Just the Facts: Scott Galloway and Ben Shapiro Debate the American Dream

First the facts, then the debate in a [music] format you've never seen before. Scott Galloway and Ben Shapiro face off with USA Facts founder [music] Steve Balmer presenting the data that frames

each round, moderated by PBS NewsHour's Jeff Bennett, beginning now. Welcome to the first Just the Facts debate hosted by USA Facts. I'm Steve Balmer. I founded USA Facts to make sense of

government data and present it to the American people. In this our first debate, before each round of questions, we'll be doing something completely different. The [snorts] debate will take

place there and I'll be here at the fact desk teeing up each topic with relevant government data and meaningful context without any partisan agenda. Even though our participants have different opinions

and points of view, they have both agreed to a common set of underlying facts. Our goal, a debate anchored in facts on issues that matter to your life. Our theme, the American dream at

250 years. The debate moderator is Jeff Bennett, co-anchor and co-managing editor of the PBS NewsHour, an award-winning journalist who has covered six presidential elections and now the

first ever USA debate. Take it away, Jeff. Thank you, Steve. It is a real pleasure to be here and to moderate the first ever USA Facts debate. So, let's get right to it and

introduce our debaters. Ben Shapiro is host of one of the world's most listened to political podcasts, a best-selling author, and one of the most influential conservative voices of his generation.

And Ben, you've also been known to enjoy a good argument from >> on occasion. And Scott Galloway is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, podcast host, and professor of marketing

at NYU, known for his provocative datadriven takes on business, technology, and the economy. And Scott, you've just been appointed to the University of California Board of

Regents. So, congratulations. >> Thanks for that. >> All right, gentlemen. Let's get right to it. Our topic, the American dream at 250. And of course, we start with the

facts. So, back over to the fact desk. Thanks, Jeff. The American dream at 250. First, whose dream? America's population is changing, and each of us has our own definition of the American dream. Let's

start by looking at the share of population by age. Notice the one big change. The share of people 65 and older has grown dramatically from about 11% of the population in 1980 to just under 19%

in 2025. And the makeup of households has changed. Since 1960, married parent households have declined from 44% of the total to just 17%. And single person

households with no kids in them have risen from 13% to 29%. Our population is still growing each year, but less so. We still have more births than deaths, so-called natural

population change, but fewer than we used to in the 2000s. And we have more new immigrants arriving per year on average. Finally, a big part of the American dream is the belief that every

kid has the opportunity to move up, to be in the top income earners. What's actually going on? This slide looks at those born from 1978 to 1983 and divides them into groups

based on their parents' income level. The methodology on this slide is complex, so I'll cut to the chase. For those whose parents were in the bottom 20% of income earners, 7% made it into

the top in their 30s. If every kid had the same opportunity, this would be 20%. If their parents were in the middle 20%, 17% made it to the top. If they were born into the top 20%, 39% stayed there.

The bottom line, our country is changing, and the American dream can mean different things to different people. Old and young, married and single, kids and adults, nativeborn

people and immigrants. Let's hear what it means to Ben and Scott. Back to you, Jeff. Thank you, Steve. So, first a quick word on the format for this opening and for each of the three

questions that follow. You'll each have one minute for an initial response and then we'll open it up for a free flowing exchange. So, those are the rules you both agree to and I'll step in as needed

to keep us to the format and make sure you each have a fair chance to make your case. So, Ben, first to you, one minute on the American dream at 250. So I I think that the first thing to understand

about the American dream is that the American dream is not a set of outcomes. It is not a house or two kids or a picket fence. The American dream is a process. The idea is that if you engage

in that process, you will be better off than your parents did. And then your kids will be better off than you were. And that process continues a pace in the United States. The the American dream is

not that you are going to in one generation or in 10 years be able to go from poverty to tremendous wealth. It's again an incremental process. And the question is how well we are doing in

allowing people to pursue those dreams and do so in accordance with good decision-making. There is supposed to be a correlation between the dutiful virtuous decisions that we make, the

hard work that we do and the outcomes of those decisions. Now that doesn't mean it's going to solve every problem for every person. That process doesn't solve problems for people who in some cases

have been less privileged in their youth or people who face certain health obstacles or people who make bad decisions. And maybe in some of those circumstances, you do need government to

step in and help people. But that really is a different question than the question of the American dream. And when we conflate those questions, we end up with bad policy undermining the

relationship between cause and effect. That is the very basis for that fundamental American dream. Again, the idea that if you make good, responsible decisions, you will do better than your

parents and your parents will do and your kids will do better than you did. Scott, your response. >> So, if you were to try to distill it down to one thing, I think the American

dream is that you will do better than your parents, as you said. And I'll use myself as an example. raised by a single immigrant mother lived and died as secretary. U but I've got I mean the

reality is America used to love the unremarkable. I got assisted lunch PEL grants applied to UCLA when it had a 74% admissions rate now it has a 9% admissions rate. I came into the

unbelievable economy of the '9s where because of the investments in technology by middle class families and things like GPS and DARPA I got to start great internet companies. uh immigrants built

most of my companies. And all of those things, whether it's uh transfers, SNAP payments, Pell grants, uh the ability to attract the best and brightest from around the world to help you build those

companies. All of those things are under attack. And for the first time in our history, a 30-year-old is not doing as well as his or her parents were at 30, which to me says that government

policies uh quite frankly have eroded the American dream. >> And that is one minute. So let's start here. According to the data that Steve presented, as you both noted, kids born

poor rarely reach the top of the income ladder, while kids born rich mostly stay there. Ben, is that evidence of opportunity being hoarded or simply how mobility works in a market economy?

>> Well, I mean, to a certain extent, it's opportunity being hoarded, and to a large extent, it is just how things work in a market economy. Meaning that again, the goal isn't necessarily that you are

going to be in the top tier if your parents were in the bottom tier. I I don't know actually very many people for whom that is true. For my own family, if you have to go back four generations,

when my great great when my great-randparents got here, great great grandparents got here at the early 20th century, they had nothing. They didn't speak English. And then their kids did

better than they did. My my parents did better than my grandparents. But we grew up, you know, very middle lower middle class in Burbank, California. We had a great life, but it was a, you know, 1100

foot small house, six kids, six six people, four kids in in essentially a one bed, onebedroom, you know, one bathroom place. And you know now, thank God we I do a lot better than my parents

did. It is an intergenerational process. And I think the impatience that that has now become part of the way that we see how the American dream should work that you should be able to go from poverty to

great wealth in one gener. And if that's not happening, then the system has somehow failed. I think that there are some outsized expectations. That doesn't mean the system is working ideally or

that we can't remove obstacles to success. The question I think that we're going to be arguing a lot about today is exactly what the obstacles are and how do we remove them. Are those obstacles

being provided by markets, by private actors, or are those obstacles being created by perverse government incentives that actually are creating obstacles, creating systemic barriers to

that relationship between cause and effect? >> Scott, how do you see it? >> Well, uh, the data that you distributed, it looks like about 37% of people in the

upper quintile stay there and only about 7.4% in the lowest quintile manage to get forward. Now, there's some argument about whether that's gone down or whether it's flat, but when you have

registered the type of prosperity that America has registered over the last four decades, you'd like to think that income mobility has gone up. And while we like to think we're a meritocracy,

the data says something different. And that is if the race to economic security is a marathon, the smartest thing you can do is be born to rich parents. There's just some people starting the

marathon at the 20 mile mark. And we do have affirmative action that lifts off people, but the people we decide deserve affirmative action are people who were born a really long time ago. We'll talk

a lot about transfer payments, but the biggest increase in transfer payments, quite frankly, and the core of the problem here is that we have decided to transfer opportunity and capital from

the entrance to the incumbents, from the young to the old. And we have weaponized government. It's not about, in my opinion, taxation. is about the misallocation of those taxes.

>> Scott and Benner, thanks to you both. That's a lot to dive into. So, let's turn now to the first question. Is government or capitalism better serving the American dream? First, over to the

fact desk for a quick briefing. Thanks, Jeff. This is a big topic. Before diving in, I have a quick sidebar on how we make sense of Americans financial situations.

Ultimately, we need to look at what families have available to spend. their disposable income and that includes their income and also what government provides in assistance and takes away in

taxes. We're going to talk a lot about families which includes people who live alone. We're going to group these families by income. The top 1% in income, the next 19% and then the rest

of families into groups of 20% by income. And we separate the elderly into their own category. So for example, the middle 20% of families have an income range of $45,000 to $87,000

and an average income of $65,000. The elderly just over $88,000 in market income on average. This slide tells us a lot about today's American dream. Let me break it down.

The data compares the year 2000 to 2023. That's the most recent year we have complete data. The numbers are all adjusted for inflation. The first column shows the groups. Next is market income.

That includes wages, business income, investment income, and retirement income. and includes earnings from everyone in the family. Market income increased for the top 40% of families

was relatively stagnant for the middle 20%. You can think of that if you will as the middle class and declined for the bottom 40% especially the lowest earning

families. For families where the head of household is 65 years older, income increased slightly. Next, let's look at government transfers. Programs like social

security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs, nutrition, housing, and income assistance. Income assistance includes things like the earned income tax credit and unemployment insurance

and all the other government benefits. Those government transfers per family increased across every group in dollar amounts. They had the biggest impact on the lowest earners and the elderly

received the most in total. The next column shows changes in how much families pay in federal income tax, payroll tax, and state and local taxes. The higher earners are paying more than

they were in 2000. The lower earners are paying less. Finally, the last column, disposable income. Here's the key takeaway. Every group ends up with higher disposable income in 2023.

and government transfers and changing tax burdens play a key role in their financial picture. Now, let's look at wages. This chart shows wages by low, median, and highpaying jobs for someone

working full-time over a full year. Lower wage jobs saw the largest gain with wages increasing 15% from 2001 to 2025. Again, adjusted for inflation. The

medium wage jobs and highest wage jobs saw four and 5% increases. Now, let's look at taxes. This compares the share of income earned to the share of federal income taxes

paid by different groups. The top 1% earns 21% of all income and pays 38% of taxes. And if you add them up, the 20% of highest earners earn 63% of income and pay 83% of taxes. The

lowest 50% earns 12% of total income and pays 3% of taxes. Now remember this is just federal income taxes in this case. Does not include state and local taxes or any payroll taxes. That's a quick

economic overview. Plenty to debate. Jeff, thank you Steve. Okay, Scott, you're up first this time. One minute. Is government or capitalism better serving the American dream?

>> I think they both work, but unfortunately I think they've been captured by the incumbents. Over the last 40 years, we've increased payments to people over the age of 65 by about

four to$600 billion a year. And we've increased payments or transfers to children by 20 billion. We're now spending more money on ICE than uh we're spending on children. So if your budget

is a value system, do we really is our values that we're more worried about the undocumented worker at a car wash or taking care of your mom than we are about creating a permanent underclass?

And I would push back on some of the data that's that uh Stephen was reading about the 1% pay 52% of the taxes in New York. We hear that a lot. But here's the reality. The the problem is with the

world paid taxes. The last five five of the last seven years I've paid no taxes because this is what rich people do. They invest in stocks and assets that go tax deferred and they never recognize a

capital event. They borrow against those assets. They put them in a trust where they're marked up. So yeah, when taxes are paid, the wealthy pay a lot. But the reality is a lot of the wealthy are

paying no taxes. And that is one minute. Ben, your response. >> I mean, I'll start with the idea that government and capitalism ought not be in in conflict. The basic idea of

capitalism is simply that you have private property rights. That you should be able to freely trade, alienate, rent. That that is all private property and free markets mean. And we are all best

served when we actually have those rights. Government is designed to protect those rights. I mean, this is the founding promise. Now obviously government can do other things.

Government can provide for for those who fall between the cracks I was discussing earlier. The problem becomes when government gets into the business of distorting free markets so badly that

you end up with the worst of both worlds. And I think that in some areas of American life, housing, I say college education, you've ended up with with in some cases the worst of both worlds

where a sort of cronyistic structure has emerged and that cronyistic structure has actually exacerbated many of the problems that we see with for example affordability. As far as the tax burden,

I mean, it is true obviously that that people who are wealthy can, you know, withhold their their gains until time is time to cash in. It's also true that a lot of that money, you know, for for me,

I'll take that that that was earned money that I then invested. So, I paid an income tax on it and then I invested it and until I withdraw that money, I won't pay taxes on it, but I did pay tax

on one time. And I can promise you that the amount of tax that I'm paying this year is a hell of a lot higher than when I was earning a lot less money. So Scott, what does Ben get wrong when he

says the answer is more economic freedom, more personal responsibility, not necessarily more government? >> So I think where there's some common ground around where uh we probably look

spending $7 trillion on 5 trillion in receipts is nothing but deferred taxes on on the young the deficit. Do we need to raise taxes or cut spending? The answer is yes. And it's time for a

responsible conversation. The way I think of it is there's a metaphor. Is it capitalism when it works is a horse, a thoroughbred that you want to run that's amazing,

most impressive animal ever invented that leverages self-interest. Government is the jockey or the rider. The far left wants to shoot the horse. And the far right thinks that horses can read maps

on their own and that the middle class is some self- occurring organism. the middle class, which is the greatest innovation in history. It's not GPS, it's not vaccines, it's the American

middle class. But it requires the myth on the right is that it's a self- occurring organism. It requires constant reinvestment. Otherwise, we turn back to the way the most of history has been for

most countries and that is a small group of very talented or very fortunate people weaponize government and create regulatory capture. And we're seeing it in the US now. The tax code has gone

from 400 pages to 4,000. And those incremental 3600 page pages are there to screw the middle class. You now have essentially a tax system which is if you can navigate by starlight and afford

people to navigate the complex tax code. You want to run your races at night. The lower middle class are paying their fair share. the the highest income earners have such complicated taxes that they in

fact take advantage of the greatest tax cut in history and that is the neutering of the IRS and no longer have the resources to collect what is a $750 billion a year tax gap. So what is the

government? The government has become essentially an agency for the transfer of wealth from the young to the old and I would argue from the lower and middle class households to the wealthy. I want

to drill down on one point you made this idea that the middle class is not a self-occurring phenomenon that it requires tending it requires maintenance by the government to which you would say

what I would say that that is an area of significant disagreement. I do not think that the middle class has to be upheld by an artificial barrier or artificial regulatory structure created by the

government. Many of the things that that Scott is characterizing as weaponizations of government I would characterize as inherent to the bureaucratic process of government. Once

government grows large enough. Once you have a giant grab baggage of control and cash, then it just becomes a question of who controls the DUT and who controls the cash. And so part of the problem

with growth of government inherently is that there will be a competition to then rewrite all the rules on behalf of a few. And that's not something that I would consider free market in the first

place. I would blame the jockey, not blame the horse in your in your metaphor for for that particular problem. When you talk about the fair share that's being paid, the truth is that in terms

of net taxes, meaning taxes, net of benefits, the people who are at the the lower end of the income spectrum because of the vast amount of redistribution in in our system, are are drawing far more

from the system than they're paying in in taxes. And the people at the top end of the system are paying far more in taxes than they're drawing from the system. Now, you can argue they're

indirect subsidies in the form of government interventions via DARPA, for example, and and these sorts of things. But but the reality is that government has existed for all of human history.

The freedom of free markets to allow for innovation has existed for approximately 220 years or so. And virtually all growth in in wealth and innovation over the course of human history happened in

in that time. So it is it is innovation in free markets that are the difference not government and bureaucracy which have existed for literally all the time going back to you know the the

prehistoric era essentially. >> Well that government and bureaucracy is the reason that innovation works. The greatest lift of middle class citizens in history has happened in China over

the last 40 or 50 years. And I think that's largely been because of their massive investments in infrastructure, in technology, whether it's renewables and a respect for the middle class that

results in um [clears throat] a a basis of infrastructure and economic growth. What I would put back to you, Ben, is can you name a society that has a really robust middle class where the government

hasn't gone out of its way to make long-term investments in infrastructure and education and healthcare and engage in some form of redistribution that has a healthy middle class?

>> I'm not making the argument that the government should never be involved in things like infrastructure, education. I am arguing that the vast bureaucracy that you see in China has actually been

inhibiting factor on their growth. But the bureaucracy preceded the attempt to capitalize China which happened in the 1980s and '90s that existed under Ma. Ma was not short on on bureaucracy. Ma had

plenty of bureaucracy. He was very short on free markets. It was the addition of a free market element to China that allowed for their growth. And in fact, if you look back at Chinese history, it

was the growth of Chinese bureaucracy over the course of centuries that actually stagnated China because China actually was a world power about 1500 years ago and then for a while they were

not a world power and now of course they have risen to world power again. So again, I think that conflating all government action together when it comes to the middle class, you know,

conflating the duty to educate children with, for example, a gigantic government healthcare structure that is that is based on subsidies and regulations. That is what makes it so expensive. I don't

think all forms of government intervention are equivalent. In other words, >> but just to respond one thing, you you're saying bureaucracy and you use

the word healthcare. Isn't it the real problem that we have monetized healthcare and prioritized shareholders and given companies an economic incentive to reject claims and that in

the World Cup, if you're a football fan, we were the only country that didn't have uh socialized healthcare. If you look at the rest of the G7, they spent 13,500 per capita on healthcare. We

spent 6,500 for worse outcomes. And we have quote unquote the most capitalist health care system. I would argue that if you look at the three buckets of the economy, the earner, the consumer, and

the shareholder, we have decided purposely through legislation and and regulatory capture to transfer capital and opportunity from earners and from consumers to shareholders. And I think

healthcare is a great example of that. I I think that when it comes to healthare, we have basically two processes that are trying to run in tandem that actually tend to run away from one another. One

is innovation and one is universality. And I'm not sure that those two things tend to run comfortably together. And when we try to use a government process to do both of those things, you end up

having to pick and and basically the United States has picked medical innovation where we are in fact a dominant world power. And and we have traded away for example the the

affordability of healthcare. And so the reality is that we subsidize the rest of the world when it comes to their healthcare. I mean all of the innovations, all of the medicines that

are being used by those nationalized healthare systems or universal healthare systems are developed by the United States. And then we really ought to force those countries, if you want to

talk about fair share, they ought to be paying their fair share of the innovative cost to us. We allow them to basically hold up the American taxpayer and the American consumer because we're

subsidizing the innovation and then they are reaping all the benefits abroad. >> On the specific matter of capitalism versus government, Scott, what does government do better than the private

sector and what does the market do better than the government? I think that you need government to create an operating system rule of fair play. I think you need to have a certain

level of taxation. You have to regulate externalities. One of the biggest I think problems in our society the last 20 or 30 years is that if you we don't I think fossil fuels are

net positive for the world. Pesticides are positive for the world. But we have an EPA and an FDA because we realize there's externalities and if we don't demand and put in place laws that

prevent Ford from pouring mercury into the river, GM and Stalantis will because they would be at an economic disadvantage if they don't. Our biggest sector by growth and by increasing

shareholder value is largely unregulated now and that's big tech. So as an example of what government needs to do, it needs to protect people's civil rights. It needs to protect our borders,

fund a military. I also think it needs to address externalities of capitalism when it runs a muck and begins monetizing healthcare, begins monetizing and privatizing prisons, begins

monetizing now even the White House. So unless there's a rule of fair play and a feel that you are going to have the same shot as everybody else and there are certain rules and certain things that

recognize at some point when you let companies run totally unfettered and have no government intervention around laws or regulation you end up with pesticides cancers 15-year-old garner

the majority of self harm and quite frankly a wild west where a few people garner the majority of the gains. So I think government plays a huge role in a successful society. Ben, same question.

I mean, obviously I agree with a lot of what Scott is saying in terms of the government's role in in collective action problems and regulating externalities and all the rest of that.

I think that we would hardly disagree on the extent to which government is necessary to do many of those things. I mean, for example, tort law exists for many of these externalities that we're

talking about and tort law goes back several centuries. So, the idea that you need certain people who are regulatory experts at the EPA using laws that were not written like the Clean Air Act, in

order to regulate carbon emissions, if we want to do that, this is why we have a democratic process. This is not why we have regulatory agencies that are supposed to be interpreting laws that

were already written. And so, you know, trying to decide all of this, it seems to me that that most of it is is better solved by the the widely dispersed knowledge of the American people rather

than a centralized cadre of of experts or or elected leaders to to actually do that. And I think one of the problems that we see very often is huge market distortions that are secondary effects

of of well-meaning but wrong-headed government interventions. I mean the education system is a perfect example of this where where you see the the government gets deeply involved in in

education and in some areas what that means that they believe that if they just pour money into education that that will fix all the problems that obviously has not fixed all of the problems in a

wide variety of areas. I went to the LA USD school system which was actually quite heavily fun heavily funded. Uh it's not a great school system. It had some pretty serious problems and pouring

more money into that didn't actually solve the problems. And the same thing is true on the college level. There was a sort of mistake that was made at the college level where people looked at the

correlation between people going to college and earning more and said you know what it would be great if everyone went to college. So what we need to do is we need to make sure that PEL grants

are available to everyone no matter your major no matter the college you go to and we will create outsized demand for college degrees many of which are actually bad bets for for the student.

That to me would have been better solved by by private markets which would have stopped the credentiing in colleges because you don't need a college degree to be a barista. You don't need a

college degree for half the jobs that now require a college degree. In other words, when it comes to government, I think we have to be very careful about how we use government because government

is a thing that we control. I don't think the economy is a thing that we generally control. I think the government is a thing that we control. And trying to figure out exactly where

we intervene and where we don't is the question and people tend to think that the government's a scalpel when it's actually a hammer. Some of the data that Steve presented earlier spoke to this

issue of generational change in this country. And as the country gets older, how should we balance protecting the wealth that older Americans have accumulated with creating opportunity

for the generations that come behind them? Scott, I'll start with you. The greatest intergenerational theft in history is taking place slowly but surely over the last 30 or 40 years. You

have, it used to be 30, I believe 34% of our payments were automatic. Now it's over 50% and the majority of that goes to seniors. Seniors are payments to seniors now account for 40% of the

federal budget. It'll soon be 50 crowding out investments in technology and education would show a greater return on investment. If you think about the wealthiest generation in the history

of the planet is seniors and yet every year we affect the largest transfer in history and that is $1.5 trillion dollars from young people to the wealthiest generation in history. the DN

Democratic is working too well and that is the bottom line is older voters keep voting even older people into office who vote themselves more money and so while it's been a successful program 10 to 20%

of social security recipients state that they don't need the money so that would save us 150 to $300 billion right there and just this notion a little bit around education about bureaucracy being the

boogeyman I I believe we need standards in certain public schools to be shut down but here's here's the actual data. Public schools spend on average in America $15,000 per student, $10,000 in

low-income neighborhoods. The schools where our kids go, private schools spend on average $75,000 a year on that kid. So, the child of a rich person who's able to send his kid to private school,

ends up spending about another 3/4 of a million dollars on that kid through the 12 years of an educational system. The result is SAT scores are 130 points different between low-income and

middle-income households and then 250 points difference between middle and upper income. My fear is that this term bureaucracy and that it's not working has created an environment where rich

people are sequestering from anything that gives them a vested interest in America. We have our own transportation, our own security, our own police forces, our own schools, our own healthcare. So

why would wealthy people have a vested interest in the well-being of America and instead they just go to these big words like bureaucracy and inefficiency recognizing that whatever we're doing is

not working and the private markets don't tend at some point to figure much of this out. It requires government intervention and I'll use the rword redistribution of income. Ben, you have

the final word in this portion of our debate. Obviously, when it comes to intervention and redistribution of income, I think that we have to be careful again about using a blunder bus

where at best an iDR drop would do. I think that when it comes to things like education, obviously my home state of Florida has engaged in essentially a universal school voucher program, which

means that people now have the ability to take their kids from public school and put them in a better private school. And that has actually led to competition in the opening of a vast variety of new

schools in the state of Florida. Again, an area where the market is actually doing a good job in coordination with some government redistributionism. I think that that how you use this stuff

needs to be extremely specific. And I think the biggest mistake that people make about government is believing that if you just fire hose cash at things that it's going to generally solve the

problem. And that by the way is the problem with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is that we fire hose cash at people as they age. And then it turns out people like having cash fire hosed

at them and then they will continue to vote for that. And and even if you pull people who are 50, they will continue to vote for Social Security kicking in at 65 because again, generations are not

actually hard and fast rules. hitting somebody who's 50 presumably will end up being 65 and will also now be on the beneficiary end of that particular game. >> All right, so let's put a pin in this

for now. On to our next question. In the context of the American dream, is the government doing too much or too little? Over to Steve now for some facts. Steve, thanks Jeff. Round two. Let's dive into

federal government transfers. Here we see the percentage of individuals who receive assistance from key programs and how that has changed since 2013. Social Security and Medicare reach the

largest percentage of the population, around 20%, and [snorts] have increased as the population has grown older. About 20% of individuals receive Medicaid, up slightly, and about 11% receive food

stamps, down from 2013. Let's look at families who receive these benefits by income and age. Over half of the spending on these programs goes to seniors, most of whom receive Social

Security and Medicare. The other half of the spending on these programs is targeted more towards lower earning families through programs like Medicaid, refundable tax credits, and food stamps.

Although, as you can see, some is also distributed to higher earners. Here you can see the growth since 1980 of mandatory assistance programs such as Medicare, health assistance, including

federal Medicaid contributions and affordable care act subsidies and social security. Those renew automatically without congressional approval. Combined, these programs grew from just

over 35% of total federal spending in 1980 to over 54% today. With these mandatory increases, as well as increases in other government spending in areas like defense, you can see that

the deficit has grown from 295 billion in 1980 to 1.78 trillion in 2025. adjusted for inflation. This is important context as we look at

government transfers at over 50% of total federal spend. That is sure worth an energetic debate. Jeff, debate away. Thank you, Steve. That we will do indeed. So, Ben, you're

up first. Is the government doing too little or too much? >> I mean, I think it would be hard to argue given the federal spending, the federal debt, the federal deficit that

the government is doing too little. The government is deeply entrenched in pretty much every area of our life. Again, I think there are areas where the government ought to be involved. I think

that's particularly true on the local and state or level of government. I think one of the things we tend to do in these discussions is conflate all levels of government as though they are the

same. And so, it seems to me that many of the functions of the federal government ought to be performed most aptly at the local and state level mainly because a polity should first

look to the people who are closest to it as opposed to sort of a broad spectrum of 330 million people. With that said, again, when you look at those statistics and you realize that there really is a

people talk about a uni party, you talk about a uni party that agrees the same thing. Both parties agree that they will not touch the entitlement programs that are driving the country into bankruptcy.

Both parties agree with this. President Trump agrees with this and Democrats agree with this. In fact, that was one of President Trump's great heresies in 2016 is when he ran, he said he would

not touch Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. And he touched some of those things, but he certainly didn't cut in any significant way or restructure in any significant way that was designed to

bring down the cost curve. that is going to bankrupt the country. No one actually wants to talk about the interest on the federal payment is going to outstrip our defense budget very very soon if it is

not already. And and what that means is that we just won't have the money. We are going to Steve me sorry Scott mentioned earlier that we are going to essentially have to backdoor tax

everybody or inflate away our our national debt or we're going to have to go through austerity measures and we are aiming right for that cliff. So, anybody who's arguing that the government is not

doing enough is going to have to come up headlong against the fact unless we're starting to tax like Denmark, then we are going to end up having to cut or inflate or do austerity measures.

>> Yeah, it's not. I think the argument around whether the government's doing too much, the answer would be it's doing too much for some people and not enough for others. U the biggest we talk about

social security at 1.5 trillion, Medicare at about a trillion, Medicaid I think at about 800 billion. The biggest expenditure of government and I would argue it is an expenditure is if you put

your income in and then the tax rate and then you put your capital gains in and the tax rate. We then give 2.2 tr 2.25 trillion back to corporations and the wealthy in the form of tax loopholes.

I'll use myself as an example. I built a company. I purposely didn't take a big salary because I saw how high current income taxes were. I was in a position to fund the company when I sold the

company 10 years ago because I invested 2 million with 122 I got a $20 million tax exemption. Hey, do entrepreneurs who do really well need a a tax exemption? And people say,

"Well, they're the most productive people. We want to give you incentive." No. No entrepreneur starts a business because of tax code. So, we're doing too much for the incumbents. We've

weaponized regulatory process around housing permits around sequestering supply for my institutions uh letting in too few kids and we consistently as a number of personnel government's

been really flat. What you're talking about is deficit spending, which I would argue is mostly there to prop up senior citizens and quite frankly take cor while having corporate taxes go from an