it's tuesday, march 2nd, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now ♪ i'm on top of the world hey i'm on top of the world ♪ ♪ we've done this a while now playing my dues ♪ ♪ holding it in for a while ♪ >> good morning, everybody welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin, and we're going to start with the markets this morning joe mentioned yesterday's rally. it was a biggie. the dow and nasdaq posted its best trading day since november, and the s&p since june if you were watching this, it was something to see joe talked about the 600-plus point rally for the dow. the dow was actually the least of the movers in terms of a percentage term, for the s&p up 2.4%, and the nasdaq up by about 3% it was the energy and the financials that were helping power the markets higher also tech stocks getting back a good portion of their recent

losses facebook up by 2.8.. apple up by 5.4%, andless tesla by more than 6%. it was apple's biggest day since october 12 lots of shares up significantly. check out the u.s. equity futures this morning there's a giveback dow futures down by 70 points, the nasdaq down by about 57. again, just a little bit of a pullback after a strong day for the markets yesterday. let's take a look at what's been happening with the treasury market we have been following that so closely as treasury yields have picked up. that's taking steam out of stocks at least until yesterday. the ten high temp-year is yield slightly higher than yesterday meantime, we have breaking news this morning in washington that could impact future stimulus measures. ylan mui joins us with the latest. >> reporter: andrew, the covid relief package is still winding its way through congress today, ten democratic senators

are going to be laying down a marker for the next stimulus package. they're calling on president biden to make sure that his massive infrastructure and investment plan includes an extension of unemployment benefit asks reoccurring stimulus payments, and importantly, they want to tie those benefits to broader economic conditions. now, this idea of automatic stabilizers does have the backing of key committee chairman including bernie sanders, ron wyden, sherrod brown and others in a letter to president biden they wrote this crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on their tables and put a roof over their heads, and should not be at the mercy of time lines and ad hoc solutions unemployment benefits will run out in two weeks the current relief bill will extend them through the end of august after that, both workers and lawmakers are going to face a cliff. i have talked to unemployed workers about this, and they tell me they have been burned by some of the arbitrary cutoff

dates for the benefits, and they have been frustrated by the fact that lawmakers promises to make the benefits retroactive have not panned out we are starting to see the debate about what comes after covid relief on capitol hill >> thanks ylan, we're going to talk about this with our special guest at 8:00 a.m. eastern time, senator elizabeth warren is joining us and, we're going to cover her billionaire tax proposal, and we'll have more on that later this hour joe. andrew, zoom, zoom is zooming higher it says here. the company late yesterday had earnings of 1.22 the estimate was only $0.79. revenue also beat and zoom expand expanded gross margins to 66.7%. turn rates remain higher than before the pandemic, although the company lost fewer customers than it expected and cfo kelly steckelberg says the company is open to buying

companies when it has the cash but hasn't found the right match just yet she'll join us at 8:45 eastern in a first on cnbc interview the future is bright i don't know what it means for the way we do our business here. we're very familiar with zoom now. it's great, i guess. is there anything we can do about the quality of the shots did you guys see the golden globes at all, did you see sean penn, is that what he looks like, the hair and everything? >> did you see bill murray, though >> i didn't watch it i just saw some twitter stuff. >> he was pretty cool, a hawaiian shirt, martini. >> saw a picture of al, looked totally asleep, and bored. didn't look great. i don't know, is it the lighting guy, what is it about zoom that can be so, i don't know, noncomplimentary to the way people actually look. >> i don't know, we're all doing our own hair and makeup. not a plus. >> make up helps, lighting

helps. so it's not the quality of the video is not strange, is that not what -- >> sometimes >> andrew, you look good every morning. >> thanks. >> but there's a wide range of, you know, what people see and what people don't see. >> most people have their lab top below them, and the camera is looking up your nose and all of the, you know, right, that's half the problem. >> it's gray, it's the lighting. maybe it's the makeup. maybe we need to go long sephora, i don't know. >> they're sitting in front of windows with the light coming in, which you should never do. come in with the window facing you. >> lots of lessons. >> we could do a "squawk box" special on how to set up the look. >> if you're going to work at home and some people, you know, that we have on, they've got, you know, their prime meat for elizabeth warren, some people they have on, and they still

can't afford a decent set up. >> let's talk about what andrew was just saying, when you look up your nose, this is not a flattering shot. >> you want to do that andrew and i like to look down our nose at people, don't we we don't look up i threw us both under the bus there, andrew, that we're both sort of -- no, we don't. let's move on here before we get in too much trouble. i just think that, you know, everybody's shot could be improved we work on it. we have to but, you know, our guests, maybe we need to talk to some of our guests about -- >> i think you've just told them >> we're on camera. >> maybe it's the lighting my lighting is better here i'm back where i need to be. chinese electric car start up nio says the global chip shortage will cut the manufacturing in the second quart, dialing back the

production from 10,000 vehicles per month to 7,500 the company's founder says he expects to resume full capacity in july. nio also reported a bigger loss than expected, citing the depreciation in the dollar depreciation in the dollar bond market anxiety easing, that's part of what happened yesterday, a sigh of relief, but kumar sticking with his call, yes, on higher yields. that's new he joins us next as we head to break, here's a look at the price of bitcoin it didn't go down below 45,000 for long we'll see, you know, in a year what happens stay with us ♪ ♪ ♪ this is how you become the best!

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the bond market interest rates have been in focus the past week. the yield on the ten-year stabilizing yesterday after last week's rapid rise. joining us now sri-kumar it wasn't that long ago. it was a long time before that, but now we're doing this a lot, sri. we need to because it's starting to happen. this market that's been a little

bit dull for a while is showing signs of life, but it did moderate yesterday which is why we saw, i guess, the stock market react that way. is this a temporary respite before we head higher? >> i think it is a temporary respite, joe as you said, because you ran up substantially from monday to thursday of last week, so we had a breather since, but the basic factors that caused the bond yields to rise have not changed. namely, that there is a lot of fiscal stimulus coming, monetary policy remains very easy and is going to continue to remain easy so they are pushing it so the equities moved up substantially yesterday because bond yields came down because they took a shot stock but that doesn't mean that anything fundamental has changed and therefore, i stick with my expectation of higher bond

yields >> you know, sri, it seems like we're making progress with the vaccines and that maybe the day of reopening is getting closer more reopening and maybe closer getting back to normal, and in materials of what would probably stimulate the economy. there's some pretty big gdp estimates out there for where we're going. so on the one hand, you would think that that would -- that people would start curtailing the need for more stimulus on the other hand, we might have just organic stimulus, which gets the economy going better. either one of those seems to be, you know, an impetus for bond yields to go up. which is more important, the reopening or, you know, i bet we could reopen and get going and they wouldn't pull back on the stimulus, which we're seeing right now. 1.9 trillion a lot of people say we don't need that now at this point, sri. >> i agree with you.

i think you do not need that much of a stimulus you need a smaller stimulus, which is better targeted in terms of worker training you do not need $50,000 of student debt that leader schumer said in a whole lot of different ways, the fiscal stimulus is to keep going the reason the bond market is reacting, is eventual recovery from vaccines that you referred to, joe, is utterly diskcounted in both the equity and bond market what we are reacting to is politics being what it is. you are not going to pull back on the fiscal stimulus come what may. that's one point second, the point has been made that inflation hasn't picked up substantially yet. inflation targets are below what the fed would want them to be, but that in turn means that politicians are going to be continuing with the stimulus until they get the inflation rate up. you talked in the beginning of

how the bond yield suddenly zoomed after being a dull part of the market. that is the nature of the bond market suddenly there is inflation worry, and you're going to see once again the bond yields shoot up and i have no idea whether the fiscal response is going to be i don't think they will cut back on the stimulus even then so the markets are saying the fiscal stimulus is going to be there, and the bond yields are anticipating it. they have been a good guide to the investor over the last several years, and they tend to be one. >> then we'll get infrastructure, i bet, sri you're probably right, the head wind where i was saying where the reopening would cause, you know, the fiscal stimulus to be less important, that probably won't happen that will not be part of it. that will probably continue a pace, and the economy will be going already, so that's like

almost a double whammy for maybe rates to move higher you don't really believe the stock market you haven't believed in the stock market's valuation for a long time, sri -- if rates move up, will that be the straw that finally brings valuations down, breaks the camel's back i think that sri was -- you know what, he's a bond guy, and he's a very thoughtful man, and when i ask him about stocks, i think he's considering that question no, actually, is that zoom, see, we were just talking about zoom, i think it's froze are we going to get -- it's not looking good to get him back he gets to avoid that entire stock market question. well, we'll have to have him back then. but did you guys watch that, i asked that, and he went -- just the look on his face, you couldn't tell it was frozen.

>> it's like when you're talking on the phone, when you're faking getting cut off, right. >> you have where the call has already been dropped i've, you know, i hate to admit it, i've got on like a minute. i've gone on a minute, and when they call back, i say what was the last thing you heard and when they tell me, it's like you're kidding me, i got to say all that again, and they go, no, you don't. >> it helps to take a breath and let somebody else talk. >> you don't need to say all that again i just heard still no good we got the bond stuff that we wanted to get out of sri kind of unsettling, though, we'll never pull back on the stimulus, and then when we get this 1.9 trillion, you know infrastructure is next they'll probably do reconciliation on that would that be a -- could they do it do you know? anyone an expert on birdbaths? >> are the budget rules -- i

don't know >> got to be a way >> better get ylan back. >> oh, that ylan not elon musk. ylan mui we can get her, i think. all right. we've got a lot more coming up on the show when we come back, we'll talk about jack ma sliding well down the list of china's richest people we'll explain after the break. as we head to that break, check out shares of roku, acquiring nielsen's video advertising service, letting roku replace ads in linear feeds with targeted digital spots on supr streaming platforms ♪ this cnbc program is s sponsored by ibm, the world is going hybrid with ibm. so do banks. that's why they're going hybrid with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach helps them personalize experiences

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welcome back, everybody. jack ma has lost his title as china's richest man, falling to fourth on that list. this comes after his empire was subjected to heavy scrutiny by chinese regulators the hearing global rich pony ma, and colin wong are also ahead of sk jack ma on the rich list. meantime, real estate brokerage firm compass has filed to go public it revealed yesterday revenue grew 56% as housing prices soared last valued at $4.6 billion in the financing round led by softbank's vision run. softbank owns around 35% of compass. an amazing story

remember when he first came on the show when they launched that company, and here they are >> i remember that, too, i think, which is saying something. lemonade shares are under pressure the mobile based insurance company reported a loss that was smaller than expected but the current quarter outlook disappointed wall street the company stock is up 75% since its ipo which was back in july becky. i can see you. i see you. i see you over there not everybody can. you guys see me. >> i see you. >> i see you. >> you do? >> i see you. >> you do? no delay when you look down. >> no delay. >> no. >> so you see this realtime. >> i don't know. i'm looking at you with two cameras that may both have a delay. i don't know everything okay there?

>> you've been using the trimmer. good job. >> those things, you'll see. you'll see when the batteries run out if you don't have the batteries, you know, you don't want to wing it you need a professional help and becky, how long, ear hair, how far back does that go. we don't need to out the fed guy that has it. >> 16 years ago. >> hobbit like, but, right, you need -- the barber. >> wouldn't have said anything, but remember the reason that we made fun of it was because he ordered me to go get him coffee. hey you, go get coffee that's the reason we talked about the ear hair, and you were supportive, i appreciated it. >> i am supportive why is that surprising of course i'm supportive. >> i'm serious you were very supportive this was a long time ago, and i still remember that. thank you. >> andrew, does your barber

help i mean, what -- >> with your eyebrows. >> you're blessed. >> you get too much, you can't even -- >> they're playing us out of here >>. ♪ all right. you started, becky, with it. >> i'm sorry >> when we come back, target is set to report, that's coming in the next few minutes we'll bring you those numbers and the instant analysis. and later, an exclusive interview with the ceo, brian cornell, we're going to talk with him about what the fourth quarter looked like. we know november and december. what about january let's take a look at yesterday's s&p 500 winners and losers

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♪ walk with me now ♪ >> good morning, welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. we're waiting quarterly results from target, due any minute now. take a look at u.s. equity futures, 41 points off right now. nasdaq down with 34 points after a big day yesterday. s&p 500 off about 9 1/2 points meantime, disney ceo bob chapek says he has an unlikely fan bass fueling growth speaking yesterday, chapek said 50% of global subscribers are from adults who don't have kids. when 50% of the people in disney plus don't have kids, you really have the opportunity now to think much more broadly about the nature of your content as of january 2nd, disney plus has signed up 94.9 million customers worldwide since launching in november of 2019 and some are speculating about what that means in terms of some of the content that they've put, for example, on to hulu and whether you're going to see a

greater combination ultimately of those services or whether some of the content that's on other services, more adult content will ultimately move to disney we'll see. meantime, we're watching shares of michael's shares there, we're going to show you, if we can put the board around there, down just marginally they had jumped yesterday on deal talk, up 12% during the regular session. reports say the krcraft and hob retailer attracting buying interest from apollo management, and one other equity firm. michael's shares are up over 300% over the past year. becky. andrew, thank you. just looking through these numbers out from target, and the numbers are very strong, both on the top and the bottom line. let's run through this earnings per share on an adjusted basis the retailers came in with earnings of $2.67. street was looking for $2.54 so that's a $0.13 beat revenue better than anticipated,

23.34 billion versus the 27.4 billion the street was looking for, so again, that's close to a billion dollars of a beat on that front, too. comp store sales comps up 20 1/2% 20.5%. if you're looking at the stores, that was up by 6.9% and digital, up by 118% and same day services, those are things when you drive up and pick up your order or shipt where they bring it to you same day. up 212% for those services and that's been the big growth that we've senen year over year. they have been doing that over the last year, growing significantly. you have to wonder how much those services are going to stick after the fact people use it, find out it's convenient do they stay with it once stores reopen that's the hope of target. shares down by about $0.19 let me give you a couple other metrics, for the fourth quarter in terms of traffic, the number of transactions that were there, up 6.5%. the basket, up by 13%. so the traffic was up very

significantly in the fourth quarter. also in terms of market share, that's a pretty significant number, too. they're talking about like $9 billion that they've grown in terms of market share. >> becky, there's the true quote. >> what's that >> there's the true quote. >> oh, thank you i couldn't fig out why it was down because this is strong numbers on every count up by 1.6%. there's the trade, first knee jerk reaction on some of these things, what you would anticipate shares up after stronger than expected numbers we had seen already, guys, the numbers for november and december when they gave us the sales preview that we had seen for the two months, but these trends look like they continued through january, and that's unusual. usually a retailer will slow down in the month of january watching those trends continue in january, leads you to wonder what happened. the company is pulling guidance. it's not going to be giving guidance like we heard from home depot and other retailers. we don't know what it's going to look like after you go back to

shopping more in the stores, less online. who knows which habits are going to stick joining us right now to dig into the numbers is larry chang, managing partner at -- your reaction to these numbers. >> digital sales up, they have leaned into their shift acquisition in 2017, which is driving their 200% growth in same-day services. but all of that is helping to drive margins at the same time because it's 40% cheaper to pick and pack from a store than a distribution store, and obviously 90% cheaper to do in-store pickup and to ship from a fulfillment center they are leveraging the fact that there's a target within 10 miles of 75% of america and executing flawlessly on omnichannel. >> those are much better margins in terms of being able to use your stores for fulfillment, rather than paying a third-party vendor to do a lot of deliveries that helps with the margins on that front too larry, how long have you been in

this stock >> we're a private investor. we don't invest in public companies. we have been watching the stock as a driver of ecommerce, which is where we invest we have been impressed as target has explored merchandising of the next generation digital demands which are the types we would invest in. they were early in dollar shave, early in harry's, they have support add number of female founded beauty brands, and so those types of brands are having scaling aggressively it's where the next generation consumer wants to buy they have done a great job in private label. they have launched all in motion, which is their athleisure brand which has north of a ball dollars in sale. cat and jack has north of a billion dollars this sales and as you may know, in november, they announced that they're going to have 100 ulta stores inside their stores. when you look at the broad list of where they can execute on merchandising, they have executed on new brands, emerging brands, private labels and in-store experiences like ulta and has led to broad, strong

performance. >> come omnichannel used to be this buzz word, we've got stores and online too, but i think it means something different now. it's really taking advantage and figuring out how to use all of those to the fullest stextent, n really probably an improvement on ecommerce where the stores were seeing as laggards, dragging crow back before. >> target is really redefining what it nemeans to be a one-stop shop you can go to target and get fashion, food, household essentials, household goods, you can get that any way you want. ecommerce, in store, personal shoppers, same store pickup, same day delivery, elevated brands and premium brands, next generation brands next to incumbent brands, and in the covid times, you want a one-stop shop, you want to get it the way you want it, and everything you want from one store, and target's really done that well >> i guess the big question is how have consumers habits

changed over this period of the pandemic and the lock down what's going to happen as people really get back out there? and look, there are a lot of places in the country where it has not been as clearly shut down but target has benefitted from anybody who's doing it no matter where you are how do those trends let's say in the next six months and what would you be watching to see if there's an impact either positive or negative on target >> people talk about a covid spike but there's a market acceleration of adoption of the services it takes 21 days to launch a new habit and codify that, and you have seen new demographics learn to shop, learn how to do same day pickup, learn how to do same day delivery, and learn how to shop with new retailers they haven't shopped with before. i view this as a market acceleration of digitally enabled and mobilely enabled services that will continue post pandemic, and of course they're going to get a driver of just in-stores sales as people come out and shop even more i don't expect this withdrawal

from retail or withdrawal from places like target once the pandemic subsides. >> you know, the big box stores like a target and a walmart had the advantage of being deemed essential, they got to stay open through all of this, they also happened to be two companies that invested very heavily on ecommerce and same day delivery and services in the stores you look at the haves, and have notes, and the question is can other retailers catch up once they're open and running again this is not cheap. these two companies have been doing it a long time before the pandemic came along. can you catch up at this point >> undoubtedly target and walmart are the cream of the crop they haven't been among the most inquisitive, and made significant capx technology investments. michael's has tripled in the last year, and other retailers have done well in the same category as michael's joann

fabrics announced they are going to go public emerging brands like rtiza, the disruptive brands in the category what you're seeing is the disruptive brands are forcing the incumbent retailers to react. chewy forces petco to react, and medleyforcing cvs and walgreen to react some of these retailers have been strong in their reaction, but target and walmart are really the cream of the crop. >> thanks for joining us, we appreciate your time today >> thanks so much. >> by the way, folks, target's ceo brian cornell will join us in the next hour in an exclusive interview. and still to come this morning, we're going to talk about the new billionaire wealth tax proposal that would cost the 100 richest americans more than $78 billion, and that's just in the first year and a reminder, you can watch or listen to us live anytime on the cnbc app.

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and welcome back, u.s. equity futures have improved a little down 47 now on the dow let's see the s&p and nasdaq are also in the red after big gains

across the board shares of novavax are under pressure the company reported a bigger loss than analysts had expected. revenue fell short of estimates. novavax's phase 3 covid vaccine trial still underway in the u.s. the company is hoping that the u.s. will consider the clinical data from its u.k. trial to help speed up u.s. approval it could come possibly as early as may here's ceo stanley erck yesterday on closing bell. >> we're the only company that showed efficacy on all three strains. i can't compare ours to others we know everybody has a safety profile and that ours is a very good safety profile. you look at stability. can your product be shipped and stored at refrigerated temperatures instead of frozen ours can >> erck said novavax could complete the 110 million shipments to the u.s. government around june or july.

if all these other things had come to pass andrew. meantime, coming up, senator elizabeth warren unveiling her ultra millionaire's tax. she's going to join us at 8:00 a.m. eastern time this morning. you don't want to miss that conversation first we're going it talk about the impact of that plan, and we'lha a dl veebate about it right after this break ♪ if i had million dollars ♪ you packed a record 1.1 trillion transistors into this chip. i invested in invesco qqq. a fund that invests in the innovators of the nasdaq 100,

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welcome back to "squawk. senator elizabeth warren unveiling a tax, a 2% tax on wealth over $50 million, and 3% wealth over a billion dollars. under this ultra millionaire tax, the hundred richest americans would hand over

$78 billion of their personal fortunes jeff bezos could face an extra annual tax charge of 5.4 elon musk 5.2 billion, and bill gates 4 billion. joining us to discuss the implications of the tax, law professor with indiana university bloomington who advised on this plan i'm going to start with you first, and maybe i'll do some work for grover in this case janetyellen says this is unworkable it's very difficult to implement a plan like this and unfair in so far as you would be taxing unrealized gains what do you think of that? >> why we need a wealth tax or some equivalent. the existing income tax, the existing tax system are largely escaped by mega millionaires and billionaires mega millionaires and billionaires play a much smaller fraction of their economic income, their true income in tax

than do the middle class or do the merely wealthy a wealth tax is one of the easiest, probably the best and most achievable ways to fix this it's working reasonably well in switzerland and in spain, and we've learned a lot about tax administration over the prior decades, and there's every reason to think we can do a much better wealth tax in america than switzerland and spain even if we get a wealth tax as good as switerland, that would be a massive improvement to our tax system, needed revenues to those paying currently a small percentage of their income in tax, and help with government's needs, help restore equality of opportunity to our economy and a host of harms caused by the failures of existing tax system. >> grover, i know you hate all taxes but is there a way to increase tax revenue and to more fairly tax the wealthy recognizing that i know that you don't like the wealthy tax unto

itself. >> until you reduce the capital gains tax. every time we have reduced the capital gains tax rate, higher income people paid more in taxes, and more growth, and more jobs for everybody if you're into hate and envy, go ahead and do the wealth tax. there's a selective discussion about where the wealth tax succeeded. 15 countries put in the wealth tax, eleven got rid of them because they discovered how dysfunctional it was one of the things people should check on, in the legislation that warren put forward, she wants $100 billion more. the irs in enforcement, so there are going to be irs agents everywhere we know when biden was vice president, they politicized and weaponized the irs to go after people they didn't like. this has happened before we can't have a government with that many irs agents looking around looking into people they

don't particularly like. and the idea that this is only going to hit the rich people that was a sales pitch for the alternative minimum tax, 155 people, it would scheduled to go to 30 million people before the republicans pulled it back the income tax was only going to hit people with $11 million in income in today's dollars. it's now half of the country gets hit by the income tax tax to pay for the spanish american war what was that a tax on long distance phone bills. 3% 90% of the population within a few decades. senator warren has said she's already told us what's going to happen why would you be scared of this? it's just like your property taxes on your home the federal government, you take this down, the lower levels of people's wealth and income in order to get the money you're not going to get because people won't invest them in the united states it will come down. it will be a federal property tax in a matter of several decades. >> hey, david, just -- i'm

thinking about a way of really raising some money the people that you're talking about, saying they approved this whether they were lucky, whether they inherited it, whether they're skilled, whatever it was they did do it under the normal tax regimen that we have right now. so they have paid taxes along the way, right so this is -- >> mostly not. if you look at someone like mark zuckerberg or anyone on the billionaire list you showed, most of those folks have paid less than 2% of their income over time. >> i know, but under current -- they haven't broken the law. this isn't punitive, right this is just looking at how much -- >> oh, sure. >> this is how much wealth that they've accrued. you're deciding, and this is the first time we've -- we do it in other areas. call it what it is, it's con

physicia confiscatory if you do 50 billion when you get up to 10 billion, 20 billion, why not do something serious. why not go 1 1/2 to 2 1/2. go 10 or 20. if they already have more than they deserve and use, then a person who has 10 billion, let's raise some real money. go for 50% why not? why not? you've decided the other people have enough. and you're taking. why not do it? raise some real money. >> because that's not -- my view of the american economy. that's not america's view of the economy. government and civilization cost money. ever since the bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy and trump's cuts, we're running deficits. >> i'm trying to help. my question was why not make it much higher on people that have a billion.

>> it's not confiscatory taxation right now we don't have progressive taxation at the very top. it breaks down to the 30 to 50 million in wealth level. before that we have reasonable progressive tax rates. after that the income tax fails to work in our existing economy. largely that's because of changes made by republican administrations. partly it's because of various tax scheming transactions that harm the economy and undermine the functioning of the tax system leave them paying the fair share. >> hey, david -- >> the rates rise with income but not confiscatory. >> david, my question is why not clean up the tax code such that we deal with, these are things i've been thinking about for a long time, we deal with the estate tax maybe you lower the limit. you deal with the step up in basis so that you're able to tax

mark zuckezuckerberg's wealth, an equivalent of wealth tax and it captures realized gains if you can speak to what grover said, when you look at many of the countries that did try this, that they ultimately abandoned it >> yeah. on the first i'm all for trying to clean up the existing tax system at the end of the day it's a lot easier and more achievable to effectively marc the tax system work for megamillionaires and billionaires through a wealth tax than through income tax or estate tax reform. all are worth considering and there's some tradeoffs the problem with fixing something like stepped up basis is at the end of the day that only works if it's applied consistently decade over decade. if it happens in one administration, the gains aren't real until decades later when say a new republican administration is in power it doesn't raise revenue a wealth tax raises revenue now

immediately when it's needed if you look at companies that have abandoned wealth taxes in europe, in some cases that's because they were right of center most cases it's because there's mobility among european countries and in european countries it's very easy to move from one country to another to escape tax or even just move assets out of one country to financial accounts to another to escape tax different than the u.s. in the u.s. to escape the u.s. tax system you need to renounce citizenship which very few people do. >> grover, did you understand my question if you're going to decide after -- you know, the game's already been played. you're going back and changing the rules on how much people owe. if you are going to go ahead and

cross the rubicon and do that, if you think people that have 50 are -- 50 million are fair game, why when you get to a billion, make it truly progressive. if you're deciding 50 million people have enough and it's not fair, i mean, bezos with -- how could you ever get him down to where he has a reasonable, in their view, a reasonable amount of money you'd need to go 70% wealth tax. let's really do it if this is what we decide we're going to do raise some serious money >> there will be two arguments one, raise it on higher income people and then bring it down to lower income people. again, this is what the alternative minimum tax. hate, nanby, 155 million people aren't paying income tax because they're invested in municipal bonds. that turned into a tax on 30 billion people don't think of theicy icky peoe

because they work saturdays. this will hit you and your children warren said like a property tax, tax on your house. it will be a federal wealth tax on your home at some point as they're looking for more money they'll raise taxes on -- bezos is not paying enough in taxes. why? he's investing all of his income in new growth. that's what he's doing all of that money will come directly out of the kind of investment that's created real wealth for many, many americans when you tax bezos or amazon you tax billions of people's 401k. >> grover, it's a longer debate and we have to have you back to continue it. david, we also want to thank you for sparring with us on these issues there's a lot to discuss here. i know we'll continue on all of it thank you. all right. coming up, a big lineup ahead including steve case

wearing a flannel shirt again. brian cornell. senator elizabeth warren khan academy founderaln smakhan and kelly steckelberg. she'll be on zoom. don't go anywhere, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc. introducing magenta max. now with unlimited premium data that can't slow down based on how much smartphone data you use. plus get netflix on us, and taxes and fees included! you won't find this with the other guys. in fact, you'll pay more and get less. right now, pay zero costs to switch! and bring your phone -- we'll pay it off! only at t-mobile.

target twisting earnings we'll get into the numbers with the company's ceo. brian cornell will join us for an exclusive interview the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now ♪ ♪ ♪ good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. u.s. equity futures after what was a remarkable day in the markets yesterday. this morning looks like we're going to come off of some of those highs. dow looks like we'll be off 50

points nasdaq off 40 points and s&p 500 off 10 points. couple of headlines. target reported better than expected profit and revenue for its latest quarter earnings came in at $2.67 per share. 13 cents above estimates comparable store sales rose better than expected, 20.5%. brian cornell will be here to talk about the quarter later this hour. shares of zoom video communications are also higher in pre-market trading. they beat estimates and gave upbeat current quarter forecasts. millions will continue to use the video streaming platform we'll be speaking with kelly steckelberg in the next hour right here on "squawk" as well meantime, twitter is taking aim at misleading tweets about covid-19 vaccines. it says it will begin starting to label tweets that contain misinformation and will suspend the accounts of those who violate policies multiple times. so debate over technology and

free speech is going to get interesting. >> always. always interesting economic activity meanwhile expected to pick up as the pandemic reseeds that will depend on the pace of vaccinations steve liesman has the latest data in his road back barometer data liesman data that's my liesmania segment, steve. >> reporter: yeah. i've got some good stuff here, joe. the u.v. vaccination effort looks to be back on track after being derailed from the winter storms even while case levels remain high, models suggest we are on track for some form of herd immunity by the summer 15% of the population has been vaccinated that's double the percentage we did a month ago and it's accelerating 77 million doses have been administered 78% of those adistributed.

the vaccination rate 44% en route to hopefully around 75 to 80%. moving on now, the u.s. percentage leads the advanced economies according to goldman sachs partly because of vaccinations but because our infection rate has been so high. number one but not for all the best reasons the next wall here, distribution is picking up, partly as expected as the systems improve. also a rebound from the storm disruptions. you can see that leg up just in the end in terms of distributions. finally, best news of all. some initial signs the vaccine is actually working as the percentage of deaths from nursing home residents plummet and that's amid a broader decline in deaths. the elderly have been the first to be vaccinated this is what you would expect to see from an effective vaccine. looking at morgan stanley adding the total infections are running below its model. that's another potential sign of the vaccine having a positive

effect they have already factored in johnson & johnson so no added distribution from what they expected from j&j despite variants the u.s. looks to be on the right track for mid-summer reopening and that is the basis for the economic turn around, wall street and the rest of the nation are expecting joe, i know you're a microbiology. >> molecular. >> molecular whatever whatever and you know this was going to happen, but for me, i don't know i get really psyched looking at the data, the initial data we're seeing showing the vaccines working. >> i was listening to what you're saying. it's not just that the old people, the elderly and the nursing home people received the vaccine but, you know, as death rates would go down, as the pandemic wanes even without a vaccine, that's where the deaths

would subside anyway because that's where they all were. >> fair enough >> right those are the people that were the most vulnerable. >> right. >> where most of the deaths were by definition that's where the deaths will go down. but you're right, the vaccine at this point, we had j&j on yesterday. even the 70% vaccine, zero hospitalizations way down no really serious disease even though it's not the 95%. but it seems to give you -- >> right. >> -- it gives you enough right at the start so that it doesn't turn into that life threatening condition that we saw so often really good things happening they want me to ask you this, steve. all ready to go and it's in the teleprompter and i don't even have to think. are vaccination rates equal across the states? >> reporter: that was really well done, joe. >> thank you >> before we go to that, i want to address what you said, which is i've been watching these

numbers carefully and i've been anxious to put them on i think you're right to point out some of this is expected, but i also go with what the analysts are telling me, the morgans, goldmans of the world say these are real signs of the vaccine taking effect. morgan has a model of what they expect infection rates to be the actual infection rate is below that here's the answer to your question yeah, you can see texas running a little bit lower that's probably storm disruption some of the other states in the south as well. we're in this band here, call it 14-18% of vaccination rates. i think that's equal across some states alaska we've gotten better dakotas doing better hard to know what to expect. if i saw widespread gaps of 10 and 15% i would think there were some problems out there, but it looks like given if you correct for the storms out there, we'll take a look at this in another couple of weeks, joe

i think we'll see whether or not texas and some of the other states that have lagged behind catch up it seems to me to be within a respectable range of 5 to 10 perfecti10%. >> listening, i think of last march. remember last march? i remember saying to myself, we've got to get through march. >> no. >> we've got to get through march until we can get to april and this starts subsiding and it was one -- really is the long march. we're still in march it's march again it might as well be march of 2020. >> if you want to know -- you want to know, joe, how dumb i am i thought back in march, that my band which does a free dead in central park benefit, i thought we were going to be okay to do our concert. now we are a year later and i'm still trying to figure out if that concert is a go in early may and i tonight think so. >> we need to get through march. we're saying again we need to

get through march and get to april only a year has gone by d. it go slow or did it go fast i can't decide there either. it seems like it's been a blur but it seems like it's been forever. >> going to have bono sing "i got you, babe. a ground hog day >> what about this may can we come down and see a dead concert? >> we're waiting-i have a conference call in a couple of days with the new york city parks department they have to make the call we can't do it without them. it's an outdoor show we raise money for river keeper. which i can say. more personal there. that's what we're trying to do >> with everything legal, i mean, the vistas are -- totally opened up for what we -- we can really enjoy this concert i think, steve. >> yeah. >> anyway --

>> thank you. >> all right beck thanks, joe. when we come back, warren buffet making it clear that he is betting on america and telling investors that it's not just the east and west coast. we're going to talk entrepreneurship and how it happens in the flyover states. that's coming up next with investor and revolution ceo steve case. as we head to a break, check out kohl's the retailer reporting better than expected profit and revenue in the fourth quarter. stocks up 1.75%. kohl's ceo michelle gass on at 12:30 p.m. eastern today "squawk box" will be right back.

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oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. in warren buffet's annual shareholder letter, the oracle of omaha made it clear he was betting on america today with finance, media, government and tech located in coastal areas, it's easy to overlook the miracles occurring in middle america. joining us is steve kase ceo and chairman of revolution this is an initiative to support entrepreneurs and burgeoning startup ecosystems across the country. great to see you

thanks for being here today. >> great to be with you. >> i read through the letter from warren buffet and it didn't occur to me to connect the dots with that and rise of the rest until i saw you tweet about it, which was really smart what did you think when you read the letter and saw that? >> it's great that warren and oracle of omaha is not just talking about what's happening all across the country in terms of big companies but he's focused on the innovation economy, new companies, startup companies. he noted that although a lot of the focus is on the silicon valley, the center of gravity has shifted and will continue to shift and we're seeing breakout companies all over the country having warren buffet stick up for the startups in the right of the rise of the rest cities which is why i tweeted about it shining more of a spotlight on the same. >> you know, i think about it. buffet may have been the original rise of the rest being

based in omaha and seeing so many of those companies, companies like nebraska furniture mart up close. he's been investing in these companies in the midwest his entire life. what's happened differently let's say over the last 10 or 20 years that's made it more difficult for entrepreneurs in the middle of the country versus those coasts >> well, that first wave of the internet when companies like aol and many others were getting started 30, 40 years ago, it was fairly regionally distributed. dell was in austin, microsoft started in albuquerque and moved to seattle it was fairly distributed when we were getting america online it was the second wave of the internet when it came about software and apps writing and the silicon valley rose to prominence and dominance for facebook and google and others now we're adding the third wave and it's disrupting things like

health care, food and agriculture, a lot of big sectors of our country and our lives. the big partnerships you need to form are in the middle of the country. we're seeing a shift ecommerce is a good example. last couple of decades it's really picked up in the last year because of the pandemic, it's really accelerated. where are the powerhouse companies driving ecommerce? it's amazon in seattle, walmart, it's chewy in miami, florida they started in sydney, australia. they didn't go to silicon valley, they went to austin, texas. it's a very successful public company. the shift is happening yet venture capitalists are focusing in the rear-view mirror. 50% of venture capital went to california the other 50% went to the other 49 states. you're seeing more and more breakout successes and that's what we're trying to focus on

with rise of the rest and the revolution growth funds. how do we back the entrepreneurs everywhere and not just places like silicon valley. >> you could be doing so many other things, steve. we really applaud you for, you know, middletown, ohio i'm from cincinnati. to bring the entrepreneurialship to that part of the country, we all hear about the wealth gap, income inequality and how well wealthy people have done that's your way to address it organically with success i want to ask you because we rarely have people that would be affected by this wealth tax. we have them on a lot. we don't know any. it's not going to affect us, right? because it's -- >> you're doing pretty well, joe, last i saw. >> doing okay. but there would be no reason for me to stick up for those people. there's no benefit for me for doing t but for some reason i just have this mental block about what we're really proposing. that's why i wanted to ask you

about it i think most people that have made it, some have inherited it, others were lucky, a lot of them did it because they're good at what they do they played by the rules and paid the taxes as they were accruing them. maybe not all of them. there were step ups. do we want to take the step to say, all right, you've got this much and that's too much and my point is going to be that if we're going to say 50 million is the cutoff and do 2% there, when you get up to a bezos or steve case or somebody like that, why not -- you know, you can never spend all the money you've got y. shouldn't it be 10% wealth tax to really try to narrow the gap i'm making that point because i think when you cross the rubicon and start just, you know, the game's already been played now you're changing the rules, i don't see why you don't do it that way am i making sense? what do you think? >> several things, it's nice to say you did in the beginning i'm not doing this rise of the

rest simply because i'm trying to be nice i think it's a great arbitrage it's a great investment opportunity. this isn't sharing, this is believing the next wave. number two focusing on the issue of income inequality is important. i think opportunity inequality is more important. you have to be creating jobs everywhere the things that are creating jobs are not big companies, new companies, startups which is another reason why we're packing more entrepreneurs in more places the tax code, i'm no expert. i do think we need to make sure we have the incentives right so innovation does happen everywhere and the innovators are rewarded and at the same time, just having them ready for the technology and shift i'm not in politics. i wouldn't be very good at it. i'm just an entrepreneur and investor i think it's fair to say where

are we right now where are we going how do we have the resources to educate, not just kids when they're young but older people when they need to be reskilled and that costs money how to fund the programs and what's the right way to strike that balance and that's a fair way. i'll keep backing the entrepreneurs creating the jobs and generating the economic growth and the wealth and others can decide how much to tax it. >> steve, what's happened to the entrepreneurs in the middle of the country in the pandemic? >> it depends on the sectors many small businesses have gone out of business. it's been tragic which is why there have been several relief efforts, ppp and other things. there are other businesses that have seen tail winds we've seen fox space and telehealth accelerate their growth they couldn't go to the doctor's office and therapist's office. i mentioned big commerce they've seen accelerated growth.

we also have companies like bloom scape and detroit and stocks x in detroit and they've seen an acceleration in growth rates because people are home and they're focusing on what they're doing while they are home it's a mixed bag there are entrepreneurs that have struggled some companies that have failed because of the pandemic. there are many others we've seen with the companies that are at revolution they've used this as an opportunity to try to accelerate this and seeing that kind of acceleration like i mentioned earlier. ecommerce being a classic example. >> where do you think we're headed you laid out what's happened since 30 years ago when it seemed like it was pretty evenly distributed. if you guess where we'll be ten years from now, will it be more of an even distribution? do you think it will be pretty heavily focused on the coast >> silicon valley will still be the leader

there are a lot of great things about the silicon valley i think it will even out some goes back to the third wave and domain expertise some of it goes frankly to dispersion of talent brain drain, people leaving the country to go to the coast many people including because of the pandemic are coming back we're seeing startup communities and we've visited by bus to 47 cities remarkable what's happening. that's why i'm so grateful that warren buffet put a spotlight on not just what's happening in silicon valley and other coastal tech hubs, that's why he's bullish on america that's why i'm bullish on america. >> i do wonder if one of the silver linings of the pandemic is you do start to see this dispersion of talent because you don't have to live in the cities we've learned how to do so much of this online via zoom. >> we've seen so much. i think it will accelerate that will help the rise of the rest cities and make it more possible for them to start to

scale which will create that job growth and economic vitality in other parts of the country which hopefully will help unify the country. we're very divided there are people who think there's reason to be optimistic, many people nervous, scared, pessimistic about the future that comes down to jobs and opportunities. that comes down to startups. that's why you have to back startups. >> let's hope it's the beginning of a virtual cycle. >> great to see you all, thank you. >> joe we missed the flannel shirt, case i thought that was going to be a permanent look i never got one. can't you send some of those i love those >> can you put your address on your screen? we'll make sure harvest gives you a flannel shirt. >> here in washington, dc. not hawaii. >> you've got to get this. >> sorkin's got one. >> i got one i got one right here

thank you, steve. >> thanks, andrew. >> wait a minute, he sent you one? >> never been worn >> it hasn't been worn >> it's not really andrew's look we're hopeful that he'll visit app harvest and do the shirt and do the shirt from app harvest. 500 jobs >> case, now i know where i stand. andrew gets one. i get no land and no shirt thanks coming up -- i hope they do hit you with that wealth tax senator elizabeth warren pushing an ultra millionaire tax that would levy a 2% tax on households with a net worth of between 50 million and a billion and then a little bit -- little tiny, teeny little surcharge after a billion. we're going to discuss her propalft tos aerhe break don't miss senator warren when she joins us at 8 a.m. eastern time "squawk" will be right back.

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and it doesn't just drag hr down. it drags the entire business down -- with inefficiency, errors and waste. it's ridiculous. so ridiculous. with paycom, employees enter and manage their own data in a single, easy to use software. visit paycom.com, and schedule your demo today. welcome back to "squawk box" this morning senator elizabeth warren unveiling a new proposal to tax the wealthy. robert frank has the details robert. >> reporter: good morning, andrew senator warren, bernie sanders and other democrats in congress unveiling what they call the ultra millionaire tax.

this is a tax on wet wealth their ran income when 100,000 households would pay the tax. that's the top .05%. it would raise $3 trillion over the next decade to help pay for child care, education and infrastructure critics point out it may be unconstitutional and most european countries have gotten rid of their wealth tax because the wealthy move or avoided the tax. argentina and bolivia passed new wealth taxes for the pandemic. now to help prevent avoidance, warren's proposal would give $100 billion to the irs for stronger enforcement, more annual audits and an exit tax of 40% for those who try to renounce their citizenship billionaires would account for half of all revenues jeff bezos would owe $5.7

billion under the new tax just for 2020 elon musk 4 point be point 6 billion and bill gates 3.6 billion. that is, andrew, every year. even for these guys pretty soon you're talkingreal money. >> robert, what's the chaps of this actually either passes or changes the conversation we've heard the biden administration say this isn't something that they're planning to do. i spoke to janet yellen last week it's something she thinks is frankly too complicated to pull off. >> yeah. i thought that quote from yellen that you got from her was really interesting. she, of course, oversees the irs. she said implementation is really difficult with a wealth tax, which is exactly what european countries have done this was a campaign promise for warren it's essentially the same tax she proposed during her campaign bernie sanders and others have been pushing for a wealth tax for years. i think they were sort of

obliged to do this for voters that supported that. it could move the debate for phase 2 when we talk about higher taxes for the infrastructure bill to move the goalposts to, well, if you think a 28% corporate income tax is high, at least we're not doing a wealth tax so it makes whatever biden and the others would propose look more moderate next to this wealth tax. >> robert, is it people brought up property tax. you can't say it's unheard of or confiscatory because it's already done i have this view of property law that's gone back centuries if you've abided all of the tax laws as you're trying to build your wealth and you pay taxes while you are doing it and now you do have a tax advantage situation, capital gains or however you pay lower taxes now, you played by the rules all the way through and it seems to me that you're going back and changing the rules after you

didn't really violate the law or do anything wrong. my point is you're doing it because these people have more money than they need and there's a lot of people who don't have enough money that they need. once you decide that you're going to, as a government, decide who has too much and you are going to start taking it, if you are going to take money from someone with 50 million and you have someone with 50 billion, why not really make it progressive. why not do 3% on 1 billion and up why not 2 p% million. bezos you could do 50 or 60 and it wouldn't affect him and you'd raise some money once you are going to do it, why don't you do that. >> you should and i'm sure you will as andrew has covered so well, there is so much wealth in this country that goes untaxed because it is stock market wealth as opposed to income. this is because of stepped up basis and all kinds of things.

>> you could just start with that >> right right. >> that makes sense. this is just taxing wealth that a lot of people have earned not that way but fair and -- not fair and square, they could be lucky. they could have inherited it you're deciding they got too much aren't you >> yes >> look, you can't ignore the fact that this is very popular among both democrats, republicans and independents not surprising because only .05% of the pom pew lags would pay it it is politically popular. we have to recognize that. >> i don't know why i'm saying that let's get them it's not going to hurt me. i don't know about you you are doing pretty well. thank you, robert. just going to get yelled at. again, don't miss senator elizabeth warren this morning right here on "squawk box" at 8

a.m. eastern time. still to come this morning, target chairman and ceo brian cornell will join us on the company's performance during the pan pandemic, give us his message to investors. let's check out the futures at this hour. target shares were up last we checked. looks like the futures are down but not as much as they had been earlier. the dow was up by 600 points indicated down by 14 points this morning. s&p down by 5, nasdaq off by 23. dana-farber cancer institute discovered the pd-l1 pathway. pd-l1.

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welcome back to "squawk box. i'm dominic chu. morning movers notable analyst calls. zoom video up around 8% or so. roughly 50,000 shares of volume. the video conferencing company posting better than expected quarterly results after yesterday's closing bell now the upgrades are flowing in. flowing in from piper sandler. overweight to neutral. 541. it was 501 in more of mia culpa. shares up 7.5% right now shares of tripadvisor up 3%

pre-market 40 shares of volume. getting upgraded from citigroup. going to 62 bucks from 20 bucks. they started tripadvisor plus. now we'll end on another citi call on beyond meat raising it to a buy rating and the target price from 1.84 to 1.81. yum brands, mcdonald's as well as packaged food companies like pepsico. 1.5% we'll send things back over to you. >> thank you, sir. coming up when we return, what is working in the industrial sector. we're going to switch focus to the retail sector. target chairman brian cornell is going to be our special guest. all of that in just a moment

since election day the industrial sector has taken off. cyclical like gear, boeing, honeywell, caterpillar we have a panel with us today. karen, i'm going to -- i know you might not be as positive or

at least think about the moves i'm going to let barry start with his thesis it's still early. you think there are still three tailwinds around for industrials? >> i do. we're recovering in the industrial sector from a double dip recession. it began with the trade war. 2019 we had the first period since at least 1990 where global trade was negative and world gdp was positive we were just starting to get a bit of a recovery when the pandemic took hold we're recovering from both of those shocks you could see it in the ism survey numbers yesterday supplier delivery prices are all surging. customer inventories are actually falling in the low 30s. so the strength of that recovery is going to probably persist the

entire year. second is cap ex they have a severe hit during the trade war, depressed cap ex. most companies, many companies are beneficiaries of stronger cap ex that's just getting started. then there's a price effect there as well. that's the cyclical case the secular case is the industrial renaissance and the idea of stretching the supply chains just doesn't make a lot of economic sense and it carries a huge amount of risk. you have a cyclical and secular case that i think is going to benefit this sector through the entire business. >> kerry, i know you think it's more consumer driven and given where the pes are with historical averages for these industrials, they already have sort of priced in what barry's talking about. is that basically what your thesis is? >> well, joe, i would agree with barry that, yes, we're going to

have a renaissance we're going to have a lot of growth in industrial, but the market has priced a lot of that in if you think of the moves for caterpillar, deere, emerson as example, they've had incredibly strong moves they're cyclic calls we know value to an extent but they're not driven by the consumer very high pe same pe a year out as facebook and google if you think about what reopening is, it's driven more by the consumer. the type of reopening names that we think have more legs are going to get helped by the stimulus plan. 1.9 new trillion new monies going into the system most isn't in consumer's hands, not into capital spending and industrial there isn't a component in this plan for infrastructure. we think that business will come back for the industrial sector we think these stocks perhaps need to pause because they've had this enormous run over the

last few months from really the time of the election through a couple of weeks ago when the market went straight up on the back of reopening names and they benefitted tremendously, which is fantastic perhaps those pes, 28, 29 type pes are a little stretched in the near term. >> okay. thank you, kerry thank you. i know we normally go longer but we have brian cornell of target and senator elizabeth warren coming up. we have to keep it short thank you. i always like your backdrop out there. makes me think of lions head, bachelor gulch and all of those places out there. >> not coming this year, joe >> i'd like to we had a big trip planned last year i think it was for march what do you think? are we able to do that it didn't happen >> skiing's the new golf.

>> what about the chair lifts? big, long ones, got to sit on each side. >> it's all right. >> we have no time, here we go thank you. got to go. becky. >> all right when we come back, an exclusive interview with target chairman and ceo, brian cornell that interview is next. also, at the top of the hour, senator elizabeth warren gsturue "squawk box" will be right back.

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welcome back, everybody. target reporting quarterly numbers, both on the earnings per share and revenue line better than expected joining us now a squawk exclusive is target ceo brian cornell. great to see you this morning. stronger numbers across the board. i think what the street is probably paying closer attention to is that strength continued in january after the last update we heard from november and december sales. what are you seeing? >> becky, we had a very strong holiday season january was a really surprising month for me i think if i do this for another 20 years we're unlikely to see january comps grow at a rate of over 30% i think the investments we've made throughout the year, ensuring that target's the

easiest place to shop, we built trust and during the month of january we saw a surge in traffic in our stores. we saw growth across all of our categories we saw consumers redeeming gift cards and shopping for newness we saw the response to anything new in our assortment from home, to apparel, to beauty throughout our store. we really saw a great response in january that lifted the entire quarter a very strong fourth quarter for the company. the team did an exceptional year and it caps off an exceptional year for target. you don't think you would see another january like this with the comps so strong. you are not giving guidance for the quarter or year because it's too hard to tell what's coming what are you thinking in terms of what you're seeing in the few weeks since the quarter closed >> well, becky, talking about

guidance as we sit here today and i listen to you and joe and andrew talk about this almost every morning, the range of outcomes are still very uncertain as we think about the state of the economy, where the virus is, the distribution of vaccines everyone's wondering when we go back to work and back to school. so we think right now the prudent thing to do is to focus on execution we haven't given guidance for almost a year. i want to make sure it's really clear. there's no correlation between guidance and the focus on execution. we've delivered great results despite the fact that it has been an uncertain environment and we've had to be more fragile and flexible we've had to respond week by week we've proven we are very focused on execution as i look at some of the results and highlights, despite the fact we haven't given guidance and generated $9 billion in gains. my confidence in the future is

incredibly high. i'm confident in strategy and capabilities and confident in the team i think that confidence will continue as we go into 2021 despite the uncertainty i think we're all going to face. >> i think you're smart not to give guidance. it's too difficult to know what's not going to happen my guess is you're planning not just for summer but also for back to school a year from now, maybe even the holidays next year how do you do that not knowing what's coming? how do you figure out what to order, how much of things to order? >> becky, we really have a different range of options as we think about each and every month in these key holiday periods i've used the term agility a few times. i think what we've demonstrated is the agility in our sourcing our teams working with our over satisfies partners making sure we can chase inventory

the agility at store level to make sure we flex as demand changes. we grew our drive-up business throughout the year over 500% and our teams have been agile and flexible to meet that demand so we certainly have a range of options as we think about the year, but we've got to remain flexible and meet consumer demand as it shifts. we've demonstrated an ability to do that over the last 12 months. >> you mentioned $9 billion in market share gain. where is that? is that electronics? is it the grocery area is it in clothing? how do you figure that out >> becky, you've touched upon all of the key areas we've seen strong market share in electronics, in toys, in apparel, in beauty certainly our home category was a really strong category throughout the year. we've seen gains in food and beverage and the core household

essentials we've taken market share gains across the boxes in all of the major merchandising categories we've seen, again, strength in our stores despite some of the challenges that we know americans are facing and many are staying at home with comps averaging 74%. very strong store performance. as you know, stores drive the majority of our growth we talk about 95% of our business really being fulfilled by our stores and that extraordinary growth of $15 billion was really on the heels of the investments we made in our stores over the last several ye years. >> yeah. fulfilling those orders in stores is a lot better for your margins on that too. brian, minimum wage has been a big discussion it's not going to go through in the next aid package the democrats have taken it out.

you already pay a starting salary of $15 an hour. it wouldn't necessarily impact you in terms of what you have to do you raised minimum wage to $15 and offer other things to your associates and you work to make that be raised to $15 an hour, what would that do to you? would you have to raise your wages to compete >> back to our meeting in 2017 one of the things we committed to that day was investing over $1 billion in our team, in pay, in benefits, in training, in development to ensure we have the best team in retail. we made a commitment that day to move our starting minimum wage to $15, which we did back in 2020 we continue to pay bonuses throughout the year, five of them in our fiscal year 2020 so we've been out in front in

investing in our team while we have lots of great highlights we'll talk about today at our investor conference. all of it comes down to the investments we've made in our team, in our store leaders, distribution leaders, front line team members connecting with our guests, making sure we've created an easy, but more importantly a safe shopping environment. we'll continue to make sure we're taking care of and investing in our team. >> meaning that if minimum nationally raises to $15, you'd go higher? >> well, we feel really good about our position today and we'll assess this as the weeks go by. i feel really good about the investments we've made in our team we want to make sure we're going to continue to invest in our team >> the stock right now down by 39 cents i have to say i'm surprised. i didn't see a single metric you didn't beat on any thoughts about what you're seeing in the market right now

>> i can't react to any one moment we're in a premarket position. we have a compelling story and we're very confident as we think about our opportunities in 2021 and beyond so i'm very confident in our position today i think those market share numbers speak for themselves i've learned market share is very sticky. the investments we continue to make in stores, in fulfillment, in our team position us well for years to come. >> brian, thank you so much. we appreciate your time this morning and thank you for being with us. we'll talk to you soon. >> thank you >> thank you andrew >> okay. thanks, becks. we have a very big hour of "squawk" still ahead senator elizabeth warren is going to join us for her pitch for proposed ultra millionaire tax heading to capitol hill. a check on futures this coming after the dow posted

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good morning

rally pauses stocks set for a slightly lower open major indexes coming off their best day in months zoom zooms smashing estimates and guidance for the year ahead is stellar. first post earnings interview. the richest of the rich may want to take cover. senator elizabeth warren out with a new tax proposal targeting what she calls ultra millionaires we'll speak with senator warren live as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin you're at home, becky. i was going to ask you for

coffee maybe matt but probably not. that's getting a lot of -- god almighty i thought the wealth tax would get a lot of attention that is going to explode trending soon. u.s. equity futures at this hour, if you don't know, you have to check becky's twitter feed down 14 points nasdaq down 3. treasury yields up 1.44. >> senator elizabeth warren introducing what she calls an ultra millionaire tax. it will be on fortunes over $50 million. she expects the proposal to bring in $3 trillion in revenue over ten years joining us to talk about all of this is senator elizabeth warren thank you for joining us

you have stirred up quite a conversation and we want to have it with you this morning in particular, i wanted to start here i had a conversation with treasury secretary janet yellen last week and i asked her about the prospect of a wealth tax and she said she thought it was, quote, very difficult with implementation problems. i wanted to understand your thought about how this would work >> so i just want to start by saying if janet yellen is all on board except for implementation, we're all set on this. the implementation is a lot easier than it looks remember the way the wealth tax is built it says if your fortune is below $50 million, nothing we're not talking to you if it's above 50 million you have to pitch in 2 cents 2 cents for every dollar above that you hit $1 billion you have to pitch in a few pennies more. the nice thing about the way

it's set up, we learned from some of the mistakes they made in europe. this version of the wealth tax says it covers all of your property doesn't matter whether it's held in stock or in real estate or in race horses, everything is covered. so there's no point in proving property around. also, wherever you hold it is covered, whether you hold it here in the u.s., whether you hold it in the cayman islands and, remember, we are already valuing property we do it in death. we value all real estate every year for real estate taxes and valuing stock is not very hard so i think we've kind of got the implementation part of this locked down. >> senator, what do you make though of the idea people believe -- some people believe this would be confiscatory but oftentimes these are quote,

unquote, unrealized gains. we've seen remarkable gains in the stock market this year but who knows what happens next year we've seen bitcoin millionaires and billionaires get made but it's a very volatile asset if it's an asset at all >> you know, andrew, i hope you're embarrassed to ask if 2 cents is confiscatory. this is 2 cents. on assets above $50 million. and just to put that in a little context, since the pandemic our 660 billionaires in america have increased their wealth by $1.3 trillion you know, this wealth tax will raise about $3 trillion over ten years as you started out what people should be thinking about is what does that tell you about the top end of the wealth

distribution, that a 2 cent wealth tax, a little bit more on billionaires, but a 2 cent wealth tax will raise $3 trillion over 10 years and that's money we reinvest in america. >> senator though, let me just ask you. >> sure. >> we've talked about this before what do you think of, for example, dealing with the current structure, which is to say to deal with the estate tax in a more meaningful way, deal with the step-up basis issue that creates a real problem, that if you could do that unto itself, maybe that would be considered a wealth tax. >> so, well, you're right. we do all kinds of things that are a part of dealing with wealth but understand a direct 2 cent wealth tax is what yields the revenue, the revenue we need just a straight across the board. it's the fairest

it's the most progressive and here's the thing it helps level the playing field just a little bit. right now the 99% of america, that's everybody who doesn't have wealth of $50 million or more, they paid last year about 7.2% of their total wealth in taxes. the top 1/10 of 1%, people who would be covered by the wealth tax, they paid about 3.2%, less than half. you put a 2 cent wealth tax on them and the playing field is at least a little more level. it's still tilted in favor of the giant millionaires and the billionaires so this is about just trying to level it out so everybody in america gets a chance. >> senator, i sent you that picture. we'll always have cincinnati my kids still talk about it i'm softening you up a little. >> okay.

i'm ready. >> you were there for hillary clinton back in four or five years ago. >> i remember. >> i happened to be there and my daughter, obviously you're an inspiration to all young women and my son, too. now that i've said all of that >> okay. >> bear with me for just a second this is not punitive, right? >> no. >> it's not punitive >> no. >> they haven't broken any laws. >> no. >> okay. once then we are actually deciding that maybe they've made enough to a certain point where they don't need all of it, bear with me, if you're going to be 2% on 50 million and then when you get up to a billion and you're going to do 3%. if we've crossed the rubicon and said you have more money than you can ever spend, you don't need it, you need to help out the rest of us, why not make it truly progressive and do 10% at 50 million and 20% at a billion.

what would be the problem? why would bezos do 3% when some poor schmo only does 50% >> i'm just a girl from oklahoma i think $3 trillion actually sounds like a lot of money and raising $3 trillion that we can reinvest in our economy, for just a minute can we talk about what that 2 cent, 3 cent would be it's not punitive on those at the top that can still grow their fortunes here's the thing, it's enough for universal child care it's enough for universal pre-k. it's enough to make sure that every baby in this country has good care and raise the wages of every child care worker in america. >> you didn't answer me. >> no. >> make it ten times as good make it -- if you're going to decide that some people have too much and 50 million is too much

and -- see, this looks to me like we're changing the rules of the game that go back centuries. if you paid your taxes on the way in a lot of these people would rather do really good things with the money than they don't think the government does it well they want to give it to harlem -- things that they do. but go back to the original thing. why not make it 5%, 10% on people that are really loaded. >> i'm loving this morning i cannot believe that i've gotten you to say we should tax the rich more, joe >> not hurting me. >> i'm loving this moment, but do remember, this is just like we do on real estate taxes we say every year, not as a punishment, you pay real estate taxes. and we want to make sure that those who have pay a percentage. now i hear you about the percentages. you want to make the argument to

pay an even greater percentage, make the argument. the point i'm trying to make is we can make a modest, just a modest change and those at the top would still not be paying as much of their wealth in taxes as the 99% and it would be transformative transformative for our children. transformative for what we could invest in infrastructure transformative for how we could build a future that $3 trillion, that goes a long way in america towards creating opportunity, not just for those at the top but creating it for everyone else. i think it's a great place to start. >> hey, senator, it's becky. >> hi, becky. >> hi. good to see you. i'm not going to get out a violin for any of these people, but i will say many of them have the equity that's built up because they founded a company,

have done something and they still are worth all of this money because they own a massive amount in the company. they don't want to sell those shares because they want to maintain control of the company. they take the money and invest it back into the company and that in turn creates jobs which is why we have seen such a phenomenal american economy where these things happen. would you force people to sell shares of their company, force them to do something else? are you worried that would in turn slow the job creation >> the answer is no. there are a lot of technical pieces about people who areally quit can i constraint. i'm going to give you the reverse answer joe it's 2 cents we're talking about fortunes that are growing at, what, 6%, 8%, 10%, 12% we're saying you can keep growing the fortunes, just pitch in 2 cents so everybody else gets a chance.

by the way, let me make the pitch to the people who really are investing in their businesses how do businesses thrive they thrive when there's good infrastructure and our infrastructure is so badly outdated and why? because we don't have the money to spend on it businesses thrive when they have well-educated employees, and yet we're not spend ing to educate our kids i talked about preschool how about k-12 how about making college universal and giving all of our kids the chance to develop to their full potential that's going to be good for those businesses as well we want to build an america that works better believe me, the guys at the top, they'll do great in an america like that. >> let me ask you about share buybacks this is something i've heard you talk about recently where you said share buybacks is market manipulation share buybacks if you are

thinking of it as a partnership, legally you've looked through all of these things, you're a professor on these issues, but if you want to buy out your partners, your partner wants out, you buy back the shares that doesn't sound like market manipulation, it sounds the way businesses work. >> no. new want to buy your partner shares, that's fine. but that's not share buybacks are. >> that's what companies do. >> no. share buybacks go into the market. >> it is >> and pumping up the price of your shares by sucking back in -- by using your own cash not to invest in the business. look, i'm not the one who started on the idea that this was market manipulation. this was the view of the sec back in the 1980s and that was there is no reason for a company to move into the market and buy anonymously thousands of its own shares for any reason other than to raise the price of its

shares why do they want to raise the price of their shares? because executive compensation is tagged to that price or because they have set other limitations on the price. >> i understand executive compensation that shouldn't be tied to that i can understand executive compensation not being tied because that you could maneuver over a short period of time. >> not could, they do. >> it seems to me that there's a very good time for companies to buy back shares when they think the market is under valuing the shares and they're better off bringing in and making sure all of the shareholders have a better part of the company. >> that's what dividends are for. if you think that you have excess cash and don't have a business opportunity, put it out there in dividends but the purpose of going into the market anonymously, buying up those shares is to do nothing but inflate your own share price. it just doesn't have another purpose. >> senator, two final questions

for me one may be philosophical but it is in practice how the wealth tax would work what would happen if in a given your year net worth was valued at 50, $100 million, $1 billion or whatnot, never realized of course you pay the tax on it and the next year somehow for whatever reason you get wiped out i know nobody's thinking that jeff bezos is getting wiped out tomorrow. >> no. >> i know there's a lot of people that think the tesla stock is a particularly volatile stock. one year elon musk may pay one rate and the next year clearly wouldn't be paying on that do you take that as a loss against that or no >> no. you just don't pay taxes that year what do you do on real estate? your real estate is valued every year and you pay taxes on how it's valued. and if your real estate becomes worthless, you don'tpay taxes on it. there's nothing unusual about this what we've done is tried to

streamline it so, for example, it's set up now to say, we're not going to collect taxes on any asset worth less than $50,000 so this is not intrusive, going into homes and valuing sub zeroes and figuring out what their four--year-old cars are worth if you have a fortune above $50 million, you pay on it if your fortune is below $50 million, you don't good for you either way i mean, i think most people would rather be rich and pay two cents but it's not -- this is not very fancy it really is a tax on fortunes above $50 million. now we do understand the direction we've been going this pandemic has created more billionaires the people at the top are not barely hanging on by their fingernails at a time when

people making less than $30,000 in america have an unemployment rate at about 20%. the folks at the top increased their wealth by $1.3 trillion. so this is just trying to say, when you're in that space, you've got to pay 2 cents, 3 cents. >> senator, want to get you to weigh in we talk about bitcoin virtually every day these days it will have an implication on your tax proposal given the volatility of it there are people like the janet yellen who are warning that this is both speculative in nature and going to potentially end badly. do you have a view >> i think janet's a really smart woman. >> that's all you're going to say about bitcoin? >> speculative in nature and going to end badly

i don't think janet left a lot of room for ambiguity there. >> by the way, i'm not sure she said it would necessarily end badly but could end badly for some wanted to get you to weigh in on another headline that a lot of people are talking about this morning, that is a big issue in the democratic party which is can you speak to what's happening to the governor of this state which is where we are, new york, andrew cuomo and just the number of women that have come forward in recent days and what you think it means and what he should or should not do. >> right i think there should be a full independent investigation by somebody appointed by the ag without any interference from governor cuomo's office. investigate. >> senator, i just -- it's me again. it's me again. went so well last time you've got me on your side now >> all right good. >> no, no, you don't anyway >> oh, tease

>> i can see that people that are doing really well need to chip in more i'm not sure how we do it. it seems to go against property law for years, but that's not what i'm talking about now i'm going back to the buybacks so just balance sheet management a company is growing so it issues a lot of new shares that would be considered in your logic as manipulation for the stock to go down. >> no. >> it's really not okay let's say they -- >> it's capital investment >> if they issued too many in the past and now they're looking at their shares outstanding, wow, interest rates are zero, but i don't want to buy it i'm thinking about buffet. i don't want to buy any of these companies because they're over valued right now, i think my company is the cheapest thing there, i want to bring in some of those shares that i issued previously not -- and even if it does help the stock rise, why is that so

bad for shareholders, for pension plans that own the stock, for state retirement plans that own the stock you reduce the flow. earnings per share goes up the stocks go up everybody's doing better income inequality narrows. >> oh, come on. >> we're all winning, senator. we're all winning. what do you mean come on >> this is nothing but paper manipulation everybody is doing better. listen to yourself nothing about the business changed. they're still turning out the same number of widgets at the same cost and selling them to the same customers nothing changed, but they got a little fluff and buff in their stock and how did they do that by taking their excess cash saying, geez, we can't figure out what to do with this we can't give it back to our investors. they're making the investment decision that the only

investment is to buy back our own stock. >> you're in the business of managing the balance sheets for these companies that are trying to do what's right for their capital structure. no one doubts that, right? >> you don't think they're at all influenced that they're just trying to fluff up their stock prices come on. >> no. i don't like that. >> oh. their job is to do the business. >> okay. >> and if they have business investments, they should do it if they don't, give the money back to the investors. that's what dividends are for. >> great having you on. >> senator warren, we appreciate it very, very much thanks for the conversation. the debate we hope we can do it more often with you look forward to seeing you. >> oh, thank you always good to be with all of you. >> great to see you. >> thanks. >> hey, joe? >> yes, sir. >> before we go to commercial, and i just got this news and i just want to bring it to you

vernon jordan has just passed away i just got a note about this right now and i wanted to bring it to the audience we can talk more about this on the other side of the break but some sad news this morning vernon jordan passing away last evening surrounded by his family >> condolences to his family another life well lived, andrew. coming up, two more big interviews that you don't want to miss. we're going to talk about what we've learned in a year of online schooling with educator sal khan then zoom cfo joins us to break down the blowout earnings. as we head to break, check out the shares of apple. the tech giant the stock rose 5.4%. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc ♪

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cfo of zoom straight off of blockbuster earnings stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc.

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big news, good news. more vaccines are coming but it's hard to say when that will roll in. this is really interesting merck you may remember dropped its own candidate. this is a sign of what happens when everybody pitches in and helps out. merck saying it's going to go ahead and manufacture the j&j vaccine that just received the emergency use authorization yesterday or started rolling out yesterday. got that authorization over the weekend. also, some encouraging signs in covid era education according to events platform bourbeo, the virtually only school stands at 27.5% a lot of kids that are still doing that but that is the lowest point since the tracking began. the non-profit khan academy has tried to bridge the gap between in person and online learning.

sal, let's just start with what we know and maybe what we don't know about what the impact will be long term on those kids who have missed out on up to a year's worth of school in person >> yeah. a few data points on what we know you know, we've had the latest test scores come out from the fall to measure learning loss. to some degree they weren't as bad as expected, especially in things like reading and writing. they were kind of roughly as bad as expected in math where we saw some learning loss but the big asterisk on that these were just for the students they were able to assess. there were 10, 15% of students who have fallen off the radar since covid began. those are obviously the students that you most worry about that probably would have likely pulled the averages down the data we're seeing has some things be to worry about and then on top of that we know that there's a good chunk of kids that we've lost. so as we go back there's going to be what i described as a disaster recovery to make sure

that those kids don't fall further off track. >> you have been doing your part to try and help those kids through this time. those people who need some additional help and for those who aren't familiar khan academy offers all kinds of courses and learning and teaching online you really started out as a tutor for your cousin and now it's ballooned into the situation where you have 120 million people around the world who are using you. >> yeah. back in 2004 i actually used to be more of a hedge fund analyst. my cousin at the time, 12-year-old navi needed tutoring i was tutoring several cousins before i knew it many other people's cousins were using khan academy. over 100 million folks when covid hit, khan academy's usage grew by a factor of 3. we had 12 billion learning

minutes last year. on top of that, synchronous learning has been difficult for folks. zoom, i know you have kelly on after me, donated a bunch of licenses so we can give free tutoring to folks. schoolhouse.world compliments what you can do on khan academy. now you can get unlimited free tutoring starting with high school math and s.a.t. but we'll go into other subjects as quickly as we can. >> how many people are using schoolhouse right now? >> well, that literally just got started in january so we have the states of new hampshire, rhode island and mississippi who kind of joined forces to make it a statewide tutoring platform. right now we have on the order of 10,000 students we could add several 10,000 more literally overnight. >> this is something that you started because of the pandemic but you think that this will be something that really has sticking power we're seeing all of these things that i don't think will change

as people go back to school or go back to work. this sounds like something that will be helpful no matter what >> yeah. it's always been my dream for khan academy, not just to be the students people learn from the site, as you mentioned, there's 20, 30 million folks using khan academy to learn that, half of them in schools, half of them outside of schools there's been the notion why couldn't people tutor each other and that's the way to scale bring get tutoring there's good research that small group tutoring is the gold standard it's never been economic to do so even when you get small group tutoring, as long as they're vetted and trained, you can get great impact this is -- we're hoping these two things can complement each other so any student who needs to learn, university of chicago is using the volunteer's platform and trend that i think is happening >> i was going to say, where do you find all of these tutors

why do they do it? if they can get college credit, that's interesting how do you get the tutors? how do you make sure they're trained and up to snuff to offer the help that's needed >> yeah. about a year ago when we were brainstorming this idea, most people would say, where are you going to get the tutors from as soon as we put the call out for service, just as 14 years ago i was a hedge fund analyst, when my cousin needed help, yeah, i can put out half an hour a day or week. turns out there are a lot of people like that there are a lot of people who have that time they might be a hedge fund analyst, retired teacher, we're getting amazing folks to be teachers we have retired physics professors be tutors, software engineers. a lot of high school students who are incredible tutors. some of these high school students are getting into college now based on their ability to tutor others. we talk about standardized assessment and how that can get

you into college and other things you can view this as a standardized volunteer service people who are listening for their children, this is where you can get them tutoring. there's an interesting side effect we did tutoring sessions for a charter school in california a few kids from russia showed up and a kid from india showed up you can connect with kids from all over the world, not just kids, learners of all ages. >> sal, thank you for being with us today this is such a hopeful point to be focused on in the midst of kind of wondering what we've lost and what's been left behind i hope people are listening and you get a lot of tutors to sign up thanks for being with us today >> great thank you. >> joe still coming up this morning, zoom cfo kelly steckelberg breaks down her company's blowout quarter numbers. she'll tell us why zoom is so optimistic about business in 20 21 despite in person interactions maybe, probably

making a bik comeback. stay tuned, more "squawk box" after the break.

s&p 500 had the strongest session since mid last year. cnbc's mike santoli joins us now. i told you i would see you this morning. >> you did. >> looking at the market's message surrounding consumer spending. >> yes, we'll get to that message for sure, joe. look at the s&p 500 for a year early march 2020, we were right on the edge of that cliff so we now have a 26% one-year return that's going to shoot up by the basic math we were heading for 11% one-week decline at this point last year. down more than 20% in the last three weeks. that's not a system where you have huge year over year advances but it's worth keeping in mind a lot of house money this is the message. equal way to consumer discretionary. outperforming by 20 percentage points the market is saying there is a spring loaded consumer spending story here used equal weight because amazon

and tesla dominate i want to take a look at supply of new issues, ipos and spacs might be starting to weigh this is ten days worth of trading. ipo etf and they have cracked. the broker dealers are holding up really well part of the leadership of this market nobody is saying this game is over, guys >> all right mike, thank you. >> yeah. >> great to see you. when we come back, another interview you don't want to miss we're going to be talking to zoom cfo she'll join us to break down the company's staggering fourth quarter revenue growth stay tuned, u'yore watching "squawk box" on cnbc a visual snapshot of your investments, key portfolio events, all in one place. because when it's decision time, you need decision tech. only from fidelity. ♪ ♪ (upbeat music)

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big shock. big quarterly numbers for zoom the video conferencing company issuing a strong outlook even as we're likely to see less need for harsh lockdowns in the months ahead zoom expects revenue to rise more than 40% after more than guaido drguadrupling. kelly steckelberg joining us yes, we're doing it. we see you actually, you look much better than a lot of our guests do on zoom i guess if you know how to work the thing you can do much better >> good morning.

>> thank you for joining us. looking at the quarter and it's a strange thing to say -- to call something like what we've been through the halcion days, but in this crazy topsy-turvy world we've been living in, things have been really good for zoom in the midst of this pandemic can you describe the operating environment? >> yeah. so we're as excited about the prospects of having a vaccine soon, but happy that during this time we've been able to minimize disruption we've seen strong growth in our core business, both our direct and online and channel segments, which we announced yesterday we've grown to over 470,000 customers with greater than 10 employees. we've seen strength in our remote product which turned 2. we have more than 18 customers with 10,000 seats and we have benefitted from a really strong

brand awareness locally and international is 30% up from 20% a year ago really strong performance across all aspects of our business. >> much more quickly than anyone could have predicted a couple of years ago and, therefore, the time dilation for the move to digital in our lives across the board we've seen but especially with zoom. but do you think it has imbued you with a moat even that makes -- you're so well-known. almost like kleenex. zoom by that i mean it's almost a generic term for video conferencing now will that be maintained in the future is it permanent? >> well, what we've seen is that people have really had innovative ways of embedding zoom into their life, right? we hear use cases from individuals in their personal

lives, parents, grandparents reading to their children and grandchildren across the globe we hear it's business owners whether it's cooking classes, fitness instructors and all the way up to enterprises, which of course have been keeping their employees safe during this time. what we know and recognize is employees especially really appreciate the flexibility that this way of working brings them and employers have seen that they can be productive during this time. so while we're all excited again about being able to safely move around the world, we are looking forward to a time when it's more of a hybrid approach, where you can go to the office and see your colleagues and have that community collaboration you want but you are still able to leverage zoom to get your knowledge work done. your children are able to take their tutoring lessons at home so you don't have to cart them around the city to get them where they need to be. that's what we see as a

sustainability and durability for the long term. >> how do you take it to the next level in terms of innovation whether it's acquisitions or expanding the business and margins are so strong i just wonder if there's ways of somehow making that permanent and even going up from here. got to be smart to do that what are your plans? >> yeah. so we're really focused on moving from being a great app to an amazing platform and that includes meeting our zoom rooms, webinars, zoom phone as well as the new product we announced last fall on zoom which is our event hosting platform that we're really excited about it's in beta today what that does, it creates an opportunity for different ways of working on our platform to your point, we are really committed to investing in innovation we're focused on r&d hiring

around the globe we are hiring all -- in all aspects or all states of the u.s. we recently announced our innovation center in singapore and india as well and then we do always look for opportunities to accelerate that through. you have a great deaf tev team we keep looking for the right match for us. >> kelly, when you think about the competition, obviously you have to think about microsoft teams, you have to think about google i would think those would probably be the top two on your list, maybe cisco, webex is somehow in there how do you think now about salesforce in the context of its acquisition of slack and the recent addition of video that slack seems to be introducing? >> so both slack and salesforce are great partners and customers of ours. we've had longstanding relationships with both of them

and if you think about it, we all focus on some aspect of best of breed enterprise technology and we had partnerships with both of them so what that's done now is it's actually simplified our relationships to bring it together so that rather than three companies coming together to provide great customer experiences, we have two of them for example, the slack integration that's available is one of our most widely downloaded integrations and so we're really excited about the prospects of continuing to work with salesforce and slack. >> i guess what i'm asking is what happens when slack does its own version of video i mean, one of the things i think we're seeing is everybody's trying to do their own version of zoom in time, right? >> yeah. so one of the competitive differentiators from zoom is we're built from the ground up to be a video first product, video first platform that differentiates it from all of the other products out there

in the competitive landscape we continue to focus on making sure that it is the best video product out there. we will continue to do that while also partnering with all of the other providers out there to make sure that our customers really get the best product that they can >> kelly, quite a run that we've seen in the past year, but as i say, you know, it's kind of crazy,isn't it, to flourish in the face of what we're saying but good luck in the future and i don't think -- which term do you like the genie is not going back in the bottle you're not putting -- i think the hardest one is to unscramble the egg. i don't see the egg getting unscrambled in this case zo zoom, we all know it now and we're not going back to 20 19. >> thank you >> andrew. >> coming up when we return, jim

cramer's first take on the trading day ahead. plus key stocks to watch as we make our way toward the opening bell we're back after this. a visual snapshot of your investments, key portfolio events, all in one place. because when it's decision time, you need decision tech. only from fidelity. all the things, all around you where you learn, work, and fly we help make them healthier. we are the people of abm.

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the two cent wealth tax is what yields the revenue.

the revenue that we need just a straight across the board. it's the fairest it's the most progressive, and here's the thing it helps level the playing field just a little bit. >> that was senator elizabeth warren earlier on this wealth tax proposal we want to get over to jim cramer before we hit up stocks, i'm curious what you think of the proposal >> i think you raised good points t there are other ways to do it. i think there are ways to be able to make this thing far more steeper when it comes to income taxes. this, to me, seems confiscatory. these people have to sell. the idea that the asset could go down as you pointed out seems to be like a retroactive penalty. i think there's a lot of ways within the code to be able to

raise more money i don't favor higher taxes now i think you guys raised very good objections. i think they were swatted down i get that but i think you raised -- you could raise a lot of money if you wanted to. >> jim, you want to own zoom >> i think so. zoom has a multi-year plan they are going to be the detack foe. only 2% of the market right now. they have great momentum >> jim, we'll see you in a couple minutes with the gang on "squawk on the street. we mentioned this earlier. sad to report this morning that vernon jordan died he was a great civil rights leader and beloved figure among his colleagues vernon died peacefully last evening surrounded by loved ones for those who don't know vernon, he was the president of the national urban league from 1971 to 19 81, and then, of course,

worked with bill clinton he was shot at in 1980, almost killed by a white supremacist back then. and had a huge -- probably the most prominent, at least one of the most prominent african americans on wall street and within the business world. he was on the board of directors of revlon, sara lee, corning, xerox. a towering figure in the world of business lost last evening. becky? >> and in washington, too. i knew vernon well anybody who knew him knew him, welcoming. >> alfalfa club always being the one that would turn a joke and host people. >> yep >> just a figure in washington who moved behind the scenes to try and advance civil rights and make sure that the people at the top both in business and in

government were thinking all the time about equality and moving that needle. >> there could be how many people at that dinner? 1,000 or so probably and you could see him immediately. he was tall and elegant, and you know, you were star struck, oh, my god i was, anyway. >> he could own the room >> yeah. yeah he will be missed dearly dominique joins us with a look at some of the top premarket stock movers >> good morning. let's get you a roundup of some of the big story lines moving things premarket on the earnings front, shares of target up fractionally on nearly 300,000. shares of volume, reporting better than expected profits in sales. sales growth at established store locations. the so-called same store sales grew by 20 % also topping expectations. online sales more than doubled during the period. the shares up now. next up is roku, up about a

percent. roughly 75,000 shares of volume. bu buying neilson's digital ad shares and we're going to end on square which is up nearly 4 % premarket. 200,000 shares of volume after it announced it started up operations for a new in-house bank called square financial services that's going to offer services to merchant customers. taking the next step offering true banking services. back over to you guys. >> all right thank you. love your shoes. showing them off again >> thank you >> another retailer reporting earnings that would be kohl's the fourth quarter revenue beating expectations adjusted profit came in at $2.22 a share. that included $1.15 in increment tax benefits quarterly earnings was estimated at $1.01

kohl's saying they would reinstate the share buyback program this year. stock up about $0.25 the kohl's ceo will be joining the halftime report coming up at 12:30 today. in the meantime, let's take a final check on the markets remember, yesterday was a huge day for the markets. it was optimism about vaccines we expected that j&j would get the emergency use authorize dags over the weekend they got it. started shipping vials yesterday and as a result, you saw the dow futures or the dow close up by over 600 points. you saw bigger gains for the s&p 500 and the nasdaq there's been a slight bit of a pullback today with the dow futures down by 21 points. s&p futures off by 4.5 the nasdaq down by 18. merck deciding it's going to be manufacturing vaccines from johnson & johnson. they had to pull their own vaccine candidate a few months

ago because it wasn't up to snuff, but the idea that they're manufacturing is great news. it means we'll get more of the doses out there more quickly that's fantastic >> yep let's go let's go everybody. >> that's right. here we go we got to go too we're out of time. we'll be back tomorrow we hope you are too. right now it is time for "squawk on the street. good tuesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber best day for the s&p since june. b of a on equities and goldman on spacs we'll begin with major news on the vaccine front. merck set to help j&j's newly approved