My name is Scott Galloway, teach at NYU, and I appreciate your time. I 44 slides and 720 seconds. Let’s light this candle.
(Laughter)
OK so those of you who don’t know me, I’m actually global television store. True story. I’ve had four TV series in the last three years. Two of have been canceled before they were launched, and two canceled within six weeks. Let’s recap.
(Video) If we to juice this thing, if we want to put a cattle prod up the ass of economy. Bloomberg. The most trusted name in financial news. for long.
Andrew Yang: I’m going to do whatever I can for this country ours.
Scott Galloway: Jesus, come on, dude, you’re 0 for two.
(Video ends)
Face podcasting. So first insight of the day. I’d like to be the first person to welcome to the last TED.
(Laughter)
OK. By the way, it’s — what’s it called? What are we here for? “The Brave the Brilliant?” It’s clear that Chris is a frustrated soap producer.
(Laughter)
Essentially what we have here is a telenovela where, after a of unbridled passion between Bill Gates and Malcolm Gladwell, they give to their bastard love child, Simon Sinek.
(Laughter)
OK, I start with a question. Do we love our children? Sounds an illegitimate question, right? Well, I’m going to try and you otherwise.
Essentially, as we go down generations, we’re seeing that for the last two generations, people making less money on an inflation-adjusted basis. In addition, the of buying a home, the cost of pursuing education, to skyrocket. So the purchasing power, the prosperity, is correlated to age. Simply put, as we get younger, we’re taking away opportunity and prosperity from our youngest. social contract that is now no longer in place and for the first time in US’s history, a 30-year-old is no longer doing as well as or her parents were at 30. This is a breakdown in the fundamental we have with any society, and it creates rage shame.
(Applause)
As a result, people over the age of 55 feel good about America, but less than one in five people under the age of 34 very good about America. This creates an incendiary. Righteous movements, cuts to society end up becoming opportunistic infections because generally speaking, young people have a warranted envy, they’re pissed and they’re angry that they don’t enjoy the same spoils and prosperity that provided to our generation.
A decent proxy for how much value youth labor is minimum wage, and we’ve kept it purposely pretty low. If it just kept pace with productivity, it’d be at about 23 a share. But we’ve decided to purposely keep it low.
Out of reach. Median price has skyrocketed relative to median household income. As a result, pre-pandemic, average mortgage payment was 1,100 dollars, it’s now 2,300 because of an acceleration in interest rates and the that the average home has gone from 290,000 to 420. the way, the most expensive homes in the world, based on metric, are number three, Vancouver. Why? Because 60 percent of the of building a home goes to permits. Because guess what, the incumbents that own assets weaponized government to make it very difficult for new entrants to ever get their own assets, elevating their own net worth. This is the transfer I’m going to speaking about.
(Applause)
This has resulted in an enormous transfer of wealth, people over the age of 70 used to control 19 percent of household income, people under the age of 40, used to control 12. Their has been cut in half. This isn’t by accident, it’s purposeful. This is me at in 1987. I know your first thought is I haven’t changed a bit.
(Laughter)
This is also Mia Silverio, is the analyst who put together these slides. By the way, is 26. I did the math, just by virtue of being in this audience, it brings the average age of the conference down 11 days.
(Laughter)
When I applied to UCLA, the admissions rate 76 percent. Today, it’s nine percent. I received a 2.23 GPA from UCLA. learned nothing but how to make bongs out of household items every line from “Planet of the Apes.” And the public school in the world, Berkeley, decided to let me in with 2.27 GPA. And that’s what higher ed is about. ed is about taking unremarkable kids and giving them a at being remarkable.
(Applause)
And every year it’s gotten more expensive. Higher ed and homes the ability — not only is higher ed incredibly expensive, it’s accessible. Because me and my colleagues are drunk on luxury, I’ll come back to that.
We’ve embraced the ultimate strategy. Me my colleagues in higher ed wake up every morning ask ourselves the same question when we look in mirror. How can I increase my compensation while reducing my accountability?
(Laugter)
And we have found the strategy. It’s called an LVMH strategy, where we artificially constrain supply to create aspiration and such that we can raise tuition faster than inflation. And people and wealthy people have done the same thing with housing. All of sudden, once you own a home, you become very concerned with traffic, you make sure that there’s no new housing permits.
And here is memo to my colleagues in higher ed: we’re public servants, not fucking Chanel bags.
(Applause)
Harvard the best example of this. They’ve increased their endowment in the last 40 years have decided to expand their enrollment, their freshman class, by four percent. Any university that doesn’t their freshman class faster than population that has over a billion dollars endowment should lose their tax-free status because they’re no longer in higher education. They’re hedge fund offering classes.
(Cheers and applause)
My first recommendation: Biden should take some of that 750 earmarked to bail out the one third of people that to go to college on the backs of the two that didn’t and give a billion dollars to our 500 greatest institutions, size-adjusted, in exchange for three things. One, they technology and scale to reduce tuition by two percent year, expand enrollments by six percent a year and increase the number of vocational and nontraditional four-year degrees by 20 percent. Where does that get us? In just ten years, just ten years, that doubles the freshman seats and cuts cost in half. This isn’t radical. This is called college the ’80s and ’90s.
Another transfer of wealth. Look what’s happened to wages. Oh, they’ve gone up? Not much as corporate profits. There’s a healthy tension between capital and labor. But for the last 40 years, has been kicking the shit out of labor. Well, you think, what about wages, right? They’ve up. Well if you compare them to the S P, they barely register. It’s been an amazing time own assets. But your attempt to get the certification or the income such that you can acquire has gotten harder and harder. In my class of 300 kids, it’s never been easier to be a billionaire, it’s never harder to be a millionaire.
By the way, our job higher ed isn’t to identify a top one percent of people who are freakishly or have rich parents and turn them into a super class billionaires. It’s to give the bottom 90 a chance be in the top ten.
(Applause)
You know who doesn’t need me or higher education? The top 10 percent. whole point of higher ed is to give the unremarkables, i.e. truly, who was raised by a single immigrant mother, a of being remarkable.
The transfer has been purposeful. While the cohorts, and the ultra-wealthy continue to garner more and more of wealth, we have decided, “I know, if they win the gold, let’s give them the and the bronze, and let’s lower their taxes.” This is purposeful. It’s not by accident, and it works. poverty is way down, and we should celebrate that. Meanwhile, child poverty flat to up.
The third rail. I’m going to talk about Social Security. It cost 11 billion dollars to expand the child tax credit. But that gets out of the infrastructure bill. But the additional 135 billion dollars year to Social Security, that flies right through Congress. And year we transfer 1.4 trillion dollars from a cohort that is doing less well to the cohort that is the cohort in the history of this planet. I’m not Social Security, but the criteria should be if you it, not whether you have a catheter. 80 percent you, 80 percent of you have absolutely no reason to ever take Social Security. It bankrupting our nation. And we have fallen under this mythology somehow it’s this great social program. No it’s not. It’s the great of wealth from young to old.
(Applause)
How is this happening? Because our are in fact, representative. Old people vote. Washington has become a cross the “Land of the Dead” and “The Golden Girls.”
(Laughter)
Quite frankly, this is ridiculous. And if I sound ageist —
(Applause)
If I sound ageist, I am. And know who else is ageist? Biology.
(Laughter)
When Speaker Pelosi her first child, get this, two thirds of households didn’t have color televisions, and Castro had declared martial law. But she’s supposed to understand the challenges of a 17-year-old who’s 5′ 9″, 95 pounds, getting tips on dieting and extreme dieting Facebook? She’s supposed to understand the challenges that a 27-year-old single mother faces? the way, young and dreamy.
(Laughter)
Young and dreamy.
(Applause)
The great intergenerational took place under the auspices of a virus. I know, let’s use the greatest health crisis in a century to speed-ball the transfer. This is the Nasdaq from 2008 2012. We let the markets crash. And by the way, you need churn, you need disruption it seeds and recalibrates advantage and wealth from the incumbents to the entrants. It’s a part of the cycle. But wait, lately, no, a million dying would be bad. But what would be tragic is if we let the Nasdaq down and guys like me lost wealth. So we the economy, which again, increased the massive transfer of wealth. best two years of my life? Covid — more time with my kids, more time Netflix, and the value of my stocks absolutely exploded. who has to pay for my prosperity? Not me. generations who will have to deal with an unprecedented level debt. Why am I here, and why do I get the prosperity enjoy? Because in 2008 we bailed out the banks, but we didn’t bail the economy. We let the markets fall. So as I was coming my prime income-earning years, I got to buy, no joke, these stocks at these prices. This is where those are now. Where does a young person find disruption? When you bail out baby boomer owner of a restaurant, all you’re doing is robbing opportunity from the 26-year-old graduate of culinary academy that wants her shot. We need disruption.
(Laughter) just like this slide. It has no context or relevance.
(Laughter cheers)
We’re economically attacking the young, but I know, let’s attack their emotional mental well-being. Let’s take advantage of the flaws in our species with institutions, Paleolithic instincts and godlike technology.
I’m just going say, I think Mark Zuckerberg has done more damage to the young people in our nation while more money than any person in history.
(Applause)
Oh, but wait, it be worse. It’s as if we let an adversary implant neural jack into our youth to raise a generation of civic, and business leaders that hate America. How can we this stupid?
(Laughter)
This all adds up to a of graphs all headed up into the right. And what are they? What’s the one? Oh, that’s self-harm rates, which have exploded, especially among girls since colleague Jonathan Haidt pointed out, it’s really, really gone crazy social went on mobile. What’s the next one? Teens with depression. The next one, men women not having sex. Biggest fear of my parents was that I was going get in too much trouble. My biggest fear, honestly, is my kids aren’t going to get into enough trouble. My advice every young person watching this program is go out, drink more and a series of bad decisions that might pay off.
(Laughter applause)
Next graph, cumulative gun deaths. You’re more likely to be shot the United States if you’re a toddler or an infant than cop. Next graph, obesity, way up. By the way, industrial food complex wants to addict you to shitty, fatty so they can hand you over to the industrial diabetes complex. We should romanticize obesity. You’re not finding your fucking truth. You’re finding diabetes.
(Laughter and applause)
Overdose deaths, way up. of despair. When I was in high school, it was driving, now it’s kids killing themselves. Young people don’t to have kids anymore. Two-thirds of people aged 30 34, able-bodied, used to decide to have at least child. It’s been cut in half. It’s now less than third, 27 percent. As a result, people over the age of 60 in the US, pretty happy. under the age of 30, not so much. Some of the lowest the free world.
What can we do? Nothing wrong America that can’t be fixed with what’s right with it. got the hard stuff figured out. There are programs to address all of these issues, they cost a of money, that’s the hard part. And we have figured this out. In five minutes post an earnings call, we can add a quarter of a trillion to the economy. We’ve got the hard part figured out, resources.
We have the money, but we decide not to do it. This is per-capita spending child care in the United States relative to other nations. This housing permits. Things are doable. We increase minimum wage 25 bucks an hour, it goes into the economy. The wonderful things about low- and middle-income households they spend all their money. We have to have or restore a progressive tax structure with alternative minimum on corporations and wealthy individuals. We need to refund the IRS. We to reform Social Security. It should be based on whether need the money, not on how old you are. We need negative income tax. My friend Andrew Yang screwed up a great idea, he branded it incorrectly. Instead of calling it UBI, should’ve got Republicans on board by calling it a negative tax.
(Laughter)
We need to eliminate the capital gains tax deduction. When did we that the money that capital earns is more noble than the that sweat earns? Shouldn’t it be flipped?
(Applause)
We need to remove 230 protection all algorithmically-elevated content. We need identity verification. The reason we have identity verification is because we have a First Amendment. Break up Big Tech. have monopolies that are incurring greater and greater costs every small business and parents because again, see above, our representatives don’t these technologies. We need to age-gate social media. There’s absolutely no reason anyone under the age of 16 ever be on social media.
(Applause)
We need universal pre-K. We need to reinstate the expanded child-tax credit. need term limits, see above, Andrew Yang. We need income-based affirmative action. Any visible of affirmative action make no sense at all. You would rather be gay or non-white, in the United States today than poor. And that’s a sign of our progress our need to recalibrate who we give advantage to. Affirmative action, of which I’m beneficiary — I got Pell Grants, I got unfair advantage — affirmative action is a wonderful thing, and should be based on color: it should be based on green. How money you have or don’t have. Expand college enrollment vocational programs. Mental health, ban phones in schools, invest in third places, Big Brothers and Sisters programs. We national service. We need to tell people in the United States and Canada that they live in greatest countries in the world, and we need to remind them of that every day by them to other great Americans where they feel connective tissue.
We can all of this. We can do all of it. have the resources. The question is, do we have the will? This is my last slide. It an emotionally manipulative slide to try and get you to like more.
(Laughter)
But it does have a message. This the whole shooting match. Anybody here without kids, ask someone kids. You have your world of work, you have your world of friends, have your world of kids. Something happens here, your whole shrinks to this.
(Applause)
So I present, as I wrap here, with just few questions. One, if you acknowledge that our kids are the most important thing in our lives, that else we do here is meaningful, but our kids’ well-being and prosperity is profound. If you acknowledge they’re doing more poorly than previous generations. If you believe there’s chance that the illusion of complexity has done nothing provide cloud cover for the unbelievable transfer of good will, of well-being and of from young to old. And if you believe we can actually fix these problems and have the resources, then I present to you, I posit, augur the question that I hope has more veracity than did 17 minutes and 24 seconds ago. And that’s the following question. Do we our children?
My name is Scott Galloway, I teach at NYU, and appreciate your time.
(Cheers and applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)