- 13 minuti fa
Categoria
📺
TVTrascrizione
00:04Non una tecnologia che cancella lavoro, ma un moltiplicatore di produttività capace di cambiare
00:10software, medicina, burocrazia, industria e spazio. Non solo l'intelligenza artificiale
00:16in questa intervista al fondatore di Amazon Jeff Bezos, ma anche Space Economy e ridistribuzione
00:21del carico fiscale, politica e media. Con un filo comune per creare valori bisogna far
00:27funzionare i sistemi, non limitarsi a distribuire risorse o cercare un colpevole.
00:57So there's this tale of two economies, and they're using this age-old technique of, you
01:02know, picking a villain and pointing fingers. But the problem is, that doesn't solve anything.
01:09And so, like, if you want to help the group of people who are struggling, you have to figure out
01:16real root causes and solutions, and that takes skill.
01:20Yeah, you know, I started thinking about this and doing some research. A nurse in Queens,
01:27who makes $75,000 a year, pays more than $12,000 a year in taxes.
01:36Does that really make sense? Some people talk about, you know, making the tax system more progressive.
01:42How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes?
01:48The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3 percent of the taxes.
01:54It's only 3 percent. We can find 3 percent. So we don't have—it's a small amount of money for the
02:01government, you know, that. And really, it's—the more I thought about it, to me, it's kind of absurd
02:07that we're doing this. It's certainly a perfectly valid policy debate to say, do we want an even
02:17more progressive tax system? So, you know, the kind of the line that gets quoted all the time is,
02:24you know, the wealthy should pay their fair share. Right.
02:27If you really are being honest about it, we don't have a revenue problem in this country. We already
02:32have the most progressive tax system in the world. The top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all
02:40the tax revenue. The bottom half pay only 3 percent. We have already—and I think it should be zero.
02:46I don't think it should be 3 percent. Right.
02:48I think it should be zero. So we would be making it more progressive that way.
02:51And the other issue around—on the tax front is whether people of great means, at the very,
02:58very top end—and Elizabeth Warren has made this point repeatedly. I think she's made it in reference
03:02to you and others—are able to pay a lower tax rate, even though you're paying an enormous sum in
03:08taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am, for example. Well, these people sometimes say that,
03:15you know, I don't pay taxes. That's not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. And it's a
03:21perfect—again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate. But don't
03:26pretend, you know, that this—that that's going to solve the problem. You could—you could double
03:31the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you.
03:36Let me ask you about the anger, because there seems to be anger, at least from certain political
03:40sides of this. And AOC recently said in a podcast—I'm just so curious how you think about this. He says,
03:46there's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned, she says. You can't earn a billion
03:54dollars. You just can't earn that, she says. You can get market power. You can break rules. You can
04:00abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they're worth. But you can't earn that.
04:06Yeah.
04:06By the way, you've earned an extraordinary amount of money. You employ the largest employer,
04:12if not one of them, in the whole country. When you read that, what do you think?
04:17Well, it's—it's—it's not cracked on its face. Let's give you—let me give you a simple
04:22example. Let's say you start a burger joint, and you have 10 employees, and you make a little bit
04:30of money until you have—this is this one outlet. And by the way, these are the most delicious burgers
04:35in the world. People love your burgers, Andrew. And so then you open a second outlet, and now you're
04:42making a little bit more money, and you have 20 employees, and you open a third outlet. By the time
04:47you've opened a thousand outlets, you are a billionaire. And by the way, this is a real-life story. It
04:55happens
04:56all the time. It's In-N-Out Burger. It's, you know, Raisin Cane's chicken. At what point did that money
05:02all of a sudden become unethical, or—it didn't. There was one outlet, and then there were two,
05:09and then there were three. What you're doing—the way—the way you make a billion dollars,
05:13or a hundred million dollars, or ten million dollars, or anything, is you create a service
05:18that people love. And if millions of people choose your service, you're going to end up with a billion
05:24dollars. Right. And you can, you know, just try it with a chicken franchise.
05:29Do you think, though— But your chicken has to be good.
05:32But there's the question of whether the people who are working at the burger joint
05:36ultimately should be paid more, that that's what creates the affordability gap.
05:40Well, by the way, that's also—if you want to change the minimum wage, change the minimum wage.
05:44Amazon, we have our entry-level wage for, in Queens, is $23 an hour. And that's—that
05:54works up to be, like, $52,000 a year. And this is an entry-level job. It doesn't require any
06:00educational attainment. It doesn't require any pre-existing skills. We will train you. It's
06:05actually a great first job. On day one, you get full health care, the same health care program that our
06:12senior executives get, the same one I'm on. And so this is—this is actually a fantastic entry-level
06:19job. $23 an hour. But guess what? They're still charging that person more than $10,000 in taxes.
06:25And you think that person— You know, that's absurd. Right.
06:27Why would you charge somebody making $52,000 a year, $10,000 a year in taxes?
06:32It doesn't make any sense. Let them be—you know what? That person has a chance to uplift themselves
06:40and to uplift them—to uplift their family and to learn more skills. This is—but, like,
06:48why are you taxing them so much? I really am puzzled by this. You know, the more I think about
06:53it—
06:53Why? What do you think personally? I mean, you read these headlines. You see your name in them,
07:01whether it's the Met Gala, protests. Yeah.
07:04On a personal level, what do you—what do you personally think of all this? I know we're talking
07:08about policy. Well, on a personal level, you know, I think of—I think of my parents,
07:14and I think of how they uplifted me, and I think of where they started. I think—you know, my dad
07:19is a
07:21Cuban immigrant. He came to this country right after Castro took over, and he was a 16-year-old boy
07:28who
07:28didn't speak a word of English. He came out by himself. His parents weren't allowed to leave.
07:31He was in a refugee camp in the Everglades. And he built himself up. My mom had me in—she was
07:40in
07:40high school. She was a 17-year-old mom. You know, it wasn't cool to be a pregnant mother in
07:46high school
07:47in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1964. And she brought herself up. And so I look at that, and I think,
07:54you know, I want to make sure that the people who are struggling today have a chance to do that.
08:01to bring themselves up. And maybe, you know, maybe they're going to be the next Steve Jobs. Maybe
08:08they're going to be—you know, maybe one of their kids will be the next Steve Jobs. I don't know.
08:13But they—we can give them a better chance by eliminating their tax bill. I don't want to reduce
08:19it. I want to eliminate it. I think there's something very powerful about zero. You know, like,
08:24we—zero is a better number than, like, $1. You know, we don't charge—we have free shipping at
08:30Amazon, not like 25-cent shipping. Zero is a good number. When people are starting out and they're
08:37struggling, stop taxing them. We don't need it. We live in the wealthiest country in the world.
08:43America is the greatest country in the world. We have more entrepreneurial dynamism here than anywhere
08:48else in the world. Right. This is the best time to be alive in America because we have—access to
08:54capital is so easy right now. It's so good. And I'm talking about for entrepreneurs. Right.
09:00And aspiring entrepreneurs. And that's—we should have so much optimism about the future.
09:05Warren Buffett wrote a fabulous letter where he said they always thought he was going to get rich,
09:09but he never imagined that people were going to get as rich as Carnegie or Rockefeller. He thought
09:14they would never imagine they'd get as rich either. Those people gave away extraordinary amounts of
09:19money. They built libraries. They built schools. All of it. You've talked about giving your wealth away.
09:24Yeah. Some $280 billion of it, mostly during your lifetime. Yeah.
09:28You're 62 years old now. Warren Buffett has said how hard it is to give money away. Yeah.
09:35He's not even sure that his kids in their generation are going to give it away. He's already starting to
09:40prepare to find another—the next generation to give it away. Yeah.
09:44How are you going to do it? Well, I give away billions of dollars to charitable causes.
09:51I'm going to continue to do that. I'm going to give away most of my wealth in my lifetime.
09:55But that's going to be hard. You have to give away quickly. It's hard. It's also hard to do well.
10:00It's easy to do poorly. Right. And in my view, you don't want to create dependence with your
10:08wealth. One of the things I fund that I really, really like is family homeless shelters. I give
10:15about $100 billion or so every year to 30 or 40 different family homeless shelters. These are usually
10:23women with children. The motto that I have is, no child sleeps outside. And these are—I really like
10:29these because they build independence. So the average stay in these shelters is usually less than 180 days.
10:38They teach people skills. They teach people how to interview. They teach a bunch of things.
10:42Because mothers with kids—usually mothers with kids, sometimes fathers—they really do want to stand on
10:46their own two feet. So like, when you start talking about charity, one question I would encourage
10:50anyone to ask is thinking about doing charitable giving is, does this giving create dependence or
10:57independence? And you want to do things that create independence. How are you going to do that at scale?
11:02I mean, $280 billion and maybe more. Well, I want to say one more thing about this.
11:06I don't know yet the answer to your question. And this is a very difficult thing to do. And it's
11:10going to
11:11take a lot of focus and work. But I want to make one more point here, which I think is
11:14really important.
11:15Even though I'm going to give away the majority of my wealth, if I do my job right,
11:24the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger
11:35than the good that I do with my charitable giving. And I think this is an important point to make
11:41because
11:42people forget or they sometimes don't see that when, you know, when you create something like Amazon
11:49and you're saving—I get letters from new mothers all the time that say, like, I have no idea what I
11:55would be doing right now if I didn't have Amazon. Thank you. Or what we did in the pandemic when
11:59people
11:59could really see what an essential service we provided to them. And so, you know, this is—
12:06Amazon creates tremendous value. And by the way, all companies are creating value of some kind.
12:12That's why people are voluntarily giving them money. You know, nobody is forcing somebody to
12:17to use a particular product. You're choosing to do it because that product is giving you value.
12:23And so if you create a company, Blue Origin will create tremendous value for the world.
12:28Prometheus will create tremendous value for the world. Amazon has already created tremendous value
12:33for the world, and I hope it will continue to create even more. It's not just the consumer side,
12:37it's with AWS, too. But this is such an important point. You know, I really want people listening to
12:46this to think about that, that for-profit companies properly run create tremendous value for the world.
12:52Okay, talking about markets, I was asking about the news market.
12:57Yeah.
12:58Because you own the Washington Post.
13:00Yes.
13:00And one of the critiques, by the way—and this is maybe the wealth critique and everything else—is,
13:05you know, we just said the company laid off about 30 percent of its staff.
13:09and there's a lot of people out there who said, Jeff's super wealthy. He's talked about this being
13:15a public trust. It's something that he bought early on. How much you care about that piece of it.
13:23Why lay people up? Why fire people? Why are you to subsidize the business if in fact—
13:28Because the Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet.
13:34Does it? But does it?
13:35Yes.
13:35I mean, that's a question. Some people say it should be a trust.
13:37And let me tell you why.
13:38Okay.
13:39Because it's a measure of its relevance. If people won't pay for our product,
13:44we're not doing—it's not a good enough product. It's like, you know, doing—it would be like
13:51poetry without rhyming. It's too easy. So we want—it's got to be something that people will pay for,
13:58because that's a signal.
14:00Right.
14:00It's a signal that we're providing a relevant service. With your paper, The New York Times,
14:05you guys make a ton of money. You guys are doing very well financially. And you're providing a
14:09service that people are willing to pay for. We can do that, too. And guess what I told them,
14:14you know, when we were planning those layoffs?
14:16Right.
14:16I didn't pick who was going to get laid off or which departments. I said, follow the data.
14:21Follow the data. And I said, there's one exception to this.
14:25What's that?
14:26Don't follow the data on investigative reporting.
14:29The heart of The Post is investigative reporting.
14:33And guess what? Our newsroom today, even after the layoffs, is still larger
14:39than when we did Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. And so—and we just won the Pulitzer Prize for
14:46Public Service, the most prestigious prize—the most prestigious Pulitzer for our investigation into
14:52Doge. The Post is going to continue to be an important institution. In fact, it's going to be a more
14:58important institution because of this financial discipline. It needs to be relevant to readers.
15:04It needs to stand on its own two feet. I don't want it to be a charity. It doesn't need
15:08to be and
15:09it shouldn't be.
15:10You were early when you talked—I remember talking to you maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago—and you
15:16were talking about putting infrastructure in space.
15:19Yes.
15:20And I think you were even talking a couple years ago about putting data centers potentially in space.
15:25Yes.
15:25Before Elon was talking about data centers in space.
15:28Yes.
15:29Yes.
15:29How realistic is that really?
15:31It's very realistic.
15:32And what is the timeline of that? Because right now there's a lot of excitement,
15:35by the way, around the SpaceX IPO in particular because of this view that we're all going to be
15:38moving stuff to space.
15:40Yeah. The question, are data centers in space realistic? The answer is yes. The timeline is
15:47harder to answer. So, you know, some of the timelines you hear are very short. They're probably not
15:53right. You know, people would talk about two or three years. That's probably a little—
15:56Elon's talked about two or three years.
15:58It's probably a little ambitious.
16:00Right. Okay.
16:00You know, but I think what Elon would tell you is if you don't set an ambitious timetable,
16:04you know, if you want it to be six years, say it's three.
16:08Right.
16:08That's the kind of—so exactly how long it will take, I don't think anyone knows. But it is real. It
16:15will happen.
16:16I don't know if you saw, Eric Schmidt gave a commencement address over the weekend.
16:20Yeah.
16:20And the students were booing because every time he mentioned AI, they were booing because
16:26I think they're deeply fearful and worried about whether they're going to have a job.
16:30Yeah. Well, and the reason they're afraid of that is because all these smart people keep saying that.
16:36So there are so many smart people, and they are smart, and they are saying,
16:40oh, my God, you know, there's going to be no more radiologists because, you know, AI can read
16:46x-rays better than a radiologist can, and they're going to be no more software engineers because AI can program
16:52better than a software engineer can.
16:53Right.
16:54These people are wrong.
16:55So what's really going to happen is that it's going to elevate all of these people.
16:59And it's like you've been digging. Let's say you're a software engineer.
17:04Right.
17:05What is the analogy I can give you is you've been digging out a basement for your house
17:12with a shovel, and somebody is about to hand you a bulldozer.
17:18You should be so happy.
17:20If you're digging the basement to your house and somebody says, hey, how about this?
17:24I have a tool here that's going to...
17:26And what's really going to happen is we're going to have so much productivity in our economy
17:32that, for example, this is just one effect. A lot of people who have two earner income households,
17:41one of the people is going to drop out of the workforce. That's why we're going to have a labor
17:45shortage.
17:46People, because of the productivity gains, you're going to be able to afford things.
17:51We're going to have, I predict, we'll actually have deflation of certain core...
17:56Assuming we let this technology play out and don't, you know, hamstring it with regulation too early,
18:03we will actually have, you know, everything will get...
18:07Food will get cheaper and housing construction will get cheaper and so on and so on.
18:11Is there a transition cost?
18:12We can even solve the permitting problem I was talking about.
18:15earlier for housing, like it should take...
18:18When you, if you are a builder, why does it take you six months, nine months, two years,
18:25five years, depending on what municipality you live in, to get a building permit?
18:30Right. AI should be able to do it.
18:31AI should do that in 10 seconds and it should give you a yes or no in 10 seconds
18:36and then you should have your authority to build it. By the way, if it says no, it should give
18:40you the
18:40six reasons why and then you go change those things and resubmit and you start building
18:45tomorrow instead of two years from now. But how do you answer, I mean, Amazon's laid a whole bunch
18:50of people off. You heard Mark Zuckerberg... Not because of AI.
18:53Mark Zuckerberg recently laid a bunch of people off. Is that because of AI?
18:57Jack Dorsey has... Jack Dorsey ascribes it directly to AI.
19:00Well, you'd have to talk to Jack about that. I don't know, he must have had a lot of extra
19:05people.
19:06We're not seeing those same kinds of things at Amazon.
19:08But the reason that people are talking about this is in the context of coding right now
19:12and also in the context that for these companies to have the extraordinary evaluation, I think that
19:16we're talking about, they have to create extraordinary productivity.
19:19Look, can I give you a different lens to view this? So if I'm a software engineer,
19:27I need to up level and think to myself, what's my, what am I really doing? What is a software,
19:33a good,
19:35computer scientist, a software engineer? What we really do is we identify problems
19:41and we help solve them. And the code is almost just a, it's a piece of execution that helps with
19:49that. But the real job is going to be identifying problems and helping to solve them. Does that make
19:55sense? Totally. And that's not going to go away because it's going to, that's the kind of thing
20:00that humans are going to be good at is figuring out, okay, we want this. And they're going to work
20:04with that tool to build the system. But we humans are never going to run out of problems. And we're
20:10never going to run out of the need for solutions. And it's just that the work is going to be
20:16done
20:16at a higher level. It's going to be done with a bulldozer instead of a shovel. And that's going to
20:21be a
20:21good thing. But there's an argument or there's a concern about, there's the white collar workers
20:26on one end. And then I was going to mention, you have a new company called Prometheus. Yes. That
20:30is really about AI robotics. No, this is a, just so you know, that's, it's not surprising, but you
20:36know, because we haven't said much about it. And I can't say much about it today either. It's a little
20:40premature for me to talk about it. But we are not, we have nothing to do with robotics. What we
20:44are doing
20:45is we're building an artificial general engineer. So when you go to design something, we want,
20:52we're building tools to make it much easier for engineers to design physical objects. So you've
21:00heard of CAD and so computer aided design and so on. This is kind of like a very, very modern
21:06version
21:07of that. I'm really oversimplifying here. And it's premature for me to give much detail about
21:12Prometheus. Prometheus is something I got so excited about that I became the co-CEO of the company,
21:18putting a lot of time into it, a lot of energy into it. And it's, it's going to be amazing.
21:23And this
21:23is, this is that thing, you know, 10, as I said, 10,000 years ago, somebody invented the plow,
21:30and the whole world got wealthier. So this, the root of civilizational wealth is invention.
21:41So somebody had been in the plow, we all got wealthier. Much later, somebody had been in the
21:46steam engine, we all got wealthier. That's how this works. And you don't think this is at this time
21:51is different? No, it's not different. It's even better. And so, and by the way, not only is this,
21:58is that these people should not be depressed. They should be energized because this is a moment
22:05when, uh, it's something when the possibilities are so large. Just keep your eyes open to this
22:14possible.
Commenti