Marianna Mazzucato, the Professor of Economics and best-selling author, doesn’t believe in “tech billionaires,” she tells Mehdi. “I don’t call them tech billionaires, I just call them billionaires.”
Why? Government investment, not billionaires or corporations, “got us everything that’s smart in our iPhones. The internet, GPS, touchscreen, Siri — these were all government-financed.”
In this wide-ranging interview with Mehdi, Professor Mazzucato, who was praised by the late Pope Francis and has been namechecked by the British prime minister, says Elon Musk doesn’t say “thank you enough” for all the government support his companies have received. It’s “important for the billionaires, once they make the money, to also admit all the public investments that they benefited from,” she says.
Mazzucato also has harsh words for Donald Trump, whose industrial policies, she says, are “actually undermining the competitiveness of the United States” and “it’s amazing he’s gotten away with this.”
Mazzucato, the founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, has been a leading progressive figure in a mission-oriented industrial approach that drives innovation while also serving the public good.
In this interview, she criticizes the UK Starmer government for not scrapping the two-child benefit cap and says “growth is not the mission” but a “result of investment.” She also tells Mehdi, in relation to Starmer: “You can’t just name-check a book, you’ve got to read it.”
Paid subscribers can watch the full conversation above to also hear Mazzucato on the Trump tariffs and also explaining why just breaking up Big Tech isn’t enough.
Free subscribers can watch a 5-minute preview. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today to skip the paywall every time.
Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, and the author of the acclaimed The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Private vs Public Sector Myths, and most recently The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies. Her Substack is called Mission Economics.
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