A (4:34)

Yeah, I mean, it is interesting when you talk about the stock market in that way, because it is. It's used either that as this, like, big, shiny thing of, look, we're doing great. But then the moment it takes a dip, it's like, oh, this shows that America is actually in the shitter. I think probably the most you can learn from it is, I guess, what. What the. The market feels at the time. Like, as far as, like, around the chaos around tariffs and like, if. If Trump's actually going to back down or is the chaos kind of baked in? But when you're talking about the top 10% of Americans and consumer spending, you know, I've talked to a number of business friends and they're like, that's, that just kind of confirms why we, we target our business towards wealthy individuals. There are a number of things there they're doing well. But is it, is that something that you think long term is sustainable? Because at some point the inequality between the lower and the lower middle class and even middle class Americans and the top 10%, it does feel like something's gotta give. Whether it's us as a society or just if the economics of the businesses that are allowing those top 10% to exist can continue forward, it's 100% got to give.

B (5:49)

And this is the thing that I don't understand about the people who run our country is they know that this is a problem. Everyone's beginning to know about this. Everyone knows that inequality is a thing. If you don't know that this is a growing issue in America, then either you're completely out of it or you're intentionally trying to not see what's happening. But the problem is for some reason there's no sense of urgency about this issue. There's only maybe a handful of people in our government who believe that this is really a problem and it is going to be a problem and it is going to break. Because we can just look through history. Every single moment of revolt or revolution comes as a direct consequence of this. You have growing inequality, you have the decimation of the middle and the lower classes. And then you have upset and dissatisfaction from usually young people. And that is exactly what we're seeing in America today where, you know, I'm 26, I'm Gen Z, a third of my generation still lives with their parents. So we're the people to be looking at. We're the ones who are going to be deciding the future. And essentially what you have is a bunch of angry, disenfranchised people who can't get access to wealth, who are struggling to build a regular life. And of course that's going to lead to some sort of break. I think the other thing about this that I think we're beginning to see, I mean the numbers are striking and the numbers, only when you really paint a picture of what's going on does it sort of strike a chord with people. And people go, okay, this isn't very good. But I think that we also need to see some visuals. We need to see just what this will actually look like. And I think one thing that I'm pretty concerned about myself is, you know, you've got all of these mega, mega rich people who are, generally speaking, in their 60s. I mean, it's generally the boomers. What we're about to see is, is a huge transfer of wealth from those people onto their children. So people in rich economies this year are going to inherit $6 trillion. That's the most ever. There were a little over 200 new billionaires minted last year. In 2024, more than half of them became billionaires because they inherited from their parents. So essentially, what we have growing in America is this, what we call the inheritocracy, where the country is about to be ruled by a handful of not just billionaires, but the children of billionaires. And we see this, for example, in the media right now, where Paramount has just been bought by the son of last week's richest man in the world, Larry Ellison. I think he's down to number two after Elon bought a billion dollars worth of Tesla and it skyrocketed the stock. But, but David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, now owns Paramount, and he also wants to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which basically means that a rich kid, and this isn't to say anything against David Ellison. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but the reality is he's got the money because his, because of his dad. And that guy is now about to own basically all of Hollywood if he gets his hands on Warner Brothers Discovery. It's. He's got Paramount, so he's got cbs, he's got Paramount Studios. He's going to have cnn, he's going to have hbo, he's going to have hbo. Max. I mean, this is what it's going to start to look like. And I think that eventually, once you start to see this, once you start to see the amount of power, not just the amount of money, but the amount of actual influence in our lives, media is a great example of that. As soon as people start to see that, then you're going to start to see genuine, genuine upset, genuine revolt. And I'm sure that many could make the case that it's already happening. And we could look at what happened with Charlie Kirk just a few weeks ago.

A (10:06)

Well, I mean, when you're talking about, especially when you kind of add the qualifier of your Gen Z, you're talking about younger people, the stress. Where do you think it begins and where it ends? Because I was listening to a podcast, you were on earlier this year where when you were talking about Gen Z, you were talking about, you know, it's a very active, at least online generation of, of talking and feeling and caring, but that. That when it comes to actions, that there's a laziness to it or an inaction. I mean, is that. Is that because, you know, this generation feels to a certain degree neutered there aren't those. Those opportunities is. What do you think? Yeah. Where does it begin? Where does it end?

B (10:50)

Yeah. So the point that I was making is exactly that we're very active with our opinions. Actually, more than half of us have participated in some sort of rally or some sort of protest. And yet, go look at the voter turnout numbers. How many of us showed up in the. In the presidential election? 42% of us. So we love to say stuff, and we love to get out there and participate in sort of the fun of social justice. Maybe I'm being a little harsh on our generation, but I'm being that way because I'm annoyed about this. And yet when it comes to actually taking the action of making the change, we barely show up at all. We have the lowest voter turnout of any generation by far. And by the way, this isn't just true in politics, it's even true in business, for example, where, you know, we talk a big game about how corporations need to be more socially minded, they need to get their acts together, and yet when it comes to participating in shareholder votes, out of those of us who actually own stocks, we have the lowest participation rate in shareholder votes of any generation, again, by a long shot. So this is my complaint with my generation. Active with our opinions, lazy with our actions. Now, why is that? Hard to tell? But my best guess is that we are the online generation and we're basically so, so addicted and so glued to our phones and so digitally minded that the idea of showing up to a ballot box, it's just a bit too complicated and boring. I mean, I wish I had a more interesting explanation for why this is happening, but I genuinely think that that's what it is. I think that it's a lot easier to post a story on your Instagram about, you know, 10 things you can do to support social justice in America. It's a lot easier to, you know, donate a few dollars to some GoFundMe than it is to figure out the paperwork that is required to register to vote and then go to the ballot box and cast your vote. That is my view on what the issue is. So I think that's the problem. Having said that, there was one really bright spot in terms of our participation, and that was the mayoral primary in New York, where for the first time ever, young people showed up in huge, huge numbers. And that's why. That's why Zoran Mamdani won that primary, is because of young people. So he did something different here. And I think a lot, a lot of it has to do with how online the campaign was, how active he was on TikTok. He was posting on TikTok and YouTube relentlessly. Cuomo posted zero times on YouTube or TikTok. And so I think that's a big piece of it. And I think that he was speaking to some of the issues that I described earlier about our economic situation. So that's a little bit of a bright spot on. Maybe we're going to get our act together on this point, but historically speaking, yeah, we're very lazy when it comes to actually showing up.

A (14:11)

Yeah, I was interested in your take there because, I mean, I do hear. I do hear you when you're talking about, like, you know, Mamdani especially, like, there is a very smart online campaign. I do want to. I don't want people to think that, like, that is it. I think. Yeah, I was interested because I think that. And once again, it's me projecting. You know, I have very, like, I have trailer park roots, but I've been in a good position for a long time, and so I can't fully connect outside of seeing it. You know, the maybe cynicism or nihilism of I'm never going to really have an opportunity. And so when I see Mamdani, I think it's. I see it as more of. As far as what to get. What gets younger people involved are these kind of more populist ideals. It's kind of, to a certain degree, some of what got Trump the young vote. Although then there's a whole conversation around masculinity. And I know, you know, you and Galloway are very top of mind when it comes to young men in the country, but, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think it is. The populist ideas are what we're going to see more and more of possibly being a unifier. I mean, when you have people voting for AOC and Trump on their same ballots, you know, there's something. There's something there. But, you know, I want to go back to the economy because, you know, is the US in stagflation right now? And if so, is there a way out?

B (15:43)

Yeah. So Just to describe what stagflation is, basically it's a combination of. You're looking at the actual growth of the economy going stagnant, so growth slowing and then screeching to a halt, combined with prices rising. So that's inflation. So put them together, you've got stagflation. So.

A (16:12)

You'Re like, man, yeah.

B (16:16)

Where we are seeing stagflation, and I want to qualify that. Not in a way that is really, really concerning yet, but essentially what, what the, what we heard from Jerome Powell, who's the chair of the Federal Reserve, in the Fed meeting last week was that we're seeing a slowing down in the job market. So we are seeing a lack of growth there. And at the same time, we are seeing a rise in prices, in consumer prices. And not only are they rising, his words, he expects them to stay elevated. So we're at, we're at 2.9% inflation at the moment. So that's, that means the prices from the previous year have risen almost 3%. And it was, we were, we were almost down to 2% at the beginning of the year. And then we did this thing where we decided we're going to charge every nation in the world about 15 to 20% to send their goods to America. And what do you know, it took a little bit of time, but now things are more expensive. So that is what we are beginning to see here is this stagflationary effect where we're having these issues in the labor market. And by the way, that isn't necessarily the fault of the administration. Actually, what has happened is the, that this labor market weakness has been growing for quite a long time. We had this recent data come out that revised some of the numbers from the final few months of Biden's administration. And what I found is that the job market was actually a lot weaker than we thought. And so this job market issue has been growing over time. But what we didn't have a problem with was prices. And that is we were intentionally raising rates and keeping rates high such that, such that prices would come down. And that is exactly what started to happen. You saw that prices were beginning to. The growth in, the increase in prices. So inflation, inflation was coming down, coming down, coming down. And then we put tariffs on in April. And in April, prices stayed the same. And then the administration says, look, prices are the same, not recognizing the fact that it's going to take three to six months for all of this to actually funnel through. And then, just as you would expect from reading a textbook or Just thinking it through logically in your brain, six months later, prices are now rising. And the trouble is, prices are almost definitely going to continue to rise over the next few months. Because the funny thing about these tariffs is we don't know if they're off, if they're on, we don't know what they're going to be tomorrow, what they're going to be the next week. And therefore, if you are selling goods, if you're selling cars, for example, and you have to import them in, and yes, you're paying 15%, 20% more for them right now, are you really going to raise your prices today if you know that maybe in the next month it's going to come down to 10% or it's going to just be called off entirely? If there's all of this uncertainty, then you're going to be very cautious about raising your prices and you're going to do it very, very slowly and very kind of quietly. That's exactly what's happening here. Walmart is raising their prices, but they're not making a big deal out of it. They're just quietly raising prices here and here and here, all of these items that we're importing from abroad. And so this is going to continue. And this is the trouble now. We have essentially dug ourselves into this hole for no reason whatsoever. We could have just been dealing with this labor market problem alone. And you know, we have the tools to deal with that. That's why we have a central bank that can set our monetary policy. But we basically decided, no, no, we want to deal with another issue now. We also want to deal with prices again, and that's essential. Exactly, let's juggle.

A (20:26)

So, but I mean, that's the thing is if it, even if it's this. Well, especially if it's. This administration is removing the tariffs, remove the, the inflation, like it, can you uncork, can you get it like the toothpaste back in, or do you think that the, the prices are where they are? It might slow further inflation. But like, is there, is there a way to undo this? Do you see that happening at least under this administration?

B (20:51)

Yeah, you could easily undo it. You just call the tariffs off.

A (20:56)

But that's the thing is, as far as the consumers, do you think then Walmart will be like, oh, great, I will now lower the prices.

B (21:03)

That is the question is, will the consumers develop an appetite for these high prices? And that's what business is. It's basically testing the limits of how much can I charge you, really? And if I put your back against the wall. Are you still down to pay for these products? That's the question. So, look, if he got, if he called the tariffs off tomorrow, we would get this inflation thing certainly way more under control. I mean, it really is the dumbest thing that you could do to gut our economy and to make the cost of living worse in America. By the way, I grew up in the UK. We did the exact same thing in 2016. Well, we decided, you know, this whole thing where we bring in all of these goods from abroad, which, by the way, we can't actually produce in our own country. I mean, the UK was, the Brexit was even dumber than what we're doing with the tariffs because we basically said, we love Britain, we love our apple farms and we love our fishermen, and we don't want to rely on Belgium and France for their products. So we're just going to cut ties with them. We're going to cut it off and then make it more expensive to bring in goods from abroad. So we did that. And then what do you know? Oh, we don't know how to build many of these products that we love. We're not very good at French fries or whichever items we're importing from abroad. And then eventually what happened is the economy went into a state of paralysis and now the UK is dealing with. And these are the ripple effects 10 years later, dealing with the worst inflation of. Of any Western economy in the world. They're at nearly 4% right now. And they've been trying to get this thing under control for a while. And it was one of the dumbest, most. I mean, just shoot yourself in the foot moves of all time, where. Because this idea of independence and patriotism sounded so fun, we decided we're just going to shut off the borders. And it completely decimated the UK economy. US is in a slightly stronger position because the US produces more of its products in the us so they're slightly more insulated from this. This dumb idea of shutting down your trade borders. But we still import a lot of stuff and that is why we're seeing the impact on the consumer. But to be very clear, if you want to fix the problem or at least lessen the problem. Yeah, you can just call the tariffs off tomorrow and then we'll be good. We'll be ed.

A (23:43)

We're being taken advantage of. Being taken advantage of. Poor America, we're being taken advantage of. No, but I mean, I'm glad you mentioned the timeline regarding the. The uk because I know that some experts have talked about, and obviously, everything is constantly changing. But just for, like, with stagflation, America could lose a decade. And I. I kind of want to ask you, like, how much do you think of America's ability to get out of it in, let's say, the 80s is because of our position in the world as the top economy. And is that. And if it is the case, I mean, do you think that we will remain the top economy?

B (24:23)

Well, the US has this beautiful exceptional advantage, and that is that the dollar is the global reserve currency. So one of the things that we've been able to do as a nation is whenever we're in a rut and whenever things are slowing down and growth is slowing, we can basically just print money and it kind of works. It massively stimulates growth. Basically, the government says, you know, we want to. We want to purchase this amount in debt and we want to finance these projects, and we can just kind of do it, and it's a lot easier for us. The UK Is in a different position where they really have to be exceptionally strict about balancing their budget and balancing their books. And this is something that the UK didn't really think about in its political leadership. And they basically decided, you know, we're going to borrow, we're going to borrow, we're going to borrow just like the US Likes to borrow, because we're Brits, we're exceptional, we're the British Empire. And then now what you have is this massive political crisis where everyone's trying to figure out, how do we pay for all of this? We don't have the money to do it, and we don't have that borrowing capability that the US Does. And this has become a huge issue for Parliament. It's a huge issue for the leading. For the party in charge there, the Labor Party. They're trying to stimulate growth, but they don't have the tools that the US does. Okay, having said that, you can take it too far. And that is where we're headed as a nation in the US where we have become drunk on our ability to borrow to the point where it is becoming totally nonsensical. And this is where you've seen the credit rating of the US Drop. I mean, first you had a downgrade in our credit rating back in, I think, 2011. You had it again a couple of years ago. You had it again this year from S And P, from Fitch, from Moody's, all of the ratings agencies. Because essentially what we're doing is we're drunk on this, on this, on this power that we can just keep borrowing, keep borrowing. And. And for me, when I think about the biggest threat to America on a sort of global, systemic level, biggest threat and the worst thing that we've seen to America's position as number one in the global order, it's the big beautiful bill, which was passed this year, which is going to. And remember the Trump campaign, part of the message, part of the idea was fiscal conservatism. We're going to balance the budget. That is what he said. That is what Trump said in his address to Congress. We are going to balance the budget. And what happened, all of Congress stands up and they start clapping. It was the loudest applause on the entire night. We're going to balance the budget. And I remember hearing that, I was like, this guy's, you know, awful in a lot of ways, in my view. But, you know, that is good. We should balance the budget. That's a good idea. Then the big beautiful bill comes out, which is going to add $4 trillion to our national debt, our net interest, the amount that we pay just to service our debt. Right now, it's currently $900 billion per year. That's our second largest federal expenditure. We spend more on just servicing the debt than we do on national defense. With this bill, we're going to increase that number over the next 10 years to $1.8 trillion. And here's where it's going to get really bad. We can keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing, but the interest costs, the amount that we pay just to service all of that borrowing is going to keep going up, keep going up. And eventually what's going to happen, it's going to crowd out our ability to spend money on all the other things that we need. National defense is one of them. I'm not against spending money on national defense. I think it's good to have a secure nation. Social Security is another one. We're not going to have as much money to spend on that. And eventually what will happen is us, us young people are going to realize, hold on. All of those years where they talked about fiscal conservatism and balancing the budget, all of those years they were saying that message and then quietly swiping our credit card over and over and over again and saying, we'll pay it later. Pay it later. Yeah, don't worry about it. It's coming later. And all of it's going to come due right when we are of age. Essentially, when I'm trying to buy a house and build a family and pay off a Mortgage. These are going to be the structural issues and we're not going to have enough space left in our budget to pay for all the things that we need to pay for roads, to pay for Social Security, all the things that made America great in the first place.

A (29:31)

What would you say to people that go, well, here's the deal, America is America. It controls things. When it comes to the debt, it's just, it's just a process, right? It's not even a real thing. Nothing bad can really come from it because we have the reins. What do you say to that?

B (29:46)

I say, just look at that. I mean, I understand where they're coming from because all of this stuff is complicated and it's debated. This idea of, can you just keep printing money, printing money? Just think of it very logically in terms of net interest payments. Just think of it. Just try to focus on the fact that we have to pay interest to other nations. Okay, we're currently paying, paying for this. We have to pay, As I said, $900 billion in interest to people, to people we've borrowed from. Same same way that you pay interest on your credit card. We have to do that today. The question being, if you just look at that number and you see how it has expanded in terms of the amount of its share in the pie, in terms of what we can spend in America, what we can spend with government money, if that just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, then you're just going to crowd out the space to invest in all these other things. So if you're someone, again, if you're someone who likes that we can use our money to pay for the military, if you're someone who likes the idea that we can, if you feel strongly about immigration, if you want to defend our borders, as an example, the reality is, if you have to spend more and more money on your interest payments, you have less money to spend on the border, you have less money to spend on Medicare, less money to spend on Social Security. So that is my response. I think it's going to be a slow and painful process, and that's why it's so dangerous. It reminds me in a lot of ways of climate change, where you don't really see the consequences like this. And so you don't really get too worried about it because it's so slow and a lot of ways it's very boring. It's very complicated. This idea that the world is heating up by 0.0001 degrees, I mean, gradually, gradually, gradually. But then of course, all of this compounds. And over time, you slowly realize, this is the frog in the boiling water problem. You suddenly realize, oh my gosh, look what we've been doing. So that's the way that I think this is going to play out. And I just think if, if you're like, this is kind of confusing and boring, all I would do is just go look at the net interest payment number, look at how it's grown and look at how it has increased and, and taken up all of the space that we have in our ability to pay for things that's only going to continue. And because of this big, beautiful bill, it's been turbocharged because they decided we're going to basically cut taxes on rich people. They decided rich people need another break. I mean, this is part of the total insanity of that bill. They decided rich people needed another break. By the way, one of the other things they did, they decided that rich people's children need another break, which is why they increased the estate tax exemption to now $27 million tax free to your children. Because they said, you know what they said that the reason that they need to do that, they said we need to increase the amount that rich people can pass on to their children without having to pay taxes. Because inflation has been really hard. But at the same time, we're going to gut Medicare and Medicaid. So we're going to forget about how inflation has obviously affected poor people most, but we're going to be very attentive and very caring to how inflation has really impacted rich people, who, by the way, have increased their spending over the past four years by 60%.

A (33:25)

Ed, why you villainize. And hard workers. It's obviously going to trickle down. They're not going to consolidate. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? No. So in this future that you're seeing, this road that we're on, do you think the dollar remains the world reserve currency?

B (33:48)

I think so.

A (33:49)

Okay, so you're not a doomer in that way.

B (33:53)

Yeah, I'm not a doomer in that way, but I think if the dollar loses its position as the world's reserve currency, it's going to be in a really, really long time. I think the story of the dollar being supplanted by another currency is, I think, a fun and exciting story. I mean, because it's sort of, it demonstrates and illustrates how the US Was this global superpower and how it could eventually collapse. And to be clear, I think that's totally in the cards for America. But if you Actually, look at the replacement options for the dollar. You've got the next biggest competitor. People always talk about bitcoin. It's not Bitcoin, actually. It's the euro in terms of just global currency reserves. And the euro is barely competing with the U.S. in fact, if you look at, you know, the last 60, 70 years, people say, people like to say how the dollar has been declining as the, as the global reserve currency as a percentage of global currency reserves. They always say that, but they're only looking at like the past 20, 30 years. If you look at the past 60 years, the story of the dollar is basically just unwavering resilience. I mean, it's always been the most dominant currency. That could obviously change. But if it is going to change, it's not as soon as I think a lot of people suggest. I don't think it's going to happen tomorrow. And I don't think bitcoin is going to replace the dollar in the next 10 years. Certainly, certainly not in, in any of our lifetimes is what I would say. And I know the crypto bros are going to come after me and say this guy's.

A (35:40)

Well, I think, I think, I think they'd come after you anyways. When I was listening to you, I know that you are very not in love with the crypto world. At most you'll be like, maybe bitcoin. But so you think more the euro rather than China. Right. Because I mean, as far as like soft power in the world, place in the world, it feels like China's been jockeying and now has an opportunity to kind of fill the void where America has been backing down. But you don't think China all of a sudden controls.

B (36:08)

Okay, wait, just in time. Just in terms of, of the actual, the actual currency reserves in the world, it isn't China. It's, it's the Euro, just, just by the numbers. But does that mean that China is, is less powerful than Europe as a global superpower? Certainly not. I mean, China is second largest economy in the world. I mean, China is an absolute powerhouse. And I think the real, if we're, you know, going down this, this road of, of what happens to the strength of the dollar, the real danger would be that China teams up with all of these other nations, with Brazil and Russia and India, the BRICS nations, and they form their own currency. And that's something that they have been talking about, by the way. The BRICS nations have been getting together and they say, oh, what if we create a BRICS currency and that way it could compete with the dollar and that could be a real problem. I don't think it's ever going to actually happen. I think they just like talking about it. But if that were to happen, that to me is the most realistic situation where the dollar is totally supplanted. But again, these things take decades and decades of time to actually play out. I mean, this is something that will happen way, way, way down the line. And that's not to say it isn't important. It's certainly important. But you know, the more, the more immediate things that we can control as an example is our massive spending habit and our massive borrowing habit, our addiction that we have to debt. That's something that we can control in the short term. And if we do that, then yeah, we can figure out this potential issue down the line of the dollar losing its position. And if that's a motivation for us to be more cautious about our spending and more cautious about our borrowing, then, you know, I'm all for it.

A (38:04)

Let's say, you know, we change our, our requirements to be president. All of a sudden we got President Ed, right? What do you think is the way out of debt? What, what moves, what changes, what measures?

B (38:17)

The most important thing is we got to get our act together on the revenue side. I mean, in government is very simple. You've got your spending, how much are you spending? And then you've got your revenue, how much you bringing in? That is how much you bringing in in taxes for? I mean, the reasons you described the trickle down economic story was one of the, one of the greatest lies ever told to America. And I don't think it was that insidious. I think that the theory was a nice, it was a nice theory. We can pay less in taxes and it actually helps us with growth. It means that people spend more. It means that people are participating in the economy. It was an amazing story because it basically told us we can have our cake and we can eat it too. And I don't decry us for believing the story. What I do decry us for is the fact that after we saw how the story did not work, how it wasn't true, we decided, let's keep doing it and let's keep telling the story. Let's keep talking Reaganomics, let's keep talking about trickle down theory. And it's very plain and very obvious for everyone to see it does not work. And the way that we can see this playing out is again, you got to go back to the inequality problem. What happens when rich people really rich people get really, really rich. Do they spend all of their billions of dollars on houses, on going out to eat food, on restaurants? Do they spend it on getting their car washed? No, you can't spend billions of dollars. They keep it. They buy stocks and they buy assets, and the assets grow and grow and grow in price and then they just sit on it because that's all you can do. I mean, if you're elon, you're worth 350 to $400 billion. He cannot spend that money. He cannot inject that money into the economy. That does not trickle down billions and billions of dollars in the hands of one person. There is one thing that you can do with that amount of money and that is sit on it and then give it to your children. That's all you can do with this money. So essentially what's happened is all of the money that we have decided to give to rich people because we said we're going to cut down on your taxes and we're going to make the environment extremely favorable to the very, very top 1%. We basically said to them, you know, just, just enjoy the cash and we're going to have it locked up there in your bank account at Goldman Sachs, or we're going to have it locked up in your. I mean, look at Ken Griffin who spent $1 billion on a house. You know, spend $1 billion on a house. It's know that, yes, he bought, he went to know, you can do that in Florida. It's crazy and it doesn't make any sense. So all of that money is locked up in there and it's not being reinvested into the economy. And that, by the way, is why GDP in the past 50 years has grown three times faster than, than wages in America. So all of this wealth and all of this value is being created and yet none of it's actually being spent. None of it, none of it's actually being injected into the economy. So my view on this, you need to tax that wealth. You have to get some way. You have to figure out a way. We made this mistake where we set up the economy where basically a handful of billionaires sequester all of this wealth and they don't even know what to do with it. And they don't want to just give it away because they feel unfair enough. They feel, no, I earned this money. You know, I'm Larry Ellison. I was an adopted child. I was born in the Bronx, grew up in Chicago, grinded my way through everything, became an incredible entrepreneur, and Now I'm worth $350 billion. No, you're not just going to fucking take my money. Government apologies, excuse my language.

A (42:19)

No, you're great.

B (42:21)

So what do you do about that? How do you get that money out? You tax it. Okay, how do you tax it? You can, you can do a wealth tax. You can just say, we're going to. If, if you're worth this amount today, we're going to take this percentage and we're going to reinvest it into the economy. A lot of people don't like that because they think it's unfair. And they'll say, how do you even value people's assets? I think that's kind of a load of bs. You can figure it out. The reason they don't want to do it because they don't want the government just taking their money. That's how they feel about it. You could increase the capital gains tax. That is the amount that you pay in taxes on the appreciation in your stocks and in your assets. It's way lower than our income tax, which my co host, Scott Galloway talks a lot about this. Why is it that we are considering that the work that money does is more valuable than the work that we do? The capital is more valuable and more noble than sweat. That shouldn't be the case. That's another thing I do. The easiest thing I would do is you need to increase the estate tax and you need to get rid of this BS of there needing to be an exemption where you can pass $27 million onto your children tax free. That's totally ridiculous. If you want a fair system, if you want something that isn't going to make all these billionaires that upset you, you could say, look, you enjoy it. You made your money. Have fun with your $350 billion. I don't know how you're going to spend it. It's not possible, but enjoy it. But when you die, we're going to reinvest it into the economy and you can give some to your children, but not all of it. And to be honest, if you give your kid $50 billion, $100 billion, $150 billion, they're not going to have a very nice life. I mean, that amount of money, you can only become psychopathic. You cannot have a normal existence with that amount of money. So in my view, you know, I don't think that there should be any exemption. I think that all of it should be taxable at a normal amount at about 40%. But if you're really going to make These exemptions, if you're thinking about, okay, what's like, what is the right amount of money that rewards rich people for, you know, their hard work in earning their money and helps their kids and gives their kids, you know, a decent life where they, they are secure, that where they benefit from your hard work. I would call it maybe $5 million, maybe 10. That's the most that I think any kid should be receiving from their parents. But after that point, it becomes insane. And if we were going to figure out any way to raise revenue, that's the way to do it.

A (45:14)

Yeah, I mean, the death tax stuff is very interesting, I will say. It speaks to how insightful and influential both you and Galloway can be in the sense of that 5 million figure. I think something he's said in the past was after that, on a per yearly income, or if you're, you're, you're exiting stocks or something like that, tax over $5 million at an incredibly high rate like that. I'm like, okay, that makes, I think that makes sense. Then I have to check myself. I'm like, is it because I'm under that figure that I'm more open to it? Right?

B (45:46)

Because. Well, let me just qualify what he says, which is, which he does it statistically and that is, he's looked at the, the studies on happiness and what money, how money affects your happiness. And it's true, money does mean happiness, but only up to a certain point. And from the work that he's done, and I don't have the exact figures in front of me, but I believe from, from, from the, the data he has looked at, the number at which you kind of max out is around $10 million. At that point, you're not getting any happier based on the studies.

A (46:24)

I think the happiness factor definitely matters. Right? It obviously matters, but I think it gets into this, you know, the back and forth conversation that happens of at what point are you penalizing success? Or this, this idea that you're potentially pushing people away and I mean, something else that he mentioned that I was like, I'm still not locked in on, but I see the mindset as the possibility of mandatory national service, not necessarily military, but dedicating yourself to the country at some, in some way on the way up, obviously, as we, I feel like we're potentially entering like a, well, not entering in the midst of an authoritarian takeover. I get worried about where we are, but this idea of we are together, because I don't know how you untrain people that might have a mindset where they're voting against their interests now because they think it's probably not even that percentage, that there is a 10% chance that they can be part of this 1% and so they'll eat shit in their current situation rather than what they might see as we're more in it together. But that's more universal mediocrity where we penalize success and an upward momentum. So I don't, I don't know. Do you think, I mean, do you have any thoughts around the service or is there another answer that where people kind of look and go, oh, we can rise all tides?

B (47:48)

I don't know. I like the direction of mandatory national service. The idea being we are more polarized than ever. We feel. We barely feel a sense of national pride, a sense of unity. You look at the share of young people who feel proud to be American, it's lower than ever before. It's lower than all the other generations. And so the idea of some sort of service, not necessarily in the military, but maybe in care, work or even something like Teach for America where you go and you teach people and you have to do it with peers of your age. I like the idea in terms of building up a sense of community. However, we need to have a better deal. I mean, if you're putting in the mandatory national service because you owe it to America, I'm sorry, but America owes you something back. And what's happened at the moment? If you were to send Gen Z international service today and then they come out of national service and they see that the price of a house is six times annual income and you look at our grandparents where it was three times, or you look at college costs where maybe you do national service and you go to college and college costs are 42% of annual income. For our grandparents it was 13%. For our parents it was 17%. If you go out and you try to buy some stocks and you see that the S and P is trading, basically it's the most expensive stock market ever, trading at 27 times earnings. And then for our parents when they were our age, it was trading at 11 times earnings. If you do that and then you go home and you realize I don't actually have enough money to even rent my own place. So I'm going to live at home with my parents. The big number, the big stat, a third of us still live with our parents, third of us in Gen Z. If that's the trade that's not going to work, that cannot work. And so I like the idea of a World where we basically tell young people, this is your country, you should be proud of your country. These are the people who you live amongst and it's your job to get along with them, to work with them, to become friends with them, to build value with them and for you all to become prosperous together and to build things that really matter. But you have to have an economy where we can actually participate in that economy. Half of our parents are still supporting us financially. We're not part of the economy. We're riding off of the old economy. We're literally living off of our parents. We're literally living in our parents homes. So if we can't be part of America and yet you also want us to put in our time for America, then that's not, that doesn't work for us. It needs to be a situation where you put in your time and then you get the benefits later down the line. And if we're going off and we're spending with the young people's credit card and we're going to pay all of this interest and all this debt later down the line and meanwhile our parents are richer than ever and they're getting more tax breaks than ever. And by the way, all of that money's basically being sequestered into the hands of just a few parents. That's not going to work. You can't go fight for your country and have that be the payment you receive in return.

A (51:38)

I mean, when we're thinking of the opportunity, right? Because I mean, in this world that you're talking about, it sounds like at the very least universal health care. It sounds like at the very least free college, right? Because I mean, I was lucky. I got some grants, I got a lot of loans, I didn't even finish college and I was in so much debt. And so I can't like, even if I had a degree at that point, it would have been. And I navigated a path that, you know, I didn't luck into YouTube at the time and get immediate upward mobility. I don't know how I would overcome it. And so as we enter this new age and we're already seeing it, something that we've talked about on the podcast recently is more and more owners and managers seeing AI as the future. Because the human element is actually more of a hurdle, right? They're getting in the way, they're not providing value, right? Do you think that we're headed towards a more dire situation? And is there? Because there's no stopping it, right? We're not. I don't Think that we're in a place where we're actually going to see any meaningful regulation that, that protects people. And then there's a whole debate about what that should look like and, you know, where you possibly stunt growth. But I mean, is, is the way for forward, for younger people to fully embrace it and use it as this tool that I think makes them five times more valuable than, you know, were they with it? I don't know. I ask because people, it feels like it's very black or white reactions to it. It's either people are like, I fucking love this or I hate it. But at the end of the day it's still moving forward. So I don't know what you, what you think with that.

B (53:15)

Yeah, the AI conversation, there's. God, there's so many, so many interesting facets to it. The first thing I would say is AI is taking people's jobs, but it's specifically taking young people's jobs. That is what we're seeing so far. The group that is Most affected by AI right now is people under the age of 25. And there have been studies on this. There was a Stanford study which basically found that all those AI exposed jobs for the entry level positions for young people's jobs in the past, I think year it's fallen 13% those entry level position job openings because of the AI, they accounted for all the variables. So I think one thing that young people have to ask themselves is how do I not get replaced by AI? That's sort of the big question. And I think a big piece of it, to your point is definitely get good at using AI. If you're not using AI, if you're not using it, I mean, you should be using all of the tools that you have at your disposal to be better at your job and to provide more value into the economy. So 100% you should be using ChatGPT, you should be using Claude. Whatever you need to do to be more productive, to be faster and to be sharper at your job, definitely do that. Now the other thing to think about is what can I be better than AI at? That's sort of the thing that you're trying to ask yourself, how can I be, do a better job than AI? And remember, by the way, AI is coming for mostly information work at the moment. So this is generally advice for people who work in, in, in information work. If you're working in plumbing, that actually you're pretty set. And by the way, I think that's why vocational jobs are such a good strategy. But Yeah, I mean, just for, just.

A (55:08)

To add there, I think, I think. No, I know, you're great. I think that trade, trade school is definitely a very smart thing, but I do wonder, and once again, it's like a perception, where are they really? I have friends that are involved in certain companies, and that includes companies like figure, where it's obviously like, you know, you're talking about, talking about humanoid robots, AI powered. Does it end up being just kind of more trivial jobs? Right, Just like move from point A to point B. How, how specific is it? But I do think, yeah, for at least for now. Plumbing, electricians, stuff like that, that's, that's much safer.

B (55:41)

Much safer. Exactly. It's, it's the stuff where you, where you're using, it's the information work. I mean, that's what AI has become really, really good at. And maybe we'll see robots way down the line, but they're not coming this year, they're not coming in the next five years. They're not going to be doing, they're not going to be doing your laundry in the next five years. So the thing to worry about is right now, think about what ChatGPT is doing, think about what Claude is doing, about what companies like Mistral are doing. So how do you not get replaced by those things? So we've thought about this a lot, our team at Prof. G, and we kind of identified three categories that we think are really important to really double down on, and we call it the three C's. And I understand it's a little corny, but just bear with me. And they are curation, curiosity and connectivity, just to go through each one. Curation. One thing that AI is really, really good at is producing huge amounts of content, huge amounts of volume. It can do more of your work and it can do your work faster than you can by orders of magnitude. You're not going to be able to compete with that. So if you're someone who prides yourself on, I work really fast, I'm really good at churning stuff out, that's not really an edge anymore. I understand that it used to be, but AI is faster than you. It can do it in seconds. So you need to think about, okay, if AI is producing huge amounts of content, then what is there a need for? Well, there is a need for someone who has a sense of discernment, a sense of taste, who can curate that content, curate that data and show it to people and say, this is the stuff that really matters. Here's the AI that's producing Billions and billions of data sets, and you don't really know what to do with it. But here's the human that looks at the data and says, what is most important here is this, this, this and this. That's taste, that's discernment, that is curation. That's something that you can be a lot better at than AI. So that's the first thing. The second is curiosity. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs have built incredible companies because they kind of just followed their curiosity into weird and wonderful places. Jensen Huang is a great example, the CEO and founder of Nvidia, who was really interested in this thing called video games. And no one really cared about video games at the time. It seemed kind of nerdy, it seemed kind of stupid, but he was really interested in it. And he dug into what it takes to build a video game and what you need and what is the processing power. And he developed this thing called the graphics processing unit, the gpu. And then eventually the GPU became a huge staple of the video game industry, which exploded. And then eventually people realized, oh, hold on, we need these GPUs to build AI. And that's when Nvidia happened and AI happened. And it was through following this sense of keenness and interest in the world, not just following things by the book, that he landed in that place, that's something that humans are good at and that AI is not good at. AI is not going to just follow its curiosity into weird and wonderful places. But you can, you can read books and you can read them for pleasure. You can read fiction and you can read nonfiction. You can find interesting videos on YouTube, and you can think and stumble upon things that are interesting to you. And that is where the magic is going to happen. In a world of AI, where everyone, all the AIs are being simply told what they're supposed to do. And you can have the agency to come up with interesting and creative things. So that's the curiosity connectivity. AI can generate a resume and it can auto send across LinkedIn. And by the way, we're already seeing that across LinkedIn. What it can't do is meet someone for coffee and ask them how their day is and tell them, oh, you know this person. That's funny. I met this person at this party and I, I know them from college. That's something that AI cannot do. And it is the singularly most powerful thing you can do to get a job. I mean, we talk about this job market that is increasingly difficult for young people. If you want to figure out a way to go get a job, go find the person who's hiring and know them before you apply, establish a connection with them. You're friends with this one. Oh, that's funny. I'm friends with this person. I know this person. This is how the world works. And it is increasingly going to work that way when AI comes into play and every job is receiving a thousand applications because every applicant is using AI to auto send all over the place. So the thing that you can do is have an actual connection, actual real relationships with people. And that's what's going to lead you into your next thing. And you know, I think that this is encouraging in a way because it's, it's almost bringing back this sense of what it means to be a person. And these are the things that we're going to really, really value. We're not going to value your brain processing power and how quickly you can rifle through an Excel spreadsheet. We're going to value the things that you've read and the way that you see the world and your interesting perspective and how your childhood and your upbringing informs your perspective and how the work that you've been doing and the people you know has changed your view on things. And that's I think, an exciting thing for young people. I know we've been, I've been a little bit duma on this and I feel doomer for a lot of different reasons. But I do think that if young people can tap into those very human aspects of what makes it valuable, what can bring out your value in the real world, in the real economy, I think that could be an exciting thing. Now there's other issues with AI that come down to ownership and that come down to inequality and I could go on in that direction if we'd like. There are some very scary things happening in the world of AI, but in terms of what you can do just on your own as a young person, those three Cs are my top recommendation.

A (61:53)

So, okay, so with that, I mean something that I'm interested in, and I mean, I was going to ask you more about Powell and the, the independence of the Fed and maybe, maybe we can get to that. But since we're already on business, and this is something I've seen that's kind of controversial in my generation and especially in your generation, what's your mindset of kind of the older mentality of, you know what, the way that you come up in the world, the way, you know, obviously you're talking about like the connections, know the person, but that you kind of have to eat shit for a while. And whether that's, you know, people have a lot of different opinions on internships. They have a lot of different opinions on initially just like working on something for free initially. Like, do you think those are. That. No, don't do that. It's too toxic. You're setting yourself up for this toxic situation. Or it's an advantage in a world that's maybe shied away from it or kind of says that's a bad thing.

B (62:54)

Yeah, so it's a great question. You know, there are a lot of different ways that you can eat shit. You can eat shit by showing up to the office and you didn't get enough sleep the night before and you're grinding and you're grinding and you're doing the work that your boss is telling you to do. And then ultimately you get a nice paycheck and you think, okay, you know, I ate the shit, but I was rewarded. That's one way to eat shit. And that's the way that we traditionally think about eating shit in corporate world. The way I look at it, there's another way to eat shit and the spoonful's a lot bigger, and that is living at home with your parents to the age of 30 and sitting in your basement and vaping and playing video games. I mean, maybe when we were 12 years old, that sounded fun, but what I can tell you about the statistics on anxiety and loneliness and depression among young people, we are eating more than ever before. And we're not eating in the sense that you describe where you're getting harassed by your boss and you got to do all this work. No, we're eating shit in the sense that we're literally living siloed in, literally in our parents basements, not, not hyperbole, 33% of us. And that's the setup that young people have today. So my view on this, go eat that corporate shit. Go do it. I mean, if, if you're trying to. I mean, our parents, many of whom did eat shit and went through the corporate world and put in their time, but you know what? They ended up being able to buy a house at the age of 30, in some cases 35, you could buy a house that was normal. In fact, the average age of buying a house 50 years ago was about 30. It's 50 today. So they, they ate the shit. But that is nowhere close to the amount of shit that we are eating. And so if, if you, if your view on, on, on putting in your time and working hard is, I don't really want to do that because it's really difficult, and it requires. Okay, you've already lost. Like, you know, what would you say.

A (65:15)

With people there that say, well, I'm. I'm being exploited? Is it. Is it. You know what? Everyone's being exploited and everyone's eating shit, and you just kind of have to choose which one. Is that kind of what you're saying?

B (65:25)

Yes, it's. It's. You're eating shit anyway. I mean, so my favorite. My favorite scene from no country for Old Men, sort of my favorite movies is when the villain played by Javier Bardem has Woody Harrelson. Woody. Woody Harrelson against the wall, and he's got the gun in his face, and Woody Harrelson saying, hey, what if I do this? What if I can give you the money here? I can take you to the bank? And Javier Bardem just says, you know what you should do? You should just admit your situation. That's what you should do. That is my first piece of advice to young people. First, let's just admit our situation. Let's just admit to the fact that in addition to housing being doubly as expensive as it was for our parents, as when measured and compared to their income, and you look at the cost of college, and you look at the cost of all assets, and in addition to the fact that we're spending 40% of our waking hours on our phones, which basically means that we have 40% less time to go do everything else, to do all the things that you're supposed to do to build a life, meet people, network it, find a girlfriend, socialize with people, do, do your job. I mean, we're addicted to our phones at the same time. So you have a terrible hand. Terrible hand. You have the phone addiction, which is eating into your time, which is your most valuable asset. And you don't have the money. So my view on that is you're going to have to work even harder than your parents did. Your parents talk about how they had a lot of discipline. You're going to have. You need twice as much discipline. So, yeah, you do need to eat a bunch of shit. You need to do the really hard work of figuring out what are my talents, what am I good at, how can I monetize my talents? How can I go show to an employer that I'm the right person for the job? Because I have this experience and I've worked hard at this, and I have these interests. How do I then work really hard at the job, demonstrate to the employer that I'm more valuable than all of the other people and that I'm working harder than everyone else. How do I then negotiate with my employer to make sure that I'm making some real money? How do I then figure out how to take that money and, and save it, how to save it over time, Invest in the stock market, make sure that those returns compound, and then how do I then take that money and go buy a house? And while I'm doing all of that, how do I go find a girlfriend or a boyfriend and figure out how to socialize with them and express interest and get them to be interested in me and then build a family with them? These are hard things to do, and they're so much harder today for all of the reasons I described. And so, yeah, eat shit, get out there. And it's gonna be tough, and I'm sorry to say it, but it's gonna be even harder for you than it was for your parents.

A (68:30)

And I mean for you. I mean, I feel like you're this, this interesting spot. I've heard you talk about, you know, the working for Scott Galloway for, for two years and then getting into. Into position where, you know, you could have your, your Markets podcast. And I, I also was, I feel like maybe these things are connected. I know that on a podcast you talked about a, a friend recently that when they were talking about new hires, they were like, I want you to have. Be online 8 to 12 hours. Like that was even to a certain degree, like a, not a superpower, but like a positive point for the hiring, especially in probably our field. What. Now that you've done that, are you 1. Pulling away from the Internet more in a different position? Are you having to stay kind of that, that hyper involved? And also like, what I'm interested. This is maybe just more for me rather than full audience and maybe it's for more your fans. Like, what do you see as next? Cause you're in this very interesting position where at least on YouTube, the Markets podcast is really some of the best performing content on the Prof. G Channel. It looks like Scott is focusing more and more on raging moderates. And so, I don't know, I'm just very interested in you as far as like, what's next.

B (69:53)

Yeah, so, I mean, this Markets podcast, we launched it about two years ago and I had no experience in podcasting. I was Scott Galloway's intern and then I was, and then I was eating shit for a few years. You know, I was, I was, you know, his, his little guy was Helping him write his books and. And do all of the. All the things that an analyst would do. And then he said, let's do this podcast together. And I was shocked and amazed and, you know, honored. And we started doing the podcast, and I was terrible at it at first and anxious, and I was like, what am I doing here? And then eventually got better at it. Started to understand what the job was, started to understand how to tell a story a little better, started to understand more about the world, more about markets, more about the economy. And we've gotten better and better and better, and we've honed it. And we started with one episode a week, then we said, this is doing well. Let's do two episodes a week. And now we're doing it every single day. And it takes up all of my time. I mean, if you ever do a daily product for anyone who's done a daily deliverable product, basically, that is going to be your life. Because if you care about what you do and you care about your product, you're going to be thinking about it basically all of the time. So the way I think about it right now, I'm not too worried about what I'm going to do far off in the future. My view is I've got this job right now that is important to me. It feels important. I'm trying to make sure that I'm providing real value for people, real value in the economy, real value in understanding what is actually going on in the world. Which of these things that we're hearing from from other broadcast networks versus the government and the administration, which of them are true? Which things should you pay attention to? Which of them are distractions? It's making money. So I'm building economic security for myself. And my view is, heads down, keep working on that, and keep trying to be really good at what I'm doing right now. And what I found is if you're invested in the work that you're doing today and you really care about the product, within the next 24 hours, you think about, okay, what can I do in the next 24 hours to be really good at my job, to make sure that I'm doing all the right things, then eventually you string enough of those days together and something starts to happen and I don't know where it goes. I don't know what happens. I don't know if I'll be podcasting the rest of my life or if I won't be. I don't know if I'll be doing YouTube. I don't know if YouTube will exist in 60 years. I mean, I don't know, but my view on it is the best thing that you can do is control the next 24 hours and really make sure that you're. You're getting the most out of those 24 hours and all of the stuff that's happening in the future, way down the line you can't fully control. And so don't worry about it too much.

A (73:10)

I like that. I think that's a great note to go out on 24 hours at a time, have a vision for the future, but it's all about the now. I definitely want to, once Powell's gone and we see what probably not Independent Fed looks like, I'm definitely going to want you back because there's going to be a lot to talk about. But man, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate you.

B (73:32)

I really appreciate it. This is really fun. Thank you for having me.

A (73:35)

And that, dear listener, is the end of today's podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. I had a fantastic time just having the conversation. And remember, you know, definitely make sure you're following and subscribing this channel. If you enjoyed the episode, give it five stars on Spotify and Apple or give it a like on YouTube. Thank you for watching I love yo faces and I'll see you right back here next time.