Kind: captions
Language: en
The only thing that's bipartisan is
reckless spending. The Trump
administration is a lot more socialist
than what Mum Donnie is proposing.
Golden share and US steel because Donald
Trump's so good at bankrupting casinos,
he should run a steel company. Budgets
and taxes are a reflection of our
values. And our values right now uh
state the following that we think sweat
is less noble than money. You know, I
don't want to demonize billionaires. I
want Elon Musk to make a trillion
dollars. I want him to be taxed 60 or
70% on it because the bottom line is
it's not going to make him any happier.
I think effectively America's for sale
for rich people. I feel like this is a
literally a clown car running the nation
[music] right now. It's a corrupt crime
family. I think America is already
locked in a cold civil war largely
driven by economics.
>> What happened exactly to our economy
that's made boomers so prosperous while
leaving the young to struggle mightily?
It's a multi-dimensional thing, but at
if you were to try and distill it down
to one thing, it would be that old
people vote and keep voting themselves
more money. I mean, social security,
there's a dogma or that if you would
ever talk about social security in a
negative light that there's something
wrong with you. Most arguably the most
successful social program in history
took seniors from 30% poverty to less
than eight. It's been hugely successful.
The other side of that coin is the
wealthiest generation in the history of
the planet receives 1.2 trillion dollars
each year transferred from working age
people to them every year.
>> Uh 40% of our budget is allocated
towards seniors
and we spend 4 and a.5% on the
Department of Education, 1.4% on SNAP,
40% of which goes to kids. In some kids
don't vote. And whereas previous
generations saw advantage in investing
in education and technologies and
infrastructure that had a longerterm
payoff for young people, those
investments are no longer being made.
But the things we continue to invest in
are things that benefit old people. And
then tax policy.
Two largest tax deductions, capital
gains and mortgage interest. Who owns
homes and stocks? people my age who
rents and makes their money from salary
young people. So in some old people have
figured out a way to transfer more and
more money from young to old. A average
25-year-old is 24% less wealthy than the
25-year-old 40 years ago. The average
70-year-old is 72% wealthier than the
average 72y old was 40 years ago. in
some my generation is not paying it
forward. And
the last example I'll use is co a
million people dying would be bad. But
what would be tragic is if my generation
got less wealthy. So we flushed 7
trillion into the system. 85% of which
was not spent. It was saved. So where
did that go? It went into the stock
market and the housing market. Homes
went from 290 to$420 in two years.
>> Who owns homes? people my age. So, it
was great for the incumbents. When you
bail out the baby boomer owner of a
restaurant, all you're doing is robbing
opportunity from the 25-year-old recent
graduate of a culinary academy who wants
her shot. So, we've interrupted the
natural economic cycle of boom and bust,
which transfers money back from capital
to labor or to young people such that we
could continue to make old people
wealthier and wealthier. And the net
result is for the first time in
America's history, a 30-year-old isn't
doing as well as his or her parents were
at 30.
Okay, that is uh very clear and very
bleak. So, one idea that I have thought
about endlessly, but it's the one thing
that I always hesitate to say out loud,
but it uh it goes along with what you've
just said, which is I believe for the
economy to start moving in the right
direction. We have to let some people
fail. So there has to be uh you're able
to make a series of bad decisions fall
on your face and yeah either your family
picks you up or the church picks you up,
local institution, something but someone
somewhere has to be able to fail
otherwise we hit this really weird
static position where once you get
wealthy you effectively don't fall back
out. Uh and that calcification of the um
class structure basically creates a cast
system and that's where it feels like we
are right now. Am I close to the mark on
that or do you think that's crazy? Yeah,
I I think there's a big overlap with
what I believe and that is before co the
CEOs of the three biggest airlines took
150 million in compensation out and the
way they did that was through stock
appreciation and they kept using all
their capital to buy back shares to take
the stock price up which
disproportionately elevated their
compensation and then when CO happens
the airline industry collapses they turn
into socialists and decide that we're
all in this together and they need a
bailout out. No, those businesses should
have gone chapter 11 and then someone
else and their all of their equity
should have been wiped out and someone
else should have the opportunity to buy
these
um you know, buy these assets for
pennies on the dollar. That's part of
the natural cycle. Uh in capitalism, we
believe in winners and losers. We
believe in winners and losers for middle
class and lower income homes. Pull
yourself up by your bootstraps. But for
wealthy corporations and wealthy people,
we're constantly talking about some form
of bailout or tax policy that shields
them. And it even goes as far as the
legal structure. I believe the top 1%
are now protected by the law but not
bound by it. And the bottom 99% are
bound by the law but not protected by
it. O
>> I I believe this and that is I'm I'm
wealthy and I think with somewhere
between if my son was incarcerated
I believe that somewhere between three
and $10 million with my connections and
my capital for3 to 10 million I could
figure out a way to wiggle myself into a
crypto summit or a fundraiser at Mara
Lago and somehow get a message to the
president that I'm in for $3 million on
a Z-Wing renovation if my Oh, and by the
way, My son, my son deserves a review by
the clemency board for a pardon. I think
effectively America's for sale for rich
people. And whether it's healthcare,
whether it's getting your kid out for
for a pardon, whether it's a bailout for
your company, whether it's government
contracts
uh to your company that are uh not
available to small medium-sized
companies,
America's basically become
when it's capitalism on the way up, but
socialism on the way down, it's
cronyism. So I feel like we've gone full
cronyist. And what that means is
eventually
this is economic history is repeats
itself in America. [clears throat] We've
always tried to exit that path. But
basically what happens is a group of
very talented very lucky people get in
the top 1% and inch by inch they
weaponize government to ensure that they
garner more and more economic power. And
then at some point the bottom 99 goes,
"The fastest way to double my or triple
my wealth would be to kill the top 1% or
to tell them they got 24 hours to pack a
suitcase and get out and nationalize
everything." That's basically the story
of Central America for the last 200
years. And we have done a good job of
trying to stay out of that by
continually redistributing income back
into the middle class. And let me use
the word redistribution.
Unless you tax people in the top 10% at
a high rate and shuffle that money back
into forward-leaning investments,
eventually that 1% will garner more and
more of the spoils. And at some point
the bottom 99 do the math and go, "Okay,
there's one guy worth more than, you
know, or 26 families are worth more than
the bottom half." At some point, the
bottom half goes, I know, let's take the
26 families [ __ ] away. So this we have
we have tried to exit this cycle of
economic history, but now it feels like
we're kind of returning to the laws of
history in the jungle. We will return to
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And now, let's get back to the show.
Yeah, I try to get people to understand
that money operates according to
something akin to physics. And if you
are uh either doing things like you're
talking about regulatory capture where
you're making it once you get in, then
you're never going to fall in your face
and get bumped back out or you just let
debt run away and people don't pay
attention to what I think is the just
absolute cataclysmic effect of debt. If
I were going to put things down to one
thing that I think has had the biggest
impact, it's that uh debt obviously
forces money printing. Money printing
forces people to try to escape. So they
go into assets, asset prices skyrocket
in addition to the other things that you
were talking about.
>> Um and the only asset that people
understand intuitively is home prices.
And so once home prices become
unavailable and people can't get on the
property ladder, they can't avoid the
impact of inflation. And so you get this
the what you're describing but not quite
saying out loud is these two divergent
economies. And so you've got the people
in the top 1% maybe the top 10% that are
doing great. 2025 has been wonderful to
me as an asset holder. And then you've
got another economy that's just doing
absolutely terrible. Uh and to your
point they they do eventually go oh yeah
uh I can separate you from your head and
uh I can do whatever I want. And so
getting people to understand the reason
that this loops in history is because
humans only behave in a certain number
of ways. Money only behaves in a certain
number of ways. And so you put those
together and you get these moments that
occur over and over and over. So when I
hear you talk, I my impulse is, oh,
let's get back to a noncrony style of
capitalism. But what I see happening
among the group that most in my opinion
needs capitalism, I see a rise of
socialism. So when you look at say mom
Donnie uh and the I I don't know if you
consider that the future of the
Democratic party. I certainly do. But
when you look at that, what what does
that tell you about what's happening
right now?
>> Young people basically are saying
whatever the current system is, it's not
working. And so I'm going to embrace
different systems. And young people who
lean conservative, David from had this
statement that really struck me. He said
that if progressives won't enforce the
border, fascists will. And what I find
is young people are saying, "This isn't
working for me. And I don't want
incremental change. I want chaos and
radical disruption. And if I lean
conservative, I'm willing to take a
strong man and nationalism and start
blaming other people and conflate
masculinity with coarseness and cruelty
or leadership with coarseness and
cruelty. And then if I'm on the left, I
think that it's socialism." And quite
frankly, these words are these words are
perverted. Socialism is the the means of
production is controlled by the state.
Communism is central planning.
Capitalism is meant to say that that the
means of production are controlled by
private sector individuals.
And we all engage in a certain level of
socialism. You know, social security is
socialism. Food stamps are socialism.
It's just where on the scale you want to
be.
Um, so what I think young people forget
is what Margaret Thatcher said that the
problem with socialism is eventually you
run out of other people's money. You do
need incentives that motivate people to
take risks and garner and capitalism is
winners and losers. My father who was a
Scottish immigrant said something when I
was young that I remember. He said
America is a terrible place to be
stupid. What I think he was saying is
America is a terrible space to be
unfortunate and we have voted for that.
We are willing to have a lower safety
net than other countries. I would argue
the safety net is now the ground, a
cement floor in exchange for un
unprecedented
upside. That creates a series of
incentives that have been very
productive for the US economy and
probably resulted in more growth and a
larger tax base to tax from to hopefully
raise the net. But it's the proportion
in the extreme that's gotten out of
control where now people are worth more
than the GDP of Costa Rica and the
safety net is oh your wife has lung
cancer that probably means you're going
bankrupt. The
gag reflex of young people to socialism
is understandable.
Uh it's it's ill advised. Capitalism has
brought more people out of poverty than
anything in history. It's just what you
mean by socialism. I'm for
I mean Mami says I want to raise taxes
on billionaires. I'm actually okay with
that as long as someone shows me that
we're not going to end up with less tax
revenue because billionaires will decide
this is the final straw and they'll move
to Florida or Texas. I get it. You uh
I've lived in the highest tax states in
the world or in the union, California
and New York. And the reason I decided
to live there was it was worth it. At
some point, people decide it's no longer
worth it. Now, I don't know if what he's
proposing
is that final straw. And it doesn't
appear to me that anyone wants to do the
economic analysis. I'm living in London.
They passed something called the nondom
tax reform where basically if you moved
here from Hong Kong, Tony Player passed
a bunch of private property laws that
attracted wealthy people from all over
the world. So, if you were living in
Hong Kong, you got to bring your tax
status, which basically was you paid no
tax. There are a lot of people living in
London paying zero tax. Now they pay
consumption taxes, property taxes, start
businesses, etc. They passed this
non-DOM that said, "No, if if you've
been here a certain amount of time, you
now have to you're benefiting from UK
infrastructure, you have to pay the same
taxes as UK citizens." Philosophically,
that's totally on point for me. I get
it. The problem is in the last 6 months,
10,000 millionaires have left and the
Treasury is going to collect less money
this year than it did last year. Mhm.
>> So there's there's a difference between
and one of the things I don't like about
my party on the far left is they're more
concerned with being right than being
effective. So I get it philosophically
that the wealthy should pay a little
bit. I I get it. I want a more
progressive tax structure, but you know
the top 1% pay 40% of the taxes in New
York. And also it's a bit of a false
argument, Tom, because first off, he's
not going to get it through. He he would
have any tax increase has to go through
the New York state legislature.
He's not going to be able to do it. And
then he goes to rent freeze. Oh, okay.
Great. We need more. I get it. Young
people can't afford to live in the city.
Housing is out of control. Freeze the
rent. Every economic study says the same
thing. When you try and implement rent
control, you discourage construction and
development and rents go up in cost. If
you were serious about lowering costs,
you would figure out a way to raise
revenues through some sort of tax. Maybe
it's on the wealthy, maybe it's on
corporations. And you would create tax
incentive for developers to build more.
And you would have legislation getting
rid of nimiism. And you would unlock the
private sector's building is much better
at building housing than the than I'm
sorry, the private sector is much better
at building housing than the public
sector. When public sector builds
housing, it usually ends up
concentrating poverty and creating
[snorts] a a crimeridden areas. When you
encourage builders to build a lot of
housing, you end up with this is a
supply problem. It's not a demand
problem. We need more houses.
Nationally, I think a decent plan for
the Democrats would have been the one of
the things I really don't like about my
party. They're so fond. I just went to
this Master of the Universe conference
and everyone running for president was
there including the governors of
Pennsylvania and Utah who I think are
great and they just want to cosplay
Obama and talk about all this goddamn
rhetorical flourish. Like all right, at
some point are you going to get to an
actual [ __ ] idea? Here's an idea. 8
million new homes in 10 years. This is
how you're going to do it. Manufactured
homes which cost 50% less and homes on
site. Tax incentives. Anti- nimism laws
like they've done in Austin or
Minneapolis. and we're going to build 8
million new homes in 10 years. That will
materially lower the cost. Maybe
government subsidize mortgages that
bring down the interest. We are going to
try and figure out a way to reduce the
cost of a home such that the average
income household has a shot at it and
then raise minimum wage to 25 bucks an
hour as opposed to freezing rents. It
doesn't work. So anyway, I've gone off
script here. When when America isn't
working for people, they typically don't
want policy or incremental changes, the
the reality of structural change around
affordability is going to take years, if
not decades. You need antitrust. You
need more competition. You need a
massive investment in housing. You need
to ensure that there aren't three
chicken companies controlling the entire
poultry market. You need 10. You need to
break up big tech. You need minimum wage
to go to 25 bucks an hour, which would
hurt the stock prices of McDonald's and
Walmart, and it would be worth it. You
need to put more money in the pockets of
spenders, low and middle inome homes.
You need an actual progressive tax
structure, not the one that's
progressive progressive till the 99th.
And then once you make the jump to light
speed, it crashes
and essentially put more money in the
pockets of young people who spend it.
multiplier effect grows the economy and
massive
um programs that increase this full body
contact violence of competition where
they are forced to offer a competitive
product at a low price. Every year big
tech has increased its margins because
they're monopolies and they're able to
charge higher and higher rents. pharma,
big egg, big big chicken, big beef. All
of these industries are able to rise
their raise their my industry is totally
corrupt. We have essentially a cartel
and we do something. I'm going to go out
really off. You
>> talking about universities?
>> Universities. I'm going through this
right now. Do you have kids, Tom?
>> I do not.
>> Okay. I have a 17-year-old and
18-year-old applying to college. There's
something called early decision. And
what they do is they say if you apply
early decision here we take the
acceptance rates from 8% to 15%. So
there's incentive to go early decision
at the school of your choice and you
sign something saying if I get in all my
applications are automatically withdrawn
from every other school. Okay, fair
trade.
It's so they maintain total pricing
pressure because Syracuse
finds out that they're not going to be
able to fill their class. So they go out
and they start offering financial aid to
people. Hey, hey kid, you got in. If you
pick us, we're going to give you 10, 20,
$30,000 in financial aid next year. And
then the kids who got an early decision,
who committed called and said, we want
this financial aid. And they said,
sorry, you're [ __ ] UNED, you have to
come here. So this is a means of
basically reducing the economic power of
applicants. And also, and you you'll
learn this as if you have kids, every
university happens to raise its prices
almost in near exact lock step. We're
all charging pretty much the same. How
did that happen? Well, we all
communicate with each other. And
wouldn't you know it, when Colombia goes
to 71,300, we go to 71,38.
Do you think that just happened? So it's
all a giant rigged system through
pricing, through financial aid, through
cheap debt, through artificial scarcity,
limiting supply such we can raise prices
faster than inflation such that we can
soak the middle class and transfer money
to corporations and even to my industry
to the faculty and endowments of
universities who whose alumni once they
have degrees love scarcity. Oh my god,
you rejected 90% of the applicants.
Standing ovation, which in my view is
tantamount to the head of a homeless
shelter bragging he or she turned away
nine and 10 applicants last night.
America needs to reject this
exclusionary rejectionist LVMH like
strategy that benefits the incumbents at
the cost of the entrance. But it is it
is a virus that has infected every
component of our society because the
people in charge already have assets. So
they want to see a scarcity mindset
increase the value of their assets and
then they wonder why their daughters are
obese and anxious and single at the age
of 30.
>> Uh yeah well it was a fantastic rant
that I think is really on the mark in
terms of the economics. Okay so looking
at this I think you and I draw every
word out of your mouth is a banger for
me. Uh but we draw I think different
conclusions about what you do next. So
when I hear all of that, I think, okay,
we need to shrink the size of
government. Um, as a history buff,
looking at what America did at its
founding, it was far more like if you
can make it here, you can make it
anywhere because we don't have all the
social safety nets that we have uh
today. Not by a long shot. When you look
at just how much more the government
spends now since COVID than it did in
2019, huge. And so I just go, yeah, I
get the impulse to tax and I don't I am
very much a believer in Ray Dalio's
beautiful deleveraging. So there's going
to absolutely be higher taxes. There's
going to be um wealth redistribution,
but they have to be done so specifically
to understand both the economic and the
psychological impact. That's the part
that I don't think people are talking
about. Ultimately, I think the goal
should be to reduce the size of
government for the reason that you said
when the public sector does things, they
tend to create more problems than they
solve.
So, when I look at this and I see, okay,
you've got the rise of socialism over
here on the left.
>> Um, you've got all kinds of cronyism
going everywhere that's creating all of
these different problems. I don't see
that adding more government is going to
be the solve. It's how do we dissolve
some of these areas that have their
grips on things in a way that does not
benefit the middle class. Um why does
that take seem out of step with the
direction you want to go?
>> I don't think it is. I just think
there's some nuances. There's there's
then overlap where we agree and probably
where we disagree. So when you talk
about government, size of government,
there's two things. There's employment
size of government and then there's
spending. So if you look at state and
local government, I think employment has
actually flatted down over the last 30
or 40 years. So it's not like it's not
like the payroll the pay the payrolls of
state and local government has has
surged. If you look at spending, it's
gone apeshit. And both Democrats and
Republicans, the only thing that's
bipartisan is reckless spending. You
know, it's like, okay, Republicans want
more in defense and and tax cuts, and
Democrats want more social programs. And
they all got together and say, I know,
let's do both. And absolutely hamstring
and inhibit uh future generations with
just unsustainable, irresponsible levels
of debt. Now, the question is, all
right, how do you close the gap? If
we're a household, if US was a
household, it makes 50,000 a year in tax
receipts. It spends 70 and it has
household debt of 370,000 of which when
the parents die after going to Cabo
every weekend on their kids's credit
card, the kid get gets to inherit the
debt. The debt doesn't die with the
parents. And there's a lot of issues
here. One, um Washington is a cross
between the Golden Girls and the land of
the dead. If twothirds of Congress is
going to be dead in 25 years, do they
really care about the deficit or climate
change? Do they do they really want to
build a high-speed train network that
they're going to be in a wheelchair to
cut the ribbon on? So, we need younger
people who think more long term. In
addition, we have an obsession with I
think we should mean test and raise all
roads lead to the same place and that is
entitlements. If you want to have a
serious conversation around reducing
government spending, we can Doge tried
to cut what was it? They went to cut a
trillion dollars. It ends up that almost
everyone they've fired, they've decided
they need to hire back. Like it ends up
that you need people to land your
planes. It ends up that the people
actually, you know, protecting parks
that government I think government is
the most underestimated group of
professionals in history. I I I mean I I
work a lot with government officials.
These are the brightest people I've ever
met making $180,000. It could be working
at Meta at a million, but instead decide
to focus on cyber security defense for
our nation. So I think generally
speaking Americans don't have an
appreciation for how talented our
government is until we put village
idiots in charge as we're doing right
now. Two, it's not the tax tax rates,
it's a tax code. And that is
there's $760 billion a year that is owed
but not collected. And the biggest tax
cut in history wasn't capital gains or
the tax cut of 2017. It was neutering
the IRS. Because as someone who has a
very complicated tax uh filing, I can
tell you that the general incentives are
don't don't hide capital. Don't do
anything illegal, but be as aggressive
as possible because they don't have the
staffing to come after you and audit
you. They do have the staffing to audit
someone making $60,000 a year. Their
audit can be done by AI and it's pretty
it's pretty straightforward when they're
lying. But if you're somebody who has
limited partnerships, properties all
over the world, different sources of
income, different shell companies, they
do not have when you neuter the budget
of the IRS, the people the manpower to
come after you. $760 billion a year in
uncollected taxes that are owed. I'm not
talking about intimidating people. I'm
talking about the taxes that are owed
and need to be collected. Two, all roads
lead to the same place, and that is
healthcare. We pay $13,000 a year per
capita for health care. The rest of the
G7 pay 6,500 in exchange for paying
double. We die sooner. We're more obese.
We're more anxious. If you're in the top
10%, you have the best healthcare in the
world. If you're in the bottom 90, it
means if your wife is diagnosed with
lung cancer, it also probably means
you're going bankrupt. 40% of US
households have medical debt. I believe
that we need to take Medicare, which
actually people are pretty satisfied
with, and delivers at a decently
economic basis, a pretty ine pretty
efficient basis, lower it by two years a
year for 10 years till it's 45 and up,
which is about 3/4 of all health care
because 55 cents, 45 cents on the dollar
of health insurance goes to profits and
administration. And we need to get that
$13,000 down to 10,000, then down to 9,
and then ideally with our scale and our
innovation back to where the other G6
nations are. If we can produce every
single product for the same or less
money than the other G6, why are not we
producing healthcare at the same rate?
If you take 350 million people times
$6,500 per capita in savings over the
next 10 or 20 years, which America
doesn't like to think because we only
get reelected every 24 months, boom, you
have your $2 trillion in savings. We
need the tax code to be enforced and we
need to really go after healthare and we
need to stop transferring money from
young to old. We're obsessed with tax
codes. We're obsessed with demonizing
billionaires. You know, Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren want to lambass
billionaires. They're each worth tens of
millions of dollars. I get it. The tax
code should have an alternative minimum
tax on anyone making over $10 million.
But that's not the problem. The problem
is enforcing the tax code and attacking
healthcare. if we get really serious
about fiscal responsibility. But the
notion that we continue to pay seven we
continue to spend $7 trillion a year on
5 trillion in receipts is so morally
bankrupt. I'm in the club doing
champagne and cocaine and the closest my
kids get is they get to throw their
credit card in so I can swipe it again
so I can now do Rails Academy. What is
going on here is entirely morally
corrupt and my generation needs to pay
more taxes. I'm not saying, you know, I
don't want to demonize billionaires. I
want Elon Musk to make a trillion
dollars. I want him to be taxed 60 or
70% on it because the bottom line is
it's not going to make him any happier
if he makes 800 billion versus 400
billion. I want the estate tax exemption
lowered from 30 million to 1 million. If
your kid inherits 7 million versus 9
million, no, happier. And my
understanding is once you're dead, you
don't really sense whether you're
happier or not happier. There are common
sense solves to our fiscal problems. We
just have DC that has been washed over
by money. There's regulatory capture and
we have old people voting themselves
more money who don't want to think long
term about the fiscal health of future
generations. We'll get right back to the
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and give something people will actually
wear. And now, let's get back to the
show. Again, a lot of things that I
think are really on the money. I'm going
to ultra simplify that. Tell me if you
think that this captures the sense of
it. So, uh, you got to get serious about
talking about the spending problem.
Spending problem is entirely
entitlements. Uh, then you've got to
find an efficient way to get more tax
revenue um by taxing the wealthy. I
don't I didn't hear anything of what you
just said about going in a Nordic style
where we just tax the hell out of
everybody. Um, is that one two punch?
Obviously a gross oversimplification,
but it'll give us a jumping off point.
>> I I think Yeah, I think that's strong.
And just some nuance around the
taxation.
I bet you're where you live in LA.
>> Yeah. I'm going to assume you make a
very good living. You know who gets most
screwed in our tax code? We like the
populist argument of the the poor paying
too much in taxes, the middle class, and
the rich aren't paying any taxes.
[ __ ] The rich are paying a
disproportionate. The top 10% pay 80% of
federal income taxes. The people who get
most screwed in our tax system are what
I call the workh horses. I don't know
much about you, but I'm going to I'm
going to stereotype you as being in the
workhorse. A workhorse,
uh, a couple played by the rules, got
great certification, work their asses
off. Mom's a baller at a law firm. She
makes $1.2 million as a partner. Dad is
a podcaster making 600 grand a year.
They make $1.8 million. They live in a
blue state, which is probably where you
need to live to have these types of
professions, this type of income. they
are probably paying 50% in tax rates.
Now, if dad starts a podcast network and
pours all of his money and can afford to
reinvest in the company and then he
incorporates the company and it gets
bought by Sirius or Wondery or Time
Warner and he gets a $30 million cash
hit, his tax rate drops dramatically.
Right? So the workh horses, the people
making hundreds of thousands pay too
much taxes. When I was when I was in my
30s and 40s making hundreds of thousands
of dollars, I was paying 30 something
40ome% tax rate. Now that I'm making
millions, some years tens of millions,
my tax rate and the fact that I'm mobile
now because I have the money and I
relocated to Florida, my tax rate has
plummeted to kind of the high teens.
That makes no sense. So when people hear
the rich are not paying their fair
share, no actually the rich are probably
paying more than their fair share if we
enforce the tax code, it's the super
rich that are getting away with murder.
We've decided if you get the gold medal,
you get the bronze and the silver. The
26 wealthiest families in America pay an
average tax rate of 6% a year.
Corporations are paying their lowest tax
rate since 1939,
right? And it's not made them any more
productive. So I think there's common
sense strategies. Let's go back to the
tax error of that great socialist Ronald
Reagan. Have the same tax rate on
current income as capital gains. Take
corporate tax rates back up AMT of say
40% if you make more than a h 100red
million in profits. If you're making
more than $10 million in current income,
uh alternative minimum tax of 40%, the
tax code's gone from 400 pages to 4,000.
Those incremental 3600 pages are
basically that screw the middle class.
There are so many goodies for people in
my income class. I start a company, I
sell it. Somebody called 1202. First 10
million is taxfree. What does that make
any sense? Oh, but we need productive
people to start businesses. I've started
nine businesses. If you held a gun to my
head, I couldn't tell you what the taxes
were when I started the business. That's
not where you started business because
of tax advantages. But oh, we want VCs
and institutional investors to get this
giant loophole where if I invest two or
$3 million in one of my startups and it
sells first 20 or 30 million, 10 times
the basis or is it know it's 10 times
the basis or now it's 15 million are
totally tax-free. What you want in an
increase in taxes is the least taxing
taxes possible.
And there's a lot. One of my
intellectual role models, an Israeli
American psychologist named Daniel
Conaman, ton of studies on happiness.
Money can't buy you happiness. [ __ ]
Absolutely correlation between money and
happiness. Middle- inome people happier
than lower. Upper income happier than
middle. But once you hit a certain
income level, no incremental happiness.
Billionaires are no happier than
millionaires. There's a myth that
they're less happy. That's not true
either. Once you get above a certain
number, no incremental happiness. Which
says to me we should have an alternative
minimum tax of 40 or 50% on anyone say
over $10 million. Corporations
>> can pay a higher tax rate. Now we
haven't seen a burst in productivity. We
have seen an increase in stock prices
because of more earnings which again
accredes to wait for it the top 10% who
own 80% of stocks. So, one, uh,
alternative minimum tax above a big
number, and two, lower the we're about
to see a transfer of wealth of 120 120
trillion, I think, in the next 30 years
of wealth. Lower the state exemption
from 30 million to 1 million. If your
kids inherit 7 million instead of 9, not
going to change their life or their
happiness. And as far as I know, you're
going to be dead, so you're not going to
care. But the notion that we build need
to build dynastic wealth with out of
control tax exemptions and estate tax
that's anti-American. We're not supposed
to be dynasties here. So alternative
minimum tax for corporations and
exceptionally wealthy people. Reduce
reduce the um estate tax exemption from
30 million to 1 million and means and
age gate. Raise the age on social
security and means test social security.
And also above a certain point, you pay
for your own health care. Full stop. And
that turns those people into consumers
who actually say, "How much is this MRI
costing?" And they shop around. I think
all of these things are common sense
solutions to bring fiscal sanity back
into the system.
>> Okay. So, I certainly have an allergic
reaction to the idea of um taxing more.
you've said a lot of very true and very
uh valuable things about I did a whole
deep dive on who actually pays taxes in
America. You've covered it very well. Um
so you have the wealthy paying a very
disproportionate amount. Um there is a
psychological impact though when you
start. So I uh in my best years am north
of 50% in my tax bracket. Yep. Uh it
there's something about that
psychologically that is very difficult
to swallow. Um and if and I think you
said something about I know you've said
this before. I don't I can't remember if
you said it today or not, but the idea
that if I knew that the money was being
spent efficiently, I would have a lot
less problem being taxed. Like if I'm
living somewhere and I feel like, oh,
it's worth it. My tax dollars are being
used incredibly well. This is wonderful.
Um yeah, you have a much easier time
stroking the check. But when and this is
me mapping my own beliefs not trying to
put these words in your mouth but when I
look at the the
making a distinction between number of
people working in the government and the
amount that they spend to me does not
change the dynamic of the more money
that they have and are spending we're
getting a worse and worse result. So
perfectly willing to buy that the people
in the government are amazing, but
there's something about the way that the
policies are enacted that end up not um
yielding the result that we would see
from that fish competition that you
talked about in the private market. So
that's my bias. So I'm I am opposed to
raising taxes long-term
unless we can see that the government
itself can become efficient. For me, I
will peg that at the ability to balance
the budget.
>> And the one immutable truth that you put
your finger on is that both the
Republicans and the Democrats are just
hellbent to spend, spend, spend because
in a popul well, in any moment that's
how you get elected, but it gets way
worse in a populist moment. So, what do
you see as the mechanism that pulls us
back out of this? Because I don't see
the government getting any more
efficient. There is a psychological
break that people will have. So the more
they raise taxes, people are going to
move even if they have to leave America.
I think that there is a point where the
taxes become so ownorous that people
will move. And so when I look out at it
and and hopefully you can back me off of
this black pill ledge here. When I look
out at it, I'm like, "Oh, the only thing
that's going to make us actually change
the direction, which again I peg is a
debt and deficit problem. The only thing
that will move us off of that that I
believe is the thing that's hollowing
out the middle class is to have so much
pain
>> that we will finally be forced to
backtrack.
>> Do you see any other way other than
economic collapse, a true hot civil war,
revolution, something like that that
will actually begin moving us in the
other direction?
>> So, a lot there. So, so first off, um I
think my t not this year, but last year
my tax rate was 17%. Yours was 52. Does
that seem fair to you?
>> Um it it depends. It No, we'll take the
short answer.
>> I made, you know,
I'm always accused of bragging about my
wealth and it's true because I'm
insecure, but I my guess is I I don't
know what you made. I I made an
exceptional amount of money last year.
My tax rate was 17%. It sounds like
yours was 52. Tell me how that's in any
way far.
>> Well, the quick breakdown would be the
year that I made the most money, my tax
rate was much lower and uh I am
perfectly willing to make the exchange
for long-term capital gains. So, capital
gains not being a tax, um, I certainly
do not know the tax as well as I know
some other basic economic principles,
but I will say that when I was building
the company and taking insane risks with
my entire livelihood, everything that we
owned, uh, that felt like a good, okay,
well, if I can get it across the finish
line, at least I'm not going to be
paying that same 50 plus% tax rate. that
would have been a bitter pill to swallow
when you risk so much. Um, so yeah,
anyway, to me there is nuance there
where I've lived both. I've had a much
lower tax rate. I don't know if I've
ever been in the teens, but I've
certainly been in the 20s. Um, and I was
like, cool. Yes, this was worth all the
sacrifice, all the risk. On a more
mainstream year where I'm just making,
by average person standards, I'm making
a ton of money. Um, I accept that I'm
going to be paying ordinary income and
it is what it is. I would just so
budgets and taxes are a reflection of
our values and our values right now uh
state the following that we think sweat
is less noble than money that when money
makes money when when you make money
from buying a house selling stocks that
that money is more noble and we should
tax at a lower rate than when someone
shows up to a car wash or someone works
really hard as a podcaster. I think we
should go back to Reagan. I think there
should be one tax rate. And I think if
you enforced the tax code and didn't
have all of these loopholes, right, buy
a plane, you get to write it all off in
the first year. You don't even have to
capitalize. When you buy office
furniture for your podcast studio, you
have to capitalize and expense it over
seven years. But someone who buys a
Gulfream gets to write off the entire
thing in year one. That to me is nothing
but capture by the wealthiest.1%.
So, I would like I think you could lower
taxes as long as everyone paid them and
you got rid of all these loopholes.
That's why I like the AMT going
>> going after specific loopholes. There's
too many. There are more lobbyists,
full-time lobbyists working for Amazon
full-time living in DC than there are
sitting US senators. And whoever raises
the most money 93% of the time wins the
election. So the game is rigged for
whoever is willing to throw most money
to maintain their their their private
equity tax loophole where for some
reason private equity investments are
taxed at long-term capital gains even
though it's just a commission. If I sell
a Subaru as a car salesman, the
commission is taxed at a higher rate
than if I find an investment and use
other people's capital to make the
investment and I get a commission as a
private equity general partner and then
for some reason I get long-term capital
gains on that. That is a loophole
sponsored by the lobbyists hired in
Washington by the private equity
industry and then they get Kristen
Cinema to basically hold up the
infrastructure bill unless they strip
that, you know, maintain that tax. So,
I'm for I think you could lower taxes
and I don't see any reason why capital
gains taxes should be lowered are more
honorable than the money that sweat
makes. I want people to work. I'm
worried about young men not feeling the
incentive to actually
work. the the notion of state that's
federal. I actually believe federal
taxes for the most part are a pretty
good deal. Uh I do believe we're
spending too much money on our seniors,
which is again the third rail. I'm a
terrible person. This is the wealthiest
generation in history. Nana and pop, if
you can't upgrade from Carnival to
Crystal Cruises, I'm okay with that. I
don't see why young people are
continuing to transfer money this much
money to old people. Do we eliminate
social security? No. But if there you
and I should not get social security. I
it just I I don't I don't see any reason
why we should get it. So go after
entitlements
uh lower taxes but enforce them. And
then with respect to states, I like
competition. I like the idea that at
some point Tom may say, "You know what?
I've had it. I'm moving to Texas and I'm
going to build my podcast studio in
Austin. And the fact that most states
have to balance their budget, they're
enforced. They there's a certain level
of fiscal responsibility enforced on
them. They can't rack up enormous
deficits,
uh, at least not directly. And they can
piece out. I left New York. Now, the
reason I left New York was cuz my kid
didn't get into preschool, but at some
point I might have left because of the
taxes. I think it's good that states
compete with one another.
>> Yeah, agreed. Uh so I think some of this
gets solved. I think you're right. I
think we should I think governments
should be forced to compete and you know
offer a good service. I come at
government from a little bit of a
different place than you because I got a
I live I grew up in California. I grew
up in Los Angeles where you are now. I
got assisted lunch. I got PEL grants. I
got into UCLA because it had a 74%
admissions rate because the government
spent a lot of money. Edmund Pat Brown
spent a ton of money of taxpayer monies
on building a lot of seats in this
amazing institution called the
University of California. So I feel a
certain gratitude and affinity and feel
like I've gotten a great deal from the
federal government. I think some states
I think California is you know I think
it's good that Texas is saying to
Californians come here you don't have to
pay any state tax because I think it
forces the governor and the people there
to take on unions take on out of control
spending. I think at some point if
enough people leave New York, they're
going to figure out a way not to spend a
billion dollars a mile. Do you we spend
seven times more per mile on subways in
New York than they spend in Paris, which
isn't known as a very efficient economy.
So there is I think competition is a is
an answer. And I think I I would like to
think that before we get to the
revolution part of the program, they
voters will get their heads out of their
asses and maybe vote for some people
that are honest with them and say,
"Folks, do we need to raise taxes or
lower government spending?" The answer
is yes. And I'm not going to give you
quick solutions here. I'm not going to
try and buy your votes. I'm going to
have to means test and raise the age or
eligibility for Social Security. I'm
going to nationalize health care, which
every the healthcare industrial complex
is going to spend billions of dollars
trying to convince you I'm a pedophile
or addicting diet diet pills to try and
make sure I don't get into Washington.
But at some point, I'd like to think the
voters are ready for an adult
conversation and say, "Okay, I am down
with figuring out a way. We can't just
pay off the deficit. We got to go back
to a smaller deficit, lower it, have a
few surplus years such that the economy
continues to grow and at some point
instead of it being 150% of our GDP, it
goes down to 70 or 80, which is
sustainable. I'd like to think at some
point the populace and voters are ready
for an adult conversation and we'll
we'll vote those leaders in. Hasn't
happened yet, but we used to vote those
people in in the ' 50s, '60s7. Bill
Clinton had a budget surplus. you know,
the voters that voted him in. I think
there's still some of those out there.
You know, a lot of Republicans had not a
lot, but a few had budget deficits uh
surpluses post World War II. Does it
have to get to a point where I mean, you
you could argue that when farmers are
lining up at food banks who 80% of whom
voted for Trump, they're probably going
to vote differently in the next
election. So, I don't know. You know,
I'd like to think that the democracy,
our democracy works pretty well. The
problem with our democracy is the pendul
like they say it's visually impossible
to see a pendulum at the exact bottom.
Like you can never actually frame it at
its exact bottom.
American politics seem incapable because
of gerrymandering to ever be at a center
point. It's either rent control and tax
the rich and UBI or it's it's cut it's
cut taxes and spend more and have
massive deficits.
And I I don't even know how you describe
the Trump administration is a lot more
socialist than what mom Donnie is
proposing. Socialism is the means of
control is controlled by the state.
golden share in US Steel because Donald
Trump's so good at bankrupting casinos
he should run a steel company. Taking an
investment in Intel, which will favor
that one chip company over others.
Deciding who should get to own Tik Tok
and doing it out to his Republican
friends. That is pure unadulterated
socialism.
So, you know, look who asked for this?
Voters asked for this.
Politicians are always afraid to say,
"Get your head out of your ass. You
voted for this." Oh, maybe you thought
you were voting for, you know, racism,
not tariffs, farmers. But this is what
you got. The Dian democracy is working.
Are you ready for an adult conversation?
[snorts]
>> Okay. I think uh ready for the adult
conversation is a little optimistic of
you, but let us say that people are.
>> You think the answer is squarely no? Uh,
dude, I really I I have run every mental
scenario I know based on the way the
architecture of the human mind. I just
don't see it. History tells me that we
run into the wall. Uh, but nonetheless,
I do think that it's worth talking
through what that reversal would look
like. So, um, 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 mom Donnie. Um, so give
us the the litany of receipts there.
What is Trump getting wrong? Certainly.
Uh, and then if you think that he's
gotten anything right, I'll take that as
well.
>> Trump's instincts are often very strong.
It's just his execution. I think he
recognized before other people the uh
asymmetric trade relationship with
China. I think you got to give him
credit for that. I thought I think they
were taking advantage of us, stealing
our IP and then selling back selling it
back to us less expensive and gutting
our manufacturing sector. I think he saw
that. Uh 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,
>> you know, 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. Um, 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 memecoin the Friday before his
inauguration under the cover 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.
Um, 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 of 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 our 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 they pay
social security taxes, but they usually
don't get them. They commit crimes at a
lower rate than nativeborn 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 and people's frustration,
especially in border states. 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 Chad GPT 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. It's so their activity is
so depraved and vile they have to wear
masks. And people say, "Well, they could
be docks." 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 a 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
competence to their grift that they're
bringing to the government, trolling
around the Gulf and 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 erodess 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 the poor decisionmaking 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.
>> 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?
>> 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
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, TheoN,
Crypto, World Wrestling Federation,
Rockets. He went right into his campaign
riaked 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 Cubanameans 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 [ __ ] 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 interest 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 election. It did not show up. 54%
of white women voted for Trump. So my
sense is if we want to save 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 I believe it's hugely beneficial. But
this dogma online, if 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 [ __ ] 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 the stress young people feel
feel the anxiety they feel is nothing
no amount of mental health or therapy is
going to replace economic procarity
and
mental I want to detonate a nuclear bomb
of mental of therapy called minimum
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,
uh, universal child care, dignity
around, lower the cost of education
through competition, and then the three
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. I'm a little triggered by
therapists right now, as you can see. I
see that. I I like it to be honest. I
think that there's a lot of truth in
that. Um I want to get explicit though
about why exactly you consider those
things therapy especially for young men.
I feel like and this is one of the
questions I wanted to ask you. I feel
like you're dancing around there sort of
an archetypal 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, uh, we might be in better
shape. Um, one, is that accurate? And
two, if so, what is that archetypal
path?
>> 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. But 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 beall 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
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 is now earns
more man money than the man, the
likelihood of divorce doubles and the
use of of of erectile dysfunction drugs
triples. Beyonce could work at
McDonald's and marry 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
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?
You you you that's the patriarchy. You
do not own women. You do not you should
not have expectations from them. They
are not your sexual. Women aren't
responsible for servicing men. Men's
problems aren't women's fault. I 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 either a 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 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. Threearters 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 step
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 uh romantic
relationships and then policies that
regulate big tech such that they don't
have an economic incentive to sequester
young men from their relationships from
work, from school with their more dopah
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 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 aesthetics. 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 [ __ ]
of 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
neats, 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
child care 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 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 of a man, I
get it. Maybe what works for me doesn't
work for young people, but
we don't want to recognize the world we
live in. Um, 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.
And 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, 2 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 let's lift up young
people. Let's let's figure out a way.
Are you married?
>> I am. Yeah.
>> Okay. Do you enjoy being married?
>> Aggressively.
I I 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 this, all these Tik Toks
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 5 years? So you you I I
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? 100%
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 badl looking. You're
you're you're not disabled. You're e
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 vill. 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. Uh 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 uh a wonderful mate I get to raise
these 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 Sanrope, 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
that ch 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 per and their
self worth. Call me when we get there.
>> Yeah. Hopefully uh we'll be getting back
to that one very fast. I I have maybe um
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. Um you said at the end
what I think is the archetypal run. And
I am very aggressive in my presentation
of this. Uh and whatever people want to
say, I honestly don't care. And that is
because I think there's an evolutionary
um setup that has created a typical
speedun of life for both men and women
to be quite frank. But um the things you
talked about um 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 uh if this is
uh more than you want to hear, but when
I think about what sexual receptivity
is, even just the physical uh position
of vulnerability a woman puts her in to
receive uh 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 um 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 uh 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. um obviously has worked out
incredibly well and I got married when I
was in my mid20s so by today's standards
ridiculously young
>> and 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 uh
work on yourself find excellence um
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 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 um people very
uncomfortable for reasons that I can
articulate but I think are moronic. And
so um 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 [snorts] hundreds of
thousands of years, depending on how far
back you want to track humans longer, um
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.
>> Yeah, I thought that was well said. And
so going back to what you said about
when I I didn't men I advised my sons to
pay when they're out with women and like
dad that's so boomer and I said look
every m 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'm
really 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 push back from men about this
that that's the ar you know that's
Boomer and 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 look, I
different strokes, different folks. If a
woman asks you out, she wants to pay,
great. I 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 7 and a half billion points of
light for that. And appreciating
femininity and appreciating masculinity
is a wonderful thing. And and recogns
away from the 5% who are non-binary. You
know, I get it. Uh, but I 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. uh uh but
yeah I think this is uh I 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 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
dogma um
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.
>> No, I agree very much. Um 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,
>> 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, often times 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. Uh 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 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. Like in Korea supposedly, I
think one out of 27 people is gonna have
a a grandkid.
>> Whoa.
>> Yeah.
>> That's Wow. I knew it was bad, but
hearing it like that, that's pretty
startling.
>> You know, only I think it's like 60%
will get married, a third of them will
have kids, and you go one generation
more and it ends up one in 27 will have
a grandkid. But we're actually doing
okay.
We're not we're demographically we look
actually okay. Some of that is there's
certain sects of our society that are
having a lot of kids.
Uh my podcast go always reminds me it's
gay women having all the kids. And then
>> is that really true?
>> Obviously a little tongue and cheek, but
>> 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 really, 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 discou
anyways. That's a wonderful thing. But
if you want 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. Um 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 in foreign
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 show it
doesn't solve the problem. I think you
supplant that with a thoughtful
immigration policy.
[snorts]
>> Well, so speaking of immigration, what
does a thoughtful immigration policy
look like? I'm guessing Trump is not
your answer to that. Uh so what should
it look like?
>> Well, so I don't want to pretend to be a
domain expert here. I'm I'm I'm I suffer
from Dunning Krueger and that is because
I've had some discuss in some reasons. I
think I'm an expert on everything. Um
look, I 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 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 have bank accounts for or
automatic transfers, we're going to find
you $1,000 a day." Uh, problem solved.
But instead, we want to demonize the
immigrants. So I I think there and then
all I think we should have a thoughtful
immigration policy around what are our
needs. We need lowskilled 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 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.
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 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 HP1 visas.
We should absolutely have more flexible
uh immigration policy around low-wage
labor. Who the 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 but demonizing them
scaring them. Do you know how much money
we make at UN? It's hilarious that at
NYU and every other lead institution, we
brag about 30 40% of our students
international student and we claim it's
for diversity. What [ __ ] 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
945 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 [ __ ] smart kid out
of Cambodia who somehow understands prop
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 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 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.
>> 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 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. Um,
there's one thing that you said in all
of that that I want to um push on, which
is, uh, it's great for our culture to
have immigration. What do you think
about assimilation? So, from, uh, you're
in the UK right now. Obviously, the UK
is um having a reckoning of sorts with
um I'll say the assimilation side of
immigration.
Do you think that matters or um much to
do about nothing? I I 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 from
immigration from certain. But to me,
this is just like it's it's not rocket
science. I think you discriminate. If
you've got if you've got a degree in
mechanical engineering and you went to
IIT in India, come on in. If you're a
hardworking kid who's willing to work in
agriculture and manufacturing and you
want to sign up for for a 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 uh 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 pre-loaded 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. Um, but a 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.
>> Yeah. On that one, uh 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 um 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 this is now my uh 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 translate 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
uh been the standin 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 um
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 [snorts] 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?
>> Thank you. I So I to resist is feudal.
I'm overexposed. I'm like AOL in the
'9s. If you stick your hand in a cereal
box, you're going to find me. Um, but
I'm at Prof Galloway uh on all social
media. My newsletter is No Mercy, No
Malice. My book out is called Notes on
Being a Man,
>> my man Scott. Again, thank you so much
everybody. If you haven't already, be
sure to subscribe. And until next time,
my friends, be legendary. Take care.
Peace.
>> If you like this conversation, check out
this episode to learn more. We just had
a socialist elected to the be mayor of
the biggest financial city in the world.
Um, what do you take away from that? Do
you think that that's going to make New
York City better? Is this a good
direction for