An American business mogul
is getting rid of his private jet
because he's worried about the climate.
Stephen Prince,
the co founder, the founder
and owner of a gift card business,
is selling a Cessna Citation three.
It should raise over a million or so.
He says he realized
his private jet use was a travesty
for the environment.
And the numbers back it up.
Compared to commercial travel,
getting around by private jet emits
at least ten times more pollution
per passenger.
Mr.
Prince is also the vice chair
of the Patriotic Millionaires
Group, a group of wealthy Americans
for higher taxes for rich people.
He's with me now. Good to see you, sir.
Thank you.
I admire your honesty
in a sense of admitting
you love the private jet.
One becomes
addicted to its convenience,
but you are still prepared to give it up.
What was the
what was the the Damascus moment for you?
A New
York Times ran
an article back in the late winter, early
spring that they outlined
some of the numbers
that you just mentioned about the
the horrible abuse that the private jet
travel creates in terms of
carbon input into the environment and
I just feel like I have an obligation to
to protect the environment
in general and future generations.
And the
and the travesty that is being called us
that's caused by some of our abuse.
The you you
you are going to continue
releasing a smaller,
more fuel efficient plane
and but you're not necessarily
going to
encourage or proselytize others
to do the same.
Absolutely not everyone.
I wish that
I thought
that would be effective to do that.
But it's as I said
in the article that you're talking about,
it is addictive.
It's hard. It's a hard thing to give up.
Flying privately is probably
the coolest thing that I've ever done
that money has provided me the access to.
But to delude myself
into believing that I'm
going to convince my
other wealthy friends to do
the same thing is is pretty naive.
That's just not going to happen.
But I feel I've got to put my money
where my mouth is in terms
of this climate issue.
What about fractional ownership?
The NetJets option now?
You know,
I suppose one could arguably say,
and I realize I'm
stretching the point, Stephen, I read.
But, you know,
in the case of sort of common ownership,
if you're like
NetJets is the closest you come
to the bifurcation of private jets.
At least
many people are using the same planes
Well, Richard, look, it's just it's
just another bite
of the same desert, right?
Instead of having the whole
the whole slice of pie,
I'm just taking a bite over
when I do that.
The numbers are still the same.
If you get on a NetJets flight and you
you know,
you reduce the damage to some extent
when you get on with four people.
So so you're you know,
you're not doing
as much harm individually,
but it's still it's
just an incredibly selfish thing to do.
It's I'm not
I'm not
going to change the world
at 22,000 private jets on the planet.
16,000 of which are in the United States.
And we're the worst abusers of it.
And the other side of it
is we're not paying our fair share.
I mean,
you know, our fuel prices,
we're using a fairly significant
part of the FAA
resources in the United States.
But being a fraction of that
and in terms of the revenue
that we're paying into the system.
So we're getting a really sweet deal
and we don't want to pay homage to that.
Now, this is very interesting.
Your your work
with project millionaires,
because the argument is, you know,
say increase
the sales tax increase the fuel tax.
In other words,
make a higher percentage payment
for the abuse of the infrastructure
in the facilities.
To that extent, that's an economic way
of redressing the balance
Well, given
the fact that,
as I said earlier,
I don't think I'm going to get
my wealthy friends to do it.
And just really
it's kind of amusing to me when when
for whatever reason
something happens in the Middle East or,
or even in the US
and the price of fuel
doubles, as it did
earlier last year,
fuel went from $3 a gallon glass
you know,
a fuel for jet went from $3 a gallon
to $5.50 and $6 a gallon in some places.
And all
everyone did was grumble a little bit
about Shell and Exxon and,
and BP,
and everybody is making a lot of money.
But if instead
we want to double the taxes,
which is $0.21
a gallon right now to $0.42 $0.21
and we're
and we will go crazy
when that happens
because we're giving to the government
in the form of taxes.
It to me it's a double standard.
We let all Exxon
and all the oil companies
make this incredible amount
of additional money.
But when the government
takes the extra money
to provide the additional services
that we need we go crazy about this.
To me it's it is it's a double standard.
What do you believe is a fair
tax rate for the rich
Well,
that's a very convoluted question
because are you
are you talking about income
or you're talking about assets?
I really think we should go back
to the same tax form
that we had in the sixties
and the early seventies up
until 1973,
to go back to a progressive tax rate
where the where
the highest rate of taxes on on anybody
and obviously
the wealthy
gets all the way up to a 90% level.
That's not $0.90 on the first dollars,
not $0.90 on the first million.
It escalates up to.
And how we structure that,
we can go back,
as I said, to what we had in the 1960s,
which was ultimately a 90% tax rate
on on the last dollar,
whether that's a 10 million
or 50 million or 100 million.
But what we're testing ourselves
right now is non-sustainable.
We cannot continue to run our government
and the world
and our present tax policy
and nobody wants to talk about, you know,
they're not even calling it
taxes anymore.
They're calling it revenue.
And is that what it is?
Of course it is.
But at the same time, it
it has an incredibly pejorative sound.
When we call it taxes, it is what it is.
We have to pay the price
to to fund our various governments.
In my case, the United States government.
Stephen, we'll talk more.
Love having you on the program
tonight, sir.
Very grateful for you. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thank you. You.