Without a doubt, the public school system in this country is broken. I.E., the city of Baltimore. You mentioned taxing private schools from K to 12. Does that include Catholic schools or other religious oriented schools? If it does, this suggestion is unfair and reeks of your anti Christian Judeo perspective. Lastly, did the federal government also provide the brain power and intelligence of Tesla's engineers or solely the funding?
I can not agree with taxing any K-12 private school. I don't believe in taxing the basics: home, real food (not fast food, junk food), medical, gyms, exercise equipment, vitamins/supplements, education - even it its crab legs, private school or protein powder. No tax to live and be healthy. IDC if its upper class stuff, no tax to live a basic life.
Scott, this lands, and I'd count myself in the category you're describing, though I've usually been filed under "self-made." I got a superb school education, then access to Open University computer science courses in the 1970s, right as the field was being invented—meaning I was taught programming by public infrastructure before most of the world knew the discipline existed. From there: eighty-hour weeks, fifty-one weeks a year, for a decade straight, and I retired at 44 after selling my third company to a larger competitor (the second had already gone public on the Toronto Stock Exchange). By every surface metric, that's a self-made story. But it only works because a public system handed a teenager access to a field years before the market caught up to its value. Fantastic education plus hard, smart work; but the education came first.
One of my clients, years later, had a slogan that captures your entire argument better than most economists manage: Dofasco Steel's was "Our product is steel. Our strength is our people." I've never forgotten it, because it quietly overturns the thing companies usually brag about. The product isn't the achievement: it's the visible output of a much less visible investment, and the real asset was never on the balance sheet where anyone could admire it. Swap "Dofasco" for "America" and "steel" for "Musk, Palihapitiya, Andreessen, Galloway" and you have the whole essay in nine words. The product was individual success. The strength, the actual load-bearing asset underneath it, was always the people and institutions nobody photographs at the ribbon-cutting. Every giant in your piece forgot which one was the product and which was the strength. You didn't.
Truth be told. Buy a car get $ 7,000 off paid for by us. Yeah, Elon, you did it all on your own, and now you just want to keep every damn penny you have.
Reagan was a shill for the uber-rich to cut inheritance taxes, taxes on their wealth, and now we are so upside down it's coming back to kill us. Add AI, and we're done. There is no balancing this pendulum swing.
My success is self-made. After losing everything I made in a family business by being their scapegoat and kicked to the curb, I rebuilt my fortunes not once but three times. You know, the third time is the charm. Persistence is the only answer. "Calvin Coolidge." I pay horrendous taxes now; let them do the same. Nobody needs a thousand million dollars.
Bravo Scott. What a well deserved honor and wonderful you have repaid the University of California system so handsomely! We need more people like you who do the right thing.
I've never understood the reluctance to "invest in the unremarkable" as you put it. Investing in only those who are already winning is like a farmer deciding to buy fertilizer and spread it only on the part of the field where yields are already high. Noone in their right mind would think thats a good idea.
A nation's economy is essentially the sum product of its workers x those workers' productivity. The best way to grow our economy fast is to invest in making those in the low and middle cohorts more productive. That is, focus where there is huge upside. That's about making education and healthcare accessible to them. Pouring more $$ into those who are already productive just exacerbates inequality and does little to grow the size, strength and diversity or our economy.
This all is not hard to understand. But, sadly, the conversation around this has been overtaken by those whose objective is to concentrate more $$ and more power into their own hands - and they've co-opted much of our political system to achieve that end.
not sure what you mean by exacerbates inequality. Bezos, Gates, even Musk, etc. have created hundreds of thousands, even millions of well-paying jobs, even for those without college degrees. Not sure why we demonize the wealthy so much.
Scott I am grateful and inspired and although I can’t give $20 million dollars, at 62 I realized I could contribute by advocating for the values I hold dear by creating an active letter writing campaign to whoever I believe could make a difference. I am now 75 and in the last 2 weeks have sent letters, not emails, to the Smithsonian Board of Regents, their Oversight Committee and the Jury Conference of the US. It’s all I can do and I am proud to do it.
I, too, was lifted up by a great public school system, a fantastically generous scholarship (thank you, Boettcher Foundation), and great Honors professors at Colorado State University. It drives me crazy that people like Elon Musk have the hubris to think they are self-made. Thank you, Scott, for setting an excellent example.
One of the best reads in awhile. Potential is relational, but we've built institutions, like education, as if it were intrinsic—an historical and categorical error. Until we reconcile that and replace it with an updated ontology, we'll continue to underperform on what's possible as a society.
As a recipient of a Pell Grant and Ohio Instructional Grant, I am grateful for and strongly support expanding grants to students for college, grad school, trade school, community college or any effort around gaining knowledge. Smarter people are the tide that lifts all boats.
And love the idea of pushing colleges to increase admissions and reduce costs. Hudge fund with classes is sad.
Also on the "more expensive cars cut off more people/other cars" item - I see this daily. The M5 cutting into the on ramp from nowhere, the G Wagon blasting thru a red light to turn left, the tuxedo black and white range rover passing stopped cars on the right in a construction site, almost hitting the road worker with the STOP sign.
Galloway’s argument is emotionally compelling, but it conveniently ignores who dismantled the affordable public-education system that once helped people like him.
He attended UCLA when California taxpayers heavily subsidized public universities, admissions were far less restrictive, and tuition was deliberately kept low. That opportunity did not disappear because Americans suddenly stopped caring about “unremarkable” students. It disappeared because political leaders and university administrators changed their priorities.
As elite private universities raised tuition, expanded bureaucracies, and competed through amenities, branding, prestige, and exclusivity, public universities began imitating them. At the same time, state governments reduced higher-education funding as a share of university budgets and redirected public money toward an ever-expanding collection of political programs, administrative initiatives, and ideological vanity projects. Students were forced to make up the difference through higher tuition and debt. The Government Accountability Office found that from 2003 through 2012, state funding for public colleges fell 12% while median tuition increased 55%. GAO report
Galloway therefore celebrates the public university model of his youth while avoiding the uncomfortable question: Who undermined it?
His proposed solution—more taxes, more spending, and another “Marshall Plan”—rewards the same institutions and political class that allowed costs and administrative overhead to explode. Simply pouring more taxpayer money into an unreformed system does not restore affordability; it may subsidize further institutional expansion while insulating universities from accountability.
The better solution is to restore the original bargain: taxpayers support accessible public education, universities control costs, administrative growth is restrained, admission capacity expands, and funding follows students and instruction—not prestige projects, political activism, or bureaucratic empire-building.
Galloway says he was “American-made.” Fair enough. But today’s students are being denied the affordable system that made him—and the people responsible cannot repair it merely by demanding more money from taxpayers.
Since Scott will be part of the Regents, he will be well positioned to advocate for some of the changes you mentioned. It will also take people motivated enough to vote in the politicans who share the same objectives.
Without a doubt, the public school system in this country is broken. I.E., the city of Baltimore. You mentioned taxing private schools from K to 12. Does that include Catholic schools or other religious oriented schools? If it does, this suggestion is unfair and reeks of your anti Christian Judeo perspective. Lastly, did the federal government also provide the brain power and intelligence of Tesla's engineers or solely the funding?
I can not agree with taxing any K-12 private school. I don't believe in taxing the basics: home, real food (not fast food, junk food), medical, gyms, exercise equipment, vitamins/supplements, education - even it its crab legs, private school or protein powder. No tax to live and be healthy. IDC if its upper class stuff, no tax to live a basic life.
Scott, this lands, and I'd count myself in the category you're describing, though I've usually been filed under "self-made." I got a superb school education, then access to Open University computer science courses in the 1970s, right as the field was being invented—meaning I was taught programming by public infrastructure before most of the world knew the discipline existed. From there: eighty-hour weeks, fifty-one weeks a year, for a decade straight, and I retired at 44 after selling my third company to a larger competitor (the second had already gone public on the Toronto Stock Exchange). By every surface metric, that's a self-made story. But it only works because a public system handed a teenager access to a field years before the market caught up to its value. Fantastic education plus hard, smart work; but the education came first.
One of my clients, years later, had a slogan that captures your entire argument better than most economists manage: Dofasco Steel's was "Our product is steel. Our strength is our people." I've never forgotten it, because it quietly overturns the thing companies usually brag about. The product isn't the achievement: it's the visible output of a much less visible investment, and the real asset was never on the balance sheet where anyone could admire it. Swap "Dofasco" for "America" and "steel" for "Musk, Palihapitiya, Andreessen, Galloway" and you have the whole essay in nine words. The product was individual success. The strength, the actual load-bearing asset underneath it, was always the people and institutions nobody photographs at the ribbon-cutting. Every giant in your piece forgot which one was the product and which was the strength. You didn't.
Thank you for doing that.
Well-said!
Well put Eric!
Truth be told. Buy a car get $ 7,000 off paid for by us. Yeah, Elon, you did it all on your own, and now you just want to keep every damn penny you have.
Reagan was a shill for the uber-rich to cut inheritance taxes, taxes on their wealth, and now we are so upside down it's coming back to kill us. Add AI, and we're done. There is no balancing this pendulum swing.
My success is self-made. After losing everything I made in a family business by being their scapegoat and kicked to the curb, I rebuilt my fortunes not once but three times. You know, the third time is the charm. Persistence is the only answer. "Calvin Coolidge." I pay horrendous taxes now; let them do the same. Nobody needs a thousand million dollars.
Bravo Scott. What a well deserved honor and wonderful you have repaid the University of California system so handsomely! We need more people like you who do the right thing.
I've never understood the reluctance to "invest in the unremarkable" as you put it. Investing in only those who are already winning is like a farmer deciding to buy fertilizer and spread it only on the part of the field where yields are already high. Noone in their right mind would think thats a good idea.
A nation's economy is essentially the sum product of its workers x those workers' productivity. The best way to grow our economy fast is to invest in making those in the low and middle cohorts more productive. That is, focus where there is huge upside. That's about making education and healthcare accessible to them. Pouring more $$ into those who are already productive just exacerbates inequality and does little to grow the size, strength and diversity or our economy.
This all is not hard to understand. But, sadly, the conversation around this has been overtaken by those whose objective is to concentrate more $$ and more power into their own hands - and they've co-opted much of our political system to achieve that end.
not sure what you mean by exacerbates inequality. Bezos, Gates, even Musk, etc. have created hundreds of thousands, even millions of well-paying jobs, even for those without college degrees. Not sure why we demonize the wealthy so much.
>Rand received $11,000 in social security benefits over the last eight years of her life
Isn't social security funded by payroll taxes? So you're dinging her for wanting to get the money she paid in back?
Congratulations and best wishes!
Great read, great view. I’m a Swede, and I’m forever grateful for my free education made possible by the people who went before me.
Very well said, Scott. Congratulations on your appointment - I hope you'll be able to do accomplish some of the things you lay out in our post.
It's OK to not be overly humble as long as you are not an asshose. You approach the boundaries of AHism, but rarely go over the line. The same as me.
Scott I am grateful and inspired and although I can’t give $20 million dollars, at 62 I realized I could contribute by advocating for the values I hold dear by creating an active letter writing campaign to whoever I believe could make a difference. I am now 75 and in the last 2 weeks have sent letters, not emails, to the Smithsonian Board of Regents, their Oversight Committee and the Jury Conference of the US. It’s all I can do and I am proud to do it.
As you say “Life is so rich”
Really enjoyed this.
I, too, was lifted up by a great public school system, a fantastically generous scholarship (thank you, Boettcher Foundation), and great Honors professors at Colorado State University. It drives me crazy that people like Elon Musk have the hubris to think they are self-made. Thank you, Scott, for setting an excellent example.
One of the best reads in awhile. Potential is relational, but we've built institutions, like education, as if it were intrinsic—an historical and categorical error. Until we reconcile that and replace it with an updated ontology, we'll continue to underperform on what's possible as a society.
As a recipient of a Pell Grant and Ohio Instructional Grant, I am grateful for and strongly support expanding grants to students for college, grad school, trade school, community college or any effort around gaining knowledge. Smarter people are the tide that lifts all boats.
And love the idea of pushing colleges to increase admissions and reduce costs. Hudge fund with classes is sad.
Also on the "more expensive cars cut off more people/other cars" item - I see this daily. The M5 cutting into the on ramp from nowhere, the G Wagon blasting thru a red light to turn left, the tuxedo black and white range rover passing stopped cars on the right in a construction site, almost hitting the road worker with the STOP sign.
Galloway’s argument is emotionally compelling, but it conveniently ignores who dismantled the affordable public-education system that once helped people like him.
He attended UCLA when California taxpayers heavily subsidized public universities, admissions were far less restrictive, and tuition was deliberately kept low. That opportunity did not disappear because Americans suddenly stopped caring about “unremarkable” students. It disappeared because political leaders and university administrators changed their priorities.
As elite private universities raised tuition, expanded bureaucracies, and competed through amenities, branding, prestige, and exclusivity, public universities began imitating them. At the same time, state governments reduced higher-education funding as a share of university budgets and redirected public money toward an ever-expanding collection of political programs, administrative initiatives, and ideological vanity projects. Students were forced to make up the difference through higher tuition and debt. The Government Accountability Office found that from 2003 through 2012, state funding for public colleges fell 12% while median tuition increased 55%. GAO report
Galloway therefore celebrates the public university model of his youth while avoiding the uncomfortable question: Who undermined it?
His proposed solution—more taxes, more spending, and another “Marshall Plan”—rewards the same institutions and political class that allowed costs and administrative overhead to explode. Simply pouring more taxpayer money into an unreformed system does not restore affordability; it may subsidize further institutional expansion while insulating universities from accountability.
The better solution is to restore the original bargain: taxpayers support accessible public education, universities control costs, administrative growth is restrained, admission capacity expands, and funding follows students and instruction—not prestige projects, political activism, or bureaucratic empire-building.
Galloway says he was “American-made.” Fair enough. But today’s students are being denied the affordable system that made him—and the people responsible cannot repair it merely by demanding more money from taxpayers.
Since Scott will be part of the Regents, he will be well positioned to advocate for some of the changes you mentioned. It will also take people motivated enough to vote in the politicans who share the same objectives.