← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Scott Galloway pt. 2: Why Young Americans Feel Hopeless: Structural Change, Policy Reform, and Real Solutions
00:45:53
Tom Bilyeu dives deep with Scott Galloway into the economic divide between generations, why young men are struggling, and bold solutions for capitalism, taxes, and America’s future.
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- [00:01]
Scott Galloway
Time.
- [00:02]
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- [01:01]
Impact Theory Host
Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go.
- [01:07]
Tom Bilyeu
Talk to me about Trump. Give me a report card. So people may have thought they were voting for one thing. What have they actually gotten? I think many people, certainly people on the right, are going to be surprised to hear you say that Trump is more socialist than Mamdani. So give us the litany of receipts there. What is Trump getting wrong? Certainly. And then if you think that he's gotten anything right, I'll take that as well.
- [01:31]
Scott Galloway
Trump's instincts are often very strong. It's just his execution. I think he recognized before other people the asymmetric trade relationship with China. I think you got to give him credit for that. I think they were taking advantage of stealing our IP and then selling it back to us. Less expensive and gutting our manufacturing sector. I think you saw that. I think that he saw immigration as a big problem. You know, the vice president, her big thing was supposed to be enforcing the border. She didn't do a great job. When a quarter of a million people can come over in December of 23 by just raising their hand and saying asylum, they had to say asylum. And then boom, they were in. That's a problem. So I think he recognized immigration. I think his messaging around affordability was the right message. I would argue that the level of corruption we have seen under the Trump administration is unprecedented in history in the West. You know, cramming, launching a crypto coin, a meme coin, the Friday before his inauguration under the COVID of dark, such that someone could put in 10 million bucks into that thing and then say please stop shipping arms to Ukraine. And we would never know that that happened. I think overrunning co equal branches of government, just basically ignoring Congress.
- [02:49]
You know, I could go sending in a mass secret police to terrorize cities and people who've been here for 20 or 30 years when he could just show up with a clipboard and say hi car wash. You have Social Security filings for these people. I need proof of their documentation or I'm going to find you $10,000 a day. We have turned a blind eye to the immigration problem for 40 years because the sad truth or the uncomfortable truth about immigration is that people say it's the secret sauce of America. Okay, that's nice. That's a Hallmark commercial. And part of that is true. But the most profitable part of immigration is illegal immigration because they come across the border when our crops are coming due or grandma needs her ass wiped or we want cheap food at a restaurant. And then when the jobs dry up, they don't go on unemployment, they don't collect Social Security, they melt back to their countries. They usually don't stick around longer to cause to. They pay Social Security taxes, but they usually don't get them. They commit crimes at a lower rate than native born citizens. They don't call 911 or use the police. So we have turned a blind eye to illegal immigration for 40 years on purpose. Has it gotten out of control? Yes. Has it created real structural problems in the us? Yes. Should we have borders? Yes. He was good at leveraging that in people's frustration, especially in border states. And, and also a lot of young struggling men like to blame women for their romantic problems and immigrants for their economic problems. He tapped into that. He flew right into the manosphere. Genius political strategy, focusing on affordability, the asymmetric trade relationship with China, the implementation. It's as if he went to ChatGPT and said I want to reduce the prosperity of America elegantly and consistently. And it would come back and say I know tariffs. I know scare the best and brightest PhD students from coming to the US I know reduce the greatest ROI investment in history, investing money through our great academic institutions that produce medical and technological breakthroughs. I know make people feel bad about America by showing these horrific videos of people who are so ashamed of what they're doing, their activity is so depraved and vile, they have to wear masks. And people say well, well they could be doxxed judges put mob bosses in prisons, they don't wear masks. So some of his political Instincts, I think, are correct. I think he's a great campaigner. I would argue that the economic policies of America right now, putting drunks in charge of the Department of Defense, putting conspiracy theorists who believe that vaccines cause autism in charge of our health and human services, I mean, I feel like this is literally a clown car running the nation right now. It's a corrupt crime family, all right? And the even worse news is Michael is running the grift and Fredo is running the government. I wish they brought half the confidence to their grift that they're bringing to the government. Trolling around the Gulf and not going to the democracies, Turkey and Israel, because they know they can't give you a plane or a golf course or a building, only going to the nations that are comfortable saying, hey, take this $400 million plane, wink, wink. Oh, and then, oh, what do you know? You're going to, what, you're going to give us Article 5 NATO protection for free? We basically just give Qatar NATO protection, a security guarantee. Oh, and he accepted a $400 million plane a few months before. I mean, that's just not. That erodes the very fabric of what it means to be American. And it hurts us. It hurts our reputation around the world. It makes us much weaker. Let's start bombing fishing boats that would take 20 stops to refuel and get to Miami in a nation where there's no evidence, there is no fentanyl, while we let Ukraine fall. I mean, the poor decision making here, the incompetence and the corruption are noxious. They're stifling. The optimism is that we have been in worse places than this before. Americans are narcissists, and we always tend to think this is the worst thing ever. We were interning Japanese families in camps because they were Japanese slave owners. Used to be the most powerful political force in America. We opened fire on veterans marching in front of the White House after the Great Depression, protesting economic conditions. We have been in worse places before, and America has come back stronger, and I believe we are going to come back stronger here. So, yeah, I do think Trump gets some stuff right. I think he has good instincts around certain things. I think he's an amazing campaigner. He is a stain on the American experience.
- [07:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Now, do you think this is a great man theory of history where he just brought these things randomly, got elected, or is he a symptom of something that the populace is going through?
- [07:49]
Scott Galloway
Well, okay, so I want to acknowledge I'm a hammer and everything I see is a nail. I Think the reason we elected an insurrectionist. I focus a lot on the struggles of young men. And young men are doing worse than are fallen further or faster than any cohort in American history. Four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be homeless and addicted. And what happened was he recognized this and he flew right into the manosphere as Vice President Harris is going on MSNBC and cnn. He went on Rogan, Andrew Schultz, Theo Vaughn, crypto, World Wrestling Federation, Rockets. He went right into his campaign. Reeked of testosterone. Because if you look at the three groups that pivoted hardest from blue to red, 2020 to 2024, in order, one was Latinos. That says nothing. We should stop tracking them as a group. Mexican Americans in Southern California have much different priorities than Cuban Americans in Florida. It's stupid to make any reductive generalizations about the Latino community. Number two, hardest pivot people under the age of 30, they're not doing well. When you're not doing well, you don't want to parse nuance, you just want different, even if it means chaos. And then the most interesting thing is the third group that pivoted hardest was 45 to 64 year old women. And my thesis, Tom, is that's their mothers, and that is if your son is in the basement playing video games and vaping, you don't give a shit about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine or transgender rights. You just want change. So. And also what we don't like to admit is there are a lot of women in America who will vote for who they perceive as being in the best interests of their husbands and sons. We talk about the patriarchy, men versus women. Women's rights were supposed to be the defining issue of this. It did not show up. 54% of white women voted for Trump. So my sense is, if we want to stave off, if we want things to be better in America, if I were to do anything, it would be economic programs that lift young people up. And just as the economic bludgeoning of young people in America has disproportionately hurt young men who are disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability, lifting young people up economically will have a disproportionately positive effect on young men. I get it. I just wrote a book called Notes on Being a Man. I get attacked by all these therapists. By the way, 80% of therapists are women. It's always work on yourself. Therapy is the answer for everything. And I want to be clear, if you struggle with mental illness, or have mental illness in your family or you can afford it, have at it. I believe it's hugely beneficial. But this dogma online, if therapy solves all problems, you know what would be the best therapy in America? 8 million homes in 10 years. $25 an hour minimum wage, universal child care, eliminate 40% of the medical debt on households. You know what makes you mentally fucking stressed out? When you can't afford your 16 year old's root canal? When you don't make enough money to pay your rent. So while I'm a big fan of blood pressure medication and statins and diabetes medication, here's an idea. Get everyone working out first and see if we can avoid that. So I think the mental health in America, I think the stress young people feel, the anxiety they feel is nothing. No amount of mental health or therapy is going to replace economic precarity and mental. I want to detonate a nuclear bomb of mental therapy called Massive increase in minimum wage tax holiday for people under the age of 30. Massive explosion in new home construction. More third places, more mating opportunities for people to meet universal child care dignity around, Lower the cost of education through competition. And then the 3 per 10,000 people who are actually therapists won't need to go on TikTok and say that therapy is the only solve for our issues.
- [12:05]
Tom Bilyeu
Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned.
- [12:09]
Impact Theory Host
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Tom Bilyeu
But that's backwards.
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- [13:29]
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That ends up in the back of.
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- [15:34]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for staying tuned.
- [15:35]
Impact Theory Host
Now let's get back to it.
- [15:37]
Tom Bilyeu
And this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you. I feel like you're dancing around there's sort of an archetypal piece of beneficial male path. Not the only I. I do not think you think that, and I'm not, certainly not trying to put those words in your mouth, but that there is an archetypal path that. Nah, I've never met the kid. Never going to meet the kid, don't know anything about him. But if he were to follow this kind of path, we might be in better shape. One, is that accurate and two, if so, what is that archetypal path?
- [16:05]
Scott Galloway
Yeah, look, so I want to be clear. I'm guilty of projecting what's worked for me. I got economically secure, I worked really hard. I got the skills, the certification, took the risks. I also had unfair advantage being born a white heterosexual male in the 60s. And then I found I've had great relationships, great friends. So I feel like money and relationships are kind of the solve. And I think some legitimate feedback is Scott Winning capitalism and having a romantic partner sometimes isn't the end all be all for everybody that some people do. There's different paths for different people. I get it. So I, you know, I understand that. And also we need to figure out a way to recognize more of the emotional labor that women have been expected to give around caregiving and start to recognize that a form of masculinity and surplus values when men do that. So I think that society needs some.
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What I'll call nuance and calibration and manicuring. And now let's talk about the world we live in. 75% of women say economic viability is important in a mate. Only 25% of women. The likelihood of divorce does not increase when a woman gets fired or her income goes down. When the female in the relationship earns more money than the man, the likelihood of divorce doubles and the use of erectile dysfunction drugs triples. Beyonce could work at McDonald's and Mary Jay Z. The opposite is not true. And I don't care how many subscriptions to the Atlantic or the New York Times you have, that's not going to change in a few years. And I get all. I'll give you an example that triggers a lot of people. I tell my sons, when you're in the company of a woman, you pay for everything. What? What?
- [17:58]
That's the patriarchy. You do not own women. You do not. You should not have expectations from them. They are not your sexual. Of course they're not. Women aren't responsible for servicing men. Men's problems aren't women's fault. Women entering the workforce probably won World War II for us. It's the only reason we're not a second rate power to China. Women making a lot of money is wonderful. We should do nothing to get in the way of that. I had a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary. It did not work out for her with my father, other men. But the biggest strain in our life was she didn't have a lot of economic opportunity. If you were a woman without a college degree back in the 70s, you could be their travel agent or a real estate broker. You couldn't even be or secretary. You couldn't even be a teacher. You had to have a college degree. That was the biggest strain in our life. So I'm all for the economic liberation of women. A lot of Women are doing the math. Three quarters of divorce filings from women because they wake up and go, okay, I'm ascending economically and boss, you're flatlining around. Domestic and emotional logistical contribution in the home, I'm out. I get it, I get it. And I put a lot of pressure on young men who have more agency than they think to raise their game. And then pressure on people our age to join big brothers. Three times as many women joining big sisters as big brothers. Men our age need to step up. We need more economic programs that put money in people's pockets. I genuinely believe that young people having more economic opportunity, more third places to meet and demonstrate excellence to each other and establish more friendships, more romantic relationships, and then policies that regulate big tech such that they don't have an economic incentive to sequester young men from the relationships, from work, from school, with their more dopa hungry, immature brains, would solve a lot of our problems. So are there different ways to demonstrate masculinity and be happy? Should you be more supportive of your partner who happens to be better at that money thing than you? Absolutely. In the, in the short and medium run before, before we become a more evolved species, I'm here for it. I'm here for the world where the man is celebrating in those relationships where the man wants to stay home until then, we have to acknowledge the reality, and that is men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic strength, women on their esthetics, and an economically unviable man feels really bad about himself and generally speaking, has very little currency in the mating market. So where I start is how do we create structural changes that maintain the momentum of women? Maintain it. I don't buy this Charlie Kirk shit. Of women were sold a bag of goods and they were told if they just worked really hard and they end up being partners in law firms, and then they're miserable and childless. So what's the answer? Have them be broken alone? Of course, they should continue to kill it. That's great. Good for them. But at the same time, let's figure out ways that young men, one in seven young men aren't neets, neither in employment, education or training. That one in three of them aren't living at home under the age of 25. That one in five of them aren't living at home under the age of 30. What are the programs that do that? Male affirmative action. No, I don't want to go there. Programs that lift all young people up. Best thing for men, universal childcare. That takes an economic Strain off of young families. More college freshman seats such that we can get more gay kids, more Republican white kids, more men, more women in college, which still is a fantastic upward lubricant. $25 an hour minimum wage give people incentive to work. And that would not hurt us if productivity, if minimum wage had kept pace with productivity and inflation, it'd be 23 bucks. Let's go crazy and raise it to 25. Let's more housing, the archetype of a man. I get it. Maybe what works for me doesn't work for young people. But.
- [21:50]
We don't want to recognize the world we live in. Marriages become the new luxury item. One in four men in the lower quintile of income earning households get married. Three in four men in the upper quintile get married. Well, marriage isn't the answer. Well, it's a pretty good answer for men. Men live four to seven years longer in a relationship. Women live longer, two to four years. But what it ends up is that men benefit more from relationships than women. Which isn't to say women owe men anything. It's to say that men do really well in relationships and there are a lot of women out there that would like more economically and emotionally viable men. So let's lift up young people. Let's figure out a way. Are you married?
- [22:37]
Tom Bilyeu
I am, yeah.
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Scott Galloway
Okay. Do you enjoy being married?
- [22:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Aggressively.
- [22:44]
Scott Galloway
Look, I didn't want to get married. I didn't want to have kids. It has given me purpose and meaning in my life, which I did not have. So I am projecting it on other people. And by the way, my first marriage didn't work out. 84% of people, all these tiktoks about marriage is a failed technology. Well then why do 84% of people who did it once and it didn't work out get remarried within five years? So you, anyone listening to your podcast, Dom is not going to be surprised by this. I struggle with depression and anger. So I decided I'm going to write a book on happiness. I wrote a book called the Algebra of Happiness. I have read, I think every peer reviewed research study on happiness. It all comes down to the basic things. Number two, a basic level of economic sustainability. You don't have to be rich, you just have to be able to have some level of healthcare and education. But the number one, number one source of happiness is the number of deep and meaningful relationships you have. And unfortunately for a man, his relationship with himself and his ability to have a primary relationship with a romantic partner is unfairly and absolutely inextricably. Linked to his economic viability. And until our species changes, that's not going to change. So let's at least have an honest conversation around how we level up the mental health, the prosperity and the purpose of our young people. Should it come at the cost of women? Hundred percent? No. Are women responsible for fixing this? No. Are they responsible for this problem? No. First and foremost, young men need to level up. I hate the term incel. When I coach young men and he describes himself as an incel. I'm like, no, I met you, you're not Brad Pitt, but you're not bad looking. You're. You're, you're not disabled. You're. You're. You, you have, you're physically fine. You're a little up in the head, but you're, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be described as clinically depressed. You are a ve. Cell. You are voluntarily celibate. Right? I wanted a girlfriend desperately when I was in high school. I wanted to have sex desperately. I could not find anyone to do that with me. So quote, unquote, it was an incel. I worked on myself, I worked out, I tried to develop excellence. I went to college, I developed a sense of resilience, I started talking to women. And I entered into a series of skills such that I could develop the most important things that have given me purpose and meaning in my life. Friends, colleagues at work, and a wonderful mate I get to raise wonderful kids with. I want to create the infrastructure such that more and more young people have access to that. And if they decide they don't want it, have at it. Watch Netflix all day, do your own thing, go to Saint Tropez, be alone. But 60% of 30 year olds used to have a child in the house. Now it's 27%. Is that because they've all discovered the children suck and they don't want children? No, it's because they're having trouble finding a viable mate and they have less money. So I want to go to the world where men are celebrated on their character and their self worth. Call me when we get there.
- [25:57]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, hopefully we'll be getting back to that one very fast. I. I have maybe. I. I can feel your scar tissue as you talk about this. I can tell people have come after you. This is one of the things I think you, you deliver such a potent message. You said at the end, what I think is the archetypal run. And I am very aggressive in my present.
- [26:20]
And whatever people want to say, I honestly don't care. And that is because I think there's an evolutionary setup that has created a typical speedrun of life for both men and women, to be quite frank. But the things you talked about, okay, I want to get laid really badly. I'm not able to do that. So I start working out, I get economically viable, whatever that takes, I start developing excellence. I think that part of what's breaking down right now is women give men a reason to be better. And forgive me if this is more than you want to hear, but when I think about what sexual receptivity is, even just the physical position of vulnerability a woman puts her in to receive, that is crazy and is something that I think historically men have had to rise to a certain level to get a woman to be willing to take that risk. And because of that, the pursuit of a woman has created in men a drive to get better, be better, do better. And then historically, I think men and women got together much younger and women were likely to influence the man because they were like you. I very much want to see women completely unshackled and live whatever life they want, economically or otherwise. But historically they couldn't. And so there was a being in a relationship, was very protective, and so they would be young, find somebody with potential, get in a relationship with that person with potential, and help them become a better version of themselves. And like you, I certainly project what my life has been, but I've said many times, so I've been married now for 23 years with my wife for 25, and I was dead broke when I met my wife and just cannot imagine. I don't even want to know who I would have become had I not met her. And she has helped me through incentivizing me to want to be better and then also just being a very bright person that could see paths that I might otherwise miss and encourage me to go down those paths. And that has been transformative in my life, obviously has worked out incredibly well. And I got married when I was in my mid-20s. So by today's standards, ridiculously young. And I, I look at that and I go, okay, if I were you asked me to advise a young man, I don't get to meet him, I don't get to ask him any questions. I would say work on yourself, find excellence. Realize what I call the only belief that matters. If you put time and attention into getting better at something, you will get better at it. So go get good at something that matters and develop the self confidence you need to attract a woman and then get with a Woman, that is, you feel you can help elevate her, and she believes she can help elevate you. And then together, you guys will approach life as partners, whatever path that takes you down. If you want to be the greatest entrepreneur, my wife has been the biggest contributor to that. It's been incredible if you want to be a parent, obviously. So that idea has become very. It's fallen completely out of favor. Taking an evolutionary look at all of this and understanding why we are where we are tends to make people very uncomfortable, for reasons that I can articulate but I think are moronic. And so.
- [29:47]
Until people get in line with the fact that they are having a biological experience, there is a reason men and women have the dynamic that they have. You have articulated very well what men are prized for, what women are prized for. So coming into all of this, understanding that even if it's slightly different now, for hundreds of thousands of years, depending on how far back you want to track humans longer.
- [30:10]
We'Ve had evolutionary pressures to make us the way that we are, and we're suddenly, because of modern technology, just completely decoupled from that.
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Scott Galloway
Yeah, I thought that was well said. And.
- [30:21]
So going back to what you said about when I didn't. Men, I advise my sons to pay when they're out with women. And like dad, that's so boomer. And I said, look.
- [30:33]
Every mammal has a courtship process, and this is a way that you try to demonstrate commitment, interest, and valor. And the reality is, on a more logistical level, the downside of sex, and you reference this, is much greater for women than it is for men. In addition, men benefit more from relationships than women. A woman's fertility window is much shorter than yours, meaning her time, quite frankly, is more valuable than yours. And one way you demonstrate that courtship, that valor, that commitment and recognition of the asymmetry and the benefits of relationships and sex to men is an easy way to say of service, not expectation, not control, but I'm of service. I appreciate your time. I'm here. I'm demonstrating some excellence and some commitment to the relationship. And one easy way to do that is to pay. And it's so funny. I've been on so many podcasts talking about my book, and I get a lot of pushback from men about this. That. That's the arc. You know, that's boomer. And then I say to them, and I'll ask you this question, who paid when you were first going out with your wife? And it's always the same thing. I did. And it's like okay. And what I told my son, he's so woke, I like to upset him. I say, just, just keep in mind, look, if you want to split the check, fine. But keep in mind anyone you ever split the check with is never going to kiss you. And I stand by that. And like.
- [32:01]
Different strokes, different folks. If a woman asks you out, she wants to pay. Great. I get it. This isn't 100%, but I still believe that there are certain masculine. Masculine energy and feminine energy is the greatest alliance in history. And I have seven and a half billion points of life for that. And appreciating femininity and appreciating masculinity is a wonderful thing.
- [32:28]
And by the way, that doesn't take any dignity or rights away from the 5% who are non binary. I get it. But I like the idea of trying to restore a code for young men that says lean into your masculine attributes. Want to be a protector, want to be a provider, want to be a procreator, as long as it's channeled in healthy ways.
- [32:48]
But yeah, I think this is. I'd like to think it's a code for young men who are really struggling right now, who have an absence of sort of a code. And I always come back to the same thing, and that is who wants. What I have found is that the group that wants more economically and emotionally viable men is women. And that there's some consumer dissonance between what we try to articulate and what we think is the right virtue and then how we actually behave and what we respond to. And that doesn't mean we can't evolve and change. But at the same time, how do we help young people find the most meaningful things for happiness? And that is relationships, economic viability, relationships, a romantic partner, not necessarily in that order. And I find a lot of this, a lot of the current.
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Dogma.
- [33:45]
Dialogue, pays absolutely no, doesn't even nod to the reality of what young people are facing out there and how they actually discern and sort through mating or not.
- [33:56]
Impact Theory Host
We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
- [34:01]
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- [35:16]
Impact Theory Host
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- [37:18]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for sticking around.
- [37:20]
Impact Theory Host
Let's get right back into the action.
- [37:22]
Tom Bilyeu
What do you take away from the correlation? Don't know that it's caused, but the correlation that the more a nation educates their women, the lower the birth rate.
- [37:31]
Scott Galloway
It's a real issue. And I, and even when you, even when you look like a counter to my argument is even when you look at economic incentives around having more kids, oftentimes they don't work. And I don't think, I don't think you can tell people to have more kids if they don't want them. And also I think a lot of people who don't have kids are happy and I think that's their right. That to me is where if you're going to have a pragmatic policy, you talk about immigration and that is all right. If we can't, if young people are deciding not to have kids because they're more educated and they want more money for themselves and they want more freedom, you know, you don't want to get in the way of that. In Korea, supposedly, I think 1 out of 27 people is going to have a grandkid. Whoa. Yeah, that's.
- [38:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Wow. I knew it was bad, but hearing it like that, that's pretty startling, you.
- [38:22]
Scott Galloway
Know, Only I think it's like 60% will get married. A third of them want to have kids. And you go one generation more and it ends up 1 in 2711 grandkid. But we're actually doing okay. We're not. We're demographically, we look actually okay. Some of that is there's certain sex of our society that are having a lot of kids.
- [38:43]
My podcast always reminds me it's gay women having all the kids.
- [38:47]
Tom Bilyeu
And then is that really true? Obviously a little tongue in cheek, but.
- [38:51]
Scott Galloway
Well, they're having more kids. You never, you know, I mean, this is one of the wonderful things about our society is that my podcast co host has had four kids and lives a real, in my opinion, lives a pretty good life, mostly free from discrimination. Just when I was in college, you wouldn't have found that. You just wouldn't have found it. They would have been discouraged. It would have just been hard for them to have kids. Both in terms of economic stuff anyways, that's a wonderful thing. But if you want to pragmatic economic policy around, you need population growth. We were worried there was going to be a population bomb that would overrun the planet in the 70s. The bomb's gone off, but it's imploded, not detonated. We need more kids. Because what happens in a society if you have too few young people supporting unproductive seniors? The society collapses. You end up where America is spending too much money on seniors and not enough forward leaning investments. So one way you do that, I think is with economic incentives to Put more money in the pocket of young people. I think it will help. But the studies in Northern Europe showed it doesn't solve the problem. I think you supplant that with a thoughtful immigration policy.
- [39:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, so speaking of immigration, what does a thoughtful immigration policy look like? I'm guessing Trump is not your answer to that. So what should it look like?
- [40:07]
Scott Galloway
Well, so I don't want to pretend to be a domain expert here. I suffer from Dunning Kruger, and that is because I've had some reasons. I think I'm an expert on everything. Look, I think that the. We can never seem to have a middle ground. If you've been here 20 or 30 years, working your ass off, good kids, taxpayer. No. No contact with the law. Path to citizenship. Let's just. Yeah, okay, you're right. It's a bummer for the people who waited in line or didn't come in. I get it. Path to citizenship. But at the same time, if we were really serious about immigration, we use biometrics and we'd go out to the supply side and start finding the employers. You show up to a fast food restaurant and say, unless you show proof of citizenship for these people who are filing Social Security and that you're paying and you have bank accounts for or automatic transfers, we're going to find you $1,000 a day. Problem solved. But instead we want to demonize the immigrants. So I think there and then I think we should have a thoughtful immigration policy around. What are our needs? We need low skilled labor willing to come work their asses off and pick our lettuce. We need them. Unless we want lettuce prices to triple, we need semi skilled labor to roof our household. I just renovated a house. No domestic workers will work outside in Florida. You just can't find them. The only people born and raised in America will work on a home renovation are plumbers and electricians. That's it. Full stop. And they say, well, okay, if we didn't have these legal immigrants, you'd have to pay roofers more. No, these construction sites shut down and then going to the top of the stack, 20% of the NASDAQ by market capitalization is not only immigrants, it's immigrants from India.
- [41:52]
I teach at a world class business school. The PhD students are the best and brightest from the four corners of the Earth. It's as if the Los Angeles Rams. It's as if the Rams said. We said to the Rams, you can have the number one draft choice every year, all the number ones. And we said, no, turn them away. That's what America is right now. We get the number one draft choice from everywhere in the world. And right now we're saying no, turn them away. Should we have open borders? No, but we should absolutely have more HB1 visas. We should absolutely have more flexible immigration policy around low wage labor. Who the hell do you think is going to take care of your parents when they're 90? You going to give up work? I mean, we need immigrants. We also need them for population growth. They add to our culture. But it should be digital, it should be organized, it should be planned. So I say it has to be legal immigration, but you absolutely open up the throttle dramatically and just have a very systemic. These are our needs for agricultural workers. These are our needs for people who will be in the construction, in the housing sector. This is our need for PhD students. And the need is big. But demonizing them, scaring them. Do you know how much money we make at Univers? It's hilarious that at NYU and every other lead institution, we brag about 30, 40% of our students international. And we claim it's for diversity. What bullshit. It's for money. They pay full freight. They pay $68,000 tuition at NYU, 95% of gross margin, $272,000 over four years. Name a product that has 94,5 points of gross margin at $272,000. These are the most. We export tens of billions of dollars of high margin revenue to adults overseas who think the ultimate luxury item is to send their kids to an elite school. And then what do they do? They go back and they love America and they don't want to help terrorist cells form against us. They want to do trade with us. Sometimes they come back here, sometimes they end up in government because it's usually the richest kid in the nation that ends up in undergrad. And then on the flip side, on the PhD side, best and brightest, some ridiculously fucking smart kid out of Cambodia who somehow understands liquid propulsion dynamics and lives for it and ends up at MIT and figures out a way to send our satellites into space for less money than anywhere else in the world. Oh, but we're going to turn that away. We want them to go to China or France. So our immigration policy right now, it needs to be enforced, it needs to be rational, but it can help with population growth. And absolutely the greatest investment in US history is not only financial capital coming in, which raises our stocks and lowers our access or cheapens, makes our capital cheaper, but the inflow of human capital. Oh my gosh I mean, the best and brightest in the world used to have one thing in common and that is they all wanted to come to America. And we've decided to discourage that. I mean, again, I just think his instincts, again, going back to Trump instincts were right. We should not have open borders. But should we be really scaring away the best and brightest in the world who want to come here and put our rockets into space and figure out different chemotherapy for our cancer victims and figure out a way to start crazy tech companies that create millions of jobs? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
- [45:14]
Tom Bilyeu
All politicians do is say whatever they need to say to gain and retain power. So that's what the populace wants to hear. I very much think Trump is a symptom, he's not a cause. I mean he certainly exacerbates, but I don't think he is in and of himself a cause. There's one thing that you said in all of that that I want to push on, which is it's great for our culture to have immigration. What do you think about assimilation? So from you're in the UK right now, obviously the UK is having a reckoning of sorts with, I'll say, the assimilation side of immigration. Do you think that matters or much ado about nothing?
- [45:56]
Scott Galloway
I just think it's a fair point. You're dancing. I mean there are just certain cultures where when we let people come in, they don't tend to be productive citizens and assimilate. Well, Northern Europe has a huge gangland problem from immigration, from certain. But to me this is just like.
- [46:12]
It'S not rocket science. I think you discriminate. If you've got a degree in mechanical engineering and you went to IIT in India, come on in. If you're a hard working kid who's willing to work in agriculture and manufacturing and you want to sign up for, for training or vocational program in areas where we don't have those people. Come on in. If you're coming from a profile or a demographic that tends to not be productive, end up on social services or has a very large proportion of population that is unproductive or becomes violent. Sorry boss, we. I don't think America can feed the world. I don't think everyone has an. I don't think we have an obligation to let everyone immigrate here. And it's totally contrary to bring us your tired. A billion people would like to immigrate to the US right now. If we said open borders, let us know billion people and we'll give you preloaded phone cards and Harris Harris Biden hats. A billion people would raise their hand. We can't do it. So to me, these are. There's just common sense solutions. You know, I don't know if it's fair. I think you want to be fair, I think you want to be equitable. But I agree it should be based on what is best for America's economy.
- [47:22]
But huge, huge mistakes around the far left thinking that all immigrants are saints and are going to come in and what happens? There's an overcorrection and they start demonizing them and there's violence. So again, it doesn't appear we can ever get the pendulum at the middle at the bottom.
- [47:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, on that one, just again, it goes back to me to psychological problems in terms of when people are economically insecure, that insecurity feels very bad, feels like anxiety. It's going to be transmuted into anger, which is a far more intoxicating thing. There was a very small study, but still utterly fascinating because of the extremity of it. When a patient has their skull opened and the doctors are using an electrode to stimulate emotional centers in their brain, they'll stimulate all the different emotional centers and then say, okay, of all of those, which one do you want me to stimulate again? And they invariably say anger. And I think the reason that people like that is there's so much certainty, there's so much clarity, there's so much forward momentum. You know exactly what to do. And so I.
- [48:32]
Impact Theory Host
This is now my.
- [48:33]
Tom Bilyeu
To a hammer, every problem is a nail. To me, just everything comes back to the economy. And so when I look at people that are economically insecure, I know that they are going to trans, history tells me so they are going to translate that into anger. They are then going to need somebody to blame. And then, hey, nice and easy to point at either an immigrant population or historically, the Jews have been the stand in for that. Somebody who's considered an outsider that I can blame for all of my woes. And then we go on the attack. The problem is to bring in what you were saying is there are realities to be faced here. You can do immigration well, you can do immigration very, very poorly. And so when you have all this economic stress being transmuted into anger at the same time that you have this wild immigration policy, then you end up where we're at now, which is full disaster. From where I'm sitting, Scott, this has been wonderful. Where can people connect with you?
- [49:36]
Scott Galloway
Thank you. So to resist this feudal I'm overexposed, I'M like aol in the 90s. If you stick your hand in a cereal box, you're going to find me. But I'm at Prof. Galloway on all social media, my newsletters, no mercy, no malice. My book out is called Notes on Being a Man.
- [49:55]
Tom Bilyeu
My Man Scott. Again, thank you so much everybody. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.
- [50:03]
Impact Theory Host
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Tom Bilyeu
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Impact Theory Host
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- [51:22]
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