Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Evan Asto is great
Speaker 1: to have you with a staff writer the New Yorkers.
Speaker 1: Tom alluded to there. The new book is called The
Speaker 1: Haves and Have Yachts Dispatches on the Ultra Rich. Congrats
Speaker 1: on the book. Congrats also on the title, which is excellent.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the warning that we heard from former
Speaker 1: President Biden has prepared to leave office, he said today,
Speaker 1: and oligarchy is taking shape in America, of extreme wealth,
Speaker 1: power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our
Speaker 1: basic rights and freedom. He sounded the alarm as he
Speaker 1: was making his way to the exit. What has changed
Speaker 1: when it comes to wealth inequality in this country over
Speaker 1: the last five six months.
Speaker 2: Thanks guys, by the way, Tom, you made my day.
Speaker 2: We live in a world, John McPhee made. I'll say
Speaker 2: that what President Biden was getting at it is something
Speaker 2: really important to a lot of folks. Frankly, it sounded
Speaker 2: almost belated. Look, the good news is this country has
Speaker 2: never been wealthier in so many respects. We are build
Speaker 2: holding companies, were on the cusp of a new era
Speaker 2: of technology and all the ways you talk about on
Speaker 2: the show every day whether it's AI and robotics, and
Speaker 2: yet at the same time, as you know, there are
Speaker 2: about half of American adults who will tell you that
Speaker 2: they don't have one thousand dollars to spend on an
Speaker 2: emergency expense. We are at a point now. It's really
Speaker 2: sort of similar to where we've been at moments in
Speaker 2: our history where we have tremendous technological opportunity, huge wealth creation,
Speaker 2: and we're also facing a fork in the road to
Speaker 2: make sure that that is also not steering our government
Speaker 2: down a path that Henry Ford used to say that
Speaker 2: he wanted to make sure that his own employees, his
Speaker 2: own workers, could afford the cars he was making. And
Speaker 2: those are some of the decisions we have to be
Speaker 2: making now.
Speaker 1: This is clearly a theme that has animated a lot
Speaker 1: of your work. I look at the Osmos Ooh for
Speaker 1: going back to your first book, Age of Ambition, Chasing Fortune,
Speaker 1: Truth and Faith in the New China, which I read
Speaker 1: on my first trip to Shanghai, and you re mark
Speaker 1: then on just the abundance the amount of wealthy excitement
Speaker 1: about wealth and upper mobility in China. As you look
Speaker 1: at this particular book, are we looking at something that's
Speaker 1: uniquely American, or has this rise of the ultra rich
Speaker 1: and sort of shared globally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fascinating parallel in many ways, David. I
Speaker 2: mean I first started reading in a sense about the
Speaker 2: American guilded age when I was living in China, because
Speaker 2: I was trying to understand what was happening. We were
Speaker 2: seeing railroads built at a pace we hadn't seen since
Speaker 2: America in the nineteenth century. It's fitting in some ways
Speaker 2: that I used The Great Gatsby when I lived in
Speaker 2: Beijing to conceptualize it. Here we are, it's twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five hundredth anniversary of that book. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of lessons in there about how do you take that
Speaker 2: sense of cultural energy that we might have had at
Speaker 2: certain moments in the Roaring twenties, but also the awareness
Speaker 2: that without making really smart choices, we're not going to
Speaker 2: make sure that this money gets into the hands of
Speaker 2: people who can rise with the tide.
Speaker 3: Evan, you grew up in the crucible this Grantwich, Connecticut,
Speaker 3: where I'm sure three kids down the street did have
Speaker 3: Hinckley picnic boats.
Speaker 2: You didn't.
Speaker 3: Your father was acclaimed within journalism, But what does the
Speaker 3: crew do below the fancy people to try to get
Speaker 3: their kids to motivate and have a good life and
Speaker 3: even aspire to be richer.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is.
Speaker 3: Topic one right now, between the buffeting of AI the
Speaker 3: decline of liberal arts. What do the kids do just
Speaker 3: below those with the super yachts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I face these questions myself. I'm a dad,
Speaker 2: I've got two kids. I think about the challenges of
Speaker 2: people coming out of school today and how hard it's
Speaker 2: going to be to get those first jobs. But here's
Speaker 2: the thing, you know, we have some pretty great models
Speaker 2: to inspire us in terms of how to think about
Speaker 2: being energetic, being creative. I think about Warren Buffett. He's
Speaker 2: on our minds a lot, all of us these days.
Speaker 2: You know. He talks about how much he left, how
Speaker 2: much he will leave to his kids. He likes to say,
Speaker 2: as you know, Tommy says, I want to leave them
Speaker 2: enough that they can do anything, but not so much
Speaker 2: that they can do nothing. I try, as I think
Speaker 2: about the opportunities that are coming to say to people, Look,
Speaker 2: it's not enough for us to just say. Elon Musk
Speaker 2: has now crossed the four hundred billion dollar threshold We've
Speaker 2: never had somebody with that kind of prosperity. Isn't that
Speaker 2: a sin of strength? No, we have to be saying
Speaker 2: to people, if we don't make smart choices, it's going
Speaker 2: to end up with too many musks and perhaps not
Speaker 2: enough buffets. And I think that's an important thing to
Speaker 2: keep in mind.
Speaker 1: Spare a teer for the billionaire class. But I am
Speaker 1: interested in this element of loneliness that comes through in
Speaker 1: your book. So if you have billionaires buying these super yachts,
Speaker 1: they can be in isolation on the open seas. You
Speaker 1: have another chapter or another piece that you've written about
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley billionaires who are looking to remote New Zealand
Speaker 1: as a place where they can go. Whether the storm,
Speaker 1: if that's a nuclear disaster or something that's a natural disaster,
Speaker 1: what explains it? And just I think the contrast is
Speaker 1: so starked to what you were talking about a moment ago,
Speaker 1: which is during the Gilded Age, you had billionaires, had
Speaker 1: multi billionaires, I should say, maybe not billionaires who are
Speaker 1: interested in philanthropy and in helping the wider population and
Speaker 1: building libraries in towns across America. It seems like there
Speaker 1: is a stark contrast that exists now between the aspirations
Speaker 1: of a lot of these ultra wealthy than what we
Speaker 1: saw before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, David, you know, for the reporting for this book,
Speaker 2: I went to New Zealand, I went to Monico. Hardship
Speaker 2: pay was not forthcoming despite my insistence, And it was
Speaker 2: a fascinating way of getting into the minds of people
Speaker 2: who have succeeded. And I think what you find in
Speaker 2: a lot of cases, and this is the surprise, is
Speaker 2: a sense of fear. Frankly, a sense of verdigo. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people will say, look, you've made all
Speaker 2: the money in the world, what are you afraid of?
Speaker 2: Why do you need to stand on the stage with
Speaker 2: a president who you may not even necessarily ideologically agree with.
Speaker 2: And I think what that tells us is that the
Speaker 2: higher you get, you actually can end up feeling quite vulnerable,
Speaker 2: quite exposed. I mean, as Silicon Valley CEO said to me,
Speaker 2: I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and
Speaker 2: I have a bunker with an air filtration system. And
Speaker 2: I think that is Another former hedge fund manager said
Speaker 2: to me, Look, there are twenty five hedge fund managers
Speaker 2: in this country who make it more money, and by
Speaker 2: and then all of the kindergartener teachers, and he said,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't feel good to be one of those
Speaker 2: twenty five. That's the vertigo