Adam Taggart | Thoughtful Money, Released on 3/2/25
There can be little doubt we’re at a material juncture: Deficit spending and the resulting pile of debts and other sovereign liabilities are starting to place real limits on our economic prosperity. In addition to these legacies of the past, the future is fast becoming more uncertain as many nations — the US in particular — are embarking on new policy directions very different from the status quo of recent decades. Where is all this heading? And are our odds for entering a better tomorrow increasing or decreasing? To help us wrestle with these very large and important questions, we have the great privilege of speaking today with Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics at Columbia, bestselling author, and global leader in sustainable development. A survey by The Economist ranked Professor Sachs as among the three most influential living economists — and it is an honor to welcome him to this program for the first, of hopefully many future appearances.
00:00 – Introduction & Overview of Economic Challenges
02:31 – The Shift to a Multipolar World & Geopolitical Uncertainty
4:10 – U.S. Debt Crisis & Fiscal Irresponsibility
11:51 – The Need for Military Spending Cuts & Fiscal Reform
20:19 – The Role of AI & Infrastructure Investment for Future Growth
Jeffrey Sachs is an American economist and public policy analyst who is a professor at Columbia University. He also serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University
Adam Taggart is the Founder of Thoughtful Money. He is also Co-Founder and former President of Peak Prosperity. Adam is an experienced Silicon Valley internet executive and Stanford MBA. Prior to partnering with Chris Martenson (Adam was General Manager of our earlier site, ChrisMartenson.com), he was a Vice President at Yahoo!, a company he served for nine years. Before that, he did the ‘startup thing’ (mySimon.com, sold to CNET in 2001). As a fresh-faced graduate from Brown University in the early 1990s, Adam got a first-hand look at all that was broken with Wall Street as an investment banking analyst for Merrill Lynch. Most importantly, he’s a devoted husband and dad.
Jeffrey Sachs: DOGE Won’t Be Enough, We’re Going To Need Tax Increases, Too added by Herman James on
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I prefer abolishing the IRS and replacing taxes with tariffs. Americans paid no taxes until the 20th century . . . if you don’t own your labor, you are a serf, you are not a free man.