>> i was really hoping that abc would cancel the show because i felt like i can't do this anymore. i can't deal with this much stress. >> have good weekend, everybody. i'm getting the hell out of here. good night. they say you can learn a lot about someone by how they respond in a crisis. well, then 2020 was one global learning opportunity. >> the latest global and national figures are going up. with states issues unprecedented restrictions. >> when the highly contagious covid-19 pandemic hit and the hospitals were packed and we were all bleaching our vegetables and everything stopped, we learned a lot about the people who run the world and how they compare to the people who run our country, not good. south korea paid at least 70% of people's wages during quarantine.

denmark paid 75% and up. rwanda's government gave food directly to the poorest people. meanwhile, over here -- >> one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear. >> now there are ten million fewer jobs than there were before the pandemic. the president didn't have the political capitol to increase the minimum wage and we are on the verge of the biggest eviction wave this country has ever seen. but don't worry. not everyone is suffering. there is one group of americans who probably wouldn't mind if this pandemic kept on pandemicing, billionaires. america's billionaires added $1.3 trillion to their kplekive collective net worth in 2020. and they all did well. right wing billionaires, left wing ball anywheres, all 614 of america's billionaires did great. let's be clear. that money didn't just drop out of the sky. it came from us.

so what does it say about a country that allows this to get worse and worse while at the same time this keeps happening? ♪ ♪ the basic thing about capitalism is that you organize everything that gets produced. the factory, the office, the store. in a very interesting way. a small number of people make all the decisions. they sit at the top. they're called the owner or the major shareholder or the board

of directors. but they make all the decisions. what to produce, how to produce, where to produce and what to do with the profits that everybody helped to produce here. but the vast majority of people are employees. they're not part of the decision. they have nothing to do with the decision. >> yes, yes, yes. >> this is professor richard wolf, a marxian economist. since this is how school is done these days, i signed up for a private lesson in american economics. >> so capitalism is a very bizarre arrangement, and it has a scary parallel with slavery, you know, a few masters, lots of slaves, or futilism, a few lords, lots of serfs. so we have a few capitalist employers, 5%, 4%, no more. and then the vast rest of russ employees. that's capitalism. >> capitalism exists all around the world.

but one thing that the united states does especially well, which i mean horribly is using capitalism to punish the poor. other countries think it is absolutely insane that in america, the land of opportunity, you have the opportunity to go broke from hospital bills and getting educated. all while others have bank accounts that could buy small countries. there may be no better place for me to look at wealth and equality and how the pandemic has made it worse than a return to south carolina, a state that is one of the poorest in the country overall, but has ocean front property and scenic views that are being gobbled up by the rich and the fabulous. >> got millionaires upon millionaires coming here and buying second homes. i know people who call up and say, give me a house in charleston. >> people who work in charleston cannot afford to live in charleston. >> not even close.

>> meet ch chchi, joshua. they just met today, but each of them has a story that represents millions of americans and many more millennials just like them. let me take a moment to apologize to millennials. people love to call millennials lazy and soft when in reality every older generation does that to the generation coming up. i know because it happened to my generation. slackers. in addition, the average millennial has experienced slower economic growth since entering the workforce than any other generation in u.s. history. it was a one-two punch 2008/2009 financial crisis and then covid. the millennial generation is the first in modern american history that's near guaranteed to end up poorer than their parents. before the covid-19 pandemic, what was your life like a year ago? >> i was just starting a new job as a bartender, and i was making, you know, good money.

and at one point i was like, this is working out and was maybe going to think about buying property in the near future. and then covid happened. and all your dreams and hopes go away. it is a tough industry to be in right now. >> yeah. >> making like half, if that, of what i used to make and it's -- it can be scary at times, you know. >> the service industry is one of those industries where they don't necessarily pay you a living wage to have the job because you are supposed to be making tips. >> yes. and no one has money to really tip, you know. >> and so what has your life been like since the -- >> it's been more than hell. i'm not going to lie. i'm pregnant, and this is my first child. i'm not even mentally prepared to have this child, let alone financially. so it is a big scare for me. i have been trying to find me a job ever since february. luckily i fought to get some government assistance, which it took me two months just to get food stamps. my boyfriend is working at chipolte. the only thing he got from

chipotle was a dollar on his paycheck. he got paid $11 an hour instead of 10, just for being downtown during the pandemic and the whole protest. no, they don't give enough at all. we've been basically scraping by the best way we can. you know, sometimes the lights would go off or sometimes the cell phone bills won't be paid, going without eating. >> if we had a society that took care of people on the bottom throughout this country, then the pandemic wouldn't have hit us hard. you know what i'm saying? in the so-called greatest country in the world. >> yep. >> in 2019, 53 million americans were working a low-wage job with median hourly wage of $10.22. while that's above the federal minimum wage of $7.25, it is way below an actual living wage. you can't live on it. the majority of americans support with $15 an hour federal

minimum wage, as do most democrats in congress. >> wages for millions of workers in this country are just too damn low. >> while republicans in congress have more pressing things on their minds. let me be clear. $15 an hour still ain't enough. a family of hour still couldn't afford the basics in any u.s. city. if the minimum wage just kept up with the american economy since 1968, it would now be $24 an hour. >> how did covid affect you? >> i'll be pretty transparent about it. i'm $75,000 in student loan debt so about close to $800 a month payment. >> ooh. >> so, you know you get out and you're looking for work, looking for work, you know. it's not there, you know. >> yes. >> in my case, i ended up working as a housekeeping manager. skills in management, but is it

that $60,000 or $100,000 that's helping me afford student loan payments? >> what was your degree in? >> business administration. >> business administration. you're picking iing a dee that help you get a job. >> you didn't go for poetry. you went for the kind of degree that parents are like, yeah, that's the one. >> yeah. i was thinking bank or finance. but now i'm back in school for cyber security. i'm hoping i can get a higher paying job so i can afford my student loans and be able to provide for my wife and son. >> let's talk higher education. while politicians and pundits freak out about the idea of free college, they are ignoring the fact that up until 1970s, america had many free or practically free colleges. but that changed in large part because we decided it was way better to jail people than to educate them. from 1980 to 2014, college tuition went up 260%. >> you will hear people saying,

when i was coming up in the '80s, i bought a house and i went to college and all that it's like, well, you could go to college for $40,000 back then. you could buy a house for under $100,000. >> where my mother went and learned to become a nurse. or you graduated high school, you could go on to get a job at the plant and make $15 an hour. >> when $15 an our meant something. >> yeah. you had health care. you know, 20 years down the road, whenever you could retire, you had money coming in. >> but your position with $70,000 in debt, say you wanted to spend that but you could put towards a house. >> right. back into the economy. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> but i'm far off from buying a house because of, okay, you only make 50 grand, but you got $70,000 worth of student debt in your dti, adding on $800 payments. you're wiped out. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> the fundamental problem is millennials like most of us aren't building wealth.

again, real estate is the number one way to build generational wealth. so with no stable job and benefits, no home that is eventually paid off and no secure retirement, millennials just can't afford the [ bleep ] american dream. what is the future for each one of you? >> big question mark. >> yeah. >> it's hard to even think about, you know? living paycheck to paycheck and, you know, hoping a tragedy doesn't strike. >> and what about you? what is the future? >> my future is just trying to find better work, find a better education and just to try to take care of my child. >> what about you? >> i thought finish cyber security. i'm hoping i can make enough to pay the good old government back for the student loans and be able to start a life for my wife and definitely got to be able to put my son in a better situation than, you know, i was. you know, it is hard to say, but i almost feel like a failure. but it's like -- it's a hard thing. it's a hard pill to swallow and it hurts.

it makes me emotional to think about it because i'm coming out here doing my best. every day. i work two jobs. i go to school. and then i hear people say oh, well, there is a lack of talent. i'm like, i'm standing in the middle of the fire waving my hand up. give me an opportunity. if there is something i don't know, i'll learn it. but i'm hoping that they will see our youth and our millennials are out here with their hands in the air willing to do whatever it takes. >> i want to thank you all for talking for me. >> no problem. >> thank you for being so open too. i think that's really important because a lot of people who are watching this, it is all theoretical and other people who are exactly like you don't realize there is other people out there like that. >> yeah, they need to see it. >> keep doing the best they can. >> change needs to happen. >> are you announcing your candidacy? is change needs to happen your slogan. >> well, for me, i guess.

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old spice hydrate will help you new citrus michelob ultra organic seltzer. become a more moisturized man. it will not help you get your security deposit back. “gotta follow the wind” i had this idea that there was a time in america where the boss, the corporation, the person in charge of the company actually liked when their workers did well or at least did better by their workers in some sense. and now the factories replaced by a big box retail store that when you apply for a job there, they pay you minimum wage and they say, here's how you sign up for food benefits because we're not going to pay you enough. >> we had that horrible example. mcdonald's, walmart and the others. in many of them they have a desk where a worker can go. they will help you apply for food stamps because they can pay

you less because the taxpayer is picking up what otherwise they would have to pay in wages. we are one of the richest countries in the world. that is outrageous. >> why do we act like this is okay? things could be different. for example, isn't it weird that food costs money? i know some of you think that question is weird. but think about it. look, i understand if you like high-end hard to prepare food like peking blowfish, you should pay for that. but the basics, rice, beans, milk, the holy trinity, why would a so-called society let anybody go hungry, especially a society like the united states that throws so much good food away? well, jermaine jenkins at fresh future farms isn't having it anymore, but this wasn't entirely her choice. >> i moved to charleston to go to culinary school. we would be making these classic desserts. i'm studying about all these innovations and going home and

snagging a couple of pieces of bread that we had in class and slapping some peanut butter in it, and that was our dinner. with me being intentional about buying the frozen vegetables, you know, just stretching it all, there ain't that much stretching in the food stamp card. so it was tough. within a month of us moving here, we had a need for food. >> in 2019, 37.2 million americans lived in food insecure households, which is defined as living without reliable access to enough affordable nutritious food. at the end of 2020, many months into the pandemic, that number jumped to 54 million. >> one of the popular terms to throw around is this idea of a food desert. >> when i hear a food desert, i automatically think food apartheid. >> the desert is a natural phenomenon. >> yeah. >> where --

>> this used to be a predominantly white neighborhood. there used to be like five grocery stores around here. all the grocery stores closed when the old navy base closed. >> jermaine lives in a low income neighborhood that is one of over one million low income south carolinians living with food apartheid. >> there was just one day of me standing in line with my neighbors all desperate where i said, i can do something else with this time i'm spending in this line. if i want to make high quality food available, i got to figure out how to grow it. so that's what i did. >> in 2014, through south carolina community loan funds feeding innovation competition, jermaine won $25,000 in seed money to launch fresh future farm. she transformed a donated building into the farm's grocery store and in fall of 2014, she and a team of volunteers began planting seeds on a lot that jenkins was leasing. from the city of north charleston.

where did you get all this knowledge? like you said, you were a city kid it sounds like. you were in culinary school. they don't go that far into the farming side. >> i'm also a proud graduate of google and youtube university. so i just went home and, you know, just researched. we can't afford all this stuff. so our ancestors had to do something. they didn't have a refrigerator. they didn't have grocery store. what did those folks do? >> they're just like, the sun is out. i got some land. >> free solar, yeah, yeah. it rains. like folks thought i was crazy building these raised beds because the only things that are actually dug into the ground are the structures. but all of these trees are actually granted above the ground. we just build soil over that dollar tree cardboard in wood ships and mounded soil around it and mulched it and walked off. as soon as we started planting the trees around the perimeter, dragon flies started coming in. birds started making nests. there is frogs and toads and

watching nature happen because we took a space back to what it was. >> one solution to the inequitable food systems all over the country is urban agricultural. she sees fresh future farms as a recipe who can find a bit of land and buy some seeds. >> what is that? is it some sort of basil? >> it's oregano. >> oregano. that could turn into this. >> yes. >> wow. >> it was a little afro puff. and then it turned into your hair. >> natural hair. natural care. >> yes, a! >> uh-oh. don't want to step on anything. >> ooh, wow. that smells delicious. >> yes. >> are you turning me into a farmer? >> i'm turning everybody into a farmer. we have red worms. these are warm castings. that's like nature's version of miracle grow. >> worm castings, does that mean

worm poop? >> yeah. >> the biggest thing we grow are these banana trees. bannana leaf itself is like nature's version of aluminum foil. you can wrap your meats in this and put it in the fire to cook. >> nature is trying to talk care of us. we just keep -- >> cutting it down. >> yeah. ybody's a skeptic. wright brothers? more like, yeah right, brothers! get outta here! it's not crazy. it's a scramble. just crack an egg.

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recently i read a post by aoc, alexandria ocasio-cortez, that was sort of talking about the idea that we shouldn't have billionaires in society that has all this economic inequality. what do you think about the idea of should billionaires exist? >> let me put it a slightly different way in terms of american history. in both world wars i and ii, the united states and congress passed an excess profits tax. here is what it said. if during the war when we're asking young men and women to risk their lives, their health, their bodies to fight for this country, it is unconscionable that others who are not risking make cash, make money out of this war. everybody thought that was reasonable, that was honorable, right? here we are. we're in a war. it's not a war with a military adversary.

it's a war with a disease. and by the way, it has already killed more people than most of the wars this country has been involved in and we haven't done anything. we haven't even seen a proposal to say the people who made money during the pandemic, that money has to go to help society. this country is so far gone that those people are not smart enough to understand they better do that kind of thing or else the party is going to be over. >> and while billionaires are nowhere to be seen, people like germane are doing the right thing. >> when the pandemic hit, we just cleared all the shelves off, distributed everything to the neighborhood and we just made deliveries twice a month of groceries to community members. not only did we distribute over

$20,000 worth of groceries, ppes, we did hurricane kits, we paid rent and utility assistance as well. >> you made sure they had a place to live, too. >> yes. where are you going to put the food if you don't have a house? >> i mean, that's true. >> they send care packages for free. so anything you need, they will put it in a care package and then they will drive to your house and drop it to them. >> which made it very good, especially for people that couldn't get to a store, lost their jobs. >> miley and her mom amber both live in the cherokee neighborhood when the pandemic hit, and they got to experience firsthand about what it was like having their local store care about how they were doing. >> made sure we had toilet paper, fruits, snacks for the kids. they brought these frozen vegetables soups you could heat up. >> that was really good. >> it was really nice for them to do that. and it was free. >> so how did you come across this place?

>> let her take the initiative. >> go for it. >> first grade, we came here for a couple of years every day after school. >> they used to go right there and we used to walk home every day. and i seen it, and i didn't really know it was here because i'm like, you know, that's a farm. okay. so we'll go check it out. i was like, this place might be expensive because my kids love going to stores. so every day after school we were going to the corner store. i bring them here and i'm like, oh, this is really affordable and they got fruit. they get whatever they want and i'm spending like $5. and it's healthy. >> healthier than what? >> than the potato chips and the sodas because that's what they sell at the corner store. we don't have apples and bananas and stuff in the corner stores. and for a lot of parents in this community, this is a low-income community. for us like myself getting to a grocery store was very troublesome. >> because there is not a big money here.

>> there is not unless you get on a bus or you catch a cab. so to me this made it convenient. >> the north chaz's cherokee neighborhood rate is probably 40%, and north charleston is among the deadliest suburbs in america. what's life like in this area? >> it's rough. for one, as far as the kids go, they took everything out of here. we don't have no real park. there is nothing for them to do. so all they do is run in the streets. the police patrol through here, but they don't do anything. the reason we moved is our house got shot through in a drive-by. >> oh, wow. >> this could be a very god place if they would put the time and energy into it, but they don't care about them here. they don't care about the low-income. they break us down and they leave us, and that's how they want us. >> are you working now? >> no. >> were you working before the pandemic? >> yes. like i only made $7 an hour, and it really wasn't work. i worked 14 to 16 hour a day at

the corner store around the corner. >> you worked at the corner store and they were still ripping you off? >> yes. >> you didn't get an employee discount at the corner store? >> nothing. i didn't get nothing. got your —- they get our best deals. you got your existing customers — they also get our best deals. everyone. gets. the deals. questions? got it. but, why did you use a permanent marker? because i want to make sure you remember. i am going to get a new whiteboard. it's not complicated. only at&t gives new & existing customers the same great deals on all smartphones. get up to $700 off our latest 5g smartphones. new dove men deodorant is different.

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nearly 40 million americans

are currently at risk of er eviction. and even before the pandemic, south carolina's eviction rates were nearly twice that of any other state. let's get one thing straight. housing should be a right, not a privilege. even the united nations agreed. it does a society no good at all to have even one person who doesn't have a safe, climate controlled place to live. but unfortunately, we all know that's not how it works in the united states of america. american capitalism believes you should earn a place to live. >> we ain't got nowhere to go. >> if you can't earn it, then you should suffer publically. before the pandemic, roughly 1 in 3 americans were a few missed paychecks or an unexpected bill away from being out on the streets. and the pandemic meant folks missed all the paychecks. >> so tell me, why have you brought me to this strip mall. >> this is where the evictions take place. we have a number of magistrate courts here in charleston county, and this is where we have our monday courts.

>> well, nicole paluzzi, a lawyer who works with charleston pro bono fights to keep those people from being out on those streets, the rumor is her blazer is red because it's soaked in landlord blood. >> we were identified as the number one place in the country for evictions to take effect. 16 out of every 100 tenancies in north charleston resulted in an eviction. now what we're seeing are cases where our food and beverage economy who we have in charleston, a lot of people were cut off from their employment, reduced hours, way fewer tips, and they were the first industry to be closed down. so those people were not able to afford their rent. we still regularly do see in housing court documents landlords who are charging 50% or 60% of the rent as a late fee, and how you ever going to get caught up? even if you are making partial

payments, even if you are getting the federal unemployment, you are not going to be able to catch up when one month really turns into five. >> how much do you think -- let's go pre-pandemic. how much of eviction is generally connected to people having rent that is too high? like are people having rent that is higher than their salary or income should afford? >> i need my soap box. i think that's a huge problem. i think the income disparity, the fact that we have skyrocketing rents but we don't have wages following in line with them is a huge problem. one of the bigger things that i am seeing around here is if we're looking at rent burden as 30% or more of your take-home pay is what your housing expense is, i would say there is a disproportionate number of people rent burdened in our area. >> if your rent is more than 30% of your income, you are in trouble. >> yeah. and i see clients who are regularly paying more in their rent than their income.

even in good times. >> more in their rent than their income. >> yeah. they're having to rely on assistance from family members or continuously going negative each month. >> when the pandemic happened, it should be, and this happened in other countries, that the country is like, we're going to turn off the tap. we will turn on the money for you guys but nobody has to pay a thing. >> canada. >> canada, exactly, yeah. new zealand and lots of other countries. >> it's like by april -- >> in the early days of the pandemic while trump and the trumpettes were busy denying the severity of the deadly virus, >> very well under control in our country. >> other countries were doing rent and mortgage freezes and or again regularly putting money in people's pockets. you heard that. so they say, look, we're going to say capitalism stops for now while everybody shelters in place. but we didn't do that in america. and i would imagine that people are not going to bounce back from this. >> yeah. that is an utterly terrifying prospect for us. we had how many families that

were unable to make their housing payment, whether it was mortgage or rental in september. wasn't it 40 million families that were unable to pay it. could you imagine that many houseless individuals? that would be a crippling situation to our entire economy and way of life. i have a family of six that came to court this morning worried about whether or not they would be able to go home tonight. >> because their landlord might have evicted them. >> yeah, for $600. >> for $600. >> yeah. >> that's the thing that's so frustrating is that money is out there. >> yep. >> $600 is not the most money in the world. >> it's not. >> it's just that that money isn't -- >> where it needs to be. >> -- isn't where it needs to be. >> if he could take the money he made during the pandemic, he'd give every single man, woman and child in this country $40,000, and he'd have the same amount. there used to be a time when corporate good will meant something more than a twitter post that says how has our company made you feel warm and

fuzzy today. you know what would make me feel warm and fuzzy? a shelter. >> home. food makes my belly feel warm and fuzzy. >> electricity. i mean, these are some basic, human needs that are not being met. >> and while the eviction moratorium has been extended to june 30th, 2021, the moratorium is really just an eviction now. eventually that bill comes due and people will have to pay all that back rent back. >> thanks for talking to me. >> any time. >> i appreciate you for bringing me to your fancy work space. >> it is fancy. >> yeah. i think i'm going to get some $1.99 dry cleaning done while i'm here. that fancy blazer won't dry clean itself.

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the united states is big on making you believe that you can do it yourself. anything. you just need gumption, whatever that is. we apply the things that make zero sense. i present the self-made billionaire. what? isn't it enough to be one of the

few people in history to get scrooge mcduck money. why would you need to pretend like you did it yourself? you didn't. >> i'm richer than most people i know. >> yeah. >> and i don't feel like i'm rich. >> what do you mean? >> but listen, let me tell you something. >> you have plane. you got millionaire pink on. >> salmon is good. >> that color used to be only successful people wore that. you can't make fun of me. i'm successful. >> you have to feel good about yourself to wear this. i get it. thinking steven prince. if you had to guess how he made his money, what would your guess be? nope. you're wrong. gift cards. >> i have always known that i was going to be in business for myself. i'm not -- i don't have the personality to work for someone else, and i always think i have a better way of doing things. that's not true, but that's the ego that drives an entrepreneur. >> good to know about yourself. >> exactly. i started the company in 1993. i thought it was going to be good. i didn't think it was going to be great.

i just made a lot of money. >> i don't know how much millions you have. do you -- you can tell me your net worth if you want to. >> i have told other people before but i would rather not. it sounds a little arrogant to talk about it. it is a decent number. you know, i have not heard that -- how much that david perdue is worth and i'm worth more than he is. he's running for senate. >> good, good. that's good to know. that gives me -- i like to have a range. i don't need down to the penny. >> not all rich people pretend they did it themselves. some even go further and know that the system that set them up for success isn't into that for the majority of americans. >> i think a lot of radical success in america is due more to luck than it is to genius. i was lucky i was born a white guy in this country and anybody who doesn't realize being born a white guy in america is fooling only themselves. >> well, there is a lot of people who are fooling themselves. >> i know. i know. i know. >> and like a lot of rich people, steven got richer during

the pandemic thanks to the stock market, which soared, despite the world collapsing. during the pandemic, it posted some of its largest gains in history. we have been convinced that the rising stock market is good for the economy, but it's not at all. more than 80% of all u.s. stocks are owned by the richest 10% of u.s. households. going full bernie sanders. and these guys already have a whole bunch of stuff going for them, like the american taxation system. which also favors the wealthy. have you heard that before? >> the vast majority of every tax law that's been passed since 1973 has been to wealthy people. why are we putting all that money into rich people's pockets, instead of everybody's pocket? and we should all be paying more tax, including me. >> steven is part of a group called the patriotic millionaires, an organization of wealthy americans that believe that they and all wealthy americans should pay more in taxes, a lot more. an idea that can't make them all

that popular at that meeting where they wear the owl masks. >> we rich people we don't go to walmart. we don't go to target. first of all, we get everything online. and secondly, i don't need anything. anything at all. what are we doing with all that extra cash? we're saving it. why aren't but putting more money in the pockets of the people who will actually go spend it and drive our economy? >> so instead of letting the wealthy horde cash like cash skeletons, why don't we tax them and give that cash to the people who will actually use it. universal basic income. let's talk taxes. so as we learned in class, during the last world war, our leaders worked together to support the country by raising taxes on the wealthiest americans. >> the united states does not consider it a sacrifice. >> it worked out so well for america, that we kept on taxing their wealthy behind during the post war boom.

why there was a boom. >> it stayed at 90%. it went down to 70%, all the way through the 1960s and '70s. then when reagan came in, it started its collapse. >> government is not the solution to our problem. government is the problem. >> now the top rate is 39%. that is a tax cut of enormous proportions for the richest americans. nothing like that was achieved for the middle class or the lower class. >> in 2017 with the passes of trump's tax cuts and jobs act, the corporate tax rate got lowered from 35% to 21%. and by taking advantage of all the different tax credits and loopholes, some of the highest grossing u.s. companies like amazon, netflix and general motors were able to completely zero out their income taxes.

>> 91 of the top 500 companies in america last year paid zero in income taxes. zero. that's not right. we can't rebuild a highway system. we can't house the homeless. we can't do those things if large corporations aren't paying any taxes. greed has been around forever. greed's been around forever, human attribute, not american, but human. >> we're pretty good at this though. if you rank countries by greed, i feel like america would be up there. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> what could we achieve by raising taxes? well, increasing the overall average tax rate of richest 1% by ten percentage points generate $3 trillion revenue

next few years, all college free, massively expand medicare, free child care for all, reparations would be nice, or financing the green new deal. >> i hate to pay taxes, no different from anyone else. >> people hear you say that, say it's a hypocrite now. >> i'm one of the good guys, why do you want me to self-penalize when i'm telling you problem is not me. it's not even the rich people but the rules, the rules are wrong. tax laws have to be restructured to hit all of us. when that happens, i'm all in. it's six times filtered. has zero grams of sugar. no artificial aftertaste. and, is usda certified organic. [toy squeezing] we're not playing around.

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♪ can we drill down a little bit on the idea of taxes. if people at top are making all this money but also paying their fair share of taxes, that things would be different right now? >> right. there's no mystery here. if you live in a society that at least nominally says universal suffrage, everybody gets a vote. smart rich people figure out uh-oh, i'm really rich, and there's all these people over here, majority. one day they're going to figure

out they could use their vote to undo the inequality of the capitalist economic system. so what the rich have done all along is buy the political parties and candidates and buy the whole process. there's nothing complicated here. so the laws have been written to allow them to not pay taxes they otherwise should. but want to hear the worst one? put on my hat as economist, capitalism has a fundamental flaw, that is creating a country of very small number of rich people living in sea of people who can't afford to buy what those big corporations are producing. in the end, there's a certain biblical quality here, in the end, you will have destroyed yourself. your profit is going to disappear because you have killed off the people who could

otherwise keep it going by buying. >> so take me five years from now if we stay on this path. what happens? >> i don't want to scare people, i'm a little hesitant to answer. >> fact that you said that already -- >> it's part of an answer, you're right. i think our economic conflicts are at the edge of explosive. you can't have a small number of people everywhere visible, you know, living it up like riley, spending money like there's no tomorrow, and you can't. you can't get your kid to college, you can't do any of the basic things that you want to do and you promised yourself, your spouse and your children. i think this is not a sustainable economic system. >> how do we get people in power, the billionaires to pay, how do we get them to do it?

>> the way you can persuade the billionaires is when the nonbillionaires begin to move, then the billionaires will pay attention big time because it will dawn on them -- they're smart folks -- it will dawn on them, uh-oh, better meet angry people halfway or they're going to take it all. that is the bottom line. >> better meet them outside the house in the street or they'll be in my house. >> and they'll announce it's not my house anymore. >> yeah. well. there it is. ask that burning, billion-dollar question one more time, should billionaires even exist? i'm sure you've seen the stats. billionaires have made billions upon billions of dollars in the pandemic, should people be allowed to become billionaires in society with this level of

disparity and poverty and economic displacement? >> we should have a society where everyone born here can eat, live, be educated. if one has to be lost in the mix, my vote is taking care of the masses. >> lose the billionaires. >> they'll be all right. >> just be multi-multimillionaires. >> house is paid for. >> only one guy, not nine. >> farm on that thing, if you let us. >> my big question for you, spokesperson here, do you think it's okay for people to become rich in middle of a pandemic? >> i don't think it's fair. if they get rich, maybe they won't understand what other peoples going through in this pandemic. >> yeah. >> i think it's always been big dogs versus the little dogs, and it's wrong. and for mothers like me or other parents out there who is in low income community that's lost

their jobs and can't afford to pay rent, lights or keep food on the table for their kids, it's wrong. it's really wrong. they're making money off of our sacrifices and it's not right. welcome to all viewers joining us in the united states and around the world, great to have you around. global outrage and condemnation, belarus accused of forcing a plane to land to arrest an opposition activist. and year after death of george floyd, pressure on the biden administration. and kenya's declining wildlife population, how it plans to fight off growing threats. ♪ >> live from cnn