:06 – The Farm Tractor Rule: AI and Creative Destruction 19:50 – Curing Cancer, Restoring Sight: The AI Upside 22:40 – Data Centers: The Ignition Switch of the Economy 23:01 – Advice for California's Next Governor 24:33 – Prop 13 Then, a 5% Flat Tax Now **Connect with Stephen Moore** X : https://x.com/StephenMoore LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-moore-89bab738a/ Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe to our podcast, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and join the conversation on Instagram and LinkedIn with the hashtag #stateofgoldpodcast **Connect with State of Gold** - X: https://x.com/realjonslavet - Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stateofgold/about - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stateofgoldpodcast/?hl=en - Website: www.stateofgold.com