The United States as we know it is no more. All signs point to 2024 being a year of significant economic hardship for the entire nation. Put your cash to use straight away to increase its value. I was aware that I needed to invest. I had no idea how quickly a few thousand dollars a month would go up. Though it is. Since 2020, I've made about $600,000.
Congrats. Your ability to control the whole risk profile of your investments and prevent irreversible capital loss will be your actual financial unlock. A plan must be in place to take advantage of opportunities to profit when they arise.
When you first start off, you should get advise from a fiduciary counsellor if you don't want to crash and burn. They adopt a profit-driven approach based on individual risk tolerance because their entire skill set is built on simultaneously trading long and short.
It's often true that people underestimate the importance of financial advisors until they feel the negative effects of emotional decision-making. I remember a few summers ago, after a tough divorce, when I needed a boost for my struggling business. I researched and found a licensed advisor who diligently helped grow my reserves despite inflation. Consequently, my reserves increased from $275k to around $750k.
As a new investor it's always great to hear from a person who has gone through all the difficult times and come ahead of it. What are some strategies i can employ to be successful?
Certainly, there are a handful of experts in the field. I've experimented with a few over the past years, but I've stuck with ‘’Melissa Terri Swayne” for about five years now, and her performance has been consistently impressive.She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
I saw the TED video last week. His initial question was if we love our children and it was to imply we don't because there are changes that can be done to help them. The problem is people only love their own children.
No they don't. The rate of "procedures" and divorce indicates almost nobody loves their own children. Look up Stephan Moneneux -- he has some good speeches about how the West use children for power -- they don't love them.
But the decisions all parents and grandparents are collectively making is leading to the same results for all their children across the board.... ...So that limited love hardly counts as actual love. Since the repercussions will affect all new generations.
No. To you and me a million dollars is life changing money. To others a million dollars is pocket change. A million dollars might not mean anything TODAY let alone in 2064.
That's not the point. Investing $150 a month is pretty low and something I'm sure most people end up spending on crap they don't really need. If you start with that amount at age 18/23 and slowly increase that over time as your wages increase, you can have a multi-million portfolio to retire. Also, 1.2M is better than nothing.
Just if you want an uncorrupt government you need term limits. The longer someone is in office, the longer they expose themselves to potential blackmail schemes. That's what the Epstein affair was. They didn't even have to do anything salacious on the island, they just had to be on the flight logs. That was enough to blackmail them. You don't have to do anything immoral or embarrassing to be blackmailed, you just have to be linked in some way to those that have done those things.
The high interest rates in the 80s lasted for a few years. Home prices have been outpacing wages for decades. I don't understand how you can consider those equivalent.
It is the issue of our time. I only hope the anger is not misplaced, and the situation made even worse. The cause is not greed but inflation. The masses need to figure out for themselves what causes inflation!
That was a point he touched on In the video, he said previous generations have made housing an artificially scarce commodity. There's plenty of space to build homes but regulations and permitting have made it significantly more difficult and expensive to develop land. On top of that, NIMBYs have made it harder and harder to get new homes up so they don't hurt their property values. Now the supply is down while prices to buy and rent are through the roof. This all happened when we as a society shifted to thinking about housing as an investment.
@@focojeepr but inflation is the caused of greed. It's the result of getting money easily so you can gouge by stuff and reduce the supply of goods which causes prices to go up due to limited supplies in the market.
@@freakinsweetdude This is true... Think about websites like AIRB&B making people think buy homes to rent them out as investments. The problem is that wages don't go up. So, if you're age 35 and younger .. if you didn't got special treatment and started working a labor job while going to college and getting one or more degrees. Thinking this will help you get a job that pays good and find out you can't get a job in the field and the entry jobs are looking for masters level with a low pay. It just shows that our wages are lower compared to previous years and you won't have money to even live on your own because your expenses keep going up every year while your pay stays the same. The pay you got won't even support yourself. If you're in such a situation how can you invest in the stock market? I mean people show what $5 can do with compounded interest Yet, ignore the facts that there's brokerage fees and risk of the companies that you bought stock from that might file bankruptcy. If this happens and you don't sell your shares at a discounted rate. You will make losses and you can lose everything if you didn't diversify . Also there/s not many shares you can buy with just $5.000. a lot of stock are at the $80 to $100 dollars a share.
@@bebdaumon3948 greed has always existed. It is a constant, a non variable to the situation. Centralized power and control of the currency supply and interest rates are the problem as is zero limits to government spending, both of these result in the inflation “tax”.
XD as a minority engineer, I vehemently disagree with Graham when he says that the college degree does not affect your success in the workplace. If I hadn’t received generous financial aid to allow me to go to college and gotten a degree, I couldn’t have even got into the door at an entry level engineering job. I watched my immigrant parents struggle in their careers for years because Americans didn’t understand the value of their university degrees from their country.
They have studied this already. The people successful in college would have been successful without it. Those that fail at college also fail at careers. Difference is nowadays both come out with a mortgage.
Engineering job. A college education is needed for people who wish to work in fields like engineering, medicine, science, law....those professions are always in demand and highly useful, even in a down economy What people in the West, especially in the US are arguing why college is useless.and can only get people in the hole, are those that need to take out $100k loans to study pointless majors like ethnic studies which have no stability or presence in the job market
He says our representatives don't understand these technologies. That's basically true, but that's not the *problem*. The problem is that they don't care to, and aren't in fear of losing their positions as a result of their ignorance.
Graham, you are very wrong about the s&p500 point, the value of the s&p500 is in part connected to the profit that the companies on it generate. If profits have gone up significantly faster then average earnings it means more wealth is being generated / retained by companies then paid out through wages
So why can't the employees do the easy path to wealth, and exchange those wage dollars for an ownership stake? Thereby benefiting from the out-performance of capital. Oh I know....they want lifted trucks and bass boats, and then complain about "the man" taking all their money.
@@typhoon320i ??? Most people struggle to live paycheck to paycheck lol, what money are they supposed to invest? In any case, yes anyone anywhere can make different decisions to put themselves on a better financial path, the point of the presentation is that there was a point in time when people didn’t have to obsess about their finances to do okay. As hard as it is to believe, not everyone is obsessed with becoming wealthy lol, some people just want to live a comfortable life and focus on kids and family. These people could exist in the old world, but increasingly are hard to find now. This will continue to have devastating effects on the economy, and it’s bigger than buying boats lol, who are you even complaining about. Your argument is the equivalent of supporting getting rid of the FDA because if people care about their health they should research what they eat anyway, personal responsibility is important, but their should be a reasonable bottom that society can create for people’s standard of living.
@@thedopplereffect00 wow, you must be special, never having made a mistake in your whole life. For the rest of us, we understand that when organizations make mistakes it doesn’t invalidate their entire existence lol
His point about the s&p was to show that the ability for the working class to buy into the valuation of the s&p is less of a possibility today than it used to be. He wasn't saying that wages should keep up with the s&p. I feel like this guy must make a lot of money on rentals 😂
Stefan with all due respect look into the history of public colleges in California and the 1960s '70s and '80s. They were all free you didn't even have to take out a loan if you were a California resident it was covered by taxes free to $500 a semester you didn't need a loan because you can pay for it working summer job.
Have you heard of iPad kids have you heard of the computer or cellphone what education isn't free I can get full college lectures, ebooks, reports, I can get government documents, I can read government documents,information is free if you pay for it or believe the lie that you have to then you you are not near as intelligent as you college degrees say you are I dropped out school in 8th grade because school was below my intelligence self educate become walking encyclopedia set also this is the internet I give a rats butt about my typing
And then that drove demand up, which drove costs up... then the government subsidized it more driving costs further. Most people probably should not go to college. Currently they only function as hives of debauchery and indoctrination anyway.
I graduated Arizona State University back early 1990s. Cost instate then was $500/semester, unlimited classes. My 2br/1ba shared apartment was $165/roommate. And back then, we had this thing called J-O-B-S. My total college debt was roughly $4,000 (which was credit card debt mostly filled with wings, beer, a new stereo and misc car repairs). Paid off in full three months after I began working. Recently, my nephew went to Gettysburg College at my sister's insistence. Gettysburg College is $75,000/year, and total college debt is over $300K. This is just criminal, in that his financial future is pretty much destroyed.
Graham is determined to fight everything in the TedTalk. If you have no skin in this game, as you said, just leave it alone. This commentary didn’t even attempt to empathize with the plight of young people or give give good advise. Literally just another rich person telling you it’s not that bad, work harder.
@@starspaceschool587 Copy the rich person by being born into wealth is the trick... where would graham be if he started in a trailer park? Who knows, but probably not where he is today.
Stephen, I like how you just conveniently skipped over the part of the video where he talks about housing prices and the the restrictions for building new homes. It's almost like your wealth is built on that and you would rather be rich and greedy than acknowledge the problem. Nice! 👍
He owns property in CA and stated part of the reason he left was because of taxes and regulation. There are plenty of talks out there about how we need to build more housing and that’s was before we imported several million people.
But the $5 a day investment at 18 to be have $1.5 million at 68, you have to include the dollar purchasing power loss for the past 60 years, in the other words ,being a millionaire in 60 years at lets say 2074 ,the cars will be worth 200k,gallonnof milk 50$, gallon of gas $45, so the one million will be worth about 100k now
This country was built on the hard labor of people , not because of the investments of the Uber wealthy . Man, you are relatable because you are young and you talk about money .. but your multi millionaire stands on social issues and taxation are obviously not going to resonate with anyone outside your usual bubble.
To add to your comment, Graham’s message of “this country was built on investments, and therefore we MUST keep capital gains taxes super low” is completely ahistorical. If you look up a graph of the historical capital gains tax rate vs. the historical level of real investment (in the US), you’ll see they’re not related at all. I didn’t believe it at first either, but eventually I realized that my entire life I had been fed a bunch of lies by the ownership class.
Our country was built on the backs of the hard work of slaves and underpaid workers which allowed the overlords to extract wealth from the fertile soil and natural resources of the land, meanwhile enlisting the rest of the lower and middle class into committing a genocide against the native peoples. Sure, some few people in the olden days had grand ideas of utopia and of equality, but let’s not act like America became what we are today by just putting our nose to the grindstone and living honest moral lives. The truth is ugly.
If you put a bunch of hard-working people on a plot of land and told them to build a house nothing would happen. No supplies, no tools, no coordination or direction. That is all wealth is, the ability to direct money where it needs to go to make things happen
Exactly, plus your mortgage got cheaper and cheaper as rates dropped precipitously and you refinanced right out of that 17% into a 12%, then a 9%. People don't understand how pleasant and beneficial a perfect 40 year downslope of interest rates can be. You can almost do no wrong because interest rates will bail out even your bad investments. But the 25-30 year upslope that we may be up against now won't be nearly as fun.
yes they do. if a house costs 3x your yearly income at 20%, it costs you 60% of your income in interest alone.. you have to work your ass off for a short while and get a second job or live on rice and beans to be able to pay that off without it ruining you
I have to say something. Not everybody is meant to run a business or small business because people don't want to put in the time that you have to work 24/7. There's nothing small about small business
And everyone likes to forget that somebody has to also run that small business. There has to be someone doing the other jobs. There always has to be somebody being a cashier. There always has to be a person stalking the floors.
There’s no such thing as “meant to”. People are just too soft today to do anything for themselves. And then when corporations or the government own everything they complain about it.
@@James-qi6zinot wanting to own a business is soft? Like especially in this economy more than 75% of businesses will fail before they even start. Those who really want it should go for it but why call people soft for not wanting to do something that they simple never wanted to do?
When I was younger I was a free market absolutist. After busting my ass for over a decade and still treading water despite working multiple jobs and living frugally, I realize people like Scott Galloway are right.
It's interesting to see that even Stephen is effected by his own wealth. There is simply a problem with wealth, yet every thing the speaker brings up is somehow wrong or relevant. That sounds like someone being at the right side of history not wanting to be effected by the negative side effects of the system he got wealth through.
well as long as graham keeps his money and his investments airtight, he'll never get negatively affected by the negative effects of the system financially. but yeah your right, he's biased without realizing it and misses the point on a lot of the ted talk he's reviewing.
He’s a millennial and self made. He believes in others and that they can do the same with hard work and smart decisions. Victimhood will only make people’s lives worse off.
@@focojeeprthis is why rich people have to pretend to be socialists. All the people wallowing in their victimhood cry and cry that the wealthy are out of touch.
@@focojeepr False hope is when you're told if you work hard, you will be properly compensated for that hard work. That just isn't the reality today with the companies are. It's still about the bottom line.
Anyone notice Graham has gotten more let them eat cake over time? Before he was more honest about how lucky he got in the real estate market, but these people HAVE to believe it's just a matter of hard work. No one works harder than poor parents trying to keep their house in a market sucked up by people just like Graham.
Ok. He’s not comparing wages to the S&P. He’s comparing people who have wages high enough to have disposable income to INVEST in the S&P 500. See the difference. He’s saying low wages make it hard to buy assets.
yup. one point: labor carries enormous risk. claiming investments to be risky unlike labor is hilariously wrong. productivity is built on labor, not investments. investments are downstream of labor and industry and anyone claiming otherwise is a charlatan.
The funniest part of all this is that Scott Galloway is wealthier than Graham and advocating for these changes for younger people but because Graham is doing well he doesn’t want to see his own generation thrive.
Graham, I hear you, anyone who truly applies themselves and works hard can make it with out college. But the average person doesn’t have that mindset or drive. The average person wants to love their life and not have to strive for more. With that said, college sets up the average American for an average life and that’s ok. People want the safe guards of college because college will (statistically speaking) guarantee a middle wage income where they’re not necessarily in the poverty line. The average American doesn’t want to strive for more if it means hustling every day.
And someone still has to work those other job positions. Someone has to work in the grocery store stocking the shelves. Someone has to work at that restaurant serving the food. These jobs are essential and a person should be respected for working an essential job and should get paid enough money for them to have a comfortable life otherwise we're just practicing slavery with extra steps
@@UlexiteTVStoneLexite While I agree with you to some extent and acknowledge that jobs like grocery bagging are essential, we must also recognize the influence of the free market, which ultimately dictates wages. Additionally, I advocate for acquiring new skills and striving for self-improvement. It's important not to become complacent in roles such as serving food, as compensation in these positions is also governed by market forces. Settling for the minimum effort can often result in minimum rewards.
@@CarlosMendez-gd2zmacquiring new skills does not address anything I pointed out. Someone still has to work the register. Someone still has to stalk the floors. The person doing those jobs should be able to afford a place to live. They're doing an essential job and you can't just say that kids do those jobs because that doesn't work. Somebody has to run those stores while the kids are in school and you don't want a constant revolving door of replacing those people every number of weeks because the kids left the house or went to college. People complaining now about people not being able to do their jobs in getting bad performance but what do you expect from a kid????.?
You have to work harder today than our grandparents did at our age. Yes they had more physical labor, but overall, we have to work harder for the same dollar.
Politicians vote for who donates them money because it’s what gets them elected. Bigger question is why does spending money on campaign adds increase their chance of getting elected?
I’m 30 and make around 95k a year in Kentucky and can’t buy a decent home and support my wife and kid. My dad did the same thing in the mid 90s making much less than me. The American dream is dying.
Sounds to me like you are probably living a pretty inflated lifestyle. I live in Dallas and make around the same amount, I own a house, I can support my wife and kid, and I am still able to save half of my income.
Even if they had 20% interest rates in the 1980s that was still more affordable on average. As the average price for a house was maybe 80k. That'd make the monthly cost on a 30 year fixed around $875/month. STILL wildly more affordable than the over $2000/month.
7:24 Graham, how did you start out making money? Did you magically already have investments? No, you used your income from a job to get those investments. He is saying that it is much harder to do these days with the wages compared to the S&P 500 performance. If the S&P keeps going up and wages don't go up, people cannot live off their wage and invest unless they eat beans and rice and live in a 1 bedroom apartment in the worst part of town for years. You are putting your personal experience in the mix. You made money from a job to invest. The 2008 housing market crash helped that along. You are at the right age where everything happened perfectly to get into investments at a low cost. The next generation doesn't have that luxury. Everything costs more and wages are not scaling with the cost. How is someone suppose to invest when they can barely afford a roof over their heads and food in their fridge?
College degrees are essential to our society. Can’t just all be RU-vidrs and content creators man. Do you want a doctor without a degree? Or a structural engineer building bridges without a degree?
Hmmm, you say the S&P has no comparison to wages, it means that stock valuations have risen so exponentially and supporting the upper/older classes but we cannot even afford a precentage of the stocks they used to be able to at the same time. Then you say the social security thing, but you fail to see how they're taking away child tax credits and all to fund the older. You aren't acknowleding how much support has been stripped from the lower classes and continues to be stripped Overall bad take, you're not taking into account his points in relation to how they fit into the bigger topic at hand, perhaps he could have elaborated more, tho, yes.
wages don't matter with the s and p because of stock splits and mutual funds. the stock market is not the same as property, crypto, and gold where the amount is fixed and can't be added to effectively. stock splits divide each share into multiples, slashing price without changing the value held by the shareholder.
@@commonsense-og1gz if true wealth and prosperity is gained by acquiring assets, and the price of the assets is going up much faster than wages, that's a bad thing. It benefits the people who were able to buy said assets 30 years ago (like Scott Galloway mentioned) but is a relatively huge disadvantage to anybody who wants to buy them now because they have to spend a larger percentage of their wages to acquire them.
52k a year for an entry level job? What happens to the people currently making 60-70k? Do we now pay them 90-100k? Does no one see the ramifications of this and how quickly that extra income vanishes as we pay more for everything else?
This man literally said 56k a year for 25yr olds is average. Some of the highest paying jobs for the average worker is roughly 20 to 25 an hour which is 38k to 48k before taxes.
I think anyone raised by a boomer and that has tried to address these issues with them knows just how little Boomers care about the future of their children. Almost universally, millennials and Gen Z have noticed that their parents always respond with a hand-waving "not my problem!" as if it's a legitimate counter to their grievances. They got theirs. They don't care. So no, Scott, Boomers do not love their children. They love what their children can do for them, but they're deeply resentful that their children ended the partying they did in the 80s. They wanted it to continue indefinitely, and they blame their children. They've been controlling politics forever and every politicians views the Baby Boomers as their true constituency.
I always get a not my problem from my parents. I was bringing up the fact that people's rights are being stripped away in various States and my dad's responses just move...... . Like everyone can move. He couldn't even possibly move.
Give it a few decades, they'll wither away like a statue of ashes and we'll fashion a shiny colossus in its place. And then you'll be pressed to realize that corruption is timeless. Americans don't realize that they have it so much better than most countries out there, yet we complain about our fathers' riches as we sit on a cushion of gold. But I guess we're not so rich in culture so quality of life is...meh
@@thedopplereffect00 The new deal was a ponzi scheme. My new deal would be a whole lot different because mathematically, it's just far too luxurious to send out big enough checks to have people house and feed themselves on an individual basis. It's absolutely absurd compared to Eastern and ancient societies. Of course, current recipients always complain about the "small" amount but it's not supposed to be a pension, it's supposed to be enough to keep your belly full and your butt off the street. It's not supposed to keep you living comfortably by yourself in a four bedroom ranch house two miles from the nearest market and hospital.
The reason he compared the S&P to the wages is to show the profit of the markets have NOT led to the "trickle down" that people believed it would have. That's what was sold to a lot of folks in the 80s, that if we help the corporations earn, the people would too. That didn't happen and now we have a majority of wealth locked into the market by the folks that can afford to invest. Also, we saw what happened when people didn't have Social security... Heck even with SS the older generations are slipping into poverty. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to go back to the days before SS.
@@myscorebig no one is stopping you from doing that. But just in case you lose your shirt SS is there to help you from descending into poverty. Our society shouldn't just let luck dictate our standard of living. I don't want to live in a society that lets you starve because you made a bad bet, do you? If so why? Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it.
@@myscorebig naw, because then you’d be screwed when crypto goes tits-up and you have nothing to retire on. I don’t want to deal with your old bag-of-bones dying in the street in 50 years.
Wages have never kept up with markets since the beginning of time nor is it supposed to. Wages are the biggest line item for companies. If they did keep up returns would be not near what there are normally
@@nicksaylor3288 we definitely disagree that wages shouldn't keep up with markets, that's exactly why we are in this situation where profits are skyrocketing while people are struggling to pay for basic necessities. And yea, returns would be lower, just because you're used to outsized returns doesn't mean that should be "normal."
Graham, I generally love your content. But seriously!?! Start investing $5/day starting at 18 for 50 years... And then you'll have 1.2 million dollars. Cool, that's just about enough to afford the AVERAGE house TODAY! In 50 years who knows how much homes will cost!?! I think you may be due for a privilege check. 😉😂 I still love your content, but it's starting to become a bit unrelatable.
Social security if it is still at the level at what it is today since people are living longer and people have more years of living off social security
I love how the video starts with understanding that more government involved private industry produces horrible results, and ends with we need government to restrict individual rights. 😂 this is so dumb. People really are just chasing their tails
I have to disagree with Graham that a college degree isn't worth the cost today. I'm an example that it is. When you come from a lower income family, grew up at the poverty line, raised by people who had very little education, from a small, economically depressed town, far from a metropolitan city, you actually know very little about how money works. Going to college afforded me the opportunity to sit next to people from the middle and upper-middle income families, and I learned how the world actually works. A college education turns out to be more than just a piece of paper for many of us. It's where we were exposed to a different way of life, and how to go about achieving it. The point of Scott Galloway's talk is that America used to be a place where you could grow up in poverty and if you wanted into the middle or upper middle class, there were multiple paths to getting there, and you could even fail several times on the way up. Today, without rich parents or at least the social skills that often comes with an upper middle class upbringing that's become increasingly hard to do without access to institutions of higher education.
This dude sounds like such a pessimist. This is the best time to be alive. Best tech, longest health spans and lifespans, best access to food and housing and so much more. Looking at numbers and saying we don’t love our children is short sighted. We have more opportunity than ever before.
Scott has been around awhile, he makes some weird excuses sometimes or just gets certain things wrong. I think his broader picture is fine but a lot of the things he assumes will save us are kind of silly anti-freedom ideas. I think he's a little to attached to a Bill Maher style liberalism.
Something no one really mentions is the younger you are the more important your monthly investment are and trying to make more money. 20 year old today 1.2 mil isn't going to be worth as much
Good analysis on Scott’s video Scott points to some serious problems and misses real solutions, more to express what will be the most popular assessment.
Interesting video but I do think you make a mistake talking about capital gains taxes. If one earns $15 after taxes in wages and then invests it, there is no capital gains tax on that $15 of investment. The tax falls on the growth (the epynomous 'gains'). The money originally invested is not double-taxed. I disagree with your other arguments about not raising the capital gains tax, but they're valid arguments that we can disagree on.
He did that in one of his last videos too. Hope Graham at least sees this post. In addition, capital gains in their purest from (aka dividends) have been taxed at a corporate level (21% federal tax) already, where as wages have not. Also, one pays 0% CGT if one has a taxable income below $44,625, 15% if below $492,300 and 20% for anything above that
We're in this predicament BECAUSE we love our children, not in spite of it. We tried to enable everyone to go to college (that drove up competition and prices). We tried to enable everyone to buy homes (that drove up demand and prices). We tried to enable everyone to travel and experience the world (that drove up prices and overtourism which damaged the environment). We tried opening every opportunity to everyone when, instead, we needed a bit of tough love.
Too much demand, not enough supply, and too much value in those who control the supply. People who provide the most value to society should be able to live the most inflated lifestyles, but just not by 1000x
Scott Galloway is worth $50 million. He's obviously benefited from the economy he's criticizing. I agree with Graham's take. He makes a couple good points, but the rest is bs.
I actually watched this Ted talk, it sad that our children and their kids will pretty much have nothing. But that’s the way they plan it to be. You will own nothing and want nothing 😮
That's stupid. human's standard of living gets better and better every single generation. Keep in mind, that has nothing to do with making as much money (adjusted for inflation) from previous generations. it has to do with longevity, leisure time, consumer technology, etc....
BTW that whole "own nothing and be happy" is totally misunderstood. If I told you in 1995 that you would own no CD's and be happy, you'd say "They are trying to steal our CDs!" .......Do you get it now?
I can't imagine many 35 yr olds having the free money and time to run for office, I mean, I was just reaching financial independence at 50, and that is when you MIGHT have the time and funds to waste tilting the windmill of public service.
We are just paying the CEOs paychecks though and they hardly send it back down to us. All of the goods that we are purchasing are just going to work them.
@@janelleg597 It is not, just based on the numbers, you could afford to pay 966 for rent based on recommendations. You simply can't live off of that unless you have cheap rent (living with parents or lucked out) and have cheap transportation (metro, sub or a used car). It's just not enough.
The amount of jobs that just require a degree of any kind is crazy and youll make double then a majority of places. Yes there are trades and other jobs that are similar but there normally back breaking and someone with a project management degree makes more then everyone on the jobsite.
Not always true. I work for a utility, and the guys doing the work - skilled pipe-fitters and technicians, actually make more than the project managers and engineers. This is because they often have a union, and they also get a lot of overtime so they make OT pay.
I get your argument and don't necessarily disagree but, ya got to get your first million somehow at some point. Then you get the compounding after that first million.
The broader point is that being a millionaire is no longer optional. That's not how it used to be and that's not how it should be. The argument that since the government poured money into certain programs like higher education, college is more expensive implies that the schools had no choice but to raise prices. That is simply not true. They raised prices out of greed and profit. You can call it market value if you want, but greed is what sets the market and greed has priced our younger generation out of the future I had.
Guess what…1M, even devalued by inflation is still worth far more than saving/doing nothing. $1M today is worth far less than it was 40 years ago but it’s still $1M.
The thing I don't like about this guy is he thinks social security is a welfare program and should only go to those who are extremely needy, but it is, in fact, a pension program for ALL citizens.
I'm a 21 year old who grew up poor. I'm so greatful it's so unbelievably easy to make money. I work at dominos and make 65k per year. I just put lots of money into the s&p 500. Anybody who doesn't have 50k saved by 21 is just lazy or stupid. I'll be retired by 30 without even trying
I am curious if there is any truth to a higher capital gains tax discouraging investing. The personal and corporate tax rates used to be much higher. Did people and corporations not want to make profits back then? The percentage of corporate federal tax in comparison to GDP has almost never been lower.
Nice commentary Graham. Just a few points: Boomers too have this demographic, in that older Boomers born in the 1940s and early 1950s are overall wealthier than "younger" Boomers (born in the late 1950s and early 1960s). This is because after WW2, American expansion was wide open, and the older generation just had a head start for more opportunity. Of course, today's younger Gen-Z, etc. have comparatively little opportunity compared to any boomer. Graduated Arizona State University back early 1990s. Cost instate then was $500/semester, unlimited classes. My 2br/1ba shared apartment was $165/roommate. And back then, we had this thing called J-O-B-S. My total college debt was roughly $4,000 (which is credit card debt mostly filled with wings, beer, a new stereo and misc car repairs) I paid off in full three months after I began working. Recently, my nephew went to Gettysburg College at my sister's insistence. Gettysburg College is $75,000/year, and total college debt is over $300K. This is just criminal, in that his financial future is pretty much destroyed. The issue with higher tuition today, IMO has to do with better government regulation. Government gave loans and scholarships to students, however, public universities must be regulated to only charge a certain amount, plus the cost of inflation. Unfortunately, Public Universities today charge students whatever they like, and this destroys the system. On housing, back in the 1950s and 1960s, houses cost about three shiny nickles. :) Nothing compared to prices today. America is currently the most obese nation on the planet, so yes I agree that the American food supply is absolute poison. Reagan cut the taxes of the wealthy back in 1981 from 70% to down to eventually 20%. Am pretty certain that this the largest tax cut in US History. After this, the National Debt sky rocked. And, of course, as Reagan preached "Trickle Down" theory. The problem was that the wealthy did not "trickle" ... at all.
I agree that showing S&P returns vs wages wasn't the best graph to show. What he probably wanted to or should have pointed out is wage growth of normal employees vs executive/management staff (he was probably trying to compare investment returns - although didn't include dividends, but investors do take risk unlike employees)
Never trust a man who doesn't look or sound old enough to grow a full beard. You can't know a man's advice is useful until he's lived his own advice and succeeded by following his own advice to the letter.
Productivity argument for the reason for minimum wage hasn’t increased was very off putting and not very relevant. Really dismisses the problem of inflation and greedy corporations.
Glad you touched on this. Such an iconic TED talk. He had another great interview on CNN (shocker). Scott Galloway's new book The Algebra of Wealth is also worth a read.
Graham salty he missed out on the Drake beef reaction bag so he figured he'd hop on this video and react to it. Between the click bait thumbnails and shady promotion history you starting look 🤑🤑🤑
The main issue with Social Security, that was implied by what he said, is that it is *supposed* to be a system you pay into and get paid out after you retire. Unfortunately, only something like 10~15% of SS goes to to retirees. A big chunk is leeched to social programs that target inner-city minorities, creating a financial dependency on the state which is then in turn used as a lever to pressure that population to vote a certain way, keeping the corrupt in power. The rest magically disappears into some politician's or special interest groups' pocket. A very, very small portion of your taxes actually go towards something beneficial to the general population.
Labor carries risks, You can't work for the rest of your life, The time that you have an able-body to go produce labor is much shorter than the time. You have an able-body to go throw some money at stocks. I used to really like your channel. I'm tired of business owners thinking they're carrying all this risk. The majority of the time, they're not the ones putting their back on the line. Putting their money on the line for sure, but not their health, not their wellness. They're stress comes from making decisions and losing money on it. Everyone else's stress comes from working, not making enough money to pay their bills, having to work more to figure that out. Meanwhile, others are just hoping to line their pockets even more. I'm so tired of hearing business owners rant about how they take on so much risk. This was their plan, is what they wanted to do. That's their risk And business owners try to find more and more ways to put that on employees everyday. It shouldn't be hard to be a working American. Truly is that simple. It just should not be that hard. Ideally, If I'm providing 40 hours of time that is required from my employer to do work, My basic needs should be met. I should be able to pay rent no matter how much rent skyrockets, I should be able to pay for healthcare. I should be able to go to college. These really aren't luxuries in this day and age. Why do we have all these companies that can hire all these people but not be able to pay their rent? Does that mean the labor we produce isn't valuable enough? That TED talk is absolutely correct. Especially when he starts talking about the transfer of wealth. In America we have the sentiment that you're supposed to raise your kids until they're 18 and you kick them out. I was one of those kids. Not only that, but my father made me quit my job before he kicked me out at 17. How does a 17-year-old go to college, get a job that can pay the studio apartment price of $1300 a month? When I grew up, Born in 1999, studio apartments where $650 a month, people could live off of $15 an hour, That was good money. Now I can't even buy toilet paper with $15 an hour. Not a chance I get a studio apartment to myself off of $15 an hour, without picking up a second job. Why the f*** should I pick up a second job if I'm working 40 hours a week? This is b*******, I shouldn't have to spend over half of the time I spend awake working, just to not be able to pay my bills. F*** that. I'm pissed off, So is everyone here. You've lost your Graham, good job 🎉 unsubscribed🎉
Incredibly disagree with bootstrap arguement. That literally comes from personal anecdote, not objective data. The objective data is that higher education always leads to higher future income than having no higher education. But that doesn't mean it applies to everyone. If we were to use generalities, the "boot strap" argument applies the least, while higher education applies the most. At the end of the day, the chance of doing better in life is increased more by higher education than boot strap. Granted, your higher education has to be in a practical field with real world applications, not useless things like "historical literature" or "divinity", where the only job is basically being a college professor.
I think you miss the mark a bit with this one. You can get really lucky with timing the housing market/renting/entering the market right before one of the most insane bull runs in US history due to low interest rates... but the "well you should've been bought in" just doesn't sit right given the compounding factors of: college, housing, and "competitive advantage" of older/wealthier people. The number of 60+ people I know who live alone in multi-million dollar family homes is absurd. Yeah, okay, you can move to a less expensive area but that's assuming you work remote and can move. God forbid the price of property drops even a couple %. The poor boomers, what would they do? Sell their multi-million dollar homes before the market drops and live comfortably in a modern luxury apartment? They'd actually recognize some capital gains. That'd be too tragic. Or building more housing? No sir. Can't do that. That'd lower the property value! Also, it's extremely tone-deaf to assert that college degrees have no bearing on your success in the workplace. It very clearly does. I remember vividly getting declined from jobs because I did not have a college degree. We can't all forge our own path. That's idealistic and to be frank, naive.
The thing with the S&P 500 vs wages is that the market is currently so overvalued that your wages are buying you way less of the actual earnings share compared to what boomers typically were able to get. The Shiller PE ratio is currently almost 35, vs in the 70s until the 90s when it averaged closer to 15. So based on that valuation metric you need to pay more than twice the price for a share of corporate earnings compared to the boomers. I.e. your expected return on investment per dollar is less than half compared to what boomers got. Of course this is a fairly simplified argument as valuing the market is tricky.
No offense, but Graham is in a bubble. Capital has artificially power than wages right now. How much growth of that Capital is engineered by fiat monetary policy? If there was no inflation and dollars maintained their value, I doubt Equities would grow like they did historically. Companies are literally just riding the wave of gov'ts debasing their currency at ever increasing speed.
