The Tax We’re 99.93% Sure That You Will Never Pay

Summary

Optimist Economy Podcast Summary

Episode: The Tax We’re 99.93% Sure That You Will Never Pay
Release Date: July 8, 2025
Hosts: Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of Optimist Economy, hosts Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi delve deep into the intricacies of the estate tax—a levy on inherited wealth that most Americans believe they will never encounter. The discussion unpacks the history, misconceptions, current state, and potential reforms of the estate tax, aiming to shed light on its role in shaping economic equity.

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Retcon Segment: Revisiting Past Discussions

[02:00 – 05:00]

The episode begins with the Retcon segment, where Kathryn and Robin revisit and clarify points from previous episodes. Kathryn shares feedback about her comments on work requirements, emphasizing that the overwhelming consensus among economists is that work requirements do not significantly increase employment. She states:

“It is actually absolutely incredible that the research is so in line on this. Work requirements do not increase work.”
— Kathryn, [03:00]

Robin adds a poignant observation from a survey by Hult Business School highlighting the disconnect between college education and job preparedness, revealing that 75% of HR leaders believe college graduates are unprepared for their roles, and 94% of recent graduates regret their college degrees.

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Understanding the Estate Tax

[10:00 – 15:00]

Kathryn and Robin break down the estate tax, clarifying common misunderstandings:

• Definition: A tax on inherited wealth above a certain threshold.
• Current Exemption: As of 2025, the exemption stands at $14 million for individuals and $26 million for married couples, meaning only 0.07% of estates are subject to the tax.

Robin clarifies:

“Most middle-class people think they’re going to have to pay an estate tax. And you're like, not a chance.”
— Robin, [12:30]

The hosts explain that estate tax is often erroneously conflated with taxes on gifts and is misunderstood as a “death tax” rather than a measure targeting dynastic wealth.

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Historical Context of the Estate Tax

[17:00 – 23:00]

Kathryn provides a historical overview of the estate tax in the U.S.:

• 1797: Introduction of a stamp tax to fund the Navy.
• 1862: Revenue Act instituting an inheritance tax during the Civil War.
• 1898: Estate tax introduced during the Spanish-American War.
• 1916: Establishment of the modern estate tax as part of the Progressive Era reforms aimed at combating wealth inequality.

She notes the estate tax's origins as a means to raise funds during wartime and reduce the concentration of wealth that threatened democratic principles. Kathryn states:

“This sentiment against the concentration of wealth is what led to the first permanent estate tax in 1916.”
— Kathryn, [21:00]

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Current State and Misconceptions

[24:00 – 35:00]

The conversation shifts to the current erosion of the estate tax:

• Pre-2001: Approximately 2.1% of estates were taxed.
• Post-2001 Tax Cuts: Reduction in estates paying the tax to 0.07%.

Robin emphasizes the misconception:

“We have drastically cut the estate tax, tinkered with it incredibly. And now 0.07% of estates pay the estate tax. Virtually no one pays it right now.”
— Robin, [13:00]

Kathryn and Robin discuss how frequent legislative changes have confused the public, leading many to mistakenly believe that the estate tax poses a significant financial threat to the middle class.

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Implications of Restoring the Estate Tax

[34:00 – 42:00]

The hosts explore the potential benefits and feasibility of restoring and reforming the estate tax:

• Revenue Generation: Current estate taxes generate approximately $20 billion annually, which could fund critical programs like childcare.
• Wealth Redistribution: Targeting the top 1-2% of wealthy estates could reduce economic inequality and support social programs.
• Policy Proposals: Kathryn proposes dedicating estate tax revenues to a children's trust fund to support child care and educational programs.

Kathryn passionately argues:

“I have a really strong part of me that's not an economist. This is just like pure blood American. I love democracy and I don't like inherited wealth. So we shouldn't have it.”
— Kathryn, [38:00]

Robin reinforces the importance of redirecting funds from the estate tax to societal benefits, highlighting that addressing wealth concentration can lead to a healthier, more equitable economy.

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Challenges and Future Prospects

[43:00 – 50:00]

Kathryn and Robin acknowledge the political and social challenges in restoring the estate tax:

• Powerful Constituencies: Wealthy individuals and their families possess significant political influence, making tax reforms difficult.
• Public Perception: Misconceptions and fear-mongering around the estate tax hinder public support for its reinstatement or strengthening.

Kathryn notes:

“Half of Americans are convinced that they'll have to pay it and that Congress will eventually raise it or lower it.”
— Kathryn, [28:55]

Despite these challenges, both hosts express optimism that with continued advocacy and education, meaningful reforms can be achieved to better balance economic disparities.

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Executive Orders and Closing Remarks

[50:00 – End]

In the final segments, Kathryn and Robin share their executive order fantasies, humorously addressing practical needs and progressive policies:

• Robin's Executive Order: More rest stops on U.S. 101.
• Kathryn's Executive Order: Creation of a children's trust fund funded by a robust estate tax and mandating all lawn equipment to be electric within five years.

They conclude by acknowledging their supporters and sponsors, emphasizing the importance of community engagement and feedback.

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Key Takeaways

• Estate Tax Misconceptions: Most Americans are unlikely to pay the estate tax due to high exemption thresholds.
• Historical Purpose: Originally implemented to fund wars and reduce wealth concentration, reflecting Progressive Era values.
• Current State: The estate tax has been significantly weakened, affecting only a tiny fraction of estates.
• Potential Reforms: Restoring and reforming the estate tax could generate substantial revenue for social programs and mitigate economic inequality.
• Political Challenges: Overcoming misinformation and powerful opposition is crucial for meaningful tax reforms.

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Notable Quotes:

“Work requirements do not increase work.”
— Kathryn, [03:00]

“We have drastically cut the estate tax, tinkered with it incredibly. And now 0.07% of estates pay the estate tax. Virtually no one pays it right now.”
— Robin, [13:00]

“This sentiment against the concentration of wealth is what led to the first permanent estate tax in 1916.”
— Kathryn, [21:00]

“I love democracy and I don't like inherited wealth. So we shouldn't have it.”
— Kathryn, [38:00]

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This episode of Optimist Economy offers a comprehensive and engaging exploration of the estate tax, challenging prevalent myths and advocating for policies that promote economic fairness and support for future generations.

Transcript

[Kathryn]

We should do the actual show.

[Robin]

We should talk about our actual.

[Kathryn]

The show that we do. What's it called?

[Robin]

I'm told it's called Optimist Economy. You named it?

[Kathryn]

Yeah. Well, choices were made. Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Kathryn.

[Robin]

I'm Robin.

[Kathryn]

On this show, we believe the US Economy can be better. And we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time, foreign. So we need to start, of course, with the announcement that we have a website, optimisteconomy.com. you can subscribe to the show there. Become a paying subscriber. We love you much for that. You can also go to Buy Me a Coffee, where Optimist Economy takes your donations. And of course, if you like the podcast, tell someone about it, especially if.

[Robin]

They have a company that they would like to underwrite our show.

[Kathryn]

Oh, yeah, sure. So this is also a call to people who have deep pockets or know people who do that. Like, we especially like your money.

[Robin]

If you would like to put a little podcast in your will, for instance. No, I'm just kidding. That's for our theme today.

[Kathryn]

Yeah, it's a spoiler alert. We do love reading the reviews. We'll often read them on the show if we have one that in particular tickles us. I am still internalizing Johnny five, who talked about just how bad we were at this, despite how much he enjoys it. And he will haunt production for many weeks to come.

[Robin]

Many weeks.

[Kathryn]

So, Johnny, let us know how we did on that one. I tried really hard to sound both natural and professional, and I'm realizing those two things are in conflict in my being.

[Robin]

But you did put some stuff on the outline.

[Kathryn]

I did. Starting with our first segment, which we call Retcon.

[Robin]

Retcon for our new listeners, we should remind folks, stands for retroactive continuity. And this is where we talk about things that we should have talked about before.

[Kathryn]

Yes. So I have two retcons. The first is really about your shout out to Doris Day parking. I just wanted you to know that it has been immediately adopted by my family to the point where we were dropping our kids off at camp and my husband was like, oh, Doris Day spot. Like, it was a seamless, seamless adoption that was also immediate. So amazing. Shout out to your friend. The second retcon is that in the work requirements episode, I mentioned that. That I think a lot of the evidence on work requirements is, like, fundamentally uninteresting because it all says the same thing. And an economist is another, like tap on the shoulder from the PhD friend of like, now that you've talked about it publicly, let me tell you what.

[Robin]

You should have said.

[Kathryn]

Let me tell you what you should have said. I appreciate all of you, but what she pointed out, which I, in fairness, I was pretty glib about, that's not normal.

[Robin]

I'm sorry, what's not normal?

[Kathryn]

That economics, evidence and research would find such a singular conclusion with very little variation. It's not normal for evidence to be that much in concert and to point out how quickly this evidence has been accumulated. You know, even over the last 10 years, we have amassed a volume of papers, books and books worth that all say the same thing. Work requirements do not increase employment. That's incredible. And so she thought I could be may to the profession, but I should make sure that other people know. It is actually absolutely incredible that the research is so in line on this. And so I take her suggestion, I shouldn't be quite so glib. It's amazing that we can find that so consistently. Work requirements do not increase work. And at some point they should have increased it by accident by now, but they haven't. So that tells you a lot about the population we're working with and how terrible the policy is.

[Robin]

Yeah. So I also had a retcon. This is just to our last episode, which was about unemployment rates for young people and young people, particularly college graduates. And I was trying to find out how the United States rates stacked up against other countries. Did not find that out because. Because youth unemployment is like age 15 to 24. That was not the group of people I was looking at. But what I did find was a survey that was done earlier this year about recently hired employees and people who lead HR departments. HR leaders were incredibly critical of the skills that people were getting coming out of college. 75% of them said that they thought college educations were not preparing people at all for their jobs. And this actually kind of broke my heart. 94% of recent graduates. Now these were people working in business. Specifically, 94% had regrets about their college degree. And 43% said they felt doomed to fail because they chose the wrong degree. Anyway, I found that kind of heartbreaking.

[Kathryn]

Where was this survey?

[Robin]

It was done by Hult Business School and it was 800 recent people hired in the last three years and 800 leaders of HR. I mean, you're going to get the. Again, this is not all executives. This is HR people. But they were specifically saying that they didn't like hiring people right out of college because it costs so much to train them for their jobs. And that they were coming in unprepared.

[Kathryn]

I went to a research seminar recently that was about transfers while in college. And it's worth humanizing that statistic of having, like, I picked the wrong thing in college. And I have.

[Robin]

I mean, don't we all have undergraduate regrets?

[Kathryn]

Yeah, it's. Which is to say that, like, that's universal also.

[Robin]

I think it's. I think it is unreasonable for workplaces to think that everybody's going to come in knowing the details of how they. I mean, it's a truism that 60% of what you need to know to do a job, you learn on the job. That's not gonna be different for new college graduates.

[Kathryn]

Oh, yeah. And.

[Robin]

And if it's, you know, in that case, 80% instead of 60, we shouldn't be surprised by that.

[Kathryn]

What was funny, the research seminar in the room afterwards, almost every person there. I mean, a collection of truly successful powerhouse economists in great careers doing amazing work. And I mean, all of them were like, oh, God, yeah, I thought about leaving and two of them were like, oh, I did leave. I went to a different school because the.

[Robin]

I mean, transfer it to massive.

[Kathryn]

It's. It's very hard to feel. Right. I think we don't talk enough about how hard it is to feel settled in college, how some people don't fit in, it doesn't fit for them. And they have major remorse, career remorse. But I, I always thought of it as, in college, you're. You're learning how to be the sponge. You're not taking in water. Like, you're taking multiple classes, you're doing multiple assignments. Some of them are labs, some of them are, you know, more technical, some of them are more creative. You have languages and you're managing a lot on your own, you know, well, maybe at a small liberal arts college. They're doing a lot of handholding, but certainly had a massive public school university. You're sinking or swimming there, but, you know, that's teaching you to be adept at multitasking, to take on a lot of new information. And so you're, you're developing your ability to be a sponge. You don't take on water until you get the job. And so, yeah, I don't know, the fact you're showing up dry is like, well, duh.

[Robin]

Terms and conditions. Second part of our show.

[Kathryn]

Second part of our show, I looked up scot free.

[Robin]

I'm sure that I've been saying scotch free for like, half my life.

[Kathryn]

Well, this is one of those, like, it's a New world. We have a different environment. And I was like, wait, I used it in a column. It was cut from the column. And then I was like, great, this is something offensive about Scottish people.

[Robin]

Which.

[Kathryn]

Considering I'm a healthy and diverse mix of Scottish, Southern and Western Irish, I should make sure that I'm not, like, insulting my cousins. Yeah. So I.

[Robin]

But it's. No, it's. Is it related to Scottish people?

[Kathryn]

It's not related to Scottish people at all. It's not Scott. It's not Scott for Scottish or Scotch free. It's Scot free. Because in Middle English with one T, a Scot was what you called a tax. So they got off without paying the Scot. And so that was. Scot free means tax free. And that has become today, you know, modern parlance is without getting any punishment, without consequences. Without consequences. You got off scot free.

[Robin]

All right. So as I was saying before we were recording, I just did a long, long drive from Spokane back to Los Angeles. And this reminded me of your looking up cow pens. We looked up Stockholm syndrome because I thought, well, you know, you hear that all the time, Stockholm syndrome, but I don't actually know what happened in Stockholm to create this term. Here's what I'm going to tell you. Everything you know about the phrase Stockholm syndrome and what you think it means as like, a shorthand for being, like, sort of brainwashed by your captors and taking on their causes as your own is completely backwards. So in 1973, there was a bank robbery in Stockholm. I'm going to try to keep this short, but the gist of it is the hostages saw pretty quickly that the police were largely incompetent and the political leaders didn't really care about their safety, and instead of negotiating for their release, just said, we're not going to negotiate at all. In some cases, they actually were firing at the bank robbers while the hostages were more or less in the line of fire. And then afterwards, this criminologist who worked for the police basically pathologized their behavior because when they were released, they said, no, we're not testifying against these bank robbers because, you guys, the police tried to more or less get us killed. I'll put a link to this story, but it's also. It's been sort of discussed as how backwards this is in psychology circles for some, for some years.

[Kathryn]

That's so fascinating. I don't know if I've ever used Stockholm syndrome, but I certainly won't now.

[Robin]

Yeah, it's, it's. It's Pretty wild. I mean, I think it's a shorthand. That shouldn't mean what it means. I guess it should mean the opposite.

[Kathryn]

Also, possibly relative to our centerpiece discussion today, which is on the estate tax. I'm very excited to talk about the estate tax, especially because I get to go back to those 1700s and Sophie, don't you dare edit that out. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Robin, get on board. Robin, get excited.

[Robin]

I was prepared for the 1930s.

[Kathryn]

Oh, girl.

[Robin]

Maybe in 1916. Sweet honey child.

[Kathryn]

Nope, we gotta go way before that.

[Robin]

Way back. Okay, let's set the table. About the estate tax, what it is.

[Kathryn]

And why we're talking about it now in 1797.

[Robin]

Okay.

[Kathryn]

No, we are talking about the estate tax is a tax that's levied on property in order to inherit an estate.

[Robin]

These not real estate, like not a property.

[Kathryn]

Wealth, basically, in order, in order for wealth to be passed down, the bulk of the wealth, like in. Before it gets split up amongst its inheritors, the number of people who get it. Wealth is taxed. As long as it's big enough and it meets, you know, certain kind of cutoffs in value, then a tax is levied on it. That is the estate tax. We have had it since 1916 in the United States. It came right after we passed the 16th amendment and passed the graduated income tax. A few years later we've had the estate tax. So it has been part of our tax code for 109 years. And over the past 25, these big pieces of tax legislation have messed with it and they've increased the size of the estate.

[Robin]

That is exempt.

[Kathryn]

That is exempt. So you only pay this tax if. If it's a lot of money. Yeah, I mean, you have to have a lot of wealth in order to pay the estate tax. That's always been true, but it has been raised to such an incredible degree in terms of how big the estate has to be that very few estates pay it. So in 2001, I just also want.

[Robin]

To say, I think that the estate tax is one of probably the most misunderstood. I think people think that they are subject to it and they think far more people pay an estate tax than ever do and they confuse it with taxation of gifts between people. And that really. We've talked a little bit about the branding of anti tax activists.

[Kathryn]

They're so good. Anti tax people are just. They just are words.

[Robin]

We'll call it. Can we say it?

[Kathryn]

No, we're not going to say it.

[Robin]

We're not going to say it. They'll call it something Else that not in the state.

[Kathryn]

Fine. They call it the death tax.

[Robin]

And the, the branding of that has just has stuck and it's led to a lot of misunderstanding that I think most middle class people think that they're going to have to pay an estate tax. And you're like, not a chance.

[Kathryn]

In fact, we're in our tax cut era, which started in 2001 with the first big Bush tax cuts that year. Before the tax cuts went into effect that year, 2.1% of estates were subject to the estate tax.

[Robin]

So that's, that's, by the way, only 2.1% of the people who, I mean, those are the people who have died.

[Kathryn]

Yeah.

[Robin]

I guess that the population as a.

[Kathryn]

Whole, if 10,000 people died in 2001, just over 200 of them would pay this tax. But instead of kind of relying on that as a source of income and revenue, we have drastically cut the estate tax, tinkered with it incredibly. And now 0.07% of estates pay the estate tax. So if 10,000 people die in 2025, seven of them will pay this tax. Virtually no one pays it right now.

[Robin]

And it's also not paid on. It's a bit like the marginal income tax. If we say it's a million dollar estate, you don't pay the estate tax on the million dollars. You pay the estate tax on the wealth above a million dollars. And of course, now it's not a million dollars, it's $14 million.

[Kathryn]

26 if you're married.

[Robin]

26 if you're married. 20.

[Kathryn]

It doubles if you're married.

[Robin]

Right.

[Kathryn]

And you co.

[Robin]

It's 13.9 million is what the, the proposed change did.

[Kathryn]

Yeah. So it's not like. So if I die with. If the estate tax exemption in 2001 was a million dollars, which it was, and I died with $999,000 in wealth, I didn't pay it. If I died with $1,000,100 in wealth, I paid the estate tax on the 100 in excess of the limit. So not as if, if I died with $1,000,100, then I had to pay taxes on $1,000,100. Everything below the exemption amount is not taxed, no matter how much you have above it. You only tax above the exemption. So this is a massive misconception that people have that the US taxes death, which it doesn't. It taxes dynastic wealth. And it has been giving dynastic wealth a tax cut, a really incredible tax cut for about 25 years.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Kathryn]

The estate tax, which was not levied on that many people and you had to be really wealthy to pay it, is now levied on hardly anyone and you have to be uber wealthy to pay it. And they're still fighting it tooth and nail.

[Robin]

And I'm personally also offended by the idea that you are paying it. You are dead.

[Kathryn]

You are dead. Yeah, you are dead.

[Robin]

You're not paying anything. Your estate, this, this idea of it being double taxation, that you saved this money your whole life and it was taxed when you earned it, and therefore it's being taxed again, first of all, nuts. Because, you know, if you've got that much money and you got it in earned income, maybe, but a lot of people got it in, say, other forms of income or they inherited themselves.

[Kathryn]

I mean, like, if you want to know who pays the estate tax, it's Jeff Bezos kids. So that is who bears the brunt of the estate tax. It is very wealthy people's children, the people who inherit the estate at death. So we will talk about Bezos Jr. I don't know, actually. I don't actually know if he has kids or how many he has.

[Robin]

I don't either.

[Kathryn]

Well, you don't need to look it up. I don't need to look him up. But this is really about Bezos Jr. Because the other thing that most people don't realize about the estate tax is that it's not levied. When spouses inherit, you have a spousal exemption. So if Bezos, whatever wife he's on then dies and the wife inherits everything, she won't pay the estate tax. It's when it goes down a generation, you have a big spousal exemption unless part of the estate goes to one of his former spouses, in which case the exemption doesn't apply. So two things to make clear. One is that we. I desperately need this to be a safe space because this is very complicated tax law and it's been made complicated by the exemptions that have gone into the estate tax and the gift tax over time. And so I, I'm going to do my absolute best to say this as honestly and accurately as I know it, but I, I might get something wrong because part of the way that the estate tax has been reduced over time is by making it so incredibly complicated that families are able to get around via loopholes. So let's go back.

[Robin]

Let's go back in time, way, way back.

[Kathryn]

This is to help explain what the estate tax is and to also make sure that it, none of you are left with A notion that this is some type of like modern liberal invention to tax wealthy people. So you die with money.

[Robin]

Okay, Bags of gold.

[Kathryn]

You have burlap sacks with gold with dollar signs on the side that is filled with gold coins. Okay, in 1797, in order to raise money for the Navy, because the US Is worried about how we don't need to get into the relationship with France at the time, but it's definitely a part of it. So actually this is all France's fault. But the first version of a tax on assets at death is a stamp tax. And it's. It's kind of like almost like a title fee that we have today that in order for the piece of paper to say, this property which belonged to this person who died is now going to this person, you had to pay a flat fee for like the literal stamp that went on it to say, yes, in fact, this property is now transferred. And so you can think of it as like a flat per cap fee that in order to transfer property, including at death, you had to pay for the stamp, the seal of Official dumb, to make it recorded in law. And yeah, that was later repealed when we didn't need to make. When we didn't need to raise as much money for the Navy. But the first version was a fee. The second kind of version of this, you die and you own assets and the state is going to collect money from it, came in 1862 with the revenue Act. This was again to raise money for a war, this time the Civil War. And this one was closer to an inheritance tax, which is you basically tax all the people who inherit the money. So if I die with a million dollars and it goes to one kid versus if I die with a million dollars and it goes to 15 kids, the inheritance tax is levied on the receiver. We had that during the Civil War. It was later repealed. An inheritance tax is not the same as the estate tax. The inheritance tax taxes the person, the kid who's getting the money. The estate tax taxes the property in totality, as one of this is the total amount of property, no matter how many people are going to inherit it, it's going to be taxed as a complete unit, right? So we had a version of this estate tax during the Spanish American War in 1898. And then once the war ended, we repealed it second.

[Robin]

So it's always a war tax.

[Kathryn]

I mean, that's when needed taxes, we needed extra money. And so the estate tax, the inheritance tax, the stamp tax, they were all ways to raise revenue for war. But in the early 1900s, in the progressive Era, income taxes and estate taxes were championed by Teddy Roosevelt in order to counter the gross wealth inequality and income inequality that was coming out of the Gilded Age. And so it's fascinating that the estate tax has this history of being, we need to raise some money pretty quickly. But it shifts as you get to the 20th century where it becomes a corrective measure of like we, these people have too much money and it's going to ruin our country that we have these mergers and mergers and accumulation of, you know, what we would call monopolies, what they would call trust. And the wealth is held in one person. That person wields undue influence and power in our democracy. We need to break up that wealth so we'll do it when they die. And the income tax was part of that. So Teddy Roosevelt was successful in this effort, even though it did not occur during his administration. The 16th Amendment, which creates federal authority for an income tax, is passed in 1909, which is basically his last week, right at the end of his, at the start of the next administration. And it's ratified a few years later in 1913. And in 1913, we passed the first federal income tax. And in 1916, weirdly enough, motivated in part by World War I, we passed the estate tax. And so this idea that we're raising money for acute needs and the like, the extra pool of money needs to come from the very wealthy as well as, let's break up these big dynasties. It was all there, you know, in the first 10 years of the 20th century.

[Robin]

And these, you know, the Gilded Age, we're talking about the late 1800s to the early 1900s. This is Robber baron time, right? This is the Carnegie's and Mellons and the people with gigantic estates on Long island and building railroads across the country who had huge, just huge, huge, huge amounts of wealth.

[Kathryn]

Yes. Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie Mellon, Forbes, Frick, Hearst, Morgan, Dupont, like these are all families that accumulated wealth in the Gilded Age. And Roosevelt just saw this as corrupting democracy because of the power they had. And a lot of social policy in the nineteen teens to the nineteen thirties was real racist and it was real misogynistic and it was real nativist and it had all these problems, but it did have some through lines that we would champion, like making our economy and our democracy less dependent on a handful of wealthy people. I mean, that was part of. Before we had the Federal Reserve, we had JP Morgan, not like the bank, I mean the guy. Right. I mean before the Federal Reserve kind of became enshrined with institutional functions and power. People who would handle panics and scares were like, what does Jay say? Is he into it? Cool. Which is not. That's not good.

[Robin]

Not how you want.

[Kathryn]

It's not how you want to run it. And this sentiment against the concentration of wealth is what led to the first permanent estate tax in 1916. Also World War I money.

[Robin]

Also World War I money. Yeah.

[Kathryn]

Yeah. So breaking up wealth and paying for expensive things, we're going to circle back to that. That's actually the history there gets kind of, like, really technical and less interesting starting in 1916, because then the estate tax enters a basic function. You have an exemption level. Estates have to be above a certain level in value in order to be subject to the tax. And then you have a graduated progressive for estates above that level that ranges from some percentage to some maximum percentage that is levied for the tax. Much like, you know, we have marginal taxes based on how much you income you earn, and you move through brackets. Your estate taxable wealth also move through kind of as something like brackets. And between 1916 and 2025, the majority of the action is raising that level, lowering that level, raising that rate, lowering that rate. A whole bunch of stuff related to making the estate tax harmonize with the gift tax so that you wouldn't just.

[Robin]

Give away all your money. So it's before. Before you die, right? Yeah.

[Kathryn]

Yep. Left hand, right hand. I'm gonna give my kids $10 million, but if I wait, hold on to it till I die, they pay a tax. No, thank you. Eventually, we caught up to them making exemptions for spouses, coming up with an exemption for farms and businesses. That's the majority of the action. And then in 2001, we enter this new era of basically gutting the estate tax through several means, one of which is raising the exemption so that for an individual, it's $14 million. Another one is to lower the rates.

[Robin]

And those all happen over time. They didn't happen in 2001.

[Kathryn]

They happened over time. 2001 was the beginning of this. It is the craziest legislation, because actually, in 2001, the estate tax went from 1 million to 3 million over several years. And then in 2010, it was supposed to be completely eradicated. So Congress set up basically a massive incentive for people to murder their parents in 2010 because it would have saved you a bunch of money in taxes. And so the. The. The joke was like, we're approaching throw mama from the train year because we've just incentivized killing people in order to make money off of them. But they corrected it before we actually got to 2010, so that didn't happen. It would have led to a lot of great movies, I think, about the pressure to kill parents in order to inherit money. But, yeah, they started messing with it in 2001. And this 2010 gap year, they had to go back and fix. In 2012, they're like, okay, okay, we're fixing this. We're fixing this. $5 million, 40% max rate. We're done. And then in 2017, Republicans were like, are we done? Let's make it like three times more than that. And they did.

[Robin]

I just want to pause one second, which is we should be clear that that big jump was the highly unpopular 2017 tax cut and Jobs act that passed in the beginning of the first Trump administration, and it wasn't popular at the time. It is set to expire, and it is essentially being put on permanent life support, potentially through the current budget reconciliation bill.

[Kathryn]

Yeah, because here's the thing about cutting taxes. It's really expensive. Really, really expensive. So what they do is they have 10 years of tax policy that they can dictate. So they cut taxes in the first seven years, and then in the last three, they raise them again. So what we're doing right now, They've done this before. What we're doing right now is we're basically saying the 2 trillion cost of the Tax Cut and Jobs act was in part a ruse because really, it was 2 trillion for the first seven years, paid for by additional revenue in the last three. But we're not going to, we're not.

[Robin]

Going to do those three years.

[Kathryn]

We're not going to let that happen. They're fighting to prevent that from happening. They're fighting to prevent the temporary tax cuts that they passed in 2017 from going away. Even, like, really good estimates of, like, well, what happens if the estate tax does go back to 5 million? Are we all going to have to pay it? No, hold on real quick. This is just a public service announcement. If you think you have enough money to pay the estate tax and you're listening to this show, you need to give us money, because you are, you are of the.01, like, 2% wealthiest people in America. And if you're free riding on this show. No, sir. So just, I'm not going to call out any listener, but if you're like, I had to pay the estate tax, brother, you need to pass that on. Because even if the, even if the exemption goes back to 5 million. It will be 0.2% of estates that pay it. So we've gone from 10. We've gone from 10,000 people dying a year and 200 pay it to 7 to, like, 20. So if you think you're part of that 20. Share the wealth, brother. This show. That's my. That's my. That's a quick psa. Also, if I had my druthers, it'd be a lot more than 20.

[Robin]

So.

[Kathryn]

Yeah, but that is what's being debated now, and that is. That is the kind of. One of the reasons why the estate tax has been so unpredictable and why you have so many people doing wealth planning and asset management is that half of Americans are convinced that they'll have to pay it and that Congress will eventually raise it or lower it. But at least in the latter case, like, they're not wrong, Congress will mess with this tax because they've done it so many times. I mean, this tax has not been consistently applied over the past 24 years. The exemption, the amount being paid, has changed so much over the past 20 years. You have all these people convinced that it's going to jump and they'll have to pay it. I think a lot of people think they're wealthier than they are.

[Robin]

I think a lot of people also make these plans when they're at their peak of wealth that they have saved throughout their careers, and they're not really thinking about how much wealth they're going to have. The intention of saving that money is that it will support you through your retirement and that, you know, you don't have to save every dime. But people feel very, very, very strongly about leaving money to their children and that people make all sorts of choices and sacrifices and sometimes bad choices about their own care or their own living circumstances because they just feel that they need to leave something to their children.

[Kathryn]

You know, it's funny because in the classic debate over the estate tax, that never comes up. I mean, what you hear is, why do we have the estate tax? Well, we need to break up wealth, raise some money, and if possible, encourage charitable bequests. So, like, if you give your money away to a charity, it is not taxed at the same rate or level as the estate tax. So giving your money to a kid versus giving your money to a charity. So having an estate tax, like, let's bust up some dynasties. I mean, not bust them. I mean, just, like, make them slightly less dent them. Dent them. We are denting some dynasties. So let's dent a dynasty, get some money. And maybe encourage charitable giving of the super wealthy to give their wealth away. Those are the reasons for it. The reasons against it have often been that if you tax leftover wealth and property, I mean, most people have a very simple relationship with wealth and assets. They start with nothing. They accumulate wealth and assets and hit their peak wealth on the day they retire. And they disave is what we call it. But they basically consume all those assets and property until they die. And some people will reach zero before they die, and some people won't. And some of them will end up with excess wealth of wealth they didn't consume during their lifetime. And for the vast majority of people, it's not that much money. You don't die with as much wealth as you think you're going to die with because you probably be living on it a lot longer than you expect. So then that money is inherited and passed down. And the wealth of wealth, the estate tax, is just a way to interrupt that process for people for whom they're basically generating wealth to such a degree that they know it will be passed down. And they are of the richest 1% or 0.2%, in this case, possibly 2% in the 2001 version of the world, which I. I've brought this up before of like, you know, okay, I wasn't gonna say it. I wasn't gonna.

[Robin]

Now you're gonna.

[Kathryn]

I wasn't gonna bring it up. I wasn't gonna bring it up. This was actually a lot of what I talked about when I testified in front of the House Ways and Means Committee, which was in front of Congress, which, if you're doing that drinking game, go on ahead and divot back. But one thing I said in response to a question was, you know, we had estate taxes in 2000, and we still had an economy, and we still had wealthy people, and we were fine. And this tax is not that disruptive.

[Robin]

You know, it's funny, I was thinking as I was reading about the proposals, and also we had recently recorded the work requirements, and you had said in that course of that conversation, you know, if I gave you $300,000, you'd probably work less. And I thought, yeah, if you gave me, you know, half of a $14 million estate, you can be sure I'd work well. That's.

[Kathryn]

So this is what's crazy. This is what's crazy is that the argument for the estate, for like, of why we shouldn't have an estate tax is that it would discourage capital accumulation amongst the person who would die.

[Robin]

Discourage people.

[Kathryn]

But, like, it absolutely discourages capital and labor force amongst the kids. So it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't have a tax that discourages people from creating wealth even though that wealth will discourage capital and labor for the people who inherit it. That we're not talking about them.

[Robin]

I tend not to ever read the comments on, on, on news articles because they just generally make me mad. But I did on the estate tax article and it was full of all of these misconceptions that we've talked about. And also that assertion like the estate tax disincentivizes savings. And I was like, well, first of all, you should be saving because you need to pay for your retirement. Like, but yeah, but how many kids do you have and how many, how much, how much work do you think they're going to do after they inherit all this?

[Kathryn]

Yeah, rich people who inherit money do not accumulate the same level of capital as people who don't and they don't work as much. I mean, this is probably the greatest coup of the people who are against the estate tax and lobby against it is that they make it about the person dying, even though the tax is really about these grubby little kids who will inherit it. Like, you know, you, you know, there's a reason why they're not going to put Bezos Jr. Up on a poster board of like, please help him. Like, he can't pay 40% on all value of his estates worth above 26 million. Like, don't let him, don't let him suffer.

[Robin]

We should be clear that we don't know anything about Jeff.

[Kathryn]

We don't know anything. We don't know anything about it. But I mean, dynastic wealth in the US exists and I want to tell you right now, you've never earned a dollar of wage income that has avoided taxes. I promise you, you have never had a job. It doesn't matter if you're self employed, if you run your own business, if you, you know, work at a cafe, if you work at a law firm, if you've earned money in the labor market, we have taxed it and you've never gotten out of it. But if you accumulate capital to an incredible degree and hand it down to your children, they are really good at getting out of it.

[Robin]

So here's the question then. Even if we were to restore the estate tax, lower the exemption level, it would still hit a very small number of people. Do we have any sense of how much revenue we're leaving on the table by not having a, even Say, you know, not at the 2001 levels, but maybe, you know, if the 2001 levels had been, I don't know, indexed or inflation or something.

[Kathryn]

Yeah.

[Robin]

Is this, is this a lot of money we're talking about? Are we talking.

[Kathryn]

So right now, individual income taxes in the current fiscal year will raise about $1.8 trillion.

[Robin]

Okay.

[Kathryn]

Okay.

[Robin]

1.8 trillion in income taxes.

[Kathryn]

We're going to get about 20 billion from estates. It's 1% of total government revenue.

[Robin]

And that's at the. And that's at the high, the high exemption level.

[Kathryn]

Yes, that's at the, the ridiculously high exemption level.

[Robin]

It could be more than 1%.

[Kathryn]

It could be, I think historically it's been like 2 to 3% or bounced around between 1 and 3.

[Robin]

Enough to pay for a child care program.

[Kathryn]

Yes. So I. So why do I know anything about the estate tax? Now, I'm not the only person who thought this. There are other people who have separately come to this proposal is that over the last 45 years, several policy proposals have emerged that dedicate the estate tax to a specific purpose.

[Robin]

Make it more popular by saying, yeah.

[Kathryn]

I mean, basically make it into a trust fund of, like, the estate tax goes into a trust trust fund. And that trust fund is dedicated to a specific type of spending.

[Robin]

Sure.

[Kathryn]

The first big proposal was to put it to Social Security. And the idea was, look, if you die with a ton of assets and wealth, a portion of that is going to go to very old people who have nothing. And the idea was that the estate tax would be directed to very poor elderly people as a way to maintain a minimum benefit and help Social Security. I thought that that was a great idea, but that it should go to children. And so I've proposed before in, like, columns and on my sub stack, and I've talked about this in various interviews, that the estate tax should be put at a level to sufficiently fund a children's trust fund, and that spending on things like child care, a child, basically cash allowance, which we did have through the expanded child tax credit, but it doesn't have to be an expanded child tax credit that we would pay for all of this through an estate tax. The problem with that proposal is that you could cover child care easy, you could cover a child allowance, probably, but you wouldn't be able to put much else in there. And the worry would be that if children had their own trust fund, it wouldn't cover everything, but it would then, like, put pressure to, like, cut Medicaid or, like, cut school spending. But if it Were if the estate tax revenue. So $20 billion a year is not enough. But it's also at a ridiculously low level. If it was moved to even 10 times what it is now, which to be clear is still 0.7% of people who die, that would be enough to fund childcare, part of the child allowance. If you put it at like 2%, which is what it was in 2001, you could probably cover most of this. I think the problem with the estate tax is that it's very hard to come to a reasonable number of what it should be.

[Robin]

You mean what level the exemption should be or the percentage of wealthy Americans.

[Kathryn]

Who should pay it either. So I, philosophically, for me the most defensible position is that the estate tax exemption should be zero and the rate should be 100%. Like we should not have any. I like there is a, there is a really strong part of me that's not an economist. This is just like pure blood American. I love democracy and I don't like inherited wealth. So we shouldn't have it. Just you die with money, too bad it goes to poor kids. You've lost. Like there's some part of me that's like this makes the most sense and it adheres the most to what would make a democracy healthy is to not have even a degree of inherited wealth. But that's not, not only is that not feasible, it's not like not feasible, it's not popular. And on some levels it's not fair. I mean if your dad dies at 40, you should be able to inherit your parents house. Yeah, right, because you're not, you're not the Bezos Jr. Out there in the world never having to have a job. So I think philosophically I come to an estate tax that I know isn't feasible or fair, but it does seem to, it appeals to like the very American part of me of like I don't like rich kids and I don't like that they get ahead. If you want inherited wealth, go become a duke of something in England. I don't care. This is America. We don't have an aristocracy and if we do, we should tax it out of existence. You can go become a landed gentry and like Sandwich or whatever goofy part of England they'll let Americans buy into. An aristocratic landed gentleman gentry line. But that said, that proposal won't work. Just want to get that out of my system.

[Robin]

Putting that aside.

[Kathryn]

Putting that very reasonable thing aside. Yeah, I mean I think the state tax has to be landed on either in terms of I mean, where an economist would say is like, Congress is like 5 billion. No, 10. No, 5. All right, 7. So that's one way to do it. The other way to do it would be to come up with some type of look at the distribution of wealth upon death and come up with, you know, basically a level that you would like to see covered by the tax, and that will lead you to an exemption level. Like, I think the estate tax is something only the top 5% of estates should pay versus the top 2% versus the top 1%. That's one way is like, you pull out the distribution of wealth at death and you decide, like, this is the number of people I want to hit. And therefore it suggests an exemption level versus you have a really, really low exemption level with a really graduated tax, which some people.

[Robin]

Yeah, which some people have suggested.

[Kathryn]

So they basically. Yeah, like, it starts at a million, but at a million, it's like 5%. This is called broadening the base. Where you would have, like, 10% of estates might pay the tax, but the effective rate would be like 3 or 4%, because most wealth isn't that high. And so it would hit more estates, but it would hit it at a lower rate, and then it would graduate up so that you would have basically fewer fights about this big money cutoff exemption. Because once you say 5 million, you basically activated a very powerful constituency. Right. Make it 10, because I've got six. You're telegraphing to the 1% of incredibly wealthy power, powerful people in the US that there's a tax that applies almost exclusively to them that we are passing. And that one way to, like, strip them of their political power is to make the tax much, much broader.

[Robin]

Right.

[Kathryn]

So that you, you know, it's like.

[Robin]

Look, it's more graduated.

[Kathryn]

It's like it's everybody who dies with more than a half a million dollars. Like, you need to, like, let. Like you're paying a higher rate, but, like, a bunch of people have to pay this. You need to let this go. Those are two strategies. I mean, honestly, I'd encourage a lot of experimentation in this. Anything would be better than the 0.07% of payers we have now. Because I think in some ways, we've come back on so many aspects of our economy to the same era that Roosevelt was in Roosevelt. One of. We have incredible inequality. We have incredible concentration of business power, market power, and the income and wealth behind it. Not to mention we need money and we have to get money. And the only way to do it is through higher Taxes. So who do you want to tax more? We had the estate tax at $1 million in 2000, and everybody was okay. We still had the accumulation of capital income, the purchasing of assets, the inheriting of assets. We had labor force participation. We had earnings, y'.

[Robin]

All. We were all businesses.

[Kathryn]

We had started. We still had businesses. We had businesses that were inherited. We had farms like, we were fine. So I think we could go back to that level. And if we went back to the 2001 level and we dedicated it to children, I think philosophically that sits better with me because it's basically saying, look, you die with a lot of money, your kids are gonna have an incredible advantage, but they're not gonna. We're gonna like, dent just a little bit to give kids who don't have rich parents a little bit more of a leg up. I think that that's a good outcome. I completely understand and respect just how scary the economy is for a lot of people. And if you were like, look, I need to build extra wealth and I need to make sure I hand something down, because the life that I was able to build for myself, my children can't build. And if it's going to be a cutthroat world where there aren't pathways to the middle class or we don't have an easy avenue to success, me and mine are going to be okay. And I will make sure of it, and I will guarantee it. And I can see that. And I can also see that for parents, the feeling that you have to buy success for your children feels like a natural reaction to how tenuous it is in your own life.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Kathryn]

And I. I get.

[Robin]

And that's where we. And that's where we are.

[Kathryn]

And that's where we are. We are at a moment of both incredible vulnerability amongst people and incredible concentration of wealth. And I think people identify more with the need to protect and to preserve and to defend whatever wealth we have, which makes them identify more with the payers of the estate tax as opposed to the beneficiaries. When I promise you.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Kathryn]

If you were listening, you are a beneficiary of some wealthy, wealthy people getting a tiny bit of debt on what they inherit. Like for your tax purposes. Because the estate tax, the income tax, and the federal government are on net progressive. You. You want the federal government to have more money. You do not want Bezos Jr. To have more money, because you are better off when the government has more money to spend on social programs like Medicaid, like school lunch.

[Robin]

So I can't Wait for us to get an email from Bezos Jr.

[Kathryn]

If Bezos Jr gets me an email, I'll be like, yo, hand over some of the cash. I'm sorry you were offended. I can make it up to you in charm, but you need to give us. That's money. Yeah, but I. I mean, so, yes, like the estate tax. The federal government uses the estate tax like it's always been. Just like, well, that's a really easy source of revenue that shouldn't harm that many people that aren't that sympathetic.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Kathryn]

And it's a way to break up wealth. But I think it has become morphed by the economic insecurity that so many people feel, and they don't see it as the solution that will benefit them. And that says more about the rest of the economy than it does about wealthy people. And y', all, I gotta tell you, it is really good for the economy to have a lot of people trying to aggressively build wealth. And it's not so good to have a lot of people who have it and are comfortable.

[Robin]

Yeah. Or who. Yeah, who just. Or who inherited and are comfortable.

[Kathryn]

Yeah. You want 10,000 people building wealth, not 10,000 people inheriting it.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Kathryn]

I mean, the idea that the estate tax would somehow discourage wealth creation. This is gonna be a gut check. Laughable to me. But inheriting money, discouraging wealth creation. Yes, that makes sense.

[Robin]

100%.

[Kathryn]

100%. And so this is one of those, like, look, every policy has a trade off. There's a cost to everything. So estate tax, we've got masses of wealth. Someone dies. It is possible. And if it's possible, we have 300 million people in this economy and more.

[Robin]

If it's possible, it'll happen.

[Kathryn]

We have basically the infinite minute set. So there is someone out there that's like, oh, man, estate tax is going up. Maybe I won't invest in that property. What's the point? He's out there. But then there are also people who are like, well, we're not going to pay any taxes on dad's house. So, like, when he dies, we'll basically get everything. So I don't need to take this extra job. Or I can, like, borrow my way to different assets because I have the ultimate golden parachute, which is inheriting money from rich people. I'm about to get it like that.

[Robin]

That.

[Kathryn]

That will also morph behavior. And then you have the trade off of the government having more or less money from people. So you just. Yeah, there could be. There. There are absolutely going to be bad consequences yeah, there's absolutely going to be bad consequences and I don't care about them. Give me this money and let me invest it in children. In this scenario, I'm the federal government, but like, I'm willing to risk, like far tip of the distribution morphs to wealth accumulation. For the top, top, even 5% wealthy people in the United States. The estate tax messes with how they build wealth. Totally willing to take it. Totally willing to take it.

[Robin]

Wait, why would the estate tax morph how the uber wealthy people?

[Kathryn]

So the accusation is basically, if you have too high of an estate tax.

[Robin]

People, oh, they'll stop earning.

[Kathryn]

They won't accumulate as much. They won't accumulate as much wealth. Look, that is the argument.

[Robin]

Yeah. Okay. You ever met a rich person who's.

[Kathryn]

Like, you know, God, I could stop here.

[Robin]

Just wish that I could not accumulate so much wealth.

[Kathryn]

Yeah. I mean, that's the economic argument. The argument that like, I shouldn't give the government my taxes when I die. That doesn't have any economic basis. The government will do much better with them than your kids will. Yeah. So that's, I mean, I'm bringing up the economic argument for the estate tax, which could morph wealth distribution at the top 5% either amongst the, you know, accumulator of wealth or, you know, either amongst Bezos or Bezos Jr. Right. Bezos and Bezos Jr. Were going to act and have different levels of wealth and treat it differently. If the estate tax is high and there could be consequences there, like even less wealth produced in the economy. Totally fine with them having a different wealth accumulation pattern. If in exchange we get to have universal early childhood, universal cash allowance for children, universal school meals, and we get to put our thumb on the scale for all those other kids who aren't Bezos Jr. I'm totally willing to take every disadvantage that comes from the lack of accumulated wealth at the top 5%. Yeah, I'll take it to invest in kids 100%.

[Robin]

Excellent. Excellent. I could talk about taxes all day. I like have many, many more things that I would bring up, but if we had a four hour podcast, it would be me talking about the people about taxes.

[Kathryn]

And for you people out there who need optimism, you should know that I have have publicly talked about dedicating the estate tax revenue to a children's trust fund in order to pay for things like child care. I have had three members of Congress staff reach out to me to talk to them about this.

[Robin]

So it's. This is not crazy. Just. Well, it is. It's pie in the sky. But it's not totally crazy.

[Kathryn]

No, it feels like a reach given how awful economic and social policy has been for the past 25 years. But, like, there are people in power who want to do this. And I have talked to them and I've briefed them. Even amongst the most powerful circles, people like this, they want to do something like this. They want to make a dent in wealth accumulation and inequality. They want to do more for children. And this idea has salience. There's an appetite for the same type of progressive early 1900s advances that we made to do them again. But they take a long time. Don't lose faith.

[Robin]

Yeah. All right, time for the last couple sections of our show. First up, executive orders.

[Kathryn]

Since Robin is the one that just drove nearly 1500 miles and had a lot of time to stew about what's wrong with the world and driving. What is your executive order?

[Robin]

Mine is that we need more rest stops on U.S. 101. I'm just going to say U.S. 101 goes from basically the Mexican border to the Canadian border, but in California, it is one of the main roads between Los Angeles and San Francisco. That is 420 miles else. There are currently two rest stops, and one of them's closed. Come on, we can do better.

[Kathryn]

Sorry, I was like, okay, rest stops. Got it. Robin. I wasn't rolling my eyes, but, like, wow, that's really bad.

[Robin]

That's really bad.

[Kathryn]

That is really bad. Okay, so this one is not that creative. Maybe my executive order.

[Robin]

Don't say yourself short.

[Kathryn]

Maybe my executive order would be to create a children's trust fund out of the revenue collected from a more robust estate tax. And that if I could really. If it's funny, if. If there was, like, one policy I could do, like, just one, I think I would pick estate tax dedicated to children investments. Because we just. We so underinvest in children. And the estate tax has a stupidly large constituency, and it shouldn't have as large of a constituency, an advocacy base as it does. And I just want to tilt the power towards kids. But that's actually something that Congress would need to do, and it's not as silly as our regular executive orders. So I have a. My backup executive order was that all lawn equipment in the US has to be electric within five years.

[Robin]

This is. Yeah. Building on your.

[Kathryn]

Building on my band of leaf blowers. I talked to someone about this, and they're like, you know, that's not really fair. And there are electric leaf blowers that are pretty quiet, so no gas Powered lawn.

[Robin]

They are. They still blow crap into my yard from my neighbor's house. But that's okay. It is better. They are quieter.

[Kathryn]

They are quieter. So I would say all lawn equipment needs to be electric or goat. That is my executive order.

[Robin]

Okay. I'm pro goat. As it has been so clear in this episode, we do not have any financial sponsors for this show just yet. So what's keeping us going is the nice emails and reviews we get from you and our spiritual sponsors. We actually do have a spiritual sponsor who gave us a donation. Gina in Hudson, New York, thank you so much for becoming a spiritual sponsor this week. My personal spiritual sponsor is friends who let you crash at their house, specifically when you're 200 miles from Los Angeles and there's been no rest area for a long time. No, seriously. To my friends who always let us stay with them. Thank you so much. Miss you guys a lot.

[Kathryn]

Amazing. I. I have a cousin spiritual sponsor, which is that my spiritual sponsor are people, you know, who have pools, also.

[Robin]

Similar spare bedrooms pools.

[Kathryn]

So important to develop a diverse friend base that includes the person with the pool because then you don't have to have one. Same with. This is a throwback to a very early spiritual sponsor. People who own a trap truck.

[Robin]

Yes.

[Kathryn]

Who will let you use the truck when you move. So you need, like you. Like you move to a city, you need to know someone who's a lawyer. You need to know someone who's a doctor. You know, someone with a pool, someone with a truck somewhere to crash around the outskirts of the city when a road trip has too dry. But people with a pool, especially in a hot place like Houston. You are my spiritual sponsor, and I'm. I'm referring specifically to the person's pool who I've gone to a lot, even in my short time here, and I'm actually heading there immediately after we wrap. And hopefully, if she's listening, she knows who she is, her pool, and her children's kindness in sharing their pool with my kids. That is my spiritual sponsor.

[Robin]

As always, we like to thank Sophie and Andy, without whom we could not. Hell, we can't barely do anything as it is.

[Kathryn]

We should ask Johnny Five to leave another review, only this time tell us, like, how much we need to call out what Andy and Sophie do. We cannot appreciate you enough in all that you do. And we snap them out.