Unveiling a Financial World Order: Challenging the 'Own Nothing' Paradigm | Carol Roth

26:42And I'll point out one other thing that happened, right, that this kind of one of the reasons this is all sort of falling apart. has been a long time, but a really watershed moment is what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine, that we went through all these financial sanctions. We kicked Russia first out of the global payment settlement system. But then we did something that has never been done vis-a-vis a major economic nation before, is we froze the access to their reserves. So basically, they had held a bunch of dollars. And we went, no, sorry, you can't have that. And so who wants to let the U.S.

27:20have the reserve currency, be forced to do business in dollars just to allow the U.S. to say, no, you can't access that. I mean, it was an absolute insane thing that didn't happen through Congress. It was Biden and his administration kind of made this off-the-cuff decision. And by the way, a couple other of our allies, central banks, the ECB and Bank of Japan also did the same thing. And that was really, I think, one of the key kind of points in time that if you're somebody who maybe you have some things you want to do that aren't as friendly to what the U.S. wants you to do, now all of a sudden the person who's in charge of the game isn't going to let you play.

27:59That's a huge, huge issue. Yeah. So potentially people could look at the situation. And this, by the way, is not any comment on the war with Russia and Ukraine because Because obviously it didn't stop the war from happening. Correct. So it happened anyway. But this weaponizing of the dollar, countries can look at Russia and say, hey, if it happened to them, it could happen to us. And so they might be more open to another reserve currency. But my push, like a few months ago, I was really nervous about this. And that weekend, this is like, I don't know, six months ago, there were oil transactions done in the yuan.

28:35There was oil transactions done in the Brazilian real. But then I thought, who the heck wants to hold the Brazilian real as their major? Like, like right now, I still would say they're like no one really. China may be growing fast and whatever, you know, playing a bigger role on the global scale. Nobody wants to hold the yuan, though, ultimately, I think. Yeah, well, let me tell you what they're doing. So I completely agree with you. So there have been all these people who have forecasted that China is going to be huge and it's going to be the yuan. And I agree. It's a communist country. Nobody wants to hold.

29:09I mean, if you don't trust the U.S. with your dollars, do you trust China with their yuan? No. So here's what they've been doing. They have been loading up on physical gold and they are now offering credible physical gold settlement. So if you trade in yuan at any point in time, it's not a backing. It's not like a one for one. But if you trade and you say, nah, you don't want to hold this anymore, you have that opportunity to then retrade that into physical gold. And that's what they're using as this kind of de facto backing for their currency. So let me ask you this though. So China then will say, hey, you can either have yuan or gold?

29:47So you trade in yuan, right? So you're holding yuan, but they say, if you don't want to hang on to that, we have this exchange that will then exchange the yuan for gold. So you still have to make the initial trade, but the settlement is done, then, okay, you can have the gold. My pushback on that is that there's not enough gold in the world. And this is why Nixon got us off gold is because the U.S. was in such debt because of the Vietnam War and the Great Society programs back in the 60s that we just didn't have enough gold to pay our debts that we got off the gold standard and the rest of the world followed.

30:22It depends on the pricing of gold, right? So the pricing of physical gold in particular has been suppressed because of the kind of paper gold trade. The reality is, if you let gold go to what it probably would be, or they do a repricing of it, then that changes the system. And I think that's one thing that people are projecting is, again, one of many possible outcomes is that you see that major repricing in something like gold or that it ends up being a basket of currencies. Or as we've been talking about, you know, that you write in the book, you're something like a central bank digital currency that maybe has some sort of a backing of a basket of currencies and commodities and precious metals and whatnot behind it.

31:07So, you know, I think that the form that it takes is definitely very up in the air. And we know that it's chaotic. I mean, after Bretton Woods, it took 15 years to kind of transition from the pound sterling being the reserve currency to the U.S. really, you know, kind of being at that center. So that's a messy period that people have to get through. And we don't know what that looks like, but anything that is moving in that direction could cause a lot of chaos for people. This is great. Thank you for responding to my different pushbacks. My next pushback on this is that although probably our biggest export is the dollar, our second biggest export is all of our innovation.

31:49Like China still can't really compete with us in genomics, AI, any kind of automation, internet, like all these technological innovations from the past hundred years, it all comes from the US. China's not even close. Nobody's close. I guess the question then, and it kind of goes back to the thesis, the kind of the haves and have nots, is if you look at the technology landscape today and really the big tech companies, there's a handful of tech companies that sort of control everything. And if you think of their market caps. I mean, the market caps of the biggest tech companies are more than the GDPs of most of the countries in the world.

32:31Many of the tech companies have more users than countries have people. So there are a handful of people who are going to benefit. The question is, does that flow down to every American? And I think that what we're seeing with the sort of transfer of wealth that's been happening and this idea of people not owning anything is this bar belling of the population where you have a small group of people who are going to do very well. That's what they're trying to do. But what does that mean for everybody else in the process? And I think that's got to be the level of concern because we did have this period of prosperity where people were doing well and able to live that American dream.

33:15That's becoming harder. and these signposts are really taking us in a way that looks potentially kind of bleak here. And so, again, as I said, it doesn't mean America's going away, but if there is some resetting of the financial order, who is going to be the one that benefits? And if that's done in some sort of a debt jubilee or a marking up of gold or with different silos or, God forbid, a war that changes that around, there are people who are going to come out on top, as has happened every time this has happened historically. You know, this is not something that we haven't seen before. We've seen these kind of rises and falls of financial empires.

33:57And, you know, there are people who do very well with it. But that's sort of the point, is that the people who see this coming, who are the students of history, who are like, ah, this rhymes a lot with what I saw before with Britain, with the Dutch, with Rome back in the day. I got to make sure that I'm going to do really well and that I'm putting myself in a position to succeed. And you, oh, you should get really comfortable with non-ownership. It'll be really great for you. And it's that separation, which I think we have to be really cognizant of because it's not good for the average person.

34:31And just from a stability standpoint, we know throughout history that doesn't work out too well either.

34:53So what's the path to Main Street America doesn't own anything? I think it's really a change in the way that they approach their lifestyle. I know people don't like to hear this, and this is advice that you might hear during any time, but I think it's even more important now, is really kind of rejiggering and putting yourself on a personal austerity plan for your spending and taking whatever you can and making sure that you do have some level of hard assets. And obviously it's gonna be different for everybody, whether that is a home, whether that's precious metals. I know folks like you like digital assets, things like Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and, you know, other potential assets that you can actually have ownership and have that opportunity for appreciation, stocks, businesses, and the like.

35:44And you have to rejigger the way you think about things because, you know, we are a consumeristic nation, but consuming is different than taking your money and investing in it. And we were talking a little bit earlier off camera about just shifting lifestyles too. If you're in a city where you can't afford that house and you're paying rent and you're making somebody else wealthy along the way, maybe it's a shift and you're living in a different location where you do have that opportunity to participate in the American dream. Yeah. That's so interesting because like, for instance, COVID has changed lifestyle a lot.

36:21Like there's now work from home and remote work. And don't you think that, I mean, I'm hoping that some of the bad things that happen are going to be outweighed by the good, which is that the talent and innovation that would happen in places like New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago is going to disperse now throughout the country. And so people are going to move to Dallas or Denver or Atlanta or Salt Lake City or whatever. And that's what we're kind of seeing happening is that there's net outflows from the major cities and net inflows to this sort of second, third. Like Cincinnati right now is the fastest moving real estate market.

37:00So it's like a third or fourth tier city that is booming because of these outflows from the major cities. And that seems like ultimately like a net good thing for the country, that talent gets dispersed and money gets dispersed like that. I mean, I'm all for decentralization, like one that's done, again, by your own agency and choice and not like you felt like you were forced into it because of a bad situation created by government mandate. But I do think that that potentially could be a silver lining that we see here when we do see this dispersion. But I think the other thing that's important to realize, too, and I think this is part of our whole discussion here, is that not everybody in America is the same.

37:40And people like you and me may have the opportunity to work from home and have a lot of flexibility. But there are a lot of people who can't. You know, we have a 70 percent service based economy. A very large part of that requires you to be performing services somewhere other than in your home. And so, you know, I see friends and people that I talk to and, you know, kind of counsel about these issues. And they're like, what do you mean this work from home trend? And like, I can't work from home. I'm cutting hair. I'm working, you know, as a janitor, I'm working in a hotel. Like this is never going to be an option for me.

38:18So, you know, it's easy for us, you know, when, especially for the people who are in these kinds of bubbles of, hey, we have this great flexibility. My friend Carol Markowitz, I think calls it the pajama class or the laptop class, something like that, you know, that has lots of options, which is great, but there are so many people around the country that don't have those options. And again, the division of the haves and have nots, the picking of winners and losers has really been a bad thing for our country and for just the outcomes for the every American. And so I think we need to be cognizant of that as well.

38:56So how do we avoid this? Because again, it was so easy for the US to just shut down the entire economy and think there's going to be no consequences. Obviously we see the consequences with inflation, with displaced workers, with, with everything. It's going to take years to really understand the economic effects of COVID. Like, you know, the effect on, on major cities, having these outflows, like the downside is that all commercial real estate in major cities is being flushed down the toilet right now. Like, like in San Francisco, people who own like malls and major office buildings are literally just handing the keys back to the bank and saying, hey, we got to go.

39:38You guys could run this building if you want. It's a mall. Don't treat everyone nice. And that's never happened before. And think of the consequences of that. So if you're in a REIT or you're a real estate owner, you got this write-off and you have some way that you can manage through it and you go and raise more capital and you buy some stuff back cheaper and you have these sort of vulture boom and bust cycles. If you're the small business who is serving donuts next to the mall where everybody came to shop and to work and you were kind of the lifeblood and that was your only business, then that's your entire life savings that's just blown up.

40:18And so, again, it's this very different outcomes. And when we saw 15 years of suppressed interest rate policy by the Fed, nine years, which was, you know, zero interest rate or about zero interest rate, and you saw sort of this transfer, this benefit to the asset holders at the expense of the savers and the retirees and the people who are just getting by. And then you saw that happen again during COVID, where, you know, the people who had the big businesses did well and the small businesses are employed is down. This becomes this recurring theme is that if you are connected, you're going to have more opportunities and you have that duration and that sustainability.

40:57And if you're a small person, it just doesn't work out well for you. And I think that's the pushback here against these central planners. You know, the idea that the Fed came in, interfered with interest rates, put$9 trillion on its balance sheet over this 15-year period, that wasn't to help the average American. That was to help their buddies on Wall Street and to allow for the government to continue to finance at a very low interest rate. And we've seen that the wealthy get wealthier and the average person not do as well and have fewer wealth creation opportunities. And I'm all for merit-based inequality.

41:38Like if you are Michael Jordan and you're the best basketball player, you're the best singer and you should get paid more. But when it's driven by central planning policy, I have a really big problem with that. Yeah. So, so A, what do you think is going to actually happen in the next few years? And B, given that these things are probably going to happen, someone listening to this, what can they do to protect themselves? Yeah. So as you know, in financial services or in the markets in particular, it's the hardest thing to predict is duration, right? So you can see the trajectory of these things happen.

42:11You can be a short seller. You can know that a stock is going to eventually go down, but if it goes way up before it comes down, you're going to get crushed. So that's the hardest thing to do is, you know, you see what's happening, but getting the timing right is almost impossible in finance. And I think that's the same thing here is we don't know if this happens in 12 months. We don't know if it happens in 12 years. We don't know if it happens in 50 years. But I think that you do need to be prepared and ask yourself questions. One of the things that we haven't talked about yet that was in the book, for example, is that there's almost $85 trillion in wealth that is set to be passed down voluntarily over the next 23 years.

42:49And that can really help to level the playing field for the average American to have, especially if you're a millennial or Gen Z and you get some of the wealth that the boomers created passed down to you. But we're seeing from various administrations and a lot of the pundits talking about things like wealth taxes and inheritance taxes. And my fear is that you use the carrot of the billionaire, the ultra wealthy for people to go, yeah, we should totally tax, you know, unrealized capital gains or, you know, something like that. Not realizing that those are the people who have the sophisticated planning elements and that that's not what they're actually coming after.

43:30They want they want the bulk of that eighty five trillion dollars. So as the average person, for example, you can look into estate planning, you can look into trusts, or maybe you can start doing some gifting up to those maximums each year. I think it's$17 ,000 per year right now. That's something that you're concerned about because it's possible, though not guaranteed, you could be grandfathered in if they make rule changes. But the first step, James, obviously, is just empowering yourself with all the information because what you're going to do if they come out with a central bank digital currency is going to be very different than what you're doing to protect yourself from a potential wealth tax.

44:08All right. Let me ask you about that because, again, this is not like a for or against, but it's just reality. Like every country in the world is going to eventually do some sort of central bank digital currency. And there's a lot of feelings, and you talk about this in the book, that that's going to give the government more transparency into how you personally spend money. They're going to know everything basically. And they're going to be able to do things about it. Like if they decide, oh, you don't believe in a vaccine for the next COVID, oh, we're going to shut down your currency. We're just not going to let you spend money.

44:43And there's a lot of fear about that. Of course, that's just a theory of what could happen that nobody's said that will happen. I mean, government could do that now. They could shut down your bank account. They know where you do your banking anyway because of where you pay your money to your taxes. But what is going to happen with that? Again, every country is going to eventually do it. So what's a way to benefit maybe or to look at this central bank digital currency in a positive way? So it's one of the things I fear the most, frankly. And I see different ends and different ways that they could enact it, whether it's promising UBI, promising some sort of a bonus, You know, the same kind of thing that happened with the stimulus checks.

45:22Oh, you want stimulus checks. Oh, I don't realize that that's going to generate massive inflation for the rest of my life. I'll give you 10 digital dollars, James, for every dollar that you get. And then people think that they're going to be rich because they don't understand purchasing power versus, you know, the nominal headline value of the dollar. or it could be something like, hey, you guys hate inflation. If we had a central bank digital currency, we could better control inflation because you know what they can do if they want to destroy demand, they just turn off like access to spending, right?

45:54So I think that there's always these kind of, oh, these are these good ideas and ways that we can put this in place that end up having really bad consequences. And we know, as we've seen with every government program that's ever been put out that once they start with one level of scope, it just sort of expands and expands. So I think that the question for people is that if you have these dollars that you are earning and they're going to be in a form factor that somebody else has complete transparency and control over, do you again want to take some of those dollars and put them into other things, whether that's the investing side for the hard assets or think mediums of exchange?

46:36How are you, if they don't want you to eat burgers because it's bad for the planet and you really want to eat a burger, how are you going to barter? How are you going to use precious metals? Or if you're somebody who's into digital currency, is that an avenue for you? What is it that you're going to do? And I think part of it is just thinking through this ahead of time and having that plan. If your house is on fire, it's a really bad time to have an escape plan and think about getting insurance. But if you've done that already, then when that happens, at least you can go, okay, this is a bad situation, but I've thought through what I'm going to do.

47:14And I think this is an exercise in that. We don't know the timing. There are several different ways that this can turn out, but have you spent the time thinking through what you would do in each of these different situations? And because it's coming at us from every different angle, you have a lot of different situations you need to think through, but fortunately, many of them have similar ways that you can approach it. Just like dealing with inflation, if you're thinking it through an advance, okay, you own assets that nominate in dollars. So if the dollar, if you need more dollars to buy a house, hey, no problem, I own a house.

47:51If you need more dollars to buy McDonald's stock, no problem, I own stocks or I own bonds or other assets. I own art. I own other assets that go up in value potentially. You have to decide what those assets are given the situation. And I think diversification in general is a good philosophy here. Like diversify where you're getting your money from. It might mean multiple incomes if you own a business or a shareholder of a business. There's more of these crowdfunding platforms where there's more small businesses you can invest in. If you want to do that, that's a skill in and of itself. but that's another, like there's more places to put money now than ever before.

48:35So being educated about that, I do agree is important. Yeah. And I also think just, you know, kind of things that people like you and I who've had the exposure to it and financial services, but other people haven't thought through are important to go through. Asking for ownership as part of your compensation is huge. There's so few people who really think about, oh, do I want, stock options or some sort of a grant or some ownership in the company that I work for. And if you're going to be putting your heart and soul into building something that isn't yours, having that ownership is a great thing.

49:10And there are a lot of people who would be like, no, I'd rather have the cash. But if you're really committed to it, asking for that, and it's available for private and public companies. Not every company does it, but it's one of those things that I would be asking about and be more vocal. How can I get some ownership of this company that I'm working for and that I want to help build and succeed? What's the deal with our what's called unfunded liabilities, like Social Security? How much are we going to owe in Social Security over the next 30 or 40 years as the baby boomers and then Gen X retire?

49:45So, OK, so this doesn't include state pensions and it doesn't include the$32 trillion in actual debt that we owe. But the statistics that we have in the book cite just under$130 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which is one of the reasons why I'm so concerned about, A, them trying to inflate up the value of the dollar and print more dollars to deal with this and potentially cause inflation. and also coming after that$85 trillion that's turning over voluntarily, because boy, that would put a nice dent in those unfunded liabilities. The fiscal situation of the United States is not sustainable. And this is not my opinion solely.

50:30It's the opinion of the U.S. Treasury. It's the opinion of the CBO. It's not on a sustainable path, and they have said so in black and white. So something's got to give. And, you know, so far we haven't on any side of the aisle had anybody with a backbone to say, we really need to address this in a meaningful way, which means probably taking away some services because the only other ways that you pay for things are raising taxes, which at some point, as we know, ends up being a negative revenue generating proposition, printing more money in terms of monetizing the debt. So you don't have a lot of choices here.

51:14They all end up poorly for the average American and nobody really has the fortitude to be the one to deal with that. I guess because obviously politicians are elected by people and the primary voters of primaries are older people. And so that's who benefits from social security, Medicare, Medicaid, all these things is older citizens. And I'm arguing against myself. I'm four and a half, I'm four years exactly away from being able to collect my first social security check, oddly, which feels weird to say. I've never said that out loud before, but maybe there can be some staggered way. Like clearly quality of lifespan is going up.

51:52Like people are working into their seventies or longer lifespan in general is going up. So maybe you have some cutoff, like whoever's Gen Z now or millennials now or whatever, your retirement age is going to be not 59 and a half or 65, but 65 and a half and 70. Maybe there's a way to do that. Did you see what happened in France when they tried to do that? They tried to move the retirement age from 62 to 64 and they burned down Paris? Oh, no. So that's something to worry about. And that's the challenge is that we don't have strong financial literacy in this country. And so empowering people with this knowledge to understand the tradeoffs and saying, yes, I know you don't want this, but the alternative is worse.

52:38Or don't take the$1 ,000 stimulus check because it's going to end up costing you$7 ,000 to $10 ,000 a year minimum for the rest of your life. Those kinds of things, the average person has to get their head wrapped around for us to have any choice because the politicians don't want to risk that level of social unrest. I mean, what's interesting is that you say people don't have financial literacy, and I guess I agree, but the problem with that is that the evidence is so clear. Like there was a 60-year experiment in central economic planning, and it was called the Soviet Union, and it just did not work.

53:19The people starved. five-year plans, you know, China and Soviet Union would have these five-year plans. Oh, this is what the, these, this number of people is going to buy apples. This number of people is going to buy tomatoes and we'll, we'll tell the factories to make that. And the people starved, they couldn't make the food that people. And they couldn't get it. They couldn't get it to the people. One of the things Thomas Sowell's basic economics, they talk about in a lot of these places where people starved, it wasn't because they didn't have enough food, but they didn't have the transportation to get it to the people who needed it.

53:52Right. So, so capitalism, the gears of capitalism, and let's not even use the word capitalism, the gears of innovation. Free enterprise. Free enterprise. Figure that out. Like, oh, I need to get a car to get my apples that I grew to, you know, I need a train car to get it to New York city. So enough people can eat them. And I know exactly how much people want because people have been yesterday, people ordered this, not five years ago, but yesterday. And so the gears of free enterprise figure this out, which is why the U.S. was able to flourish. And the Soviet Union collapsed, the failure, the experiment failed.

54:28And China is essentially, you know, kind of this dictatorial capitalism right now. So A, everybody knows history. Everybody saw that. And then the second thing is when you have people, politicians, like well-known famous politicians come out and say, oh, we could tax unrealized capital gains, which means you invested in a stock, say, and it's gone up, but you haven't sold the stock, so it's unrealized. Let's make it personal to the people who are listening here. You bought a house. Your parents bought a house in 1970 for$100 ,000. Today on Zillow, Zillow says it's worth$2 million. You now own tax on$1.9 million.

55:10Where are you getting that tax from? Yeah, you have to sell the house. And so again, basic financial literacy, if everybody has to sell everything, then it's worse than, it's 10 times worse than the Great Depression. And you won't owe nothing, James. This is the whole point here, right? Is that these ideas that are being floated, they sound nice in theory. They're very like unicorn-like, right? But the reality and the history shows that they don't work. And we have a bunch of people because we have been prosperous who are in denial and don't sort of have that broad worldview. I mean, I would imagine, you know, if you were in, like, we've been in the pole position, you know, at the center of the global financial universe here in the US for the last 80 years.

55:55If you were in Britain, while they were at the center, they probably felt invincible too. I mean, the same with the Dutch, right? Like, hey, we're everything. We're the man. Nothing's ever going to change because it's just hard to imagine how you can mess it up so completely. But then you go look and our public debt to GDP is at 125%. You look at the unfunded liabilities. You look at sort of the people, the central banks who are moving away from the US dollar. There are a lot of red signs on the horizon. So again, it's not necessarily going to happen tomorrow, but you have to plan and prepare.

56:34You're not going to change the new financial world order from happening at some point in time, but maybe we can delay it or you can at least help yourself get through it. Yeah, I agree. I'm going to be both a cynic and an optimist here. So A, I think it's, I'm cynical in that I think multi-billionaires, it's to their incentive to have this new world order because it makes everyone, just when they made their money, everyone else now will be blocked from making money so they will rule and so i'm being cynical there and conspiratorial but the flip side is i would say gen x and baby boomers are more sophisticated financially than the generation before like each generation gets a little bit more sophisticated i think i hope and we're not going to vote for something that takes away everybody's property although again You have young people who are going out and taking out multiple six figures in college debt to pay for five figure salaries.

57:34So, I mean, I'd like to think that they're savvy, but the the architecture around them is feeding them lots of misinformation about things that don't add up mathematically. And I think that's not to say that they're not savvy people, but there are too many sort of free riders and people who are benefiting that are creating a system. And then they're just being like, yes, you should totally take out$200 ,000 in debt to make, you know, to go teach in a public school. Like it makes no sense whatsoever. They're never going to be able to pay that back. And by the way, nobody's running on it from either party.

58:15You're not seeing anybody being like, you know, the government's the largest predatory lender in the world. You know, the colleges, it's a huge wealth transfer from young people to colleges and their administrators. Like we need to fix this system so that our young people not only get good educations, but have the opportunity to then go out into the world and create wealth and be in a better position instead of college making them poor. So again, where I'm cynical is I don't think government's going to solve that problem because if you even say kids shouldn't go to college, which I wrote a column on in the Financial Times in 2005, and I got so much hate mail, it was ridiculous.

58:51Now it's more of a conversation, but it's still people are pretty much against that idea. Government's going to push back. But college tuitions have risen faster than inflation for the past 70 years in a row, every single year. And like you say, you're borrowing six figures to make a five-figure income that can't be sustainable from a free enterprise point of view. Like at some point, all of these new public school teachers will say, hey, don't do what I did. And they're going to be educating the kids hopefully better. How long is that going to take? You would think that that would have happened at this point.

59:26Instead, they're saying, forgive our debt instead of saying, you know, they want the free ride, not understanding that they're still going to pay for it and everyone else is going to pay for it. And that's become the shift in the system is that government and the Fed are creating these problems. And then people have been trained to look to them to be the one who's going to create the solution. And you're right. They're not the ones. We need to stand up and we need to educate people. We need to push back against this. It's the only way it's going to change. Yeah. And you make an interesting point.

59:56The government now, and this just came up in the Supreme Court the other day. The government obviously wants to give student debt relief. And I really feel for the people who have student loans, which is because they made a mistake before they were ready to assess what that risk was. They were preyed upon by the government. The 17 and 18 year olds preyed upon by the government nationalizing most of student lending. Right. So there's gotta be some consequences somehow for the government in this, which is unfortunately, it can't really happen that way. But I don't know. I mean, look. I mean, one thing they could do, they could do two things, right?

1:00:39I mean, one is that they could change the interest situation, right? They had basically free capital for a long time. Why are they earning a bigger interest rates? They could change the interest because obviously that's a big piece of what's killing people. But really, they need to get out of the lending. We need an underwriting process. We need to bring back bankruptcy option, which you can't have if you don't have the underwriting process because it's not baked in there. You need the colleges to have some skin in the game. I mean, it just needs to be revised. I agree. There's no reason why, if I was a college president, I'm going to raise the tuition as much as I can because the government guarantees all the money.

1:01:18I get the money no matter what. But here's the thing now. Now, the problem is because there's the hint of student loan debt relief, I'm more willing to take out a loan for my kid because maybe I'll never have to pay it because there's going to be debt relief. So that is going to keep the system going. Moral hazard. Even the whiff in the air. Exactly. It's the moral hazard baked into the system. And yeah, so it's a question of at some point, this, like you said, becomes unsustainable. It all blows up. So the question is what happens then at that point? Like there has to be a reset because we can't just keep pushing in this story.

1:01:52Like something eventually you keep, you're like, Oh, we're not at the edge of the cliff. I'll just go a little farther. Yeah. We're not at the edge of the cliff. I'll go a little farther. Eventually you're going to go over the cliff and then, okay, all bets are off at that point. Maybe when there's a, uh, the next generation assumes the presidency, like there's instead of, you know, 70 and 80 year olds on both parties running for president, maybe when 40 year olds, I don't know. So here's what I would say. Give me some hope. Here's what I would say about this. As human nature is human nature. People act as their best self-interest.

1:02:24Nobody would want to be a politician unless they're a narcissistic sociopath. Like the three people who are good aren't going to outweigh the narcissistic sociopath. So we need to, as individuals, be able to push back against that. And then also, you know, a lot of this is look at what the elite people are doing instead of what they're saying. You know, when they say, oh, you know, don't own a house and they're loading up on mansions or, you know, you don't need this. Watch what they're doing and put a lot more weight on that. And just prepare yourself and your community that if something were to shift in the global financial order tomorrow, like what is it that you're going to do?

1:03:05And I do think the idea of America is so important that eventually we will have people who will stand up. It may be really ugly in the process. I hope not. But we need to be prepared to work through that and set yourself up during that interim period. Well, Carol, I hope you're right and I hope it's not so painful because I agree. The American dream, as distorted as some have made it out to be, whether you're left or you're right or whatever, the American dream is very real. It's created incredible innovation throughout, particularly this past generation. And the innovation is only getting greater and faster with, again, in every technological sector.

1:03:51And I, for one, hope that continues. And I know you do as well. But you're right. Things have to correct itself somehow. We'll see how that happens. But Carol Roth, author of You Will Own Nothing, great book. It describes all the history of all these different trends. It describes what's going to happen next. It describes solutions. I really hope people read it. It's really important. You Will Own Nothing by Carol Roth. Carol, once again, thanks for coming on the podcast and I hope you come on again. Yeah, I would love to. It's such an interesting and thoughtful conversation and just appreciate us being able to explore these ideas that I think are gonna be really important for the decades to come.

1:04:32So would very much welcome another conversation. Thank you.

1:04:48Thank you.