America’s Most Charitable Places, McLaren’s Zak Brown

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1:35This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston bringing you stories of capitalism. Last summer, we took you to Jackson Hole, the wealthiest place in the country. Now we head east to Arkansas and Michigan to see what drives the most charitable counties in the U.S. President Trump came to office promoting a swing away from green energy. But given the exploding energy demand from those AI data centers has all of the above, won what was a battle between fossil fuels and renewables. As the Formula One season draws to a close, we spend time with the man who has already won. Zac Brown brings us the remarkable story of his personal journey from rebellious high schooler in California to the pinnacle of auto racing as head of McLaren Racing.

2:20But we start with the big visit this week of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the White House, a symbol of a potential shift for investors from looking to the kingdom as a source of capital to a destination for Western investment. Deborah Lair of Baselina has been working on the transition. So, Deborah, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, came to Washington this week. As far as you know, what was his agenda? Well, just the arrival and the welcoming ceremony already has been a great success for the crown prince to be welcomed in an unprecedented way to the White House with this military band, military on horseback, escorting him into the White House in the flyover.

3:09The president personally walking him through already shows both the respect that the president has for him and the partnership that the United States is demonstrating with the kingdom. Under Vision 2030, the crown prince has put a priority on diversifying the economy. This year, for the first time ever, 55 % of GDP actually comes from the non-oil sector. So as they look to attract data centers, for example, they just don't want to be host to them. They want to build out a whole infrastructure around data centers to be an electricity and cheap energy supplier to building out the whole AI network, to attracting AI networks, to being the world's leader in e-games.

3:56One of the benefits that Saudi Arabia has is, obviously, it's one of the largest countries in the Middle East, and so they can provide space for manufacturing data centers to provide that technology. There's low-cost energy for building up the AI infrastructure, so they've been in discussions to build out their own AI infrastructure. They have their own domestic champions that they're building out, like Humane. But also they're looking to be the e-sports and e-gaming capital of the world. And so they spent a lot building out that infrastructure, in part because they have such a young population.

4:32But also it's an opportunity for them to show their own technological capabilities. Saudi Arabia is a wealthy country. At the same time, maybe not quite as wealthy as it was before because the price of oil is somewhat suppressed. That's where it gets a lot of its revenue for them. Does it have to cut back at all on its investment ambitions, given where its fiscal situation is? Well, that's an excellent point. And clearly, their revenues are still highly dependent on the price of oil. And we have seen a cutback in recent years on some of the mega projects. So we've seen that in the case of Neom, where they've cut back on the grand ambitions and slimmed down the project, but also then focused in on other things like the Saudi Expo, where they are putting a lot of money and capital into that project.

5:21I think they're also being smarter about how they're spending their money. Originally, they brought in a lot of outside consultants and spent millions and millions of dollars on plans and strategies and ideas of how to build or how to make these mega projects successful. They're not so dependent on those outside consultants anymore. where we've seen really a move to much more specialty insights that they're seeking from outside experts and taking a lot on themselves. The Crown Prince, as you say, set out a very ambitious agenda for 2030. Do they have enough of a track record yet to know whether they're on track for where they need to get to?

5:59So Vision 2030 was a very ambitious all-of-nation plan, one of the most ambitious transformations in the world, and it was a very aggressive timeline. When we look at some of the indicators, for example, attracting foreign investment, what they've had to do is transform their regulatory structure. That, even though it is moving forward, they've been able to streamline a lot of the regulations. They've opened up sectors to 100 % ownership by foreign firms. It's not one-sided. Western investors are responding to the friendlier tone and are at least dipping their toes into the kingdom. In the past year, tech companies like Tesla and Scale AI have moved operations and offices there.

6:46Stephen Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations says Saudi Arabia is opening up with some limits. Saudi Arabia is now open for business. Of course, there are restrictions. This is Saudi Arabia, after all. But the Saudis are interested in bringing the world to Saudi Arabia. They look at its location. They see it as an important center for culture, sports, tourism, technology and logistics. I think the Saudis are kind of opening the door to all of these companies who have expressed a tremendous amount of interest in coming to Saudi Arabia. But there is issues related to kind of, from what I understand, related to what the Treasury Department and what the Commerce Department will allow a company like Google or Apple to do in a place like Saudi Arabia.

7:38What about countries other than the United States as possible investors? You're seeing, for example, from Europe. Yeah, you're seeing general interest in the quote unquote new Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his mantra has been to make Saudi Arabia a normal country. Now, he is not a Democrat. He's not a liberal. This is all top-down reform. But I think what he sees is most Saudis are 18 to 50 years old. And if you're going to make your country prosperous and you're going to want to have that cohort staying there and making their lives there. And so he's been inviting investment from all over the world into the kingdom so that people can work and live and enjoy their lives like they would if they were in the United States or Europe.

8:29One of the areas of potential investment is real estate, commercial and residential. What is the level of investment in real estate right now going on in Riyadh, in Jeddah? Well, I mean, the only way to really answer this, David, is to say that the most oft-sighted bird in Saudi Arabia, especially in those two cities, is the construction crane. I mean, I don't think there are enough construction cranes in Saudi Arabia to satisfy all the building that is going on. They've had to bring them in from other places. In terms of real estate, who's doing the investing in all this construction with all these cranes you talk about?

9:04Where's that money coming from? Well, a lot of this is driven by the government. But they've encouraged private firms to engage in the development of cities and so on and so forth. So there are authorities that the government has established that have partnered with private firms in terms of the development in Jinda, of the old city and the development of hotels there and tourist attractions there. But a lot of this is top-down driven by the government. But there is private money coming in. We've heard about Trump developments in both Jidda and Riyadh. Adam Neumann has a flow project in Riyadh as well.

9:44That's private money going in. And do they partner with Saudi entities? How does that work? Well, yeah. So there has been a recent change in how foreigners can invest in real estate. It's in certain areas. And it has to be in partnership with a Saudi entity. But it is less restrictive than it was, where previously it was much, much harder for foreigners to invest in real estate in Saudi Arabia. Right now, AI is all the rage, right? In the United States and elsewhere. There's a lot of concern about maybe a bubble, over-investing in AI. Is there a danger of over-investing in, for example, real estate in Saudi Arabia?

10:26Absolutely. I mean, I think that that's certainly the case. Again, there is a build it and they will come aspect to what they're doing. The Saudis, when you press them on this, will say that they've done the hard work and know that there's demand for all of this. But if you just look at the scale of the projects that they're doing, they're not even called mega projects. They're giga projects. They're enormous, trillion dollar bet on a country. You have to wonder whether the demand and supply will come together on this. And again, we've seen this before where the Saudis have, you know, had this grand vision for new cities and so on and so forth.

11:09And they've never come to fruition. Look, Neom, which is something that the Crown Prince has talked a lot about, in many ways it's his baby. They've had to scale that back over and over and over again. Part of it is engineering and the idea that, you know, what he envisions is extremely difficult to do. But at the other end of it is just putting a city down in a place where one didn't exist before. Not only has engineering challenges, but you have to wonder if there wasn't a city there before, why would there need to be a city there now? So it's those kinds of flights of fancy that I think people need to be worried about when it comes to Saudi Arabia.

11:47Coming up, we hear a lot about economic inequality in the United States, but not nearly as much about how much wealth and time is given away each year. As we head into this Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., we'll go to the two most charitable places in the nation, Northwest Arkansas and Western Michigan.

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13:48This is a story about giving back, and in particular, the single place in America that does it better than anyone else. Earlier this year, we brought you the story of the wealthiest spot in the country. The residents of Teton County, Wyoming, have an average annual income of around a half a million dollars. They also donate more per person than anyone else. But then, it's easy to give more when you have more. So who gives the most as a proportion of how much they make? That's another story altogether. It's a chilly autumn morning in western Michigan. And today, like every Sunday, people here are heading to church.

14:31It's a small town. I mean, we have, what, two lights, maybe? You know, not very big. But I do know that they're very giving. We genuinely do care about the people that are right next door to us. You know your neighbors. You know the people that your kids go to school with. You see them on a daily basis. Of all the cities, towns, and communities across the United States, building stands apart when it comes to lending a helping hand. But to understand why, we have to think about the nature of giving. Generosity is more than just money. It's being a family. It's being part of the community. Community is something Pastor Ryan Snyder and his congregation think about a lot.

15:14Even more so when we told them what we had found. After years of research, Harvard economist Raj Shetty and his team joined the U.S. Census Bureau to create the Opportunity Atlas, a project analyzing billions of data points to learn about the economic fabric of America. Among the factors they studied was volunteerism. In this case, the share of people in a given place who are members of a volunteer group. And there is one town, one single zip code that stands above the rest. You guessed it. We're just a little tea on town. I mean, we don't, Belding? Are you kidding? We have nothing famous. I know that Belding has its flaws just like everybody else does.

15:54But one thing I can say about Belding is that Belding is willing to support when support is necessary. Anytime that there's a need, everybody will always step up. no doubt. According to the Opportunity Atlas, about 7 % of people nationwide are part of a volunteering group. In Belding, zip code 48809, that figure is 56%. I was born and raised in Belding. I lived here for a long time, and I'm still in this community. Community isn't just you being in your house and you happen to live next to others. Community is that you're willing to help others regardless of your beliefs, regardless of your political stances, regardless of what they look like.

16:37Generosity is an individual act, but it also is an act that responds to the social environment. Kevin Fitzpatrick is the director of the Community and Family Institute at the University of Arkansas. Whether it's an individual characteristic or something that our family always did or now it's something that our church does, I mean, people are brought to generosity through a lot of mechanisms. Although Belding might have an especially strong community, it's just one remarkable place in a particularly remarkable state. Take a look at membership and volunteer groups across the country as a whole, and the competition isn't close.

17:20Michigan is in a league of its own. We asked Michigan native and former Blackstone vice chairman Tony James why that might be. I was born in Wyandotte, as you point out. Not many people actually know that. No one's heard of it. But now my real connection is I have a summer home in northern Michigan. And people say, do you have a house in your Hamptons? Do you have a place in Nantucket? No, I go to northern Michigan. I love northern Michigan. It's absolutely beautiful. There aren't many New Yorkers there. If I told you that of all the states in the Union, Michigan ranked at the top in terms of volunteering, would you be surprised?

17:55I was very surprised, honestly. Having said that, that whole Midwestern Bible Belt area was pretty much the same green color. So it got me thinking about why. And I think what distinguishes that part of the country is small towns. not really rural like the American West where there's lots of empty space and certainly not urban but small towns and towns that have been struggling I guess economically for the last 25 or 50 years shrinking manufacturing base and so on so I think those towns have certain common factors like strong church strong social institutions the 4-H Club the Boy Scouts the Elks Club the VFW a lot of engagement with kids' schools.

18:43And so I think the communities know each other. James retired from Blackstone in 2022 after two decades at the firm. His deep commitment to philanthropy came not so much from his time in Michigan as from his experience in New York and on Wall Street. At some point, I realized that the people in finance that I most admired weren't just successful in their careers and ran big companies. They added community service to it. And it got to the point where the leaders in our industry, if they had the capability of making a difference and the financial resources to make a difference and weren't doing anything, I started to lose respect for them.

19:20So I decided that there's a message there and that I should start leaning into getting involved with philanthropy. And I think people are inherently generous. They do give to the church or to the United Way or something. But until you start leaning in, you don't realize how much impact you can have and how many opportunities there are to make a difference. Americans spent about 5 billion hours volunteering in 2023, valued at around$167 billion. But in the richest country in the world, it comes as no surprise that much of our giving is financial. The U.S. donated almost$600 billion last year, and New York has the highest total contributions.

20:04Teton County, home of Jackson Hole, generally gives away the highest amount per capita. But the people who donate the most, as a proportion of their income, live about halfway in between New York and Wyoming, in a place that happens to be Professor Fitzpatrick's backyard. If you look at philanthropy across northwest Arkansas, we would see that over the last several decades, as the large philanthropic organizations have responded, it so too has the individual. Here in Benton County, Arkansas, the average annual charitable deduction is about 15 percent of residents' income. That's well above the figure for Teton County and several times higher than the national average.

20:50So what makes this area so unique? We asked a local philanthropist. I moved to northwest Arkansas in 2002 with a little bit of a life transition and started working for a small family business for an hourly rate and worked my way up through that company and ultimately was able to buy it from the founder. Aaron Marshall ran the firm for eight years before selling it, starting his own nonprofit and building housing for hundreds of homeless residents on a site where they had been living in tents. He called it New Beginnings. And although Marshall stepped away from his business to spend more time and money on those around him, he still says the businesses of Northwest Arkansas could be the secret to the area's generosity.

21:37Three businesses in particular. There's something special about Northwest Arkansas. It's a unique place. We're the home of Walmart, Tyson, J.B. Hunt. Those families with names that almost anyone would recognize have not only set a tone by their business success and entrepreneurship, but they also set a tone for charitable giving and building the community and making it better over the last 30 years. For Marshall, giving goes a long way back. He donated$2 of the very first$20 he ever earned, but he also thinks it helps to see firsthand the charity of others and the way that business success and philanthropy can go hand in hand.

22:22I would say that's inspired a whole nother tier of people like me who were running small businesses in support of some of those larger companies or the other companies from around the country that support them and I think that there's hundreds of people like me who live here whose names you'll never hear and wouldn't recognize that are doing work quietly behind the scenes to make Northwest Arkansas one of the best places to live in our country. In the context of big giving, there oftentimes is medium and small and tiny giving. I mean, it's an energy and it's an atmosphere of generosity that gets created.

23:09We have these corporate giants that have done such an amazing job in responding to the needs of not only the local community, but the regional and state communities, that it's really inspired a whole generation of givers. Perhaps the legendary investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett put it best in his note this month to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. In the letter, he described his plans to step away from the firm and give away over a billion dollars, writing, quote, when you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless, but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it's hard to beat the golden rule as a guide to behavior.

23:59And all God's people said, amen. Back in Michigan, Pastor Snyder agrees. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's like just being a brother, just being there for someone, regardless of whether or not they've been there for you. You're okay to just jump in and help. You're okay being there for other people. What makes America unique in this world is the way private Americans give so generously. You don't see that anywhere else in the whole world. And our government doesn't support a lot of these charities the way they do. Think of the museum world, the British Museum, the Louvre. They live off government support.

24:40The Metropolitan Museum is 100 % supported by private philanthropy and private giving of art. Nothing from the government. If we shrink that private philanthropy, I think we'll see it in a lot of places in the community. And I think it would be a terrible thing. So I think that's a really important pillar of American society and unique. And we should be grateful for it, not threatening. Whether it's New York City, Belding, or Bentonville, there are many different ways of looking at giving and of doing it. Michigan and Arkansas are exceptional, though hardly unique. But in both cases, the lessons are clear.

25:22Community matters. Generosity is contagious. And giving back can yield unexpected results. Through your long history of charitable giving, what have you learned? What about it has changed in your mind? from what you saw originally? The most satisfaction I've had in my life has not been the business success, the year over year growth, or selling for more than I purchased a company for. It's walking around the hallways and the sidewalks of New Beginnings, talking to somebody who a year ago was unsheltered in the woods, didn't know where their next meal was going to come from, and now they're in a safe environment and they have a plan for permanent housing.

26:10The satisfaction level that comes from giving and investing when you have the ability to do so for people that don't is 10 or 100x any other experience of my life. A remarkable return on investment, not in dollars, but in fulfillment. Thank you so much. Generosity pays dividends all its own. Up next, President Biden wanted more green energy. President Trump wants more fossil fuels. We examine whether they both may be right.

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