293 - Justin Wolfers: AI, Inflation, & The 2026 Elections

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Justin Wolfers (0:56)

If it costs a thousand dollars to change someone's vote and each thousand dollars you buy only one vote, to change a hundred and fifteen thousand minds would have taken a hundred and fifteen million dollars. Musk put in two hundred and fifty million. Musk bought the 2024 election.

Robinson Erhardt (1:21)

Are billionaires like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg actually bad for the economy? Do they grow the pie or do they grow the pie and then take all the extra pieces?

Justin Wolfers (1:35)

I think it varies and I think there are different margins to think about. So look, one thing I don't want to do is I don't want to give in to the ugly side of my personality and say every time I see Zuckerberg earning an extra dollar, that makes me envious and unhappy. Envious and ugly emotion, I would rather do without it. That's not the case against billionaires. I also want to not be against all billionaires. Let me take someone I admire, Bill Gates. Obviously, Bill Gates looks very bad in some of the more recent personal revelations. Bill Gates also created the foundation for the personal computer revolution and then has spent the rest of his life very carefully and very thoughtfully giving away his fortune. If you thought of Microsoft as a machine for taking money from corporations so that the Gates Foundation could give it to curing diseases, then you would think of it as one of the world's truly great things. I think in American history, American billionaires have played constructive roles.

I don't know how much you travel, Robinson, but this idea that we owe something back to our country in philanthropic giving is a deep part of what it means to be rich in America. That's not true in other countries.

We have inherited some amazing things and we've created amazing universities and arts and cultural institutions. There's a lot of arguments to be had whether they were done just right and should have that much power and so on. But there is a sense of obligation. Some of these blokes meet that obligation. Warren Buffett meets the moment. He's going to give most of his money away. Some of them don't. Elon Musk. So now let me come back to the case against billionaires because I think there is one and I actually think it's quite serious.

Let me just make up a fact. If I had $100 million, I could buy everything I wanted. I think that's probably true. And if you disagree with the number, let's make it $200 or let's make it $50. I could go to the finest restaurant, so I could buy a nice house. You're at Stanford, maybe you couldn't buy the nicest house. Real estate is crazy where you are, but I could go to the nicest restaurants, I could buy a nice house, I could fly business class, I could wear nice clothes, real fancy clothes like with the brands and everything.

If I had any dollar of income I have above $100 million, cannot in any meaningful sense improve my materials quality of life. That's an idea. I don't know if it's right. Seems right to me though. I could forward just everything I could imagine. I'd fly private and I don't even think I'd like that.

So what are the dollars above $100 million buying you? Like, I think the answer is power. That's the, I mean, Matisse's, you can buy artworks and you can buy power. That's the only thing you can buy when you got more money than that. And Elon Musk gave $250 million to the president before the 2024 election. And almost any way you cut the math, that was what got him elected.