Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
What do you have to do if you want a
thriving middle class? You must abolish
the Fed, get rid of printing money.
Period. End of story. Otherwise, the
middle class is merely a point on the
sixphase cycle of debt. And if you're
perfectly happy with that lasting for 50
years and then it goes away, okay? Then
keep doing what we're doing because
that's how it works. Now, this is so
easy to map out. These cycles are
repeating. You'll have a stretch of
middle class and then it goes away
because of the nature of inflation. So
you have to get rid of the Fed. You have
to kill inflation. That will with
precious few other changes allow you to
build a thriving middle class. Just
basically stop stealing their money. The
reason that the rich get richer and the
poor get poorer is that when you print
money, you socialize losses across
everybody and you only give to asset
holders. And you disproportionately give
to connected asset holders. So the
system really does make the rich richer
and the poor poorer. They're not
misidentifying that. That is true. But
when you go protest on Wall Street,
you're in the wrong place. You're just
mad at people who go, "What? Why are you
mad at me? This is the game." And I'm
just playing it well. So now you're
pissed because you don't like the no
roughing the passer rule in football.
Like what the [ __ ] It is a rule. And so
I'm going to play the game knowing
that's the rule. Stop being mad. So I
get if you're mad about deflated balls
and that kind of stuff does happen, but
like bro, get mad at the right people,
please. and the right people are the the
structure of the banking system and the
political system is such that they rob
from everybody and only give to people
that hold assets. It is that simple and
people want to shuck and jive and hide
from that reality. It's that simple. If
you don't do that, you will always have
a temporary middle class that is born of
catastrophe because we have to go
through bloodshed to reset all of this.
It's born of catastrophe. You get 50
years of it and then we're right back to
where we are now. And it doesn't have to
be this way. Let's start at the policy
level because I think socialism verse
capitalism, it's an emotional discussion
and I want to kind of ground us in
something a bit more tangible about you.
So, you know, I try to bring it back. I
want you to be the sung hero. Don't be
the unsung hero of this duo. You're
amazing. I have to start singing. No,
we're going to sing for you. Let's go.
Which I'm here all week, guys. Let's
start with tax the rich, right? Somebody
just said Tom. Of course, Tom can say
this. He gets the biggest tax cut. Let's
I know. I know. I know but socialism
let's start at the very beginning. So
instead of socialism instead of
capitalism let's start at the very
beginning. I'm starting at the origin.
Okay. Um
do people understand that to get a tax
break I have to have created something
of such value that it generates a profit
or that I have to have invested so
wisely that I'm making a profit? Guys, I
still have to make the [ __ ] profit.
So uh where were you guys at 2 a.m. on a
Friday night when everybody else was at
the [ __ ] club and I was under the
machine with bloody knuckles? Where were
you when there was almost a war between
the Bloods and the Crips on the
production line and I had to make sure
that that [ __ ] doesn't pop off. Where
were you when I had to drive somebody to
the most dangerous neighborhood in
America? Huh? I was all alone, Drew. So,
I still should take half your money
though, Tom. Like, listen. Stop being
selfish. Stop. Yeah. Yeah. You lo you
lose the election. You lose the the
battle. Mandi runs for president. He
gets disapproved. We're taxing the rich
now. the rich of the effective tax rate
is now 60% 70% on the highest income
earners. Give me the day one, day two,
day three, year 1, year two of what
actually happens when some of these
policies actually get enacted because
they sound good on the headline level.
People want it. If we just tax the rich,
everything will be fine. But what
actually happens when the those tax
rates are incompatible with what society
has deemed to be appropriate? What
happens when you tax the rich? Tax the
rich over tomorrow. You get 80%. They
leave. They leave the country. They
leave the country, the state, wherever
they have to leave. State country. Okay.
Tax revenues drop. Yep. So what's the
second order consequence of the money
that we were taking now leaving? They
start printing money. Technically, when
enough rich people leave, they do
capital controls. And so they literally
stop you from leaving the country. So
like you can move out, but your money
can't leave or there's you may not even
be able to leave. But yes, sure you go,
but we keep your money. Copy. So they
just confiscated that person's wealth.
And remember, let's think of Cypress
because everybody thinks they're going
to create a system that just takes money
from the billionaires and they they
really can't see that's not how it plays
out. You can tax the billionaires to
100%.
You just take everything. I need people
to hear this. You can take everything
from the billionaires. It doesn't make a
dent in a 36 trillion and climbing
deficit. Okay? So, you know, that's not
going to work. If we know that we can
tax them at 100% and it's not going to
work, then guess who else gets taxed?
They get taxed. And guess how they try
to make up the shortfall? They print
money. Printing money is a tax. So you
end up just taxing everybody to death.
And then for the Cypress example, so in
Cypress, because they got themselves in
over their skis from a debt perspective,
they have to con they had to confiscate
wealth. So it was like 46.7%
of every dollar over a h 100,000 in
somebody's bank account was taken
overnight. No warning, just taken. Uh,
imagine that you saved up 30 years to
have that money and they took half of it
and that was going to be the money that
you put your kids through college or
that you retired with or whatever. They
just took it. Bruter said, "Drew, please
chat GBT." Why times argument is
disingenuous? Uh, it played out in
France and in Norway. Um, Norway
implemented what played out the uh they
attack on the rich and those people flee
like the money left. Brutus, my beloved,
who is you? I really think you act in
good faith. So it stings that you think
I'm being disingenuous. We disagree.
Fair enough. Remember, and we were just
talking about this. To understand the
way that I think, you have to see that
innovation to me is the thing. There is
a reason that America is far more far
more prosperous than France. And the
reason that we are far more prosperous
than France is because we innovate. We
create the environment in which people
can innovate. I Okay, so Pooky just said
bringing wages up isn't going to do
anything. Isn't the root of the problem.
I disagree, Pooky, because Johnny Harris
did a deep dive on the 50s, the 70s, the
90s, and the 20 uh 2025s. That sounds
terrible. And how what happened to the
economy, what happened to income
inequality and things like that. One
thing that is for sure, after the 70s,
wages stopped keeping up with inflation
where profits kind of just became
distorted. So, I wanted to ask you this,
Tom, where do wages come from and and
how are wages set? Okay. So ultimately
they are set by whether or not you as a
worker bring enough value that you can
create fear of loss in the person that
you work for. Everybody is paid in
direct proportion to the difficulty of
the problems they solve. That's a direct
quote from Elon Musk and I think that
that is exceedingly true. If you want to
make more money, you need to become more
valuable. A company is going to pay you
as little as they can get away with
paying you. Period. That that is their
job. They are trying to stay in
business. They're trying to make sure
that they turn a profit. If they're a
public company, they're trying to they
have a fiduciary legal responsibility to
maximize the value for shareholders.
They're going to try to get you as
cheaply as possible. It is not their job
to go, "How much can I afford to pay
you?" It is their job to act in the best
interest, long-term interest of the
company, which means the company retains
as much profit as humanly possible and
ability to raise, which is one of the
reasons that people will pay back
shareholders is it keeps the share value
high. If you want to make more money,
that's what you need to do. This all
gets complicated in terms of wages not
keeping up with inflation because of
money printing and the setup of the
actual financial system. Everyone is
living in an era where you are forced to
gamble in the stock market to keep up
with inflation. As soon as people go,
"Well, wait a second. I know what I can
do. I can group up with other people. I,
as an individual, I'm just too small in
the organization. and I'm never going to
be able to get what I'm worth. They can
replace me too easily. But if all of us
group up and we go in and we fight as a
union, then we're able to get paid. And
unions cause massive stagnation because
now they can negotiate so powerfully
that you go, you don't lose a couple of
employees, you lose all of your
employees or you have a strike and now
your company isn't able to move forward.
And I'm sure the workers think this is
brilliant, but the problem is that you
grind that company. You slow that
company down. Many companies can sort of
drag it, but it becomes like barnacles.
The unions just try to extract as much
money for as little work as possible.
And so now you get into this really
combative relationship between the
workers and the people that own the
company. Where I think we want to get to
is you want corporations to use
incentives like equity incentives or
profit sharing incentives with the
employees as a way to attract the best
talent. Don't believe me? Look at what
Mark Zuckerberg is doing to get people
to move from OpenAI to what he's doing
at Meta. From an AI perspective, he's
paying a $100 million signing bonus.
Signing bonus. Solve better problems.
That's the real answer. Don't have a
system that steals from everybody and
only advantages the wealthy. And then
don't think that the solution is
somebody fighting on your behalf. You
need to get so good you can fight on
your own behalf that you actually are
valuable to the company. Because in an
age of AI, when you've got a bunch of
people that create problems, guess who
you replace with AI? The people that are
creating the [ __ ] problems. Like,
people have no sense of
self-preservation in this moment. And it
seems crazy. A few people are talking
about raising the minimum wage. And one
person in particular said, "The hourly
wage at McDonald's is $20, but then a
meal for two McDonald's is $40, and so
now the wages can't even cover the
cheapest food." What are your thoughts
on raising minimum wage? Debt and
inflation is the problem. The issue that
you're facing is it's real. It's there.
Wages aren't keeping up. People are
having a hard time making ends meet. But
here's why changing the minimum wage
does nothing. We've been changing the
minimum wage forever. And what ends up
happening is you're giving the companies
the incentive to replace those workers
because you're making them so expensive.
either with uh people with more
experience that are then only able to
get an entry- level job or you're
creating a situation where now with AI
you're just trying to outsource as much
of that to AI as humanly possible.
There's always going to be these
competing interests and this is why I'm
not a zero uh government guy. Somebody
earlier said something about antitrust
and that's where I'm like, "Yeah, yeah,
yeah." You don't just like you don't
want the unions to get too robust
because they end up creating problems
for the company. The company will end up
creating problems for the consumer
because they'll take over the whole
marketplace. So, internet, like I pray
to sweet baby Jesus every single day
that Starlink gets the bandwidth that we
need here at Impact Theory because oh my
god, I hate AT&T and Spectrum so much
because their customer service is a
joke. A joke. Yeah, you want
competition. Competition is good. I'm
glad that as a entrepreneur I've had to
compete with people. It keeps you sharp.
There there is something to that though
of like if we track how wages were
initially proposed and this is me
putting my Adam Smith on and like the
wealth of nations like the basis of
economy it was supposed to be wages are
paid on a fraction of productivity our
productivity is increasing company
profit margins are increasing wages
aren't keeping up so I understand
inflation money printing I understand
assets I understand Jackal Island I
understand the Fed is a bad guy and I
want to kill all the bankers I get that
but just looking at just looking at that
formula though like wages should be a
function of productivity and they should
be a function of the company's profit.
And there are some companies that are
taking advantage of that. There are some
companies that are having record profits
that could they they can physically pay
for it. They will still turn a profit.
The CEOs will still be good and they'll
still have a successful company and they
can pay each of their uh employees two
extra dollars hour. If the second
employees are the same, I will start
paying them the same. I'm not saying pay
them the same as everybody should be
equal. No, I'm saying they can be paid
addition. said it is a function of
productivity. Do you want me to try to
measure productivity on the individual
level? Do you know how hard that would
be? It would be by like department. So,
okay. Then when every employee in that
department is the same, I will pay them
the same. Until then, this has got to be
a hostile negotiation. It's got to be
you want your thing and you come in and
you threaten me with nuclear war because
you're going to leave. And then I go,
"Fuck, I do or like I care about losing
this person or I don't." Here's a really
gross thing all of you are going to
hate. And this is the hard part about
being somebody on camera with employees.
I know every person in this company
whether I have fear of loss or not. And
if I don't have fear of loss, you have
no negotiating power. If I have fear of
loss, you have negotiating power. And
the hard truth is it comes down to what
you can deliver for the company. But the
bad news is all of you [ __ ] are
different. You're in different roles
that can impact the company in different
ways. You have different skill sets,
different levels of intellect, different
soft impact that like is hard to
quantify. It just is, man. And I get
that people want this to be cookie
cutter and it's not. And so the hard
reality is you got to go into the world
knowing that the only way to make all of
this stuff work is to fight and to get
good. And I get it. Everybody wants to
go be Norway. I don't [ __ ] want to be
Norway. So you can pitch me all day on
having like an easy cushy country where
[ __ ] is like taken care of and
[ __ ] chill in the spa or
whatever the [ __ ] they do and build like
four companies ever that have mattered.
I'm not interested. I'm not interested.
I want to be a part of the most badass
company on planet Earth that innovates.
We're going to send people to Mars, man.
That's the game I want to play. And I
want to build an army of people that are
excited about that, that want to get
their kids excited about that, that
understand that you can become truly
extraordinary in life. And that we all
get a shot to become really strong. We
all get a shot to build and create and
to love to the depths of our souls. To
fall in love with our career. To not do
something because it's a job. To not
resent Mondays. To build a life of
passion where we get good at something
that matters to us and other people. To
pursue an honorable goal with everything
that we have. I am not saying stack
money to the ceiling. I'm saying get so
good at something that matters to you,
that helps you and other people, that
your life mattered. That's what I'm
pitching. And I'm saying those people
aren't doing it. Their life might be
easier, but I'm telling you right now
from my frame of reference, they are not
living life to the fullest. To me, this
is about seeing how far you can push
your individual talents because
everybody can get better. It's what I
call the only belief that matters. The
only belief that matters is that if I
put time and energy into getting better
at something, I will actually get
better. Find those things you want to
get better at. Progress is a
foundational pillar to human happiness.
If you are not making progress towards a
goal that matters to you, you will feel
a profound sense of disease. That
doesn't mean work around the clock. I am
not pitching that. But it means commit
yourself
to love, commit yourself to family, and
commit yourself to building something
that matters to you, your skill set in
some way to contribute to yourself and
to others.