Is the Middle Class Over- The Harsh Truth About Money, Work & Power in 2026

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:31moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know.

0:561969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you what kind of life would you have?

1:31Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious Mind Games a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you think Duval posted this, and I want to ask you, do you think they killed off the middle class in 2020?

2:12Was the printing of that money and COVID a way to destroy and widen that gap to erase the middle class? yeah I mean the middle class I think has been destroyed maybe before 2020 but yeah definitely that accelerated it I think um that was definitely an acceleration of that even going back to 2008 financial crisis and we could talk about that on blackout but as far as um you know how many people lost their homes in that and that's when housing really became a forefront issue and made a permanent class of renters um collapsed people's 401k people panicked and sold that's they have market monday so a lot of people didn't have the full education people got liquidated out of their positions um so i think that was the start of it the pandemic definitely probably accelerated it with the amount of money that was printed um but the middle class i think has been at least shrinking it has been shrinking yeah for the last 20 years or so and then you add inflation that's the killer because even when epstein that's what he said that was one of the things that he said it was like um um, power phrasing.

3:40He said that, um, we, we make money from trading stocks and investing. And we, it's not, we're not doing real work. The other people, they got, they got to do real manual labor for work. Like that's not, that's not what we do. We don't, we don't, we're not doing real, which is ironic because a lot of people were like, yo, content creators, you guys aren't really contributing. And he said several times, he was like, Wall Street, what are they really doing? What are they doing? They're not doing anything. They're making billions of dollars just by trading... On arbitrage. Concepts. Yeah. Price disparities.

4:20They're not doing anything to contribute. They're not doing anything physically and they're not doing anything to really contribute to society. They're not doing anything. Especially when they deregulated derivatives before 2008. It was a free-for-all. But that's the world that we live in. I mean, you know, that's the game that's being played at the highest level, but the middle class is not doing that. Put it like that. The middle class is not taking part in that situation. For the most part, they're still working for money. And it's just getting to the point now between the creator economy, Wall Street, and AI.

5:00that's what robin vlad tenner said to us he's like he's gonna get to a point the idea of work is not even gonna is is going to is not even gonna look the same in 20 years like how we even conceive work people that's actually still trying to i mean i guess you still got the trades electricians and stuff like that but the people that still trying to hold on to that we need more no we really don't We really don't need more. I just told you, for every job loss, you only need 10 NVIDIA GPUs to replace the efficiency of an office worker. That's scary as hell. And we were just at NVIDIA. Trust me, for those who say, oh no, they can't replace it.

5:44Some of the work that we saw in those side conference rooms. But they got a garage for each unit. So we saw the autonomous garage, but there's a healthcare tech around like yeah what's happening like what are you like in a warehousing there was hundreds of robots in a warehouse that they're simulating and this is the crazy part even if we make it to outer space or above earth they've calibrated the ai to know the differences in gravity for the robots to deliver goods in outer space yeah that's scary like they know the weight of mars and jupiter earth two and it only takes a day or two to for the entire robot force to recalibrate to deliver supplies on other planets yeah the gpu that goes inside that that that robot it yeah it takes a day if they know the the level of gravity on a specific place they can train it to balance itself inside that gravity right so the first time you train it it falls to the ground then you train it to earth's gravity it begins to learn how to walk on earth like it's it's in the stuff you see it's just like oh it's a different level it's a different level yeah and then of course tesla i mean elon announced that spacex is merging with xai oh yeah talk about that Oh, yeah.

7:16It's not the time to play. Follow the money. Follow the money. We do need more plumbers, but everybody that's telling you we need more plumbers, they're not a plumber. You ever think about that? That's a good point. Gary Vee, shout out to him. I mean, he's a genius, obviously, but he's like, yo, we need electricians. Gary Vee's not an electrician.

7:38Go get it over there. I'm going to get it over here. I hate to be a bad guy, but let's just be honest. Everybody that told you that you need more plumbers, they're not plumbers. Yeah, show me how you making 30. Shout to him and Mike Boy, all y 'all. I love y 'all. So if they clip this up, we love you. But show us how to get 30 million off of the agency side. I'm gonna go get over there to hang drywall. Come on. It's a bunch of people in tech and VC saying, it's like, bro, y 'all making seven and$8 million off two, three deals. So what? And it's good money in plumbing, but show them how to make $10 or$15 million a year.

8:16Yeah. No, it's good money there. It's good money there. For sure. If you own a plumbing company, let's be honest, but what I'm saying is that they tell you one thing and they're not telling their children that. They're not sending their children to private school to become plumbers. No. They want them to, like I said, sometimes in life, people earn money from the neck down and some people earn money from the neck up. Hey, yo. Earning money from the neck up is wild work. I never see going down too. I said some people. Some people. Hey, y 'all. You might know those people. Maybe you know those people.

9:01I don't. But them rates down though. Appreciating that's it. Allegedly. or maybe not. Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts.

9:481969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

10:23Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast.

11:02On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. I went blank. I hit a bad note, and then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.