[cheering and applause]
Hello, I'm Jimmy Carr and this is The Fix...
the show where we fix the world's problems in 30 minutes or less
or it's free.
In this episode, we're going to fix the wealth gap.
Incredibly, the richest 1% are worth the same as half the world's population.
And that is a problem if you're not one of them.
The wealth gap is fundamentally about equality of opportunity.
The fact is, if you're born into poverty, you're very likely to stay there.
There are exceptions.
The Beverly Hillbillies, Duck Dynasty and, of course, Drake,
who started from the bottom, now he's here.
He started from the bottom, now the whole team fucking here.
[laughter]
True.
[applause, whooping]
Money is important to all of us.
I know people say the best things in life are free,
but those people have clearly never had sex.
[laughter]
Of course, if I had my way,
everyone would be a millionaire
and I would be a billionaire.
[laughter]
Luckily, we've got half an hour and four overpaid comics.
Should be easy enough. Let's sort the wealth gap.
Welcome to The Fix.
[cheering, theme music plays]
Okay, here's how the show works.
I've challenged two teams of comedians to come up with a fix for the wealth gap.
Our studio audience will be voting at the end of the show
for their favorite fix,
and that'll be that, final answer, no take backs.
So here to fix the wealth gap are DL Hughley and Howie Mandel...
[applause]
...Katherine Ryan and Aparna Nancherla.
[applause]
Later on, we'll be hearing the team's fixes,
but before that, let's take a closer look at the problem.
Here's a remarkable fact for you.
The eight richest people in the world have the same wealth
as the poorest 50% of humanity. Wow.
You're saying, "Wow" like that's a bad thing.
You see, you're thinking that... No!
[laughter]
I look at it like glass is half full.
3.5 billion people should be thinking,
"Oh, my God, we have as much money as the eight richest people!"
[laughter]
"Look at us!
Us 3.5 billion have the same...
We think we're poor, but, look,
we have the same amount as these eight guys!"
[laughter]
Katherine, what do you make of that fact?
Eight people have got the same amount of money as half of humanity.
I wonder if the public education system is so broken
that most people can't work out how bad that percentage actually is for them.
[laughter, applause]
There's some people in our audience clapping that
- that went, "I don't know." - [laughter]
"I don't know, I guess I'll go along."
I can't believe there's only eight of them.
I think 3.6 billion... I think we could take them.
[laughter]
So, DL, mo money, mo problems, am I right?
Well, it's better than being broke.
[laughter]
But I am in the 1%, but I've got a 99% chance of getting shot, so it's...
[laughter]
How have you found having money?
When you're black, you're not far away from somebody who don't have money.
- That's the thing, like... - [laughter]
No, literally, you can't go to a family reunion
without somebody going, "Hey, man," you know, so...
[laughter]
It's difficult.
You get relatives you didn't know before.
Like I met my father after I got my first HBO special.
[laughter]
Okay, Aparna, why do you think the wealth gap is so big?
Personally, I blame late-stage capitalism.
I've found if you put "late-stage" in front of a word,
it makes it sound worse.
[laughter]
But personally I feel a little conflicted,
because, while I'm not in the 1% like DL Hughley,
I do identify as wealthy,
- and that's been a challenge for me. - [laughter]
Katherine, you're from quite humble beginnings,
and by that I mean white trash...
- Yeah. - And now...
[laughter]
You're doing very well now.
How would you describe the difference between being a have and being a have not?
Since I've started earning money, I've become a lot less attractive to men.
And that's fun.
[laughter]
Is it more difficult if you're a wealthy woman?
Do men find you less attractive?
I wouldn't call it difficult, because it's not something I'm trying to do.
That's the sort of thing someone that's finding it difficult would say.
[laughter]
They are certainly disgusted by me, yes.
[laughter]
That's kind of interesting, because with wealthy men...
Wealthy men... I don't know what it is about wealthy men
that young, attractive females find so attractive.
- Are you asking me? - Yeah.
[laughter]
[Carr] Sure.
I'm ridiculously wealthy and I am...
No, I am.
I'm being honest with you. I make a fortune.
[laughter]
Not today, but I usually...
[laughter]
But it is such a relief for me,
once I made a fortune, to not rely on just my sexiness and my looks.
I know, I know.
I know.
[applause]
Okay, let's take a quick look at how the super-rich spend their money.
Fun little quiz for you.
Sheikh Hamad, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family,
spent some of his fortune in an unusual way.
Did he, A, have his name carved into an island,
B, build a museum in the middle of the desert for his 400-car collection
or, C, buy a custom-made truck 64 times bigger than a normal truck?
I love that he has all that money
and he still gets those adorable shots from the mall.
[laughter]
I like... I like it because it makes it seem...
He's like, "I'm a sheikh, but I'm still approachable.
- I'm fun." - [laughter]
- Yeah. - What do you think he did, DL?
I think it's B, because Jay Leno did that, so that ain't really that bad.
[Katherine] I'd do C if I were him.
You'd do C, a massive truck?
People, in this country at least, love a monster truck.
I can tell you the answer. The answer is all of the above.
- No! - What?
[Carr] All of them.
I've got a picture. Take a look at the picture of the island.
This is the island that he got his name carved into.
- [laughter] - [Carr] That's taken from space.
That's amazing.
You could lose the H and the A and that would still make sense.
[laughter]
Let's take a look at his truck.
- [DL] Wow. - [Howie] Oh, my God.
That sound from our audience seemed to suggest
that is a legitimately cool thing to do with money.
[laughter]
I do love that both ends of the wealth spectrum
are united by the love of a truck.
[laughter]
Such a great point.
It's kind of cool and it's kind of gross.
It's both. You can be both things.
You can be cool and gross, like a pug
or like being Italian.
[laughter]
You're saying that being a pug or being Italian is both cool and gross?
That's right, Jimmy.
- Yeah, I absolutely agree. - [laughter]
Okay, outside of houses, let's say,
what's the most expensive thing you've ever bought?
Someone's silence. Uh...
[laughter]
You'll notice, ladies and gentlemen, when DL said that, I didn't say a word.
[laughter]
Howie, what's the most ludicrous thing you ever bought?
I bought...
I'm being honest, I'm not being funny.
I bought another house for when my family sneezes.
- [laughter] - I'm a germaphobe.
I really did. I bought...
I built a house in the back.
You probably don't know... I'm a germaphobe.
I don't... I'm not even enjoying being here with you people.
- I've got one... - [laughter]
I've got one question for you, Howie.
And this determines whether you're a good or a bad person.
When someone in the house sneezes,
do you go to the other house or do you send them to the other house?
- No, I go. - Oh, you're a good person.
I'm a good person. I'm just fucked up.
So I built a house where I go when people sneeze.
I was in the market for a house.
I'm looking at all these houses and I happened to see a house Howie was selling
and it was...
pyramids of hand sanitizer all over the house.
[laughter]
We live in the same neighborhood.
"This is Howie Mandel's house."
I thought he didn't want to touch me because I was black, but it's not.
No! That's...
I promise...
I was like, "What a dick this guy is."
- But he isn't, he's just a germaphobe. - No, I'm not.
That's why I love being on this episode.
The Wealth Gap. Anything that has a gap so I don't have to be near...
[laughter]
So, Aparna, Katherine, what's the most ludicrous thing you've purchased?
I think, for me, it has to be therapy
- because it's an on... - [laughter]
I wouldn't say it's a ludicrous purchase, but it is an ongoing purchase.
[laughter]
How's that going?
It's fine. I'm mainly just trying to cope with the wealth gap.
[laughter]
Jimmy, I like to indulge in dogs
because a lot of girl friends of mine have rescue dogs.
"I'm such a good person, I have a rescue dog."
Not me. $4,000.
[laughter]
My dog is from a special center that grinds up rescue dogs
and feeds it to my beautiful designer dog.
[laughter]
Yeah.
I feel like I'm spending money on the wrong things.
- I want... - [laughter]
I want to buy...
I want to buy a dog that just looks like a giant eyeball
- and a sneeze house. - [laughter]
- A sneeze house. - What if you buy the dog
and you're allergic to it, then you end up in the sneeze house?
I think that's the dream.
[laughter]
If money was truly no object... I mean...
Have you ever seen the movie Eyes Wide Shut?
- Yeah. - That would be Tuesday night at my house.
[laughter]
In all seriousness, I'm very passionate about pandas.
So if money was no object, I would love to eat a panda.
[laughter]
Okay, if you're a millionaire and you're looking for love, you're in luck.
There's a dating site especially for you called Luxy.
Yeah, they describe it as Tinder minus poor people.
[laughter]
It might as well be called golddigger.com.
[laughter]
Katherine, what do you think? Would you go on that dating site?
No, I date exclusively broke men.
[laughter]
Because...
the rich ones can afford too good a lawyer.
[laughter]
And the men that I date are also diabolical, Jimmy.
So you add wealth to that, it will just amplify their evil.
I'm not interested.
[laughter]
Aparna, would you ever look for love, or money, on a dating site like Luxy?
I think I would date a rich guy the same way I would date a hot guy.
I would do it.
[laughter]
I would do it.
She would.
[applause]
I don't want to write someone off just because they're rich, you know.
What if they just happen to have a personality too?
[laughter]
I'll tell you something. I've been married for 40 years now.
- And... Thank you! - [applause]
Thank you. People say, "Howie, to the same woman?"
And I'll be honest with you, when I married her, she was 22 and crazy
and wanted to have sex all the time.
This is not the same woman. This is...
No, she has the same name.
She's not the same woman.
[laughter]
Okay, next up, some billionaires are actually pretty down to Earth.
Take a look at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates shopping for a mattress.
My real vocational goal was to be a mattress tester.
- Alright. - I thought that would be a terrific job.
I'd just test mattresses all day.
But I never got that.
But they did name...
a mattress after me, the Warren.
Can you imagine it? I mean, this is...
- Wow. - This is the way to spend your time.
I think this is better than the mattress I sleep on.
I wouldn't fool around with computers while I could be in this position.
[laughter]
Can you remember buying your first mattress, Warren?
Well, I didn't do very much of the purchasing in our family. Uh...
I can't recall ever buying anything, actually.
[laughter]
Check this man's credit and see if he's good.
[laughter]
[applause]
[Carr] Adorable.
Two old billionaires in bed together, it's like 100 Shades of Grey.
[laughter]
Katherine, have you ever met a billionaire?
Well, you're not a fan of it clearly, but I have a show in the UK
called How'd You Get So Rich?
where I travel around meeting millionaires and billionaires.
[laughter]
I actually turned down the show. I was busy.
So you did a show where you met billionaires and millionaires.
- Yes. - What did you learn from that show?
I met a man who was in the mafia.
He was my absolutely favorite.
[laughter]
He made more money for the crime family since Al Capone
and then he was involved in a gasoline racketeering scheme,
just a little white collar crime, which I'm on board with.
- And then he was caught. - [laughter]
He went to prison, he had to pay back millions of dollars
and he's the only one who served time in jail and wasn't murdered
and now he has a dance studio.
[laughter, applause]
Yeah, I think... I think, yeah...
Okay.
Here on The Fix, we have our very own data expert.
Please welcome Mona Chalabi.
[audience cheering]
- Mona, very good to see you. - Hi, Jimmy.
Now, I like a bit of data, you like a bit of data,
data me on the wealth gap.
Well, Jimmy, I wanted to look at why there's such a big gap
between the rich and poor in America.
Since half of employed Americans work at big corporations,
it makes sense to look there first.
And it turns out that the wealth gap actually starts within those companies.
Specifically the companies where bosses are paid
exponentially more than their employees.
And I mean exponentially.
Take Wal-Mart for example.
Here, the CEO's salary is $22.8 million.
But the workers there earn around $19,000 a year.
That's a ratio of 1188:1.
Fittingly, there's an even bigger pay gap at The Gap,
where the CEO makes 2,900 times more than his employees do.
And at McDonald's, it's 3,101:1.
Of course, not all companies are the same.
At the other extreme is Fitbit,
where the gap is much, much narrower.
For every dollar an employee there makes, the CEO makes just 23.
Luckily, at The Fix, we all get paid the same amount of money, right, Jimmy?
[laughter]
Yeah, let's go with that. Why not?
So what's the best company to work for?
At Tesla, the pay ratio is actually 1:1.
The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, makes minimum wage.
- [crowd whooping] - [Carr] Whoa.
Whoa, there's got to be more going on there. Is there a catch?
There is a catch. He has a $10 billion stake in his company.
[laughter]
Aparna, should companies have to make salaries public?
I think so.
I think it's like finding out how many...
sexual partners your partner has had before you.
I only want to know the number if it's lower than mine.
[laughter]
That's a very good point.
I never count nobody else's money.
I just think that's only frustration.
I don't... I don't count anybody else's money.
I've worked with people that obviously made a lot more money than me
and I told some friends I grew up with and they robbed them, so it was all cool.
[laughter]
Well, I think the world would be a better place
if companies published how much they were paying people.
And women would find me much more attractive.
[laughter]
Mona, fascinating stuff. Thank you very much.
Thanks, guys. Bye.
[applause]
Right, let's get to the heart of the show. Let's get to the fixes.
It's time to solve the wealth gap.
We googled our teams' net worth to see who'd go first.
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting their fix,
please give it up for DL Hughley!
[applause]
The way I see it,
the only thing that makes rich people feel better than making lots of money
is looking good when they give some of it back.
That's why my fix is called EgoFundMe.
Now, EgoFundMe is a program where people with obscene wealth
can log on and donate to poor people for the most important reason of all.
Getting shit named after them.
[laughter]
Eight men are wealthier than the world's poorest 3.6 billion people.
Since 2008, these eight greedy bastards
have cut down on how much they give to charities
and we need them to start giving again.
There's only one thing rich people love more than Teslas and chicks half their age
and that's getting shit named after them.
[laughter]
How does EgoFundMe work?
I'm so glad no-one asked.
[laughter]
For a $1 billion dollar donation, it's our bronze package,
we will name a highway rest stop after you.
- [laughter] - For a $5 billion donation,
you can get our silver package where your face goes on the $20 bill.
- Ooh! - Sorry, Harriet Tubman,
maybe they'll put you on a food stamp. You don't know.
[laughter]
But, for now, it is this guy.
[laughter]
And if you donate ten billion,
you've reached our gold tier package.
We're going to put your face on Mount Rushmore
and we'll even forget that you sold all our personal data to the Russians.
[laughter]
And for a one-time donation of $100 billion dollars,
you can pick the next president.
Yes.
Anyone you want, no matter how unqualified.
We call that our Koch brothers package.
[laughter]
- [applause] - [DL] So...
Let's start stroking egos and solving the wealth gap
with EgoFundMe today.
Where the hell is my trophy?
[laughter, applause]
So this fix is really about
getting billionaires to give away more of their money.
This could really work.
I think that most people who are wealthy are making much more money than they need
and why do they do that? Because of ego.
So ego...
At a certain point, once you can pay your rent, once you can buy the meals,
once you can pay for your health care, all the rest is ego.
You've solved it. It's fixed. Let's just end the show.
[laughter]
It is a very good idea. So...
You get this money from a very small amount of billionaires
who give you a huge amount of money.
How would you decide where the money goes?
You know, I'd give it to programs that have been cut, like Medicare...
Toys R Us...
[laughter]
[Carr laughs hysterically]
Planned Parenthood.
As a matter of fact, I will put a Planned Parenthood in a Toys R Us.
[laughter]
That's thinking. That is thinking.
I think it should also go the other way.
If you don't donate money, they should start naming bad stuff after you, like...
That's good.
- This is good now. - [applause]
Give me a few examples here. What sort of thing?
Like, you know, instead of calling it herpes,
you could call it a case of the Bezos.
[laughter]
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for EgoFundMe!
It's a great idea.
Great idea, gentlemen. Great idea.
[applause]
You did it, buddy.
Right, let's get to the next fix.
Katherine and Aparna, you're fighting for 99% of the population,
so the pressure is on.
Presenting their fix, please give it up for Katherine Ryan!
- [applause] - Thank you. Okay.
The wealth gap is widening
and it's a lot less sexual than it sounds.
The Jimmys are getting richer, Rich.
I mean the rich are getting richer, Jimmy.
But I can fix it with the Garage Growth Initiative.
Apple, Amazon, Google, Metallica.
What do they all have in common besides hating Lars Ulrich?
Well, they all started in garages.
Even the word sounds rich.
Garage. It's French, you know.
Garer. To protect, shelter. Vehicle condom.
And it's...
[laughter]
It's all you need to be a gazillionaire.
Crucially, millions of Americans don't have garages.
But as the old saying goes, give a man a fish, feed him for a day.
Give a man a garage,
he'll invent a fish that will exploit his workers while he gets super rich.
[laughter]
That's why we're introducing The Garage Growth Initiative,
a new program that puts garages in low-income neighborhoods.
No garage, no problem.
We'll bring the garage to you.
No backyard, no problem.
No fire escape... That's dangerous.
[laughter]
As a man of the people, Jimmy,
I discovered that there is poverty.
So I sat in one of my garages
and I invented this, the portable garage
for people who haven't got any property or space to put a physical garage in.
Look at him there, coming up with the next billion-dollar idea.
I wonder what he's incubating?
Probably something special and magical, like flushable toilet paper,
wallpaper for your car,
motorcycles for dogs,
food that cooks itself, topless women.
You see?
[laughter]
It's already working. Thank you.
- [applause] - [Carr] I like it.
So what kind of businesses do you think would come out of this initiative?
So many.
Just in my garage today, I invented AirBnD.
[laughter]
AirBnD. I think I know where you're going with this.
So you stay there and then you have breakfast
and the D...
I thought it was depression. I was wrong.
[laughter]
DL, Howie, what do you make of this idea?
I'm being honest with you. I don't like it all, but I...
I think it's an amazing idea.
Okay, Howie, what don't you like about the idea?
You can just be absolutely honest.
Because you don't need... [stutters]
[laughter]
But, Howie, you built a house so people can sneeze in it, so I'm just...
- [laughter] - Just... You can't... That's...
[DL] That's judgmental.
[laughter and applause]
Okay, give it up for The Garage Growth Initiative.
- [audience cheering] - Good.
Right, so Katherine and Aparna are proposing
we turn every American into a Shark Tank contestant
and DL and Howie are suggesting we let the rich do whatever they want,
- so business as usual. - [laughter]
On The Fix, we're a democracy,
so our studio audience will be deciding which is the best idea.
Ladies and gentlemen, please vote now.
And remember, your vote counts.
It's like the opposite of a Russian election.
[laughter]
I can tell you the votes are in and it could not be closer.
The winner, with 52% of the vote...
DL and Howie!
- [audience cheering] - 52%. Very, very close.
Well, congratulations, you've won The Fix.
And all of their money.
[laughter]
So that's that, the wealth gap fixed.
Just don't look in your bank accounts yet.
It'll take a few weeks for the money to clear.
Thanks to Katherine Ryan, Aparna Nancherla,
DL Hughley and Howie Mandel,
our brilliant data expert, Mona Chalabi,
everyone in the studio, and all of you for watching.
We'll be solving more of the world's problems
in five, four, three, two, one...
[applause, theme song plays]