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