{"podcast":{"title":"The Ezra Klein Show","slug":"the-ezra-klein-show-1371595","podcast_index_feed_id":1371595,"rss_url":"https://feeds.simplecast.com/82FI35Px","website_url":"https://www.nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast","image_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/47913775-afcf-4643-935f-31f1dcc86cfb/6a0e5e15-04a3-47c8-9c50-2f2fe8e84437/3000x3000/teks-album-20art-3000px.jpg?aid=rss_feed","author":"New York Times Opinion","episode_count":512,"summary":"Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike? Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher.","last_synced_at":"2026-06-19T18:20:25.714319+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show-1371595"},"episode":{"title":"Our Tax System Should Make You Furious","slug":"our-tax-system-should-make-you-furious","published_at":"2026-04-17T09:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show-1371595/our-tax-system-should-make-you-furious","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show-1371595","url":"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ray-madoff.html","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pfx.vpixl.com/6qj4J/pscrb.fm/rss/p/nyt.simplecastaudio.com/3026b665-46df-4d18-98e9-d1ce16bbb1df/episodes/1d0a1d2c-ad41-4824-9fe2-0320a377fabe/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=3026b665-46df-4d18-98e9-d1ce16bbb1df&awEpisodeId=1d0a1d2c-ad41-4824-9fe2-0320a377fabe&feed=82FI35Px","summary":"Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett are three of the richest people in the world, but they pay little in income tax relative to their wealth. In 2021, ProPublica published an investigation built on leaked tax documents that reveal what some of the richest Americans really pay — or don’t. Warren Buffett had a true tax rate of 0.1 percent. Jeff Bezos: 0.98 percent. Michael Bloomberg: 1.3 percent. Ultra-wealthy Americans have essentially been written out of the tax system. “It’s wrong as a matter of principle. It’s wrong because we need their money. It’s wrong as a matter of fairness. It is wrong for so many reasons,” the law professor Ray Madoff told me. She’s the author of the new book “The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy,” and she’s interested in helping people understand how broken the American tax system is and how to fix it. In this conversation, we discuss the techniques the ultra-wealthy use to evade the tax system, why they think “salaries are for suckers” and what tax reform could look like. Mentioned: “The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax” by Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel The Second Estate by Ray D. Madoff Taxation: The People’s Business by Andrew W. Mellon Philanthrocapitalism by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green Book Recommendations: The Age of Extraction by Tim Wu The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary Gerstle Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https:…","meta_description":"Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett are three of the richest people in the world, but they pay little in income tax relative to their wealth.…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3945,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-ezra-klein-show-1371595/episodes/our-tax-system-should-make-you-furious/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show-1371595/our-tax-system-should-make-you-furious.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}