MAVERICK RESPONSE — Billionaire entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” reality-TV star Mark Cuban is considering a late-stage presidential run as an independent because of Covid-19. He’s been critical of Trump’s handling of the crisis, arguing that rushing to open the economy before the virus subsides would unnecessarily sicken people — even as Trump said at today’s coronavirus briefing that Cuban is on a committee the president is creating to guide the country’s reopening. The owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks has continued to pay the team’s hourly employees even as the basketball season was suspended last month, and he has called on other CEOs to prioritize their employees’ well-being, saying that the pandemic will define their brand for decades.
Your host spoke with Cuban today about what he would do if he were in charge right now. Our edited conversation:
How do you think Trump is doing?
It’s an impossible position. No matter what you do you are not going to get it right. You can just do the best you can. I don’t want to make it sound like I am throwing Trump under the bus. I’m not a fan, but no one could do it right.
What’s the first thing you would do if you were president today?
The No. 1 thing I would do is pass a law defining responsibilities and authority for all federal roles. When everybody is a chief, nobody is a chief. I would eliminate the ability to just bring in random people whether they are related to you or otherwise to head up a task force. There is a job that everybody has, and right now they don’t have the authority to do those jobs and that’s created a lot of the problems. There’s an old business rule that responsibility without authority means no results.
How would you address unemployment?
I don’t think this is a V-shaped recovery, I think it’s more like a U or W. I would expand the AmeriCorps program dramatically. I would create a testing and tracing infrastructure that would have a million jobs in it so we could maintain and support dealing with this pandemic and avoiding any future ones.
How would you create a long-term framework for recovery?
We have to figure out how to pay for it. I would institute a 12 percent robotics tax. Let’s say you are replacing a welder, and your cost for that robot is $25 an hour. You would tax that robot the way you would tax that welder who was getting paid $25 an hour. I would mimic the Social Security tax, and I would take 9 percent of that and send it to Social Security and 3 percent to R&D because we’re not the leader in robotics. Then I would do a cloud tax of 2 percent. The need for cloud services is only going to expand. The need for processing power is only going to expand.
Your host spoke with Cuban today about what he would do if he were in charge right now. Our edited conversation:
How do you think Trump is doing?
It’s an impossible position. No matter what you do you are not going to get it right. You can just do the best you can. I don’t want to make it sound like I am throwing Trump under the bus. I’m not a fan, but no one could do it right.
What’s the first thing you would do if you were president today?
The No. 1 thing I would do is pass a law defining responsibilities and authority for all federal roles. When everybody is a chief, nobody is a chief. I would eliminate the ability to just bring in random people whether they are related to you or otherwise to head up a task force. There is a job that everybody has, and right now they don’t have the authority to do those jobs and that’s created a lot of the problems. There’s an old business rule that responsibility without authority means no results.
How would you address unemployment?
I don’t think this is a V-shaped recovery, I think it’s more like a U or W. I would expand the AmeriCorps program dramatically. I would create a testing and tracing infrastructure that would have a million jobs in it so we could maintain and support dealing with this pandemic and avoiding any future ones.
How would you create a long-term framework for recovery?
We have to figure out how to pay for it. I would institute a 12 percent robotics tax. Let’s say you are replacing a welder, and your cost for that robot is $25 an hour. You would tax that robot the way you would tax that welder who was getting paid $25 an hour. I would mimic the Social Security tax, and I would take 9 percent of that and send it to Social Security and 3 percent to R&D because we’re not the leader in robotics. Then I would do a cloud tax of 2 percent. The need for cloud services is only going to expand. The need for processing power is only going to expand.
