← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Mamdani Balances the Budget, Trump Lands in Beijing With 17 CEOs, a Chinese Spy Mayor, and the AI Job Apocalypse Hits Women First | Tom Bilyeu Show Live
01:21:49
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway. Carvana, give it a whirl. Love ya. So good you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up. Fees may apply. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Tom Billew Show Live. I am so honored to have you guys here today, but we do not have Drew, unfortunately. He is out sick. I am very sad to report, but I know he is with us here in spirit. Ryan is going to be picking up a ton of slack. All right. There is a lot going on in the world right now today. I think we all woke up to a bunch of things stacking up. Two thirds of the US economy is basically flying to China with Trump right now. Wild. A California mayor admits. Admits to acting as a foreign agent of China. Women now significantly outnumber men in US College educated jobs. But it actually may be setting them up for failure. This is going to be one of the most interesting things we talk about today. And good news for all of my Gundam fans out there. Mechs are now real. It's wild. You guys have to see this. The footage is absolutely insane. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the Tom Billy show live. Ryan, you locked, you loaded? You ready to rock?
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B
I'm ready to go.
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A
I'm also ready to pick up Drew's slack here today.
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B
I got chat right here. I'm ready to say anything they got.
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A
All right, let's go, man. This is a wild day with Trump headed over to Beijing. This is obviously a big trip. You've got the two biggest economies in the world coming together, meeting. Everybody should be paying attention to this. And Trump landed in Beijing with 17 of America's most powerful CEOs in towers, you've got Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, the heads of Boeing, Blackrock, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Meta, and more. And this is a very similar playbook to what Trump did in Saudi Arabia. You come in armed to the teeth with economic power, with the people that are actual decision makers that can get the ball rolling right then and there. You seduce, you, cajole, all at the same time. Trump knows that China does not consume their own goods, not in enough quantity to keep their economy going. They eschewed that as their strategy for growing gdp. Unlike the US which is exactly what we do, we buy things and China relies on the world to buy their goods. And when you're the world's largest economy and you're in a consumption economy and you have a blockade on your biggest rival's access to its cheapest sources of oil, you definitely have some leverage to work with. Now it's going to be very interesting to see if deals actually get done in real time on this trip. That feels more like a Trump thing than a Xi thing. Xi's not someone that you can intimidate or push around, and he knows the power that he holds on the global stage. Xi is many things, but a fool is not one of them. And however tough you think Trump is, for everything that he stood up to here in the US Xi is playing on a much more dangerous stage and has been able to consolidate power in a way that nobody's been able to do before him for decades. Mao was really the last figure to have the kind of tight control on the country that Xi has, and that's saying something. China is known for having very aggressive leadership that takes very iron fisted control of the country. So he really is on another playing field. So anybody that thinks that Trump is going to go there and just sort of push him around is out of their mind. Xi's official doctrine is to become the global number one. And he has communicated in the past, at least internally, but it's certainly come out according to Kevin Rudd, if you guys know him, wrote the book on Xi Jinping, and Xi has communicated that China should be more, and I quote, dismissive to the powers in the west. And obviously he's talking about us. So despite all of these tensions, this really is an incredibly important bilateral relationship for, for everyone on the planet, for us, for everyone else. The US and China relationship is going to define the next 50 years. So it really is all eyes on Beijing for the next few days. These are the two powers that are going to determine the future of AI. That alone would be worth everybody paying attention to. But the fact that we have so much global instability and these are going to be the two countries that either escalate that or de escalate that. Now, according to reports, Trump has demanded that every CEO that he's taking with him and there's reports that they're all on Air Force One. According to a live tweet from the flight, Elon Musk said the only of the CEOs that are on Air Force One are him and Jensen Huang. Thank God. Like, putting that many people on one plane is just way too juicy of a target. Now, he said, if you want to come, you've got to show up with one clear, tangible ask. Because Trump is trying to get these concrete deals done. He wants something that could deliver a handshake, basically signed agreement while they're there in Beijing. That's according to Rhodium Group's Riva Kujan. So we'll see if that actually comes to pass. I would imagine that is pretty accurate in terms of what Trump is looking to get done. It's just a question of whether it's going to be possible when you have a Xi that's going to want to smile, shake hands, but make no promises. Boeing supposedly is going there to close up to 500, 737 Max jets, which would be obviously huge for America from an economic standpoint. Cargill is there to get an agricultural deal. The other 15 are there to negotiate things like access to rare earth metals, which needless to say, is very important. AI chip access, figuring out what that's going to look like, whether we're giving them, denying them what that's going to mean, regulatory approvals. That's a big one for Meta, who's got a deal that's stalling out their purchase of Manus, I think is how you say it. China has officially shut that down and so I'm sure they want to see if they can breathe life back into it. As far as I know, though, Zuckerberg himself is not going at somebody else from Meta. Now, by doing all of this face to face, it is far more likely that a deal actually gets done versus just getting the sort of half smile that she is famous for and a nod, and then nothing ends up happening. When the official negotiations happen down the road, we'll see a lot of times out of these, you can get great pr, but there's not a lot that ends up coming out of it, at least not in a timely fashion. So that's really going to be what everyone needs to pay attention to on this. See through the headlines, understand that. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of noise that comes out of this, maybe even a lot of things that look really good. But whether they become actual investments in the US is another question. Depression. There's rumors floating around that what Trump thinks he's going to be announcing, there is a trillion dollar investment on the behalf of the Chinese in the us I'll be very curious to see what ends up happening. But with that, I would take all of that with a grain of salt. Just like we had big, I think, $2 trillion in announcements out of the GCC countries, and then we had the war in Iran. Basically put all of that on hold. We'll see what one even just gets announced. I would be very impressed if that even gets announced. But then whether or not it gets across the finish line is going to be a completely different story. So make sure that you, when you're assessing what's going on, you separate the PR spin from what's actually happening on the ground. Is anybody breaking ground? Are the dollars actually being transferred over? There's oftentimes a gigantic chasm between the words and then what actually comes to fruition. Now, I think one of the most important things that people need to decide what they think is happening here in order to have an accurate picture, or at least to be able to hold themselves accountable to whether or not they had an accurate picture, is whether you think this is Trump taking all these CEOs as a sign of strength or is this a sign of desperation. Obviously, this is tending to break along political lines. You've got MSNBC calling it desperation. From their perspective, you've got the Iran wars dragging on in a way that Trump did not want to see. Gas prices obviously spiking, tariffs largely nullified by our own Supreme Court. His poll number is just tanking. And so, from their perspective, Trump is rolling deep to try and finally just get a win for his side. And it's, you know, a little bit thirsty. From their read, the Council on Foreign affairs largely agrees, saying that China holds the upper hand at the negotiating table. But obviously, the White House is saying something just completely different. They are trying to get people to see this as classic Trumpian dollar diplomacy and an opportunity for the two largest economies to find a path towards mutual success in a world that is, at least from Trump's recent rhetoric, big enough for two superpowers. Trump, all the things that he's been saying in the lead up to this, you know, China's a great country, got a great relationship with Xi. We're going to be able to work things out. I think this is going to be great. And by the way, even if you absolutely despise Trump, even if you think that he's not going to get anything useful out of the deal, for the sake of the world, we should want these two powers to come to some sort of mutual agreement. You've heard me talk a million times about Thucydides trap The statistical reality is that China and the US are likely to end up in either ongoing protracted economic warfare, kinetic warfare, or both. That is north of. What's it like, 78% of the time or something. I forget the exact stats. 12 out of 16, whatever the percentages of that, two powers that find themselves in this situation end up in protracted conflict. So, man, do I really hope that we're able to get something that is truly mutually beneficial. Because if these guys can both set their egos aside, accept that the world is now multipolar, accept spheres of influence instead of one person trying to dominate everything, we could find ourselves in a much better position where we have trade deals that are healthy without being, in the US's case, outsourcing all of its manufacturing to clearly a rival, potentially an outright enemy. So we have to be very, very careful about that. There is critical manufacturing we absolutely going to have to bring back to the us, but there are also things where we'd be in a much better position if we could have an understanding where we are meeting as peers and to be able to negotiate something that is beneficial for us. The rare earth materials being the most obvious case. But there are a lot more things that China controls from a supply chain perspective, so we'll see. Trump himself has said that he doesn't need or want China's help on Iran, which is something that a lot of people have been saying, like, hey, hey, while you're there, you better make a play to get some help wrapping up everything in Iran. Trump's words is that the US is going to win against Iran, whether through war or diplomacy. But either way, we're going to win. We'll see. I think there's way more question marks there than Trump wants to admit. And the unsaid part is that the US and their oil squeeze on Iran and Venezuela has already disrupted China's access to its cheapest oil supplies. Venezuela is the, you know, the Trump that he can play, the trump card. He can play in his back pocket of, hey, not only can we, if we work together, get something done in Iran, but also if we can come up with a path forward that is mutually beneficial, we could get you some of that oil on good terms from Venezuela. Otherwise, we might just find that it's going to some of the other countries that are being impacted by the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. So we'll see what ends up happening. With all of this a lot on the table, there is a lot at stake, and there's going to be a Lot of PR battles going back and forth, so it's a pretty wild time here in big power negotiations. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about the worst investment most guys make on repeat cheap clothes. 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B
It seems everyone has this idea that China has the upper hand. And I'm curious where you fall on that, because right now I feel like we've been painted as this paper tiger on the world stage. And so do you also agree that you think Xi has the upper hand or is there some way Trump could pull out some deals for us?
- [15:21]
A
I mean, there's definitely ways that Trump can pull out deals for the U.S. there's no doubt about that. To say that the U.S. doesn't have any leverage I think is completely foolish. The fact that Trump right now controls the oil coming out of Iran, Trump controls the oil coming out of Venezuela, those were two of the biggest places that China gets their oil. Now I had seen reports that China was only pulling about 20% of their oil from Iran, but I'm now seeing reports that they're pulling up to 50% of their oil from Iran. But even if it's not that high, you put the two together, Venezuela and Iran, and that is a lot of China's oil supply. It is a fraction of their oil supply that is so large they will not be able to move forward without a solution to that problem. Now that solution could be an economic deal with the US that solution could be forcing Iran to go to the negotiating table to give up on the nuclear weapons and to get the Strait of Hormuz open back up. It could be a lot of different things. It doesn't have to be, you know, what the US wants to put forward. But China is going to have to solve that problem. And given that the US right now has the biggest impact on, on that, I think that there is plenty of leverage. And then again, what I was saying before, we, we are the biggest by far consumption economy on planet earth. China requires consumption economies. A lot of people do not understand that GDP is a function of what you sell and what you consume. The US builds, I think 70% of our GDP is based on consumption. So not only are we just absolutely gigantic by numbers, we are also mahusive in terms of dollars that we spend. So if you're China and you know that your economy is in a slightly weakened position, I'm not saying that they're crumbling, but I'm saying that they're not in a great position right now. If you're there, you're looking at the US and you think, okay, you've got this guy, he's all about deals, let's get a deal done. China is very good about playing the long game, setting their ego aside, not needing to on every issue, get people to bow down. That's definitely their long term strategy. But China will do what they need to do in order to get the long term victory that they're looking for. So I think China will be more than happy to be diplomatic, will be more than happy to Broker a deal that's good for both of them. I don't think China's going to cut its nose off despite its face. So from that perspective, the US Has a fair amount of leverage to get something done. But in no uncertain terms, this is not Xi sitting over there like, oh, my God, like, I've got to get something done and I'll do whatever Trump wants. That isn't it. Imagine Xi sitting very calmly, very proud, very stoic. If a good deal comes his way, he'll take it. If it doesn't, he'll reject it. China can go a very long time. They have like, six to nine months or wait nine to 12 months, I think, of oil reserves. So they understand that they can play a nice, patient game, that they can wait for the right moment, that the U.S. needs them as much as they need the U.S. and so, yeah, China holds a lot of cards. We're not a paper tiger. That's patently absurd. I think that when you look at the way that the war in Iran is going, if Trump can't tie that up in a bow, then people are going to realize that we're not as strong as we once were. And that is going to have big consequences. There's no doubt. But it's not like China could go patrol the seas better than we could. And I think that's where people misc. Calculate right now, there's only one country that can play world's policeman. That's the US China does not want to see Iran or anybody else take control over international waters. And that's something that people talk about, but they don't talk about a lot. The fact that the current economic glory globally brought to you by the fact that the US has patrolled the seas. And so if that were to end, that would be a problem for everybody, not just the US Be huge for China as well.
- [19:33]
B
I got the percentage of imports with oil for China for you. So Russia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Iraq and Brazil make up 62%, with the other percentage being Venezuela and Iran. So that's kind of all the massive ones.
- [19:47]
A
They roughly 38% come from Venezuela and Iran.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So that's pretty massive.
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B
Pretty big hit.
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A
Yeah, massive. Like that is not something that they
- [19:59]
B
can just be like, okay, we'll push on for now.
- [20:02]
A
Yeah, they're going to have to address it.
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B
But Drew mentioned with all these leaders
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A
are Drew, our beloved chat. Let's go, Drew. What's up, Drew? Drew, I hope you're feeling better.
- [20:12]
B
Says with all the business leaders attending with Trump, he's going to go the economic sanction route as the carrot. So how much do you think things like tariffs and that are going to be the main focal point of this conversation, or do you think it'll lean towards things like Iran and Taiwan and things like that?
- [20:27]
A
Trump is tariff happy, so there's no doubt that he's going to leverage that as much as he can. But if he thinks that Xi doesn't understand what's going on internally, that the US Supreme Court nullified a lot of his ability to do tariffs, he's talked a big game. But if you look at the way that he's responding, he's clearly still pissed off about it. So Trump is busily paying back a bunch of tariffs I think he recently had from a, I forget what court, but another court reject another one of his tariff attempts. So I think that while he wants us to believe he can tariff anybody at any time, it's just not playing out like that. So China knows he's not in a paralyzed position from a tariff perspective, but he's certainly in a weakened position. So that isn't going to be as strong of a card. Plus, Trump has been playing that card aggressively and China has been able to weather that storm. So from that perspective it'll matter. But I think this ultimately is going to come down to the bigger leverage that the US has right now is that if we don't do deals with China and we don't, we, even if we just do non tariff trade barriers, you're going to, we will be able to make it impossible for China to market a large portion of their GOODS in the U.S. china knows that because China's run that playbook themselves. So there's no question that we have economic leverage. China wants to have a deal with the US But I think Trump, as always, is far more prone to like, hey, let's do something that's in both of our benefits. And he only brings out the stick when he doesn't feel he's being treated with enough respect or that he's not getting the deal that he wants. And then he'll try to bludgeon him with something, whether that's to choke him off. From an oil perspective, he'll threaten tariffs, but I think that that's a weaker and weaker threat by the day. So it's all going to be part and parcel. But this is a read I don't think many people share. But when I watch the way that Trump behaves, I think while he is a gigantic narcissist, he wants things his way and will pout and act like a petulant child if he doesn't get it, he really does try to pick something that he thinks is good for the other side and say, hey, this is good for you, this is good for us. Let's just get the deal done. And when people act in a non economic way, that's when he's always very confused. Take Iran. Iran is not acting in Iran's best economic interest. Iran is acting like somebody who's fighting for their lives because the regime is fighting for their life. And so they're making economically, catastrophically bad decisions, which is why he is completely confused. So if China takes a purely economic stance, then we'll probably get something done. If China, on the other hand, is trying to play a political advantage, if they want to stall things out, if they're trying to buy time and they're willing to make their own economy, you know, continue to struggle for another year or two years to ensure that Trump is weakened more and more on the international stage, they certainly can and will do that if that's where Xi feels his best interests lie. And Trump will be very confused by that.
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B
We were talking about it briefly before the show, but the list of people who are going with him right now is rather interesting. Who's the guy we mentioned who's doing Rush Hour 4? Who's there right now?
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A
Brett Ratner.
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B
Yeah.
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A
This is wild. So Brett Ratner would be one of the most surreal comeback stories ever. If he makes it. I'm going to derail on this, Ryan. If the chat is trying to talk about something else, I'll come back. But okay, speedrun on Brett Ratner, he music video director, comes out of nowhere to become one of Hollywood's biggest directors. Does a Rush Hour franchise. If you're young, you may not even really know what it is, but if you're anywhere near my age, you know that this was an absolutely massive comic franchise. Did incredibly well. And it's like this U.S. china crossover. And it was a U.S. china crossover when everybody was just glowing about the U.S. and China, you know, coming together. We didn't yet see that the middle class is being hollowed out. I mean, it was just like this came along at a time where the US And China really were just like, holding hands and singing Kumbaya. It was awesome. Hollywood was desperate to earn those Chinese dollars. Chinese stars really wanted to make it big in the U.S. i mean, it was really, really a fascinating time. So Brett Ratner rides on the back of that, consciously or unconsciously, and puts himself in just a gigantic, successful position. But apparently behind the scenes is just a me too time bomb ticking away waiting to happen. Now, I have to say, I think I've shared the story here before, but he made a pass at Lisa back in the day, so it was hilarious. So I was teaching film at the time. He was friends with the owner of the film school. Long story. Doesn't matter. So they say, hey, Brett, will you come and do a presentation at the film school that at the time I'm running. And so I'm literally sitting there with Brett. Obviously he doesn't know that I'm dating Lisa at the time, nobody did, because I wasn't supposed to be. And he was awesome. I just cannot say enough nice things. He was funny. He was showing us his student films. He was offering, like, a free class in filmmaking. So imagine this is at the height of his power and his success. It was absolutely. It was so cool. It was such a neat moment. And then later that day, he cracks on to my wife and is like, or my now wife, and says, actually, maybe this was already after Lisa and I, I think we were back in the U.S. that's correct. So we were engaged. Cause she was like, I'm engaged. And he was like, does he is your fiance here in the US And I just thought that was absolutely hilarious. Lisa thought it was hilarious. Obviously she ends up shooting him down, but. So that should have given me the indication. Okay. Oh, this guy is, like playing a dangerous game. He's very fast and loose in terms of his approach on women. Ends up blowing up, like, yikes. Like, big complaints about him.
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B
Well, he's an Epstein affiliate. There's a photo of him with Epstein and two girls.
- [26:35]
A
Oh, God. So it gets even worse. So Epstein classes as long as the day is long. And so he just, poof, disappears. And then he's the one that does the Melania documentary, which makes so much
- [26:50]
B
sense, given the Epstein connection.
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A
That's why I was like, oh, God. So anyway, if he plays this as, like, his comeback card, that will be wild. That will be wild if he's able to get past this.
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B
But what about, like, everyone else going? Because we have. We have Musk. Think Visas guy is there, like, they have a lot of top business people from America, from tech to finance. Do you think that's, you know, having that level of intervention is good? Or how are you feeling in that?
- [27:20]
A
Listen, I look at this as an entrepreneur, and so this is where I have to confess all of my. My frame of reference. So my Frame of reference is if you want to get a deal done, you want to bring the people in the room that can actually make a decision. There are two ways to negotiate something. And this is like, if you want. Like, if you were ever going to see secret footage of me that made you think, ooh, Tom is not who I think he is, it would be me. On calls with lawyers, I am a psychopath. I get so fucking agitated because lawyers are. They want to drag things out. And so I am notorious, infamous for when I'm negotiating a deal. We've got 90 days to get it done. If we're not done with a deal in 90 days, everyone is getting on a fucking call and we are literally not hanging up until we have everybody's sticking points. And I'm going to run that call like, I'm unhinged. And I have to admit, even sometimes I'm like, ooh, I'm probably pushing the line a little bit here. I just cannot stand it. I cannot stand the way that people manipulate you. Bullshit. You tell you, yeah, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world. Then they go back to their client, they're like, this is terrible. You shouldn't take this. And the client's like, really? I don't know. Like, it seems like it could work. And then they'll come back and they'll negotiate tooth and nail for every little thing. And my thing is, there are some things I care about, there are some things I don't care about. I want to talk directly to the person that I'm negotiating with. I do not want somebody in between me. So I'm reading this like, Trump doing the same thing. Trump being like, hey, listen, motherfuckers, we're going to go to China, we are going to sit at the fucking table, and we're just going to say, I care about this, I don't care about this. I'm willing to give on that. I'm not willing to give on this. What do you want? What are you willing to give on? Like, when you just ask people that point blank, you can get real fucking answers. If you don't, you are going to be in lawyer hell. One of the worst things happening to my beloved country, to much of the west, is we are becoming a nation, not a builders, not of engineers, but of fucking lawyers. And so by Trump taking these guys over there and just saying, sit down with your, you know, the person in the Chinese government that you're going to be dealing with, let's just fucking say the thing now, that's A super American approach. I don't know that the Chinese are going to go for it. They've got way more of a hierarchy culture where there's expected deference and things like that. So listen, this might be. Be the most brash American, like, suicide run ever, where you're not going to get this shit done. But that is how I read this. It is, in my opinion, from a business perspective. This is how negotiation should be done. We sit across from each other. They've had plenty of calls leading up to this point. They've gotten like the big deal points and all of that. Now we're just sitting across from each other. We're saying, yeah, I'll give on that thing. It matters to you. It doesn't really matter to me. Fine, cool. I'm going to give on that. But this fucking thing here. Nope, I'm a sociopath. That we're going to get done, Plain and simple. Period. End of story. So where the fuck are we? Are you guys good or not? And I have found that while it is a very high friction meeting, lawyers absolutely despise it. But you can get deals done. I never start there, but, man, the number of times that I've had to get there where I'm like, everyone gets on this call. I don't want anybody else who have to go back and check with everybody that can make a decision is going to be on this call. And if this call lasts six hours, this call lasts six hours. We are getting to the fucking bottom of this thing. So anyway, that's my hope, is that they can just hash it all out right there. There's no intermediaries. It's just everybody saying the thing.
- [30:57]
B
Do you fear, though, with this instance? So we look at Tesla, Nvidia, even Boeing, like, these are companies that export their labor to other countries. Do you worry with China's rise as a superpower, that these individuals would want to make deals to push their work out of America to make it cheaper for them? Or do you think there's any way they would want to bring it back? Because I feel like when you are sending these people with power and money within our economy specifically, and not our government, you're almost asking for them to push all labor out of the U.S.
- [31:28]
A
trump knows that suicide. Now, does he have to wrangle a bunch of business guys that are like, well, this would be a lot cheaper if we could build it in China. Yes, he almost certainly is going to have to wrangle a lot of business guys that do not give a shit about the middle class and they will do whatever the fuck they want that's good for shareholders. Now, that, ironically, is not in their best interest. It's so short sighted and Lord knows I hope to bang this drum hard enough that these guys hear me. But the reality is Trump is well aware of that. Trump's base is getting the real wages in America to go up. And if he is not able to get real wages in America to go up, the Republicans lose, guaranteed, he loses at the midterms and then Republicans just lose, plain and simple, at the next presidential election in no uncertain terms. So Trump has everything that he's been doing shows me he is trying to get things manufactured here in the US he is trying to break some of the supply chains out of these other countries, get them to come back here to the US he is obviously willing to punish corporations through tariffs, if nothing else to get them to manufacture on U.S. soil. If the rumors are true that he's trying to get Xi to make an announcement that he's going to build factories here in the US Using, now I'm presuming this part, but using US labor, those would be huge wins for the agenda that Trump already has on the table. That goes along with everything he's postured about, everything that he said, all of that. Now, Trump obviously is hyper aware of the financialized part of the U.S. economy. And so he's going to do things to balance that out and not just swing all the way to Main Street. This is, when you hear Scott Bessen talk, it's always we can do Main street and Wall Street. And so that, that would be my hope. I think that is 100% the way that Trump is going to play this. Now, do I think that when you're running especially a public company, that you are doing everything you can to keep costs down and you're thinking essentially only of shareholders? Yes, but Trump knows that. So this is one of those times. Very fair if you absolutely despise Trump. But he really does get the thing that's going to get him reelected. He understands that he appeals to the working class and he is very cognizant of the fact that if real wages don't go up, he's toast. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to.
- [34:11]
B
Seems like China might have more influence over the United States than we thought.
- [34:15]
A
Jesus, dude, if you're talking about the, the spy thing, this is pretty wild. So, yeah, if you guys are paying attention, there is A mayor in California, Arcadia. So the town's Arcadia. And they also found like some weird sort of baby mill in Arcadia. So Arcadia has been on people's radar locally here for just. There's weird things happening, but the mayor of Arcadia just stepped down after admitting to being a foreign agent or acting on behalf of a foreign country. And that country, of course, being China. So this is, I think, going to have massive ramifications. I think that there's going to be a ton of investigations certainly in the city of Arcadia, but going elsewhere to see how much influence China has actually been able to get over U.S. officials. And so there have been people talking about this for a very long time that China was running some sort of operation across the Darien Gap and trying to get as many sort of military age men into the country as possible. Obviously we have birth tourism, so people are especially Chinese nationals coming here to have kids so that the kids are born on US soil so that they have instant citizenship. And remember, the US Is running. I don't know if they're doing the same things, but we're trying to get as many spies as we can into China. So don't think this is something, oh, that makes China uniquely bad. This is what, what great powers do. But you want to be the one doing it. You don't want them doing it to you. And so you've got to find out who are all the people that are doing this. Obviously this is a problem. Obviously we need to root this out and nip this at the bud because this would be. It is incredibly dangerous to allow your foes to take you over from the inside. So having China buying a bunch of farmland, super risky. Having China buying property next to military bases, also risky. Having China have some massive amount of property ownership in the US Risky. I'm not saying you say no to foreign nationals buying property in the US But I am saying, like, you got to be thoughtful about it. Are there ways that you can do it that mitigate some of the downside risk? So figuring out exactly what's going on here, figuring out how deep the corruption goes, I really think the next 10 years for America is going to be a great truth and reconciliation around fraud and corruption. And I think that we're going to see that it has been massive for a very long time. And part of that is going to be foreign nationals taking advantage of that. And so whether it's people in Somalia extracting tremendous wealth and sending it back to the home country, or whether that is people in Congress saying things like, I'm for. I think she was Guatemalan. Like, I'm Guatemalan before I'm American. Like, yikes. People that have beef with people that say that they're Israel first over America. Obviously problematic. We don't want any of that shit. And we certainly don't want anybody that is saying that, oh, yeah, sorry, I should have registered as an agent of a foreign power. Like, that's wild. So, yeah, China is running a playbook and we need to be very careful.
- [37:29]
B
Yeah, everyone's, everyone's green in the chat. They're saying that it's crazy that she also just outright was like, yeah, I did it, bro.
- [37:37]
A
She knew that the FBI had her dead to rights. Like, you don't admit it if you think you're getting away with it, you admit it. When the FBI is like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Just down the list. And you're like, ah, yeah. Like, I don't know if you guys are watching Friends and Neighbors. Watch Friends and Neighbors. It is fantastic. And there is spoiler alert. I guess if you're not. In season two, there was a moment where, I guess I'll be as vague as possible where one of the characters just gets caught on camera doing something and it's like, yeah, about the time that your enemy just straight has you on camera. There's only so much denying that is left. So caught red handed, you might as well try to plea it down, I suppose, as much as humanly possible. So people are using. I even use it in the headline of today's episode, Chinese Spies. She has not pled guilty yet. I mean, we'll see. But she has not pled guilty yet to being a spy. Just as she's an unregistered agent of a foreign power. And that what she's pleading guilty to is, yes, I should have registered because I am an agent of a foreign power. That's the part, dude. She's a mayor of a US city. That is so wild, Boys and girls, welcome to the Cold War 2.0. This is what it felt like growing up in the 80s, by the way. So you can expect some Red dawn esque type movies coming your way and may they haunt you as a teenager as they haunted me. Man, I used to have a recurring nightmare about Red Dawn. That's wild. It's a great movie by the way, but Damn if you're 12 or 13. It's rough. It is rough.
- [39:08]
B
Our favorite pothole filling socialist out in New York City actually did balance the budget recently.
- [39:13]
A
That is very fair. So here I want to Talk about Mamdani. In my promise to myself and to you guys, as always, that if I see something that's it's done well, I'm going to call it out. So Mamdani, who I consider my mortal nemesis, nonetheless, he has balanced the New York City budget, and he did it largely by clawing back New York City tax revenues that were flowing to the state. So, in fairness to him, those dollars essentially belong to New York City in the first place. I think that that is a very good place to start. And the most recent fiscal flow study from 2026, it uses fiscal year 2021, 2022 data. So some things may have changed, but that found that New York City contributes 54.5% of state revenues when measured by place of work. That's very important. Now, on the spending side, New York city only receives 40.5% of state operating expenditures. Okay, so that's dodgy. In my estimation, the rest of the city is gobbling up nearly 60%, which is substantively more than they generate. New York city contributed roughly $68.8 billion, but only got back roughly $47.6 billion. This is a net subsidy to the rest of the state on the order of $21 billion in that fiscal year. Now, admittedly, the gap narrows down depending on how you allocate the income taxes. So if you look at place of residence, then New York City contributed 46.7 of the total revenue, rather than the 54.5. The difference is basically commuters. So these are suburbanites that work in New York City. They pay New York income tax on wages earned there. And if you credit that revenue to them out in the suburbs, that does change the picture. But if you set that aside, Mamdani, I think, had a pretty reasonable request of New York State, and they gave it to them. So I think that they recognize that New York City is the economic engine of the entire state. And so trying to push them around was probably going to be a better idea or a bad idea. And so that one makes sense to me. Now, you guys know me, and I'll talk more about this in a second. But cuts, Cuts. He should have done cutting. He didn't. But at least he's clawing back dollars that were generated by New York City. He also did another thing that I thought was pretty clever. And so the headline win on his, like, we did it by taxing the rich. Not really. But there is one thing that they're doing that is legitimately targeting the rich, and that is this new pied A terror tax. Now, pied a terror is basically a non primary residence of second or third house. It's only things that are above $5 million. So that to me is very clearly targeted at specifically the wealthy. It's projected to bring in $500 million annually. Now, I think it's a very smart bit of political engineering on his part. No one is going to fight for the ultra wealthy guy that doesn't want to be taxed on his extremely expensive second or third home. That gets pretty hard to argue, especially if he can't vote because he doesn't actually live there. So that one I thought, okay, I get it, it's smart politically, obviously I would rather see them do this via cutting, but if you're going to do it, this one makes sense. So where I start saying, okay, hold on a second, is that a pied a terre probably isn't going to generate as much of the revenue as they think it's going to. It's certainly not going to affect housing affordability because even if this does cause the ultra wealthy to stop the practice of owning the properties in that place, the properties that are in question aren't the properties that are driving values high. That is a dearth of properties in the ranges that the average person actually can afford. And also the wealthy owners are likely to restructure their assets into LLCs, trusts and corporate vehicles that are owned there, owned by someone in the state, and then may take it outside of this tax. And because of that, and this is many people are already saying this, the tax gains will inevitably fall short of what they're projecting. So the $500 million number is a nice planning assumption, but it's not a guarantee. And so I'll be interested to see if at the end of the year if the budget actually balances or not, because I have a feeling they're going to have a shortfall here. Now, if this ends up chasing off would be buyers. Another bit of pushback I would have is that now there's just less money flowing into the city. I get that we're at a cultural inflection point where we think people with money are bad, but the reality is that everybody's got to have money. Nobody wants to work for free. So anybody that ever says, I'm not going to do that because I'm not getting paid, we're all the problem. So just getting everybody to remember you want money to flow into your city, you want that money to be handled well. You want your city, your state, your country to respect that capital you want them to put restraints that don't end you up in the kind of like runaway toxic inequality that we have now. Obviously this needs to be fixed, but you don't just want to become predatory with your taxes causing people to leave. We've run this story before and it ends up being bad news. In fact, I want to talk to you guys about something that's going on in Sweden which Mamdani himself has used as an explanation for the kind of policies that he wants to bring. Really fascinating. For years everybody has been talking about like the Nordic model. Look at what Sweden has been able to accomplish. And they use this, Mamdani specifically use it as an example of why they want to put forward the policies that they're putting forward. And what we're going to talk about now is basically largely me going after the dsa. Because when you've got mom Dani banging the drum about making it sound like cutting isn't an option, fiscal discipline isn't an option. The only option is more free stuff and more tax on the wealthy if we actually do an audit. And I'm actually writing a deep dive on Sweden right now because I didn't realize that this is what had happened. I've been so propagandized around Sweden and the Nordic model, even I didn't realize what was actually happening under the hood. So a recent article came out showing that Sweden has leaned into capitalism, has been doing it for decades, and as a result they've gotten richer, a lot richer. From the 1970s through the late 1980s, Sweden's GDP per capita, that growth had trailed the OECD average, which is basically other developed democracies. So they were falling behind. So with all the Nordic model, they were falling farther and farther behind. They had a progressive tax system that's going to. AOC is going to love this. They had a progressive tax system that at the highest level is pushing past 90% in an effort to say it with me now, tax the rich. But what was it actually doing? It was dragging down their entire economy. This is my fear for New York City. This is my fear for the DSA policy. So Sweden had a heavily nationalized approach to business. They were doing their best to tax the life out of the rich. And they were famous for being the prototype of cradle to grave socialism. Hey everybody, don't worry, we've got you. Like you're never going to have to worry about a thing. Now, ironically or not, if you understand the physics of economies, this actually ended up putting them in an insanely fragile position. Because remember, the only thing that generates any taxable revenue are entrepreneurs, full stop. So you're either an employee for an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur yourself, but that's it. This is how we derive value. So when Swedish, the Swedish banking crisis hit, lasted from about 90 to 93. That dropped their GDP by roughly 5% and sent unemployment skyrocketing from 2% over 10% in just three years. Yikes. Now, in the middle of all that, voters finally decided that they'd had enough of what I will call moronic policies. Though I imagine at that time they would have been pretty happy to agree with that sentiment. And it's one of those things that works on paper, but in real life it starts having problems when you find yourself in that kind of position. And so they ended up electing Sweden's first center right prime minister in 61 years. Not some like wild right leaning guy, just center right, okay? He comes in, his coalition dismantles the Nordic social democracy model that had gotten them in the mess in the first place. The very model that people will say, oh, they're running the Nordic model. Sweden hasn't been running the Nordic model for decades now. They immediately began implementing what has become some of the most aggressive set of reforms in Sweden's history. Sweden's top income tax rate is now around 50% from its high of roughly 90%. Public social spending has dropped to 24% of GDP, which is the same as the U.S. by the way, which there are many things to be said about that, but we'll leave it at that for now. And the country now has more billionaires per capita than America. Okay, so let's think about that. We have these policies, cradle to grave, going to take care of you hit a banking crisis, all of a sudden we go, whoops, you really do run out of other people's money. We're going to have to go in, do things that actually stoke the engine of prosperity, which is the free market. And now we actually turn things around, get things going in the right direction. Suddenly people are waking up within Sweden. You know, back in the 80s, that the country needed to go in a way that gets the fiscal engine to be more disciplined and gets the free market to kick off more capital that can be taxed. And so what everybody is now seeing with this article is that the very country that Americans have argued about for 50 years, the one that was supposedly supposed to be proof that socialism really just makes life better across the board, has actually spent two decades not proving the exact opposite. It is complicated. And we'll get into some of the complications and trust me, when I do the deep dive, you're going to see all of this. And I want to be as fair to what works and what doesn't work. And I don't want to paint some propagandist picture about the free markets. However, as of right now, nearly half of Sweden's primary healthcare clinics are privately owned, mainly by private equity firms. By the way, one in three public high schools is privately run and school operators trade on the stock market. In Stockholm, health care spending per capita has only grown by roughly 1% a year from 2014 to 2024, which is half the rate of UK and a third of the rate of the increasingly socialist United States. And what it shows is that private competition, even in health care, is the thing that keeps costs down. Regulation, government involvement, when they get out of hand. Because listen, Sweden is still very heavy government, but when they get out of hand, that involvement is the thing that drives costs up. So if you want to know why the US is moving in the wrong direction, it's because of this weird helter skelter like regulatory madness in both trying to not become single payer, but not let the private market do what it does. It's fucking crazy. So when you really start looking into it, Sweden has produced more than 500 IPOs in the last decade. That's all about private capital. Free market capitalism in the decade that ran through 2024, that's more than Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain combined. Bro, do you know how small Sweden is? It is tiny. It's like 11 million people. Spotify, Klarna, Skype, Minecraft, my beloved Candy Crush, all of them came out of Sweden's embrace of capitalism, opening the free markets back up. Their finance minister, Elizabeth Svantensen has cut taxes three years running. Cut taxes three years running. And as a result, Sweden's economy is now outpacing its European peers. So they go from being behind to now being ahead by embracing the free market. Not entirely, but by heading more in that direction. The Swedish government debt sits at about 32% of GDP. Remember, we're 123% when the European average is closer to 90%. Real GDP per capita in Sweden hit an all time high in 2026. According to OECD figures. Swedish per capita GDP growth has outpaced most OECD countries over the past decade. And this is where it gets weird and I'll be very interested to see how you guys respond to this one. That is, despite rapid population growth from immigration, that is putting a massive drag on that number. So, and I'm talking by the math, not by my gut or anything like that, they've run the numbers and the to give you the specific place that it breaks, I'll do in the deep dive from memory. It's roughly like on when you take their immigration in totality, it is a massive drag. It's like, oh God, it adds something like 50 billion, but is a drag of like 85 billion or something. So they're in like this massive net loss. The European Commission projects that Sweden is going to grow 2.6% in 2026, which is among the highest rates in the EU. It's not very exciting, keep in mind, but it is better than their competitors. France grew by 0.2% by being far more socialist in the final corner of the quarter of 2025. Germany has been functionally flat for two straight years. Sweden's employment rate is the 10th highest in the entire OECD. Inflation just hit 1.5%. That's awesome. I wish it were zero, but at least one point, actually, I wish it were negative. Don't get me started. I know the debate. Real wages are climbing, which is fantastic. Household disposable income is rising. These are all good things. While France raises taxes to chase a deficit, Germany debates how to fix an industrial base that's basically just a total collapse. Sweden, on the other hand, is like, cool. What can we open up to the free market without losing our identity of being a very big social safety net country? Okay, They've not like turned their back on that identity, but what they're proving is that if you want to distribute, you've got to first have a strong economic engine. Okay? This is the exact thing that happened in China. You realize that the free market is the thing. Now, the country that was supposed to bury capitalism is. I would put forward to you, and I hope that what you guys take away from it is that it's proving that you can build wealth much faster by opening up to the free market. That if you want to have a big social safety net, the very thing that you have to light on fire is the economic engine of prosperity, which is the free market. And the way that you do that is by allowing inequality to run hot. Now, there is such a thing as too hot, there's no doubt about that. But if you don't create an incentive structure by distributing, redistributing less, letting people keep more. Remember, more billionaires per capita in Sweden than the US US has more by a lot in Terms of raw numbers. But per capita, I think it's Sweden. You're letting people have that reward for all the hard work, taking all the risk, all of that stuff.
- [55:09]
B
So I'm curious, Sweden basically has this mix of free market economy with some socialism safety nets, right? And it is considered to be top five quality of life countries across the entire globe. In what ways would you could you see those policies being implemented in like a New York City to make it more flourishing to then spread to United States? Because I feel like Mamdani balancing the budget and then we look at all these Nordic countries. It almost feels like it's kind of this opening for more social safety nets to kind of be introduced into America in a way that is more digestible for people. It won't work like in any capacity.
- [55:48]
A
It won't work in any capacity.
- [55:50]
B
Why is it?
- [55:51]
A
The reality is that what matters is you have to be a small country. So I looked this up yesterday. There's no country with over 100 million people that doesn't run inequality at a pretty hot level and grows. So what you end up seeing is that you can run a big social safety net, stall your growth out and stay small, or you can let inequality run hot and you can do it on a really big population. So take China is the king of hot inequality. I think people don't realize China has more inequality than the US and so why does China tolerate that level of inequality? The answer is because they know that hundreds of millions of people were pulled out of poverty, like grinding, starving to death poverty by going, all right, fine, we're going to let some of these guys get rich. And people's shout out to anybody that's done research on China, thank you, I love you guys. Please help spread the word for anybody that just refuses to fucking learn the lessons of history. It's such a wind up, as the Brits would say, because the answer is right there. Like they realize the only way to equal everybody out is to equal them at zero. And as much as people make fun of me, equal that zero means you eat your own child. Not everybody obviously, but if I told you, hey, there's a policy on the floor for a vote that leads to people being so hungry and malnourished that they will actually eat their own kids, like provably, would you not just go, okay, it's a bad idea, let's not do it? I would hope so. But people don't. They actually still fucking do it. It's crazy. So anyway, what China learned was, all right, we're going to have to let inequality go run pretty hot so that these guys are incentivized because the ratio of people that are capable of generating a billion dollar company versus the people that are capable of collecting a welfare check is so disproportionate that you end up bogging them down and you disincentivize them because you have to redistribute so much, you end up disincentivizing them so much, they stop creating.
- [58:02]
B
Redistributing the wealth of billionaires to the people who don't have billions is what you're saying. Just.
- [58:07]
A
Yeah, you're, you're asking, hey, can't we just do some of these social safety nets here in the U.S. like, wouldn't that work? And what I'm saying is social safety nets don't scale. Just to say it really succinctly, scale is in. As in little numbers of people. Yeah. So when you've got a country. Now, here's why I say the people that talk about this get attacked. There is a part of this I'm not saying, and part of the reason I'm not saying is because I actually don't believe it. But if you go ask AI, if you go talk to most of the thinkers on this subject, when they tell you about why Sweden can do it, they are going to say they are ethnically homogeneous. Now, I think that's bullshit. And I think people do not understand. Ethnic homogeneity is meaningless. What matters is value homogeneity. If you are value aligned and your values are. We don't take handouts unless we are in dire straits and we take a handout for as little time as humanly possible and we make demands of our own family that like if a dad is saying to his kid, hey, asshole, get off the dole, get back to work, then like, cool, you can have a country that can pull this shit off. They feel a sense of obligation to each other. Other people will round that to ethnic homogeny because ethnic homogeneity is one of the ways that you can get there. But then you fucking spill into racism and all that bullshit, and it drives me absolutely fucking mad. So this isn't about race. This is about values. Now, we as Americans are a melting pot. So we've got people that have all different kinds of values, all different kinds of values. There is no one American ethos anymore. And because there's no one American ethos, we're in a position where there are literal people who believe that billionaires are evil, that they're actually saying words out loud like there's no way to earn a billion dollars. You must have done something illegal, immoral, etc. To get it. And therefore, of course they are justified in confiscating that wealth. There are people who believe that the President of the United States deserves to be murdered. On and on and on. So when you have that kind of hyper division, then people feel that fraud is justified. You had Hasan Piker saying, yeah, it's perfectly fine to rob the Louvre, to rob certain stores, like, no problem. So when you have that, when you create a government program that is redistributing wealth from the highly productive people to people that are not productive, now all of a sudden people go, that's just. And good. And so we're going to spin up as many daycares as possible, as many leering centers as possible, as many hospice care facilities as possible, and you get industrial scale fraud. So now imagine that you're coming up and you're looking at 90% tax rates. Obviously we do not have that right now, but there are people braying for it. And so if you look at that and that's actually where you go, you just don't pursue it. And so now all of a sudden the economy starts to slow down and that's where you run into problems. And it's just, it's so self evident and it's played out so many times over history, and yet when things have been going well for long enough, we forget that prosperity is the hard part. Redistribution is the easy part.
- [61:21]
B
Post World War II is arguably the biggest boom in economic history for America. Right?
- [61:25]
A
Yes.
- [61:26]
B
At that time though, the top marginal tax rate on the highest earners in the United States was 91%. And so I'm curious how that feeds into your argument about, I can't think of the word right now, but the fluctuating tax rates, the progressive tax rate. Progressive tax, that's the word.
- [61:43]
A
Yeah, man, What a great question, Ryan. I love this. Okay, so the US comes out of World War II, 90% progressive tax rate. And the reason that they were able to do that is because everybody believed in the war. So we go into World War II, we're fighting on the side of right and good. We've got to end the Nazis. You know, people are becoming increasingly aware of the atrocities we've been attacked at Pearl Harbor. So people were all in. And so there was a real sense of it is my patriotic duty is even the wrong word. But sure, my patriotic duty to do this. But people wanted to do it. They wanted to help America. There was this real sense of we're all in this together, we've got to do whatever it takes to win. As we came out of the war, what we realized was that on a per taxpayer basis we were actually cap. Capturing less money. And so it probably felt good to say that people are paying up to 90%, but the reality is that even comparing it to today, on a per taxpayer basis, they were collecting less money. So I get it, people love to hear that number. But the reality is that you're never going to actually capture that money. So what's going to end up happening is either people stop producing or they find ways around it so it just doesn't work. And that's why we then very rapidly began backing off of that. I think there's a very credible argument to be made that the redistributive. Redistributive, making that sound hard nature of like the, the New Deal. What was that called? What was his name? Roosevelt. Doing his whole thing.
- [63:24]
B
Oh yeah.
- [63:25]
A
That that ended up prolonging the Great Depression and that it was only the economic juice of the war that ended up getting out of it. And that if we had just let the depression run its course, not tried to engineer our way out of it, that we probably would have gotten out of it faster. So that is the right way to look at what happened in World War II. And it goes back to that idea of when values are aligned, you can do things that you can't when values are misaligned. And I cannot think of a time other than, I mean, you've got during the Civil War and during maybe the 60s where the US was as divided or more divided than we are now. And so this would be a terrible time. I mean we're seeing it in the fraud numbers. They're just absolutely ludicrous.
- [64:11]
B
If we were to implement a system like Sweden for health care specifically, because the US is the one developed country that doesn't have single payer health care, to my knowledge, with the scalability of it, do you think there's a world where we could see both single payer health care and a private sector as well?
- [64:27]
A
Well, Sweden does. So there is a way. I'm not the guy that as of today would be able to map out how that works. My instinct is always that you don't want a single payer, that you want competition, but that competition has to be done in a very rewarding way. And right now the way that we're doing non single payer is so Weird that I can't just go, oh well, this obviously is going to work. We are clearly proving that there is a way to do it poorly. So we are doing it very poorly. But I don't know the edges of how that all breaks down to see what exactly we're doing wrong. The person that whenever I hear them talk about it, that seems to have the best read on this is Cuban.
- [65:11]
B
Who did you mention, sorry?
- [65:12]
A
Mark Cuban.
- [65:13]
B
Oh, Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban, Yeah.
- [65:14]
A
Not the Cubans.
- [65:15]
B
I was like the country. Can you define scalability a little bit with these types of policies? Because I look at some place and I'll use health care again, like Brazil. They have SUs. That's the actual name of their single payer system, by the way. It's SUS. It's a full name, but I think
- [65:29]
A
SUS is the abbreviation. No, no, it's us. SUS is appropriate.
- [65:32]
B
But they have like 200 million people and the most complaints I hear out
- [65:35]
A
of it is, sorry, what country is this?
- [65:37]
B
Brazil.
- [65:38]
A
Okay.
- [65:39]
B
The most complaints I hear out of it is like, oh, you know, for the basic, like oh, I've got flu, maybe the wait times are a little longer. So I'm curious what your definition of. Because you argued scalability is the issue. Why exactly is that comparing, I guess Sweden and America? Why do you think scalability causes problems with these types of policies?
- [65:58]
A
So I don't have the stat about Brazil memorized, but when I was doing the research on is there any kind country, over 100 million people that is keeping their inequality low, actually growing economically and has a large social safety net. Brazil was specifically part of that. And it was like, yeah, one of those metrics they're failing on. I don't remember which one. It wasn't 100 million. So they are a big country, but they either aren't growing or their inequality is running hot. I don't remember which. I'd have to go back and look, but it's did not invalidate the thesis. That much I can tell you now on other things that I want to make sure that we get to. We've got that Gundam is real. I can't believe that's a whole thing. But that really is the thing. We got to cover that. So if you want to pull that up. And then I want to make sure that we also get to Zillow and its prediction about the housing markets. And then we must save time for women now outnumbering men because I think there's something interesting there. But let's.
- [66:58]
B
That was funny. Real fast, because that came. That news came the day we just posted a video about women losing their jobs to AI. And I was like a bigger and
- [67:06]
A
bigger thing, which is really interesting. So if. If we have any Mecca fans out there, like, this is the big fantasy, or these giant robots you can actually crawl inside of. So much of the history of science fiction is that it ironically ends up leading science fact. Because what happens is you get somebody like an Elon Musk that grows up reading books with a picture of what spaceships are going to look like, what space outfits look like, all of that, and then that person becomes an engineer, and they go on and make this stuff real. So Japan since, what, the 70s? I think the first Gundam came out in the 70s, painted these pictures of these giant robots that humans could actually crawl inside of. I don't know that it makes any sense for the human to actually be inside of the robot. To be completely honest. It feels like these would be much better driven without somebody inside of them. But nonetheless, you have generations of people all over the world that grew up fantasizing about being able to climb inside of a Gundam robot, and so now somebody has made them. I think there's plenty of criticism to be made about these things being far less functional than they are. Just cool. But they're going to show a clip of this thing in a second, like knocking over a brick wall. There, I think are precious few things that this thing can actually do at this point, but it's big as hell and certainly strong. So it'll be wild to see as certainly as AI comes online and we're able to knock down, there goes a brick wall. We're able to knock down, like, more and more of, like, the limitations of manufacturing. It'll be interesting to see what kind of crazy, like, megalithic structures we're going to be able to build. The starship that Musk has built is so big, it's absolute insanity. So anyway, this stuff is like. There is a child inside of me that gets very, very excited by this. Even though I think that this really is ultimately going to go nowhere and is probably the worst way to build this kind of technology. But nonetheless, that stuff is cool. All right, now with that, I want to talk about what's going on with women. This, as it collides with AI, this is going to get very strange. So what's happening is you've got more women that are getting degrees than men. I think there's 200,000 women in the US more than there are men getting college degrees. And so people are looking at that. The initial reaction is, oh, my God, like, what's happening? Men are getting left behind. Oh, no. Like this. Is that that big problem that we've been watching happen for quite some time now? And so does this just mean that we're going to see more of a breakdown in the roles between the sexes as women? You know, they hypergamy, so they date over and up. And so men have just checked out of education because it's become so effeminate. Men's ambition has been so attacked for so long. Right. All of that, I think, is very real. It's a very real conversation. It's been going on now for probably a decade. But I think that there's something different that's actually playing out right now. And what you're seeing when you combine it with what we were just talking about the other day, is the fact that the jobs that women occupy are actually more vulnerable to AI replacement than the jobs that men occupy. And as you start researching it, and I don't have all the specific numbers, but as you start researching it, you realize men aren't just checking out, they're actually going in and increasing numbers to things that are going to be harder for AI to replace. They're going into the trades. So seeing more men go into things like being a plumber or an electrician. And as you think about all the data centers that are spinning up around the country, which I do not think people understand, how big these data centers actually are, how many people their construction will employ for the next decade, 20 years, I don't know. It'll be fascinating to see how long this goes, but there are going to be a lot of people that go into these roles that are going to be harder, not impossible, but they'll be harder for AI to disrupt. So I think really what you see in this story is an exacerbation of the fact that women are in more the humanities, more of these exposed roles that can all be done on screens. Anything that can be done on a screen is going to get replaced much faster, much sooner by AI. And so it'll be very interesting to see if what we actually see creating more tradwives. This is going to be controversial, but the thing that we see creating more tradwives is actually AI that will be very fascinating as the jobs that are available that the economy just says are valuable end up being these things that aren't geared at men. It's not specifically aimed at men, but it happens to be things AI can't do as well, and, and if jobs that men find themselves more drawn to happen to be the thing, it's more physical happen to be the thing that men find themselves more drawn to. It's more abstract, less dealing with people. Right. If you're spending all day pipe fitting, that's not exactly interacting with other people. And so men tend to be drawn towards things, women tend to be drawn towards people. And so if the ultimate thing that creates a some amount of a resurgence to a more traditional male female dynamic ends up not being religion, which has historically been the thing that kept that going, but instead it's just that AI is replacing more female centric jobs. That will be wild. That'll be wild.
- [72:38]
B
I feel like another layer to this is also just college is so expensive, we should respect trade schools more. Like college is absurdly expensive.
- [72:47]
A
I'm going to stop you there and I'm going to say do not respect trade schools unless they provide something of value. Being cheap is like whatever. I couldn't care less about that taking on debt. If your job, the job that you're going to get at the end of that degree doesn't pay it back is stupid. But what we're seeing here, I don't think is men saying college is too expensive and women saying, no, it's fine. I think what we're seeing is men going, oh, I like this job anyway, that sounds dope and I can make money. Yeah, I want to go do that. And I think they have a much stronger drive. And ladies in the chat, light me up if you think I'm crazy here. I think men are hardwired to be ambitious, to want to provide in a way that women are not. And so women might get a sense of freedom, they might get a sense of meaning and purpose, especially if they're not having kids. But I don't think that they have that same. I'll just be emphatic. Women do not have that same level of drive and ambition that men have. And the numbers bear that out. So it's like as they find the friction with, ooh, this isn't a job that I necessarily want. I think that they're going to turn to something else. Now, will that something else be onlyfans or will it be getting married, having kids? That's a much bigger debate. All right, if you thought that was crazy by all mean my pushback, and
- [73:59]
B
again, this could be skewed, but I cannot think of a single woman in my family who doesn't wear the pants in the relationship. Right. I, I, I, hold on I have confessing I've always been surrounded by very strong, independent women.
- [74:15]
A
Right.
- [74:15]
B
And I think for me, that's very
- [74:17]
A
different to me than wearing the pants. I would say my wife is a strong, independent woman. My wife, if she were sitting next to me, would tell you, I wear the pants in the family in no uncertain terms. She wouldn't need to laugh or giggle about it. She'd just be like, yes. So that to me, those are two separate things I don't want to derail. If you don't mean.
- [74:37]
B
Well, I would say they're both. Yeah, Both of them are accurate to describe most of the women in my family. Like my aunt was a banker, my mom was a prosecutor for a bit.
- [74:46]
A
Okay.
- [74:46]
B
My sister was a teacher.
- [74:47]
A
You need to wear the pants in the family. I just want to be very clear.
- [74:49]
B
Well, but they're always the ones calling the shots.
- [74:51]
A
Yes.
- [74:51]
B
The husbands are the ones in the family. Yeah, yeah.
- [74:54]
A
But I want to say being a lawyer doesn't mean you wear the pants in the family. That's a totally different thing.
- [74:59]
B
Well, that's on the ambition note of like, I feel like again, my family. But every woman in my family has had a career ambitions. And yes, they want a family, but all of them have pushed for my careers first. And then once they decide to have kids, you know, that shifts. Right. Then it's like both the parents are now focusing on the children. So I don't know, I guess the stats could say something else, but my lived experience tells me otherwise.
- [75:23]
A
I'm so curious. We have a woman lingering right outside the tent here right now. I see you, Christina. So, yeah, this is a topic I expect to strike a nerve for people. So let's tease out two separate things. So women being ambitious by the numbers, just not as hell bent to work the hours, climb the ladder, be driven by money in the same way that men are. Again, just by the numbers. If you say that a woman wears the pants in the relationship, to me that's a very different thing. There are plenty of women that are. Your default assumption about a woman should be that she is as extraordinary at her job chosen field as a man would be. Right. Women are the. If you think of intelligence, the curves are slightly different, but there are a ton of smart women. In fact, I think I'm almost certain what I'm about to say is statistically dead accurate. There are less dumb women than there are dumb men.
- [76:25]
B
Women are more educated than men.
- [76:26]
A
No, I'm not talking about education, I'm talking about iq. Okay, so there There are more dumb men than there are dumb women. I'm almost certain that is just statistically true. Now. There are more smart men on the like way end of the curve than there are like hyper high IQ women. So that is also true. But when you meet a woman, you should just assume like she's going to be as capable and as smart as the next person. That doesn't matter. But when you start looking at the statistics, the kinds of roles that they go into, the fact that they will often choose to go home when they have kids, work less hours, those kinds of things, that explains a lot of what we see out in the workforce. But that to me is a very different thing than I'm the decision maker in my family. So the whole idea of hypergamy, which again you just see in the data over and over and over and over and over is a woman wants someone that they feel good following. This is not everybody. So you just may be in a family where, nope, you have collected women that they're just not motivated like that. They want to be the one in charge. They feel great about it, they're good at it. I'll make that presumption and that they've found men that are not interested in being in a leadership position anyway and they would rather have a woman that, yeah, I would like her to take the lead and she's great at it and I love it and my marriage is extraordinarily happy. I'm not saying those people don't exist. They do. I'm just saying these are two different things. Ambition as separate. Ambition and ability, let's say separated from. I want to be the leader because you can imagine, prosecutor, ultra high level. But still my husband is the one that I turn to, to be the final decision maker in the household, to set the vision for where we're going. It doesn't mean that the woman is silent. My wife is anything but silent. My wife is very aggressive with her opinion. She is going to fight for what she believes in. If she thinks I'm wrong, she is going to tell me in no uncertain terms. But at the same time she is with me because from the moment we met until today, she believes of the two of us I'm the right one to lead. And so those are two very separate things.
- [78:37]
B
Gotcha.
- [78:38]
A
In my opinion.
- [78:39]
B
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. In terms of like the comparing it to the stats and stuff.
- [78:42]
A
Yeah, like if you want to understand what's going on in the world, if you want to understand why some relationships work and some don't I think you have to like really begin to tease those things out. Because somebody who is like, let's say I know multiple women, I won't name them and I know these women well and they are incredible. Very successful in their roles. One of them is an entrepreneur and extraordinarily successful business. I mean, she inspires me. Incredible. And they've both gone through perimenopause and they're like, yeah, I just don't care like I used to anymore. It's like, yeah, word. Such is the power of like your hormones. And so I think men have hormones driving them to scale, to climb, to win, to compete. I think that women have a hormone set that makes them want to connect and nurture. And nurture. That's the right word for it. And so when you take them as like big statistical numbers, you're just going to find that in terms of like ultra hardcore, climb the corporate ladder, there's just less and less and less. As you get more and more towards the top, more women just feel a different impulse. And so they either pursue careers that just don't take you that high, or they eject out when they have kids, or they eject out because they're making enough money that their husband is successful. They want to go do philanthropy or work at their kids school or whatever. It's just two different life paths. And it's very weird to me that we place a value judgment that like, women should want to do those same things as men and that if somebody says that women don't do those things, that that's somehow a slight against them. I don't think the world ought to be judged on a male curve. I think males should be judged against a male curve. I think women should be judged against a female curve. And you shouldn't say, oh, there should be like this complete overlap between the two. That to me is evolutionarily nonsensical. All right, you guys are amazing. I love you bunches. Thank you. We'll see you on Friday. By the way, we're going to be coming to you live. We will be live on Friday, normal time, all of it. But we're going to be coming to you live from London. So that'll be a lot of fun. I'm very much looking forward to that. Drew, if you're still in the chat, I hope you feel better, brother. I will see you in London. And yeah, everybody, see you on Friday. Peace. Later. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop 8 ounces of water and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gift gifts. With your first subscription you get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus, K2 and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.comimpact to claim this offer.