Welcome to The Daily Show.
Thank you very much!
How-how are things going in life?
Are you-- are you afraid? Are you stressed right now?
Are you-- I mean, because you are, according to Forbes,
a man who is a billionaire
worth $51.7 billion.
-(cheering) -Uh,
Elizabeth Warren, I've heard, is coming for you.
Are-are you afraid?
How-how are you feeling about this whole thing?
Is there a war on the billionaires
or how do you feel about it?
I think there's a great discussion to be had
about who should pay how much taxes.
Uh, I personally would be fine with paying more.
-And yet the most... -(cheering)
-Hold on! Hold on! -H-Hold on.
He hasn't said how much. (laughs)
-Yes, and yet the most...? -I think the most important thing,
frankly, is that people just get the numbers.
-Look at what's going on today -Right.
and then you can almost, like, assign a quota.
-You should pay this much tax, you should pay that. -Uh-huh.
But it's got to be based on what we want to do.
What do we want to do with the money? How much?
-Who can pay? What other expenses can we cut? -Right.
Just-just get it right.
And then the will of the people will decide what should happen.
-And I'll be okay with it. -That's really interesting...
-Whatever it is. -Yeah, 'cause you've always been one
of the people who said-- you've said, "Hey,
"I don't agree with this idea that the government
"can make the money it needs just by cutting costs.
"But, at the same time, government has to do
"a better job of using the taxes that it collects.
And as a billionaire, I'm willing to pay more."
So you're not afraid in life? You're not, like,
stressed every day? You're not, like, waking up
in the middle of the night, like, "Elizabeth!"
I wake up stressed! Every day!
Are we gonna win tonight?!
-Oh, is that-- Okay. -(cheering)
-Let's talk about... -But-but I don't-- I don't have any issues
-on the other front. -I feel like-- That's good.
I feel like-- I feel like the Clippers,
now, more than ever, are not stressed.
You have Kawhi Leonard on your team.
You have an excitement in L.A.
that I have never seen before.
This-this is really a momentous occasion,
and you're getting ready to build an arena
for the L.A. Clippers, which--
please correct me if I'm wrong here--
apparently, you're designing it so that, like,
the players can hear the crowd more.
Like, the roar goes into the court.
We want it to be the most intense, hard-core,
high-energy basketball junkies building in the world.
-(applause) -I-I like the idea.
But I was thinking. I was worried.
Like, what if, acoustically, it works too well and then,
like, the players can just hear, like, someone just talking
in, like, the stands? And the person's like,
"Hey, honey, pass the ketchup." And then the guy's like, "Pass?
Wait, who said that?" And then, like, it could throw it off.
You're also doing-- you're also doing, like, augmented reality.
I don't understand what that means. You're saying, like,
you're gonna put people in the game. But how?
What does that mean? What are you gonna do?
We, uh, uh, set a technology today.
-You watch the game, and in real time... -Uh-huh.
it'll give you probability that somebody'll make a shot
-based upon where people are standing... -Wow.
who it is, is it a good shot, what you can expect out of that.
It'll diagram the plays that are going on.
-Real time on the floor. -This is live. Wow.
We've got this live today.
Because of rights, we're in alpha,
-or beta test still. -Right, right, right.
But the stuff exists today.
You know, there's limited stuff that does this today.
There really is no first down marker...
in football, on the field.
It gets painted in by a computer.
-That's... -It's that concept on steroids.
Oh. I-I thought someone just ran out and did it every...
-(laughter) -You're teaching us things here, Steve.
Teaching us things.
Um, let's talk about the big reason you're here today.
Let's talk about USAFacts.
It feels like we live in a world today
where facts are no longer a thing.
It feels like, more and more, people want to live in silos
where they believe what they believe,
and a fact is something that can be determined
by the person who is absorbing the information.
You've created a website that is geared towards facts.
What is USAFacts?
USAFacts.org is a website.
I got into this four or five years ago,
and I just wanted to understand who pays how much taxes,
-what does the money get spent on... -Mm-hmm.
-and what are the outcomes we get for all of that. -Right.
And it was impossible to find.
So I started just splunking around,
uh, trying to understand.
My wife had made a comment about where our taxes go or don't go.
Couldn't do it. Got into it, and said,
"Hey, I should share this with other people."
It's very interesting to understand.
-And by the numbers, by the numbers. -Right, right, right.
You know, part of the problem with words is they're partisan.
Numbers don't know how to be partisan, if you will.
-Uh-huh. Uh-huh. -And, uh, we've been pursuing it,
you know, ever since.
We've published "Annual Report,"
by the numbers of government
in the United States now for three years.
Right. It's interesting, because it's...
it's-it's a nonpartisan effort that you've put together,
where you've gone...
This data comes from the government.
It's compiled from different government departments,
and it's factual information,
but nobody knows how to compile it until now.
Like, you've gone and said, "Hey, if you want to know
"how much is being spent on schools
"in this district, you can find that.
"If you want to know how much is being spent on immigration
"or what is... what your money's being used for,
"what the government's wasting on, spending on, etcetera,
you can use this website."
What have you learned, though, from the website?
Is there anything that has changed your mind
-about how America works? -Yeah.
There's a number of things that have really prompted me.
If you had said to me, uh,
five years ago,
"Who really pays how much taxes in the U.S.?,"
-I wouldn't have been able to tell you. -Right.
I wouldn't have been able to tell you
there are people who pay more in taxes right now
-than they earn in income. That's true. -Wow.
And then they get benefited, also, by transfers
-that come from the government. -Right, right, right.
And you can decide whether you think,
-you know, whether that's a great situation or not. -Right.
We let our... our users decide what they decide
-on policy. -So you just give them the facts. Right.
We'll give you the facts, and you can decide
what's good or bad. I'll give you another one.
Only 33% of third graders...
of, uh, eighth graders-- sorry-- in this country
are proficient in math.
-33%? -33.
33%. But it's up.
-Oh. -(laughter)
It's up over the last several...
-Yay? -Well, somebody here look at it
-Okay. -and say, "Progress is good!"
-Right, right, right. -Some... But that's a judgment.
-But education spending at the same time... -Right.
inflation-adjusted, more than double.
That's actually interesting.
So, you've basically created this site
because you wanted to break through
the whole partisan breaking down of what news is
and just go, "Here's a fact."
A person at home can decide what that fact means.
Some of the more interesting, uh, polls that you've conducted,
though, on USAFacts have-have-have....
have illuminated a few things.
So, for instance, um, you've conducted some--
we have a few of these slides here that we can pull up now,
like, um, some of the data facts.
If you can pull that up, their poll. Like for instance,
how much do you trust information from the president?
Republicans: 40%.
Right? Democrats: Five percent.
And then if you see, like, the "not at all"
is, like, a big flip-- Republicans are like,
"No." Only 15% say not at all. But 61% of Dems...
But, I mean, that's a big... If you look at the next slide,
for instance, we have another one that's really interesting.
How much do you trust each source?
Republicans don't trust public TV or radio,
and they don't trust national TV news.
And in the next slide-- this one is even...
even a little bit more disconcerting.
What makes a fact likely to be true?
If it's verified by scientists, Republicans are like, "No."
Only 40%. Democrats are 72% .
Verified by academics, 30% to 57%.
So... so...
this is just information that you're compiling for people.
You don't even give anybody an opinion on this.
We do not. We explicitly don't give opinions.
Now, this was a poll we ran, as you pointed out.
Everything else we do is government data.
-But we need to know what we're doing. -Right.
Just take even the thing about academics and scientists,
-'cause you can react one way or another. -Right.
The truth of the matter is, a lot of what you see
out of economists is forecasts.
And on every forecast, you'll see one on the right
and one on the left, and they'll say different things.
I don't know what you would think.
At Microsoft, I didn't believe the forecasts.
-Uh-huh. -I only believed what had actually happened.
So all of these things have context,
and that's why we have to share what actually happened.
-There's a quote I'd like to give you from Madison. -Mm-hmm.
Something to the effect of: A popular government
without popular information or the ability to go get it
is a prologue to a...
a farce or, even worse, a tragedy.
-Hmm. And so that's... -I mean, that's...
the facts sort of start there with Madison.
So if I were to say to you, "Steve Ballmer,
"as somebody who's been part of this USAFacts,
"what do you hope Americans would achieve
by going to this website?"
What do you just want people to get from the website?
Because it is free, it is nonpartisan,
it is... it's just facts that are compiled,
but what are you hoping it will achieve?
I hope we can get to a point with not as much polarization,
civilized dialogue.
-People can disagree about what to do... -(applause, cheering)
but at least... at least be in the same place.
We... we have a little fun thing coming out here soon
for Thanksgiving.
You're gonna sit around a table with relatives
-and people are gonna disagree, -Uh-huh. Right.
and they're gonna want to scream and yell at each other,
so we have a Thanksgiving fact sheet from USAFacts.
Pull it out on your phone and you can say,
"I'll get you the real data on that subject."
-Boom! Special. -Oh, wow. Oh, wow.
-For Thanksgiving holiday. -Well, there you have it.
Thanksgiving will never be the same.
-Thank you so much for being on the show. -Thank you.
You can check out all the data at USAFacts.org.
Steve Ballmer, everybody.