Training Example: No Mercy / No Malice (Scott Galloway) – Review the Data, Give Your Score & Compare to the Real AI Evaluation

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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February 27

[H3] The Epstein Tax

America’s greatest asset is its optimism — an attitude that’s unleashed unparalleled wealth and validated the thesis that anyone can achieve the American dream. But here’s the glitch in the matrix: Capitalism is the belief that there should be winners and losers, that incentives drive…

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February 20

[H3] The Algebra of Resistance

What media matters? There’s influence, but the ability to fund that influence is a function of which content, media, and brands drive action. In sum, where do third parties (e.g. advertisers) spend capital to get high-quality traffic? For the past two and a half weeks,…

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February 13

[H3] Role Models

“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they’ll never sit under.” There’s an inverse to that wisdom. Great societies decline when old men chop down forests meant to provide shade and oxygen for future generations. Donald Trump isn’t making America great again,…

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February 6

[H3] Resistance Infrastructure

I’ve struggled my whole life to discern the difference between being right vs. effective. Over the past decade, the U.S. has been on a slow burn to fascism. The best description I’ve seen of America’s current political landscape came from David Frum: “If progressives won’t…

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January 30

[H3] Resist and Unsubscribe

Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, was arrested today. Targeting journalists is not about enforcing the law, but shaping reality. History reflects a brutal truth: When you begin arresting journalists, your nation becomes angrier and poorer.  _____________ After the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee…

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January 23

[H3] License to Intervene

I’m in Davos. I was last here in 1999 — a period in history marked by (relative) peace, a narrower wealth gap, and techno optimism. Today geopolitics resembles a cross between pre-World War II and the Gilded Age, and Big Tech is the foe. But…

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January 16

[H3] The ‘Vcel’ Movement

I hate the “incel” moniker. Throughout 99% of history, 99% of men have been incels for long periods. I was celibate until I was 19 — not by choice. I wanted a girlfriend in high school, but was largely sidelined from the dating game by…

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January 9

[H3] Rare Earths

Last week, U.S. forces entered Venezuela and arrested President Nicolas Maduro.  Regardless of your politics, this was a serious flex from the best-performing organization in history: the U.S. military. Army Delta Force and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (specialized helicopters) accomplished in 35 minutes what…

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January 2

[H3] Slow Dopa

“Buy now, pay later” is booming. This past holiday season, American consumers were expected to spend a record $20 billion using these services, in many cases snapping up electronics, clothes, and other products they otherwise couldn’t afford. But the BNPL mentality extends far beyond retail.…

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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[H3] Listen

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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December 19

[H3] 2026 Predictions

Every year, we make predictions. Our missives on 2025, made in October ’24, registered the most direct hits since we first pulled out our Ouija board a decade ago. Our objective isn’t to be right — though that helps — but to inspire a conversation…

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December 12

[H3] The Streaming Wars and Affordability

Netflix’s $83 billion deal to buy most of Warner Bros. would unite Stranger Things and KPop Demon Hunters with Game of Thrones and The White Lotus, creating a streaming powerhouse. With Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters at the helm, the combined company would also…

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December 5

[H3] The Cult of Therapy

“Don’t read the comments,” I tell people, just before I have a drink and … read the comments. I knew my book Notes on Being a Man would spark controversy, as you get the most flak when you’re over the target, and some of the…

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November 21

[H3] The Next Opioid Crisis

Today you can “trade” on the outcome of thousands of future events, from the Fed decision next month to the Grammy Awards in February. Without leaving the house, you can wager on Taylor Swift’s wedding or Time magazine’s person of the year. One of Kalshi’s…

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November 14

[H3] National Service

An Office Hours listener asked what I’d say to President Trump if he invited me to the White House. I’ve struggled my whole life with being right vs. being effective. So, as we’re meeting with the president … let’s focus on being effective. We don’t…

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November 7

[H3] Notes on Being a Man

Donald Trump pulled off a stunning political comeback because of … young men. While the Democrats ignored this demographic, the far right rushed in to fill the void, flooding the manosphere with rockets, Hulk Hogan, coarseness, and crypto. The last presidential election was supposed to…

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October 31

[H3] Big Tech Stock Pick of 2026: Amazon

At the end of every year, I pick a Big Tech stock I believe will outperform its peers in the coming year. My 2025 pick was Alphabet: I believed the market had overestimated the threats to Google’s search businesses by AI and antitrust. At the…

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October 24

[H3] America’s Best Bet

America is now one giant bet on AI. If not for the Magnificent 10, the markets would be flat for the year. There’s a different technology that offers more asymmetric upside. If we want to transform the economy — and the well-being of Americans —…

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October 17

[H3] How Does the End Begin?

The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 account for 40% of the index’s market cap. Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, AI-related stocks have registered 75% of S&P 500 returns, 80% of earnings growth, and 90% of capital spending growth. Meanwhile, AI investments accounted…

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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[H3] Listen

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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November 25

[H3] Fake News…

Fake News… Story of the week is FB, GOOG, and Amazon are legs of the fake news stool. However, Facebook and Google don't want to be thought of as media or news companies. News Flash: They are. They (or their consumers) produce content, garner eyeballs,…

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November 18

[H3] Warby Snarker

Warby Snarker Snap's glasses ("Spectacle") have received positive, if not enthusiastic, reviews, and snap gets kudos for making vending machines cool again. The firm also confirmed an IPO projected to command a $25B valuation. The first trade (open to hedge funds and institutions, so ...…

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[H2] Scott Galloway

Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the
Prof G
and Pivot Podcasts.
For Scott Galloway speaking inquiries, email speaking@profgmedia.com

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America’s greatest asset is its optimism — an attitude that’s unleashed unparalleled wealth and validated the thesis that anyone can achieve the American dream. But here’s the glitch in the matrix: Capitalism is the belief that there should be winners and losers, that incentives drive innovation and prosperity. And they do. But the gilded few amass power and use that power for regulatory capture to expand their wealth … a lot.
The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality popular among economists. Zero indicates everyone in a society has the same; a score of 1.0 means one individual owns everything. In the U.S., we’re higher than 0.8 — about the level seen when the French were separating people from their heads. The superwealthy have amassed vast fortunes without fear of mobs arriving with pitchforks. U.S. policies, turbo-charged by a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the gates to unlimited spending on elections, have widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots. As wealth concentrates, billionaire political spending rises higher, securing policy outcomes that further concentrate wealth. The chaser is inflation, which transfers still more wealth from earners, whose purchasing power erodes, to owners, who are insulated.
A reckoning is underway, ignited by the mountain of Epstein documents, which are giving the public a window into the rarefied world where the 0.01% are protected by the law but not bound by it, while the rest of us are bound by the law but not protected by it. Among hundreds of names appearing in the files are three of the nation’s best-known billionaires: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates. Americans are fed up, not just with the depravity of some people in the Epstein class, but also with the massive wealth they continue to accumulate while the working class struggles. We aren’t talking about beheadings today, but modern-day guillotines are on the way: shame and taxes.
[H4] $2 Trillion
The top 1% control almost one-third of the nation’s wealth, their biggest share since World War II. The top 0.1% increased their wealth by 40% in the last three years. But UC Berkeley researchers say the top 400 paid only an estimated 23.8% of their income in taxes from 2018 to 2020 — a smaller percentage than the average American — down from 30% between 2010 to 2017. It’s not just an American phenomenon. Last year, the world’s 500 richest people added more than $2 trillion to their collective net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Governments around the world are putting the rich on notice, hoping to address this disparity, plug fiscal holes, raise money for defense, and address the challenge of aging populations. A few examples:
In California, a proposed tax on billionaires would require those with a net worth above $1.1 billion to pay a one-time tax equal to 5% of their assets.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for a 2 percentage point increase in income taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year.
U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves used the budget to shift some of the burden onto wealthier people, targeting higher-value property and investment income.
In France, left-leaning parties unsuccessfully pushed for a tax that would have required people with fortunes of more than €100 million to pay a minimum tax of 2% annually on their assets. Narrower measures were enacted instead.
[H4] Revolution
Wealth taxes are a tempting way to tackle inequality. They’re also an obvious means of raising revenue. In America, $5 trillion of receipts and $7 trillion in spending is (again) a transfer of wealth from earners to owners, as it’s inflationary. This isn’t sustainable. Fiscal strain in the U.K. prompted 30 economists to sign an open letter calling for a wealth tax to raise tens of billions of pounds. Voters also like this idea: Three quarters of British adults backed the idea of a 2% tax on wealth above £10 million.
But there’s a problem; wealth taxes don’t work. In 1990 a dozen OECD countries had wealth taxes. By last year, only three remained, in Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Most of the measures collected little revenue and failed to meet their goals, sparking concerns they could stifle innovation and growth. In some cases, the superrich packed their bags and fled.
If the megawealthy don’t leave the country, they’ll deploy accountants and lawyers to value their assets at 40% of what tax authorities believe they’re worth. How are you going to value a stake in a small business? If you don’t have the cash sitting in your bank account, will you have to sell assets to pay your bill? Wealth taxes in the U.S. would also face challenges on constitutional grounds. Targeting people’s assets may violate private property laws while creating massive administrative complexity.
[H4] Capital vs. Sweat
Finding flaws in wealth taxes is easier than coming up with solutions. But there are commonsense ideas we should adopt to ensure the superrich and large corporations pay their fair share. One is tackling the carried-interest loophole, which allows private equity and venture capital managers to be taxed at the capital gains rate of 20%, well below the top rate of 37% for ordinary income. Taxing carried interest as ordinary income could raise about $15 billion over the next 10 years. That’s not a game changer, but it’s a start.
Capital isn’t more noble than sweat. There’s no reason someone should pay a 37% tax on their income while the wealthy pay much less when they sell stocks. In 2021 income from capital gains accounted for 39% of pretax income for the top 1%, compared with less than 1% for those in the bottom three quintiles.
[H4] Buy, Borrow, Die
If you want to climb into the upper echelons, follow a three-step strategy: Buy, borrow, die. While wages are taxed when they’re earned, assets are taxed when they’re sold. The wealthy often borrow against stock holdings and other assets, which grow more valuable over time, rather than selling them, deferring their tax liability. As long as interest rates are lower than the rate of return on the assets they hold, billionaires can spend more on houses, yachts, or even islands, while enjoying significant wealth appreciation. In 2011, a year in which Jeff Bezos was worth $18 billion, he reported so little income that he received a $4,000 child tax credit. Americans with more than $100 million of wealth held an estimated $8.5 trillion in unrealized capital gains in 2022.
One idea: When the rich borrow and use their assets as collateral, they should pay tax on the difference in the value of that stock or property between when they originally bought it and the day it’s pledged. Treating borrowing as a taxable event could raise more than $100 billion over a decade.
[H4] IRS Tax Gap
A hobbled IRS is a massive tax cut for rich individuals and large corporations, amounting to the most regressive tax in recent history. Auditing lower- and middle-income tax returns is easy; holding wealthy taxpayers with high-priced lawyers accountable requires a lot more resources. The tax gap, the difference between the amount of taxes owed and the amount collected on time, surged to almost $700 billion in 2022. Most of the taxes owed stem from underreporting of income by richer taxpayers.
An $80 billion increase in IRS funding planned under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (since rescinded) would have alleviated some of the pressure, netting more than $600 billion over a decade. Instead, the agency faces even more pain after losing more than a quarter of its workforce. If we want to move the needle on wealth inequality, strengthening IRS enforcement is critical.
[H4] Alternative Minimum Tax
In 1969, Congress learned that 155 taxpayers with incomes exceeding $200,000 had paid no federal income tax in 1966. So legislators created an early version of the alternative minimum tax, which essentially compares an individual’s income before and after they claim certain deductions and embrace all the loopholes. After a portion of their income is exempted, the taxpayer must pay tax on whichever amount is greater. Legislation in 2017 didn’t eliminate the tax, but it limited its scope, dropping the number of taxpayers affected from more than 5 million to 200,000.
We should have an individual AMT, with people above a $1 million threshold taxed at 40% and those over a $10 million threshold taxed at 60%. I estimate this could raise hundreds of billions per year, while only affecting the top 0.2%, or 275,000 taxpayers.
[H4] More Time With Family
As the tax debate heats up, billionaires inevitably start to focus on spending more time with their family — as long as they live in a low-tax state. In 2023, Bezos announced he was moving to Miami after almost three decades in Seattle to be close to his parents. His family must have used all the face time to persuade him to sell billions in stock in a state that doesn’t tax capital gains. In 2022, Washington state imposed a new 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000.
[H4]
[H4] Boiling Point
Now Mark Zuckerberg is in the process of buying a property in Florida, triggering speculation that he’s unhappy about the proposed new tax on California billionaires. You think? The Meta CEO has benefited enormously from taxpayer-funded investments in education and infrastructure in the Golden State. If he wants to peace out to Florida, fine, but when he sells tens of billions of dollars in stock, he shouldn’t be able to escape tax on the massive wealth he accrued while living in California.
Billionaires can run, but they shouldn’t be able to hide.
We don’t need a revolution. We need a functioning IRS, capital gains taxed as income, and the death of the carried-interest loophole. The guillotine isn’t coming, the 1040 is. At a minimum, let’s stop pretending the system is broken by accident. It’s working exactly as designed — for those at the very top.
Life is so rich,
P.S. Kara Swisher and I are coming to Minneapolis. Catch the first ever Resist and Unsubscribe LIVE event, on March 8 at 7 p.m. at the Pantages Theater. Tickets are available here, with proceeds to benefit the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

Comments
[H2] 58 Comments

Ross Stefano says:

3 months ago at 10:15 am
Your discussion of income equality and the possible tax remedies was excellent, and we generally agree with your positions. In particular, you did a good job of identifying the “lowest hanging fruit” for raising taxes and improving equity, and also pointed out some of the pitfalls of the CA wealth tax proposal, etc.
One minor point….The Gini coefficient is a popular measure of inequality but we think that your comparison to the period of the French Revolution is a bit dramatic. We would argue that it is not the difference in income or wealth that makes people rise up and revolt, but instead it’s when a large portion of society cannot get their basic needs met, which we acknowledge is a point that we seem to be at or approaching. This inflection point could occur whether the Gini coefficient is .6 or .9. Regardless of the French Revolution hyperbole, I thought your Friday piece was great.
A recommendation….we think you would be more effective in making your points and certainly reach a wider audience if you would temper your political opinions and stick to economics and markets, areas in which you are quite good. Your political ranting (and salty language in your podcasts) sometimes distracts from your otherwise intelligent economic analysis.
Thanks for listening!

Ed says:

3 months ago at 11:02 am
The IRS has been repeatedly hobbled by the GOP. Senators and Reps say they do it to prevent IRS “abuse” of taxpayers. But they really do it to allow key donors to evade taxes. The wild tax evasion now happening is in addition to the steady reduction of top marginal income tax rates over the last 45 years.

John Galloway says:

3 months ago at 3:58 pm
We need to reflect more on the Eisenhower years in the 1950’s. Although the individual tax rate for income above the top bracket was 90%, the economy flourished because workers were well paid and their spending drove up profits for business. We had a president who saw that a strong healthy nation required policies that steered a fair share of wealth to workers rather than to people who already were quite wealthy.

Noel Cantu says:

3 months ago at 4:31 pm
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spriteless aunty says:

4 months ago at 6:04 pm
the poor stay poor, the rich get rich, that’s how it goes.

Mike Costello says:

4 months ago at 1:52 pm
Scott – Talarico won the primary in Texas but needs your help to win the general. I find his message so compelling and it’s going to create an incredibly needed conversation about morality. But his economic message is practically non-existent and his net worth is listed as $170K. It is not enough as a Democrat to only talk about redistribution in a general election – there must be a balance between creation and redistribution. Like so many Ds, Talarico assumes that creation will always exist and his job will be to redistribute. But people in Texas (and the rest of the US) won’t trust someone who takes all of their hard work for granted and puts a ceiling on what they can achieve. Please go help him – Crockett would never had a chance to win the general but Talarico does. But he needs someone who actually understands business and economics to help him craft a modern Democratic message that embraces growth as well as redistribution.

Louis Mondello says:

4 months ago at 7:28 pm
A time of reckoning will come for the Epstein class. The more barriers they erect; the harsher it will be. I spent my peak earning years in the military (23 years) and I am angry as I watch my adult children struggle and worry about the future these greedy pricks are leaving for my grandchildren (17 – 1 years old).

Harv says:

4 months ago at 4:45 pm
Great commentary, Scott. You missed a large point – we have a spending problem. If the government taxed the 500 richest folks at 100%, we’d be able to fund the government for about two months. The wealthy are ok with taxes, but who spends it and how is the problem.

Kevin wandryk says:

4 months ago at 3:07 pm
Generally, love the podcast as well as Raging Moderates, but have a question on one of the points discussed in this one. They mention the GINI coefficient for the US is around .8. But when I google search for US GINI, I don’t