Netflix Wants To Have It All

Summary

Slate Money — "Netflix Wants To Have It All" (Released Dec 6, 2025)

Overview

In this episode, host Felix Salmon (Bloomberg) is joined by regular co-hosts Elizabeth Spires (NYT Opinion) and Emily Peck (Axios), with special guest Nick Kulish (NYT reporter), for a lively, insightful discussion of:

• Netflix’s historic bid to acquire Warner Brothers (and what it means for media, antitrust, and consumers)
• Michael Dell’s $6 billion donation to 'Trump accounts' for children, with an in-depth exploration of philanthropy, wealth inequality, and the future of social safety nets
• The alarming, endemic practice of dollar stores and supermarkets overcharging poor consumers at checkout
• The crew’s customary “numbers round,” with a few lighthearted asides

The episode is marked by its signature blend of skepticism, wit, and deep industry knowledge as the hosts analyze big business stories with both big-picture context and on-the-ground detail.

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1. Netflix to Acquire Warner Brothers: The Endgame of Streaming Media? (02:06–13:55)

Key Points

• The hosts recount the tortured corporate history of Warner Brothers, listing infamous takeovers (AOL/Time Warner, AT&T, Zaslav’s Discovery).
• Netflix is now set to acquire the storied film and TV studio — a symbolic crowning of streaming’s dominance.
• The discussion centers on who “wins” and “loses” (Netflix, HBO, Paramount/Ellison) and whether the deal will survive antitrust scrutiny under a second Trump administration.

Major Insights & Quotes

• On the sheer scale and inevitability:
  • Felix: “[Warner Brothers is] finally reaching its natural and teleologically predetermined home, which is Netflix.” (02:06)
• On Netflix’s ambition:
  • Emily: “Netflix needs to become HBO before HBO can become Netflix ... then Netflix was like: ‘HBO’s nothing. We want to be all the things.’” (04:08)
• On antitrust hurdles:
  • Nick: “Antitrust is all about defining the market. If you can define the market broadly, then you can skate through... But also, I mean, it doesn't seem like the Trump administration has a real trust buster vibe.” (06:00)
  • Emily: “The real regulatory wildcard is not what the market is. The regulatory wildcard is just ... a very abnormal White House.” (06:35)
• On how the deal might go through:
  • Felix: “If you can get HBO Max and Netflix for the price of Netflix, that's good for consumers, right?” (08:35)
  • Nick: “…we’re trying to predict how somebody’s gonna wake up… what mood he’s gonna wake up in bed one morning…” (08:54)
• On consumer impact and the end of competition:
  • Emily: “They're buying HBO Max, which … if you don't count YouTube, … the third biggest streamer, number one and number three are combining… More and more expensive streaming until we're way past where we were with cable when this whole mess started.” (10:10)

Notable Segment Timestamps

• Historic failed Warner Bros deals: 02:10–03:30
• Netflix’s evolving ambition: 03:30–04:43
• Antitrust and Trump’s influence: 05:09–13:23
• Consumer impact: 10:10–12:31

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2. Michael Dell’s $6 Billion “Trump Account” Donation: Philanthropy, Politics, and (Broken) Social Safety Nets (15:51–39:55)

Key Points

• Michael Dell donates ~$6 billion to seed savings/investment accounts for 25 million American children, but only U.S. citizens and those in certain zip codes qualify.
• The accounts, originally intended as a non-partisan “Invest America” plan, are instantly politicized as “Trump accounts.”
• The hosts examine whether this move is practical, progressive, and/or an effective philanthropic intervention, and discuss what happens when the government privatizes social benefits.

Major Insights & Quotes

• On the magnitude and method:
  • Nick: “Michael Dell gave an amount of money roughly equal to the size of the entire Rockefeller Foundation’s endowment in increments of $250 to 25 million children…” (16:41)
  • Felix: “…if I was making a $6 billion charitable donation, I would be incredibly hard pushed to do something which has a smaller overall effect than throwing it all into index funds for 15 years and waiting for them to mature...” (21:49)
• On the accounts’ political branding:
  • Nick: “...they didn't call them Trump accounts. They called them Invest America accounts throughout the interview ... once you watch the press conference... anything called a Trump account ... is going to be immediately and, like, seriously politicized.” (18:15)
  • Emily: “They were introduced as Invest America accounts ... then House Republicans called the MAGA accounts. And then the Senate said, okay, let’s call them Trump accounts...” (20:48)
• On potential for inequity:
  • Felix: “...the people it doesn't reach are going to be mostly the poorest and obviously anyone whose kids are not US Citizens.” (26:00)
  • Elizabeth: “...the very poorest families are probably not going to take advantage because ... the understanding that you have to fill out this separate form...” (25:36)
• On motives and macro trends:
  • Emily: “...the big push is to sort of put the safety net on people…instead of giving you sick days, your employer gives you a few hundred dollars a year to pay for a sick day if you want to take it off … This is just the latest, you know, move in that direction.” (30:03)
• On the original “baby bonds” idea and how it’s shifted:
  • Nick: “...where it started ... every child born gets $1,000 in their account ... under the poverty line get $2,000 ... Now we ended up with the carnival of capitalism ...” (31:09)
• On the struggle to give away big money:
  • Nick: “In philanthropy, there's this kind of central question where rich people always say, ‘it's really hard to give away a lot of money.’... there’s this feeling that the solution...insofar as it's a problem and we can debate whether or not it's actually a problem... if you believe that it's hard to give away money at scale, then the solution ... is unconditional cash transfers, of which this is one flavor.” (33:53, 36:38)
• On cash transfers:
  • Felix: “...givewell ... re-rated GiveDirectly. ... UCTs (unconditional cash transfers) are holding up pretty well.” (37:12)
  • Emily: “…we had sort of unconditional cash transfers in 2021 when we expanded the child tax credit ... The poverty rate fell… it was pretty easy …” (38:13)

Notable Segment Timestamps

• Michael Dell's donation & naming: 16:01–19:30
• Politicization and technicalities: 18:15–21:27
• Efficacy and equity doubts: 21:49–28:47
• “Carnival of capitalism” and safety net privatization: 30:03–32:50
• Unconditional cash transfers: 36:38–39:55

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3. Dollar Stores Overcharging Poor Customers: Small Overcharges, Big Problem (42:37–47:44)

Key Points

• Dollar stores, core retailers for low-income Americans, are frequently found to charge more at the register than the sticker price.
• This practice is widespread, legally dubious, and enabled by a cocktail of corporate indifference, limited staffing, and weak oversight.
• The hosts express outrage at the normalization of such petty but harmful injustices.

Major Insights & Quotes

• Felix: “...dollar stores, both big chains, seem to endemically overcharge ... an astonishingly high percentage of the goods in their stores. And I'm sitting here going, how is this even a thing?” (42:37)
• Emily: “[After government inspections,] Dollar General stores have failed because their sticker prices are lower than the register prices ... the staff often says, there’s nothing we can do about it.” (43:36)
• Elizabeth: “What’s crazy about this is that it is directly a labor problem as much as it is, you know, the company’s not prioritizing this … when you have one staffer in the entire store ...” (44:13)
• Felix: “I don’t think that having E Ink prices is like, an expensive thing ... the reason they don’t do it is partly because they want ... to get away with mischarging.” (44:28)
• Emily: “...an effective way to cut costs for people would be to just make sure companies charge you what they say they're going to charge you.” (46:38)
• Felix: “...we’re in this kind of bizarre, laissez faire world where ... the cost of breaking the law on this kind of thing is negative, increasingly.” (47:00)

Notable Segment Timestamps

• Guardian investigation, fines, and consumer impact: 43:36–47:16

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4. Numbers Round: Music Tastes, Bob Ross, and Poop Analysis (50:27–57:13)

• Emily's number: 67 — her "listening age" according to Spotify Wrapped; Elizabeth is 61, Nick's wife is seven (due to kid playlists). (50:42–51:58)
• Felix's number: 1,044,000 — price paid at auction for Bob Ross's painting “Cabinet Sunset” (52:08–53:33)
• Elizabeth's (from Emily): $599 — the price of the Dakota, a Kohler device that scans and “analyzes” your poop; with a (dubious) family subscription. (54:19–55:01)
• Nick's number: $148 billion — Michael Dell’s remaining net worth after his $6 billion donation, illustrating how negligible the gift is relative to his fortune. “He could put about $6,000 more dollars into each of those 25 million [Trump] accounts” (55:34–56:06)

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5. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “There’s less competition, that’s not good for consumers.” — Emily (11:26)
• “No one ever competes on price. Prices only ever go up.” — Felix (11:26)
• “The regulatory wildcard is just ... a very abnormal White House.” — Emily (06:35)
• “If you believe that it's hard to give away money at scale, then the solution ... is unconditional cash transfers, of which this is one flavor.” — Felix (36:38)
• “America first! ... Okay.” — Emily jokingly, on Felix’s suggestion Dell give to the world’s poorest instead (55:59)

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6. Episode Structure & Tone

The tone is quick, skeptical, playful, and keenly analytical. Hosts display deep knowledge, sharp humor, and aren’t afraid to make political or moral judgments. They offer clarity for listeners outside the media/finance bubble, injecting memorable side commentary.

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7. Timestamps Recap

• 02:06 — Netflix buying Warner Brothers
• 05:09 — Antitrust & the Trump White House
• 10:10 — The future of streaming & consumer impact
• 15:51 — Michael Dell’s $6B donation & Trump accounts
• 25:36 — Who benefits and administrative costs
• 31:09 — From baby bonds to “carnival of capitalism”
• 36:38 — Unconditional cash as a philanthropic trend
• 42:37 — Dollar stores’ overcharges
• 50:27 — Numbers round (Spotify age, Bob Ross, poop analytics)

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For anyone who missed the episode:

This installment covers three of the biggest tectonic shifts in American business, philanthropy, and daily life right now — and tells you both what’s happening and how to think critically about it. Highly recommended for anyone interested in streaming media, social policy, or the sneaky ways the retail system can nickel-and-dime its most vulnerable customers.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, and welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Bloomberg. I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of the opinion side of the New York Times. Hello, I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios.

[B]

Hi.

[A]

And we have a super special guest today, the one and only Nick Kulish from the new news side of the New York Times.

[B]

Thrilled to be here.

[A]

Nick, introduce yourself. Who are you?

[B]

Oh, I didn't know I was gonna introduce myself. My name is Nicholas Kulish. I'm a reporter with the New York Times. I have been there now for 20 years and I have been writing a lot recently about philanthropy.

[A]

20 years, wow. Now you're really making me feel old. Nick and I have some past history which if you are a Slate plus subscriber, you will learn a little bit about because we have a Slate plus segment on kids movies, which is kind of interest. You get to learn what Nick and I got up to, what, 27 years ago. We do have a main show before that, though. And we of course are going to talk about just movies in general and film and tv because Netflix is buying Warner Brothers. So we're going to talk about that. We are, of course going to talk about The Michael Dell $6 billion donation to kids with American Passports. We are going to talk about dollar stores and whether and why and how they overcharge for goods. It' coming up. It's a fun one this week. Welcome to Sleep Money.

[C]

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[A]

This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. Fun fact, I never leave home without my Apple Card. I mean, would you want to miss out on daily cash back on everyday purchases subject to credit approval? Apple card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and [e-mail] so obviously the big business and finance news of the week is that Netflix is buying Warner Brothers, which has had various different suitors and owners over the years. We all remember when AOL bought Time Warner, which included Warner Brothers, and that was one of the most disastrous M and A transactions of all time. A lot of us will remember when AT&T bought Warner Brothers because reasons. And I remember having Ed Lee on this show multiple times going, can you explain this to me? It doesn't make any sense to me. And he would talk about strategy and I would still not understand it. And eventually that fell apart AT and T gave up, basically sold it off for scrap to David Zaslav who had like some also ran group of cable TV stations, became this company called Warner Brothers. Discovery still failed and now it is finally reaching its natural and teleologically predetermined home, which is Netflix. That seems to be the news. Are we happy about this or we not happy about this?

[C]

I think this is the most fun to talk about business news that has hit us in a long, long time because there are so many amazing components to it. First, there's the storied history that you've just laid out of like the broken deals hall of fame or like the worst bloated, awfulest deals ever. Then there's like, there's like the comeback story or like the David Goliath back and forth of Netflix and HBO since 2010. I was looking at a quote from Jeff Buches. Does anyone remember?

[A]

Yeah, he was like the Warner Brothers guy.

[C]

He said I could look it up.

[A]

I shared something about the Albanian army.

[C]

He said, yeah, Netflix taking over HBO would be. Or conquering Hollywood would be like the Albanian army conquering the United States or something like that. Do you need the exact quote?

[A]

We do not need the example. He definitely said Albanian army. Even as. As the stated ambition of Netflix at the time was Netflix needs to become HBO before HBO can become Netflix. Which then Netflix was like hbo, we're much bigger than hbo. We want to become like an entire movie studio. And in fact we're now bigger than Warner Brothers.

[C]

Correct. So yes. So then after he said that in 2010, 2013, Sarandos or 2012, Ted Sarandos, who's now the co CEO, so says we wanna be HBO. Then a few years later he says, actually HBO is nothing. We wanna be all the things. And so now of course Netflix has so much money, so much power, they're the number one streamer. They've also put out Oscar winning movies. There's no doubt here who is on top.

[A]

Well, I mean, so we are gonna talk about asterisks, we are gonna talk about antitrust and I'm sure that Netflix is going to be spending every minute of every day until this deal receives antitrust approval saying that they are not the number one streamer and that the number one streamer is YouTube and that they are competing aggressively with YouTube and they need this kind of scale to compete with YouTube. But yeah, since we were on the subject. Nick, I know you are the antitrust expert. Suddenly all of a sudden, I covered.

[B]

Antitrust for the Wall Street Journal.

[A]

Exactly. So, like.

A lot of people will.

Kind of take one look at it and say, on its face this looks anti competitive. But my feeling is it's going to go through.

[B]

Yeah, I think it probably will as well. For the reason that you said, like, antitrust is all about defining the market. And if you can define the market broadly, then you can skate through. And if you define it really narrowly, then you get busted. But also, I mean, it doesn't seem like the Trump administration has, you know, a real trust buster vibe. And I know they're not, I know they're not.

[D]

Netflix happen to donate anything to the Trump Ballroom?

[A]

They probably will now.

[B]

They will. My biggest question coming in was, does this mean we don't have to have Rush Hour 4?

[A]

Well, no. I mean, that's going to be Amazon, right? Please.

[C]

No. So this is the, the wild card, I think is Larry Ellison, Paramount, the Rush Hour four angle. Ellison, who now has Paramount and who is like, very close to the Trump administration, obviously wanted to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. And apparently sources are saying, I don't know, not my sources, that they're upset. And like, as we were getting on the chat today, there was, you know, some anonymous tweet of like, trump officials are looking closely at this deal. I feel like it's true. Everything Nick said is totally true about narrowly drawing the competitive landscape or whatever. But antitrust, everything is. We're living in this Trump world, this Trump era now. So the real regulatory wildcard is not like, what the market is. The regulatory wildcard is just we have this, like, very abnormal White House. And they can do all kinds of shenanigans here if they want to.

[A]

When Ellison bought Paramount, the big sticking point that the Trumps, the Trumpers got caught up on was CBS News. And they wound up paying him, like, a huge amount of money to make that sticking point go away. Paying Trump, to be precise. And a bunch of CBS News people, like, quit in, you know, protest. But here there's no, like, CNN is not part of this deal. CNN is part of the cable channels that are getting spun off from Warner Brothers Discovery before they buy Warner Brothers. So I think the thing that Trump really cares about is CNN more than he cares about movie studios. And then the other thing is that the sort of GOP take on antitrust as opposed to the sort of Lina Khan hipster antitrust is we are going to look for consumer harms if this is bad for consumers, then maybe it's anti competitive, but if it's good for consumers, then we'll let it go through and on its face. If you can get.

HBO Max and Netflix for the price of Netflix, that's good for consumers, right?

[D]

No, I think this gives Trump administration too much credit for sticking to the normal parameters of antitrust. And I wonder how much of this is really going to be driven by the fact that he feels very aligned with David Ellison.

[B]

Well, Comcast was the deal that he was most against. Right. He didn't want to see. He didn't want to see CNN and ms, you know, falling into the same hands. But yeah, I mean, we're trying to predict how somebody's gonna wake up, you know, what mood he's gonna wake up in bed one morning and whether he's gonna, you know, tweet out that he doesn't like the deal or not.

[A]

So the other thing is, I don't think that David Ellison has much sway in the White House. I think Larry Ellison has sway in the White House. And so we would need David to persuade his dad to persuade Trump. And that's just like one extra degree of separation, which I think what happened, by all accounts, all of between David Ellison and David Zaslav, who's selling Warner Brothers, that they got into a big fight over south park about a year ago and they don't really trust each other. And Ellison wanted to buy Warner Brothers, but Zaslav was like, fuck you, and eventually just said, fuck you. I'm gonna go with Netflix instead. Whether Ellison actually bid more than Netflix will probably get leaked at some point. But I suspect that ultimately, for all that, Larry Ellison is like the second richest person in the world, Netflix has more money to do this kind of deal than, you know, Ellison Feast.

[C]

Felix, to your question about is this good or bad for consumers? I mean, the price of Netflix has gone up. I didn't look up the numbers before we hopped on, but I think two, it's up double or threefold over the past few years. It's really expensive now there, the number one pay well. We could fight over the YouTube point. I don't want to. They're really big. They are a Goliath to these many Davids who are fussing about and fighting. They're buying HBO Max, which is, if you don't count YouTube, I believe the third biggest streamer, number one and number three are combining. Netflix said today that they're going to keep HBO Max, whatever they'll call it next and we know it's had many names. They're going to keep it separate for now, which means there's no like two for the price of one situation yet. Maybe that comes. I was hoping, but Netflix will have all these amazing. They'll have Sopranos, they'll have Sex and the City, they'll have Succession people, they'll have succession like Game of Thrones. Like they're gonna charge more. That is the future for consumers. More and more expensive streaming until we're way past where we were with cable when this whole mess started. So I don't think it's good for. There's less competition that's not good for consumers.

[A]

I just don't see this as an area where anyone ever competes on price. Like prices only ever go up. No one's like, use my streamer because it's cheaper. Netflix has tried a little bit with its ad supported tier and I guess Amazon is kind of trying. But ultimately these things are sold on the breadth of offerings rather than we are cheap.

[D]

Maybe. But I think, you know, we're in a situation now in an economy where we're seeing consumer spending pull back and you know, that could happen indefinitely. So maybe in the long run that's true. But I do think that people will pull back on things like subscriptions that are not. They don't consider pure necessities when the economy's doing badly.

[A]

I think that's the vibe. I mean, last consumer spending figures I saw were pretty healthy.

[B]

But it is stratifying where you have these free services, right, Like Tubi and.

[A]

Roku, you know, and just the standard watch YouTube where you watch, you know, Mr.

[B]

Beast or whatever versus now. Yeah, you'll have the super, super premium HBO Max, Netflix.

[A]

I agree with Nick. I think it's going to go through. I don't think the Trump administration really has any antitrust appetite against anyone. They made a bunch of anti big tech noises when they were campaigning and those noises seem to have died down a bit. Like Trump is very transactional. And so there is definitely a world in which, you know, he's going to be like, take a look at this deal and go, if you want, if you have 82 billion reasons why you want Warner Brothers, you can give me like 1 billion somehow to, you know, buy another plane for my presidential library or whatever. But like, you know, he, if he tries to get anything out of it, it's gonna be like some kind of grift rather than just stopping it because he has some noble reason why, you know, he feels sorry for David Ellison. Who, to be clear, absolutely no one feels sorry for David Ellison.

[C]

He's probably never watched Netflix. I would bet the President. It's entirely possible he hasn't seen House of Cards. Nothing. He's just out there watching cable news.

[A]

He's really, he's. He totally watches news shows. He has such a. You know, your grandpa stuck in front of Fox News. That's all he.

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[C]

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[A]

We should also, because we have Nick Coolish on. Talk about the other billionaire in the White House, Michael Dell. Who?

[B]

Nick, Weren't we gonna say that Ted Sarandos is gonna make a big donation to the Trump administration?

[A]

Exactly. So I mean this is, I was, I was talking to my colleague John Others about this at Bloomberg and he was like the thing I don't get About Michael Dell is if you're gonna make a $6 billion donation to anything, the first thing you do when you make a $6 billion donation to anything is you put your name on it. And when Michael Dell set up his computer company, he called it Dell. And now he has an investment bank, which is his initials. But what's he doing with the $6 billion? He's naming it after Trump. But anyway, Nick, give us what happened and why is it interesting?

[B]

Well, Michael Dell gave an amount of money roughly equal to the size of the entire Rockefeller Foundation's endowment in increments of $250 to 25 million children, which is, I mean, just on its face is. Is just really, really wild as a donation, because we talk about the biggest donations of all time, and it's usually, bill gates gave $20 billion to the gates Foundation. You know, it's just like moving money from column A to column B. But, like, if you think of, like, a direct donation, meaning the money goes, you know, from the billionaire to the recipient, I think this is. I think this is the biggest one.

[A]

I mean, I was thinking about this. I would say that the Buffett donations to the Gates foundation come close because they are not going into the endowment. They are. They were all designed to pass through within a year.

[B]

Within a year. But as a single. But, yeah, but then that's being parceled out to, like, little different groups. I mean, listen, I mean, Buffett has obviously. Warren Buffett has obviously given away more money, more totally more generously than Michael Dell. Mackenzie Scott has given away more money total than Michael Dell.

[A]

But it is an absolutely massive donation. The other thing that it reminds me of, because it's so political, because it's going to this insanely politicized entity. And since we're talking about AOL Time Warner, it reminds me of Ted Turner giving a billion dollars to the UN a million years ago. It's that kind of donation. It's super political. Right.

[B]

Well, I mean, it's interesting. So I talked to Michael and Susan Dell about this, and I noticed something which was that they didn't call. They never called them Trump accounts. They called them Invest America accounts throughout the interview. Because this, I. They've been pursuing this idea since 2021. And they kept saying, we, we took this to the Biden administration. You know, we talked to Cory Booker, you know, about this, and Ro Khanna, and like, to them this was like a good idea. Regard administration. Now, once you watch the press conference at the White House, you can sort of see how Anything called a Trump account that's happening under the Trump administration is going to be immediately and, like, seriously politicized. But I think they saw it a different way.

[A]

In order to open up one of these accounts and, you know, if you are a kid who's eligible for one of these accounts, your parent needs to fill out a form when they're filing their taxes, and that form is going to be called form 4547.

[B]

Why those numbers?

[A]

Why those numbers? It's just completely random. Like, obviously, Trump has done an incredibly good job of making this all about him, even if the Delfts didn't particularly want him to. And they were perfectly happy to trek to the White House and do the press conference at the White House, you know, and give him all of that positive publicity at the same time.

[C]

It's interesting. I wrote a story late last week. I was speaking to the Republican lobbyist Matt Lira, who's behind the push to get these, the big beautiful bill, the Trump accounts, you know, and they were originally called Invest America accounts when they were pitched in the Biden era. And then they up until the last minute with the bill, and then they changed it to Trump accounts for obvious reasons. But he was saying that there's this now, this, like there was before this week a shift where companies, lawyers, policy people are trying to call the accounts 530A accounts because that's the section of the bill that they're in, 530A. And, you know, and everyone I talked to was like, we just, we don't want them to be politicized. We want everyone to put money in these things. If they're Republic, like, they don't want, like, Democrat parents filling out their taxes and they see the word Trump account and they're like, fuck this. Because they would actually miss out on money and Wall street would miss out on all those dollars. Right? So no one actually wants them in the long run to be politicized. And I don't think, honestly, I know everyone likes to say things about the President and the White House and how transactional it is, but I think it's fine that they're called Trump accounts. We have Obamacare like it, things become politicized, but if there's pickup, if there's money that Americans can get somehow, like, probably everything will work itself out.

[B]

And they were actually briefly called MAGA accounts. So they were introduced as Invest America accounts by Senator Cruz. Then House Republicans called the MAGA accounts. And then the Senate said, okay, well, maybe we'll just call Them Trump accounts, look, they're called Roth ira. Like, it's, you know, this is like a. This is. Okay, we can do this. But, yeah, there was a brief moment. Senator Roth, I looked it up. There was a Senator Roth who was involved in that. The bigger question is whether every other program, 529 college savings accounts, whether this is gonna become a thing where rich people pour tons of money into it and poor people miss the boat. And sadly, probably.

[A]

So, Nick, you've talked to the Dells about this. You've looked into it more than I have. To me, and I am very willing to hear you tell me that I'm wrong about this. But to me, if I was making a $6 billion charitable donation.

I would be incredibly hard pushed to do something which has a smaller overall effect than throwing it all into index funds for 15 years and waiting for them to mature and then asking people to pay taxes on it when it does. And like giving people money in a kind of technical sense, but not in a sense of them being able to spend it. And then, you know, at the end of 15 years, they have 500 bucks which will buy you a cup of coffee at that point. It strikes me as a peculiarly small bore intervention with an enormous amount of money. Where normally you would expect someone spending this amount of money to really. There will have been loads of like, RCTs. It would be super evidence based. There would be massive returns on investment, and there's very little of that. The best I can find is basically, well, if you open up these accounts for kids, then they're more likely to go to college, which is not nothing, but like, come on, for $6 billion, you could save millions of lives.

[D]

Well, it seems like, you know, part of the logic is that they, they really are betting on the idea that other people are going to come behind them and put more money into these accounts. But I don't really understand how this works. Like, if you write a giant check to the government, do you get tax benefits or anything from that? What's the incentive for other, you know, bajillionaires to do this?

[B]

They're going to write the regs so that this is. This is a charitable donation.

[A]

Yeah, but also, Elizabeth, like, the overwhelming majority of the money they are hoping will end up in these accounts is not philanthropic capital and it's not government capital. It's capital coming from grandparents and friends and parents and employers. And the idea is you open up one of these accounts and then your employer will throw $1,000 a year into it. And that kind of thing. And that's how they grow. It's not like we're going to find another few billionaires to throw in more money at $100 a pop.

[B]

I was joking to my editor this morning that they should be called Rorschach accounts because like, if you ask progressives, they're like, we got the account started and now, you know, in a future Democratic Congress we'll be able to seed them with way more money. And this is like, this was just like the foot in the door to like create the kinds of baby bonds that progressive economists have advocated for. And Scott Besant made comments saying that this was a backdoor to abolish Social Security, although he walked those back and said it was additive to Social Security. But he, at a prate BART event he said that. And then the Dells are like, yeah, all of my friends have said they're going to kick in a few billion too. So it's $250 now, but it's going to be $5,000 once every. Once the cavalry arrives and once the parents chip in and everything. So it's like everybody, everybody has a bold vision for these accounts and they'll probably just end up like 529, which is, you know, rich people use them to build wealth tax free.

[A]

What's your expectation, Nick, for take up of these things? You know, obviously the idea here is that what is it, 85% of kids, like every single kid in the zip code where the median income is less than 150,000 is going to be eligible with a massive asterisk, by the way, saying that kid has to be a U.S. citizen. If you're not a U.S. citizen, you're not eligible. Which is going to create all manner of disparities. But to its credit, I mean, I will say this, it is going to make it interesting to do natural experiments on this. In 10 years there will be lots of neighborhoods whereby of kids don't have them and a bunch of kids do have them. And you'll be able to see whether or not they actually made that much of a difference. But it is still wild to me that that is still a completely open question and that we are throwing this much money at a program which is so unproven.

[D]

Also the thing is there's a certain amount of administrative burden here where the very poorest families are probably not going to take advantage of it because they just the understanding that you have to fill out this separate form, all this stuff that just makes it a little bit more difficult. I think is going to mean that it's mostly going to fund middle class people.

[A]

I think mostly is maybe stretching it, depending on how you define middle class. But yes, I think the people. It's not going to reach everyone and the people it doesn't reach are going to be mostly the poorest and obviously anyone whose kids are not US Citizens. I do wonder about that. Is there a world, Nick, where like, a Democratic administration can come in and, like, fix that?

[B]

I mean, I mean, I think anything is possible that way. It's all a matter of, like, how easy you make it or how automatic you make it for people to enroll. I think, you know, so many different kinds of studies show if you wait for people to opt in or make it hard for them to opt in, then it kind of never works out. And if you, if you kick it off and get it started, you know, and that's. And that's. I think Michael Dell deserves some credit here. Even if you don't like the name Trump accounts, even if you don't, you know, agree with the administration. Like, he's saying, I'm kicking off an amount of money that will try to grab the attention of, you know, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people and, and get them interested and get them working on these accounts. And like, you know, a $6.3 billion bet is like, a pretty, pretty hefty bet.

[C]

A couple of things. I was talking to an equal. Neil Mahoney is an economist at Stanford, and he was talking about how, like, putting money seeding just kind of like we said earlier, ceding a little bit of money into these accounts really incentivizes people to open them up. And once they open them up, it becomes like this kind of sticky thing that maybe snowballs and grows to your question of, like, how many people are gonna actually do this or whatever. So, okay, but then I was thinking about 401ks and how they have become huge. I don't need to give you any more information on that. We all know this, but they were just like an afterthought thrown into a bill that these accounts were created. But then employers were like, hang on, pensions are really expensive. This 401k thing looks interesting. They had a huge incentive to offload pensions into 401ks and, like, build out that whole world. And then like, obviously Wall street, that the whole industry had an incentive also to make 401ks huge. So there was, like, a lot of momentum coming from that. But with these accounts, I'm like, what's the momentum? It's not the same thing. Like employers and employees don't care like that much. Like it's a nice add on benefit. But it's not like workers are clamoring for this.

[A]

Nick, I need to ask you, I think the really important question here, and I genuinely don't know the answer, is the reason 401ks took off is because you put pre tax money into them rather than post tax money. If I'm, I'm pretty sure, just correct me if I'm wrong here, but if I want to give my niece 300 bucks for her Trump account, that's post tax money. So like at that point, the incentive that you see with the 401ks is just not there.

[C]

But employers, if you're getting your money for your Trump account through your company that comes in pre tax up to 2,500 a year, they can do the same. Instead of giving you, they can give you x to your 401k and then y to your Trump account for your kid or for yourself if you're a kid. You know, if you're 17 and you work some job and for some reason they want to give you that money.

[B]

And this is where it gets a little weird in touting how they're going to close the wealth gap because companies like Microsoft and Nvidia have said that they're going to donate to their employees children which.

[C]

Oh, that'll do it. Yeah, those poor Microsoft and Nvidia employees are really struggling.

[A]

Well no, the employees are working very hard, Emily. And their kids don't see their parents. But at least the kids will now have 500 bucks on top of the 50 million that their parents have.

[C]

That their parents have.

[B]

And then at the White House press conference, Ted Cruz said that a single mother earning a living waiting tables could put $5,000 a year into their child's. Sorry, Emily, I wasn't actually trying to create a real spit.

[A]

Take actual spit tick.

[B]

This is true.

And then that that child would have. It was something like $700,000 when they were 25 or 30 or something.

[C]

It's so easy.

[D]

Yeah, you went to Harvard.

[C]

I wrote about this a little too this week. There's just this like big push for the past decades to sort of put the safety net on people, on individuals to save for their retirement, to save for their healthcare. Earlier this year I wrote about there's this Republican effort mostly now to do what they call portable benefits, which is like instead of giving you sick days or sick time, your employer gives you a few hundred dollars a year to Pay for a sick day if you want to take it off and you put it in a savings account. And they call those portable benefits. And now we're seeing with the fight over Obamacare subsidies, you know, there's a lot of talk of healthcare savings accounts which already exist, but they're like, we'll make them even better. And I feel like this is just like the latest, you know, move in that direction. And like you said, Nick, like to the point where there has been some chatter from the Treasury Secretary about making these a substitute for Social Security.

[A]

So the question then arises, if this is all part of this kind of libertarian privatization of the welfare state, how would they ever progressive idea to begin with?

[B]

Well, I've actually been talking to the people who came up, well, talking in one case and emailing the other because he had a painful oral surgery apparently. But these two economists, one at Duke and one at the New School here in New York, you know, we're looking at the wealth gap and specifically the black white wealth divide kind of in the wake of the Great Recession and sort of as the understanding shifted from income inequality to wealth inequality and how important that was. And so they came up with they're sometimes they're called child savings account. Connecticut has a version of this where every child who I think is, you know, Medicaid born gets a couple of thousand dollars in an account. And so the version that they helped Cory Booker put together is every child born gets $1,000 in their account, like the Trump version for the next four years. But then children under the poverty line get $2,000 a year until they turn 18. Children at twice the poverty line get. It was like 1500, three times the poverty line, 1000. And then once you're at five times the poverty line, you don't get anything. So it was incredibly progressive and it was intended to with compounding and so on, mean that poor children as defined by the federal poverty line would have like $50,000 when they graduated from high school. You know, middle class kids would have 20 grand to help supplement, you know, going to college or whatever. And rich kids would have this account that their parents could donate to, you know, tax free. So that that's like sort of where in the old meme sense, you know, where it started where we are like that's. And we ended up with the carnival of capitalism with all.

[D]

And maybe we can get all Social Security with this. That's the.

[B]

Yes. Yeah.

[A]

Did you ask the delves about that? Did you ask if they were worried that this was going to Threaten Social Security.

[B]

It hadn't come up yet. For.

[C]

Ask them.

[B]

I didn't cross.

[A]

Next time you talk to them. Hold on, hold on.

[B]

Let me text him. Give me a second.

[C]

Dash it off, quick.

[B]

When I first talked to them, it wasn't entirely clear about the whole zip code thing. And so I said, you know, people are going to say, why didn't you put some kind of income restriction on this? You know, somebody's going to say, why are Elon Musk's kids eligible for this?

[A]

I think they are. I think South Texas is where he lives and got a low median income.

[B]

Well, Michael Dell said, I saw Elon last week, and his kids are not in one of the zip codes.

[C]

His kids will be eligible for the thousand.

[B]

The ones that keep on getting them born. Yes.

[A]

I mean, but yeah, when you like the going rate. We've talked about this for an Elon Musk baby Mama is 30 million per kid. So that's not enough to get by. You need that extra thousand.

[B]

But this, I think, does get to a point because there's. In philanthropy, there's this kind of central question where rich people always say, it's really hard to give away a lot of money. Well, and they're kind of right, because if you give to, like, a group and then they embezzle it or they tweet crazy things like you. You, like, take the hit. So they have all this kind of due diligence and stuff. And. But there's like this question of, oh, sure, rich people, it's so hard to give away money. You know, and the rich people are like, no, I swear, it really is. It's really hard. And so this kind of raises that question. And Elon Musk is the perfect example, because Elon Musk once upon a time signed the giving pledge, set up a real foundation with all of the federal requirements, and it has just gone so grown and is now one of the. Has like $14 billion or whatever. Teddy Schleifer and David Fahrenholt reported, like, huge amount of money, and he could say, oh, I'm friends with Michael Dell. This is a great idea. It goes straight to the kids. It's capitalist because it's invested in this s and P500.

[A]

And it's Natalist. Right. Which is very Musk coded.

[B]

Right, Exactly. So he could give that 14 billion and be on the Dell model. That's what, like more than twice as much. So then every kid in America has $750. So it's like, that's what the Dells are hoping is going to happen.

[D]

How do we shame these people into doing this?

[A]

Well, Elon is unshameable. We know that.

[B]

Like, you just wait for their mergers to go before the exact FTC or the Justice Department.

[C]

I was thinking about that. They say it's so hard to give away money. At the same time, they're like doing everything they can to work the tax system so they pay less taxes. It's like, you know, it's an easy way to give money. Like just fricking pay your taxes. Like, stop fighting it.

[A]

There is an interesting extra twist to.

[C]

This about, like, I don't know anything about the Dells.

[A]

No, no. But then in terms of the hard to give away money thing, you know, and this goes back to what Nick was saying at the beginning about like really big donations to a single recipient. It's hard to think of anything on this scale because it is not easy to give $6 billion for a single recipient without making that recipient a multibillionaire. You know, at which point they're part of the problem because as we all know, every billionaire is a policy failure anyway. There is this feeling that the solution to this problem, insofar as it's a problem and we can debate whether or not it's actually a problem, but if you believe that it's hard to give away money at scale, then the solution to the problem is unconditional cash transfers, of which this is one flavor. It's not my favorite flavor at all because it's going to kids in the richest country in the world and they have to be US citizens and they're already very privileged for that reason. And it goes to, you know, untouchable savings rather than money you can spend. And there's a whole bunch of reason why if you're doing ucts, like, you wouldn't do it this way, but it does kind of help places like givedirectly sort of say, well, yeah, like you can't say that giving away money is hard because giving away money is easy once you sign on to ucts. And one thing I will just mention, because I think it's worth mentioning for the Slate Money audience is that at the end of last year, kind of quietly givewell, which does a very good job of judging charities, re rated givedirectly. And they basically said givedirectly was actually after the rerating, four times more effective than they had previously thought. UCTs are holding up pretty well these days.

[B]

Well, and what's really interesting is how it's kind of this convergence of, you know, very progressive people who love them because they're, you know, anti colonial and they're like, giving back the power to the people, you know, letting the people decide what they want. You know, very conservative people like them because they don't trust the progressive leaning staffs at foundations. And they all worry that their money is going to turn into the Ford foundation, where, you know, a conservative donor ends up with really liberal endowment. And then the technocratic, you know, effective altruist types like it, too. So it's like all these people are kind of moving away from that, like Bloomberg Gates, you know, super, super. You have to do it exactly the way I tell you to model and toward, like here, just like, push in the chips and let the people decide what to do with them.

[C]

Let me also point out, as I guess the resident liberal today or in this segment. Anyway, sorry, Elizabeth. Like, we had sort of unconditional cash transfers in 2021 when we expanded the child tax credit. And families around the country got, like, real money every month, hundreds of dollars. And the poverty rate fell, like, and it wasn't hard. It wasn't a hard thing to pull off. It was pretty easy, actually, for the. I mean, not politically, but as a mechanism, it was pretty swift and effective. And there are easy ways to do that. Again, if instead of complaining that it's hard to pay, you know, to do philanthropy, you just again, pay your taxes.

[A]

And we do know that Trump loves them. He's still banging on about how everyone's gonna get $2,000. Somehow, I'm not holding my breath.

[C]

But these were targeted payments to families.

[A]

Unconditional does not mean untargeted. You can target them.

[D]

But also, the Trump administration has also complained about pandemic checks, even though those had a similar effect. They reduced property by 17%.

[A]

Didn't the Trump administration send out the.

[D]

First tranche of pandemic checks and then they turned around? Well, they. After, when inflation started going up, they found a way to kind of pin it on Biden and pretend that they were not responsible for any of it.

[B]

They did Operation Warp Speed, too.

[C]

Yeah, but I'm just saying the most effective mechanism isn't give directly. The most effective mechanism is the federal government. It pains me to say it, and people don't like to hear it, but it's just true.

[A]

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Let's move on, because since we're talking about the plate of poor people, here's a little stupid, dumb, illegal tax that poor people pay that they shouldn't, which is they live in food deserts and they don't have a lot of choice as to where to shop. And the one thing they are surrounded by is dollar stores. And they go into the dollar stores, and the dollar store is like, here, have a skillet for $5. And they're like, great, I'll buy a skillet for $5. And they take it to the checkout, and it rings up at like $7.95. And the dollar stores, both big chains, seem to endemically overcharge or rather charge more than the sticker price for an astonishingly high percentage of the goods in their stores. And I'm sitting here going, how is this even a thing? Like, my. I remember when I told Emily this, she's like, what? Really?

[C]

But then I read the Guardian piece, and I was like, oh, my God. It was like, what did they say? 4300 government inspections in 23 states. The dollar stores have. Have Dollar General stores have failed because their sticker prices are lower than the register prices. And then the customers that catch it, they'll complain. And the staff often says, there's nothing we can do about it. And they won't take a return, which I thought was. Was astonishing.

[A]

My favorite one was like, oh, you should have told us before you left the door. But since you found out after you left the door, we can't do anything about it. Like what? Yes, you can say what?

[C]

Say who?

[D]

What's crazy about this is that it is directly a labor problem as much as it is, you know, the company's not prioritizing this because when you have one staffer in the entire store and they change prices as frequently as they do, there's just no way to relabel everything and then make sure it's.

[A]

Elizabeth. Yes, there is. It's the thing that Target and everyone else does, which is just have like. Like E Ink prices rather than paper prices.

[D]

I think you. Well, but, Felix, the whole dollar store shtick is that they don't have the scale of technology and they're not willing to invest that way.

[A]

I don't think that having E Ink prices is, like, an expensive thing that they can't afford. Like, that is now cheap. The reason they don't do it is because partly because they want to have, like, big flashing signs saying, like, three for $5, and partly because I think they want to get away with misjudging.

[C]

Also interesting, producer Jessamine included a piece in our prep about Kroger from Consumer Reports, which was an excellent story. And Kroger also has a similar problem that's been called out by attorneys general around the country. And consumers have complained about where in their more understaffed supermarkets, they don't change the prices frequently enough and people are getting overcharged quite often.

[A]

And they have not.

[C]

So I wonder, like, how many other. I bet it's not just dollar stores. I bet it's not just Kroger. I bet it's more than that.

[B]

I have been noticing this at my grocery store in Brooklyn recently, and I was like, wow, this just suddenly keeps happening a lot. And when I read this article, I thought, oh, tactic, not just mistake. I thought the Guardian piece was amazing and stunning.

[A]

And the fines are so small compared to the excess profits. And it's all done on a state by state basis. And there are states where they don't even do the inspections. There are states where they're like, well, it's on the consumers to care about this. And it's not.

[C]

Yeah. And pricing is so much more dynamic now, which we've talked about so many times on the podcast before. But we usually talk about it as an online issue, like with Amazon. If you subscribe to paper towels at $10 a pack, you don't even notice. And I don't think they always tell you when the paper towel pack goes up, you know, things are just changing all the time. But with this, it's brick and mortar. And you would have thought it would be more. It would be less susceptible to that kind of problem.

[A]

Yeah, it even happens. It's happened to me with Uber, you know, where they're like this, this trip is going to cost $37. And then you do the trip and then you get billed and then they're like, oh, sorry, it went up to $57. And you're like, what?

[C]

Sorry? Yeah, it seems bad. And I don't know, everyone's talking about affordability these days. And we know that inflation doesn't. We don't want it to go negative or anything like that. But it seems like an effective way to cut costs for people would be to just make sure companies charge you what they say they're going to charge you. Like that seems pretty much like a good idea. If only there were, like, agencies to.

[A]

And it is the law. I mean, they are legally obliged to do that. But like, I again, like, we're in this kind of bizarre, laissez faire world where it seems that the cost of breaking the law on this kind of thing is negative increasingly.

[C]

So, not that we like to give advice But I think the advice here is like keep your eye on the scanner and like eagle eye, like watch everything at the store. You can't just like look at your phone while they're ringing you up.

[A]

But they had like if you read the stories they have all of these people who do that and they eagle eye it and they're like wait, no that's not the price on the shelf.

[C]

And that don't pay.

[A]

And the cashier is just like eh, nothing I can do. They will not give you that price.

[D]

Right.

[A]

The only choice you have is not to buy the thing but like if the dollar store is the only choice in town, that's no choice at all.

[C]

Then I guess what you need to do is steal at the self checkout. Does dollar store have self checkout?

Like just don't scan it, just put it in the bag.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

They can implement self checkout and then have no employees.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

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Guys, we should have a numbers round. Emily, do you have a number?

[C]

Yeah. Well, at first I had a number I prepared and it involved a toilet. Then I was like, no, I'm not going to do that number. I can talk about it. Or maybe Elizabeth has it as hers. My number is 67. That's right.

[A]

Oh, no, not six. Seven.

Again.

[D]

Not the same number.

[C]

But not the same. Yes, it's 67. Because that is, according to Spotify, wrapped my listening age.

[A]

No.

[B]

What?

[C]

I am old. I'm old.

[D]

Wow.

[A]

I was 47. I feel so much younger than you now.

[C]

I've seen so many young people that are old that I feel almost like I'm young because I got the old number and you can't convince me otherwise.

[A]

Wait, Elizabeth, are you 67 as well?

[D]

No, but this was my number idea. I'm 61, though. Oh, and IRL, I'm 48.

[B]

So my wife is losing her mind because Spotify thinks she's seven.

[C]

Seven years old.

[D]

Is there a lot of baby shark on your playlist?

[B]

She. It's a little. Oh, yeah, no, she got this. It was like, remember the day Spotify said to her the other day, Remember the day when you listen to this My Little Pony song?

She was screenshotting it and sending it to people. And the upshot is that I am now being forced to take all the, like, child playlists onto my account to run.

[C]

There was a meme going around that was like every parent with their Spotify wrapped today. And it was that scene from Titanic where the guy goes, I have a child.

[D]

I have a child.

[B]

So true.

[A]

Elizabeth, do you have a spare number?

[D]

I'm operating on less than four hours of sleep.

[C]

I'm so sorry. Do you want the 599 number that I also prepared? I can send it to you.

[D]

Sure.

[A]

While Emily is back channeling with Elizabeth, I will reveal my number, which is 1,044,000. And that is the price at auction paid for a painting called Cabinet Sunset by. We've talked about him before, Bob Ross.

And. And this was not one of the paintings that we talked about before. The three paintings that sold on November 11, they sold for between 114 and 318,000 each, which is still an insane amount of Money to pay for a terrible painting. And that all went to something called American Public Television. Whereas the Cabinet Sunset, which is also a terrible painting, went to something called the Public Media Bridge Fund. So obviously, like, people care about which flavor of public TV charity they want to support. Because I can guarantee you that no one's paying this because they love the paintings so much. Or maybe they are. Maybe people just have really bad choices.

[C]

Why do you have to malign Bob Ross constantly? I mean, he's a person Blessed bushy haired man.

[A]

Pleasant bushy haired man who was also a terrible artist.

[B]

No, he just goes like this. And it looks like a pine tree.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

It's like pine tree, pine tree, pine tree.

[A]

It's beautiful.

[C]

It's amazing.

[A]

But the other reason, and we should maybe talk about this. I feel like I want to do a money talks about this. It's just like the sort of psychodrama of auctions. I think the real reason that this thing sold for a million dollars is the auctioneer. Like the identity of the auctioneer is really important. And if you have a good auctioneer, they can really get people head up and bidding more. And in this case, the auctioneer was a certain gentleman, an Englishman by the name of John Oliver.

[C]

He probably donated his time, right?

[A]

Yeah, but like there are people who do it professionally. If you are a charity auctioneer and you are a Slate Money listener, please email us on slatemoneylate.com and I want to interview you and I will ask you how much you get paid and you will answer because you like me. Elizabeth, what's your number?

[D]

Yes, I have a number on loan from Emily Peck. It's the price of the Dakota device, which is a Kohler product that analyzes your poop and tells you about your gut health.

[A]

So this device, what's the number?

[D]

Oh, it's $599.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Plus tax. Plus tax. But also, this is a subscription product.

[C]

Man.

[D]

Do you pay right swabs $6.99 a month. And there's a $12.99 a month package for a family package. If you want the entire family's poop.

[C]

To be analyzed, they analyze your poop and you get an app for it and it'll be like, congratulations, you drank the proper amount of water.

[D]

I feel like this is biohacking just run amok.

[A]

We had a whole Bloomberg weekend story about poop scanning toilets, but this is.

[C]

Not why it's in the news this week.

[A]

Oh, why is it in the news this week?

[C]

Explain.

[D]

Oh, also, they were promising end to end encryption. And they are misusing that term so your poop data is not fully encrypted.

[A]

Just FYI, from your end to their end.

[C]

Yeah, they lied about the end to end encryption on the video camera for your toilet bowl.

[D]

End to end, so to speak.

[A]

I'm sorry, I'm just gonna cut this short right now. Nick, what is your number?

[B]

Okay, My number is 148 billion. And that is Michael Dell's remaining net worth. If he chose to do so, that means he could put about 6,000 more dollars into each of those 25 million accounts.

[A]

Or, you know, he could give it to really poor people rather than Americans.

[B]

He could spend it on bed nets.

[C]

Come on, Felix. America first. No. Oh, my God. Okay.

[A]

That'S why he can afford to give away $6 billion is because he's worth $148 billion. And it's, it's like it will make precisely zero difference to his life in any way, shape or form beyond he's now, you know, buddies with Donald Trump, which has got to help somehow.

[C]

Didn't you say in your story like he, his wealth made $6 billion? Didn't I read that somewhere this year alone or something like that?

[D]

Like he's generated a quarter of what he made in the last 12 months or something.

[B]

Well, there's like the maid versus like what the value of his stake in the company went up, you know, which is never the same thing. I mean, I've never, I haven't tracked this down exactly. And now I'm saying it in front of, of, you know, people work for Axios and Bloomberg. But like I, I'm pretty sure like he had this, this in like investment in like VMware that got like turned into Broadcom and then the company got a lot of money from the acquisition, but then he personally got a lot and like, and I think there's some way where like this is, there's like an actual transaction that like left him with like a bunch of money. And I think if you do an old fashioned Homeland, you know, yarn chart on the wall, you can see, you can see where the 6.25 billion came from.

[A]

All right, I think that's it for the main show this week. Nick, we are going to put you on the spot in Slate plus about Zootopia 2 because I do actually want to talk about Zootopia 2 and the Rise and rise and rise and rise of children's movies in a special segment, by the way, I should add, where Emily is going to tell me that I'm completely wrong about everything. So I'm looking forward to that. But otherwise, thank you so much for listening to Slate Plus. Thanks for emailing us on slatemoneylate.com thank you very much to Jessamyn Molly, Shayna Roth Merit Jacob, Micah Phillips and the whole Slate crew for making this happen. Thank you especially to Nick Kulish for braving sub arctic weather and going to various places in Brooklyn before finding his way here. Nick, thank you so much for coming on. Happy to be here and we will be back next week with more Slate money.

[B]

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for 15 bucks. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment.

[C]

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.

[A]

And Doug here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[C]

Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera.

[A]

They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary underwritten by.

[B]

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.