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#127 Scott Galloway: The ONLY Savings Strategy You Need

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#127 Scott Galloway: The ONLY Savings Strategy You Need

The discussion highlights a pervasive intergenerational wealth transfer in the U.S., where policies and systems favor older, asset-owning demographics at the expense of younger generations. Key mechanisms include Social Security, tax codes benefiting homeowners and investors, and soaring costs for education and housing—areas critical to young adults' advancement. Structural issues like artificially limited university admissions and housing supply entrench incumbents' advantages, while economic concentration and corporate power further marginalize new entrants. This has led to declining wealth among young people, delayed life milestones, and widespread frustration that fuels social movements. The speaker argues for policy reforms such as progressive taxation, youth tax holidays, and greater political engagement to rebalance opportunities. Additionally, he encourages young people to build owned assets, like independent newsletters, to escape exploitative systems and reclaim economic agency.

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I think almost everything we do is an elegant transfer of wealth from young to old. Who owns homes, makes money selling stocks, people of my age, who rents and makes money with current income, people you're rich. What do you tell a young person today? I can get you rich. That's the good news. Find something you're good at. People say to follow your passion, I think that's both. You got to develop a savings muscle. And then the final thing where I really screwed up was the boop. Follow this pattern. You're going to be economically fine. Scott is fascinating. Made millions, hundreds of millions, even, lost hundreds of millions, and has played this game of wealth incredibly well. He's willing to tell the ridiculously hard truths on both sides of the coin and then back it up with a massive amount of data so without further ado, Scott Galale. Get used to rejection. Most people aren't willing to endure rejection. I've started nine companies. Four failed, three are tie, two are hits. All you need is one. We are producing way too few economically and emotionally viable men. They're not going to college, dating. The result is loneliness. I think the biggest threats to our society aren't climate change or even income inequality. I think it's one extremism and two, I think it's loneliness. Let's talk about another boom. I don't think the average person realizes what's happened right underneath our nose. We have allowed so much concentration of power that the rents they can charge on consumers go out there every year. I think there's a lot that can be done to make small business and bring down the costs for regular consumers. I think one of the best TED talks I've ever seen from you recently about stealing from the youth to give to the old in this country. What do you think's happening and how did we get where we are today? Well, the DN democracy is working a little bit too well and that is old people have figured out they can vote themselves more money and people you're aged on vote in the same kind of, the same volume. So the incumbents will blame it on things like network effects, or globalization, but there has been a purposeful transfer of wealth from young to old over the last 40 years. The tax code's gone from 400 pages to 4,000 and those 3600 pages aren't there to help the young in the middle class. They're to transfer money from people you're aged to my age. So some specific examples. The largest capital transfer in history happens every year. It's called Social Security. People you're aged. There used to be 12 of you for everyone retired person. Now there's three. And the wealthiest generation in the history of the planet gets 1.3 trillion dollars a year in the form of Social Security. And I'm not saying we should do away with Social Security, but I don't think I shouldn't get it. It should absolutely, it should be moved back. People are living much longer. It should be means tested. Look at the two biggest tax deductions are mortgage interest rate and capital gains. Who owns homes and makes money selling stocks? People my age, who rents and makes money with current income? People your age. And then the two things you really need to get ahead are a college education and to build kind of a future and start thinking about a family housing. And if you look at the price of housing, 290 average house before COVID, 410 now interest rates. So I think one of the reasons that Taylor Swift is so huge is I think people are giving up on saving for our house. I think the reason Airbnb and so many people are traveling is like we can't afford a house. So I see it all culminates in a couple of very scary stats. The average seven year old is 72% wealther than they were 40 years ago. The average 40 year old is 24% of the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. And for the first time in our nation's history, 30 year old man or woman isn't as wealthy as his or her parents were at 30, which in my opinion is fundamental and break down in the compact. We have between us in America. And when that happens, it creates so much shame and rage that every opportunistic infection turns into full blown pneumonia. So whether it's me too or the Black Lives Matter or some of the anti-Israel protests on campus, I'm not saying those aren't righteous movements with their own momentum, but there's fuel poured on everything because I think young people are just pissed off. I've never thought about that being sort of a powder keg that ignites these one-off instances. That it's like anytime you have hyper concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, then the many are kind of constantly on edge. That's really interesting. So is that what you also mean when you say that it's never been easier to be a billionaire, but harder to become a millionaire in this country? I'll have 300 kids in my class and why you stern. And though each of those classes is a billionaire, either through all three-- Wow, really? Yeah, but someone will be a billionaire. Oh, I thought so, but actually-- I can introduce him more. And I just call him Big B. No, but there'll be someone who'll be an billionaire either through all-term investments, probably a hedge fund, but a small chance one of them will join or start a tech company. I also think that probably about 10% of them wind up being supported by the parents. Whereas when I got to school, it was pretty much everyone made a very good living. Some people did really well, but everyone did fairly well. So our economy has definitely become more of a hunger game. So the Jeannie Fish Co. Co. Fish has gone up. And some people would argue that's a good thing. We believe in winners and losers. But I would argue-- and I kind of go to higher ed on this-- that when I applied to UCLA, the admissions rate was 76%. And I didn't get in. I was one of the 24% that got rejected. And I applied the second time when I got in. This year it's going to be 9%. And they artificially constrained supply among the elite institutions. And the kind of gestalt in America is that we want to identify a superclass of freakishly remarkable kids and then turn them into billionaires. As opposed to trying to let in as many kids as possible and give them a shot of being millionaires. So I think the gestalt has changed a little bit in the US, where we're trying-- we romanticize these stories of people dropping out of school and becoming billionaires. But I can guarantee every parent that 99% of your kids are not on the top 1%. And it feels like we've sort of fallen out of love with the unremarkable kids. Yeah, I agree. I also find it shocking how big the endowments of the universities are. At the same time that we have education costs for universities going up so high. And sort of like a declining ROI that kids are getting from universities. What do you think about it? Because you're not quiet about the things that you don't like about universities while also working in one. Well, my industry is arguably the most corrupt. Maybe with exception to social media. I work in a corrupt industry. People are on the impression that we're nice people with our labradors watching PBS every night. And we're noble people. We're like everybody else. We academics and administrators wake up every morning looking to mirror and ask themselves the same question. And that is, how do I increase my compensation while reducing my accountability? And we found the ultimate business strategy. And that's to sequester the majority of public from the freshman class and artificially constrain the freshman seat. So Harvard $54 billion in endowment. It's grown. It's endowment 4,000% in the last 30 or 40 years of 40 fold. It's grown. It's freshman class size 4%. So it admits 1,500 kids on 55,000 applicants. It has the resources. It could let in 15,000 and not sacrifice any quality. But they decide to artificially constrain it because there, to a certain extent, homeowners and people already have college degrees, have figured out that this LVMH rejectionist exclusionary strategy is the best way to entrench the incumbents. So if I already have a college degree and already have a house, I love it when you see a lesson possible again today. How many people do you say kind of proudly or jokingly say I would never get into my college if I applied now? A lot. Well that means your daughter's not getting it. And it's not something to be proud of. In addition, once you own a home, you become very concerned with traffic. And your starts starting up to the local review board and you're trying to kill every new housing permit. I bought some land to try and develop in Florida and a woman showed up at the local review board and said, "I don't want them to build there because that's where I walk my dog." I call that trespassing. They decided to do a study and delay their approval in other three months. So putting housing permits or taking them out of the hands of officials and putting them in the hands of homeowners, you have absolutely no incentive to ever approve housing if you're a homeowner. Because an absence of new housing makes your house go up in value. An absence of elite education certification if you already have it. Sky brackets the value of your certification. So all the incentives are to make it more difficult for new entrants versus incumbents. And the ultimate example of this intergenerational theft, if you will, was COVID. And that is a million people dying from a virus would be bad. But what would be tragic is if we missed an opportunity to make my generation much wealthier. So we flushed six to seven trillion dollars into the economy. And the auspices that this is a national emergency and people that need it. 85% of it wasn't spent. So 85% was saved, meaning five to six trillion, which is kind of like, let's flush money into the market. So where did it end up? It went into housing and it went into the stock market. Stock market touches new highs, housing touches new highs. Great if you're me and you already own Netflix and you're your own home. Terrible if you're coming into your primary community years and want to buy stocks or buy home. The reason I'm economically secure is that in 2008 we bailed out the banks. We didn't bail out the economy. And Apple Netflix and Amazon just as I was coming into my primary community years as you are now. I was able to buy Amazon Apple and Netflix at eight, 10 and 12 bucks a share. Those companies are trading at $182.40 and $750 a share now. But now we don't ever want disruption or churn. When you bail out the baby boomer boomer owner of a restaurant, all you're doing is robbing opportunity from the 26 year old graduate of a culinary academy that wants her shot. So what you get, is the credit card bill. The closest you get to the club, I'm in the club doing champagne and cocaine, you get to throw your credit card in, I run it up. The deficit is out of control, and it'll be fine while I'm alive. We still have incredible creditworthiness, but by the time you're older, deficit is nothing but attacks on young people. It's a delayed tax, but it just means your interest costs are gonna be much higher when you're my age. So I think almost everything we do is an elegant transfer of wealth from young to old. - What do you say to young people listening to this that go, "Wow, those problems are so big." I'm like, like you said, barely trying to make rent, doing what I can over here. How do I not become a nihilist and only want to destroy things? - Sure, so the first thing that sounds stupid, but it's a vote. I mean, seniors figured it out, they figured out if they vote, they get money. So if young people wanna figure out more child tax credits, long-distance, for business, whatever it might be, more opportunities to engage in this economy. They need the first form of what they need to vote. Young people do have a lot of agency. There is huge opportunity. I know that you're making money in the mainstream economy. If you're willing to work hard, I mean, things are worse for young people than they are for old people now, but the reality is things are less bad here than almost anywhere in the world. Every problem I'm talking about, it's prevalent elsewhere and even worse. So for example, if you take the poor state, Mississippi, the average household income there is still the same or higher than it is in the UK, Germany, South Korea, Japan. So a lot of the anger and anxiety among young people is justified, but some of it is your phone reminding you that if you don't have a hot boy friend and you're not vacationing, that the hotel decap, like all your friends seem to be doing on a Gulf Stream that somehow you're failing. So there's all this wealth porn trying to make you feel bad about your state in life. I do think there's, if you're hard working, understand technology, there's still a lot of opportunity, but there's just not getting around it. We're gonna need new policies. I'm, like, I'm been pretty open about my politics. I've endorsed publicly a Harris president, her economic plan would be, would increase the deficit by a third, Trump's economic plan would blow the deficit or be triple the deficit addition. That's just, that is essentially a tax on young people. So I'm kind of a one policy voter at this point. I think young people need more money. And this notion that, well, it's just to give away, well, we give away money all the goddamn time. Corporations are paying the lowest tax rate since 1938. The super rich, not the near rich, but the super rich, the wealthiest 25 Americans paying average tax rate is 6 to 8%. So I think we need an alternative minimum tax. I think we need higher corporate taxes. And I like what Portugal proposed. You know, magic wand, run for president. Portugal just passed a tax holiday. Everyone between the ages of 20 and 30 pays no taxes. 'Cause they found that their younger generation was anxious, depressed, and also, quite frankly, leaving. I think we need something like that. I think we need sort of a martial plan to level up young people because what we're seeing, what we're seeing is that 40 years ago, 60% of people aged 30 to 34 had at least one child. Now it's 27%. People are literally kind of opting out. And opting out is, I don't want to bring kids into this world. And I don't think it's 'cause they don't like kids. Things 'cause they can't afford them. So, you know, what's the point of all of this? If people, if your kids are anxious to press, so peace and don't want to have children, what is the point of all of this? And is it to create a class of, you know, it's this lottery economy where let's just try and create as many billionaires as possible, even if it comes at the expense of young people where people who are just trying to be millionaires. So I think, quite frankly, I just think, well, I fucked up. I don't think we've got our priorities straight. Once you're above $2 or $3 million a year in income, you're not gonna get any happier. So why, I'm turning into, you know, this sounds very populist, but why wouldn't we have a very progressive tax structure at the highest levels instead of a tax code that massively declines once you get really wealthy? And the myth in our tax code is that the rich don't pay taxes. Actually, the workhorses pay a disproportionate share. The bottom 50% pay almost no federal income tax. And the top 2% pay about 90% of the taxes. But there's some nuance there and that is, I call them the workhorses, moms of baller, she's a partner, it's got an arms, M&A transactions makes 2 million a year. Dad is a chiropractor and he has two clinics, he clears 600,000, 2.6 million a year, right? That is a crazy amount of money. They probably need to live in a city in a blue state to have those types of jobs, which means at that income level, they're probably paying 48 to 52% in taxes. So when you say the rich need to pay more taxes and they think, well, I'm the rich, they're like, well, boss, I'm kind of working with the government at this point, I don't need to pay any more taxes. Once you make the jump to light speed and you can have the privilege I have where I basically buy and sell assets to make a living, I start companies, I sell them, I peace out to Florida because I have that kind of mobility. My average tax rate the last 10 years has been 17%. So when I was your age, I'm making a lot of money, but it was all current income, I was paying 40 to 50%. Once I started making a shit ton of money, my tax rate plummeted. So it's the plummet part, I don't understand, and I don't see any reason why, you're not gonna lose any happiness. If you took taxes, say, I'll turn to minimum taxes to 50% from 17% for someone like me, I'm not gonna lose any happiness. Whereas if you can give someone a child tax credit, take them from 45 to $55,000, that changes everything in that household. So I think our tax policy, my fiscal policy, I think it's all designed to shove wealth from young to old. Scott talks a lot about how the game is rigged against young people, and I think he's right, but there's an angle most people miss. The average young American spends two and a half hours a day on social media, 900 hours a year, creating content, building audiences, going viral, for platforms owned by billionaires who are getting rich off of their labor, while the creators see almost none of that upside. We've handed an entire generation a sharecroppers deal and told them it's an influencer career. So if you're a young person creating content, breaking down politics, economics, culture, like whatever you actually care about, and your audience lives on Instagram or TikTok, you don't have an audience. You have a following on somebody else's property. One algorithm change, and it's gone. That's where Beehive comes in. Beehive is the all-in-one platform to publish, grow, and monetize your newsletter. And I'm obsessed with it because the founder, Tyler, and I believe deeply in this same thing that you need built-in referral programs, intense analytics, and an ad network that actually brings sponsors directly to you that you can get paid subscriptions from day one. I don't think young people are lazy. They're not broke because they bought avocado toast for fuck's sake. They're broke because every system they've been handed, housing, education, social media, extracts value from them instead of building it for them. A newsletter on Beehive is one of the few plays where you actually own what you build. Your list, your revenue, your asset. The system won't fix itself, so I think you gotta go own something. Go to beehive.com, which is spelled be-e-e-h-i-i-v.com and use code Cody30 for 30% off your first three months. Stop building on borrowed land. It's interesting. I think the other part that I find fascinating is the institutional incentives that say big finance companies have. So for instance, today, if you have BlackRock, Blackstone, some of the really large companies out there buying a bunch of single-family homes, well, they have so much money, so much of our money, really, from us investing in funds and ETFs, et cetera, that not only can they pay more, but they also have the institutional benefit of having great credit with all the money we have on hand. And thus, like, a half to one third of the interest rate. So I think some of the reason why things have become so expensive are not just, they're actually, you know, I don't agree with you on all the tax policies perfectly, but I do think it seems wrong that somebody could use my dollars to have a lower interest rate to pay more for our houses and then bundle them again. We also saw during 2008 that mass bundling of the American dream of home ownership can be problematic as well. So that is another one that I worry about. What do you think though about the people who might say, hey, I actually want to pay my fair share in taxes because like you said, where else is there better to pay taxes in America? But they're concerned about things like trains that go to nowhere in California and government that can't do much with our tax dollars. I don't think, look, do we need to cut, do we need to increase tax rates or cut spending? The answer's yes. If America was a household, America's making 50,000, that household's making 50,000 and it's spending 70 and it has 330,000 in debt. That's just not sustainable. And every day we get new credit card offers to keep rolling and paying, continuing to spend 70,000 and 50,000 in debt. We get seven trillion and spending, five trillion in tax receipts. You just can't manage a household responsibly. At some point, the Chinese are whoever aren't going to show up for one of our treasure reactions and interest rates are going to skyrocket and you're going to have, you know, shit's going to get real pretty fast. So I just don't think there's any getting around it. I like states like Florida and Texas that have no states. I like when states compete. And I think ultimately competition is probably going to bring down sort of the SATA control spending in some of the blue states because they're just People are leaving. I think it's good to have interest state competition government When an economy goes above sort of 30 32% of spending is the government it just becomes very inefficient Two thirds of employment in Argentina is civic is is is government employees. It's just not there's no productivity There's no incentive there So I would love it if there's someone had an adult conversation and came in and said We've got to cut Social Security spending by 10 or 20% we're gonna have to cut you know 40% of all spending right now government spending goes to seniors It's about to be 50% which lowers the amount of money we can invest in technology R&D and education which have a much bigger payoff. I think we're gonna have to massively cut social services and Widowments it all leads to entitlements, you know, we have to look at everything and we're gonna have to raise taxes because The far left and the far right as far as I can tell come together and agree on two topics They agree on reckless spending right I want more services more social spending You want more military and lower taxes? I know let's do it all and we'll just keep racking up the deficit because young people haven't done the math and We still can continue to borrow our credit card hasn't been shut off. It's irresponsible. It's mortgaging Our future so I'm with you No one wants to have that conversation The third biggest issue among people year-aves the election is the deficit and it never gets mentioned among our politicians. It's just I mean the right there's a myth that Republicans are more physically responsible. They love deficits as much as we do as much as Democrats do so I'm with you. I would love to see All right, we have two trillion dollars and deficit. You can have a small deficit to 400 Billion as long as you're going the economy. So that's 1.6 trillion. All right come up with 800 billion in tax cuts and Are in spending cuts and the other side will create 800 billion and increased taxes, but that's some way too reasonable There needs to be a grown-up in the room at some point here. It's gone. It's gone on way too long and because Because the deficit really hasn't popped up. I mean, we're now this year going to spend more money on interest on the debt Then we spend on our military That's at some point it's going to become begin crowding out almost everything So yeah, I'd like to think we're ready for an adult conversation. It hasn't happened yet. Fingers crossed. So if if You know if we're sitting out there right now and you're talking to a young person and they're about to slit their risks They see no light at the end of the tunnel. What what do you tell a young person today? Like what is the actionable thing that you can go do now? Scott having seen so many different Moves and markets. What are some words that was them you'd have if they want to make money? You okay, I just well I just start I just wrote a book on creating economic security and I do think there's a Formula the first is focus and that is find something Find something you're good at people say to follow your passion. I think that's bullshit Anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich and the guy telling you to follow your passion made his billions in iron or smelting right be a DJ on weekends play in a soccer league You know design jewelry with your friends Open a restaurant when you're already rich the vanity industries are really difficult because there's 180,000 people in Sag After these are incredibly. It's not easy to get a union card That's the union representing actors and stage workers or producers 83% of them last year didn't qualify for health insurance because they didn't make $23,000 So acting might be your passion, but unless you're in the top 1% and you're getting bright Blinking green signals that you're in the top 4% Go find something else and I don't want to crush your dreams Just have a sober conversation around what's required to make a living in that industry So find something you're good at and the key part of that is find something you're good at and a non-romantic industry the guy He less this studio. I've been here twice this week This isn't that romantic. He found some shitty loft space on Avenue B and rents it out to podcasters and is probably making really good money That is not he didn't dream of that when he was nine I know I'm gonna install sound insulation on a loft in a mediocre area man hat and then rent it out to podcasters I don't think he was dreaming that when he was nine But this is a good business. Now I just opened two more. There you go. This is a Find something you're good at and think I could become great and by the way if you don't know a 20 When I was 17 I thought I was gonna be a quarterback When I was 19 I thought I was gonna be a pediatrician when I was 22 I thought it was gonna be a investment banker. I got a job in an investment bank I ended up in business intelligence and analytics. I didn't even know what that meant until I was 25 or 26 So try and find some of your job when you're 20s is to workshop and find something you're good at and Maybe could be in the top 10 of the top 1% and Forgive yourself if it doesn't involve College because two thirds of kids don't end up in college and there's this industrial shaming complex I've been at these parties. Did you hear you know Max dropped out of Rutgers and it's like oh shame shame, you know The parents have fucked up the kid is a failure two thirds of our kids do not end up with a college degree Workshop stuff find something you could be good at maybe great. It might be being a tax accountant Okay, do you understand are you willing to go to college or you willing to get a CPA? Do you understand numbers do you understand the tax code are you good with clients because if you can become In the top 10% or the top 1% of tax lawyers Those people get to fly private and have a broader selection set of mates than they deserve which makes them really Passionate about the tax law. I am so passionate about analytics because it gave me the ability to take care of my kids take care of my dad Have crazy outrageous vacations and remove stress from my key relationships Passion comes from artistry mastery and economic security So whatever that thing is that gives you the ability to make some good money that you're good at maybe even great at in an industry that's not sexy You're gonna be passionate about it. I'm building a home right now in London and There's the soapstone guy or the marble guy and he's a raki immigrant and everybody knows him He can tell you everything about the vaning and the marble and I was very open with him and he's been open with me He makes 2.1 million pounds top line as a marble company. He clears about 800,000. That's pretty good margins Yeah, it's a guy in his 40s. He's been in he's been in he's been in marble since he was 28 and He's passionate about marble in soapstone because it affords him a really nice life and he's great at it and he gets a lot of camaraderie he gets a lot of prestige relevance You know pride ability to take care, you know to be economic and secure so the first thing is focus Second thing is I call it stoicism, but the one thing that's in your control is spending You got to develop a savings muscle when you're young and see if you can get alignment with your roommates or your romantic partner And gamify savings my saving money even you got to figure out you got to have a savings muscle that you can flex When I was a junior in UCLA I wasn't going back for my senior year unless I saved $3,000 through the summer I had 11 weeks to save $3,000 earn and save So everyone in the fraternity knew who the four kids were who didn't have money? I went to UCLA. I was in a fraternity with mostly Jewish kids in the valley They all had money. There were four of us that everybody knew were broke like our parents weren't helping us We moved in together in a room in the in the house and we had a white board and we gamified spending I spent $78 a week including rent and food for 12 weeks I ate top ramen bananas and milk my big treat is every Sunday night I go to sizzler you ask your parents and For 499 I was on the crew team the entire crew team would go and we would go there at 3 p.m When it opened and we'd stay till a p.m. And we would just eat seven several million calories and It was fun. I mean, I would have rather had more money Yeah, but the ability to gamify and especially the partners save money and start investing If you're young you got to figure out that savings muscle and it's getting reward from other things getting rewards from fitness from friends And I think about being young is you don't need as much money to have fun There's this Instagram generation that thinks you got to have a Birken bag or go take Go to Coachella fun when you're in your 20s pretty much like beer and making out as a pretty good bra That's like there's a lot of cheap shit out there available for 20 20 some things plus you can't really do it after you're married Yeah, then it gets much harder actually it doesn't get harder. It stays in Austin poly though pretty big It doesn't get harder gets much more expensive Anyways, the I call it stoicism but getting a savings muscle the third is time For the majority of our time on this planet. We even live past 35 so young people just cannot imagine They're gonna live to be a hundred and most of them are and they also can't Calibrate how fast time is gonna go wow my life has gone really slowly said no one ever If you from the age of 22 just figure out a way to get two three five percent of your income out of your hands Don't even 99% of us will spend everything that comes into our hands You have the brightest people in the world with a god-like technology hitting you The exact right moment a chance to upgrade from economy to economy comfort add flour with chocolate cake with your panini whatever it is Right telling you you deserve this. It's worth it up. There's two people looking at the hotel room You better there's only one left buy now Find a force savings mechanism two to five percent in your 20s when you're my age are gonna be fine You don't start into your 30s. That's fine But it's gonna need to be five to ten percent it's gonna be closer to 15 to 20 when you're in 40 But you're going to live longer than you think. Time is going to go fast. Well, I'm only going to get 9% in the markets. Well, OK, that means in 24 years it's going to be up eightfold. So the power of compound interest in time, and then the final thing where I really screwed up was the power diversification. And that is I've always made a lot of money. I came out of the gate's hot, started new commerce companies, and I was raised in the-- I came up professional age where you were told, be in it to win it, go deeper, go deeper. And my coming was about to go public. And I was that guy that borrowed money against his stocks, to buy more stock. So when 2000 had hit, I went from being-- from looking at jets, no joke, to broke. Clawed my way back, 2008, all my money was in tech again, boom, broke again. And that was about the time my first son came along, which was really upsetting. But diversification is your Kevlar. And that is two weeks ago I found out-- I made one of my biggest-- I invested $5 million in a tech-based healthcare company, Tier 1 VCs, Baller CEO, Best Investors, had to album my way to get in. That's a big investment for me. It went out of business last week. That's a zero for me. But I don't invest more than 3% or 4% of my net worth in any one thing. So it ruined my hour, but it didn't ruin my day, and it certainly didn't ruin my week. Diversification is your Kevlar. The moment you have anything resembling an asset base, you want to try and take pieces of it and put it in stuff that is uncorrelated as possible. I'm about to invest in an aircraft maintenance company in El Salvador. I just want anything that's away from my tech world. I now appreciate diversification, because once you have an asset base, the way you get rich is probably through a little bit of concentration. Your own business, you double down on a house, you fix it up, you flip it, whatever it might be. But the way you stay somewhat rich is through diversification. And I didn't realize that. I was always reading these stories about Steve Bommer, Barring Stock, Fred Smith, doubling down on FedEx, Mark Zuckerberg, never selling a share. No, diversify, because here's the thing. The market is the market will always trump individual performance. And no matter how good you are, if you're in tech in 2000, you're going to get hurt. Amazon lost 90% of its value. From 99 to 2001. And then also a little bit of forgiveness. Recognize that when your stocks go down, recognizing you have a business fail, that most of it is not your fault. And at the same time, when you kill it, and you buy stock and it doubles, and you were smart enough or lucky, you weren't smart enough to buy Nvidia three years ago. You were lucky enough. You were never more prone to a big mistake than after a big win. Bring in your horns. So I wish I'd learned diversification. I didn't save money in my 20s and 30s. My first feeling when my son came marching out of my girlfriend. It was supposed to be bright lights and angels singing. I felt so nauseous, and I thought, well, okay, an addition to childbirth being gross, which I think it is. I felt incredible shame, because I was sitting there at 40 years old. I'd made so much fucking money, and I was broke, because I wasn't smart enough to diversify. Because I thought, I'm such a baller that my company's going to be worth a billion dollars. I'm going to keep doubling down. So my first sentiment when I saw my son was I failed this kid. And I want to help young people realize, I don't want anyone ever feel that way. And you don't need to be a billionaire. Just start saving some money. Real estate's a great for savings. If you've got a way to get it out of your hands, keep saving. And just in case you don't go double platinum or have a podcast, this number one, or have a movie or buy Nvidia, you don't need it. I can get you rich. That's a good news. The bad news is the answer is slowly. So what I would tell young people is even if you don't end up an amazing job, if you start early and you follow this pattern, you're going to be economically fine. That's such a good point. I think there's a lot of porn these days about sleeping on floor, sleeping on couches, and that that's the only way to make it, too. And that if you want to be successful, you have to go all in on your business. And I don't know about you, but I never wanted to do that. I never wanted to sleep on the floor if I didn't have to. Yeah, I didn't want to have to sacrifice everything. Early on, I wanted to work really, really, really hard. But I think in finance, we get lucky because we learn that. From an early age, and for most young people today, if they watch anybody who's had success, they go, well, they went all in and it goes back to your point. I don't think I'm a top one per center. I think we should all have a little bit more humility. I assume you're going to fail more and then you won't. And then I always giggle. Like when people say they want to be a DJ, you go, you know, how to become a DJ? Come to CEO of Goldman Sachs. It's more likely. It's a DJ soul. Yeah, and you buy your way out of the stage. You know, who else buys their way out of the stage? Paris Hilton. Shack. How does Shack make his money? Fucking chicken stores now. And car washes, which I love as well. So I think you're right. Well, I went to the US Open. And I thought, OK, I'd rather be an $1 Federer. The number three or number four ranked tennis player, I'd rather be because I get to go to the US Open and sit in great seats. And I'm not stressed and throwing up. You know, I'd rather be the number one or number two player in the world. I just was-- I coached a lot of young men. And I had this kid. He got into MIT. And he got-- but he had a chance to play basketball. He's played basketball so all life. And what I call it pretty mediocre school. I go to MIT and buy a fucking basketball team in 20 years. What are you thinking? This sports is a terrible business. It's-- you know, if you do the math on what's required to become a basketball player, it is much easier to win the lottery. It's just crazy. So you need to have-- what I tell you, I'm pretty-- was you can't have it all. You just can't have it all at once. And you need to have a sober conversation around the trade offs. And a lot of times what people don't take into account is, you know, you can control your spending. And there's nothing wrong with cutting your spending and saying, I'm not going to live to work. I'm going to work to live. Well, fine. But you're going to need to lower your cost of living. And there's nothing wrong with moving to St. Louis and dual incomes, make 80 or 100 grand. You can get a home for that, have a really nice life. But be clear, if you expect to live in New York, and you expect to have-- I serve in my kids when I say my kids. I mean, my students, 70 to 80% of them expect me to top 1% of income earners by the time they're 35. Do they realize it's the top 1%? Well, no, because I think the top 1% in commons like 700 grand. They don't think of that as that much money. I mean, the average compensation at NYU Stern is 212,000 first years. They think, OK, within 7, 8 years, I should be making $600,000 or $700,000. And a lot of them will. But if you expect to be in the top 1% and maintain a lifestyle in New York or LA, or one of the super cities, you're going to have to work pretty hard. You're going to have to-- I had some fun growing up. But I don't-- I always say that from the age of 25 to 45, I didn't really do anything but work. And it comes at a real price. I would say I lost my hair. I lost my marriage. And it was worth it. Yeah, it's interesting. I do think you either get to choose short term or long term pain. It's right. And I wish somebody had told me that earlier. Which is-- I never liked to when-- You know when they play those videos, like the reaction videos of the girl crying because life's hard and then they make fun of her. And that never really sits that well with me, because I think it's because we kind of failed them. We didn't tell them it's going to be fucking awful. Your first job is not supposed to kill you from-- how hard it is. It's supposed to kill you from the pure monotony of labor-- It's your first job. Finance. My first-- Yeah, so 80-hour weeks, taking all that, you know, series 7, 24, 63, all that jazz. And I was the dumbest and the least qualified and didn't have any fancy friends or family. And so-- But it was also awesome because I learned massive pain tolerance really young. And I think that's probably what we should tell them to say that your first job's going to suck, but eventually it'll be worth it. Well, what I would say is that, you know, it's like rearing children. It gets better. We're told a lie that it's going to be great. At least to me, I think babies are awful. I couldn't stand the first two years. I thought it was just torture. I thought my job was just to make sure the thing didn't get near a body of water and keep it alive. And I didn't find that that rewarding. Do things make you happy, though? You seem to have like a steady state of unhappiness. Here's the good news. I hate my life less and less every day. That's good. But what I say about kids is two to five, it gets kind of fun. And then five to 15 is amazing. And then you can't lose them again. I'm going through that right now. But-- What's your oldest? 17. Oh, OK. So you haven't seen the other side yet. Yeah, no. Maybe that's good. I'm waiting for that. We'll see. We'll see. It's hard to believe it when they don't, you know, they don't call them and they don't. It's like that Tina Fey thing where you have a crush on somebody. My son was in town doing his college tour and I'm like, "Would you like to grab coffee?" I mean, you're probably busy. And I'm busy, but if you're free, I could find time. But you probably don't want to. I mean, it's just-- It's just my-- You'll never find people less impressed with you than your teenage teenagers. But anyways, look, everything's a trade-off. You just have to decide what you want to trade-off and when and how much. And I get it. I'm not going to tell kids to give up their 20s. Have some fun, spend some money, try and find a little bit of money to put away and also just recognize your first job, even if you don't like it. You know, give it a couple of years, give it two or three years to see if it gets better. But also recognize you may not end up in your dream job right out of college. Few of us do. But that's a learning. I went into investment making and worked in Mourin Stanley. I hated it. They hated me. I was terrible at it. And that was a learning. But it was really good training because it gave me intention to detail. It gave me kind of the ability to suffer a little bit. It taught me a little bit about working in a large organization. It also told me I don't have the skills to be in a big company. I'm too insecure. Anytime people went into a conference room, I would think they were talking about me. I didn't have patience or maturity. If I met someone senior to me that I think was the smarter as smart as me, I get angry that they were making more. I just was too immature to handle a big company. And people romanticized entrepreneurship. I went into entrepreneurship at a defense mechanism. I'm just not going to be successful. I met my stalemate from Morgan Stanley. He's been an investment banking for 30 years now. We boarded both very transparent about our wealth. We ended up in almost the same spot economically. He's endured much less stress than me. If you have access to corporate America, the US corporation is the greatest wealth creator in history. The reality is most of us don't have the skills. We don't have the patience. It's not easy to get up and put on a tie. It's not easy to go to corporate events and pretend to like the boss's husband. This shit is not easy. It's awful. And be thoughtful and be patient. And occasionally you're going to suffer injustice. People less intelligent and less hardworking are going to get promoted. There's injustice everywhere. But if you can endure those injustices typically over time, the American corporation is a great way to get wealthy slowly. And the majority of entrepreneurs, I think do it out of. I mean, the majority of entrepreneurs are immigrants. They can't go to work for Google. They didn't get to go to work for Dartmouth. So when kids kind of my office hours, they think they say, "Oh, I have an offer from JP Morgan, but I think I'm starting my own business." They think I'm going to break into song and say, "Go for this small business." And I'm like, "Fuck that." JP Morgan, here you come. Well, it's true. I mean, I was a Goldman, like I was a shitty little peon analyst back in the day for two years. And I hated my life for all two years of it. And to this day, you know, whatever, 12, 13 years later, it's still like Cody Sanchez. Yeah, she's on these businesses. She's got this online thing. She also worked at Goldman Sachs. I'm like that. Huge credibility. Huge credibility. And I hear they spend like about $100,000 a year training. New members. So that's probably the cheapest university you can get is a. Great training. Is it corporate MBA, basically? Great, incredibly smart peers. Yeah. The way I described it is like having served in the Marines, you're really glad you did it past tense. Yep. But I'm. You see, I've started a bunch of business, but what did I roll out first? That I was in Morgan Stanley. Yeah. Because we all are proud of our brands and the institutions. But anyone who write out a college can go get a graduate degree called a US Corporation. I would say do it. You might be good at it. And if not, it's going to help you zero on what you're good at. And they did these crazy things called health insurance and retirement plans and training. First thing they did was they sent me to Columbia for this mini MBA. Yeah, I got my MBA Georgetown through State Street. There you go. So same thing. I mean, it would cost me $160,000 is what the executive program at Georgetown cost. That's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, I had a hell of a time. But I think the most valuable thing I've ever done was work in corporations and start a business, not my MBA. I think that's, yeah. Like everyone has a path. I describe business school for the elite and the aimless. You're good at what you do. You're smart. You want to make money. You're disciplined. But you have no idea what you want to do. We all try to sound very focused in our business school applications. But if you were really good and knew what you wanted to do, you don't need a graduate degree. You just go do it. Unless you want to be a lawyer or a doctor. That's a great point. Business school is for those of us who were trying to figure it out. But we were trying to figure it out. And we were trying to figure it out. I'm wrong often. I get a lot of strength from my atheism. That's fascinating. Why? You just don't think anything matters? To a certain extent. And that is, I'm convinced that at some point I'm going to look into my kids' eyes and or relationships coming to an end. And it's going so fast. And everyone who I'm worried about their opinion or being ashamed by, they're going to be dead really soon. And so am I. So I think a recognition of the financial situation. And so I think a recognition of the financial situation. And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president where I went on to wait for it. Lose. Four failed, three or kind of a three or kind of a tie. Got the money back and two two or hits. All you need is one. Yeah. One out of seven businesses succeeds. So I started nine. And my super power was when I had a business fail or when I was divorced or when I lost my mom. I knew how to mourn and I knew how to move on. And the only thing I can guarantee anyone is you're going to have a certain amount of tragedy and a certain amount of joy in your life. The ratio of those things, some of it's out of your control. Wearing when you're born, a lot of luck, health of your loved ones. But the thing that's in your control is your ability to move through that failure. And I've been being, I've been shot in the face professionally and personally. And I was always able to say, okay, my business failed. I learned a lot. I'm going to go raise more money and start a new business. What does that look like? Like right after you lose an election or you fail in a business, what do you do? I do sit with like a whiskey. No, I, you know, it's, I think it's different for everybody. What I would suggest is everyone needs to find things and make them feel good about themselves. Friends. What do you do? Well, I have, so this isn't going to come as a surprise to you. I struggle with anger and depression. I'm very cognizant of it and I have a series of kind of activities to try and, when I feel like I'm going dark, which weird is failure or adversity doesn't send me into a depression. Other things do. So I think it's probably more chemical with me. But everyone needs to figure out how do I maintain a sense of enthusiasm. I have so many really successful friends. Came out of Ivy League school, started hedge funds, got to a billion under management. We're making two, three, ten million bucks a year. And then the market goes south on them. There's a bunch of addemptions. Their fund closes down. And for the next five to ten years, they're like stuck. They can't get past the failure. Yeah. And it's not, it's not hitting a home run. It's your ability to just get to the place many times. Because at some point you're going to connect. So my, my cognitive behavior or tricks are trying to bust out of a depression when I feel myself going dark, I have an acronym SCAF. The first thing I do is I sweat, exercising resets. Everything for me. It's like pressing the reset buttons. Yeah, you're fit. Well, I'm trying. I'm holding on to every last vestage of my youth. See clean. I try and eat at home. Not a lot of butter or salt, which I find is really helpful. Absidence in the sense that I love alcohol and I love THC. I'm a better version of me a little bit fucked up. I love being high. I love marijuana. I love alcohol. I'm really good at both of those things. And I think like, I'm like most people. They're an enhancement to my life. And I know how to control them mostly. But when I'm peeling depressed, I just take them out of my life. Whatever's happening to those sensors in my brain, I just don't want to fuck with them. F is for family. My kids are so awful that they forced me to take myself out of my own head and stop focusing on my own shit. They're there. If I can be around my boys, I know that they will come up with reasons where I need to focus on them. That's actually quite healthy. And the A is affection. I will tell my kids jokingly, I'm not feeling good. And they know that means we watch TV. They'll throw their legs on mine. I let my dogs on the couch. Physical mammal touch. I think it's very restorative to me. So whenever I feel myself going dark and the way I feel myself going dark is I start just getting pissed off at everyone and everything and I start feeling really down on myself. I get quiet, I get drawn and have trouble sleeping. And I'm like, but I've got to a point where I recognize it and I can snap out of it. But your ability to move through failure, your ability to endure it, you want to punch above your weight class professionally or romantically. - Yeah, we-- - You stop caring about it after a while, I think. You kind of like inculcate yourself against it. - I've had disasters professionally. I've had a company go chapter 11. I've had stocks at 18 months after I invested, go to zero. And I can get through it. I don't mind it. I've been single. I can't tell you the amount of rejection I've endured for women. And that's the reason I'm with somebody who's much higher character and much hotter than me is all the women who reject. I was fine. I could get past it. I could get past it. I wasn't scared of approaching people to ask for money to ask them to come to work for me, to ask them to be my clients, to ask them to go on a date with me. That is the key to my success is an abundance of rejection. - This is slightly inappropriate question, but have you ever tried psychedelics? - Mm-hmm. And that doesn't make you less of an atheist ever. Like if you done like where you do the whole thing and you put on the I mask and you lay down and you see the spirit world. - I did it in Austin, actually. - Yeah, I did it. - The tracks. - Yeah, I did. I just did a massive ketamine. - Yeah. - That's the only time I've ever really done psychedelics other than mushroom chocolate. I loved it. It was a ton of fun. I learned a lot about yourself. - Just intentional about it. I went in very intentional. What is my purpose? What is my purpose? - Yeah. - Well, I'm pretty convinced that that whole death thing is gonna be just a wonderful long sleep. I don't. And by the way, I wanna acknowledge that as an atheist, our belief that kind of the world was nothing and then it exploded. That's pretty ridiculous too. I don't wanna in any way try and fool, fool, religion or faith. I think it's a tremendous source of comfort for people. I've always enjoyed going to church and temple. I like the community, but no, I don't have an invisible friend and I think at some point this is, I don't think this is a dress or a her. So I think this is my first and last act. - There's something beautiful about that though. I always loved that Emma Bomback quote where she says, "When I stand before God at the end of my days, I hope I can say to him that I have not one drop left. I use everything he gave me." - Right. - And I think she was an atheist. So it's funny that she used God in the quilt, but I think that's kinda what she meant. She's like, just leaving it on the line. Like whatever's left. - Yeah, leave it on the field. Wouldn't it list the great mech, was it a Mexican artist, Freedom Marina, the one with the Unibrow? - Oh, Frida Kahlo. - Frida Kahlo. - That was great quotes. Said, "I want my exit to be glorious and I don't wanna come back." - Oh, that's on brand for you. - There you go. - I like that one. - And Frida. - Yeah, that's right. - Yeah, okay. I could see that on one of your next thumbnails for one of your podcasts. Okay, I wanna talk a little bit about, I wanna talk slightly about young men today. 'Cause I think increasingly you're talking to them, in particular. In a way that's not so hard, bro, you gotta do X, Y, and Z. It's like sophisticated, which I think speaks to a lot of this generation. Yeah, what's the deal with young men doing more video games and opting out and not asking women to go out on dates? What are we doing? And how do you get around that as a young man? - Well, first let's look at the numbers. There's no group globally that's ascended faster than women. There are more women globally seeking tertiary education than men. And when you look at, there's probably four to 15 nations that don't allow women to seek tertiary education. Actually, I don't know if that's true. - Does tertiary mean university? - Yeah, higher education, college and graduate education. More women are in graduate school now. Higher education globally than men. - Yeah. - That's a wonderful thing. In the last 30 years, the number of women elected to some form of parliament or electro body has doubled. Women are killing it. And by the way, I don't think there's anything we should do to get in the way of that. Single women are more homes than single men. Women under the age of 30 and urban centers are making more money than men. In the next five years, there's gonna be three female college grads for every two male college grads. Two out of three women under the age of 30 has a boyfriend, one out of three men under the age of 30 has a girlfriend. Why? Because women are dating older. Why are they dating older? And there's a variety of reasons. There's straight biology. Men's prefrontal cortex is about 18 months behind. When you applied to college, when there was another senior from your high school was a male, you were basically applying, you were competing against a junior. There were less mature boys mature later. They catch up at about 25, but at 18, they're basically a 16 and a half year old girl. School education is highly biased against boys. If you think about the behavior we want in school, it's sit still, be organized. Be it please or raise your hand. You're describing a girl. Schools that are just boys only end up with twice a month of recess time. Because boys are like dogs, they need to be tired. They need to be kind of worn out. In addition, there's some societal factors that have been especially rough on boys. We have the second most single parent homes in the world. And if you reverse engineer where a boy comes off the tracks, it's when he loses a male role model. And what's interesting in the studies is that girls and single parent homes have the same outcomes, same college attendance, same rates of depression. All the studies show that while physically stronger, boys are emotionally and mentally much weaker. So they're not going to college. They're not mating, they're not dating. Half of millennial men say they are no longer dating. They're no longer even trying. This is like the end cell movement. They're much more prone, online dating. It used to be family, friends, and school. How you met people and now it's 70% online. And we don't like to talk about this because we like to assume that every problem and facing is their own fault and that any problem facing women, it's because they're victimized. And if you look at online dating, basically most women want the same guy. And that is if you have 50 men on 10 to 50 women, 46 of the women will show all of their attention to just four men. They all want the same dude. And so that leaves 46 men vying for the attention of four women. So a man of average attractiveness on Tinder has to swipe right 200 times to get one match. So that's one coffee. And then four of the five coffees will ghost him because their filter kicks in again. So a man of average attractiveness has to swipe right a thousand times to get one coffee. So he gets what he feels is validation of his lack of worth in the mating market. They're much more prone to addiction. They're much more prone to conspiracy theory. They're much less likely to leave home. So what you have is an entire generation of men without male role models, who are more prone to addiction and who start engaging, they become much more prone to misogynistic content. They start blaming women. They become more nationalistic. They start blaming immigrants. They stop believing in climate change. And some they become really shitty citizens. And the ripple effect it's having is the mating market. And that is three quarters of women say economic viability is key in a mate. It's only one and four men. We don't care. Men are disproportionately evaluated on their economic well-being, women disproportionately evaluated on their aesthetics. But when the pool men made horizontally and down, socioeconomically, women horizontally and up. But when the pool of horizontal and up of men is shrinking every year, there's just less household formation and there's more loneliness. And if you talk to, if you talk to couples that have been married longer than 30 years, three quarters will say one was much more interested in the other in the beginning. And it was always the man was much more interested. Because the downside of sex is so much greater for women and men, men are much less choosy. Men feel like their obligation is to spread their seed to the four corners of the earth. Women's obligation is to be as filtered as possible, as selective as possible about inbound opportunities and pick the strongest, smartest, and fastest seed. So what you have is men, essentially women are much choosier than men. And when they're not going to church, not going to softball league, not going into work, men have very few venues to demonstrate excellence. What you find with these couples is the woman says, I wasn't interested in them, then I found out he's really kind. - Totally. - I liked his hands. I liked the way he smelled. I saw him present to a client. I started getting attracted to him. He made me laugh. How do you demonstrate excellence as a man when there's no venues where you're around other people for extended period of time doing something different? I was just in Israel at the Nova Music Festival Memorial and I met this battalion of IDF soldiers, 90 men, 90 women. All outside, all fit, all meeting each other. They're finding mentors, they're finding business fund, founder partners, co-founders, they're finding mates. Where does a young man demonstrate excellence? If everyone's meeting online and everyone wants the same dude, it creates a few things. It creates a cadre of men who feel like they've been rejected by women. And it creates this environment. If you're in the top 10% of men, it's never been better. But it creates this Porsche polygamy environment where the guys who are the kind of the most attractive males, quite frankly, they have so much opportunity. It doesn't encourage long-term good behavior. So you end up with a cohort of men who feel totally rejected and you have women who have found dating just across the spectrum is just a little shit here. that the guy they want. is not interested in a long-term relationship, and everyone else really they don't have venues to kind of, if you will, fall in love. And the result is loneliness. And so I worry about young men not engaging with work, not engaging. One of three jobs used to require a college degree now it's two and three. And in some universities in the Northeast, it's two to one women to men. So they aren't getting the qualifications. They're much more prone to addiction, and the deepest resource companies in the world are all trying to convince young men that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life online. You don't need friends. You're going to read it and discord. You don't need to work. Just trade crypto or stocks on Coinbase or Robinhood. You don't need to shower, get in shape, have a plan, endure rejection, get out of the house, figure out how to make a woman laugh, be persistent, endure rejection. You got you porn. So you have, and I feel as though almost we're developing a subspecies of mostly males that are totally asocial, asexual. And once they get kind of into their mid-late 20s, they're still living at home, and they haven't developed those skills around socialization, I don't want to say they don't become savable, but they become very hard to pull out again. And the people I hear from most on this, when I started talking about this three years ago, it was accused of being misogynist, because there's a gag reflex from a lot of feminists, who were like, oh shit, it's Andrew Tate again. Not recognizing that having empathy for men doesn't mean you're anti-women. There needs to be a more productive conversation. Civil rights-- - So lonely. - Civil rights didn't hurt wide people, had a normative marriage, or gay marriage didn't hurt had a normative marriage, nor acknowledging the issues facing men doesn't hurt women. Young men are four times as likely to kill themselves. They're three times as likely to be addicted, they're three times as likely to be homeless, they're 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. If there was any special interest group that was killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group, we'd move in with programs. Going to NYU down the block, you're gonna see black women's support group, women in consulting, golden seeds, venture capital for women. There really on a lot of support groups for young men, because of the privilege I recognized, because of the fact that men have had a 2000 year head start, we're kind of holding 19 year olds accountable in natural males. And what we're finding is there's real knock-on effects in our society. And generally speaking, when I hear from these mothers, they say the following, I got three kids, two daughters, one son, one daughters in Chicago, NTR, one daughters at Penn, and my son is in the basement playing video games and vaping. So less mature brains, less opportunity educationally, a lot of the jobs that were on ramps into a good middle class life have been outsourced or off-shored, mating market that is crowding into the most attractive males and leaving everyone else out. Fewer third spaces for people to meet and fall in love and mate and have children. And it's leading in a technology sector that is trying to convince men you don't need to get out of the house, you can stay at home. And I relate to these men, I was one of them. I didn't have a lot of prospects when I was younger, living with my mother, and I could have easily just gone down a very bad path. So I think this is something that is a real societal issue. I think it's one extremism from the far left and the far right and two, I think it's loneliness. - I think you're right. Well, I mean, you see when you go to war torn countries, and I spend a lot of time building businesses in Latin America, you know what, you know what, civil unrest looks like. It looks like a lot of fighting age men on the side of the streets without anything else to do. And if you've been through, I mean, Crete Reims sitting over here, and he's from Egypt and has seen all around the Middle East, and I've traveled the Middle East and Latin America, and you can feel what it feels like to be in an area where there is a different kind of powder kick, which is young men that, you know, understandably so have more aggression, more testosterone, and feel like there's no outlet. - That's the loose. - Yeah, 100%. And you know what's interesting though, is a small little spark of light, I think. You know, we're in Austin, like I was telling you. And we've been trying to find a church. And so I'm Christian and group Catholic. And I wanted to find a place we're gonna have kids. I think it makes sense. It's a good way to install ethics and morals, in my opinion. And so it's like, where else do you go where you can sort of teach these? - Exactly. - Yeah, exactly. And so whether that's stoicism or Catholicism, or whatever it is. And at the damnedest thing happened, I was, we did a little tour, a group of churches to kind of see one we would like, 'cause I think I would have PTSD from a Catholic church again. I just, like too many wouldn't puse. But we went to this church called Red Rocks, like a New Age Christian church. And kind of thought would freak me out, you know, like text to donate, like, I don't know, it did just kind of scared me. And yet when I walked in, I was shocked all around, where these really attractive young men and women. And they were like happy. And they were meeting one another. And I went from church to church to church, all around Austin, which is a pretty liberal place. And in each of these areas, I mean, we're talking 18 year old kids to maybe 35 year olds, they're meeting one another. And I thought, man, if you are sort of a lost young man or woman and you are white, and maybe you come from a decent background, there's probably one place where you have your own little version of a safe space. And that might actually be a church. - I think, look, I, when I coach young men, the first thing I actually as I do is I say, give me your phone, unlock it, I won't judge you. And we try and find eight to 12 hours in their phone, which is ridiculously easy between Twitter, TikTok, Coinbase. And then what do you have? You want to lean into your strengths. You have a lot of capital when you're young. It's human capital. You have a lot of time. So we're going to reallocate that capital to a higher ROI. First thing we're going to do is we're going to get fit. We're going to sign up for classes, I don't care if it's berries or an app or the, you know, there's a great fitness, you know, the allo app has fitness classes. You go to whatever it is, F45, we're going to start getting fit. We're going to feel better about ourselves. We're going to feel more confident. Two, we're going to start making some money. If you have a phone, you can make money in this economy. I don't care if you're a lift driver, a tasker, a task driver or whatever they call it. You're going to start figuring it. If you go to a construction site and you have any skills at all, you can start at about 20 bucks an hour. I don't care if it's four hours a day. You need, the way you make a lot of money is by starting to make some money because you get a taste for flesh and you start thinking, wow, this money thing is awesome. And then the third thing we're going to do is at least three or four times a week, we're going to put ourselves in an environment with strangers in the agency of something bigger than us. It might be church, it might be a nonprofit, it might be a sports league, it might be a riding class. You have to be around strangers and we write down, every time you're there, you got to meet somebody, a potential friend, a potential romantic partner, and you got to go up and introduce yourself. But being in that company of other people in the agency of something else like church, it's just incredibly important. And young men need those guardrails. Young men, one of the things I got at a, we're going to sound like, excuse me, was, how to read a room. Also, it's just so important. I think we talk about a code, I'm writing a book on masculinity. I think masculinity can be a decent code for a young man and I think a man is supposed to be kind of three things, a provider, a protector, and a pro creator. And I think all three of those things are wonderful and men should aspire to all three of those things and break down what it means to be each of them. But the only way you're going to get there is in the agency of others and being in communities. Men are dangerous when they sequester. When a woman doesn't have a romantic relationship, a lot of times she will pour that energy into her work, into her friends, she finds other places to give and receive love. They're much better at maintaining a social network. When a guy doesn't have a prospect of a romantic relationship, he stops showering. He stops looking for a job, right? And I remember this when I was 23, my first girlfriend told me if I didn't stop smoking so much pot, she was going to stop having sex with me. And I was really enjoying that part of my life. So I got my shit together and I stopped smoking so much pot. Guys need guardrails, young men need guardrails. That might be church. It might be the Marines. It might be a girlfriend. It might be Morgan Stanley. They told me I couldn't party every night because it was really hard to get up at 6'30 and put on a tie and haul my ass downtown. But without guardrails, men don't demonstrate the same discipline as women in their early years or early adult years. So take some while to catch up. It's such a good point. Yeah, and I think also women out there too. Like what a dumb thing. The whole, I always sort of giggle about the 6'5, Trust Fund, Blue Eyes song. Because I can't think of anything that would make me more miserable. Who can height has no bearing on happiness? Either does I call it eye color. Sure, money actually decreases misery largely. But I don't think it increases happiness to a huge degree in a relationship. And so I hope at some point women also start pushing back against some of these ideas. And I also-- I wouldn't hold your breath. You know, I think, yeah, you're probably right. But I have a lot of friends who are my age. I'm a little older. And they make money. Yeah. And at a certain point, they start to realize that maybe men don't want to date them as much because they're really narrowing their field of who they will date. And so-- Yeah. And a lot of the women these days increasingly seem like the studies show that they don't want to date men theoretically who have different political views. So I always joke with my cousin because she's super liberal. And she can't find a dude. and she's super cute and she works hard. and I jokingly send her the studies that say, "Maybe you should date a conservative, "'cause young men are age or increasingly conservative, "so it's just math." And also, by the way, polarity seems to work out pretty well for most of us. Maybe we should, my mom and dad had two different political perspectives for our entire lifetime going up. And now they're married for like 40 some odd years. - Yeah, there's something to the yin and the yang. I like that saying that the best marriages are one person loads a dishwasher, like a Swiss architect, the other like a raccoon on math. - I'm the raccoon. - Yeah, I'm the same way. My partner will make me load the dishwasher 'cause she gets angry that I add no value. And I'm like, "I've always, I've never had any value." And nothing's changed here. But then I load the dishwasher and chill unload and reload it. - That's correct. My husband, ex-pilot, Terry. - You're doing wrong. - Yeah, 100% wrong. But there's, I mean, there's so many reasons. The thing I hate about men getting more conservative and women more progressive. It's yet another reason for people not to hook up. When I was dating, if I looked at all of my dates, all of my relationships, for the life of me, I would not be able to tell you what political affiliation they are. - I know, right? - It's like, we've invented another reason for people to side not to hook up. And what I tell men to generally advice, a lot of young people, how many times have you heard, I have all these great female friends, attractive, nice, high character, professionally, they have their act together and they can't find a man. That's not true. They can't find a man they want to date. - That's true. - And my general advice to men is, you need to get your act together. You gotta have a plan. What's your plan, right? Every woman is subjectively or implicitly or explicitly is gonna try and figure out, does this dude have a plan? You don't need to be a baller. You don't need to have a fast car and a beautiful condo. But you need to have a plan. Like I am thinking about this shit. You need to demonstrate discipline. One way you demonstrate discipline is you're in really good shape. It says, I have my act together. I know how to commit to something. I have, I take pride in achievement. You gotta have a plan, right? You gotta be kind. You gotta be, you gotta demonstrate a certain level of, I wanna call it aggression. But you make the plans. This is where we're going to dinner. You have manners. You pay, right? None of this, my, I saw this guy there today. And like, ask him about his day and his nice grade. And we split the check. Let me guess, you didn't have sex. I'm like, you're just, no one who's ever gonna kiss you. Though I'll pretend that it's fine. You paying. And then she's not going to have sex with you. I do remember the one date where they did that. Like to this day, I remember the guy that did that. I was like, you want me to pay? And he was like, sure, you want to, and I was like, you want to fucking pay. That's the most hollow off forever. And I know that's sexist, but there's evidence to back that up. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I tell my son, if they're in the company, women and they can't pay, they shouldn't go. Yeah, or go somewhere for free. Yeah, or go for a walk. That's totally fair. Go do a workout. For a walk, whatever. I get it. Yeah, whatever it is. But women are generally attracted to men for three reasons. The third is kindness. They want someone who's going to be a long-term partner. The second is intellect. If you're funny, really lean into it. Because the fastest way to communicate intellect and men who make good decisions, women are attracted to them because they, if you make good decisions, your kids are more likely to survive. But the number one is your ability to signal resources. Now, the easiest way to signal resources is to show up with a Rolex and a BMW. But also having a plan is signaling future resources. So you just have to be thoughtful about those. And what I tell men is you've got to have your act together. You've got to say, would you want to mate with you? Start. Start figuring out. Start looking in the mirror. Start looking the way you dress. Start-- I mean, Christ, you have bad breath. I mean, what is it, man? Get your act together. Start becoming more attractive to you and to women. What I coach women around is what I call the second coffee. You can't tell women to lower their standards. That's just not-- but what I say is if you go on a date, and it's not sparks, but maybe it's nice, but you think, oh, there was no chemistry there? Give it a second date. Because a lot of couples that have been married found that the woman who's much finer filter, she started to find-- was able to demonstrate excellence over the medium term and she fell for them. Second coffee. Like, unless it's just awful or it just not-- I mean, I'm not going to tell anyone-- I can't tell anyone to lower the standards, but give it a second coffee. You just don't know. And then the other thing I tell all young people, your default setting is yes. I have some friends going on. Yes, I'll come. Oh, there's a dinner. Oh, there's a lame corporate event. Yes. Yes. Yes. Return eye contact. And what I tell men is approach strangers. And if you express romantic interest or you go up to someone and they're not interested, you're both going to be fine. You're both going to be fine. And men get a lot of mixed signals in the professional world around the difference about where contact could be harassment. And I'm like, if you don't know the difference between expressing interest and harassing somebody, you have bigger problems. But something we don't like to talk about-- one in three relationships begin at work. Yeah. And 99% of them are consensual. And there's been some horrific-- That's why I'm in my first husband. There's some horrific abuses of power in the workplace. Those people should be fired or worse. But it's OK to meet people at work. There's been 12 marriages of the companies I've started. I see that as a mitzvah. I think it's a wonderful thing. I love that. So anyways, I'm worried the young people. We aren't creating the economic stability, the economic prosperity, or even inventing the third space is whether it's church, national service, parks, leagues, nonprofits, a chance for them to get together and quote unquote, fall in love. And we're regressing to a more primal vision of mating. We're a small number of men get to proc-- 80% of women have procreated. It's only 40% of men throughout history. And we're moving back. 80% of-- say that again? 80% of women have procreated, have had a child. And men. Only 40% of men have. Because generally speaking, the middle class is an accident. A group of men in the middle who are attracted to women is an accident. It happened in World War II. Seven men came home for more. They demonstrated excellence. They were in uniform. They were in good shape. And the government flushed a bunch of money into their pockets with the GI Bill, the National Highway Act. So there were a lot of very attractive men coming home. And it started the baby boom. And these loving, supportive, confident households created this prosperity and this progressive outlook. We're like, let's give women a shot. Let's give non-whites a shot. Everybody, this prosperity and rights shoved into the middle class is such a wonderful thing. We should shove it into as many corners as possible. That's the greatest innovation in history. But it started with young people having more economic opportunity and quite frankly, a group of men that were more attractive to potential mates. And what we have in our society right now, unfortunately, is too many men who are just not economically or emotionally viable. Yeah, it's beautiful. What a beautiful disaster. I think where I kind of want to end is maybe not the most of high notes, but I think important to note-- I love some of your writing on this-- a little wrap up here. Let's talk about another boom, not the baby boom, but the LBO boom. And what happened with leverage biodes in this country and what happened with sort of the few owning much? Because I don't think the average person quite realizes what's happened right underneath our nose. Sure. I look at it mostly through the lens of-- so I don't think-- I'm not one of these people that thinks all private equity and bio firms has been bad, because I know a lot of dentists and people who own long-care and people who own car-practic clinics who have found liquidity by a private equity firm coming in and trying to consolidate the back end. So I think capital coming into the market is actually a good thing for people. Where I see a concentration of power is across industry. One firm controls 2/3 of all social media. One firm controls 93% of the $300 billion search market. There's three chicken companies that control like 80% of chicken. We have allowed so much concentration of power that the rents they can charge on consumers on marketers go up every year. So Amazon 20 years ago, if you were a third-party market or a third-party resale, or selling your products on Amazon, they took about 20% of your gross dollar volume. Now they take 45 because they kind of own the market. If you don't sell on Amazon, you're kind of not selling online. So there's concentration of power that has raised rents across corporate America. And quite frankly, raised rents across parents. I know tick-tocks bad. I know snaps bad. How do I tell my kid to communicate with his friends back home if I get him off snap? That's it. What these companies have so much power, I'm going to tell my kid not to have an iPhone. So there's so much concentration of power that the rents have gotten greater and greater and greater. So I go more towards antitrust. I think there needs to be a lot of breakups. It's good for shareholders. When AT&T was broken up into the seven baby bills, all seven of those companies were worth more than the original AT&T within 10 years. At Google hasn't really innovated. Search is much different than it was 10 years ago because they have a needed two. They have 93% share. They buy any company that threatens them. Microsoft too with the suite of products. I mean, they just basically recreate any product that comes out there in the marketplace that they can put inside of a Microsoft suite. That's right. And they're a perfect example of the power of antitrust because in '99 they were found guilty of monopoly abuse and they were ordered to break up. And even though they overturn the ruling, they stopped bundling and putting companies out of business. So if there hadn't been a DOJ ruling against Microsoft in 1999, we'd all be saying, I don't know bang it. Google is a function advantage. trust. So the ability once companies get too big, breaking them up in oxygenating the environment, there's more people, the rents for labor go up, employees do better because there's more people bidding on their time. There's more tax revenue, shareholders traditionally do well, paypal used to be owned by eBay and they spun it and it's not worth I think 15 times what eBay is worth. So tax, tax taxes, more taxes, more entrepreneurship, higher salaries, more shareholder value. The only person that loses is the CEO who generally wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms, not just West Rouse. So I would argue the way to oxygenate the market would be to go through industry by industry and break up. You know, it's launching a tech company is really difficult right now. There's a lot of bigger players and there's just a concentration of power across industry it is very hard to break into and they donate a lot of money to Washington. There's regulatory capture. Why do I have to buy insurance to get a mortgage? Because they're in bed with each other. Right. I just so I think there's I think there's a lot that can be done to make small business and bring down the costs for regular for regular consumers through antitrust. The private equity market, I'm of two minds. Is there abuses when big players come in? Yes, but at the same time, I like a lot of capital in the market bidding on entrepreneurs businesses. You know, there's a there's a there's a person on the other end of that that pool maintenance company that just got bought that guy is some doesn't want to go into it, right? And he's got a nice little business and a private equity shop comes in and says, okay, I'll pay a million bucks for your business. You work here for four years and you have a way out. So I'm of two minds and I work with a lot of private equity firms and I've generally found generally found that they're good people trying to you know, who pay well. So I can understand that there's some situations where they come into a company, lever it up in debt, let it go out of business, raid the employee pension fund. I find a lot of that is a bit made for for news for the you know business section in New York Times. I think it's I don't think there is mandatious as people think now venture capitalists. I think that's another story. So I you know, I think there's some nuance there, but generally speaking, I'm a fan of capital coming into the small business market. Yeah, I totally agree. Well, I also think like to your point in the very beginning, everybody's looking for a way to make more with less risk. And so I think the concern is always not the private equity's evil or even the Google and all them are evil. It's just how do we make sure that our perverse incentives have always wanting to win individually, do not overcome everything else. And so I get concerned when I see private equity go from owning 4% of the you know, private businesses to 20% over a, you know, depending on how you measure it somewhere between a 10 and 12 year period, but man, you could say the big four much more of an instigator on the public market than the private equity companies are on the private market. Seven companies are responsible for a third of the returns. One company apples worth more than the entire UK stock market. I mean, there is we have this illusion that the stock market is really robust. There's seven companies that are driving the majority of the return. If you tell me what stocks you have, but I mean, if you have Amazon Apple, Facebook, Google, Meta, Nvidia, Netflix, and I don't know if the other ones Microsoft, if you don't own one of those seven stocks, you've under performed the market and your returns are probably flat. What do you think about people who say, the argument today is like, you know, Vanguard State Street and BlackRock own, you know, let's call it 80% of the S&P and 40% of the broad market, but then people say, but they're passive, they're passive investors. What do you think about that? Do you think they actually change governance on most of our companies in the US because they own them or are they truly passive? It's a really interesting question. So, concentration of ownership is just a bad, is this bad to begin with? Although, I would argue that those industries, I mean, it's an interesting question. So, there's two sides to it. I love low-cost index funds. You want to have some fun. Everybody believes they're smarter than your average bear. I'm not immune. I stock big. But what I would tell young people is 70% of any of your savings. Well, 99% of your savings are going to come from money you can't touch, whether it's equity or things that automatically go into a savings account. Low-cost index funds, the I work with the brightest people in finance, I've advised the most prestigious VCs, private equity funds, and my sum net conclusion is no one has any idea. And the VCs, the Dow Performer, the ones who get better deal flow. But if you took the entire alternative, the entire alternative investments industry, any logo on CNBC, anyone that advertises, any hedge fund, anywhere, it's essentially a grift. And what they, if you look at their performance, they've exactly underperformed the S&P by the amount of their fees. So, Vanguard, low-cost, SPY, index funds, I absolutely think that's the way to go. Now, whether those funds have become so big that they dictate corporate governance in their passive so they don't create enough churn with management, I don't know. I mean, it's an interesting theory how maybe they've created a stasis in the market. It's an interesting question. I don't have a viewpoint. Where I take from these is, I tell people they're like, "Oh, is it too late to buy Nvidia?" I'm like, "I don't know, but it's not too late to buy an index fund." And you're 27 cents on the dollar, going to go into the magnum as in 7. So, if they double, you're fine. But if the other 493 companies have their day in the sun, you're going to get to participate. And the market, especially in America, I wonder if emerging markets are about to finally have their day in the sun because the US market is actually pretty expensive. But along the lines of index or diversification, I would even suggest like index funds that have some exposure to foreign markets now because the US market looks historically expensive. But you don't need to be a hero. It's like with John Bogel from Vanguard said, "You don't need to find the needle in the haystack by the whole goddamn haystack." And the amazing thing about humanity is that with population growth and innovation and technology, generally speaking over the medium and long term, we become more productive and the market goes up into the right. So, yeah, pretend you know more than everyone else have an expensive lesson figuring out you don't. Take a third by Doja Coin or by whatever it is, you know, by the new AI company with 70% into, and this is the key, low cost index funds. People, you're in this business. People don't realize how much of the returns are eaten up by fees. No, because they hide them and they think it's just an expense ratio. Well, two percent, that doesn't sound bad. That's a 30-a-return. Yeah, 100-per-than-you-don't-add-the-fund admin fees and everything you have inside of it. I think Vanguard's a great place to invest in awful place to work. Unless you don't really like working now. It's my first, it's socialism in a company. There's no meritocracy. It's kind of like if you want to progress in the military, they go, "Cool, three years. You're at this level and then at three years you can go somewhere else." That's right. That was my experience a long time ago. That was right out of college. And, you know, when you're young and dumb, you're young and dumb. So, I don't know how much of that was just like, "I'm really good." And really, I was an idiot who knew nothing. But I much preferred gold men, even though it was hard. And I was scared I was going to get fired all the time. But Vanguard's great because you can't get fired unless you like cuss in an email or maybe have like some version of harassment. You get a company match in your 401K that's really aggressive. They never fire anybody and you can climb the ladder as long as you stay there forever, but you can't go fast. And that never worked that well for me. But those are different cultures and there's people for each of those goals. 100 percent. Right. And I generally find the companies, it's proximity bias because I'm around very ambitious young people being at a business school. In your New York versus the Malvern, Pennsylvania. Yeah. And what I found is that the best companies that really outperform the market have the culture of the following, we own your ass. You're going to have no life. But this is what we're going to do. If you want to go lad out, we're going to let you run as fast as you can. And we have 30 year olds who are making a million bucks. And we don't look at them ago. Your time will come. You'll be VP at 45. Don't worry. Rodgers above you and he's been here 20 like you want to go flat out. We'll go as fast as you can run. And but it's not balance. It's not paternity leave. It's not pepperyman leave. It's not it's the implicit agreement is if you go flat out here and you're good and you're talented and you you you devote your life to work, which is not for everybody. I'm going to put you where your parents were at 50 at 30. And there's a lot of people who want that culture. They're like I want to I want to go flat out. I want economic security. I'll have more balance when I'm older. There's also a lot of other people are like no. I want to work to live. I want to have kids. I want to have healthy relationships. I want to spend time with my parents. I want to be fit. I want to have weekends and maybe in the summer take the you know Friday off and go to the lake. You're probably happier. Yeah. They are probably happier. There's nothing wrong with that. And then like I worked at one of my first consulting clients was Levi Straussen company. They were very maternal with summer Fridays. Mental health counsel. I mean really like cared about their employees. And Morgan Stanley was like shut the fuck up. We'll give you feedback once a year. And it's called a check. And you'll you'll find out what your bonus was when it hits your bank account. We didn't give her we didn't give her reviews. I remember that. You got to remember when they were like you get a bonus. Like how do you count? Excuse me. Don't ask how you calculated this. Now my employees are like, "Can you please tell me how much you make and when?" I'm like, "What? But also good for you guys. Do you have the balls to ask this stuff?" Quarterly reviews. Yeah. The world's changed, probably for the better. But the majority of the people I'm around, young people, want to go flat out. And the companies that usually upperform the market are the ones that create that culture around going kind of. The ultimate arbitrage in our economy is fossil fuels. But the second of that is finding young, super hardworking, super talented people who are better with technology and paying them 30% of what you're paying Bob, who's a 40-year old, and they do 90% of the value. They're less mature, they're not very good managers. They're super smart. They don't have dogs or kids, so they really need to kind of work all the time. That's the ultimate economic arbitrage in corporate America. And the companies that attract that secret sauce that is very talented young people outperform everyone else. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we've got some free time. We have 23 minutes in between. We were giggling. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what we want. Okay. Last question. Elon Musk. Do you not like the guy? You guys get at it at Twitter? Did he really call you insufferable? Did you just put that on a drift? What do we think about you? No, he called me an insufferable nomschool. On Twitter? Yeah. Did you talk back to him? I don't even remember. I don't remember what I was saying. Yeah. I mean, it's not a big deal. He's actually reached out to me through a friend saying we should get together. I like that. I like a little bit of, I think you got to push back even on the biggest billionaires. And they can handle it and they'll probably push back too. Yeah. Look, the problem with, we're in a culture where we've decided if someone or a company is a net positive. If I had a button that Elon Musk would have to go back South Africa, I wouldn't push that button. I think he's been a net good for the world. Inspire the EV race. Hmm, space, I mean, seeing that rocket, that booster rocket captured on it as it's following, that's just inspiring. But at the same time, the problem with the word a net good for society is a word net. I also think he should be held accountable for his core, his core system is cruelty. I don't think you would attain that level of power such that you cannot pay people their legally obligated severance. I don't think you accuse an employee of being a sex criminal such that employee has to move their house. I think he's not a very good role model for men. I don't think living alone with none of your 12 children by three women with a loaded gun next year bed is what men should aspire to. So, you know, I think it's just sort of a great tragedy. I think he's going to move the world forward. But I think quite frankly being coarse and cruel and super into ketamine, I don't think that's something young men should aspire to. So should he be recognized for his achievements? Yes. Should he also be held accountable and should we be critical of him on the things that where I don't think he's living up to his blessings? Yeah. And so, but look, I don't think he thinks a lot about me nor should he. But I don't, you know, I, like the more generally the people are most patriotic of the ones who've invested most in our nation and that's veterans. They're the most patriotic. The thing I find so distressing about it, guys like Elon Musk and generally what I'll call this tech bro community is I think they're the most blessed Americans. There's, they're the most blessed people on the planet because if you look at a map, if you go up the western coast, you start at San Diego, Qualcomm and you go up to LA, you get SpaceX and Snap and you keep going north, you get Salesforce and Meta and Alphabet and you keep going north, you get Amazon and open AI and Microsoft and then it stops when you hit the Canadian border. Lululemon maybe in Vancouver and then you go down to San Diego and it stops and you got to go another 5,000 kilometers until you get to Mercado, Libre. Maybe there's something about being in America that has really helped you and I find these are the first people to ship post America. So it's a boss, you don't realize a lot of your success is not your fault. It's the success of other Americans. Everyone of these companies is built on a technology that was funded by American middle class taxpayers whether it was DARPA, whether Elon Musk got $350 million tax free loan. He hates subsidies but he was there for it when we gave him a low interest, $350 million the charging stations are being built out by taxpayers. But the internet, Netflix was built on net neutrality funded by California and the other 49 states taxpayers and yet they seem to just dislike America once they have leveraged the shit out of it. I just find it obnoxious. I think that's a good pushback. My husband is a contractor still for the Defense Innovation Unit at the Department of Defense and their AI portfolio and runs the commercial portion. A lot of what you talk about is us first China, which is real, not like us first the Chinese but the actual Chinese government. Only happens because the government is willing to fund a bunch of initiatives in Silicon Valley and venture capital that venture capital would not. No way, they wouldn't get nearer. They wouldn't get nearer. You and I both know a lot of people who are full-time venture capitalists. I want to come back in my next life as one because I don't think the real hard work is being the founders, doing the ridiculously hard, massacistic thing that is building a business out of nothing. I also think being a government worker when you have to go to war to foreign land, which is our soldier, so I agree with you. All right, this is incredible. Thank you for being here today. This was so interesting. I learned a ton and I know that everybody probably knows where to find you. But if I haven't said it before, no mercy, no malice. It's probably my favorite newsletter. Thank you. It's an incredible newsletter overall. I listened to a drift in probably three days on audiobook and then I bought actually the real book too because the graphics are so incredible. I think it's even if people don't read books today, which is more normal, being able to understand the world through those graphs is very easy and digestible. If you haven't read Scott's new book, Drift, it's really good as are all the rest. Thank you so much for being on this podcast. Thank you. I think that's on your success. We'll see how long it lasts. All right, guys. I think that's a wrap. Thanks everybody.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Economic systems and policies in the U.S. systematically transfer wealth from younger to older generations, exemplified by Social Security, tax deductions favoring asset owners, and inflated costs for education and housing.
  2. Structural issues—such as constrained university admissions, limited housing supply, and corporate consolidation—prioritize incumbents and reduce opportunities for new entrants, exacerbating inequality.
  3. Young people face a "hunger games" economy with declining wealth, higher barriers to milestones like homeownership, and exploitation on social media platforms, fueling frustration and social unrest.
  4. Proposed solutions include policy reforms like progressive taxation, tax relief for youth, increased voting participation, and building owned assets (e.g., newsletters) to regain economic agency.

Summary:

, where policies and systems favor older, asset-owning demographics at the expense of younger generations. Key mechanisms include Social Security, tax codes benefiting homeowners and investors, and soaring costs for education and housing—areas critical to young adults' advancement. Structural issues like artificially limited university admissions and housing supply entrench incumbents' advantages, while economic concentration and corporate power further marginalize new entrants.

This has led to declining wealth among young people, delayed life milestones, and widespread frustration that fuels social movements. The speaker argues for policy reforms such as progressive taxation, youth tax holidays, and greater political engagement to rebalance opportunities. Additionally, he encourages young people to build owned assets, like independent newsletters, to escape exploitative systems and reclaim economic agency.

FAQs

The speaker argues that current economic policies and systems, such as Social Security, tax deductions, and housing markets, systematically transfer wealth from younger generations to older ones, creating inequality and frustration among the young.

The speaker criticizes universities for artificially constraining admissions to increase exclusivity and value for degree holders, while endowments grow significantly without expanding access, making education less affordable and reducing opportunities for new entrants.

The speaker encourages young people to vote for policies that benefit them, work hard, leverage technology, and recognize that opportunities still exist in the U.S. compared to other countries, despite systemic issues.

The speaker highlights that while high-income earners from work pay high tax rates, the ultra-wealthy who earn from assets often pay much lower rates, advocating for more progressive taxation to support younger generations and reduce inequality.

The speaker suggests that economic pressures, such as wealth concentration and lack of opportunity for young people, contribute to societal problems like loneliness and extremism by fueling shame, rage, and social unrest.

The speaker argues that social media platforms exploit young creators by profiting from their content without fair compensation, calling it a 'sharecroppers deal' that extracts value instead of building assets for the youth.

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