How to Think About Careers, Global Risk, and Teaching Money — ft. Ed Elson & Kyla Scanlon

0:03Every year, hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world flock to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. And they spend a week trying to sell each other on the weirdest gadgets you've ever seen in your entire life. This week on The Vergecast, we're talking all about everything happening at CES. From the TVs, to the AI gadgets, to the humanoid robots that everybody is hoping might someday do your laundry and wash your dishes. All that and much more on The Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts.

0:33What are the top 10 global risks we should be thinking about for 2026? Long term, you are giving away the store to countries that operate more effectively in the law of the jungle. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the Eurasia Group, joins me to discuss his annual risk report and how we can make sense of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and the capture of Nicolas Maduro. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

1:08Welcome to ProfG on Economics, a special series focused on the forces shaping the economy and your financial life. Scott Galloway is away this week, so I am filling in. Who am I? I'm Ed Elson, co-host of ProfG Markets, and I am more importantly joined by the one and only Kyla Scanlon, economic commentator and author of In This Economy, How Money and Markets Really Work. Kyla, thank you for doing this. Thank you for doing Scott's job for him. It's great to see you. Great to see you.

1:45So we will be answering your questions on the economy that you have, you as the audience, have sent us and what it means for your money. If you would like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehours at profgmedia.com. Again, that is officehours at profgmedia.com. or you can post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit. Okay, Kyla, are you ready to do this? Yeah. So our first question comes from Afro Turk on Instagram. They say, How should young professionals who feel priced out of home ownership by rent, student loans, and higher living costs think about whether to keep chasing big city careers versus moving to more affordable markets to accelerate saving, investing, and eventually buying a home.

2:35How has the American dream changed for you both? So I'm kind of reading this as like a, do I go to a city or not question. I'm going to throw this over to you to start, Kyla. What would be your response to Afroturk on Instagram? I mean, I think it's a fair question. And it's one that is a lot harder to decide than I think people give it credit for. So for me, like I grew up in Kentucky and ended up moving to LA immediately after I graduated in 2019. So I chose the big city career, but then the pandemic kid. And so I think that's one part of it is that you don't know what's going to happen. And so I think here you have to optimize for what you want.

3:25Like if you want to buy a house right away, it's not the smart thing to move immediately to a big city. It's just not going to happen unless you have generational wealth. And I think the American dream has evolved really substantially for everybody because we consider buying a house the American dream, but it's gotten very expensive everywhere. So even though this question says, like, should I stay in my small town and buy a house, like, those homes are still quite expensive too. And there's something called Balmo's cost disease. Have you heard about this? Have you heard of almost cost disease?

3:59No. So I think it gives a lot of support to what this person is asking, where we've gotten really productive as a country over the past several decades. We've gotten really good at producing goods cheaply because we do, we did a lot of international trade. And so goods have gotten a lot cheaper because we've gotten more productive at producing them, but it's much more harder to get productive with services. So you can't really automate a physician, but you can automate a car factory. And so I think that has also really shifted the American dream, where like the average American today has a ton of stuff.

4:36Like most Americans have a lot of things. But that, you know, more, if you're thinking, broadly speaking, about buying that house, it's a little bit more difficult to achieve. And so I think the American dream at one time was like accumulation of goods, buying the house, getting married, having kids, retiring, the buying a lot of stuff is achievable, but the other half of it is not so achievable. But anyway, I think the point of this question is it's very much preference. It's interesting because this, I saw this comment and this was one of the most popular comments. And it seems like this is something that people are really thinking about.

5:11I think to your point, when COVID happened, that sort of blew a hole in the whole where do you live question, because we suddenly realized that you could maybe live anywhere and you could do your job from anywhere and everything would be remote, which kind of was true for a little bit. I'm not sure how true it's going to be moving forward. But I mean, just my two cents on this question. Like if you're, I mean, this question is a young person, it seems like, how should young professionals think about this? Do I move to the small town where maybe things are more affordable? Or do I go to the big city where things are more expensive, but maybe there's more opportunity?

5:56The way I think about this is when you're young, like you've just graduated, you're just getting out there, starting a career. My view is that as a general rule, you should optimize everything for your career. like your career and establishing value in the workplace establishing your personal value in the marketplace that to me is like the most important number one thing and it's important at that moment in time in your life because and scott often talks about this like those first 10 years basically 10 to 15 years kind of set the trajectory for what your life is going to look like and it's not fair that that's the case and maybe it shouldn't be the case but that is just kind of the way things work.

6:41So my view is optimize for your career, figure out how to set yourself up for success, get that early trajectory. And my other view is that if you're trying to do that, I think you should go to a city because that's just where the opportunities are. And we have some data here that I'm looking at, which is, you know, kind of understandable. And that is, the first piece of data is from the BLS. Average wages in metropolitan areas are 29 % higher than in non-metropolitan areas, which, you know, is striking, but also you'd probably guess. This is also from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Income growth in non-metropolitan areas was 4.7%.

7:25This was in 2023. In metropolitan areas, so cities, it was 6%. So your wages are rising faster. And this is the most important point. This is from the Fed. which found that wages for workers in big cities rise faster with experience compared to workers in small cities. And I feel like that's the most important point, which is you shouldn't be basing your understanding of your life based on your current earnings as like a 24-year-old, 25-year-old, because it's going to change dramatically over time. And the reality is, if you're in a city where things are more competitive, there is more opportunity.

8:04Also, you're surrounded by people who are probably just better, at least at the whole work thing. People are probably making more money, they're more competitive. It's going to make you more interested in working harder. and ultimately that's going to mean that probably based on the data your wages and your earnings are going to increase at a higher clip than if you were to go to a smaller town so i agree it's situational and you know i mean everyone has different preferences but i feel like my general rule is like you want to think about your career you want to be laser focused on that early on which probably means go to a city and then once you've figured your stuff out and you know what you're doing and you have relationships with people you have credentials then you can start thinking about the quality of life stuff then you can start thinking about like okay where do i really want to live do i really want to be living in this big city or do i want to be living somewhere else where i can have a bigger home etc but early on i would vote city yeah i mean i'm curious like one thing that we're really seeing a lot of right now is people who over-optimized through their careers and now are very tragically having fertility issues, especially for women.

9:17And so I think what we're talking about too is also the world of AI, like the big city career. It's going to be really challenged by the onslaught of automation, which is actually, funnily enough, the answer to Balm-Less cost disease is AI and automation should help services get cheaper because all of a sudden we have, supposedly, I don't think it's going to happen, but like 100 AI physicians, right? And so I think that's the other thing is that like for me, I moved to the big city from a small town, smallish town outside Louisville and was like, okay, I'm going to do this thing. And then the whole thing shut down.

9:53And so I think one thing that's really important is you do save no matter where you are. You try to invest no matter where you are. Buying a home is obviously more difficult to achieve, but I do want to make it really clear that I don't think these things have to be mutually exclusive, that you can, you know, have a career, maybe think about like what you want in life because we are seeing some tragic challenges that people are facing and then still try to save and invest as much as you can. So I think those are important caveats to that conversation. I totally agree. And I would also, to your point, I probably have a pretty male-centric view of things because I'm sort of like, go work your ass off like that's what you have to do but it's a great point it's like you know that that might not be what you're trying to optimize for so again it really it is situational as i'm sure the answer will be to many of these questions but let's move on to number two uh this question also comes from instagram this is from harry alonan uh harry asks greenland keeps popping up in geopolitical conversations lately.

11:00Rare Earths, U.S. interest, China. How should we be thinking about Greenland economically? Is this a genuine shift that could reshape supply chains and investment or mostly a geopolitical topic slash situation? And if this stuff does matter, where on earth are you supposed to put your capital and invest? There are interesting economic pieces to this story. And it's similar to the economic, interesting pieces to the Venezuela story. For Greenland, it's that it's resource-rich, as it seems that this user knows. They have a ton of rare earth elements. They have 40 million tons. Experts say it could be 20 % of all of the global reserves, which is interesting.

11:44And so we have seen a little bit of stock market activity. There's also this other problem with Greenland where it's covered in ice, and also there's no infrastructure or people. So if you want to get the rare earth stuff out of the ground and you want to sell it, that's going to cost a ton of money, billions and billions of dollars. And it's also going to cost a ton of time. People think it's going to take like at least 10 years, maybe like 20, maybe 30 years to get all of that stuff figured out. These, to me, are fun, interesting questions, just because they're interesting. But I don't think they are relevant to your life.

12:26And I definitely don't think that they're relevant to your portfolio. Like, I don't think that this is something you should be thinking about as an investor. And I would even point to Wall Street's reaction to the whole Greenland-Venezuela situation, where you had a couple of stocks that climbed because they're very specific to the region. If you're a rare-earth mining company that has a project in Greenland, yeah, your stock went up. But overall, there was almost no reaction from Wall Street. The S &P, the larger market, didn't really care. um and i honestly think that that is the way that you should probably think about this as an investor like this doesn't really affect you unless you want to try to be a stock picker but if you're going to do that well then you got to now become an expert on greenland and rare earth elements in the nordic region which i don't think you probably want to do so to me i don't think this is that important i think if we're thinking about like the real issues around this like what the larger conversation this brings up, to me, it's more of a geopolitical story.

13:32It's more about how America is trying to become more of an imperial nation. Trump's been talking about going into Cuba and Colombia. Like if we decide as a nation that our new MO is to just invade countries and take their shit, that's kind of a big deal. And maybe that does affect you to the extent of like, what does that mean for America and its relationships with other nations? What does it mean for our relationship with Denmark, for example, and therefore Europe? What does it say to our allies? What does it say to China? Does that embolden China to go in and start taking Taiwan? That is kind of a different conversation, which brings up a question of like, is this going to make the world a more violent place?

14:15And maybe that would be important to our lives. But for the time being, I would say, no, it isn't. This is more of an interesting story that is worth tracking, but not something that you should think, oh my gosh, like, what do I do with my portfolio now? What do you think, Kyla? Well, I kind of disagree with you. Yeah, I mean. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, sorry. So I think it's important to like level set the situation in Greenland. Like Denmark has controlled Greenland for hundreds of years. Greenland does not want to be controlled. The people of Greenland do not want to be controlled by Denmark, but they also do not want to be controlled by the United States.

14:54So that's number one most important thing. What do the people there want? They want freedom. And the U.S. actually has already they have access to the materials that they need. In 1951, the U.S. did sign a defense agreement with Greenland that gave them military access to Greenland. It was updated in 2004 to state that the U.S. has to tell Greenland and Denmark if they're going to do anything there, but they can go and do things there. And also Javier Blas of Bloomberg Opinion wrote a great piece talking about how, as you said, how difficult these rare earths are to get out of Greenland. The ice is so thick.

15:31If you really want rare earths, that's not the best country to go to. There's some speculation that perhaps supply chains are going to be evolving around Greenland as global warming happens and ice melts. So there's all sorts of speculation around this topic. But I think the way that the U.S. is thinking about this is underneath the lens of the Dondro Doctrine, right? So Trump released this national security strategy document in November 2025 that talked about how the U.S. wants to be the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. That's what we saw with the action in Venezuela. that's why he's threatened Cuba he's threatened Colombia he's threatened Mexico he's threatened Iran he's threatened Canada um and so it does seem in Iran's obviously not in the western hemisphere so apparently the Don Road doctrine is very uh far-reaching um it's everyone but if the U.S.

16:19invades Greenland NATO will like the NATO will have to respond in some way so all of the countries that have been the U.S.'s allies for the past you know since the post-world war era are now going to have to look at the U.S. and say, okay, we can't really get along with you like how we used to, because you just attacked one of our member states, which is Denmark. And Denmark has also been one of the closest allies to the United States. Same situation with Canada, where you're kind of like punching your best friend in the face for no apparent reason. And that's kind of the hard part I have about understanding this and, you know, what a lot of commentators and researchers and analysts are talking about is it doesn't make a lot of sense.

16:57And if anything, at the net impact could be really bad. I think it does signal a more multipolar world, like you pointed out, where maybe the signals to China that they can have Taiwan, it signals to Russia that they can have Ukraine. Trump is very focused on expanding military power right now. You know, he talked about building out the defense budget to one point of building it to, I think, another $1.5 trillion or to$1.5 trillion. And he's talked about, you know, how the defense companies no longer can pay out dividends. There's going to have to be caps on compensation. And then he's also very focused on economic power, which was in his mind, the tariffs.

17:35And so this is kind of setting the U.S. to be very isolationist. It's a very different U.S. than we've had in sort of the period of the Great Moderation, which has been the past 40 years or so. And so Greenland actually represents a lot. It represents a U.S. that is thinking about diplomacy very differently. And in terms of investing, BlackRock came out with their view of 2026 and the things that they're focused on. And I think this is a good rule of thumb. You know, they're a big investor and I think they're pretty smart about this kind of stuff. But they've talked about diversification really mattering in times like this.

18:10So if you want to protect your financial profile against some of the volatility that we have been seeing and probably will continue to see over the next couple of months diversifying. So BlackRock is investing like quality or they're recommending quality fixed income. They're recommending exposure to emerging markets. They're thinking a little bit, how can you get stable and then how can you get beyond the U.S.? So investing internationally. Bloomberg also put together a really great piece. They look at all of the investment outlooks for 2026 that all the big banks talk about. And so a lot of them are recommending international exposure to real assets like land, exposure to gold, and some exposure to the more like nuts and bolts part of the AI trade.

18:53So things like memory. And so I do think there's a lot to consider with Greenland. And I think there's ways that you can think about your capital a little bit differently just because of what this does signify. I think right now it's all smoke and mirrors. but if it does happen you know it's it's a different world and you have to think about capital differently yeah it's almost the question is like if if we invade greenland like if we actually go in there with guns and we start taking people's shit i agree it's like okay i guess part of my issue is i i haven't i haven't experienced that yet so it's really hard to tell what what that world will look like but i think what is definitely true is if that happens and it is a big if but if it does we are definitely looking at a different uh type of world um and i i mean to your point diversification de-risking that was one of my big emmos for this year as well as this is kind of the year to de-risk if you can um i think that's i think that's a great point okay we will be right back after a quick break

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22:32Welcome back. We are moving on to our final question. It's me and Kyla. This is from Thai Guy on Reddit. He says, quote, considering you're both Gen Z slash younger millennials, how would you want to see financial literacy taught to younger generations, especially those under 18. Considering America has had a poor track record of teaching basic personal finance in institutions like high school and college, how would you introduce or reform this? Big fan. You're both awesome. Thank you very much, Thai guy. Kyla, what do you think? I mean, this is something I think a lot about. You know, I wrote a book that was meant to be an introductory guide to economics, meant to make it fun, you know, illustrations and everything.

23:15And so I think that it's been very tough to teach financial literacy. The main thing that I hear from econ teachers is that it's just it's pretty abstract for students. Like it's hard to conceptualize money. It's hard to conceptualize what, you know, making a budget means when you're that age. And so I think when students get to college, that's when it gets pretty important because they have more of a concept of money. It's not as abstract. And I think what's really important about both personal finance and economics education is you kind of have to root it in what happens to the news. So if you have like a CPI report talking about inflation, you can talk about how the market reacts, how that's going to impact somebody's portfolio, and then talk about how the CPI data is collected.

23:59Like, you know, what is this role of this government institution in determining what inflation is and therefore the direction of your life? And so I think you have to have it always rooted in some example because the language of economics is not always that accessible. But when you have a news headline, I think it becomes a little bit more accessible. And I think that's the purpose of economics education is to kind of understand the world around you as it's happening. So I think it's really important to anchor it in reality for students. This is such a good question, and it's such a good question for you specifically, because you're kind of the person who's figuring this out better than anyone.

24:40Like you are popularizing these issues, trying to and succeeding. And yeah, I think it's a great point about tying it to the news. I feel like part of it is you want it to be fun, like you want it to be interesting. and beyond that you want to understand why it's relevant and why it matters like why you should care and i feel like that's something that is not that schools generally don't do a great job of because you and i don't really know how schools work but i assume you get the curriculum this is what you're supposed to teach here's the content okay go teach it but there should be more emphasis on the reason you should know this is for the following reasons like this could impact your life for X, Y, and Z reasons.

25:26And there's nothing more impactful on a person's life than something like financial literacy, which is why I don't understand why there's not more support for teaching this in schools. And maybe there is, maybe it's growing, but I tend to land where Scott lands on this. And that is, I think we should have like adulting classes in school. Like, we should teach kids, like, this is what the adult world looks like. This is what your life will look like. And here are some things that you should know before that happens. One of them, for me, that I would want to teach, for example, would be like, what is credit?

26:06And how does it work? And why does it actually matter? Because, I mean, some of the stats around Gen Z's understanding of this stuff is kind of insane. Half of us don't know what affects a credit score. score, one in five never check a credit score. And that's something that's like, okay, well, then we need to explain to people what it is and why it's important. Like why it's a bad thing if your credit score goes down. And I don't think people really understand that. I don't think people understand that it can increase your interest rates if you're taking out a loan, that it can affect your employment.

26:43Like the fact that if you're applying for a job, your employer could literally just check your credit and be like, no, you can't have this job now because your credit score is too low. Like that happens. And I feel like people don't understand that because there's not enough emphasis on the tangible outcomes of these lessons. The same would go for student debt and college loans. Like, I don't think people know enough about how many people regret going to college because they took out all of this student debt. And that's another example of like, this is the tangible, realistic outcome of this decision.

27:21This is why it matters to you. So I love this question. I love that Kyla is here to answer this question. And yeah, my view on this, we need adults in classes and we need more emphasis in schools on why these things actually matter. Answer that question for the students so that it's clear to them why it's actually important to listen. I mean, the tough part about fitting it into schools is the schools are already so packed with curriculum that econ classes or personal finance classes have to take a section of like a history course because there's just no room in the students' schedules. And so I think that's when it becomes important to have like an adulting app or like just have this stuff be a bit more accessible for people.

28:08And what's really interesting is a lot of the young people who are trading meme stocks and meme coins actually have a relatively decent understanding of personal finance because, as you said, they understand the application of it. They understand what it means. They have to follow the markets and therefore the economy to trade their memes. And so there is a way to teach it outside of school. And sometimes I wonder if that's kind of what we have to focus on is having publicly available resources so the students have time to look at it. It makes me think that's also probably why this podcast, as an example, has been successful and you have been successful is because there's a void in this market that it seems like podcasts and books and your videos are filling because like you just don't get taught this stuff in school.