Janet Yellen is discussed in The Bob Zadek Show in connection with two policy controversies: the negotiation of a global minimum corporate income tax and the extension of deposit insurance beyond the statutory limit. The excerpts do not describe her biography, her offices, or her career; she enters the program as the named sponsor of measures that guests and host analyze as restraints on tax competition and as taxes ultimately borne by individuals.
The global minimum corporate tax
In the May 2021 episode on the corporate income tax, Bob Zadek introduced the subject by describing a plan of Yellen’s to negotiate with trading partners in Europe and Asia. He characterized the effort as seeking agreement among countries on a minimum corporate tax, and said that countries such as Ireland and Estonia had enhanced their economies by attracting corporations with lower corporate income taxes. He asked his guest, Wall Street Journal tax policy reporter Richard Rubin, to explain the proposal and give his opinion on it Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021).
Rubin described the idea as putting a floor under corporate taxes globally. He said the discussions predated the administration then in office, and that the prior administration had been heading in the same direction. He said that not every country is needed — that getting the G20 on board would leave companies with little place to go — and that the aim was to prevent companies from routing corporate income through Ireland to Bermuda or the Caymans where it was not taxed. Rubin said the United States had initially signaled a floor around 21 percent and later indicated it would accept 15 percent. He noted that the United States already had a 10.5 percent minimum tax on US companies’ foreign income, created in the prior administration, and that companies were paying it Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021).
Rubin also described an enforcement mechanism he called the SHIELD proposal. Under it, if a company operating in the United States sent profits back to a country with a very low tax rate, the United States would deny deductions to that company’s US operations — which he said was the same thing as taxing it, and would either punish companies headquartered in countries without minimum taxes or induce those countries to join. He added that Congress would have to approve all of it Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021).
Zadek responded that the arrangement was anti-competitive, invoking the phrase “race to the bottom,” and said the United States had concluded that competition for corporate investment through lower taxes should be eliminated by agreement. He argued that if corporations had no place to hide, the United States would have no need to use tax dollars efficiently or to lower tax rates. The excerpt breaks off at that point Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021).
Tax competition and antitrust
The October 2021 episode with Philip Hamburger returned to the same policy. Zadek said the attempt at international coordination of taxes was an attempt to squeeze out variation so that there would be a uniform minimum rate across the world, and that this was worrisome because there would be no way of opting out and trying something else. He then named Yellen, saying she was not the creator of the provision but its great sponsor, and that she was obtaining the consent of the major industrial countries to agree not to compete on the basis of lower taxation and to adopt a 15 percent minimum corporate income tax The New Civil Liberties Movement (2021).
Zadek drew a parallel to a domestic measure he described as an exchange of federal tax dollars for a promise by states not to compete on the basis of lower taxation, and said that eliminating taxation eliminates freedom. He argued that if countries or states compete on lower tax policy, citizens gain the freedom to choose where to live on the basis of tax policy among other things, and that a monopolistic approach forbidding competition on price would be a crime if businesses did it. He said the arrangement flunks the test of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, and that prohibiting states from competing on tax policy removes the freedom of New Yorkers to move to Florida for lower taxation The New Civil Liberties Movement (2021).
Hamburger’s contribution in the excerpt is a general argument rather than a comment on Yellen specifically. He said that Republicans have sometimes been as bad as Democrats, that many Republicans voted for unconstitutional conditions and for higher taxes, and that blame is widely shared. He said the motivation for the measure under discussion was to reduce competition for taxpayers — customers — from high-tax states. He argued that no new legislation is needed, but better and more intelligent litigation, and that judges need to understand money as a mode of power; he said the New Civil Liberties Alliance is pursuing such challenges The New Civil Liberties Movement (2021).
Deposit insurance and the incidence of taxes
In the March 2023 episode with Arnold Kling, Zadek raised a different Yellen measure. He said the government had announced that it would insure deposits in excess of $250,000, that any insurance carries a cost because claims become likely, and that Yellen and President Biden had said this was at no cost to consumers. Zadek described Yellen’s explanation as being that consumers would not pay because banks are charged a fee for deposit insurance based on their size, so that if claims must be paid the banks will pay. He asked Kling to address what he called the cynicism, if not dishonesty, of that explanation Arnold Kling: We Just Nationalized the Banking System—Now What? (2023).
Kling called it a classic move by politicians to levy taxes at a business level and say the tax falls on business rather than on people. He said there is no business entity that is not a person that pays taxes, and that all taxes are ultimately paid by people; he called the claim that no people will pay a tax a demagogic lie. He said any tax — corporate or payroll — is paid by people, and that there is no entity out in the ocean from which money can be pulled without taxing people Arnold Kling: We Just Nationalized the Banking System—Now What? (2023).
Zadek then recalled a program from at least ten years earlier, with a guest from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, devoted to who pays the corporate income tax. He said the data-driven answer was that the lowest 25th percentile of earners bears the brunt of corporate taxes, because they spend all their money on consumer goods whose prices include the tax. Kling added that such earners are also workers, that the corporate income tax reduces investment, and that investment raises workers’ productivity and wages. He illustrated the difference between where a tax is levied and who bears it with the payroll tax: half is levied on employers and half on employees as a legal matter, but as an economic matter the employee pays all of it, because an employer who must pay a percentage of salary to the government can afford to pay less in salary Arnold Kling: We Just Nationalized the Banking System—Now What? (2023).
Across episodes
The topic recurs in two episodes, and the treatment is consistent rather than developing. In May 2021, Richard Rubin supplies the mechanics of the global minimum tax — the 15 percent floor, the existing 10.5 percent US minimum, the SHIELD enforcement proposal — while Zadek frames it as anti-competitive. In October 2021, with Philip Hamburger, Zadek advances the same framing without new mechanics, adding the antitrust analogy to the Sherman and Clayton Acts and the domestic parallel of states competing for taxpayers; Hamburger’s remarks concern unconstitutional conditions and litigation strategy generally. The March 2023 episode shifts to deposit insurance and the incidence of taxation, with Arnold Kling supplying the economic argument that all taxes are paid by people.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no biographical information about Yellen: no offices held, no confirmation dates, no earlier career, and no account of her role at any institution. They do not state the name of any bill, the terms of any statute, or the outcome of any litigation concerning the measures discussed. They do not report whether the global minimum tax was enacted or what rate was finally adopted, and they do not describe the deposit insurance action beyond the announcement as Zadek characterizes it. Everything the program says about her concerns the two policies above and the arguments her interlocutors make about them.