The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 68

 

Episode 68: Why FBARs Can Leave You FUBAR

Ugh, are we talking about Elon AGAIN? Well, yeah, but he's running so spectacularly wild, it reminds us of the joke about a horse wreaking havoc in a hospital. There's no protocol, so I guess we're all just watching. Blue checks backfired again with the fake Eli Lilly account Tweeting "Insulin is free," shining a big light on two things: That the pay-to-be-verified-on-Twitter plan is trash and, most importantly, that price gouging insulin to the tune of 1,200 percent is ethically barren. Next on deck is a big nasty: The Wall Street Journal reports that a U.S. taxpayer is facing a fine of $2.72 million for failing to submit a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts--also known as FBAR. The stinger? The taxpayer in question didn't even OWE any taxes on those assets; this is literally just a penalty. Good luck, fella. Meanwhile, pay transparency laws are going into effect in NYC to help narrow the income gap across gender and ethnic lines. All together now: Equal work, equal pay! A solid win for decreasing income disparity. We also cover a crypto update, echoes of Enron at FTXA, and Meta/Facebook is about to lay off 10,000 employees.

Read the Full Transcript:

Speaker 1:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice.

Welcome to The Liquidity Event, a show about all things personal finance with a laser focus on equity compensation. Hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI, each episode will take you through the week's news on FinTech, IPOs, SPACs, founder wins and fails, crypto, and whatever else these nerds think is interesting. Learn more and subscribe today at brooklynfi.com.

AJ Ayers:

Hello, and welcome to The Liquidity Event, we're your hosts AJ...

Shane:

And I'm Shane.

AJ Ayers:

And this is Episode 68, being recorded on November 16th, airing on November 18th. How are you doing, Shane?

Shane:

I'm great, very good.

AJ Ayers:

Great, great. Glad to hear it. Got a lot of fun stuff today-

Shane:

Oh, that's it? Okay.

AJ Ayers:

... this week. Well, yeah, moving on, moving on. This is just a quick check-in. We'll get to you later. Be patient.

Shane:

The patient is breathing.

AJ Ayers:

Cool. It's all good. Anyway, on today's episode, Shane is breathing, we've got the collapse of a crypto exchange. We've got Twitter in the news again, some articles on pay transparency, and a $2.7 million IRS penalty on some poor guy. Happy Friday.

Shane:

On some poor guy, some schmuck.

AJ Ayers:

So I was going to say schmuck, honestly. I was going to say schmuck and then I balked, I balked on schmuck.

Shane:

I got you. I got your back. I know what you're thinking. We share a brain.

AJ Ayers:

Just some poor schmuck. Speaking of some poor schmuck, Elon Musk demands Twitter servers explain what all these wires are for. That's not an actual headline folks, that's an Onion article. Shout out to The Onion for still being hilarious after all these years. Some context to that Onion headline, Elon Musk has been gutting Twitter and saying, "What's are all these expenses?" There was a violent Twitter exchange over the weekend about the extravagant lunch expenses for Twitter employees in the office, so The Onion taking a shot here. And then there are just great jokes on Twitter about this. Did you see the one about what's actually going to bring Twitter down is Elon goes into the server room and unplugs a laptop that's connected to all the towers.

Shane:

One laptop?

AJ Ayers:

Yeah.

Shane:

Yeah. Yeah. The website is in duress. You can't let go of 3,000 people. The website's going to go down at some point.

AJ Ayers:

It would seem that way.

Shane:

If the website goes down, that is probably TKO for his ownership with the company. It's already under financial strains. There's a good reason he's firing 3,000 people because they can't afford the interest payments, right? So if then the website goes down, the trust in it... It's a pretty antiquated platform. I don't think anyone under 25 has a Twitter, to exaggerate a bit, so they've got to make it work.

AJ Ayers:

Yeah. Well, all the code is written in Latin. The language is so ancient. No?

Shane:

Is it? Oh, sorry. Sorry. My doorbell rang right as you made that joke. Yes, it's a dead language. No, it would be written in COBOL, just like the IRS.

AJ Ayers:

Right, right, right. Yes.

Shane:

That would be fantastic.

AJ Ayers:

An actual headline about Twitter that's not from The Onion, there was a fake Eli Lilly Twitter account that claims insulin is free.

Shane:

Oh, God.

AJ Ayers:

Yeah. So a little bit of backstory, yeah, so Elon comes in, says, "Okay, let's monetize this bitch." You can buy a blue check mark and it only costs $8 a month, so a bunch of fake accounts popped up. Someone created a fake Eli Lilly account, which is a pharmaceutical company, and tweeted, "Insulin is free." There was some intense ramifications of this. Their stock fell over the weekend, and obviously just shed light on a pharmaceutical company who overcharges for insulin when that is a drug that is very inexpensive to produce and many, many, many people rely on it to stay alive in this world.

Shane:

Yeah. First of all, fuck this company. Fuck Eli Lilly. They've raised the price of insulin by 1,200% when the original patents were sold for a dollar so that people wouldn't die.

AJ Ayers:

Right.

Shane:

This is capitalism run wild.

AJ Ayers:

Right.

Shane:

So I have no sympathy for the devil here in this scenario.

AJ Ayers:

Yeah, this is like a Guy Fawkes kind of situation.

Shane:

Huh. Yeah.

AJ Ayers:

Right? It's kind of like what Twitter is right now, right? It's like a bit of, "Let's put masks on." That's what the blue check is. "Let's put all put on our Guy Fawkes masks and impersonate evil companies doing good things."

Shane:

Potentially the most impactful $8 ever spent in the history of corporate spending. Apparently, there's a lot of other... For those of you that don't know, the verification changed up quite a bit. You no longer have to be literally verified. You just pay $8 and you get a blue check mark, and then you can change your name to something really silly like TheRealOJ32 instead of therealOJ32 and tweet stuff like, "I regret my mistake." There was a bunch of them. Somebody did George W. Bush and said, "I miss killing Iraqis," with a sad face emoji.

AJ Ayers:

Oh, god.

Shane:

RealOJ did a confession. LeBron James was requesting a trade from the Los Angeles Lakers. Lockheed Martin claimed that the company was stopping weapon sales.

AJ Ayers:

I actually understood that. I follow sports.

Shane:

Yeah, yeah, sports reports.

AJ Ayers:

I love-

Shane:

Trade.

AJ Ayers:

LeBron James to me transcends sports. LeBron James is like... We'll get to him later. Anyway, anything else on Twitter we should talk about?

Shane:

Do you still use Twitter?

AJ Ayers:

I use it when I'm bored and I've checked my email and checked my Slack and checked my Instagram and responded to all my text messages, I'll scroll through it.

Shane:

Right. And you're like, "I still want to be on my phone. I'd prefer this doom scroll to continue."

AJ Ayers:

Oh, sorry, LinkedIn. Yeah. In the hierarchy of time spent on phone, it has been pretty low for a very long time.

Shane:

Yeah. I archived my old Twitter account that I've had since 2009 for obvious reasons. And now I have a corporate account that's really boring.

AJ Ayers:

Blue check mark?

Shane:

I'm sorry. I couldn't scrounge up the eight bucks.

AJ Ayers:

I can loan you some. I had a crypto windfall this weekend, not, so I could loan it to you if you need it.

Shane:

Is this your segue into the FTX debacle?

AJ Ayers:

Wait, I lost my train of thought. Fuck. Anyway, yes, that is my segue into the FTX debacle. Wait. Before we get to that, I want to make sure we talk about this because we skipped it the past two weeks and it's still sort of timely. Let's talk about this IRS penalty. This is an article from The Wall Street Journal. Just to recap what's going on in this article, a poor schmuck, as we led with at the top of the show, essentially, if you are a US tax payer and you have assets in foreign bank accounts of more than $10,000, you have to tell the IRS about them. It's called an FBAR. It's a foreign bank something something.

Shane:

Account report.

AJ Ayers:

Account report. Thank you. And you have to file the form, no taxes on it, just informational. You got to do it. If you don't, the penalties are insane. Shane and I and our entire tax team have been begging clients to tell us when they have foreign bank accounts. It's just a one-page disclosure, bank account, name, amount in it. This guy failed to do that, and the IRS levied a penalty of $2.7 million on him. No allegations of tax fraud, no additional taxes owed, this is literally a, "You didn't complete this form and file it and you owe us $2.7 million." CPA thoughts on this?

Shane:

Yeah, I have a lot. I'll try to make them quick because it's tax related. But the idea behind the FBAR is that we had a lot of people going overseas, and we're a very globalized globe at this point, so people work around the world and they have foreign bank accounts. And if you have more than $10,000 in a bank account, then the US wants to know about it because if it's not in the US, there's no 1099's, no W2's, so you could have a ton of income. And the US taxes you on your global income even if you do not live in the United States. We tax people based on their citizenship, not by their residency. We're one of two countries that do that, it's us and Eritrea, so in good company there.

Anyway, this guy was a Romanian/American dual citizen, and I've seen this a lot. I worked in international tax deeply for four years, and it was routine, I did this all the time, somebody was born with an American citizenship, but they never stepped foot in America because one of their parents was an American citizen. They grew up in Italy, they don't speak English. And then, around 2008 or '09, the worldwide crackdown on international assets comes down. And because you are a US citizen, you're taxed on your global income and all these penalties start popping up. The guy has never even been to the United States, but the IRS finds him and says, "You should have been reporting your foreign bank accounts for the last 50 years." And they're like, "What? Who are you? Que pasa?"

AJ Ayers:

Prego?

Shane:

I have revoked many people's citizenships or helped them revoke their US citizenship because-

AJ Ayers:

Because to avoid this-

Shane:

... the taxes. Yeah.

AJ Ayers:

Yeah. It's not worth it.

Shane:

So, what's weird in this guy's case is he told the IRS. He's like, "Oh, I found out about this." He went through a voluntary disclosure program, and the penalties for not reporting that, they can be up to 100% of the value of the account. And that's intended to make sure that people don't hide assets. So this guy is paying a penalty of $2.7 million, and it's not even an income tax, it's just literally his money that he has in the foreign accounts.

AJ Ayers:

And just to be clear, he never owed any tax.

Shane:

Right.

AJ Ayers:

This is not a penalty on tax that he didn't pay. It's literally just a slap on the wrist for not filing these damn forms. Why didn't his accountant just file a first penalty abatement?

Shane:

Oh, well I don't think that exists for these.

AJ Ayers:

It doesn't work for a first?

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ Ayers:

Okay.

Shane:

But the reason we bring this up is because this case has made it, I think it's going to the Supreme Court. We're going to see if under the eighth amendment, the government cannot charge excessive penalties on citizens. So these foreign reporting penalties are going to be reviewed by the Supreme Court for being excessive. So, it's interesting.

AJ Ayers:

I have a suggestion. I have a suggestion. Let the IRS let me build the FBAR reporting form, which will be an online portal, which you type in your name, your Social Security, your bank, the amount, and the address, and it takes you five seconds. Folks who are listening, if you've ever tried to fill out an FBAR, it's the most annoying, stupid form ever. It has to get attached to your tax return. It's just hard to do. If they just made it easier, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

Shane:

It is quite hard to do. You have to report the highest balance during the year, given exchange rates fluctuations throughout the year. So if your balance went from, I can't even get into it.

AJ Ayers:

No thank you.

Shane:

But the takeaway here is if you have any clients, or if you are somebody with a bank account outside the United States and it exceeds $10,000 after converting from Euro, for example, which is now one-to-one, so easy conversion there, then you need to report it. And that includes all of your bank accounts. If you've got four bank accounts that have $3,000 each in them, then you need to file an FBAR. Anyway, let's talk about pay. You want to talk about transparency in the pay space for tech companies?

AJ Ayers:

Sure. Yeah.

Shane:

Yeah. There's just this cool New York business article about how in New York City there's pay transparency laws going into effect. These are intended to make sure that the gender gap is not ever growing and should be shrinking, because if pay gaps or a pay salaries are public and viewable, then everybody should be getting paid the same despite their gender. So that's a law-

AJ Ayers:

Or ethnicity. Yeah.

Shane:

Yeah. Or ethnicity or whatever it is that would cause a gap in wages for two people that are equally qualified for a job. So AJ has a note here about... Do you want to comment on this article before I talk about it?

AJ Ayers:

Oh, I just I wish there was a little pay transparency when I started my first full-time job after college. When I started, I made $28,000 a year, which was significantly less than the other mostly male, not financial planning associate, Jesus, other editorial assistants in my publishing office. So this would have helped me out a little bit. Maybe I wouldn't have had to also be a barback and write freelance and babysit kids to pay my rent. Yay.

Shane:

Yay.

AJ Ayers:

A little bit of personal color here.

Shane:

Tell me how you really feel.

AJ Ayers:

Yeah. Honestly, I've been thinking a lot about this and watching other people react to this. I don't know if this is going to be good in the long run. Well, sorry. I think it will be good in the long run. I think in the short term everyone's going to be scrambling. There will be companies that find creative ways to avoid this, such as putting very wide salary ranges and making excuses for why someone gets paid more than another person. So it's going to be messy while we figure out how to actually make a difference and close the gender pay gap.

Shane:

Yeah. I don't know how it impacts... I don't know if it's going to have the Europe effect with the iPhone, where because Europe requires a USBC, America will get a USBC charger for the iPhone.

AJ Ayers:

Everyone else will, yeah.

Shane:

Yeah. I don't know if that's going to happen in New York and California, who usually lead the way on progressive items like this. What I can tell you is separately, there was a way to find out what people were getting paid at tech companies, because if you want to hire somebody from India who's a star coder, you have to put them on the H1 visa and you have to pay them something similar to what a US person makes. And you have to post those pay ranges on your visa application. So you were able to see what every position at Apple and Google was hiring for-

AJ Ayers:

Oh, what a good hack.

Shane:

... with a range. Yeah, by looking at visas.

AJ Ayers:

Love that.

Shane:

So yeah, pretty cool.

AJ Ayers:

Love a hack. You think Mississippi's going to do this? You think Mississippi's going to post?

Shane:

Fuck you. Fuck you. I couldn't keep it. Dog, dog, where do you think you get your soybeans from? I don't want to hear it, not another word. Either eat your veggie burger and shut the fuck up or accept that-

AJ Ayers:

Sorry. Quick no-brainer, related to soybeans.

Shane:

Oh, yeah?

AJ Ayers:

My no-brainer is literally...

Shane:

Eat soybeans?

AJ Ayers:

My no-brainer is literally eat soybeans. I used to, speaking of making $28,000 a year.

Shane:

Vote with your wallet, AJ. Vote with your wallet.

AJ Ayers:

Back in the day when my bank account was very scarce and I would shop almost exclusively at Trader Joe's and very certain discount supermarkets, I would buy packets of frozen edamame, AKA soybeans, and just eat those as great snacks. And I recently rediscovered that. So if you're looking for a great healthy, protein-filled easy snack, frozen soybeans, you just put them out on the counter and they defrost. You don't even have to cook them. Add a little salt, a little chili oil if you're getting spicy.

Shane:

I love when you come up with single dude recipes, because you show your true colors when you do the single dude recipes. The kitchen princess, deep at heart-

AJ Ayers:

Because I'm this-

Shane:

... eats frozen french fries that have been left on the counter long enough for them to de-thaw and doesn't heat them up sometimes.

AJ Ayers:

They get a little soggy. It's kind of nice when you do that. Anyway.

Shane:

Speaking of single dudes that are a mess.

AJ Ayers:

Single dude, left out on the counter to melt a little bit. All right. What the hell's going on in the crypto space?

Shane:

Yeah. If you've been paying attention to the news at all, then you are aware that there could be a Lehman Brothers moment going on in the stock market and private markets with the failure of crypto exchange, FTX. Over the last two weeks, revelations have come to light that about a billion dollars of customer funds, I think it's closer to $2 billion, have been just left off of the balance sheet, have been totally lost. There was a run on the bank, so to speak, and FTX, once worth north of $30 billion is now worth close to nothing and is heading into bankruptcy. SBF, the owner, the 30-year old billionaire, formerly worth $15 billion, now worth about $1 billion, is now searching for bankruptcy.

AJ Ayers:

Oh, wait. We're not using his name now? Is this like a Voldemort kind of thing?

Shane:

Sam...

AJ Ayers:

Bankman-Fried.

Shane:

Yeah. I know the guy. I'm calling him SBF.

AJ Ayers:

Oh, okay. You were also in the house with the 10 other people in The Bahamas, but you slept on the couch so you weren't involved, as some people have said.

Shane:

People think it stands for, his name is actually Soy Boy, funny boy. So anyway.

AJ Ayers:

Anyways.

Shane:

I took a shot.

AJ Ayers:

Anyways, so this whole thing starts unraveling, right? This is a little over a week ago. There's this leaked document showing that there's an investment firm called Alameda, shows a leak document, and basically, is revealed that a lot of their assets were actually its own token, which sent a little bit of worry throughout the crypto space. A bunch of drama unfolds over Twitter. We have a CEO of another exchange, Binance, say that he's going to liquidate his position in FYX. Then there's potentially some kind of handshake deal that happens behind the scenes between FTX and Binance that falls apart. And once that falls apart by the CEO of Binance basically tweeting and saying, "We're not going into this deal." That's when the dominoes start to fall.

And then, we get these revelations that $10 billion removed from FTX to the investment firm, which is apparently under control of Sam's ex-girlfriend, and it just looks like a big old hairy mess. I'm getting Enron vibes from this, Shane. There was a note here in this article that we got from Reuters about a kind of backdoor accounting system, where they had their own internal mislabeling, and they chalked up the missing $10 billion to just, "Oh, we had a bad internal way of coding things." Do you buy that?

Shane:

I do. Yeah. There's two reasons why it reeks of Enron. One is that the accounting was done incorrectly and the balance sheet was wildly off. At Enron, they had off balance sheet assets, so to speak, or off balance sheet liabilities as well. And these ended up being the problem with Enron, as their CFO had all these dual dealings where he would benefit if Enron crashed. The other reason it reeks of Enron is that the guy, the lawyer that unwinded Enron after Enron went bankrupt is the same guy that's unwinding this company.

AJ Ayers:

No.

Shane:

It's the exact same lawyer. Yeah, it's kind of... Oh, I forget his name, but he's involved.

AJ Ayers:

It's his specialty. He's got a niche. Everyone's got to have a niche.

Shane:

Everyone's got to a niche, and that's multi-billion dollar meltdowns for this guy. Yeah. I think that there was a run in the bank when one of the investors withdrew $580 million of coin from FTX, and then the rest of the people that weren't investors started to try to get their money out, too. And then they realized that there were billions missing. And then, when a run on a bank happens, it's pretty clear. And the problem with this is that-

AJ Ayers:

This is run on the chain, though, right? This isn't a bank.

Shane:

A run on the chain, yeah. And none of these funds are insured by the FDIC because this isn't cash, nor as an investor or protected by SBIC, because this isn't a part of the typical investment community. So people's money are going to disappear, unfortunately, and a lot of venture capitalists and a lot of retail investors are going to be out of money. Something interesting about all of this is, I don't want to be a conspiracy theory guy, but we have to note some connections between some of them.

AJ Ayers:

Oh, it's a little late for that.

Shane:

We must note some connections within the regulatory and MIT college and private investment space. SBF, Sam is a graduate of MIT. His girlfriend, who borrowed the $10 billion for her trading platform in Alameda, who by the way is 28 years old and is just two years out of Stanford and is suddenly managing $28 billion, and says that she used elementary math to manage all of those investments and does not use stop losses to prevent losses on their trades, very interesting take. She is the daughter-

AJ Ayers:

Yeah. She has a fresh perspective.

Shane:

She is the daughter of a man named Glenn Ellison, who is a professor of economics at MIT, and the former boss of Mr. Gary Gensler, who is a former employee of Glenn Ellison at MIT and is the current head of the- SEC.

AJ Ayers:

Current head of the damn SEC.

Shane:

Would you look at that? Can you imagine Thanksgiving at those houses?

AJ Ayers:

Yeah, you're like... What's the GIF of what's his face doing all the math, making all the connections?

Shane:

Oh, yeah, the man from Mars?

AJ Ayers:

I can never remember that first name. Thank you. Yes.

Shane:

Yeah. Are you doing Galifianakis from-

AJ Ayers:

I was doing Galifianakis, thank you. Yes.

Shane:

Oh, okay, from Road Trip.

AJ Ayers:

Yes.

Shane:

No, it's not Road Trip. The Hangover. Anyway, not that there's anything wrong with this, but it does add some flavor to the whole debacle, right?

AJ Ayers:

Yes.

Shane:

It's an under-regulated space. The regulator is involved with this family. I don't know. Do you want to talk about this? There's a lot of articles about what's going on here and there will be a lot more revelations to come. We're going to be talking about this for probably a few episodes. You have some comment. There's a lot of commentary about the type of people that are involved in this. Tom Brady and Giselle are losing billions. The Winklevoss twins are losing billions. Obviously all the people-

AJ Ayers:

It's the Winkle vi.

Shane:

Thank you. Well, tiny violin.

AJ Ayers:

Yeah. Look. There are good people who are going to literally have their funds evaporated and have already at this point.

Shane:

Yes.

AJ Ayers:

But this is a juicy scandal. This is the unraveling of someone who's on the cover of Forbes Magazine for being a financial genius. This was a guy worth tens of billions 14 days ago, and is now, what's the latest? Is he on the run? Is he getting extradited? I didn't quite follow the headlines.

Shane:

No. He's owning up to everything and he's involved.

AJ Ayers:

Okay.

Shane:

The company is based in The Bahamas, so it may look like he is running away to The Bahamas, but that's just literally where the company is.

AJ Ayers:

He picked The Bahamas for the beaches, by the way, not for the relaxed regulations. Just so we're clear.

Shane:

I find it very interesting that crypto.com is based in Singapore. Coinbase has no headquarters, and FTX is headquartered in The Bahamas. I'm not saying these are all...

AJ Ayers:

Okay.

Shane:

Anyway.

AJ Ayers:

Last bit on this. Michael Lewis, who you and you and I have read most of his books. For those not in the know, he wrote Moneyball, he wrote The Big Short, which is one of the greatest books about money and one of the greatest movies about money. It was revealed, this is my favorite part of this entire story, it was revealed he has been profiling what's his name, SBF?

Shane:

Uh-huh.

AJ Ayers:

For the past six months, like shadowing him. So he has all the notes, and what an incredible end to this story. So Mr. Michael Lewis is already shopping the movie rights obviously for this book that he hasn't even written yet on the downfall of the King of Crypto. Looking forward to what this book's going to be titled.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ Ayers:

Bailout in The Bahamas? He's more creative than I am.

Shane:

Yes. I'm looking forward to an explanation of what happened from Margo Robbie in a bubble bath again in this next movie.

AJ Ayers:

Yes, yes.

Shane:

If they don't do that again, then they missed their shot.

AJ Ayers:

Yes. Podcast producers, please put a photo of Margo Robbie in the bathtub from The Big Short in this frame right now. Thank you. Okay. Oh, wait. One more little bit on crypto. We've got a Wall Street Journal article here that Crypto.com, which is not FTX, different crypto behemoth, their withdrawals were increasing over the weekend after the CEO admitted a $400 million transaction problem. I don't know, it kind of seemed like the timing sort of lined up with the demise of FTX. I wonder if it was the transaction problem or if it was just general crypto market feeling a little uneasy and wanting to just take their money out of an asset that was falling pretty dramatically.

Shane:

Are you referencing the ether transfer that Crypto.com had where people were judging?

AJ Ayers:

Mm-hmm.

Shane:

Well, the interesting thing about that is everyone can see what's happening on the chain, and if something goes wrong and there's watchdogs on this visible transparent chain, they can tweet about it, which I find really insane. I would love that to happen in US banking, right? Obviously, that might not be possible since we don't have the same technology in US banking. ACH and wire transfers are 500 years old. I did find an article about, this is kind of relevant, how corrupt bankers, due to the lack of transparency, are treated differently in other countries in the United States, where it's usually a slap on the wrist in a monetary fine, where it should be prison time. In Vietnam, if you are found to be a corrupt banker, you'd die by firing squad.

AJ Ayers:

Wow. Okay. That's intense.

Shane:

Anyway, moving on.

AJ Ayers:

Anyways. Wait, one last thing. So if Crypto.com goes down, what do you think... So there's a Crypto.com Arena, which used to be the Staples Center, for those of us who grew up going to the Staples Center. They have a 20-year naming rights to that building where the Lakers play and JLo performs. They have 20 years. They paid $700 million. Shane, what do you think at the end of 20 years or sooner, if Crypto.com fails, what is the Staples Center going to be renamed to? What company is the future of the Los Angeles Arena? I'll go first. I think it's going to be the Spindrift Arena.

Shane:

Why?

AJ Ayers:

Because of seltzers, everyone is obsessed with seltzer, and it's cute and the colors are great. It's going to be great branding for everyone.

Shane:

All right. I'll piggyback off that and call it the Kombucha Arena because it's LA after all.

AJ Ayers:

So the Synergy? Synergy is one of the more popular kombucha brands.

Shane:

Yeah, yeah, sure.

AJ Ayers:

Synergy Arena is nice. That has a nice ring to it.

Shane:

Yeah. You put me on the spot.

AJ Ayers:

Sorry.

Shane:

Move on Twitter? Back to Twitter?

AJ Ayers:

No. I'm sick of talking about Twitter.

Shane:

Oh. All right.

AJ Ayers:

Sorry. No, let's talk about Twitter. What do you got for me?

Shane:

Well, there's just this article, it's commentary from Business Insider. It's a colorful article about how a Twitter employee who was eight months pregnant and has a nine-month old at the house was locked out of her company laptop the night before mass layoffs were due to be announced. So it's just like... I don't know. There's a couple ways to think about stories like this. You're always going to hear sob stories when mass layoffs happen, and there's going to be a lot of them. Meta just laid off 10,000 people. There's probably going to be 10,000 more layoffs at Meta. And there's going to be, among those 10,000 people, a real sob story.

So when you're reading these, I don't really know how to think about these. These are my two takes, and I want your response to that. One take is that your personal life has nothing to do with your work life, so that is an idea that people have about work. But the other take is that America is fucked up, because you rely on your employer for health insurance and maternity leave. So many benefits that you need for your life are tied to your employment.

So those are just the two things that I think about when I think about work. People tell you not to bring personal stuff into work. That's not professional. But when you get laid off, then you lose your maternity leave and you lose your PTO and you lose all your health benefits that are necessary for you to take care of your children. So it's this intertwining that's necessary.

AJ Ayers:

Right.

Shane:

So when people say you're being too... Gen Z, they talk about their personal lives and safe spaces and how work needs to accommodate these things, what's going on in their personal life, we need to sort this out as a country.

AJ Ayers:

Right. Exactly. It's definitely a catch-22. You shouldn't bring... What's happening in your personal life also, for discrimination purposes, should not impact your work. If you can show up and do your work, you should do it. If we're going to increase our population, women have to have kids and we'll need some time off to birth them and nurse them. But to your point, we don't have a country that's set up to... We don't have a social safety net. If you have to go to a hospital without health insurance and have a baby, that is going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. So you have to stay employed at one of these companies in order to get those benefits.

I'm going to bring this around to an article we have later, which is about another tech company, that the founder of Amazon, Mr. Jeff Bezos, has pledged to give away most of his wealth, which is great. We're glad that he decided to do that at age 58. But couldn't we have just taxed Amazon, the corporate engine, and taxed the individual in the first place in order to get some of that money into some kind of more robust benefit system for people to have basic health insurance and basic health coverage, is my take on this, that we don't have a system in place because we have incredible profits going into the hands of just a very few people. As AOC once said, "Tax the fucking rich."

Shane:

Yeah. It is interesting. We did get the announcement this week, which I think is great. Warren Buffet is often held up as somebody that is a good billionaire, so to speak, because he's pledged to give away all of his money. There's a number of billionaires that have pledged to do this, including Bill Gates and some others. I think it's great that Jeff did do this at 58. I think it's for relevance. Warren didn't do that until he was 76, so he is learning a bit from them. And then, Jeff also gave Dolly Parton $100 million to give to whatever charity she chooses, which I think is-

AJ Ayers:

Ooh, quick hot take on this one, which is great, love Dolly Parton. There was definitely... In five years, there's going to be a leaked marketing document that Jeff requested, which said, "Who is the most likable person in America that I can give $100 million to, by number?" It was a numbers game from a PR perspective, and who's it going to be? And the answer was Dolly Parton. I'm going to guess also on the short list, Taylor Swift, she's too young, Oprah, and LeBron James.

Shane:

Yeah. Yeah. I think so, too. Yeah. Cool. Well, that has been this week's episode of The Liquidity Event. Feel free to email us at liquidityevent@brooklynfi.com. Leave us a voicemail and we'll play it on the air. Show notes can be found at brooklynfi.com/episode68. And BKFI's fans can leave us a review if they want to be weird about it. Thank you.

AJ Ayers:

See you next week.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to The Liquidity Event, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Head on over to brooklynfi.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel or if you want to learn about their full service, financial planning, tax, and investment firm specializing in tech professionals and creatives on the path to financial independence. We'll see you next time on The Liquidity Event.