Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, Donald Trump one roughly forty one percent
Speaker 1: of the vote with young men. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: he increased that shared a fifty six percent. What's happening
Speaker 1: with young men in this country? What's happening with the
Speaker 1: trend lines that define some of the stresses and the
Speaker 1: anxieties that so many young men are facing in America today?
Speaker 1: This is Gavin Newsom and this is Scott Galloway. Well, Scott,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time and joining us
Speaker 1: on the podcast. And there's so many things I want
Speaker 1: to talk about, from higher education, a little bit, touch
Speaker 1: on housing, issues of inequality, a lot of the work
Speaker 1: that you've been doing, talk about some of the trend lines,
Speaker 1: particularly as it relates to young men. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of attention now being placed once again on tech titans,
Speaker 1: notably Mark Zuckerberg, who you once described lovingly is the
Speaker 1: most dangerous man in the world, who is now testifying
Speaker 1: in an antitrust suit. He'll be joined in a number
Speaker 1: of months by a number of other companies. I think
Speaker 1: there are five lawsuits the FTC, but Mark is up
Speaker 1: there on one of the may perhaps the most consequential in decades.
Speaker 1: Anti trust discussions related to what's happened Instagram just curious,
Speaker 1: you're over under What do you make of this moment?
Speaker 1: What do you make of Zuckerbird's outreach to the Trump
Speaker 1: administration to try to get this thing off the docket,
Speaker 1: the fact they didn't move on it. What does it
Speaker 1: mean to you from a political perspective, not just from
Speaker 1: a substantive perspective in terms of the future at tech.
Speaker 2: First, I think you have to get Mark zuckerbergers too.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the most brilliant business people
Speaker 2: of the last fifty years. I also think there's a
Speaker 2: few people that have done more damage while making more
Speaker 2: money than Mark Zuckerbird. The coarseness of our discourse teen depression.
Speaker 2: If any company could reverse engineer their product to an
Speaker 2: uptick in self harm among teen girls, that company would
Speaker 2: be put out of business. And it relates to if
Speaker 2: it relates to antitrust, the concentration of power. You know,
Speaker 2: power corrupts absolute power, absolutely corps. And we have one
Speaker 2: company that controls fifty percent of e commerce Amazon, one
Speaker 2: company controls ninety percent of search Google, and one company
Speaker 2: owns two thirds of social media globally. With the exception
Speaker 2: of China, two out of three people are on a
Speaker 2: meta platform every day, and unfortunately, I'm in the field
Speaker 2: of brand strategy.
Speaker 3: I taught that.
Speaker 2: I studied that at Berkeley, teach at NYU from nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five to nineteen ninety five. We thought we discovered
Speaker 2: the ultimate sell or selling tool, and that was its
Speaker 2: sex cells, like tell people to be hotter and play
Speaker 2: volleyball and be more tractive potential mates if they buy
Speaker 2: a Maserati or drink Core's Light. But these algorithms figured
Speaker 2: out with Google that there's something that sells even more
Speaker 2: than sex, and that's rage. And that is if you
Speaker 2: bring on somebody who says an mRNA vaccine alters your DNA,
Speaker 2: that person, in my view, deserves the right to say that.
Speaker 2: The the center's voice is important. But what these algorithms have
Speaker 2: figured out is that if we elevate that content beyond
Speaker 2: its natural organic reach, it creates enragement because people will
Speaker 2: weigh in and go, that's nonsense and that's not true,
Speaker 2: and you're going to result. You're going to see a
Speaker 2: surge in measles and rebella and then people way back
Speaker 2: in and every comment enragement equals engagement equals more Nissan
Speaker 2: ads equals more shareholder value. And so unfortunately, the deepest
Speaker 2: pocketed companies in the world are trying to enrage us
Speaker 2: or addict us, get us addicted to our phones such
Speaker 2: that they can then hand us over dopamine addicts to
Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical the medical industrial complex. Now, how do you
Speaker 2: address that. We need more laws. We need to remove
Speaker 2: two thirty for algorithmically elevated content.
Speaker 3: We need age gating.
Speaker 2: There's no reason anyone under the age of sixteen should
Speaker 2: be on Instagram. But also the more and boring stuff.
Speaker 2: We need to break up these companies. And in a breakup,
Speaker 2: it almost always works economically, it works for shareholders. The
Speaker 2: seven baby bills that AT and T was broken up
Speaker 2: into are all worth more than eight and T you
Speaker 2: within seven years. PayPal is worth monstrously more than the
Speaker 2: original eBay. Breakups are very accretive to the economy. They're
Speaker 2: good for employees because they get to charge more to
Speaker 2: rent their labor. If you want to be in social
Speaker 2: media and you're a hotshot engineer, how many companies are
Speaker 2: really bidding on your talent? I would argue snap in
Speaker 2: Pinterest that Facebook could put them out of business. But
Speaker 2: they don't just to pretend they have competition, they can
Speaker 2: put them out of business. I think in ninety days
Speaker 2: if they targeted their sights on them, shareholders win, consumers win.
Speaker 2: And what happens is this level of concentration is rents
Speaker 2: go up. And unfortunately these companies have non economic rents,
Speaker 2: and that is it's hard to determine the pricing on
Speaker 2: a product that's free. But what I would argue is
Speaker 2: one of the greatest increase in rents in history is
Speaker 2: the rents, the increase in rents that parents are paying
Speaker 2: at the hands of an organization that really doesn't have
Speaker 2: your kids' welfare and best interests. I know you have kids,
Speaker 2: I have kids. I would say between forty and sixty
Speaker 2: percent of all real tension or ajita in my house,
Speaker 2: not only between my kids but between my kids and
Speaker 2: their mother, is around the phone and social media. So
Speaker 2: look at the rents we're paying here. I'm cynical anything's
Speaker 2: going to happen. They've been much more masterful than our
Speaker 2: government figuring out a way to avoid all regulation.
Speaker 1: Did you were you surprised? I mean with all the outreach,
Speaker 1: particularly for Meta, but I mean all these guys, you know,
Speaker 1: not just being there at the inaugural for Trump, but
Speaker 1: obviously more outreach in the oval that you surprised Trump
Speaker 1: didn't intervene a little more aggressively with the quote unquote
Speaker 1: new FTC and then went to trial.
Speaker 2: I'm convinced, Governor, that four hundred and ninety eight of
Speaker 2: the five hundred fortune five hundred CEOs wake up every
Speaker 2: morning and say good morning, mister president. I think all
Speaker 2: of these guys think there's a non zero probability then
Speaker 2: be drafted to be president, and the key attribute to
Speaker 2: be president's leadership. And I think of leadership. We teach
Speaker 2: leadership at business school, and I can summarize the entire
Speaker 2: course of the following do the right thing even when
Speaker 2: it's really hard. But we want to charge them seven
Speaker 2: thousand bucks and so we can hire formally important people.
Speaker 2: And it's in my opinion that we shouldn't have leaders
Speaker 2: super ethics classes. But that's an entirely different, entirely different
Speaker 2: talk show. How many corporate CEOs are really stepping up
Speaker 2: here and saying the greatest own goal in history are
Speaker 2: these tariffs? And that make no sense. There's been such
Speaker 2: a lack of leadership from these CEOs stepping up. The
Speaker 2: FDC and the DOJ, I would argue have been neutered.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Canter I just interviewed, said that I'm not giving
Speaker 2: the current officials at the dj enough credit that they
Speaker 2: will break them up, and that Trump has been kind
Speaker 2: of a little bit all over the map on this.
Speaker 2: He didn't like TikTok till he found out and then
Speaker 2: I think the CCP dialed up the algorithm in his favor,
Speaker 2: so he decided he liked it.
Speaker 3: Then he found out that.
Speaker 2: Jeffrey ass is a large shareholder who gave him two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty million dollars, and what do you know,
Speaker 2: he no longer wants.
Speaker 3: To ban it.
Speaker 2: So I find unfortunately our government has become at this point,
Speaker 2: especially this administration, and I think Democrats have been guilty
Speaker 2: of this, but just in a small ball.
Speaker 3: Kind of way or a more elegant way.
Speaker 2: I think it's just pure pay for play, whether it's Apple,
Speaker 2: which gives a million bucks to the inaugural Committee and
Speaker 2: it has a cult of iOS users that he does
Speaker 2: not want to piss off. You just saw tearff relief
Speaker 2: for Apple. Meanwhile, ninety eight percent of company is dependent
Speaker 2: upon the export and import economy or small and medium
Speaker 2: sized businesses, So what do they do?
Speaker 3: It's you know, it's great to.
Speaker 2: Be Apple, but what do you do if you don't
Speaker 2: have If you're not the largest market cap company in
Speaker 2: the world, then you're just a company selling pots and pans,
Speaker 2: importing from China. And you have I talked to a
Speaker 2: homer or retailer over the weekend one hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: in product on a ship on ships that are going
Speaker 2: to about to be offload at the port of Long
Speaker 2: Beach over the course the next three weeks. This person
Speaker 2: has to show up with another one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: five million dollars in tariffs to get this stuff off
Speaker 2: the boat.
Speaker 3: In addition, he's going to have to.
Speaker 2: Send down hundreds of people to retag and relabel because
Speaker 2: now labels and pricing are attached to the factory in China.
Speaker 2: And he doesn't have a plan his business. So he's
Speaker 2: stopping hiring. He's not recruiting at universities. He doesn't his
Speaker 2: earnings calls are going to be a mess.
Speaker 3: So what do we have?
Speaker 2: A reduction in hiring, a reduction and prosperity with increased
Speaker 2: consumer prices and a brand that is America now of
Speaker 2: toxic uncertainty, where we're seeing people selling our bonds, where
Speaker 2: people diversting from our stocks. But I'm very disappointed that
Speaker 2: a lot of what I think great leaders in the
Speaker 2: corporate world aren't stepping up and calling this for what
Speaker 2: it is, and that is a totally self inflicted entry,
Speaker 2: probably the greatest own goal since our entry into Iraq
Speaker 2: with Scott.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not doing it for obvious reasons, right,
Speaker 1: just pure self interest, right. And would you argue for
Speaker 1: douciary interest on behalf of the shareholders? I mean, what
Speaker 1: you know, I'm with you one thousand percent. But in
Speaker 1: a world that we're living in, I mean, is it
Speaker 1: surprising or is it just outraging?
Speaker 2: I think you bring up the correct point, and that
Speaker 2: is the smart thing to do from a shareholder perspective.
Speaker 2: I mean, the thing that disappoints me, governor present company excluded,
Speaker 2: is not that our government officials. It's not going to
Speaker 2: be provocative here because you've had a lot of right
Speaker 2: wing people. It's not that our government or elected representatives
Speaker 2: in DC are are whorees. It's that they're such cheap hors,
Speaker 2: and that is it's the best ROI is to give
Speaker 2: a million dollars thenopogal committee any crosshairs so chief. So
Speaker 2: when you're earning a three trillion dollar market cap company,
Speaker 2: why on earth would you just just grin and bear
Speaker 2: it and text me and my co hosts that I
Speaker 2: hate being here. But meanwhile they show up, they prostitute themselves,
Speaker 2: they get prayed around. Because if you're solely focused on
Speaker 2: shareholder value, I get it, they're just being fiduciaries with
Speaker 2: the share stay out of his crosshairs.
Speaker 3: Bend the knee.
Speaker 2: If you're a law firm refusing to take clients of
Speaker 2: his adversaries, which is literally an attack on our constitution, fine.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 2: But for God's sakes, let's give up the charade about stakeholders.
Speaker 2: I've been on a bunch of corporate boards and everyone's
Speaker 2: always talking about stakeholders. I'm like, okay, let's stop it.
Speaker 2: In some way you should expect or not expect, the
Speaker 2: American corporation is better, are making money than any corporation
Speaker 2: in the world, and therefore should not be trusted to
Speaker 2: do anything else. We need laws, and we keep hoping
Speaker 2: that if we shame Mark Zuckerberg and talk about all
Speaker 2: these kids self harming and all the damage he's doing,
Speaker 2: that his better angels are going to show up. That's
Speaker 2: just not going to happen. The incentives in America are
Speaker 2: the following. To be rich in America is to be loved.
Speaker 2: It's a loving, generous place if you have money. It's
Speaker 2: a rapacious, violent place if you don't. So so many
Speaker 2: incentives are to do whatever incremental decisions you have to
Speaker 2: make to make more money. That unless we have systemic
Speaker 2: laws that say, if you algorithmically elevated content that shows
Speaker 2: a fourteen year old girl images on suicide pills, nooses, raisors,
Speaker 2: and this happened because the algorithms pick up she's having
Speaker 2: suicidal ideation. Unless we put someone in jail, or we
Speaker 2: find them five fifty billion, not five billion, they're going
Speaker 2: to continue to do this right now.
Speaker 3: The incentives are the following.
Speaker 2: If you have a parking meter in front of your
Speaker 2: house that costs one hundred dollars an hour, but the
Speaker 2: ticket was twenty five cents, you'd break the law. And
Speaker 2: that's essentially the incentive system we have around big tech
Speaker 2: right now. But for God's sake, stop stop to see
Speaker 2: us to stop with this bs around stakeholders. They're there
Speaker 2: for shareholders, admit it, and we can just get on
Speaker 2: with figuring out we need laws not to shame them
Speaker 2: in front of the populace for a TikTok moment so
Speaker 2: you can raise more money as an elected representative, and
Speaker 2: then the wheel turns, if you.
Speaker 3: Will appreciate it.
Speaker 1: On TikTok, I mean you're just I mean you are
Speaker 1: firmly in the camp that they need to be banned
Speaker 1: in the United States. Is that right?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so October seventh happens. Since then, there's been
Speaker 2: fifty two pro Hamas videos for every pro Israel video.
Speaker 2: And I recognize that young people have a healthy distrust
Speaker 2: of people my age and are maybe more progressive and
Speaker 2: have a lot of warranted empathy for the people in Gaza,
Speaker 2: But fifty two to one. We spend hundreds of millions
Speaker 2: of dollars on psyops to support our message oversea, with overseas,
Speaker 2: with what you would call Radio Europe or Air America,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. That's propaganda. TikTok now has greater
Speaker 2: dominance in terms of time. The average fourteen year old
Speaker 2: male in America spent seventeen hours a week on TikTok,
Speaker 2: meaning that if you include sleep, they're spending a full
Speaker 2: day a week on TikTok. They have a greater command
Speaker 2: of attention among people under the age of twenty five
Speaker 2: than CBS, NBC, and ABC had in the sixties. Would
Speaker 2: we have been down in the sixties with the Kremlin
Speaker 2: owning those three networks? And the argument I would make,
Speaker 2: Governor is, they would be stupid not to be doing this.
Speaker 2: They can't beat us militarily, they can't beat us kinetically,
Speaker 2: they can't beat us economically. I know, let's get them
Speaker 2: to hate each other. And I think that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2: So we're raising a generation of civic, nonprofit and nonprofit
Speaker 2: and military leaders. They just don't like each other. They
Speaker 2: don't like America. Half the people our age, Governor feel
Speaker 2: good about America. It's one in ten young people. So
Speaker 2: we weren't comfortable with having missiles pointed at US sixty
Speaker 2: miles off our shore in Cuba. I don't understand why
Speaker 2: we would have a neural jack and plan into all
Speaker 2: of our use wet matter controlled by the CCP that
Speaker 2: has a strategic andperative and diminishing our power. I think
Speaker 2: it's insane that we would allow TikTok into the United States.
Speaker 1: And as a point you make often is name how
Speaker 1: many American tech companies are operating in mainland China.
Speaker 2: Well, we just to talking about tariffs. Tariffs can be used.
Speaker 2: Tariffs do play a role, and that is you can
Speaker 2: protect nason industries. South Korea has done a good job
Speaker 2: thoughtfully protecting some industries there. If we feel we need
Speaker 2: a certain level domestic steel production in case we have
Speaker 2: a war, need to build tanks, maybe make some sense
Speaker 2: have tariffs there when you have leverage. We had leverage
Speaker 2: in the truck market. We impose a twenty five percent tariff.
Speaker 2: On Japan they impose zero percent. So they can be
Speaker 2: used strategically and thoughtfully. And one type of terraff to
Speaker 2: restore traders is to say, if you're not going to
Speaker 2: allow a single American media company in the mainland China,
Speaker 2: it would make sense we're not going to allow any
Speaker 2: of yours.
Speaker 3: But we do for some.
Speaker 2: Reason because again the General Lantic partners to Qui Capital,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of American investors that are investors
Speaker 2: in TikTok but I just think this is I think
Speaker 2: American's core competence are One of our kiaptriats is our optimism.
Speaker 2: But the Achilles heel of that is I think we're
Speaker 2: a little bit naive. And it bothered me that the
Speaker 2: Biden administration no one was allowed to be on TikTok
Speaker 2: for security reasons, because I don't think they realize what's
Speaker 2: going on here and you don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm.
Speaker 2: I'm pologizing a little bit all over the place. But
Speaker 2: have you seen the program Adolescence Governor.
Speaker 1: I did not have the guts I started. I kid
Speaker 1: you not as a parent. I couldn't do it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't do it. My wife watched it. She said, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you I'm glad you missed it. Even though she
Speaker 1: says you're going to watch.
Speaker 3: It with me.
Speaker 1: It asked to be seen. Apparently, it was parenttly powerful
Speaker 1: beyond words.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny you say that I found it. I
Speaker 2: did watch it because it's I think a lot about
Speaker 2: these issues.
Speaker 3: I found I had to have a drink before I
Speaker 3: watch it.
Speaker 2: It was so rattling, and the question at argurs is
Speaker 2: who's raising our kids? And are you raising your kids
Speaker 2: or is the Internet raising your kids? And if the
Speaker 2: Internet's raising your kids, who is raising them? And I'm
Speaker 2: just not down with a CCP controlled algorithm raising American children.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, I mean in terms of
Speaker 1: just and we'll get to America's children. And I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting just so much of your work is not
Speaker 1: just about headlines, but it's about these trend lines. And you,
Speaker 1: of course did that wonderful book Adrift that did it
Speaker 1: in charts, and you've been talking about these broader issues
Speaker 1: and goes back to my opening a little bit, and
Speaker 1: as it relates to inequality and generational theft, as you've
Speaker 1: referred to it, the issues of housing costs. But you
Speaker 1: have sort of a plan, a flag in history here
Speaker 1: in California. You grew up in Los Angeles, and not
Speaker 1: only are you a proud graduate of UCLA, we're a
Speaker 1: proud beneficiary of your largesse. And as someone that's on
Speaker 1: the UC regions, thank you. If you haven't been formally
Speaker 1: thanked for your incredible personal contributions to UCLA and to
Speaker 1: UC Berkeley, you've paid forward, You've paid back twenty times X.
Speaker 1: But I talk to me a little bit about these
Speaker 1: trend lines you've seen exacerbated perhaps by these algorithms that
Speaker 1: have really led to the headlines and the anxiety that
Speaker 1: we're all experiencing today.
Speaker 3: Well thanks for that. That means a lot coming from you.
Speaker 2: Look, I was an unremarkable kid, and I'm not son Ahmobruck.
Speaker 3: I was remarkably unremarkable. I was raised by a single immigrant.
Speaker 2: Mother who lived and died of secretary of a household
Speaker 2: income was ever never over thirty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: I applied to UCLA.
Speaker 2: When the acceptance rate was seventy six percent, and I
Speaker 2: was one of the twenty four percent that didn't get in.
Speaker 2: And I was installing shelving in the highlight of my
Speaker 2: day as I get ridiculously fucking high with my coworkers
Speaker 2: and then take to the high ways of Ontario, California.
Speaker 3: And I came home and I just broke down.
Speaker 2: With my mom and I said, is this my life?
Speaker 2: And there's nothing wrong with vocational work, but I'd really
Speaker 2: hope to go to college. And we found out there
Speaker 2: was an appeal process, and I appealed, and I remember
Speaker 2: changed my life. The guy the admissions director called or
Speaker 2: got missioned off called and said, you're not qualified, but
Speaker 2: you're a native son of California, and we're going to
Speaker 2: give you a shot. And I rewarded UCLA with a
Speaker 2: two point twenty seven GPA. Undergraduate, I did nothing but
Speaker 2: learned how to make bonds out of household items and
Speaker 2: watch Planet of the Apes. And what did Berkeley do.
Speaker 2: One of the top ten business schools in the world.
Speaker 2: They led me into graduate school with the two point
Speaker 2: twenty seven GPA, and I got my shit together. My
Speaker 2: mom got sick. I just grew up, liked to think,
Speaker 2: I started becoming a man, and it started an upward
Speaker 2: spiral of prosperity.
Speaker 3: And I've been able to give back.
Speaker 2: And the lesson here is that no one can predict
Speaker 2: greatness at the age of eighteen in anybody, no institution
Speaker 2: and his higher education is my industry of about identifying
Speaker 2: rich kids or the frequently remarkable and turning them into billionaires.
Speaker 2: Or it is about giving the bottom ninety a shot
Speaker 2: at being in the top. And we used to love Americans,
Speaker 2: and I look back on the things that that gave
Speaker 2: me just this unbelievable American experience, and some of them
Speaker 2: don't exist today. UCLA's and missions rate has gone from
Speaker 2: seventy six percent to nine percent. They just they couldn't
Speaker 2: have let me, and they didn't have the bandwidth. It
Speaker 2: was not I spent seven thousand dollars over seven years
Speaker 2: undergrad and grad. It's obviously that's total tuition. It's obviously
Speaker 2: a lot more. You know, I talk about this very openly.
Speaker 2: There were also things today that I think I would
Speaker 2: have succumbed to that would have gotten the way my prosperity.
Speaker 2: My mom, when she was forty seven, when I was
Speaker 2: a senior in high school, became pregnant and had access
Speaker 2: to family planning. Had we lived in a southern state,
Speaker 2: given our income and our lack of sophistication, I would
Speaker 2: have dropped out of school to help my mom, and
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have been able to go to college. Quite frankly,
Speaker 2: young men are being targeted by the deepest pocketed, most
Speaker 2: talented organizations in the world, specifically big Tech. Want to
Speaker 2: give them the sense that they can have a reasonable
Speaker 2: facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Why
Speaker 2: go out and try and make friends when you have
Speaker 2: read it in discord, Why go through the pain of
Speaker 2: putting on a tie showing up on time, not partying
Speaker 2: during the week, and get a real job when you
Speaker 2: can trade stocks or crypto on coinbase or robinhood.
Speaker 3: Which usually leads to disaster.
Speaker 2: Why go through the humiliation, the effort, the rejection, showering
Speaker 2: for God's say, its working out, having a plan, showing resilience,
Speaker 2: approaching a stranger, and expressing romantic interest when you have porn.
Speaker 2: The scariest stat I've seen is that fifty one percent
Speaker 2: of American men age eighteen to twenty four, I've never
Speaker 2: asked a woman out in person, So I think the
Speaker 2: America today.
Speaker 1: Scott, by the way, just because I can't help it,
Speaker 1: I got two young women find the camera. Literally both
Speaker 1: shook their head when you said that, Oh really, well
Speaker 1: give me I mean they literally and now they're laughing,
Speaker 1: but nervously. I mean that's that was very powerful stat
Speaker 1: you just gave, and it was powerful.
Speaker 2: Their response, Well, look, I think a lot about masculinity
Speaker 2: in America, and the reality is back in the eighties,
Speaker 2: you know, America loved unremarkable people. And it feels as
Speaker 2: if America has fallen out of love with the unremarkable.
Speaker 2: That the objective of higher ed and America is to
Speaker 2: try and identify a superclass and turn them into billionaires
Speaker 2: instead of giving the bottom ninety nine a chance to
Speaker 2: be millionaires and to find someone, fall in love, have kids,
Speaker 2: you know, all the.
Speaker 3: Profound shit, right. And I worry the young men who.
Speaker 2: Are especially susceptible, that these algorithms are kind of losing.
Speaker 2: They've lost a lot of on ramps into the middle class.
Speaker 2: And we aren't producing enough economically and emotionally viable men.
Speaker 2: And who wants more economically and emotionally viable men women?
Speaker 2: Sixty percent of thirty year olds who just have a
Speaker 2: kid in the household now it's twenty seven percent. I
Speaker 2: coach a lot of young men, and I think between
Speaker 2: these algorithms the lack of jobs. Quite frankly, they're just
Speaker 2: not Their prefrontal cortex isn't developing. They're less mature. Seventy
Speaker 2: percent of high school valedictorians or girls, women own more
Speaker 2: homes in single.
Speaker 3: Women than men.
Speaker 2: Now in urban centers under the age of thirty, women
Speaker 2: are making more money. And by the way, that is
Speaker 2: a collective victory. They deserve it. They're working harder, they're
Speaker 2: studying harder, they got their shit together they deserve more money.
Speaker 2: The problem is is that without women to have an
Speaker 2: honest conversation around household formation and mate and we have
Speaker 2: to have an honest conversation, and that is women tend
Speaker 2: to meet sociation economically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down.
Speaker 2: And so when the pool, the viable pool of male
Speaker 2: mates that's horizontaled up, keeps shrinking, there's a lack of
Speaker 2: household formation. And what's interesting is that women without a
Speaker 2: relationship oftentimes pour that additional energy into their friend network
Speaker 2: and into work. When men under the age of thirty
Speaker 2: don't have a relationship, they oftentimes pour that energy into
Speaker 2: video games, porn and sequestering from society, conspiracy theory. They
Speaker 2: start blaming women for their problems. They become much more
Speaker 2: prone to misogynistic content. They start blaming immigrants for their
Speaker 2: lack of economic viability. They become very nationalists, and some
Speaker 2: they turn into really shitty citizens. And if a man
Speaker 2: doesn't have a relationship by the time, if he's never
Speaker 2: cohabitated or been married by the time he's thirty, there's
Speaker 2: a one in three chance he's going to be a
Speaker 2: substance abuser. And some women used to need relationships for
Speaker 2: financial support, they no longer need it. Men have always
Speaker 2: needed relationships for emotional support, and without that emotional support,
Speaker 2: they kind of come off the tracks. And I'm not
Speaker 2: suggesting in any way women lower their standards. What I'm
Speaker 2: suggesting is men need to level up, and we also
Speaker 2: need to recognize it. Unless we give more money to
Speaker 2: young people who are twenty four percent less wealthier than
Speaker 2: they were forty years ago, and old people are seventy
Speaker 2: two percent wealthier. Unless we level up all young people
Speaker 2: and create more opportunities for people to meet, to fall
Speaker 2: in love, and to do what I think is the
Speaker 2: most profoundly rewarding thing, and that has raised children with
Speaker 2: someone you care about and have a reasonable chance of
Speaker 2: having a home and not being one of the forty
Speaker 2: percent of households that have medical or dental debt.
Speaker 3: Then what is all of this for.
Speaker 2: There's been more shareholder value created in a ten mile
Speaker 2: radius of SFO International Airport in the last three years
Speaker 2: than it's created in Europe in the last thirty years.
Speaker 2: But we can't afford to give people a middle class lifestyle.
Speaker 2: And I think all of these things are conscious choices
Speaker 2: we've made. But going back to this notion, and you know,
Speaker 2: I had the opportunity to meet people. I had the
Speaker 2: opportunity to get jobs. I had the opportunity to get
Speaker 2: a cheap education. I had the opportunity when I bought
Speaker 2: that house in San Francisco. When I graduated from Berkeley,
Speaker 2: it was one hundred thousand dollars average comp average house
Speaker 2: in San Francisco costs two hundred and eighty thousand. Now
Speaker 2: the comp out of has is two hundred great money,
Speaker 2: but the average house costs two point one million, So
Speaker 2: it's gone from two point eight to ten times. Minimum
Speaker 2: wage is stuck at seven twenty five. The Nasdaq has
Speaker 2: gone up sevenfold, minimum wage has gone up zero percent.
Speaker 2: Every year, we transfer one point trillion dollars from people
Speaker 2: under the age of sixty five to the wealthiest generation
Speaker 2: in the history of the planet, to Social Security recipients.
Speaker 2: And I'm not suggesting we do away with Social Security,
Speaker 2: but Governor, neither you nor me should.
Speaker 3: Ever get Social Security.
Speaker 2: So I feel as if we've consciously transferred money from
Speaker 2: the young to the old, made it more competitive. Women
Speaker 2: are thriving, that's outstanding. The young men are struggling, and
Speaker 2: I think we're finally having a productive dialogue because the
Speaker 2: people who are finally not finally, the people are most
Speaker 2: supportive of my work now it's changed totally, are mothers,
Speaker 2: and what they realize is that the nation and women
Speaker 2: aren't going to continue to flourish as long as men
Speaker 2: are flailing and our young men are failing. Governor four
Speaker 2: times is likely to kill themselves, three times is likely
Speaker 2: to be addicted, twelve times is likely to be incarcerated.
Speaker 2: Do we have an opiate crisis? Do we have a
Speaker 2: homeless crisis? Yes, but we really have a male opiate
Speaker 2: and homeless crisis. And if any other special interest group
Speaker 2: was killing themselves at four times the rate is the
Speaker 2: control group, we would weigh in with programs. But instead,
Speaker 2: because of our generation, where so much was prosperity was
Speaker 2: crammed into a small number of people, specifically white heterosexual males,
Speaker 2: we want to punish the nineteen year old male for
Speaker 2: our blessings, and understandably there's a gag reflex because we've
Speaker 2: had a three thousand year head start. But the nineteen
Speaker 2: year old man whose mom's addicted to opiate, it's his
Speaker 2: father's incarcerated, who has no on ramps into a middle class.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you really want them to pay the
Speaker 2: price for the benefit and the privilege that the two
Speaker 2: of us have received. There's a lack of empathy, and
Speaker 2: this is not a zero sum game. Civil Rights didn't
Speaker 2: hear why people game marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage. If
Speaker 2: we level up our young people, it's not going to
Speaker 2: take away from the incredible progress women have made.
Speaker 1: Scot When did you start to really see this trend?
Speaker 1: When did you start? I mean your work on this.
Speaker 1: You're doing a new book on Notes on being a
Speaker 1: Man and obviously talking a lot about it. I'm personally
Speaker 1: been very attached to this issue. My wife has done
Speaker 1: a number of documentaries, one on the miss and underrepresentation
Speaker 1: of women and girls ten years ago, right, yeah, ten
Speaker 1: years But then immediately did one called the masculinbing about masculinity,
Speaker 1: and this was pre Trump, and she really to your point,
Speaker 1: she came at it as a parent and the challenges
Speaker 1: and the difference between we have two boys and two girls,
Speaker 1: and so I've long appreciated this topic. It's a difficult
Speaker 1: one politically, and I want to get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. And I think you started to unpack some
Speaker 1: of that. But when did you personally really start to
Speaker 1: see this and realize we need to talk about it more.
Speaker 3: You know, it wasn't any specific moment or epiphany.
Speaker 2: It was I love data, and the data here was
Speaker 2: just overwhelming when you just saw what was happening to
Speaker 2: college attendance. It used to be forty sixty, now it's
Speaker 2: sixty forty. It's probably going to be two to one
Speaker 2: female to male college grads the next five years because
Speaker 2: men drop out, so there's literally going to be two
Speaker 2: college literally college crowds.
Speaker 1: I literally had a CSU conversation along those lines, literally
Speaker 1: two to one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then you look at just some of the dynamics.
Speaker 2: Around one out of three men under the age of
Speaker 2: thirty is in a relationship. Too out of three women
Speaker 2: under the age of thirty is in a relationship, and
Speaker 2: you think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women
Speaker 2: are dating older because they want more economically viable men.
Speaker 2: One in three men under the age of thirty under
Speaker 2: the age of twenty five is living with their parents.
Speaker 2: One in five at the age of thirty is living
Speaker 2: with their parents. So you see, you just see the
Speaker 2: data so overwhelming and just on a personal note, Governor.
Speaker 2: I just relate to these young men. I could think,
Speaker 2: I think to myself, had it not been for the
Speaker 2: generosity of California taxpayers and the regents of the University
Speaker 2: of California, and the irrational passion for my well being
Speaker 2: and my mother, and the fact that the tax policy
Speaker 2: and economic policy gave me just this upward spiral, you know,
Speaker 2: there for the grace of God go I. I relate
Speaker 2: to these young men. I don't think that you know
Speaker 2: as you when you're younger, you you like to you
Speaker 2: credit your you credit your grit and your character for
Speaker 2: your success. My origin story up until the age of
Speaker 2: forty was check out my shit. I was raised by
Speaker 2: sam la'mi grandmother. Now I'm a baller and you know,
Speaker 2: aren't just smell me? And then as you get older,
Speaker 2: you realize a lot of your success is and your fault.
Speaker 2: If had I not been born in California, a white,
Speaker 2: heterosexual male, am I you know in the sixties, I
Speaker 2: just don't think I'd be here. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I'm not humble. I think I'm a fucking monster. I
Speaker 2: think I'm in the top one percent, but the top
Speaker 2: one percent of this on this planet puts in a
Speaker 2: room of seventy five million people, my life is better
Speaker 2: than the top seven and a half at least. And
Speaker 2: that's because my smartest thing I ever did was to
Speaker 2: be born in America, specifically in California, and I realized
Speaker 2: that a lot of those features that really lifted me
Speaker 2: up by the scrap of Mayac and flung me forward
Speaker 2: at the speed of sound into prosperity, that hand is
Speaker 2: getting weaker and weaker. So one, the data is overwhelming,
Speaker 2: and two, I just really relate to these young men.
Speaker 3: I was there.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a lot of economic or romantic prospects,
Speaker 2: and things worked out for me because our nation decided
Speaker 2: that it loved the unremarkable, and I just I worry
Speaker 2: that's no longer the case.
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Speaker 1: You've highlighted I think four x the housing costs, two
Speaker 1: x the educational costs. Paychecks now declining and exacerbating these
Speaker 1: conditions in this sort of generational shift that you highlighted
Speaker 1: as it relates to seniors doing better and this generation,
Speaker 1: younger generation doing worse for the first time in American
Speaker 1: history than their parents' generation. What is that I want
Speaker 1: to connect?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 1: Do you connect any of the dots in our conversation
Speaker 1: around terras. Do you connect any dots as it relates
Speaker 1: to de industrialization, Do connect any dots to any substantive
Speaker 1: policy decisions that were made in the United States of America?
Speaker 1: Or was it just a broader neglect and focus on
Speaker 1: what made America great? Was it a lack of intentionality
Speaker 1: in subsidizing higher education? Was a lack of focus on
Speaker 1: yimbiism versus NIMBYism? As relates to housing and the imperative
Speaker 1: there was what was there? Was there something that you
Speaker 1: really connect as a moment? Was it in the simple
Speaker 1: terms that often are painted in politics, Reaganomics and trickle
Speaker 1: down economics in a broader sort of decoupling of commitment
Speaker 1: to the social well.
Speaker 2: So a lot there, but a couple of things that
Speaker 2: it isn't. A couple of reasons that didn't inspire this
Speaker 2: decline in the prosperity of young people of the American male.
Speaker 2: The first is that manufacturing has gone away, and that's
Speaker 2: the problem. As manufacturing has gone away in the seventies,
Speaker 2: we've had more overall prosperity. Americans aren't looking. You know,
Speaker 2: Stave Chappelle said, we want to wear nikes, not make them.
Speaker 2: You know, the notion that we're going to have the
Speaker 2: biggest own goal in history so we can bring more
Speaker 2: manufacturing and microwaves back.
Speaker 3: It's just stupid.
Speaker 2: The average assembly line worker for Fox Con working for
Speaker 2: Apple makes five hundred dollars a month or six thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a year in China. The average executive at Apple
Speaker 2: headquarters makes over two hundred thousand dollars a year. We
Speaker 2: have purposely traded off manufacturing for higher growth technology systems
Speaker 2: services jobs.
Speaker 1: So do you make the case that's not it, then,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's notton.
Speaker 2: We're still the second largest manufacturing in the world. We've
Speaker 2: just outsourced the shitty manufacturing work. Have we left some
Speaker 2: people behind?
Speaker 3: Unfairly? Sure?
Speaker 2: Eighty percent Americans want more manufacturing. Only one in five
Speaker 2: one actually work in manufacturing. You can't take your dog
Speaker 2: to the shop floor to the plant at Lansing, Michigan.
Speaker 2: Everyone loves the idea of manufacturing. People want to design software.
Speaker 2: They want to be in the services industry. They want
Speaker 2: to be an associated JP Morgan and not not tooling
Speaker 2: or making batteries somewhere. The ascent of women has been wonderful.
Speaker 2: It has not come at the cross, It has not
Speaker 2: come at the cost of men. I think there's a
Speaker 2: variety of things that are going on here. One just
Speaker 2: biological men mature are less fast. And when we even
Speaker 2: the playing field in academia, women blue by men, I
Speaker 2: would argue that the educational system is now biased against men.
Speaker 2: A boy is twice as likely to be suspended on
Speaker 2: a behavioral adjusted basis exact sand infraction, A black boy
Speaker 2: five times as likely look at the behaviors that we
Speaker 2: promote in school. Sid still be organized, be a pleased,
Speaker 2: or raise your hand. You're basically describing a girl you have. Woodshop,
Speaker 2: metal shop, and autoshop have gone away, so the online
Speaker 2: kind of the on rams to a vocational job are
Speaker 2: not as clear. We all knew that guy in high school.
Speaker 2: There was no way he was going to college, but
Speaker 2: he was fixing up his trans am in his driveway
Speaker 2: and he could go to work making thirty or forty
Speaker 2: bucks an hour as a mechanic. Now that path, that
Speaker 2: vocational path, those jobs are there, but sociologically we sort
Speaker 2: of shame those jobs, and we tell parents you've failed.
Speaker 2: If your kid is one of the two thirds of
Speaker 2: kids that doesn't get in doesn't get into college.
Speaker 3: We've seen, you know. I would call a lot of
Speaker 3: mixed messaging to young men that pull up.
Speaker 2: Yourself, you know, pull yourself up by your boots if
Speaker 2: you're only more in touch with your feelings. I think
Speaker 2: that modern masculinity from the right is be coarse and cruel,
Speaker 2: and from the left it's.
Speaker 3: Be more like a woman. I don't think either of
Speaker 3: those is right.
Speaker 2: I still think there's opportunity for men to embrace masculinity,
Speaker 2: you know, being strong, being physically strong, being risk aggressive,
Speaker 2: initiating romantic contact, being aggressive around trying to get a
Speaker 2: job you're not qualified for taking risks. I think these
Speaker 2: are wonderful at being kind, being a protector, your default
Speaker 2: system as a protector. So I think young men have
Speaker 2: gotten a lot of a lot of mixed messages. More
Speaker 2: than anything, we have made the conscious decision to transfer
Speaker 2: money from young to old. Old people have figured out
Speaker 2: a way to vote themselves more money, and they continue
Speaker 2: to do it. The forty billion dollar child tax credit
Speaker 2: gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill, the one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty billion dollar increase in cost of living adjustment
Speaker 2: for seniors flies right through Congress because old people vote.
Speaker 2: And it's just insane to me that we have the
Speaker 2: largest economic transfer in history annually happen, every being done
Speaker 2: in twelve months from young to old. There used to
Speaker 2: be twelve people supporting every retired worker, now there's three.
Speaker 2: We haven't raised the age. All this nonsense around Doge.
Speaker 2: You know they save two and a half billion dollars.
Speaker 2: You could six sax of Doge by cutting off all
Speaker 2: subsidies to Tesla it's if you really want to be
Speaker 2: an adult here about the fact that we're spending seven
Speaker 2: trillion on five trillion revenues.
Speaker 3: There's only two things you can do.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to go after entitlements and you're going
Speaker 2: to or you're gonna have to raise taxes. And the
Speaker 2: answer is yes. At some point, we're going to need
Speaker 2: an adult that says, I'm sorry, folks, we have to
Speaker 2: do both. I'm the person that's going to cut your
Speaker 2: entitlements or at least means tested and age gate it,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to have.
Speaker 3: To raise your taxes.
Speaker 2: And what we've decided is the people who vote and
Speaker 2: the wealthiest people. Taxes for incorporations are at their lowest
Speaker 2: level since nineteen twenty nine. The twenty five wealthiest Americans
Speaker 2: are paying six percent of taxes. And we like to
Speaker 2: think that, oh, we can't lower taxes, they're too high.
Speaker 2: There's a strange dynamic in the US whereas the people
Speaker 2: who get most screwed by our tax code are not
Speaker 2: only young people, but well, let's just stop. There two
Speaker 2: biggest tax deductions mortgage interest rate and capital gains. Who
Speaker 2: owns stocks and homes, people age, who rents and makes
Speaker 2: some money from salary. Young people social Security tax. My
Speaker 2: analyst who works for me makes one hundred and sixty grand,
Speaker 2: pays nine grand to earn social Security tax. I make
Speaker 2: substantially more than that, and I pay nine grand because
Speaker 2: we've decided to cap it such that it's a regressive tax,
Speaker 2: so we keep transferring more and more money to the old.
Speaker 2: And what you know, young people aren't economically it's economically viable,
Speaker 2: which is more important for a man. Three quarters of
Speaker 2: women's say economic viability is important in a mate. Only
Speaker 2: one in four men say that it's important. So we
Speaker 2: essentially have just the most depressed, obese, and anxious generation
Speaker 2: in history, and we ask ourselves why.
Speaker 3: Well, of course they're upset.
Speaker 2: They're not doing as well as their parents. They can't
Speaker 2: find a mate. There aren't as many venues to meet.
Speaker 2: They meet online where they type in six feet or
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars plus. If you take out married,
Speaker 2: obese and men under the age over the age of fifty,
Speaker 2: that's two percent of the male popular. Men need a
Speaker 2: place to demonstrate excellence. If you talk to couples that
Speaker 2: have been married longer than thirty years, seventy five percent
Speaker 2: of them say one was much more interested in the
Speaker 2: other at the beginning, and it's almost always the male
Speaker 2: who was more interested than the woman, because the downside
Speaker 2: of sex is much greater for a woman than a man.
Speaker 2: We've been taught for thousands of years to spread our
Speaker 2: seed to the four corners of the earth. Women have
Speaker 2: been taught for thousands of years to put up a
Speaker 2: much finer filter to pick the strongest, smartest, and fastest seed.
Speaker 2: And some they're just more selective. And I'm not suggesting
Speaker 2: they should ever lower their standards, but typically what happened
Speaker 2: in those relationships is the man had a chance to
Speaker 2: demonstrate excellence. I worked with him, and I found out
Speaker 2: he was really good at what he did. We went
Speaker 2: to the same temple, and I saw how kind he
Speaker 2: was to his parents. We spent time together, and we
Speaker 2: worked at a food kitchen together, and I saw that
Speaker 2: he was kind. I liked his hands, I like the
Speaker 2: way he danced, I like the way he smelled, And
Speaker 2: slowly but surely he raised his game in my mind,
Speaker 2: and we fell in love and decided to have a
Speaker 2: life together. Where does a man, a young man, demonstrate
Speaker 2: excellence to get through that much finer filter that women have.
Speaker 2: They're not going to work, they're not going to school.
Speaker 2: The number of bars. I'm living in London, the number
Speaker 2: of bars in London has declined forty percent. Kids don't
Speaker 2: have the money and they have this anti alcohol movement.
Speaker 2: And just so I can really act like I'm crazy,
Speaker 2: I think young people need to drink more. I think
Speaker 2: this anti alcohol movement is the worst thing since remote
Speaker 2: work for young people. I tell people jokingly, you need
Speaker 2: to go out, drink more and make a series of
Speaker 2: bad decisions that might payoff because the risk to your
Speaker 2: twenty five year old liver of alcohol is dwarfed by
Speaker 2: the risks of social isolation.
Speaker 1: Well as a guy who owns a few bars and wineries.
Speaker 1: I'm with you Scott on that, but you're in yeah.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting. I love hearing. I mean, by the
Speaker 1: way you've made this point about bars, it's interesting you're
Speaker 1: sincere about it. You're not just being flipping about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean people to your point. I mean
Speaker 1: they're more isolated, more lonely, and more disconnects. One of
Speaker 1: I mean, we can get to solutions in a minute,
Speaker 1: but it's actually one of your foundational principles to address
Speaker 1: some of these issues. Not just bars. I mean social
Speaker 1: settings that can bring people together.
Speaker 2: Sports leagues, church, nonprofits, national service tax credits for places
Speaker 2: that bring people together, young people together. I mean, and
Speaker 2: I'll ask you this, Think of your closest friends, I
Speaker 2: mean your buddies, where you get together and you just
Speaker 2: pick up a letter m no matter how long it's
Speaker 2: been since you've seen them. Think about your romantic relationships
Speaker 2: in your life. Did what percentage of them? Did alcohol
Speaker 2: play some role in your formative yours?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 1: Enough said?
Speaker 3: Enough said, there you go.
Speaker 1: No, I mean right, I mean everybody listening. How many
Speaker 1: people listen to your point? That's ninety plus percent of folks, right,
Speaker 1: I imagine.
Speaker 2: Well, and six percent of our youth are addicted to
Speaker 2: drugs and alcohol. Twenty six percent or twenty three percent
Speaker 2: are addicted to social media.
Speaker 3: Where's the real problem here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well said, you talked about minimum wage at seven
Speaker 1: twenty five, and you've talked about the fact that if
Speaker 1: you ingested for productivity and inflation, be closer to what
Speaker 1: twenty three, twenty four or five dollars, And that you've
Speaker 1: talked about the issues of vocation, community college. You know,
Speaker 1: you brought up the woodshop frame and just how we
Speaker 1: know those jobs exist, but we haven't persisted in providing
Speaker 1: the sort of reputational support for those skills and the
Speaker 1: actual education that we pulled away from our education system
Speaker 1: K through twelve. What else should we be focused on
Speaker 1: in terms of substantially trying to address this besides now
Speaker 1: having an honest conversation about it.
Speaker 2: Well, first off, I think you and the governor of
Speaker 2: Washington have shown a lot of leadership around minimum wage,
Speaker 2: and that is what we found is that the myth
Speaker 2: that all these small businesses are going to go out
Speaker 2: of business, it's just a myth that when you raise
Speaker 2: minimum wage. Wonderful thing about lower middleclem households is that
Speaker 2: when you give them a buck, they spend it all
Speaker 2: and it creates a greater multiplier effect. And we haven't
Speaker 2: seen a decline in businesses, economic growth, or an increase
Speaker 2: in inflation when we raise minimum wage. So that's, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, that's no brainer. I like to think I'm
Speaker 2: helping the Democratic Party with messaging. I like to think
Speaker 2: of a unifying theory of everything, and the unifying theory
Speaker 2: of everything for me is anyone under the age of
Speaker 2: forty that's a good person and works hard, should be
Speaker 2: able to find someone, and should be able to raise
Speaker 2: kids in a household without living in poverty. And the
Speaker 2: first thing is twenty five dollars an hour minimum wage.
Speaker 2: I don't, I just don't. It would hurt wal Mart stock,
Speaker 2: it would hurt McDonald's stock, and it would be worth it.
Speaker 2: I think more men in K through twelve education, if
Speaker 2: you were to look reverse engineered to the single point
Speaker 2: of failure for when boys become come off the tracks,
Speaker 2: it's when they lose a male role model. We have
Speaker 2: the most single parent homes of any nation in the world,
Speaker 2: and when we say single parent, we really mean mom
Speaker 2: is heading the household. That's ninety two percent of single
Speaker 2: parent homes. And ends up is that girls in single
Speaker 2: parent homes have the same outcome, same rates of high
Speaker 2: school attendance and self harm. Boys become much more likely
Speaker 2: to engage in self harm and not go to college.
Speaker 2: It ends up that while boys are physically stronger, they're
Speaker 2: mentally and emotionally much weaker. So we need more males
Speaker 2: involved in K through twelve And even just saying that
Speaker 2: boys need men in their lives used to trigger people,
Speaker 2: and now mothers are recognizing that that's just not true.
Speaker 2: We need boys involved in men's lives.
Speaker 1: And Scott, you mean by that teachers, not just mentors,
Speaker 1: people that are advocates, counselors in what respect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all of the above after school programs, coaches,
Speaker 2: they usually don't get paid.
Speaker 3: More men.
Speaker 2: I think the Catholic Church and Michael Jackson have screwed
Speaker 2: it up for all of us. I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of wonderful men out there that don't have families
Speaker 2: of their own. There are three times as women applying
Speaker 2: to be big sisters as men applying to be big
Speaker 2: brothers in America. Why one men aren't stepping up and
Speaker 2: two I think they feel self conscious.
Speaker 3: If you're a thirty five year old male.
Speaker 2: Maybe doesn't have your own family or your own kids,
Speaker 2: and you want to be involved or help out a
Speaker 2: fifteen year old son of a single mother, don't people
Speaker 2: look at you like there's something wrong with you. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of wonderful men out there that I
Speaker 2: have loved to get paternal and fraternal, and they're under
Speaker 2: the illusion that if they're not a baller, that or
Speaker 2: they haven't done have a degree in adolescent psychiatry. They
Speaker 2: shouldn't get involved in a boy's life. I think of
Speaker 2: the rings of masculinity. You got to take care of yourself,
Speaker 2: you got to be strong, you gotta be economic viability,
Speaker 2: You take care of your family, you take care of community.
Speaker 2: But I think the ultimate expression of masculinity is to
Speaker 2: get involved in the life of a child that isn't yours.
Speaker 2: And we need more men involved. When my mom got divorced,
Speaker 2: she made sure that a couple of her boyfriend she
Speaker 2: kept in my life. There was a neighbor that used
Speaker 2: to come over with his girlfriend to take me horseback riding.
Speaker 2: I made really good friends with a stockbroker and I
Speaker 2: used to swing by his the brokerage, Dean witter Reynolds
Speaker 2: in Westwood after school. Lot of wonderful men in my life.
Speaker 2: So one, men need to step up. More big brothers programs,
Speaker 2: more coaching. I would like to see a mandatory national service.
Speaker 3: If you look at if you.
Speaker 2: Look at Israel, lowest levels of young adult depression in
Speaker 2: the West, despite all the existential threats. I was just
Speaker 2: in Israel and I met with a battalion of one
Speaker 2: hundred and ten from the idf all these beautiful young
Speaker 2: men and women fit outdoors, learning how to handle assault rifles,
Speaker 2: getting to the point where they're so skilled that the
Speaker 2: man or the woman next to you would literally depend,
Speaker 2: you know, trust you, with their lives and serving the
Speaker 2: agency of something bigger than themselves. And that's where they
Speaker 2: meet friends. That's where they meet mentors, co founders, and mates.
Speaker 2: I'd like to see national mandatory, national service where people
Speaker 2: can meet others from different sexual orientations, different income classes,
Speaker 2: different ethnicity, so we start to see each other as
Speaker 2: Americans before we see each other as trans or Republican.
Speaker 3: Or rich or poor.
Speaker 2: I think any college it's not growing as freshman class
Speaker 2: faster than population growth should and has an endowment over
Speaker 2: a billion dollars should lose its tax re status. Dartmouth
Speaker 2: has eight billion dollar endowment, five hundred students. It's not
Speaker 2: a college, it's a hedge fund with classes.
Speaker 3: It's just insane. If you had a drug that made
Speaker 3: people less obese.
Speaker 2: Four times more likely to get married, likely to run
Speaker 2: for office, much less likely to get divorced, much less
Speaker 2: likely to have diabetes, whilch ahard that drug. That's what
Speaker 2: me and my colleagues are doing. At elite higher institutions,
Speaker 2: we purposely sequester artificially constrained supply. We could let in
Speaker 2: five x the number of kids we do now, but
Speaker 2: we're all drunk on exclusivity. When my dean announces we've
Speaker 2: rejected eighty five percent of our applicants, you know what
Speaker 2: me and my colleagues do.
Speaker 3: We stand up and we allawed. It's awful.
Speaker 2: And I really appreciate the University of California and what
Speaker 2: the cal state system is doing trying to increase its
Speaker 2: population by the amount of one class. But unfortunately a
Speaker 2: lot of elite institutions have not have not received the memo.
Speaker 3: I just toured.
Speaker 2: I did a calle true with my son University Chicago.
Speaker 2: Four percent admissions rate. Do four percent admissions right?
Speaker 1: And you were, by the way, literal when and just
Speaker 1: for listeners, when you said nine percent of UCLA. It's
Speaker 1: nine percent at UCLA, eleven percent at Berkeley. It is interesting,
Speaker 1: Scott use over the entire system it's now seventy percent.
Speaker 1: Just broke seventy percent, but at those specific campuses because
Speaker 1: of UC mer said and other ucs, we're making progress,
Speaker 1: but it's not good enough. In your point, it's even
Speaker 1: worse if you look at degrees. If you're trying to
Speaker 1: get a computer science degree or something, you're talking one
Speaker 1: to three percent of people getting in. And you're right.
Speaker 1: You hear it all the time faculty.
Speaker 3: In others.
Speaker 1: It's not a knock at faculty, but people start to
Speaker 1: applaud I've been in those meetings just as you described,
Speaker 1: and it's gross.
Speaker 3: And California gets it.
Speaker 2: I'm not a billionaire, but I've given a lot of
Speaker 2: money to UCLA and Berkeley because California gets that. The
Speaker 2: cal State system is probably the unsung hero.
Speaker 1: Right, biggest pelgrant recipient in the world in the United States,
Speaker 1: biggest conveyor metal talent the country.
Speaker 2: Pel grants saved my ask Governor. I'm the recipient of
Speaker 2: affirmative action because I came from a household that was
Speaker 2: in the lower third economically, I got unfair advantage and
Speaker 2: I got pelgrants. I couldn't have gone to college without them.
Speaker 2: And it's worked out for everybody. And also so I
Speaker 2: do think there's schools to get it. I think what
Speaker 2: ASU is doing with Michael Crowe. I do think there
Speaker 2: are schools that get you dubbed Madison. I just took
Speaker 2: my kid at the University Wisconsin Madison, fifty thousand good
Speaker 2: kids from Minneapolis and Wisconsin University of North Carolina doing
Speaker 2: their job trying to expand it.
Speaker 3: So some people get the memo. The majority of elite.
Speaker 2: Institutions now see themselves in their as their mes bags,
Speaker 2: not as public servants. In terms of solutions, we just
Speaker 2: need to put more money in the pockets of young people.
Speaker 3: I like what Portugal did with a tax holiday.
Speaker 2: If you gave every person under the age of forty
Speaker 2: who makes less than one hundred thousand dollars a tax holiday,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't cost that much because reality is they don't
Speaker 2: make that much money. I think all capital gains should
Speaker 2: be like the Reagan administration. There shouldn't be long term
Speaker 2: or short term. Why is sweat less noble than the
Speaker 2: money my money makes? Why is rent less noble than
Speaker 2: the money you pay for a mortgage. That's nothing but
Speaker 2: an elegant transfer of money from the young to the old.
Speaker 2: And then you want to talk about the greatest intergenerational
Speaker 2: theft in history.
Speaker 3: COVID.
Speaker 2: We took seven trillion dollars. A million people dying would
Speaker 2: be bad, But if I got less wealthy, it'd be tragic.
Speaker 2: So we took seven trillion dollars flushed into the economy.
Speaker 2: Eighty five percent of it wasn't spent. It wasn't spent
Speaker 2: on food, or medicine or housing. Eighty five percent of
Speaker 2: it wasn't spent.
Speaker 3: So where did it go?
Speaker 2: It went into the markets, and housing went from two
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety thousand average household to four to ten
Speaker 2: in just four years. The stock market went crazy, so
Speaker 2: I got richer and richer, and young people the entrance
Speaker 2: everything got more expensive. When you bail out the baby
Speaker 2: boomer owner of a restaurant, all you're doing is transferring
Speaker 2: opportunity away from the recent graduate of a culinary academy
Speaker 2: at twenty six who wants her shot. The reason I
Speaker 2: get to live the life I lead economically is in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, we bailed out the banks, but
Speaker 2: we let the markets fall. The markets are cyclical, and
Speaker 2: disruption transfers power and money back from incumbents to entrants.
Speaker 2: And what did I get to do? I got to
Speaker 2: buy Netflix, Apple, and Amazon at eight ten and twelve
Speaker 2: dollars a share, and Netflix is at nine point forty.
Speaker 2: Where does a young person find value now because we've
Speaker 2: decided to use their credit card to bail us out.
Speaker 2: When shit gets real, I'm in the club doing rails
Speaker 2: of cocaine and champagne, and the closest a young person
Speaker 2: gets is they get to throw me their credit card
Speaker 2: so I can spend where the government can spend seven
Speaker 2: trillion dollars a year on five trillion in receipts, such
Speaker 2: as young people are going to have to pay this
Speaker 2: shit back. It's criminal such that the stock market stay
Speaker 2: is high. So that's that you and I stay wealthy.
Speaker 2: So I think almost every major economic policy can be
Speaker 2: reverse engineered to one thing. How do we maintain the
Speaker 2: incumbents wealth at the cost of potential entrance?
Speaker 1: If I can just briefly enter the world of partisan politics,
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting these trend lines of obviously accrued
Speaker 1: to the Trump candidacy. I mean, you saw with the numbers.
Speaker 1: I think it, you know, and forgive me if I'm
Speaker 1: off a little bit, But I think in the first
Speaker 1: Trump election he won forty one percent of young voters,
Speaker 1: fifty six percent of young voters in this last election. Obviously,
Speaker 1: so much focus on his outreach and in terms of
Speaker 1: focusing on the quote unquote manisphere focusing on sports more
Speaker 1: of a hyper masculine frame of outreach and engagement. Don't
Speaker 1: get me started or don't even get you started, though
Speaker 1: I would love to actually get you started. But with
Speaker 1: the DNC's lack of engagement to young men nonexistent. Doesn't
Speaker 1: exist in the Democratic Party, hasn't in the past. But
Speaker 1: give me a sense of you're over under. Was that
Speaker 1: very intentional on his part? Was he just the beneficiary
Speaker 1: of that because of the neglect of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: and he sort of stumbled into it. What do you
Speaker 1: make of the difference between the two parties in terms
Speaker 1: of trying to approach some of these issues in a
Speaker 1: sincere and honest way.
Speaker 2: The three biggest own goals in American history where our
Speaker 2: entry into Iraq or in recent history, these ridiculous tariffs
Speaker 2: that is the most elegant way to reduce prosperity in history,
Speaker 2: and the Democratic Committee losing to an insurrectionist and this
Speaker 2: is how we managed to steal, to snatch the feet
Speaker 2: from the jaws of victory. This was supposed to be
Speaker 2: a referendum on women's rights. Understandably it was, and women's
Speaker 2: rights did not show up which showed up was testosterone. Specifically,
Speaker 2: young men are really struggling. And if you look at
Speaker 2: the three groups of pivoted hardest from blue to red
Speaker 2: twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, it was one Latinos,
Speaker 2: who I believe don't want to be identified as a group.
Speaker 2: The Mexican Americans in South California have much different priorities
Speaker 2: in Cuban Americans in Southern Florida, and even identifying them
Speaker 2: as a group I think pisses them off too. People
Speaker 2: under the age of forty per your comments, they're just
Speaker 2: not doing well. And when you're not doing as well
Speaker 2: as your parents, you feel rage and all you want
Speaker 2: is disruption. You don't even want change. You want the
Speaker 2: candidate who is kind of chaotic because you're like, whatever's
Speaker 2: going on here is not working for me. And then
Speaker 2: the third and most interesting group the pivoted hardest from
Speaker 2: blue to red, was forty five to sixty four year
Speaker 2: old women. And my thesis is that's their mothers. And
Speaker 2: there's still a lot of women in the US who
Speaker 2: will vote for what they perceive is best for their
Speaker 2: husbands or their sons. And when you're a mother and
Speaker 2: your son is in the basement playing video games and vaping.
Speaker 2: You don't give a shit about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine,
Speaker 2: or women's rights or transgender rights. You just want change.
Speaker 2: Trump campaign, to their credit, was brilliant. They flew right
Speaker 2: into the manisphere rockets crypto Joe Rogan went He went on,
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan, do you realize with forty million audio downloads,
Speaker 2: assume me forty million YouTube videos and fifteen million audio downloads.
Speaker 2: For vice president to get the same level of exposure
Speaker 2: Vice President Harris, she would have had to gone on CNBC, MSNBC,
Speaker 2: Fox and CNN every night for three hours.
Speaker 3: For two weeks.
Speaker 2: They totally outplayed as governor and then talk about young
Speaker 2: men not going to the Republican Party but moving away from.
Speaker 3: The Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: I like you was at the convention and what I
Speaker 2: saw was a three day parade of special interest groups
Speaker 2: representing everybody but the one group that has fallen furthest.
Speaker 3: Fastest, and that as young men.
Speaker 2: If you go to the DNC dot org website, it
Speaker 2: has a site that says who we serve. Explicitly, it
Speaker 2: says who we serve and it goes on to list
Speaker 2: sixteen demographic groups ranging from Asian Pacific Islanders, the Black Americans,
Speaker 2: the disabled veterans. I added it up, it's seventy four
Speaker 2: percent of the US population. When you say you're explicitly
Speaker 2: advocating for seventy four percent of the US population, you're
Speaker 2: not advocating for them, You're discriminating against the twenty six percent.
Speaker 2: And young men went viciously towards Trump. So did the
Speaker 2: women in their lives supporting them, and that was enough
Speaker 2: to swing groups who had traditionally been Democratic to Trump.
Speaker 2: And this was a huge own goal. An honest question
Speaker 2: is how did we let this happen? Quite frankly, we
Speaker 2: ignored the group that has fallen furthest fastest. This wasn't
Speaker 2: This wasn't This was the testosterone election. And Trump figured
Speaker 2: that out and went.
Speaker 3: And flew right into it.
Speaker 1: Look, if Democratic Party is not listening, they sure as
Speaker 1: hell better listen. Are there's going to repeat history. I
Speaker 1: appreciate Scott, you're reinforcing this, and you know, we know
Speaker 1: we're short on time, and I guess it begs the
Speaker 1: final question, you know, what is the hesitancy to the party?
Speaker 1: Is it just that you know, I think you've heard
Speaker 1: the old phrase pay all male. You know, we've had
Speaker 1: all the privileges you mentioned, three thousand years of sort
Speaker 1: of male dominance, the Me Too movement, this notion that
Speaker 1: you know, we still have gender disparity, we still have
Speaker 1: all these issues. Is it just our unwillingness as a party,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party? What do you to just own up
Speaker 1: to this fact? Or is it do we feel it's
Speaker 1: just we're talking only about white males. What is it
Speaker 1: that you think has restricted the capacity for the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party to fully embrace and understand this gap in terms
Speaker 1: of their electoral thinking, let alone the policy substance behind it.
Speaker 2: I think we became too obsessed with achieving social status
Speaker 2: versus doing things that actually helped people grow the material
Speaker 2: or the psychological well being. And I think identity politics
Speaker 2: is for a long time, I think it was just
Speaker 2: smart to cater to the specific needs and the easiest
Speaker 2: way to identify people was through their identity. And I
Speaker 2: think and by the way, I'm really hopeful for the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party. I think this tariff nonsense is just unbelievable
Speaker 2: opportunity for us to go. These people are insane and
Speaker 2: they're producing your prosperity. I think this is a gift
Speaker 2: to us. And the reason I have been and will
Speaker 2: be for the rest of my life a Democrat is
Speaker 2: that Democrats we get it wrong, but our heart's in
Speaker 2: the right place. We're trying to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: Sometimes do we carry it too far? We'd do and
Speaker 2: what I would argue is using what needs to happen
Speaker 2: at universities as a metaphor for what needs to happen
Speaker 2: to the Democrat. You know, I'll use the University of California.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety seven, the University of California dipped away
Speaker 2: with race based affirmative action and they shifted to an
Speaker 2: adversity score.
Speaker 3: Was what they realized is the daughter of a time
Speaker 3: when he's private equity billionaire. It's not diversity.
Speaker 2: But if you're a trans kid, a white kid who's trans,
Speaker 2: who's faced incredible uphill battle, you deserve a second look,
Speaker 2: a second shot. And I think the Democratic Party to
Speaker 2: move away from identity politics and focus really on one thing,
Speaker 2: and that is the unifying theory of everything should be
Speaker 2: that if you're young and you're a good kid, you
Speaker 2: should have be able to have a job that pays.
Speaker 3: A certain wage.
Speaker 2: You should be able to find someone to fall in
Speaker 2: love with, and you should be able to have a
Speaker 2: home and kids. We need seven million homes in ten years,
Speaker 2: manufactured homes that cost thirty to fifty percent less than
Speaker 2: homes built on site. We need a minimum wage of
Speaker 2: twenty five bucks an hour. We need a tax holiday
Speaker 2: for people under the age of forty. We need national
Speaker 2: service and more third places where people can fall in love.
Speaker 2: And stop this identity politics. We are here to give
Speaker 2: everyone a shot. Everyone and affirmative action in America should
Speaker 2: should thrive, but it should be based on color, and
Speaker 2: that color is green. We need in America. This is
Speaker 2: a collective victory. You'd rather be born gay or nine
Speaker 2: white than poor today.
Speaker 3: So let's go after Let's help the people.
Speaker 2: Let's use the full faith and resources of the greatest
Speaker 2: experience in history, the best performing organization in history, the
Speaker 2: US government that's offered more rights and prosperity for a
Speaker 2: lower cost taxes than any organization in history. Let's puild
Speaker 2: a full weight. Let's put the full weight of that
Speaker 2: incredible organization around the people who need it most in
Speaker 2: the US, and that is the poor. Let's let's stop
Speaker 2: this nonsense where the richer are protected by the law
Speaker 2: but not bound by it, and the poor are bound
Speaker 2: by the law but not protected by it. The constitutions
Speaker 2: here to protect the lower fifty. This nonsense of rounding
Speaker 2: people up and sending them to healthscapes. Guess what knowing
Speaker 2: you or I know is risk. I could be in
Speaker 2: deepest reddist Mississippi. I have access to messifest round because
Speaker 2: I have money. That is not why the government is here.
Speaker 2: The government isn't here to make you or me richer.
Speaker 2: The government is to help the lower half. And I
Speaker 2: think that's that's where the Democratic Party needs to go
Speaker 2: and get away from identity politics because it's it's creating
Speaker 2: more problems than it's solving.
Speaker 1: Scott has been wonderful to spend time with you. Thank
Speaker 1: you for your insight, thank you for your recommendations, and
Speaker 1: thank you for always being so candid and forthright.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Governor, and thank you to the toxpayers of California.
Speaker 2: Literally changed my life.
Speaker 1: I love it.