90K Subscribers: AI & Thoughts on Escaping the Rat Race

Hello everybody. Good afternoon or early evening, or morning for our Australian viewers. Um, thank you guys all for joining us for our live stream. This is probably the last piece of content that I will be recording for 2025. There'll be stuff I release over the next few weeks, but it's already pre-recorded and scheduled for you guys. Um, so you guys can not have your miss of content while I'm on a Christmas break.

But what was I going to say? Yeah, today's live stream is going to be about the rat race and how to get out of the rat race. First, I would like to thank um the new members who have joined. If you want to get access to content early and exclusive bonus videos, I do recommend checking out um becoming a member of the channel. Um, we recently just released for members a few days early my video about the truth of elite boarding schools. So if you want to watch it now before I release it later this um weekend um join in and become a member of the channel.

But how I'm going to structure this live stream is similar to what I've been doing the last few live streams. And that is um we will be having me do an opening lecture kind of explaining a concept and an idea and then I will open it up to Q&A. Um, if you want um to ask a question, feel free to leave it in the chat. And if um what's it called? Um you want to um uh what's it called? Make sure your question gets answered. Please do a super chat.

Um, now we're going to um get started with um my um my theme today, which is getting out of the rat race and the rat race in general. First of all, where does the term the rat race start? It wasn't just from some 2001 comedy movie um that people had to race across the desert from Las Vegas. Um, there was a it starts originally from 1950 corporate America. Um, there was a um what's it called? This metaphor that had these rats being running an endlessly circular motion without progress essentially. And when you see most old like images of the rat race, it's just dropping like mice and elaborate them to find cheese where there really is no end in sight. So um yeah, it was first popularized in the business journalism describing white collar burnout in New York and Chicago in the 60s and the 70s.

Um, it was built on the belief that career progression really should be linear. America held true in the post-war era from 1945 to say 1970 because a lot of the corporate executives, particularly like C-suite executives at in those eras, um what's it called was um what was I going to say? Oh, we're ex-military and fought in World War II and so they brought like the military merit like hierarchical structures of and brought those out of the military and into um corporate America. And so that's why you had like the stereotype of IBM where everybody wore the same white shirt and the skinny navy blue ties or like there's a very more kind of conformist society. It was kind of brought as a byproduct of pretty much every um man of working age or peak career years being military. Um, and so however, really once the GI generation started to retire and other cultural um variables happened such as the boomers growing up and having a role in corporate America, a lot of that traditional hierarchical meritocratic um way of operating a company broke down.

And thanks legal automation for chipping in once again to the Bloomberg terminal. We're now I think about I don't know $25 in. So $29,975 more to go for those. Um, I'm keeping tab of all the donations for a future Bloomberg terminal. So uh I haven't forgotten. But back to what I was trying to talk about here, starting with the 70s, which had a variety of things such as the removal of the gold standard, boomers entering the workforce, and global competition forcing more flat hierarchical structures. Um, the idea of just working harder than anybody else and being insured promotions um started to fray. And there's a lot of hard stats really that kind of show this. You have since 1980, US productivity has generally rose about 70%. While median inflation adjusted wages have only risen about 20% over that same time. Um, 80% of workers in general according to Gallup report they're falling behind despite having full a time employment. Um, only one in four employees in 2025 believes that promotions are based on merit and 55% see office politics as the dominant driver.

And I'm generally in agreement with the office politics crowd um and um the office because um when it comes to the um the office politics crowd, they are right about this. Like I did a whole American class hierarchy video which basically explains if you want to move up on the establishment hierarchy. It's more about connections to your um what's it called? Your network than um and how well you can make the right alliances and pick who to be friends with, who's on the rise in the company, who's on the decline, and manage your relationships than um just outworking somebody. Like you're better off playing golf with your boss more often than you are say for example working an extra hour at the office every day. And um so that's kind of the um I think that the that the surveys are right about that the top 10% now capture about 49% of national income, which is up from 33% in 1970. I mean, I actually don't think that's entirely necessarily a bad thing. It kind of lines up with Pareto principle. Actually, Pareto principle would be even worse than that. I just think that the 70s due to a variety of 60s and 70s due to a variety of variables that the global 1% or the global top 10% all happened to be in one country. And as the elites in other countries started to move back up again, it leveled the playing field globally in exchange of increasing inequality domestically here in the United States.

By age 45, only 18% of college graduates approximately, this is according to um a Harvard and BLS composite study, have reached a VP level or higher in a corporate hierarchy and less than 4% have reached the C-suite. Um, and yet pretty much most college graduates expect to get to a VP level or the C-suite by the time they're 45. So if only about 22% of people um actually get there, it causes a lot of burnout and cognitive dissonance with the merit of the rat race. Um, what's it called? Um, yeah, then um you've got next really on top of that is the bottom 90% of workers today own about less wealth today than they did in 1990, especially if you adjust for housing prices because a lot of people just happen to own homes that have gone up more than inflation. May um skew the net worth data, but in terms of liquid net worth, most people have less today than they did adjusted for inflation. And then layoffs. The average white collar layoff worker gets about three layoffs over a 35-year career. And each layoff reduces um their salary by 10 to 20%. But usually that the thing is is to be more optimistic here and paint the full picture is yeah, they'll get that 10 to 20% cut at their next job but within three years they'll recover back to their old salary and continue an upward trajectory. So that's not necessarily the end of the world.

So this really essentially turns a career into like a tournament of um basically corporate brown-nosing to a certain degree. Uh, you've got basically corporate hierarchies are narrowing and flattening in general. And AI I think is going to really can accelerate this because in the age of AI um you've got um less need for a lot of entry-level or middle management workers because you can use tools like the LLM and more specialized versions that are coming out that a lot of developers are building right now to reduce headcount. Like example, you can probably run a law in five years a law firm that needed 10 lawyers with probably only two or three. And the ripple effects are already starting to show in the economy with say for example, you've got um college graduate unemployment rate being at 25 and under is the same or lower or higher. Sorry, it's higher than people who didn't go to college at the same age. And normally that is um what's it called? Um, what was I going to say? Normally it's the reverse. You've got um you got col basically college grads tend to have lower rates of unemployment. But because a lot of the entry-level college grad jobs are being disrupted by artificial intelligence and LLMs, it has inverted.

And then the next real point I want to make is that promotion odds for many um levels VP and above at a lot of big prestigious companies like the major investment banks or consulting firms, big law, etc. is often worse than the acceptance rate of getting into a US News top 30 university. Um, the higher earners, particularly people in finance, tech, law, and real estate, typically work 55 to 80 hours a week during their peak years. And you get burnout rates of like up to 60% by age 40. And I've seen that really with my own cohort. Like I know peers of mine who took big investment banking jobs or very prestigious corporate jobs and they worked them so hard in their early 20s that by the time they were 25, they're like, I'm over it. I just want some nine-to-five job in commercial banking or some very stable government or some sale boring thing that I just go home and relax and put in my minimum hours because all of my life force to strive was just sucked out of me from being overworked in my early years of my career. This didn't happen to me personally because I made a conscious decision to avoid investment banking. And I did do a video about why investment bankers get paid so much and is investment banking worth it a few years ago if you want to know more of my thoughts on that.

Um, yeah uh that the thing is is in general the burnout rate is really high and the reason why they work people that many hours is simply just a pay thing. It's that look if I want to attract the best talent in my field and the ones with the most prestigious degrees I need to pay them more. But they're not worth that much economically. So, the way I can pay them more while not losing too much money on my analyst class is that I hire one/4 of the people I need to do the actual work and pay them four times as much versus just hiring four times as many people and paying the same as a similar college entry-level job. Um, and so that's kind of my take on that. And I got Thank you um for the super chat. I just saw that Mr. Beast is starting a finance YouTube channel. Is this a top signal in your opinion? I mean, it very well could be. I don't really know Mr. Beast's background in finance. I don't think he has one. I don't I wonder what it would be about. Honestly, this is news to me. I didn't know Mr. Beast was starting a finance channel. Um, maybe he should bring me on as a guest speaker. But yeah, that's it could it's a very possible. It's a good comment but back to what I was saying really is that just and then political behavior again correlates more with upward mobility than task competence especially at these more prestigious jobs and like the C-suite headcount has grown only about a Fortune 500's 1% in 20 years whereas white collar employment overall has grown 35%. So there's more people at the bottom of the pyramid and the same amount at the top, but they're all competing for those same amount of spots. And that's on top of the fact that boomers don't retire. So that is um causing a a lot of issues until now now they're starting to retire, but but basically from 2008 to 2020, they delayed their retirements and didn't retire. And so you had the average age of corporate executives move up and really no mobility really up the ranks. And so that kind of caused a lot of issues and lowered the return on investment really for being in the rat race.

Um, and I'm going to get into what is like the better alternative path for the rat race, but I'm just trying to explain context now before I get to that. So be patient. And the AI is kind of the monkey wrench that's really destroying the final like um resemblance of the rat race. Like McKinsey estimates now that about 30 to 40% of work tasks will be automated by 2030. Um, Goldman thinks up to 300 million jobs could get disrupted. I mean, I think the worst-case scenario is about 36% of jobs that that pay more than $50,000 per year get disrupted. Uh, I mean, the given the valuations of a lot of these companies, it's implying that that's going to happen quick pretty quickly. I think it's going to take a little bit longer, but that's another debate. And also, I got to say, this is where I keep going. Nothing I say here is investment advice. Please do your own research. I don't do specific investments or trade recommendations um on this channel just given the nature of my profession, but if you do have specific questions about your own investments or any specific financial related things, feel free to schedule a call or a consultation with me in the forms linked below. Uh, now that I've got the disclaimer out of the way, let's kind of get back to what I was talking about with the rat race and AI.

Um, so the so basically you have the first time automation is just is also hitting judgment works, not just purely repetitive tasks and it's hitting white collar repetitive tasks particularly, which is what most entry-level recent college grad jobs are. Companies with AI adoption reduce managerial layers by about 15 to 30%. And so it's kind of creating a diamond shape when it comes to corporate hierarchies when it used to be a pyramid. So you still have the middle, which is the same size. You still have the top that's very narrow, but the bottom is starting to narrow out. And a diamond-shaped corporate hierarchy is good for short-term corporate profits. But in the long term, it's actually quite bad for the economy because if you don't train the next generation to have a basic competency to be able to check what the AI is doing, you're going to have a less efficient society and you'll have social issues and you will probably just get you'll lot more bad decisions because the people who grew up before AI and how to do a lot of this stuff on their own when AI hallucinates or makes a mistake, they can say, "Hey, wait. This doesn't make sense. I could override it with my common sense and figure out a real solution here." But if you don't take that into consideration and you don't have that common sense or intuition developed because you've always ran things through the AI yourself or you don't have any people at the bottom 10 years 20 years from now when the top retires and the next level middle management becomes the top, you have nobody under you to be the middle management to supervise it. I mean, the counter-argument would be well then why don't you just have AI do the middle management as well and yeah, again, that's going to lead to a lot of inefficiencies really in the economy because the AI is not perfect and there is needs to be some sort of genuine creativity which is where you derive the information that you can get that's available like AI but apply it to new applications that really the AI is not going to be thinking about. So that's kind of really one of the things that people have to think about possibly the diamond shape really in the career.

Um, and the ladder disappearing also causes a lot of issues for younger people trying to move up. And then the other problem with the rat race idea is that it makes people extremely prone to um lifestyle inflation because think about it this way and as maybe I grew up as a millennial so it was peak rat race generation um in a way is that when you were in high school or earlier you were trained that like basically if you needed to get in to one of the top 30 colleges in um what's it called? In the in the United States otherwise you're going to end up at best middle class that basically the a lot of millennials and this is what I talked about my millennial socialism live stream and the roots of it is that they believe that basically where you got into college or how prestigious your resume is should dictate where your class is. And so people worked their butts off really in high school to get perfect grades and do all these extracurriculars and max out on all that and SATs and all that other stuff because they knew that or at least they believed that if they got into the top schools, they could coast the rest of their lives essentially because it mattered more where you got into school than what you studied in your school or how what your GPA even was unless assuming it was respectable like say above like a 3.4. And so that kind of caused this rat race mentality that like everybody had to just grind extra hard and they deprived a lot of the enjoyment of their youth in like high school and college because they wanted to get into top grad schools or top careers. And it was a rat race to get into those few professions that had the high pay out of school. Whether that was finance, tech, big law, elite graduate schools, corporate management training tracks, etc., etc. And then once they're there, you're still not safe because you live in a high cost living city. So even if you have a six-figure salary, it's not getting you that as far as you think it would. It's not getting you to support a family level by yourself. So you grind harder to move up and be like to get to so that you can get to a salary that's high enough, but then by the time you get there, you're getting laid off because you've become too expensive. And so it's comes a trap and a lot of it, especially once they get to that level, even if they don't get laid off, it's like, look, um, I've worked my butt off basically the first 30 years of my life. I want to be able to actually enjoy myself for a change even it doesn't really matter if I can't save. So it's like I might I need to I want to drive the nice car. I want to live in the trendy neighborhood or buy a house that it's probably out of my budget or I want to go on vacations every year. Like it it's just the willingness to defer gratification eventually burns out if you defer it for too long without any sort of breaks. Like in general, I'm for deferred gratification. Deferred gratification leads to better outcomes in the long run. Particularly in your youth like ages say 15 to 25 is probably the best time to defer gratification. But it there's difference between deferring gratification and thank you for the super chat Rita. um versus um deferring it for life. Like you have to deferring means you delay it to a certain point. Whereas living a completely ascetic lifestyle is that you never gratify yourself. And if you have constant deferred gratification and doing things you don't want to do or you don't enjoy just so you can gain either higher pay or higher social status eventually you burn out and you just can't take it anymore. You either lower move down to a lower stress profession or you start spending and living a more luxurious lifestyle and the free time you have to compensate and say hey look me putting myself through all this rat race is worth it. And so then by the time you do get laid off because it's too expensive or like you hit a ceiling that you can't keep up with the lifestyle of your supervisors who were paid more or paid in in dollars that had higher purchasing power, you get bitter and resentful and be like, why did I do this? Whereas you don't end up with the outcome that is worth the amount of extreme extra effort you put in versus if somebody decided to pursue their own path and not do a rat race style profession. And I kind of were seeing this like look at the professions that rat race are the ones that have high pay but don't require as much risk taking. um like you don't really see as much rat race in professions that have hard P&Ls or sales-oriented or trading or entrepreneurship because yeah, you are higher pay but you also have a lot of risk. The whole appeal of the rat race is high pay with low risk. But if the layoff rates are going up and AI is dating diamonds of the career um ladders, then that low-risk high pay isn't as certain as it is, which makes the rat race in general less appealing. And like now they have the choice of basically either having dozentberry pro affect problem spending where you try to keep your your lifestyle at a certain hedonic level or you have to move down a social class and this is what causes a lot of the issues. So that is the problems of the rat race.

So what really kind of is the solution to the rat race dynamic? Like what should I if I avoid just want to avoid that or want to get out if I realize I'm stuck in it? What do I do? So um let's see. The first example that's most commonly cited is quiet quitting. But quiet quitting I don't really think helps in the long run. Quite quitting if you're not familiar. I did a video about this too, is the idea of reducing effort without really increasing any sort of optionality. It's basically you do the bare minimum at your job just to not get fired. You won't work any more than 40 hours a week. You won't like try to go above and beyond your job description. You'll take long lunches, etc., etc. So that is the um the the basis of quiet quitting and it can work maybe if you work in like the government or you live in a European country where it's impossible to fire somebody but then the income ceiling is very low in those places too. So there's a there's a different kind of trade-off going on. But low engagement employees have double the layoff probability and 70% slower promotion speeds. So like, yeah, it's it's big enough of a difference on that that like the quiet quitting strategy is not going to work. It's essentially a short vault trade. Like you get low you're selling calls on your future. You'll get some low upside for doing that, collecting the premium, but you get you don't really you're not really protected much from a recession. Kind of like when you have you buy a covered call on your to hedge a stock. Like yeah, you might get a little bit of premium, but you're giving up the upside if it breaks through your strike. And if the market really goes down, um it provides a nominal amount of hedging. So, it's like it's you're basically doing a covered call on your own life when you're quitting, which based on my conversations with I did with my former colleague Chris Adomay and also my own video on it is not I don't think an optimal strategy.

Um, and so what do we do if we don't quite quit? Well, basically what you need to do is you need to be more intentional about your career building from the beginning. Like instead of focusing on what is the thing that's going to give me the most money and prestige incrementally right now, you need to decide basically where do I want to end up? And based on that, how do I work backwards? Like what's the kind of life you want at 40 or 50? Like where do you want to live? How much intensity do you want for your job? Like what kind of family style do you want? How much free time are you going to need? What do you want to do at a day-to-day basis at the office? Um, what where are your talents? Where do you think your potential is maximized? And you look at like what the endgame is. And then you look at people who've gotten there and you take the steps backward and say like look this is where I want to be at 40. What how do people get there? And then you work each step backward until you get to where at your current stage of your career you are now. And you need to reorient to get yourself back on that path. I also think entrepreneurship is marginally becoming a lot more appealing because AI is going to lower the cost of starting businesses. You're going to need a lot less employees to do the same amount of tasks. Especially when like um robotics technology advances that it could start to make a bigger dent in substituting like manual blue-collar labor, the um the operating leverage of a solopreneur or like a single family business is going to go up exponentially. So they've got that path which I think is going to become more appealing. Um, and especially as the corporate ladder starts to have um limited promotion opportunities and more diamond-shaped structures, the the upside the downside risk of going on your own versus staying in the ladder um be the rat race narrows because the odds of you surviving the rat race continues to decline. And so that's kind of what I think is going to be one option. But not everybody's cut out to be an entrepreneur to be quite honest. Like it takes a willingness to take on risk. It takes a willingness to have lower income than your peers for a long time and make it look like you feel like you're falling behind. It takes um having something that you are excited enough that you are willing to put in the long hours even if there's no hard deadlines or pressure from an external force. So I don't think it's entirely um a viable strategy really for everybody. I think it takes a certain personality type.

But what you can do is kind of more of what I call an entrepreneur role, which is that you build your career as if and your portfolio of skills as if you are an independent contractor and you'll eventually go on your own. And there's a strategy to do this one. Education. It's still important to get an education. I still think it's a good idea for most people to go to college, but you need to know before you go to school generally what you want to do. Like the whole point of going to college is to find out what you want to do in life and you need to have a plan by the time you graduate of like the general direction. You need to know exactly what roles and every step you need to go but you need to kind of know what track to go on. So that's step one. The second role is that you go to corporate America but you don't expect to have a lifetime career there. And I'm not talking about just being at the same company with 40 years in a golden watch. Everybody knows that's not viable anymore. I mean more in the sense that you've got um what's it called? The um the the idea that you can just switch from roll to roll within corporate America and job hop every three to five years and have 10 jobs within the corporate America umbrella over a 40-year period. I don't think that's a viable strategy anymore either to be quite honest because one if you do the job hopping strategy it will lead to higher pay in the short term but it also risks you being one of the first to get cut when they do have layoffs because there's no real old loyalty there and you're probably more expensive than internal people previously and so usually layoffs target the most expensive people and general the economics of layoffs are kind of messed up really for this is kind of a tangent here is that the reason why there's so much mass layoffs in the United States is because you can't in labor law in the US and correct me if I'm wrong on this but I don't think you can just do mass pay cuts across the board. So like say for example you need to cut payroll 10% to stay in business as a company or to maintain profits at a certain level so your stock doesn't collapse. Um, if in a country like Germany, for example, what they could do is say, "Hey, look, we're just going to give everybody a 10% pay cut across the board and you either accept it or you leave your job." You can't really do that in labor contracts in America. Like once you agree to pay somebody a certain salary, unless you let them go, you have to do it u by the way our labor laws are structured. And I think that applies to pretty much every state in the US. And so that's why you see more layoffs particularly of large corporations that have multi-state presence because you can't you like because instead of giving like everybody a 10% pay cut you just fire 10% of the staff and a layoff. Um, and yeah, one outcome creates lower income structurally the other one creates more volatile employment. So, there are trade-offs for both, but I just don't think that I think you should be allowed to if you want to keep your employees is to do mass pay cuts like they do mass layoffs. And if people don't want to stay, they have their their their right to leave. Or if you want to make sure your talented people stay, you structure your pay structure so it's more performance-based and you just do the the mass cut on the base salary part and you can make it up later with performance kickbacks for the top performers. But again, I don't think I think there's a we I'm not a labor lawyer or an expert in labor law, but I think that's kind of what drives layoff culture to a certain degree in the United States.

Um, but back to really kind of my point. So step so the point really for corporate America then is not to have a whole career in it. It's to gain somewhere between depending on your profession. Some industries that require a lot more capex and very niche skills may take more time in corporate America. Whereas others that are more using disruptive technologies or things that there that several years of experience doesn't provide an advantage, you need less time in corporate America. But the point really of being in corporate America is and I usually put three to five years as the timeline is to get enough experience to build a um what's it called? To build enough track record to prove that you know what you're doing to learn about how your industry works from the inside. So if you wanted to start a business you can figure out what the economic drivers are. Who are the customers? What is the cost structure? What are things I would need to think about if I were to go on my own? You've faced every kind of edge case problem in your industry that you're not going to learn in a textbook because like all the easy stuff is going to be done by AI like all the generic simple ways to solve any sort of problems in your profession. It's going to be a lot of what work for humans is going to be more in edge cases. So once you've understand the edge cases then and you've done enough of them so you have enough experience to have enough competence and therefore confidence in what you can do then you've graduated. Think of corporate America is like graduate school except instead of paying for it you are getting paid. That's the way I think the future like younger employee has to handle corporate America. They used to build experience and maybe a few names on the resume and also to make contacts through networking. Um, that they can either go on their own or they can move to a smaller firm when the layoff act comes because smaller firms particularly smaller professional services firms like law firms, accountancies, medical practices, financial firms, etc. they could they don't necessarily um want um what's it called to train people. They can't afford it because you lose corporate America loses money on the first year or two they hire you in general and they need people to help them to grow and they're willing to even pay a higher salaries or at least the same salaries to corporate America if you can do what you need them to do. Um, especially since they don't want you switching jobs so they will pay a premium for retention um like a lot of small businesses but what but I'm gonna answer this question before I get that thank you um thoughts on med school as a pivot to escape lower middle class as a first generation American is medicine psychiatry a stable long-term career play like I think psychiatry is going to grow as mental health continues to be a more prominent issue in society um I think that you could build your own practice doing that and psychology as well. Um, I think med school though in general um the cost structure is really high, the acceptance rate is really low and you are going to be burning through your entire 20s to finish. Like by the time you're done with med school and residency and postgrad stuff before you can either set up your own practice or have like an full-time doctor type job at a hospital or a larger scale clinic, you're going to already be in your 30s. So um you can it is the and it's also the biggest rat race and that's one reason why the medical acceptance rates are so low. Combination of AMA capping sizes of medical schools along with everybody wanting to be a doctor because they chase that because it is relatively high stable pay but um and low risk of losing your your job and your career. So you're going to it's going to be a lot more competitive. It's it I don't I think that the market is fairly efficient on this. Like I said if you have a legitimate passion for medicine, go for it. But if you're doing it mainly as a class advancement strategy, I think there are better class advancement strategies than getting into medicine.

But back to what I was saying about career path. So yeah, you spend the first three to five years of corporate America and you want to work at smaller firms after you either get the layoff or you decide, hey, I want more freedom in my life. And working at smaller firms also gives you flexibility geographically. You can find one that's in your hometown or where you want to live versus having to be stuck in the big mega cities where the cost of living is super high. So even on after tax after cost of living space, you're probably getting paid more working at a smaller firm assuming you have enough skills to prove that you are of value. And that's kind of really what is the corporate ladder nowadays or the career ladder should be. You start school, large company, small entrepreneurship or small company depending on your willingness to take risk and I don't mean like startup that is burning cash I mean like a successful firm that does generate positive cash flow but just needs more talent to grow and that is the way I think generally out of the rat race you use corporate America more to learn and so you build useful skills and connections and um a work ethic and understanding of the business world that you have more flexibility and mobility to do a lot of other things. Um, so that's kind of my opening comments. Um, now we're going to get to the Q&A section. So, if you want to ask any questions, feel free to put them in the chat. And also, um, if you want to make sure your question is answered, please do a super chat because you guys ask me a lot of great questions, but and I always read these live chat feeds after I do the lives, but the problem is I always miss like a lot of good ones. Even though I try to read through them as I'm doing the lives, it's just sometimes you just glaze over stuff and it's like, "Oh, I wish I would have answered that question." So yeah, I'm gonna get a sip of water and then I'm going to start answering questions.

All right, first question. Jobs that are subject to high liability such as diagnostic healthcare. Do you think they are more resistant to AI creep that folks are nervous about? Yeah, I think they are because a lot of anything that has enough stakes that like there's real material damage like somebody's life is on the line or there's a lot of major corporate liability or it's like a multi-million dollar deal. Do you really want to trust an LLM that has a chance of hallucinating and making a mistake? And lawyers will jump on that and sue. So I think this the higher stakes the profession is um I think that it makes it more less at risk of AI disruption. Um, thank you um Sakita for the um super chat. I don't see any question but thank you. And then ma um your stuff is always great topics. Perhaps a good idea will be a B to deep dive into what would be two or three superior careers to advance class versus the doctor role as the previous doctor role. I mean, I could do I I'm I've done a video about entrepreneurship already. Um, career advice is something I can touch in a little bit about but it's not really my core competency. So that's why I don't try to dive into it too much, but it is a potential idea and I'll keep it in mind. Um, and speaking really of um kind of other things I'd like to announce before I do more questions, I almost forgot. Um, I we've planned all the Q1 events for the tour um for and I'm excited to kind of just go through all of them. Now, our first one is going to be in Beverly Hills, California on Friday, January 23rd. And then our next one is going to be in Newport Beach, California on um what's it called? Saturday, January 31st. And then we are going to have two f um two meetups in Australia. Um, we have one in the Gold Coast on February 7th on it's a Saturday and then we have one on Friday, February 13th in Sydney. So, I've never been to Australia before. So, I'm really excited to meet all the Australian uh viewers of the channel at the live stream down under and it's it's going to be fun. And so, next All right, so I got super chat and then I'll go to announcing the rest of the tour. Hey Nick, I'm an accountant in a nonprofit and got a job offer for 30 cent more at a new nonprofit being an accounting manager. Should I stay at my new job if they decide to match the 30% or leave? Well, it depends on a number of things. One, is the new place more in line with your longer term ambition? Like again, you have to think like where do you want to be at 50 and work your way back? Second, um what's it called? Um do you like your co-workers? Do you like where you live? Do you like what what you're doing at your job? Like if they pay the same and they're equal value in terms of your long-term goals, I would stay. So the tie the tie should go to staying basically, but you have to assess all the other variables. Since I don't really know your personal situation, I can't give an answer to it. And it also Yes. So thank you. And then also after I get back from Australia, we're gonna have two meetups in Florida, one in Tampa on the 26th of um February, and then we're going to be in Palm Beach, Florida on the 28th of February. And then in March, we're going to have four meetups in the West Coast where we're gonna have March 7th in Seattle, Washington. And then in late March, I'm going to be doing a Northern California's rotation with um a meetup in Fresno, California on Thursday, March 26th and San Francisco on March 28th. And then I'm al I'm also going to have a private curated dinners at all these events. So I'm gonna have my main meetups where I do my speeches and have sometimes guest speakers as well and just more of like a meetup and a social gathering. But I'm also private dinners with eight to 10 people where it's more exclusive private conversations and high-end food and unique experiences in almost every city I go to. And if you want to um come to one of the curated experiences, they're application only. So you fill out applications so I get to know you better be and see if you are a good fit. But um I'm also going to be doing certain places where I only have curated experiences. Like I'm going to have a private dinner in Monaceto, California, which is near Santa Barbara on the 29th of March. And um yeah, and then we're going to have them in all the other cities as well. We might do a special private lunchon in San Jose or Silicon Valley area if there's enough of you who would want to come to it. I don't have that one set in stone yet, but some people have reached out to me. He's like, "Nick, you should do a curated lunch or some dinner in San Jose." And I might do that on the 27th of March. But now with the tour announced, um, I'm going to get back to Q&A. But if I didn't mention your city, it's probably because it's going to be later in the year. I'm going to try to do most of the US and Asia Pacific in 2026. But if you want to make sure that we come to your place, vote in our survey. This will help me figure out where to do events. I mainly pick the locations based on where you guys want me to go and and or if I have other reasons to be there. U and then the other thing I like to announce is we have our Substack. People always ask me about reading lists. If you want to get my reading list, join our Substack Nicks present value where you get updates about videos on the channel as well as um our reading lists and extra content and on top of that um updates and announcements for events and other things.

Okay, now I'm back to questions. What is the best path towards an independent professional class for a new CPA who wants to do their own tax firm? Well, you need to just start developing your book of clients. I mean, if you probably should work at an at a bigger tax accounting firm or an auditing firm at the beginning, but one that doesn't have a strong non-compete or like move to the state of California where non-competes are less enforceable and build while you're working at the bigger firm, you start to develop your own book of clients on the side. That's probably the safest way to go about doing it. And then once you have a mass amount of clients on that, you can then just branch off and do your own CPA practice. Uh, but you got to make sure that you don't violate any employer non-competes or don't or or don't fail to fulfill the obligation of your employer while you're doing that.

Thoughts on a data analyst role in marketing and business development fields? Um, yeah, I mean I think there's opportunity in that because being able to use data will help improve marketing ski like be able how to target people more efficiently and get more yield. And if you could be proven to figure out how to get an edge in finding prospects or clients for employers, you can turn that into a very lucrative private practice. Thing is the barriers to entry are very low in that. So he will have a lot of competition. But I think the key is that you just got to go find um um an edge on where you can do that. Um, so that's um kind of um my take on that. What do you think about working as a plumber? I mean in the short term it's probably safe from disruption, but once the robots come, I think there will be eventually robots that will be able to do what a lot of plumbers do within the next decade or two. Um, I think really the key if you want to go through the trades path and you want to advance out of the working class is that you have to have an entrepreneurial mindset and be willing to turn your plumbing career into a plumbing practice that you hire other plumbers under you eventually and you scale and build a local business. Uh, so that's my my take on that.

Um, let's see. Let's go back to um I'm going to scroll up and try to find questions because I um and also Jenner, what are you guys thoughts on the rat race? Do you think that the rat race is has declined as much

As I think it has, or do you think it's still worth pursuing these prestigious white shoe jobs? Um, I'd like to know your thoughts on all of this, and we have a conversation on here.

Uh, let's see. Thoughts on the Albanian economy? Any chance that Trump would annex Albania? No, I don't think the US would ever annex Albania. I don't really know enough about the Albanian economy. I have a friend of mine who does a lot of business in the tech industry there who's very bullish on it. And I think they do offer relatively low-cost but competent, um, like outsourced IT, but I really don't know about the whole macro economy of Albania enough to really have a strong opinion. It's a small country that's relatively geopolitically and economically insignificant. It could grow on its own, but it's hard for outside investors to get involved.

Um, do you think Gen Z should focus on success first, then marriage, or does it not matter? Well, I think you could kind of do both in a way. Like I think if you do my hybrid career strategy, you don't work too long hours. Like you keep your working hours, say, under 60 hours a week. That can still give you time to have a sufficient social life to go find your future spouse. But I think that what you, what my view on the whole marriage timeline thing is, like once you're graduated from college, you should go and try to find the person you're looking for, but don't rush to settle for whoever is first available necessarily. If you meet the one who's perfect for you right away, great. You shouldn't really delay getting married. But be realistic, especially if you're somebody who has a more unique personality or somebody who has very strongly defined values that might not be agreeable to mainstream culture, it might take you a little bit longer to find somebody. So if you start looking, say, at 22, it might take you till you're 32 to find somebody. And that's just kind of the cost of doing business. And while you're doing that, you shouldn't just put your career on hold. You should go in and try to pursue your dream, especially if you're a young man. Because like men who have like a plan for their lives and want to go and do something and are making things happen are more attractive to people looking for long-term relationships than guys who are just kind of focusing all their whole life on partying and socializing.

Um, and uh, that's kind of my, um, my take on that. Uh, let's see. Um, another question really that I'm going to ask that I'm going to ask here. It's a lot of statements here. I'm just got to read through this.

Do you think a data analyst career is lucrative? I mean, that's I've seen data analyst job entries that are some of the lowest paying jobs in the Bay Area and some of the highest paying jobs in the area. So, it depends what kind of data you're analyzing and what it means. A data analyst can mean something as simple as copying and pasting QIP numbers in mortgage software, or it can mean something as advanced as building an LLM. So, yeah, I think a data analyst is kind of like a financial advisor. It's one of these things that could mean anything. And so, therefore, it's not really a, um, a good metric.

Let's see. Um, why place a cap on med school? How does that make sense? Less doctors. Well, the reason why they want a cap because if it's simple, if you have lower supply of doctors and a constant or growing demand, it means higher pay. So, and also given how expensive medical schools are, doctors need higher pay for it to be worth it to go there and rack up multiple six figures of debt. I mean, that's also why I'm generally not a fan of pursuing the doctor path unless you have a strong passion for medicine because that kind of student debt limits a lot of your optionality. Like I would try to build my education on having zero to minimal amount of student debt if possible because you just gives you a lot more freedom to pursue a lot of different avenues with your life and your career if you're not chained to a job because you have debt payments to service. So, but yeah, it lowers the supply of doctors, which increases the salaries of doctors. So, it's it's it's it's it's an intentional supply cut to boost up demand. It's, um, and to boost up salaries. It's a supply demand curve.

Um, let's see. Uh, how do you think fintech will grow in the future? I mean, I think they're going to try to make LLMs that, um, replace a lot of roles in finance like research analysts, financial advisors, insurance advisors. Um, and I think they could do it on the low end, kind of like how Wealthfront and a lot of these robo-advisors disrupted the lower end. But if you have particularly even the wealth management, my profession, if you have enough money that the stakes are high enough, are you really going to trust an LLM or an AI to better manage your finances and better supervise your finances than an individual who is using that AI maybe to help expand their scope of their research and be able to monitor things better, but still have that human source of judgment and just that sense of trust. Like I think the main thing that AI is going to increase the value of is trust. And things that require high trust are going to be higher paid and less disruptible. Whereas things that can be automated or that don't require trust are going to be more automatable because if you don't need to trust the counterparty, the machine can probably do it just fine without too much consequences.

Uh, I might do a separate live stream about high versus low trust societies, but I have a lot of other ideas I'm going to do for these future streams. Like the next one I'm going to do by your request in January is educational reform about how to fix, how I fix the school system. And then in February, I'm going to do the, the last Valentine's Day special, which is going to be the, like I, I do, I used to make one video a year about dating and relationships and the intersection of finance. And I'm just going to do one big long live stream about my thoughts on why people perceive the dating market to be broken and the why you have a lot of the issues involved because it's mostly a lot of it is economically driven and the sociology kind of bounces off of it. And so I want to do kind of just my magnum opus and final say on these matters and move on to topics that I will find particularly more interesting in my life in the future. But I know you guys want to see it and it's a hot topic right now and I'm going to line it up and do it on February 1st. And then I'll probably do a live stream about social trust in society and I might do like a Catholic focused one on Good Friday for Easter. But if you have any other suggestions for what I should do for future lecture topics for the live streams, please leave them in the comments.

Okay, so what about real estate appraisers? I think real estate appraisers actually are at risk of automation because a lot of their assumptions are based off of comps and there are databases like the MLS or Zillow where comps are readily available and you can have like drones on the exterior and like a robot in the interior with a camera take pictures of everything, compare it to the same in other properties in similar cities and give you like a formula. So, I think like appraisers in general, like that rely on comps, whether that's valuations for private businesses, valuations for real estate, um, just valuation work in general, I think is actually really at risk of AI disruption. It's it's too formulaic, I think, to be really safe.

Um, if I want to start a financial advisory firm or work as an FA, is a CPA worth it? Um, you only really want to be a CPA if you want to do taxes or accounting. Like I think it's good to take an accounting class or two in college so you can read the language of finance, but they're very different. I, I, if I, if you're going to the designations that would be better for a career in financial advising would be either a CFP or a CP or CFA, not a CPA unless if you want to offer tax planning as something you do. The way that would make sense to have a CPA as a financial advisory practice is if you start as a tax planner first and then you try to upsell your tax clients to wealth management. That's the, the, the way that I've seen CPAs do it. But if that's not really what you're intending, um, it, I, I don't really think CPA is the path unless if you want like a back. It also could be a hedge, like you can get into accounting if the f, if the financial advisory path doesn't work for you.

How do you see AI disrupting teaching professions? Well, I will get into this more in my educational reform live stream. But in general, I see that, um, teaching professions and through the internet are going to be able to be done in much larger scale and it's going to make homework obsolete because you can just look at the LLM to help you solve your homework problems. So, I think homework will be done in the school system. I, and I think good riddance. I think homework is just a sign of inefficiency of the school system and, yeah, it just, I don't think it just causes more stress and without really improving learning outcomes, but I, I think that's really the, the main thing. And academic integrity is going to be harder to enforce because these AIs are going to get better at, they're going to be one step ahead often of the, of the LLM cheating detectors. So, yeah, that's a kind of a concern. Like the school system will have to be restructured in a way that you can't use an LLM to help you get the answers. So, probably more oral or written exams with pen and paper, and you maybe do a reverse schooling system where you watch the lectures at home on YouTube, like Khan Academy, and then go into class to do the practice problems and the applications.

Um, let's see. What do your successful friends do for work? Well, I mean, a lot of they do a lot of different things. Um, a lot of them work in, or most of them are entrepreneurs. They're self-employed or work in a profession that is very, um, eat as you kill. So, a lot of finance, a lot of tech, um, attorneys, um, self-employed entrepreneurs in a variety of industries. Um, but yeah, I mean, as a member of the independent professional class, most of my friends happen to be fellow members of the independent professional class. I have some friends in corporate management, but they are a minority compared to my general, um, social circle nowadays. Um, so, yeah, it's that's kind of, um, in general, my circle consists of, um, working at a large utility engineer.

Do you have any recommendations? What other options do you think are better than a doctor for moving up the class hierarchy that you just mentioned? Um, I think that entrepreneurship is one. I think working in, like in, in tech at the right front, at the frontier parts that aren't as codified and institutionalized. Just, um, I think that, like again, if you want to move up the career ladder, it's, um, going to be some sort of entrepreneurial or sales or financial role. If you want to, um, move up on the institutional path, it's got to be things, it's that allow your office political skills to shine, or being in, helping people with high stake problems, is building a niche of expertise in general that you are one of the few people who can do it well enough that people will pay a lot for it. It kind of goes in my intersection of the Venn diagram: things you are good at, things that you are excited at, and things people ask you for help for that there's demand for, and you need something that kind of intersects all three.

Um, let's see. How's the commute for the new job? Oh, that's not for me. That's for the guy in the chat.

Um, how do you think fintech will grow in the future? Yeah, I've already answered that question earlier on the live stream.

Um, how should displaced working class apply your advice living in, um, racialized areas and for minorities particularly? I'm not a minority, so I might not be the best one to answer that question, but you just need to be in places that are more meritocratic and where results are driven more than where you come from. And I think in most major cities in the United States, um, that that is fine. You just need to kind, and again, you just, it's just a proof of competency. I think if you're good at your job, nobody's going to care too much about your background.

Um, let's see. What's it called? Um, if you had to estimate the probability of the average American making it to the rich level at this point in time, what would it be and what traits increase and decrease it? All right, that's a good question. Um, I think that the probability of the average American making it to the rich level is probably about one to 5% chance. But because, like, you can't really get rich without a top 5% income. Like, even if you're the most shrewd investor on earth, um, it's going to be very difficult to get there without at least that. So that's kind of, um, and my definition of rich is like 20 million plus in net worth by the time you're 60 years old. Like, I'm not talking about like upper middle class. Like the chance of getting to the upper middle class, I could put it as high as 30% or 30 to, or even a third. But those numbers may seem low, but the thing is is that how many people are actually trying? And that's the real guesstimate you should care about. What are the percentage of people who are willing to grind it out and willing to actually put the effort in and take all the steps? Then that's probably at least a 50/50 chance. I think if people who are actually willing to full-on apply themselves and do it and have the risk-taking capacity and the grit to do so, but I think most people don't have it. A lot of people think they have that, but they don't. It's also, it's why, for example, when I go to entrepreneurial events in my local community, it's disproportionately immigrants and first-generation people at startup groups. And it's not because native-borns don't have the opportunity to do it. It's just most native-born Americans prefer stability and a comfortable life and they feel like they have too much to lose versus going for it. Like as a native-born American who's third or fourth generation, depending on which side of the family, I was in a minority at most entrepreneurial conferences or events that I went to. And I think it's just, um, like it's a motivation difference, I think, is the main driver more than anything. Not really a, that people from not the US are better entrepreneurs. I don't think that's true. That's like the narrative that the, that the establishment in the left likes to pitch is that, um, people like immigrants are naturally better entrepreneurs. But that's, I don't think that's true. I think it's a selection bias on what type of people come legally to the United States. And also just the motivation, like of, like what is the better outcome, like versus risk, or if their parents were more risk-taking people. Like most people who came to America had ancestors who were probably more risk-taking, and that's why this country generally has a more tolerance for embracing of entrepreneurship and willingness for growth and a less generous welfare state because the ones who weren't risk-taking stayed in Europe.

Um, but I think that's kind of the, I think that the odds are low. It's probably less than 5% to be the answer. But the people who are trying, it's, it's at least in the double digits and it could be as high as 50%. But again, I wouldn't know because there's no data. You can't really measure. How do you prove somebody who's actually, everybody's going to say they tried their best, but like, how you gonna, significant, how you gonna measure that?

Um, so, let's see. Um, what's it called? Oh, yeah. Hey everybody, I'm back. Sorry, my internet kind of just farted out there for a second. So, but I just wanted to say this is also the live stream to celebrate 90,000 subscribers. We're at a little under 92,000 right now. What should I do for 100K? I want to do something special. I'm gonna do a live stream and maybe some a special event in person for it. If you have any suggestions on what I should do for the 100K mark, which I wanted to hit by Christmas, but we're realistically not going to get 8,000 subscribers in six days. I mean, it's possible. Share the word and spread, help me get to 100,000, but I think it's realistically going to be more like a late Q1. But, um, I want to do something special for it. So, I'm open to suggestions.

Um, I know some guy said 100K meetup in New York. I will be doing a meetup in New York. It will be most likely in April or May of, um, this upcoming year. I just have other things I need to plan out, so I can't start scheduling events really post, um, these hard dates, post March 30th. The only one we have a hard date for after March 30th is Scottsdale, Arizona on the, um, 18th of April. But we are planning on going to a lot of different cities in Q2, including Boston, DC, New York, uh, Toronto, Atlanta, and Scottsdale, Arizona. So that's, and maybe possible other ones if there's enough demand for you guys for me to see you there.

Um, let's see. So, now I need to kind of go back to my questions.

Um, are you bullish on precious metals in the short term? I'm not going to answer specific trading questions on here. If you want to talk to me about your own specific portfolio or investments, um, schedule a consultation or a, um, a call with me. Um, it just, yeah, I can't give invest, mass investment. I can't invest on a mass plan like this.

Um, let's see. What about becoming a dentist? Does that make enough money in its field? I mean, I think a dentist probably has a better ROI than being a medical doctor. I, not really, I'm not really, I'm more familiar with the path for doctors because my grandfather was a doctor and he told me all about the risks and rewards of this when I was growing up. But for dentists, um, I think they take less time in school and therefore they probably rack up less debt and I don't know what the cost of operating a dental practice is. So it really, I don't know the numbers enough to strongly say one way or the other.

Uh, thoughts on Peter Schiff? I was a big fan of Peter Schiff when I was in college, but in general with a lot of financial thinkers, I call a lot of them one-trick ponies in the sense, and this isn't just financial thinkers, this is like public intellectuals in general, where they have like one or two core ideas and they have like a general ideology that doesn't change very much and they kind of stick to a certain lane. And so if you consume enough of their content in a short period of time, you kind of get their entire gist. And that happened to me with Peter Schiff when I was in college. Like I understand his views on Austrian economics and on gold and on international stocks and all this. And so I already kind of can build a mental LLM in my head saying, what would Peter Schiff think about this? And I could probably answer it with a 90% accuracy. And so because of that, I haven't really followed him as closely as I used to. And that's a lot of other thinkers. I kind of absorb a lot of somebody in a relatively short period of time, extract the interesting ideas, kind of build a mental LLM framework of what I think they would react to certain situations, and then move on to the next.

Um, I think that's a general way to kind of like think of thinkers. And I think probably I sometimes worry like, what if I become a one-trick pony? That's why I try to also do more diverse content because, um, I have a lot of different ideas in a lot of different fields so you guys won't get bored of what I have to say because once I become the one-trick pony, that's when this channel stagnates and when my idea power starts to really stagnate in the bigger picture of things.

Um, yeah, let's see. Um, what's it called? Thoughts on Friedrich List and Listian economics? I don't know and I don't even, I don't really know what Listian economics is. So I, that's giving me something new to research and I thought I knew just about every school of economics based on what I did on the iceberg of economics, but I'll have to look up Listian economics and give you a better answer.

Um, do you foresee a revival of religion with the advancement of AI, specifically Catholicism? Well, I mean, as a practicing Catholic, I would love for that outcome to happen. And I do think that we do have Catholicism is making a comeback, particularly among Gen Z men. Um, the higher churches are a little bit more intense gravity and seriousness to their faith that maybe some of the lower church style Christianity denominations do not. And that's appealing to more intellectually focused and people want more of like a standing tradition. And I think that's a big driver in a world that seems like this trying to just erode and destroy every tradition, make everything ephemeral.

Um, but I think AI could recover religion because there's three ways historically people have meaning in the world. Um, and then there's a fourth way, which is what the urban monoculture tries to deal with, is just delay things with consumption and vice, but that's not really a, a source of meaning. That's a way to delay addressing the meaning deficit. So, in terms of actual sources of meaning, there's three. There's religion and faith. There is family and/or community, but mostly your blood family. And the third one is your profession or like your, your vocation, like what you're called to do and skill to provide to others to advance society. And vocation is the career. And if AI is disrupting a lot of careers and obviating a lot of careers and making not people cannot, it's hard for people to, it's going to be harder for people to derive meaning from their career if their career is always at risk of being disrupted and always has to be changed. So you need something new to be your set of your identity and new to create your sense of meaning if your career is something that's going to be constantly shifting, um, due to the ways of technology. So I think religion could be one of the, um, the ways that people will derive meaning. So instead of like, say, for example, people introduce yourself and be like, hi, I'm Nick, I'm an investment manager, and then I'm also a Catholic and I have a family with X amount of people in it, whereas maybe now that's generally how Americans introduce each other first is career, maybe family, and then religion third, whereas maybe in the age where career is not as a big portion of identity, religion might shift up to that. The other risk really is once like the cult of equality, um, implodes on itself due to being financially, um, insolvent, maybe people will start worshiping LLMs or AGI as an alternative religion. That's something I've thought about is like the cult of equality, people who are going to be disillusioned from that, they're going to need to find something else to believe in. And if they, those people are naturally hostile to Christianity and traditional religion, so they'll need to find something else. So maybe LLM worship or AI AGI worship might be that new outcome that progressive shift to.

Um, yeah, let's see. Um, next question. Really? I was going to say, how do you feel about the Pope? Um, it's too early to say. I was fortunate. I got to go see the Pope in Rome while I was doing the Analyzing Finance with Nick tour last year in Europe, live at a Jubilee mass. So, that was pretty cool. Um, it was probably ranked, I was more excited about that than seeing any politician I've ever seen in person. And I've managed to see a few notable ones or sports figures. It's pretty cool to meet the Holy Father. And it's cool, especially since he's an American. Um, his, I think his papacy so far has some things I agree with, some that I disagree with. I'm still optimistic. It's too early to give an assessment. I think he has taken a step back in a lot of the key issues, ways that Francis had kind of been causing strain in the church. So I think in general, he's a step in the right direction so far. Um, but again, I, it's too early to say and I haven't been following every single one of his writings, but I think he's so far playing out the way I expected him to.

Um, let's see. Listian economics is a nationally guided capitalist economy. Think Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. So, it's basically just land reform plus more authoritarian state-driven capital, export capital. So, modern mercantilism, um, in a way. Um, I think it could work in an era where it's a, it could be a way to get your country from the ground floor to level one, but a Listian model is not going to get you from like the middle-income trap to, um, like the most advanced developed society. I think it's a good step one, uh, because you need individual freedom and creativity, and the state is not really the best at driving people towards those outcomes. Uh, so, yeah, the challenge is really is being able to find a way to maximize individual freedom and creativity without an electorate that will vote for short-sighted things that damage the golden goose. That's something that I also think about sometimes, it keeps me up at night.

Um, I'm going to have another sip of water as my throat's drying out, but I want to keep going. But in the meantime, fill up your questions in the chat and I'll get back to them. If you're ever going to do long live streams, always stay hydrated. Um, they're a lot more tiring than you think, especially on your throat. But now I'm back.

Do you think Taiwan's real estate market is a bubble or is it fundamentally justified? I have no idea to be quite honest. I don't follow Taiwanese real estate closely. I don't know what the prices are relative to incomes there and I don't really know what the property tax levels are. So without that kind of information, I can't really give an assessment on Taiwanese real estate. I'm so, I'm sorry I can't help on that question.

So, um, let's see. Are you in general expecting more centralization or decentralization in the next 25 years? I expect generally more decentralization in the next 25 years. Um, I think that the problem with increased centralization is that, um, you're going to, with a lot of this disruptive technology, it's going to allow a lot of new entrants to compete at relatively cheap costs for things. And the, I think you'll see centralization in more older industries. Like I think you'll, especially since a lot of boomers are retiring with certain practices and don't have succession plans, they're going to see consolidations in those industries and you're going to see a lot of mergers and acquisitions. But there'll be a lot more newer growth opportunities to kind of wash out that and more. And also as the government's finances continue to get weak, um, due to excessive spending and demographic cliffs and various developed economies, the government will not have the power to centralize everything like they used to because they won't have the resources to do it. And so more things are going to have to be deferred.

Um, so in general, I think it's going to be more decentralization in terms of economic level. In terms of politics and national borders, I think you'll probably see more centralization. Like the liberal international order has artificially kept up the, um, the number of country, independent sovereign states. Um, so if, like, the liberal international order recedes, um, or just becomes more authoritarian, I think you'll see more consolidation in terms of the number of countries. They'll either voluntarily unify into bigger blocks or you'll see more traditional, like conquests or like forced annexations. And so I think political centralization will increase on the international level, whereas I think that individuals' lives and the economies will decentralize.

Um, how much should young people weigh the cost of living and choosing the place they want to build their career? Uh, I think it should be a big impact because, um, you can't consistently be running negative cash flow in your young age. Um, and if you're going to go to a high cost of living city, your first, your, your real after-tax pay doesn't necessarily have to be, um, higher than in the lower cost of living place at the beginning. But if there's no like path that you're not going to be making considerably more money and have more opportunities for a more fulfilling career path by going to the higher cost of living city, you are wasting your money. There's a lot of people who move to these cities particularly for like more romantic reasons like, oh, I want to live the dream and live in New York or LA or San Francisco and or Silicon Valley and it's like, but they don't really have a plan of why they're going there and what they're going to do and what the endgame is. So they end up getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill of high cost of living and live the stereotypical urban monoculture meaningless life. So you need to have, um, a plan of action. Like, I'm going to go to this place if I'm going to move away from. And also, I think people overvalue the value of roots and connections. I talked about this in my last live stream about planting the flag in your local community. And if you have a good social and business network in your local community, you shouldn't leave your home community unless if the opportunities are exponentially greater. Like, for example, I had to leave my home community early in my career because it, my, where I live didn't have the specific type of opportunities like in employers that I wanted to work for. There were more of them in big major cities like New York, Singapore, San Francisco, Chicago. Those were the cities that had the type of jobs in my early career that I needed to gain the experience and the skills I needed to to do what I'm doing now. So, I had to live away from my hometown for 10 years to do that. But once I had acquired the needed, um, expertise in human capital, um, and savings to kind of go on my own, I moved back to my roots and made an effort to kind of plant my flag. And I've, and you're, and again, social capital is generally heavily undervalued. So, if you're going to, and this is assuming you like where you're from, and when you grew up in a place with enough economic opportunities, like if you grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere in rural America, yeah, there's probably not much social ties and social capital worth having to keep you there if you have bigger ambitions, which most of the people who watch this channel do. So, I'm assuming up in a top 50 metro. So if you are one of those 80% of Americans who grew up in a top 50 metro and you like your living near your family, you like your home, your community you grew up in, you probably can make very good opportunities for yourself doing it.

Um, so, yeah, that's generally my take. Um, what's it called? What do you usually cover at your events or how are your events in general? Well, we're going to have two different types of events. We're going to have our main events, which, um, I've shared with you guys earlier in the live stream, but we're also hours mingling among all the people there at the event. Then we have speeches. It's either myself speaking or an opening speaker of either my, like, people I know personally who I think would be good expert speakers on that topic who live in that city, or fellow, um, content creators who have interesting or other smart people who have something interesting to say will be the opening speaker for me that's relevant to the topic, and then I will do the closeout speech, and then I'll take a fairly long Q&A, and then there's post-speech, like mingling and stuff like that. So that's kind of how the structure. They're usually about, like, three hours long, my, um, my events for the main ones. And the second ones are private dinners or curated experiences where it's a group of eight to 10 people where we either share a meal or some a cool event and have like a more private one-on-one type discussions with me.

Um, and here's like my Eventbrite page, which has a list of all the upcoming events. I have them all prescheduled up until the end of March. And then I'm also going to post a new link to the Curated Experience application form if you want to, um, apply to join us at one of the private dinners. And we're having them at pretty much every city we go to, at the exception of the Gold Coast in Australia and Fresno, California, which just aren't big enough of metros to have curated dinners.

Um, let's see. Um, what's it called? Is the European Union a failed political project? And what do you think their role is in a multipolarized world? I mean, I think it generally is a failed political project. Like, it is very anti-democratic. It consistently goes against the will of the actual European people. And it's kind of a last grasp attempt for relevancy in worlds with where with much larger populations and more dynamic economies of countries like the US and China.

Um, but I think with the age of AI, it's going to, large quantities of people is no longer going to be an asset like it used to be. Like it depends. Um, what's it called? No, AF with Nick is not a reference to, um, the other AF with Nick. I caught that hashtag and that Twitter before he did. So, we just happen to have the first name and I chose Analyzing Finance with Nick as the name of my channel partially because I wanted to start with an A. So, if you go on your subscription feed, I show up first. But also because I think it's a good name.

Um, so, yeah. Um, so it's not, um, but like, yeah, I think with the problem, I think in the future though, with again, with AI technology going the way it, it has, um, you are going to have, um, and robots accelerating the way, like countries with much smaller populations but much higher levels of average human capital and more, I don't know, like well-educated, highly intelligent societies with fewer smarter people are going to be able to punch above their weight. And there's been a pattern of this rotating in history, like in eras of massive technological acceleration or where there's a big gap in technological potentials between different countries or different regions of the world, smaller countries have been able to have large empires or large geopolitical sway. Like, example would be like in the 16th and 17th century with the Netherlands, which was this tiny country that didn't have that many people, man, much manpower, but they innovated modern capitalism and the first to embrace it, and they used that technological edge to basically have a giant colonial empire. Uh, Britain is another example. They're the first to industrialize, even though they had a much smaller population than the rest of their empire, but they were, their technological advantage allowed them to punch above their weight.

Um, and I think you're going to start to see smaller countries be able to punch above their weight because the, the gap between the haves and the have-nots for technology in the, and AI is going to start to widen out. Like the internet and like the globalization era from say, like 1980 to 2010 was a convergence in technological capability. So in an era of convergence of technological capability, the main edge is manpower and population. Whereas in an era of diverging technological outcomes and capabilities, it's more about the strength of human capital and the technological edge of a country. So I think smaller countries will be able to compete again, which means the EU will not need to exist to make European countries viable. So like, yeah, I could see a world where the Netherlands and Switzerland are strong powers again, and especially as the big three in Europe, Italy, UK, not Italy, UK, France, and Germany continue to struggle, and I think the rest of the continent is going to not want to be burdened by their problems. Uh, but that, and if we're talking about the EU itself, the big three are Italy, Germany, and France. But that's, um, my answer to that question.

Um, what's it called? I live in Boston. Is it wrong to dislike politicians from other cities coming in and running my city rather than locals? No, it's not. Those are called carpetbaggers. And people have always had a problem with those. I mean, the thing is that you have to judge them based on what do you think they're going to do, be, are they going to actually improve your city or not. Like, I would vote for somebody who is from another, um, from another part of the country in my city if I thought they would do a good job running my city and they reflected the views and the, um, the values of the citizenry here. That's just the carpetbaggers tend to not do that. Um, there are some who do and they're fine, but you just have to do a little bit of deeper dive to see like, does this person really match? Because some people move to your, to Boston, for example, because they line up more with Boston's values and Boston's ethos than somebody, um, than from their, their hometown. So, it, it, it's a yellow flag, not a red flag in my opinion.

Um, what is the history of the cross behind you? Um, I bought it as a souvenir in the Vatican for going to Jubilee. So, I've only had this since September, but it's a memorial. It's like a little momento for my pilgrimage for Jubilee. That's the answer to that question.

Um, let's see. Um, have you done a live event before in the Caribbean? No, I've not. Um, I have. I've, I want to do one in the Caribbean. It would probably be either in the Cayman Islands or in the Bahamas, but we don't have enough of you guys who voted for me to come to the Caribbean yet. I'd also be open to doing one in Barbados if there's enough of you guys who wanted me to do it there, or Puerto Rico, but it's just that I just haven't got enough votes that I think I can do an event there and have enough of an audience to make it worth the trip. And there's a lot of other places personally, like in terms of my personal life travels, that I'm going to be going to before the Caribbean. But if you want to have your vote for the Caribbean, I do have that, some of the choices. Or if your island is not a choice, you could check off the other. St. Barts would be also another fun place to do an event. But I don't know how many people, um, what's it called, would have, um, who watch this channel live in St. Barts or go there regularly enough to come to an event.

Um, but yeah, I would like to, like I've only been to two places in the Caribbean in my whole life and that was to the Cayman and to the, um, Barbados. But I would like, unless you count the Florida Keys as the Caribbean, which I do not. Um, or but I would like to go to, um, to the Bahamas. I'd like to go check out St. Bart, St. Martin, Aruba would all be really cool places to visit. And the Virgin Islands. And I'd probably want to go back to the Cayman.

Um, but yeah, let's see. Um, what's it called? Um, let's see. Next question that I have.

How can someone get into real estate development to make money on their money they save up? Well, yeah, you would work under, probably the best way if you want to get into real estate development is to work for a real estate developer and be their, like, preferably like an independent professional one that's not too big, and you become their number two guy or their apprentice in a way. That's probably the way the, probably the best path if you want to get into that profession and do actual real estate development related work and get like hands on the ground experience with it. Boots on the ground experience, sorry. Like that's how I would do it is work at a small but prosperous real estate development firm and like be like, and just kind of learn from them and you save up your own money and then you build trust among the real estate community, investment community, and your own mentors and have them help you spin out and start your own real estate fund when they feel like you're ready. Or you can be the succession plan and buy, buy your boss out. That's the other way you can do it.

Um, any predictions on the solution to Social Security trust insolvency? Um, all right. Congratulations to 90K Nick. I got to do the super chat first. What are your thoughts on the propensity for economists to smuggle personal values and politics into what should be imperial analysis? Also, when will you visit Minnesota?

Um, thank you, um, for the super chat. And yeah, I did a whole video about this. It's called Macroeconomics is Political because, uh, the way you move up professionally, like if you want to be a professional economist and want to get like acclaim and prestige and speaking gigs and like consulting projects and stuff, is that you become relevant in the mainstream culture. And how do you become relevant in the mainstream culture is that you give a policy, you give an economic justification for a policy platform of a popular political candidate. Example, be like the MMT people, like Stephanie Kelton. They got their following from, um, she got her following for being Bernie Sanders' economic advisor, and it was very lucrative for her, and not just financially, but also for her reputation as being a leading thinker because she was the one who created a framework to justify his ideology. Even though I strongly disagree with MMT and, um, Bernie Sanders' platform in general, that's how she moved up. And absolutely Peter Schiff. Actually, Peter Schiff gained notoriety because he was Ron Paul's economic advisor in 2008 and 2012. That's how I heard of him in the first place because I was a big supporter of Ron Paul back in my college days. And so I learned about Peter Schiff as a derivative of my research on Austrian economics and just the support for his camp primary campaign back in the day. And so that's why you, they tend to align a lot of their personal values in politics because they benefit from it. If a politician says, "Hey, I like what this guy's about. Can he build me the economic rationalization for what I want to do anyway?" Another example, Art Laffer. He built the Laffer curve partially as a way to help justify Reagan's, um, supply-side economics plans. That's how you build up your career in economics. And watch, search my video Macroeconomics is Political for more on that.

But yeah, I generally don't, I mean, the thing is is that economics is inherently political because, um, it is the study of why people exchange goods and services with each other at certain rates and how resources are distributed. And the distribution of resources is effectively political because certain classes get certain things and other classes are deprived of certain things. And like, so economics is going to inherently cross those lines. And so what I don't like are people who have a certain, or economic belief system, but then they completely throw it away to match their political ideology. Like the, for example, minimum wage. Like the consensus in 2008 was that minimum wage hikes were generally a bad idea because they increase unemployment, and the data really hasn't shifted on that at all. But now all of a sudden 50% of economists support mass minimum wage hikes. Why? The data hasn't changed on it. It's because, um, their political ideology is getting in the way of what was previously settled economics. And I might get into a whole video about class and political ideology. I already did, but like a deeper one about how basically political issues can never be solved, especially economic ones, because

Different classes have different ideas of what it means to be a good economy. Like, I think the only class who actually wants like high GDP growth and real long-term real living standards growth would be the independent professional classes. Because the poor would give up economic growth if they wanted to maintain stability. As long as they get help, aid to help their rent checks or keep themselves alive now, they don't care if the economy in the future won't grow.

And then the old money establishment classes want to keep their relative high space on the social pyramid. And so they would prefer stagnation too, because stagnation ensures, or at least increases the odds, they will not get disrupted off their perch. And then the middle classes, they generally prefer whatever economic policy will keep them employed at their same job and stability. And stability often conflicts with longer-term growth and prosperity. And so each different class has different priorities for economic growth and what kind of economic structure, and that's why the coalitions are so fragile.

Um, I know I had a long answer for you, but hopefully that answers your question. Um, I'm glad that there's a country like Portugal that is actually debating this issue on social trust. I think this is the most important issue in politics that's not really being addressed hard enough in my opinion. Um, is, um, the low-trust society because there's a lot of real cost to it. Like, you have to pay extra to verify everything. You have to have increased physical security everywhere. Um, you can't really like, you have to be always more aware or more vigilant, and you have higher costs of law enforcement, you have higher costs of insurance. You have a lot. I did a whole video about this if you want to watch it, but in general, it's there's real economic damage, but it also just lowers the quality of all of our lives. And I don't like it.

Other YouTubers, particularly on the right, basically say, "Oh, we just need to embrace low, low-trust society. You got to be able to like cheat better than the cheaters." No, maybe this is my inner Swiss German coming out in me, which is a very high-trust society, but yeah, I mean, I think that we should be striving to maintain like a high-trust society or reinforce the norms that maintain it and make start in our individual communities and then grow up from there instead of just embracing it's like the "enjoy the decline" mentality that you see a lot of people say as well. It's like, no, I mean, you you can do that if that's just a defeatist really kind of attitude. However, there is the one point they do have that you kind of need to fix your own problems before you start to try to pitch others, which is why I haven't done too much advocacy yet because I got to do one step at a time. You first need to make sure everything's right with yourself, and then your family, and then then maybe your local community, and then you try to push more aggressively for larger-scale reforms. But it's kind of one step at a time.

Um, let's see. Do you think the US is heading for a gambling crisis right now? That prediction marks basically people bet on everything? I mean, I think it's a symptom of a broader problem. I talked about financial nihilism in a video I did last April, which I recommend you guys watch. Um, it's about how basically people don't have as much hope of building wealth in the conventional way. And so they resort to gambling or cryptocurrency or zero-DTE options or other very speculative actions because they're like, "Look, if I bet this $2,000 or $1,000, if I lose it, it doesn't really affect my quality of life, but if I get 100x on it, then I can actually get ahead." So I think in fundamentally the gambling problem is a spiritual problem. And this is probably why I haven't gotten too much into a lot of the social issues beyond economics because most of the social and moral problems outside of economic incentive structures, which I think can fix a lot of it, but it can't fix all of it. It's fundamentally a lot of this is a spiritual problem, and our society is spiritually sick. Uh, I'm not gonna, that's again for a whole another topic, so I can't really get too deep into that, but it is that is kind of the answer.

And I answer your question, when would I visit Minnesota? If I'm coming to Minnesota, it'll probably be in the third quarter of this year. So I think July or August was when I would try to get to Minneapolis. I'm also going to go to Chicago for sure in that period. And other cities I'm considering are Kansas City, Milwaukee, and, um, Louisville, and, um, Indianapolis. So, I am going to make a Midwest swing. Chicago is the guarantee. Minneapolis is likely. Kansas City is likely, and then a few other ones are in the air. But yeah, what about Dallas? I'm also going to do Dallas probably in the September, October time frame. Um, so I'm going to do a Texas triangle and Austin, Dallas, San Antonio maybe, and, um, Houston and New Orleans. I'm going to try to target. I'd like to go in the summer, but the weather might just be too, um, uncomfortable for me to do that. Um, and maybe a lot of people are gone traveling in the summer because it's relatively intense heat and humidity in Texas in July and August. So, I think I'm going to try to do it in September or October in Texas.

Um, why do middle-class people like to give back so much? Like, you mean charitable contributions? I think that charitable contributions are not really in terms of like percentage of income, are not class-correlated. They're they're they're religiously correlated. People who have stronger faith give to charity, no matter what income level they're at. I don't, I mean, so those middle-class people probably have other reasons, usually faith-based reasons, for wanting to give back to people.

Um, do you think the rise and fall of professional wrestling correlates with the health and disposable income of the working class? I've never thought about it. Um, I think that wasn't professional wrestling at its peak when people thought it was possibly real, like in the '80s and then once it really, in the early '90s, by the time it realized people was scripted, that's kind of was a slow decline. So there is another variable there.

Um, also keep in mind the World Cup starts this summer in the US. Yeah, I might have to plan when there are not games there for logistical purposes, so that the flights and hotels don't become too cost-prohibitive. That's a good, um, that's a good idea. I am gonna, I don't think I'm going to go to the World Cup unless if it's US versus Switzerland competing against each other directly. That would be pretty cool to see. But I'm gonna save my sporting event, um, money for the Olympics in 2028 here in in Los Angeles. Um, I care a lot more about that than soccer, to be quite frank. And it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I've said it before in previous live streams and videos, like I'm going to cancel all my vacation plans for '28 and use my travel budget to kind of have maximize my Olympic experience. Um, but yeah, that's, um, anybody in Southern California who lives here, I recommend doing that because it's probably, we're probably not going to see the Olympics come back to us, and particularly our hometown, um, in our in the next 40 years.

Let's see. Um, next question. What do you think is driving gold and silver? I think a lot of it is central bank purchases and increased distrust of, um, like the inflation and the US dollar and just money printing around the world, but I'm not going to get more details on that because I'm not going to specific investment ideas.

Um, have you considered a video on climbing up the ranks in the tech industry? Um, no, I have not because I never worked in the tech industry. I don't have direct firsthand experience with the tech industry. So, would I be the right person to do that? Maybe if I had a good guest who worked in like who did the conventional path? I know the path really is you work at a big big tech company, you develop some like good connections and craft your skills, then you go to the startup, whether your own or being one of the early people, get an exit. Become a VC and maybe try again if the first exit was too small. That's the general counter-elite path in tech. Or the established elite path is you work in tech, you either try the startup, get bought out by a big company and move up the ranks there, or just develop your office politics skills so you can move up the ranks within the big tech company. But I never actually ever worked at a tech company. I lived in San Francisco. So, I know I've seen people kind of go through that whole experience and I kind of know it because I was taught in college in my entrepreneurship classes about how to pursue that path, but my lack of firsthand experience would not re, it makes me hesitant to make that video unless if I had a good guest.

Um, did you, do you think becoming a psychologist is worth it today considering the doctorate in psychology commitment? I think it'd be worth it if you actually enjoy the field and you really have a calling to help people in mental health because I think the demand will be there and I think that even in the AI, people using ChatGPT as therapists, people know it's not a perfect substitution. So I think you could build a niche doing it, but it's not, again, I don't really recommend any sort of healthcare profession doing it just for job stability or the money. And I think healthcare job stability is going to be also demographically limited. Mental health might be the exception because mental health issues are higher in millennials and Gen Z than previous generations. But a lot of the healthcare boom is mainly boomers getting old and requiring more treatment. And so if the demographic pyramid normalizes, healthcare is a relative loser.

Um, let's see. Will the Fed achieve its goal of raising the neutral rate? Is it the Fed's goal actually to raise the neutral rate? I don't really know if that is. Um, I'm not going to talk about US equities. Let's see.

Um, pearl drift and the relation to combat sport prevalence. Yeah, I did a whole video about that, social class in sports. And in that video, like, um, I think that the increased popularity of things like UFC, um, is a kind of a product of pearl drift to a certain degree. Like combat sports. Usually lower-class people are more likely to participate in it because people middle class and or above who have a chance to use their human capital in a in a less physically risky way will avoid combat sports. Same with football too. Football is also disproportionately a working-class sport for playing it because of the injury potential.

How much does finding a partner play into what city you live in? Um, it feels like the most important function of a college campus is being a 105 IQ Tinder. Um, I think it does have some importance because if you live in a city with conflicting values, it will delay, um, what's it called? Your ability to find a partner. Like, I lived in cities that had very conflicting values to my own, and it's probably why I stayed single longer than, um, some other people I know because the chances of me meeting somebody serious when I was living in those places was basically zero. So that's how it affects it is that you need to find, if you can find a community of like-minded people with values, then then it's fine wherever you live, but there are certain cities that have a reputation or attract a certain demographic that might be an antithesis to you, and this doesn't matter whatever value set you have, like people cluster to places that are more in line with their beliefs. The problem is is that some of these cities also happen to be the best places for careers. Um, and so that's comes tough managing it.

Um, let's see. Um, what's it called? How do you get better at sales when starting a startup? You just have to, you can read books about sales. You can take sales classes. You go out there and do it. Like, enough repetition and practice, you'll get better. Maybe finding like a mentor for a group like SCORE or your local community who's been in the trenches and can kind of like, and do practice pitches among your friends and family. But the way I got better at sales, and I'm still not very good. I mean, if I was probably, I don't know, this channel would be a lot bigger, um, would be, um, to, um, just again, it just, I think it's just going out there and doing it to a certain degree. And if it's your own product and you have passion about it, it's a lot easier than selling something you don't care about.

Um, let's see. What are those six specifically you think? Well, it depends. I don't know what your value set is. So, I'll just use examples. So, say for example, you are a devout Christian and you move to, um, like an Islamic majority country, you're going to have a hard time finding somebody who's aligned. Or if you're somebody who's more politically conservative and you live in San Francisco, you're going to have a hard time finding somebody who's aligned with your values. Or if you're somebody more progressive and you live in Birmingham, Alabama, you're going to probably have a harder time finding somebody in line with your values. Or if you're somebody who's not materialistic and you move to Miami, you're going to probably have a harder time finding somebody in line up with your values. So there's, it, if everybody has different value sets, and so it's, it's not, there's not a universal place that is antithesis. You have to figure out, and this is the other thing I recommend really when it comes to dating stuff is write like a page, like a one-pager about who you are and what you're about and what are the values and what are those values, because and think about based on that, what somebody with those kind of belief sets, where are they going to live, what kind of life are they going to pursue. Um, so yeah, that's kind of my take.

Do you think space investment in the US is important? Yeah, I do. Um, I'm not really an expert on which of these space investments are good ones or bad ones, but yeah, it's probably important for society in the long run.

Um, let's see. Let me see if I have any more questions. Oh, Houston. Somebody asked me if I'm going to come to Houston. Yeah, it'd be in the same time I go to Dallas, which would be, um, in the summer of or early fall of this of 2026. Um, I don't have specific dates yet. Um, but that is kind of my timing. I think I'm going to run for about 10 to 15 more minutes on this live stream. So get your questions in now. Um, so that if you want me to answer them and have me something to talk about because I don't really see any other, um, questions except for this one about the uneducated economist. I've maybe watched a few minutes of his videos. Um, he talks a lot about the cancel effect, but I don't really have a strong opinion about him overall. Um, I I notice that I do notice we do have a big intersecting audience though.

Um, but is Disney adult really pearl drift? Sadly, I think it is. It's a sign of arrested development to a certain degree.

Uh, what is my Christmas plans? I don't travel for Christmas. I stay home. I'm fortunate that all my immediate family lives within an hour's drive of me. So, we are just going to have Christmas here. And I don't really travel this whole last couple weeks of the year. I just try to relax, not work very much, spend time with family, and, um, recharge for the new year. Um, but yeah, Chris, I generally like traveling more for summer holidays or like random three-day weekend federal holidays than like Christmas and New Year's or Thanksgiving. I I prefer spending those times with family and not really going anywhere and dealing with the rush of the crowds.

Um, curious, um, let's see. How much does the future economy based on strategic geopolitical competition? I mean, it always is. I don't think that's really changed. So, um, hi Nick, how many long-short funds are in London? I don't know the exact number, but there's enough if you want a job doing that, you could find one.

Um, let's see. How do you see the difference between the goals of the Canadian financial elites and their American counterparts? I think the Canadians are more rentier. They just want to be able to extract as much rent from their housing market and natural resources versus actually trying to produce things. I think American elites actually more want to create growth and production. Even the financial elites, they're trying to get more IPOs or raise more money for venture capitalists to invest in new startups and like drive economic growth. Whereas Canadian elites are more just trying to extract more out of their natural wealth, their natural resources, whether that's land or real estate or like literal natural resource like iron or minerals, metals and oil. And there's third degree agriculture. So I think that's really the big difference.

Um, let's see. Um, what's it, what do you, what do you think the best marketing strategy is in today's market? Digital or physical? It depends on what you're trying to sell. Like, if you're trying to do a short transaction of a low-cost item, that was definitely digital. If you have a higher-priced item that is more local, community-based, you definitely need to do physical. Or something that requires relationship and trust, you definitely need to do physical. And if you want to do a hybrid of both, use digital to get your general awareness and physical to develop relationships.

So, what's the meaning of life? I mean, it's not 42. I know. I love the Hitchhiker's Guide reference, but I think there's kind of two general meanings of life. One, it's God's test of character. We're put on this earth and face several temptations and challenges and tests on whether we actually live by the values that we profess to believe in. And every day you are tested on that. And so that's stage one. Like, that's why we go through all these trials. That's why we have free will is because it's kind of a big test that you live throughout your whole life. The second one is, in my opinion, most secular purpose of life is to leave a legacy that lasts longer than yourself. Some people can do this through having a family and children, um, and therefore they have a biological legacy and their values are imputed into the next generation. And hopefully after that, as your children are good transmitters of your values. Others do this through the business world and acquiring wealth that they can invest in and donate to build the future. You can do this through political activism and getting involved in politics. You can do this in a creative way, like writing a great American novel or making a great piece of art or scientific discovery. But yeah, I think it's a two-tier structure. God's tested character and leaving something that legacy that lasts longer than yourself. And by that definition, the longer the legacy beyond yourself is, the great, uh, the more success you've really had in the secular sense of the world.

Um, let's see. Do you have any opinion on the economy of Hawaii, specifically the real estate market? Do you think there will be positive growth? I did a whole video about who gets to live in Hawaii where I talked about my economic future of Hawaii, which is like a long video, like a 30-minute one. So, I recommend watching that. Um, I would like to do a meetup actually in Hawaii. Um, if I do manage to do it, it'd probably be in the fall or the winter of 2026 in Honolulu. I don't know if there's enough for you guys if you want me to show up to do it, but if there's the demand, I'd gladly do a meetup, um, in Honolulu. And, um, speaking of the tour, before I get back to more questions, if you want to vote on where we're going next and so I include your city, um, feel free this form. Like the focus for 2026 will be the US, Canada, and, um, Asia-Pacific, like Australia and East Asia. And then this the focus for 2027 will be Latin America, Caribbean, and Europe with a few of our greatest hits in the US mixed up with it. So those are kind of my general timelines, but feel free to vote if you want to see. And if you want to come to one of our private curated dinners, here's a link to the application. And instead of posting all the links one by one, here's just a general, like, link to my event page that has all of them, all the main events listed on it. So you can just kind of pick and choose based on the ones we have cities scheduled for already. And if you want, also I recommend checking out my Substack if you want to keep updated on events or my new videos or other commentary that I have. I've been doing increased amount of cameos on other people's podcasts. So, if you like those, let me know. If you have any suggestions on who I should show up as a guest on it, feel free to leave it here. I did one really recently interesting I'm releasing excerpts on on my channel, but if you want to see the full-length interview with I did with Ben Beer's Authentic Journey, here's the link to his channel. It's kind of an early Christmas present for you guys. Um, and that is kind of, um, my updates just on what we're doing. And then if you want more direct ways to talk to me, you can either schedule a consultation or a call via my Calendly, which I will post the links in for here. But yeah, let's see.

Do you have any general lessons or stories from your overall investing journey? Yes, I do. That might be something good to talk about at a live stream at a live event or a private dinner. Um, I I I will, as you, you'll, you'll, you'll they come. I've talked about stories of my career here and there throughout all my videos, but to go all in here, it would probably take me several hours to do that. And so I just don't have time to answer that question really at length here.

Um, do you have any literature you really love? A novel you keep coming back to? No, I really don't. I stopped reading fiction recreationally in college. Um, and like even by the time I'm late high school, it was few and far between. I generally like to read to educate myself. So, I read a lot of non-fiction. Um, I like non-fiction narratives, though. So, like non-fiction, like true stories that read like a novel. Like, if I know it's all fake, it just doesn't have the same real impact on me. And I read a lot of novels from say ages nine to 20. And so, I kind of got my fill to a certain degree. And when it comes to consuming fiction, I personally like doing that better through movies, particularly older movies, and video games are kind of my preferred avenues for consumption of fiction. And when I read, I like to read things that are more educational and real stories. Um, but if I want some to read something that's like a fiction book, I'll read a non-fiction narrative.

Um, let's see. Thoughts on day trading stocks from home? Um, it's, um, it's not very, um, high risk-reward. It's not a good chance of success. It's about 1% of day traders actually end up making a living from it. And most of the time, you're going to blow up. It's better to learn the market skill and have a longer-term time frame than like intraday or very short-term trades. Like, if you have the discipline and the nerves of steel to be a good day trader, you'll be a much better swing trader, position trader, or long-term investor. So I would apply that that interest into something long-term. I think day trading is very close to gambling. Um, sorry to say.

Any thoughts on where the technology industry in the going to the USA, how it affects immigration? Well, I think basically modern AI and labor-replacing technology is really going to change the politics of immigration. Like, I think even the left is going to start having a more restrictionist view on immigration. It's just, I think that the that Trump's faction has won the battle on immigration really in the long run. Um, and I think the birth rate crisis is not a real crisis. I think there are plenty of solutions for it. Most of them are self-correcting. Some of them might be more dystopian than we like, but it's not something I think it's climate change of the right generally. Um, so I think that, and this, and the more existential risk of job losses due to robots and AI is going to change the electorate to just, and even politicians as a byproduct of it, and elites to be less interested in immigration, especially from lower social trust societies.

Um, thoughts on Dave Ramsey? Um, I think that he is, um, what's it called? A, he's good at encouraging people to reduce debt. I think most people, especially middle-class people, are better off with less leverage in their balance sheets, not more. Like the smart ways to use debt are generally for business owners and not individuals. And so I am very, I agree with him on consumer debt for the most part. But I think his advice does ignore like cost-benefit analysis. Like, if rates are extremely low, it doesn't make sense to pay back your mortgage. But Dave Ramsey would say to pay back your mortgage anyway, even if that money can get better returns elsewhere. So yeah, I think he is good for, um, for basic entry-level personal finance, and his instinct to be against debt is generally the right one, but there are nuanced examples where it doesn't make sense.

Um, what's it called? Um, yeah, then, um, let's, let's, what I was going to say, um, what kind of people do you recommend to go the entrepreneur route versus staying corporate? Um, I think entrepreneurs are people who are okay with stomaching risk, people who don't mind falling behind their peers in the short run and aren't in a hurry. Like, if you're, and like, basically, if they're not in a hurry to have children. Um, you can have an entrep, you can be an entrepreneur and have kids, but you would need to have a very supportive spouse who doesn't mind covering your bills for the first few years. So, like, if you're this trad guy who insists on having kids at 22 and having his wife not work, you're probably not entrep, it's probably not an entrepreneurial path. Like, if you want a more trad, you need to start the business and build that up first and then get married. Um, and so like, whereas if you don't mind having a dual career household, you could do entrepreneurship if you have a spouse who's supportive of you not making money for a few years. Um, in terms of personality types, yeah, it's people who are more go-getters, people who aren't afraid of embarrassing themselves, people who are resilient and will not give up on adverse signs of adversity, like, and have a lot of grit, and people who look for creative solutions and, um, yeah, and are willing to push themselves out of their comfort zone, are suited for entrepreneurship, or people who just would not do well in an office politics environment. If you're somebody who's good at office politics and good at like, if you were able to move up the from the bottom of the high school cliques to the top, you're probably better for corporate America or politics. Like, if you're good at playing the games with people, you probably will make a lot more money and a lot less risk going corporate. Um, or if you just have low risk tolerance and you can't handle declines in lifestyle temporarily, um, or you can't work on something if you don't see a clear light at the end of the tunnel, then you're probably not cut for being an entrepreneur. So, that's kind of my take on that.

Um, yeah, let's see. What do you think of the Pelosi tracker? Um, I mean, I don't think it's really accurate because the way that politicians purchase things, they only have to disclose it, I think, once a quarter. And so, you don't know exactly, they might not be able to get that information quick enough to make a perfect reflection. And I think it's been good to call out a lot of the corruption and insider trading in Congress, but I don't think it's a scalable investment strategy, um, with a meaningful amount of assets. I think it's just kind of more of a fun thing that we can laugh at and help expose the problem to be solved.

Um, let's see. If I'm in my 20s, should I keep my job as a teacher or start a business on the side or try to break into IB? Well, why do you want to break into investment banking? Like, what's your goal? Like, usually people go investment banking to either just continue the rat race, whether they move up higher in the bank or work at private equity so you can, or, um, like, um, do you also, do you like teaching? Why did you become a teacher? Like, what's the circumstances to it? Like, if you're trying to break into M, um, uh, MS and banking from teaching, you're probably gonna have to get an MBA, which is another factor. And do you have an idea that you want to start a business for? Do you figure, do you know like what things you can do? Because I think maybe the keeping your job and starting a business on the side, if your long-term goal is entrepreneurship, might be your best bet. But if your longer-term goal is to get on the corporate ladder and try the rat race game, get an MBA and go into investment banking. Uh, so it really depends what you want in life.

Um, thoughts on Susie Orman? Is she still around? I haven't, I mean, I remember my mother used to read her books like 25 years ago, but I mean, I thought she was just like the pantsuit feminist woman version of Dave Ramsey, or am I wrong on that? Um, I don't really honestly remember her ideology.

Um, what's it called? Um, yeah, what finance jobs will be automated by AI? What fields and finance will be more safe? CFA, CFP, FRM. Well, I think there'll be roles within all of those tracks that will be automated. It'll be this like the lower-level junior-level analysts are people automated, or the back-office fund accountants, or just any kind of trade settlement, like anything that's more just repetitive or just not interactive with clients is the stuff that's going to first be automated. And the stuff that's more interactive with clients and takes more, um, like being able to assess the data and critically think and come up with a conclusion are more safe.

Um, thoughts on the Catholic document Nostra Aetate saying that Muslims and Catholics worship the same God? Well, it's not official doctrine, so Catholics don't have to agree on that. There's a difference between like official sanctioned infallible doctrine versus just a random encyclical like a bishop or even the Pope writes like there. So like that's kind of the one of the assumptions of papal infallibility that people don't understand is that there are different types of statements that are considered official or versus not. And the doctrine doesn't really change that much. Even Vatican II, Vatican II's problem wasn't that it changed the doctrine really. And I'm still doing more research on Vatican II. So, I'm not an expert on this by any means, but it's more that how it was enforced effectively at the parish level and in which is what causes a lot of the problems with it. Uh, but yeah, in theory, they technically in some way worship the same, I guess, I guess they have the same Abrahamic tradition and have worship a single all-powerful God, but the personality profile of God the Father and Allah are quite different. So, I mean, I think they both legitimately believe that it's the same God, but which one has the right interpretation? That's really up to people to decide on their religious journey.

Um, what do your client net worth range from lowest to highest? I mean, if you want to know more about that, reach out to me directly. Um, our general minimum is about $500,000 under management, but we do offer waivers in special situations, particularly those who are saving a lot and like rapidly growing their nest eggs or under a certain age. But, um, in general, but and like the ceiling, I'm not going to disclose that just due to privacy of my clients. So yeah.

Um, let's see. Did you talk about the Netflix acquisition of Warner Brothers? No, I have not. And I don't really have any unique insight to really say about that at this point. And I'm not going to answer specific questions about IRA contributions. That's a, that's a question to reach out to my team directly about. So, I'm going to post the link in the chat if you want for your specific investment needs if you want to reach out to me.

Um, uh, let's see. What's your thoughts on aviation maintenance, like airframe and powerplant license and avionics technician career field trajectory? I mean, I think it will hold up well against AI, but it's when the robots come in. I don't really know the timing on that.

What role do you think religion will have for the future generations? I think it will be bigger than in the previous generation. I think millennials are going to go down as the most atheistic generation of all time in the West because the more secular people are not having kids for one, and two, when you see a mass amount of millennials, and this is a, let me know if this would be a good video topic too because this is a dilemma I've been thinking about. What about these millennials who pursue career over family? They never get married. They don't really install roots in their community. They live kind of shiftless lives in big cities that they go to their job, go to like their favorite yoga studio or a bar once every weekend, and go on a vacation to some random exotic location once in a while. Don't really save money, don't really commit to roots. There's a large chunk of the millennial population. What's going to happen to these people when they're 60? And what are the social and economic and financial implications of a large group of rootless old people? This is something I don't have a good answer to, but it's something that people is going to be a problem in like 2040 to 2060. So, it's not something that people are going to think about now, but it's a real concern and I don't know the answer to it. I mean, what's going to happen when the average age of inner cities is higher than the average age of suburbs or rural areas? So yeah, that's, um, what's it called? A question that I have. Um, so yeah, that's the, that's another thing to think about.

Um, if I had kids, would I put them in public schools? No. I think I would do one of two things. I would either send them to Catholic school or I would try to create my own school called the Pardini School of Critical Thought and I would try to recruit maybe nine to 10 other families and we would pull our resources to hire our own teachers and write our own curriculum and kind of create like our own school because I'm not really a fan of conventional homeschooling. Um, I don't think that, um, what's it called? Um, it, I think that parents' core, unless if they were teachers before they had kids, it's not their core competency to be educators and probably can use that time for other things. Um, and it'd be, and given how like, if you pull enough resources, you can probably hire better quality teachers if you coordinate with other families. And also fixes the socialization problem of homeschooling too, if you coordinate with other families, because you you create now social opportunities for your kids, but they're vetted for families who you trust that have similar values and are raising their kids the right way. So, it's kind of a way to pre-select your peer group for your children. Um, so that's kind of how I would do it. I either try to create a school like a as a pool with a bunch of other local families or send them to Catholic school if I don't have the ability to coordinate that way. Um, so yeah, I mean, how can you make such a blanket statement about all public schools? I mean, look at the educational outcome over time and the quality of the school system has not really improved for the most part over the last 30 years. I'm somebody who went had half of his education in public school and half of his education in in Catholic school. And so I can kind of growing up saw the differences firsthand. And I've talked to friends of mine who are parents who have sent their kids to different schools and seen what the the issues are. Um, so yeah, and so that's kind of another real take on this. I think the public schools are designed more to be a place to drop off your kids while you're working than to be like real productive education to a certain degree. Um, but there are good public schools out there. It's just that I mean that's so that's not saying all public schools are bad, but I just think like on the marginal level, I think it's, I wouldn't do that personally. Um, so that's my take on it. Um, yeah, public school is great for society. I think public school has a role in society. It provides like a minimum floor for education for people, but I mean, so I'm not, I wouldn't say get abolish public education, but there's a lot of reforms that need to be done by it. And I'm going to save that topic for my educational reform live stream before I get too much into that because I have a lot of discussion about this.

Did you watch the debate between Tim Gordon and Jay Dyer? No, I have not. I don't really have that much time to watch these long debate videos on YouTube. Um, just given what I have to do in terms of producing content for this channel and then my work life and my personal life. Um, so I have not seen that one.

Let's see. What do you think of Bogleheads in that strategy? Um, I generally think it's had a good run, but I, and if you have a relatively small amount of assets, it can work, but once you have enough assets where asset allocation makes a real difference, I don't, I think it's suboptimal.

Um, would a scenario like the Troubles be possible if youth unemployment remains high while incurring more debt, or would it be solved through elections? I mean, the Troubles is more due to religious sectarian conflict, like I don't really see that as really an outcome. I mean, if if if we had that kind of outcome, it'd be basic. And if our politics became as sectarian as Catholicism versus Protestantism, we've got, we'll probably have a whole entire civil war across the whole West. Well, much bigger problem than just the Troubles. But I still think that's a very far left tail outcome. That is not very likely.

So, what net worth do you consider rich in the USA? It's $20 million excluding your personal residence is my definition of liquid net worth of a net worth. Just like if you have $20 million excluding your personal residence, um, that would put you in approximately the top, like 0.9% of people. I think the top 1% is about $11 million. Um, so I mean, I think so it's over 0.5 and 0.9% is 20. Um, and so that's like basically the top, um, they're basically like, if in a room of 200 people, the richest person in that room of 200 people is what is the wealth distribution, which is higher than you think it would be. It's kind of like, so I think that a lot of that wealth is more attainable than people think.

Um, do you think pivoting to finance in your 30s is too late? Um, no, it's not. I don't think it is actually. I've known plain people who've gone into other professions who didn't get into finance their 40s and 50s and still had good careers.

Um, let's see. Um, do you think there should be a tax incentive for small business startups considering how AI will affect the corporate environment, especially at the junior level? Well, I mean, if you were going to do a tax incentive, you would just basically be like, look, the the proposal like example of raising the standard deduction to 150K or something like that would probably be a possible way of doing that. Um, but I, I mean, I think there's a lot of room for potential fraud by doing particularly like small business incentives, like what's to stop somebody from like calling their lemonade stand an LLC and trying to claim it. That's my, but if it's done, if it's executed correctly, it could be a good idea. I just, especially with the low trust concerns, I don't know how well it can be. Look at what happened with the PPP, for example. I'm a little bit concerned about that.

Is grad school worth it? Generally not, unless if you want to be like a doctor or a lawyer and or something that essentially requires it. Um, there's usually other ways to get into fields without having to go to grad school. A lot of people use it as a like a deferral strategy to avoid facing the wrath of the job market. And we've seen a spike in law school and grad school applications because people are scared of the employment market.

What is my chess ELO? I don't really know what it is. I don't remember. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm in my peak like when I was like in my pre-teen era, like I don't know, 10 to 12 years old. I was a competitive chess player and now I just play for fun in person with my friends or other chess players I know. I don't really like online chess because too many people cheat.

Um, let's see. Does living and working in high economic areas worth the high cost of living? If you have a plan and there's a career trajectory that you can get there. And the thing is is that usually it is if you're doing the right thing. Like, if you go there to say be a teacher or like a personal injury attorney or something where like they have that opportunity just about everywhere, it's probably not worth it unless if you grew up in that community. Whereas if it's a job that you have to go to that place because that's where people who work in that profession work and build their career and build their network, then it is worth it. Like example, tech people in San Francisco or energy industry in Houston. You know, Houston's a low-cost living city, or like people work, go to New York to work in, um, in high finance.

Like, what's it called? Um, by definition, if you and your spouse, you have a spouse, do you share the same net worth or is it half? You share the same net worth. Like marriage is a union. You're like, if you are, unless if you have explicitly separate finances, which I generally I'm not a fan of unless if it's like a second marriage or there's other variables at play, but like, yeah, you guys share the same net worth because getting married is essentially sharing a life.

Do I do mentorships? Not at the moment. Um, I don't do internships either at the moment. It might be something I might explore when I have more time. I kind of feel like this channel is an indirect way that I do mentorship on a mass level. Um, so yeah.

What video games do you play when you play them? Mostly Nintendo games. Um, I have a Switch. I haven't got the Switch 2 yet because there isn't any game that's super compelling. I usually mainly play video games on airplanes. Um, or I use like the phone or like like a certain like app on my phone to play, um, games like old Game Boy Advance or DS games when I'm on the road. But like, yeah, that's, um, I I like Zelda. I like Pokémon. I like the Mario games. I used to be really, I like on PC. I used to be really big into RTS like Age of Empires and Starcraft back in the day, but I just don't have time. Online is too intense for me. Uh, but yeah, I don't know. Just think games I can relax and play. Usually single player or I, um, let's see.

Do I play Magic the Gathering? No. Have you revealed your net worth? Will

You? No, I will not reveal my net worth. I'm not going to reveal super private information about my personal life on this channel out of my own like desire to have discretion and also to protect my loved ones.

Um, so yeah, how do you think being Catholic disposes you to see the your work or analysis differently than a Protestant?

Uh, that's a good question. I mean, it made me challenge the idea of the Protestant work ethic, and I did a video about that just recently, like, how does it um how long does it take to um does it make sense to when does it make sense to work hard? Um but yeah, I don't know the answer. That's a great question, honestly.

Um did you ever do land parties back in the day? No, but I would have like three or four controllers at my house and just play with my brother or my friends or my brother and his friends or my cousins or whoever came over. So, I did a lot of that on N64 and Gamecube back in the day. Um, or when I went to my cousin's house on Xbox. Um, but yeah, let's see. Um, but yeah, I knew people who did do land parties though. A lot of my friends did land parties. I just never really want it was just too much work to set that up, which is why I never really wanted to do it.

Um, who do you what do you see as the major economic after? I think the emergence of robots that can replace blue collar manual labor. um whether they're humanoid looking or not and robots that can do domestic chores and housework. That's the next step. It's already coming. People are not taking it seriously because there's not like a direct to consumer version of it that's accessible like chat GPT is now. But once they do have that, then you people are going to um to notice and it's going to have it's it's big. That's the next one. And then the other one after that is probably longevity technology and advancements in biotech that allow people to live considerably longer and we hopefully extend the um the ceiling the 120ear ceiling on human life. Um so those are the ones that interest me the most I would say.

Um, have you dug into Sam Alman's past with Y Cominator U Looped and Paul Graham? No, I have not. I mean, I've heard good things about Y Cominator generally. I had a friend of mine who had a successful Y Combinator startup. Um, but I don't really know about Sam Alman's history that much. I haven't studied him that closely.

And I think um, let's see. When's my educational reform stream? Um, it's going to be probably the fir like January n 18th or 19th. It's like that second or third Friday of January is when I'm doing it. Yeah, I'm going to be doing it on January 16th is when I'm going to be doing the um the educational reform live stream and I'm going to do the dating live stream on February 1. So, those are the next two.

Um, can you traverse up the class letter by imitating the behaviors of the elite class? That's I mean, you can maybe imitate some of the behaviors that got people up to the counter elite like the work ethic and the skills and but like in terms of just like having the right table manners or something like that kind of emulation, that's not going to be enough. I mean, I think it will help you socialize once you get there. Well, and if social climbing and maybe in the establishment path, like if you're trying to do the social climbing office politics play the game, yeah, that could work, but I don't think it will I don't think it can do it alone.

Um, yeah, what's it called? Um, did you talk about your Australia tour yet? Yes, I did, but I will send updates on it now. We're having two events there. We're having an event on the Gold Coast on February 7th and then we're having another one in um Sydney on February 13th and we're also going to have a curated dinner after the main event in Sydney. We've sold half the seats for the dinner so far and it's looking like a pretty cool crowd. Um, so yeah, that's um my take on that.

Why do you think making one million per year is a one in 10,000 odds? Um, I never said that it was a one in 1,000 odds. I don't know where you got that. I said that it's a one in like it's a one in 200 odds to have a net worth above $20 million. That's what I said.

Um, let's see. How about disclosing an income range? 100K independent professional class. I mean, are you talking about my own income? Like, I mean, I told you I'm in the independent professional class, but I'm not going to disclose my income. It's none of your guys' business.

Um, let's see. Um, I have a small tech firm in OC. I make good money considering an MLA in business management at Harvard. I only want the name. Is it worth it? I mean, if it's a vanity project, that's just your assessment on whether you like it or not. Um, uh, it's like from a financial perspective, if you probably don't need it. You're an entrepreneur. You have a business that's going good. You probably put that money into expanding your company. like the only reason you need to get an NBA is if you want to change careers or um I don't know an MLA. I don't I don't I've never really heard of that. I I think that might be a typo for an NBA, but clarify if I'm wrong, Cameron, but um it's just I I don't think it's worth it. I mean, maybe if you want to run for politics and use that as a resume builder, maybe. But I think just in terms of a financial perspective, you're better off just investing your own money into your business or if you have enough surplus you don't need to invest back in your business is to start building your own wealth through investing in the financial markets or real estate or other things. Um yeah, and it's not just the money, it's the time thing. That's two years you're going to have to spend in Boston going to school and like basically taking a pause on your life. And that's probably the bigger cost than the money in your case.

Um, let's see. What would you recommend someone to read to start thinking about class? I mean, you could start reading the book Old Money by Nelson Aldridge. You can read Class by Paul Fussell. Um, there's a lot of books you can read. I have a reading list that you can get on my Substack where I have all the social class books. I get asked so many questions about this. That's why I offered it. You get you join, you become a free member of the Substack, you'll get a welcome email and there'll be the downloadable link to the PDF that has my top 100 books. So, um yeah, I just don't think it's that's my answer. I don't um because I get asked a lot of that.

What kind of reasons um may someone have utilizing for utilizing a high yield savings account in lie of investing in the market and other traditional types? Um if you need the money in a short period of time like less than a year that's the main reason and you don't want to take market risk because if the market has a downturn right when you need the money you might not have it. That's the general reason.

Um, do you think Bitcoin is correlated with equities now? It always has. It has like a 0.7 correlation to the NASDAQ.

Uh, we have around 15 properties in the US and Canada with 7 million asset value, 5 million equity. Beyond real estate, how do you recommend the equity be invested? Well, Matthew, thank you for reaching out to me. Um, this is a question that I just cannot answer directly because it's specific investment advice. So, if you want to talk to me more about this one- on- one and I can talk help you with that, please fill out the consultation form that I just put in the chat and I'd love to talk to you about that more directly.

Um, so let's see. I'm soon to be 30, want to step up in my career. I have a BA. Would a PMI be a good step? Like I I don't What is a PMI? Can you in I'm not really sure what what you're meaning by that. I know PMIs are like the P purchase manager index surveys, but that's not I think what you're referring to.

Um I'm a 29 Thanks for the super chat. I'm a 29y old data engineer making 150K in Arizona. It's low prestige and not very interesting. They take the risk and opportunity cost to go back and get an MS in biomedical engineering. If you want to pursue a career in biomedical engineering and that's something you think you'll do for at least the next decade and you have a plan of where you'd want to work after and what exactly you'd want to do, go and do it. That's the whole point of graduate education is career shifting. That's the main reason you do it. Otherwise, it's got a negative expected value. I would try to do it in the most costefficient way possible unless if I don't really know in hard sciences how fussy employers are prestige of degrees. I know in finance you have to basically have a top 10 MBA or people think it's not very valuable and there might and is there also is there are there certifications that are an alternative say for example like the CFA or the CPA exams in finance for biomedical engineering. I'm assuming there's not and it pro and given that kind of topic it probably does require schooling. So yeah, if it's something you want to do, go for it.

Let's see. What percentage do you recommend Bitcoin exposure? not going to talk about specific investment allocation recommendations on the lives.

Um, let's see. So, uh, Nick, I have a pretty good resume and apply to 400 jobs and get only four interviews. Pretty wild. I mean, that's better than the ratio I got when I was applying to hedge funds. So, you're not that bad. So yeah, like that's just kind of the nature of of of of the job market in the post internet world. It's it's high volume game. It's numbers game.

Um project management. Okay. Yeah. I mean project management is generally a good career. It can be utilized in a lot of ways. Um, so I mean I'm not sure on the prestige and how much a project management institution certification really means and what the cost is. So I might not have the best answer for you to be quite honest. If you can do it concurrently with your current job and you have curiosity about it why I think it's might be worth it. If you have to like quit your job to do it, maybe I would second guess it. But yeah, I mean, don't drink out of plastic. Get a steel bottle. I mean, generally I just drink out of glasses, but like yeah, I just didn't really want the water to soak through into my wooden desk. So that's why I don't usually eat or drink at the desk. It's just I need to to keep my um my throat available to do this.

What is the biggest wealth killer for young people aged 18 to 21? Well, it's probably substance abuse or having children without getting married. Those are generally the the biggest um what's it called? Wealth killers at those ages or not studying something or going to school and not finishing it. That's probably the big one, too, because you end up spending all this money, you're racking up a bunch of debt, and you have no degree or no plan to show for it. Those are kind of big wealth destroyers.

Why do you think young people are into looks maxing? Well, I did a membersonly video about this very topic, and um I I'm not really a big um fan of looks maxing for a variety of reasons. I think it is pearl drift. I mean, there's a difference between trying to stay in shape and be healthy for your long run. That's not pearl drift. Like exercising regularly so that you don't become obese or have health issues later in life. But I think that um when it comes to actual like the stuff like plicular and those type of people advocate for Yeah. It's I think it's a byproduct of men's perceived sometimes perceived and sometimes real um what's it called economic drops relative on an absolute basis and also relative to women and they feel like they cannot compete on the traditional metrics on what makes a good man which is a variety of other things. It's a combination of like career and financial stability. um what's it called? Um personality like having certain personality traits that will make you more likely to do well in the modern world or be able to just or emotional maturity or just in general having an interesting worthwhile personality. And um the other trait would be social status. Those are historically the things that men competed on and now they feel like they can't compete on more traditional metrics of attraction. So they resort to competing on looks. It's a sign of lack of self-confidence and um falling incomes of men relative to women and falling um and just the decline. Like I'm going to talk about this more in my dating live stream I'm going to do on February 1st where I'm going to talk about why the dating market is broken. And the main reason is that the qualities that women find valuable in men, men are getting weaker at those. And the qualities that men find valuable in women, women are getting weaker at those. And they're not the same things. So that's kind of the root of it. So, I don't want to get too into it, but in general, it's it's a compensation for feeling like they can't accomplish traditional metrics of desiraability. And I think if people invested the same amount of effort that they did in looks maxing into developing their careers or developing their personalities or doing things that create interesting life stories, they would get much better ROI not just from their personal um what's it called? Like net return on their income increase or increased dating prospects, but in terms of like their self- fulfillment and happiness.

Um, if you are in your late 20s or early 30s, is it better to be a big fish in a midsize city like Tucson or a small fish in a city like New York? There isn't opportunity here, but I'm in the top 1%. Um, like I would What's your goal for what exactly? Just for acquiring wealth? Is it for like social connections? Is it for being a voice in the national discourse? Um I generally and also what do you have ties in either place? Like are you from originally New York or Tucson? What brought you to Tucson? Did you grow up there? Um there's a lot of um variables and like I would generally think it's better to be the midi the big fish in a midsized city that like if if I had a tiebreaker on it like planting your flag it's like in New York you can't even be a fish because the population is too transient. Not enough if people stick around long enough unless if they're these old money established New York families who've been there for several generations who don't want to socialize with you anyway. So yeah, I mean and then you get into the rat race problem by going which I talked about at the beginning of this stream. So I would if it all things equal, I would rather be the big fish in a midsize city. Like I and you because you can't even be a fish in like like that's the problem. I lived in some of these big transient cities and there's no community. So, you can't really put a foot a flag down in a constantly shifting ground. It's like trying to put a flag down in sand dunes versus a more solid piece of soil. Like I live in Orange County, which is like a mediumsiz market, too. I mean, that's about three million people in this metro area, and I've been able to have much more success in personal fulfillment being able to be in that size market than in a mega city size market.

Um, hey, Nick, any advice on moving the professional working class to independent professional class electrical engineer? Well, basically, you need to figure you need to learn business skills. you need to turn your um electrical engineering um talent into a business. And I don't know if you work for another electrical engineering firm right now or you do it on your own. Um and there's a few ways you can do that. One, you just develop a really good reputation than your local community. Again, like being a bigger fish in a medium-sized pond and like you're known as the guy who's good at doing certain types of electrical stuff and find a niche that you're known for. you're the guy, for example, who does the electrical systems for um lights at sports stadiums. I don't know. I'm just think or you're the guy who does electrical engineering to fix robots. You can find like an emerging tech niche. If you want to really go for the billionaire or counter elite level, you need to do you need to combine your expertise with something that is a growing industry. So like robotics or something like that. Whereas if you just want like a upper middle class or like a successful business owner like level, you can just just be develop a niche and one really good thing and just develop reputation of being good at that one thing. And then you eventually learn the basic business skills to run a practice. And then as you're um you run out of time because you only have 24 hours in a day, you start hiring and training people under you to work under you. and eventually you're just managing your team of electricians versus doing it yourself. So yeah, like the trades, the one of the bright sides of the trades is that the the model for scaling is pretty linear and straightforward. So yeah,

never thought I'd hear Nick talk about clvicular. Well, someone of you guys emailed me directly asking and showed me an interview that he did on somebody else's YouTube channel saying, "What do you think of this guy and what he has to say?" And if you if the if you if one of you fans didn't email me about him, I would have never known he existed. So that's how I figured out he existed was you guys reaching out to me.

You guys, do you have thoughts on Tucson? I think it could be the new Austin. A few more quality jobs come down. I know you visit Scottsdale. It's nice there, but it's a little soulless in Scottsdale. I mean, I like Scottsdale because it's the closest thing to Orange County, California in Arizona. Um, so And I could see your critique of it being kind of a um a soulless vibe to it, but I mean I like going there to play golf in the winter, but yeah, Tucson I mean the thing is Tucson has University of Arizona, but the University of Arizona's academic prestige and like there as a byproduct and the type of talent who goes to University of Arizona, I don't mean this to be projorative, is not at the same level as some of these other state flagship ship universities. And I think the thing the key for UFA and UVA has its own problems with its own finances is that U of A needs to up its game in terms of like attracting like higher caliber students and being a more like prestigious university was step one to kind of be the basis of it. But second, and I think they have improved over the years. So I'm not saying they're aren't trying and they haven't done it, but they also need to make Tucson a place that's so enjoyable to live that once these UFA students graduate, they decide to stay there and start businesses. Like people when they graduate from University of Texas or University of Washington or Cal, then they go and start businesses locally because they want to stay in the area. I think with U of A and similar to where I went to school, UC Santa Barbara, even though it's a elite university, people don't stay in Santa Barbara because Santa Barbara is hostile to young people living there for a variety of reasons. And so, as a result, all the talent from UCSB moves to San Francisco or Los Angeles. And I think it's the same thing with UFA, like most of the talent is moving from Tucson to Phoenix. So, they need to create some sort of ecosystem or make the city just more desirable to live. I've never been to Tucson, so I don't know enough about it to really say, but I mean, that's that's that would be kind of my suggestions. You got to find a way to keep the young professionals there. Maybe that's encouraging like one big tech company or some other major corporation that's popular for young people to work with setting up a satellite office there. That's like how like Austin and Boulder and Denver kind of got started. So that's kind of my my take. And speaking of Scottdale, I'm having my meetup in Scottsdale in on April 18th. We're going to have our normal meetup, which is a speech, but I'm also having a curated golf outing. So if you want to play golf with me at like TPC Scottsdale or a similar caliber course, um come to Scottsdale. And if you want to apply for the golf event, um send an application via the curated um experience uh in the link below.

So yeah, I got another super chat. Would you put Georgia Tech in tiers of prestige? It's a bit of a dark horse. Probably near MIT, but lacking prestige. Um I would say it's top 50 for sure, but it's probably somewhere between 30 to 50 in the rankings. So Georgia Tech would probably be a similar place to like UT Austin, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, um UC Davis, University of Washington. Um like it's that tier. Um, it's still and for particularly for tech and like engineering and science, it's probably higher like it's probably tier two for like specifically hard science schools. So like if the top are like MIT and um Caltech, Georgia Tech would probably be next level below that specific like UC San Diego is probably a good comp for Georgia Tech. UC San Diego is really good for hard science research, but it's not so great for other majors. Um and I think Georgia Tech is kind of a similar dynamic, but yeah, it's generally considered a great institution. I have good things to say about Georgia Tech in terms of academics. UVA would als Chapel Hill would also be similar and University of Michigan would also be similar comps. Um so yeah, that's my take on um Georgia Tech.

Um, do you use Python at work? No. I've had people build me Python models that I used to do when I was a more aggressive trader, but it's not something I use that much more now.

Um, what's it called? Um, outside of California, what do you think is the best state to live in? Or should you think in terms of region? I personally like living in California. Um, I'm think the politics here are not so great and it's holding the state back, but I think that will eventually self-correct like most of these problems do. So, I think in general it's I used to think, oh, there's objectively best places to live, but I think it's a lot suited now based on individuals. I've changed my mind on this. I generally think people if they like where they're from and have a good community and they're more entrepreneurial-minded should probably live where they grew up um in the United States. Assuming you live in a top 50 metro area, I'm not talking about if you live in the middle of nowhere in some rural place, but you live in a top 50 metro area and have good relationships with your family and good social ties. I think that your home metro area is usually a good bet. If you don't have those and you're more um location agnostic, the opportunities I think based on tax incentives and where I think the money is moving, South Florida like is a good area, particularly Palm Beach County. Um, I think that Dallas is going to replace Los Angeles probably as the second most important city in the United States given bas or a lot of the businesses that are relocating there and Dallas has lots of room for expansion because it's not hemmed in by mountains or ocean or um bad state politics. Um, I think those are probably like if I had to just go to a city just for betting on the future of the city, it's probably South Florida metro area or um the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Uh, yeah, if I wanted to have like a high quality of life adjusted for cost of living and I don't mind going through the transition phase of recovery, Chicago is probably a good one. If I'm trying to maximize cost um the payment the high pay of salaries adjusted for cost of living I think Atlanta and Charlotte are the two top cities for that. But I think the the political culture and those is shifting in a way that might eventually be kill the golden gooes for both Charlotte and Atlanta. But for now those are probably great places to move if you're trying to have a high salary relative to a affordable cost of living. Um, but yeah, in the United States, internationally, that's a whole another can of worms. Uh, but those are kind of places that seem favorite finance movie.

Um, what's it called? Um, I I mean I don't know like I mean I like Florida documentary. I like Trading Places. Those are probably good ones. Um I have I mean yeah I would say so I don't really watch that many finance movies.

Um what are you asking for Christmas this year? Um generally I know I need to upgrade like the way I dress. So, I've been just asking like from family like just with especially the help of my more fashionably um like conscious sisters just to upgrade my clothing and my wardrobe. That's kind of my goal for this year in a way. Um but yeah.

Um, what do you think of Boston? Thinking about restarting my life there. Lots of interesting startups. I mean, I did a whole video about the economic future of Massachusetts, my speech about the enrollment cliff and are we running out of college students? I think that's the title of the video. So, watch that. It's very dependent on the fate of Harvard and MIT. Like, I think 33% of the population in Boston is college students of some sort. So, it's the America's biggest college town. It might be the world's biggest college town. So, that's my take on it. And there's a lot of very smart, highly educated people. There's the VC infrastructure. Boston's a great example like that. Tucson needs to follow the metric of Boston. They gota find a way to keep the young people there so they reinvest in the community and develop a startup ecosystem. So, I mean, why would you want to go to I don't think Boston if you don't have a particular reason to go there, like you're not going to an elite university or have a good job opportunity there that's kind of connected to that ecosystem. I don't see why you'd go there. It's very high cost of living and it's very cold weather and it's a very parochial town a lot of ways. It's not very socially open. Um, so I I don't see why I would want to live there. But I am also extremely hostile to cold weather. I had a great time at the Boston meetup. It was one of the more fun It was fun because um and had our largest crowd of any meetup outside of Southern California. So, I know the analyzing finance with Nick Crew is very strong in Boston. Uh, but yeah, let's see.

Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? I mean, it's set during Christmas, but I wouldn't call it a Christmas movie because it's not about Christmas. It's not about how the spirit of Christmas um can make things better for people or like solve a a plot problem. The plot doesn't revolve around it being Christmas. So, no, it's not a Christmas movie.

Um, what's it called? Um, yeah. What do you think about Philadelphia? I think Philadelphia is a warning case for what can happen to Boston if they don't adjust for the enrollment cliff. I went I lived in Philadelphia um about 15 years ago and it was my experience in the Northeast. I personally didn't enjoy living there. Um I went back for a meetup last year and had a good time. It's it's got a lot of potential. I feel like it was ran by better management. It could be a great city again. Like it has one of the best art museums in America. It has all the four major sports teams. It's very geographically close to New York and DC. So it's got a great location. And there are some legacy big-time corporates there. And there's some really nice neighborhoods in the mainline. and there's Susahana and there's there's stuff going on in Philly, but I just think it could be better managed and be improved. It's a city that peaked probably um maybe a century ago, honestly, or even longer. It's it's but it was America's first big great city and then it later kind of got superseded by first New York, then the California, then Boston, then Chicago, then the California cities and DC and several others. Now, unfortunately,

Um, I'm ETH Zurich and my bachelor of science. I'm interested in mining. Should I get an ME in mining or aim for a more general MSSE at a top five world university? Uh, do you want to get into mining specifically? Um uh like I mean you could go to like Colorado School of Mines if you want to get into mining or petroleum engineering. that's kind of really highly regarded for that kind of thing. But I mean, I would say like if you're not so certain on that and you want more optionality, go to the more elite world universities and get your masters there. But yeah, first figure out what you want to do and if you want and go to the place that is good at that niche.

Um, any plans locked for Atlanta yet? Well, we are going to do it. I have a date that's most likely going to do it just I'll have it locked for sure by January 10th, but I just have to iron out some things for my Q2 schedule, both in my business and my personal life. But the date I'm likely going to do Atlanta is Janu, not January, April 25th. Um, and I want to do a main event and if there's enough of people want to do it, a curated experience like a golf outing like I'm doing in Arizona. Uh, I just want to make sure I do it after like the master's crowd kind of goes in and out of there because it might make things a little bit more chaotic for traveling. But so yeah, but before it gets too hot. So I think April 25th is what I'm targeting for Atlanta. But I will let you know when I lock that in.

Um, what AFC North City are you most bullish on? Cleveland, Sid, Cincinnati, or Baltimore? Um, I'm That's a tough one. I mean, a lot of those cities are all kind of struggling right now. I mean, Pittsburgh, I think, is probably the one that has done the best in transitioning in the post um industrial Midwest. So, but I've never really been to Pittsburgh or Cleveland really. I mean, Cincinnati was a lot nicer than I thought it was. It's underrated based on my meetup there. And Baltimore, I think, is the least likely because DC is just going to absorb all of like the human capital in that region. So, if I had to guess, it's probably it's either Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. I I I don't again that's probably the the the the section of the country I am the least familiar with. So I've only I never actually even been to um to Ohio until June of this year as part of the tour. So yeah.

Any thoughts on the Lost Generation by Jacob Savage? Is that the DEI piece? Um, I think that what's happened, and this is the advice I've given to white men generally and Asian-American men, too, because they face the same problem, is that just assume, work your hardest in corporate America, but assume you're going to hit a ceiling at around age 30 and just adapt and be more ready to be an entrepreneur. That's really my implication. I think now that this is all the light has been shined on all this DEI controversies, it's probably going to correct to a certain degree. But given also AI and a lot of other issues and technological disruption and like I think that that the answer is that you need to plan around this by having an entrepreneurial backup plan or moving to a small company like just like what I talked about in the beginning like small companies are less likely to care about DEI. That's a S&P 500 corporate America thing. So, that is my um my take on that is that if you're worried about having a diversity ceiling, start preparing to have transferable skills to smaller, more boutique companies that can use them and pay you well or going on your own.

Um, were you expecting to hit 90K subs this year or this soon? If you ask me this time last year, probably not. If you ask me this time two years, and I'm really close. If you asked me a month, two months ago, I would have thought I would hit 100 by Christmas, but um the sub growth slowed down a little bit around November, but I think because of the type of videos I was making, I mean, the Pearl Drift series kind of carried me to a certain degree and also um just I guess people slowing down their YouTube consumption for the holidays. But yeah, I mean, I started to think I'd get here probably by around September or October. Before that, I didn't really believe I'd ever get here. And I'm just so grateful for you guys. Like, this is something I really started just as a hobby to just like um share my ideas that were too esoteric for my research clients. And it's now become like a big part of my life and it's changed this whole the growth of this channel and me doing this has really changed my life for the better like in both my professional life and in my personal life and I got some very unique experiences including going to places I never would have gone to otherwise like example Atlanta. I've never been to Atlanta. I never had any plans of going to Atlanta but I'm going to now because of this tour. Um, another thing would be um, what's it called? Um, just being able to have a speaking tour. Something on my bucket list for a while, but I never I had no idea what I would be doing it about and why would people care. So, as a result, I never had a reason. But this YouTube channel gave me a reason to do it. And it was one of the more interesting and rewarding experiences of my life. And I'm glad that my ideas are getting out there and leaving a positive mark. I feel like as the channel has grown and maybe it's my older brother syndrome, I feel like I need to be a better a better example for you guys in the way I live and the the way I present things. Like I can't be a doomer doomer stuff, which I I've changed my mind on and generally don't. I'm a former doomer. Like I wouldn't be able to preach that narrative because I would be causing the destruction society that I'm trying to fight against. And also, I want to encourage people to do better. Like, I'm wanting to push personal agency. That's one of my goals of this channel in the long run is that the main personality trait if you really want to move up on the class level is personal agency and belief that you can actually do things and change your own life for the better and make a difference. The people who do do that make it and move up. the people who don't give up and they are the ones who are complaining and voting for people to take from those who are successful. Like so that is kind of um my kind of one of my longer term goals on this channel is just to promote more personal agency in society because the people who have personal agency are ultimately the ones who run society. They're the ones who actually make any real change in life and are like leave a legacy that lasts longer than themselves. And it's like, yeah, and it doesn't matter what background you grew up in or social class or anything. People with high personal agency move up. They might not be able to get from the dependent to the very top, but they can move up at least one to two classes in the United States. And America is fortunately a country that rewards um personal agency whereas other countries unfortunately do not and that's why they stagnate and decline. Um and yeah that's kind of um my take on that.

Um, let's see. I am going to start a business. How much to get your commentary on a business plan? Depends how much commentary you want. Like I mean I have my hourly I'll send you a link to my Calendarly page and you can do it. But like if you want like a hour review it's probably about 500 bucks US. Um if you want me to do a more extensive it's going to be more expensive than that. I mean, I reason I put pay walls on the on the calls that aren't wealth management related because I get a lot of inflows and a lot of people are asking for my help and I have to budget my time somehow.

Um, let's see. Have you watched the 4-hour essay or podcast from Naval Rowan? I read a lot of his Twitter back in the day and I've listened to some of his podcast. I think he has some good insights. Um, I don't know if I agree with everything he says, but yeah, I generally have a positive view of Naval.

Um, let's see. Santa Barbara is very expensive. Young people can't live there. Exactly. Like Santa Barbara, there's nothing to do there between 23 to 65. like when you're 65 plus and retired, it's a great place to go take your wife um to have a nice dinner and maybe go sailing or play golf or stay the a long weekend. I know a lot of boomers who are friends with my parents who do that kind of thing. And then you have um what's it called? Young people. It's a great place to go to college. like UCSB the li is the like number one college lifestyle place and I'm somebody who doesn't even drink alcohol and I enjoyed the lifestyle at Santa Barbara or really didn't participate in the party scene that much at all after my first semester in college and so yeah it's but there's really no um there's nothing to do between the ages of say 23 65 there's just not there's a few companies but there's not enough employers And the cost of living is so high that the burn rate for being an entrepreneur is very cost prohibitive. And it's a town that literally has a moratorium on water fixtures. So they don't allow development. Like given where it's located and the weather and the val available land, metro Santa Barbara should be have at least a million people. It should be a much bigger place. But there's anti-growth policies that have prevented it from doing so. And as a derivative of that, it's more um expensive. So that's um really my take on um Santa Barbara. I like it, but again, it's a place that's they call it newlyweds or nearly deads is kind of the phrase that I um heard about for Santa Barbara and I don't think it's changed that much. In fact, really the higher cost of living is made it either like college bro or retired are the two people who can really do anything in Santa Barbara.

Um, thoughts on homesteading with a few cattles and hands with a wife and kids and working remotely the income as a husband. I mean, if you have a passion of farming, go ahead. But I think the idea of homesteading as a mass solution to the cost of living crisis, I think is kind of a pearl drifty thing. This I I talked about this in my pearl drift videos. Like the whole point of the advancement of civilization was that people don't have to do that anymore. People move to the cities from the farms throughout human history all over the world because it was a brutal and very difficult life to have a family farm. Um yeah. So that's kind of um my take on that.

Have you ever tried Pilates? If not, are you open to it? Pilates is like what my I always thought was one of my things that my mom does for working out and I always thought it was kind of like a boomer mom type of thing to do, but maybe I'm wrong on this. Um I think you also my sisters do it. Younger women do it, too. I don't really know that many men who've done Pilates. It's I mean I've never not really against it. I've just never come up to the um it's never come up to think about doing it. I did try yoga when I and I didn't like that one personally um for a variety of reasons. Just not my vibe. But I mean I have nothing against um Pilates. I just never have tried it. I mean usually my forms of working out are just either like going to the gym on my own. I used to do like hit classes um when I had more time for it and um I like to play tennis and I like to go on long walks and swim, but like yeah, I don't know. I'm open to Pilates. I just never had a really a chance to try it to be quite honest. Um yeah, what's it called?

um about the looks maxing is actually worth investing as a woman than a man or um what's it called? Um I guess the question got cut off so I'm not going to answer it.

What's it called? People complain about food being fast food being expensive now. Is it just housing where we are all just poor and can't afford it? Um I think it's a combination of it. I think that it is a combination of lower wages as general, but I also think um it's fast food comp. I think this is one of the few examples where they actually attempted greedflation. I generally don't believe in greedflation. I think that um the market just kind of has to do what it does with these kind of things. But like there was a history in the past that fast food was considered a inelastic good that people would pay no matter really what the price. And so that's why fast food stocks are in a lot of consumer staples indexes. And people thought, oh, we can just keep raising the price because upper middle income people will pay for it because they can't cook. And so they will just um buy fast food and have it door dash to their house because this is what they did during the pandemic. And I think they're learning the hard way. Look at the stocks of what's happened to Starbucks, Cava, Chipotle, um and a variety of other ones are just getting creamed because there is a limit. Like I for example, there is like a there's a shopping center right next to my apartment complex. It has a Chipotle and it has this like a sitown burger place called Islands. And if I go there for lunch, I can get go to the sitdown place and have their burger special and it'll be cheaper than me going to Chipotle and it's probably higher quality food. Um, and there are a lot of other places like Mex local Mexican restaurants I can go to and I go to sit down meal, better quality food, and it's going to the bill is going to be comparable, especially if you take out tip. Like, if I got takeout at these places, at the sitown restaurants, it would be price comparable to a lot of fast food restaurants. The only one that's remained relatively affordable is like In-N-Out. Um, and I don't really go to fast food places unless if I'm on a road trip you or I'm at an airport or something like that because it's not particularly healthy. So, I try to avoid it. And I also try to avoid going out to eat by myself. Like that's the way I ration going out to eat is I I go with friends or I go on dates or I go with my family, but I will not go by myself. Um, or if I wanted to eat like fast food, you can also go like places like Whole Foods or like the grocery stores where they've upgraded like their amount of like options that they serve. So, yeah. I mean, it's just like they they thought they can raise prices because people don't know how to cook, but that's it didn't work for them. And so I'm not so they're kind

Of they're gonna have to lower their prices because the reason why people go to fast food is because it's cheap and affordable and fast. And nobody cares if it's fast if it's the same price as a nicer restaurant.

Um, and also, yeah, like at this point, like it's just also better to cook for health reasons. What is your favorite food meal? My favorite food, as I don't know if you watched my, um, my short I did about this, um, and I complained about the Russia-Ukraine war, was, um, what's it called? Um, Alaskan king crab legs. That is my absolute favorite food. Um, I love them. They're just kind of a little bit price prohibitive for restaurants, and I don't think I could cook them. I mean, they're actually not too bad if you go to Costco to get them, but I don't, I can't really, I don't trust myself cooking them and wasting a good piece of meat from my bad ability to boil the crab. So, that's why I haven't tried to ever make them at home.

But, um, outside of crab legs, I like American seafood restaurants that also have steaks. That's probably my favorite type of restaurant generally. I like lobster. I like crab. I like steaks. Um, I like, um, what's it called? Um, the, um, the, what's it? Um, the other thing is, um, I like Brazilian Terrasco places like Fogo de Chão. Um, those are pretty good. Um, I like, um, what's it called? Um, Italian food quite a bit, um, as well. And, um, I like, uh, so that's probably my favorites. Next tier would probably be like Mexican food or just like a nice barbecue place would be tier two. Um, and then, or actually in tier two also had Korean barbecue or Japanese barbecue. Those are good as well. Um, yeah, like for most of the meetup tours, I'm going to be doing steakhouses and seafood places for the private dinners. Um, and, um, yeah, I did like the Texas barbecue. I went to a place in Austin, like Terry Black's, that had really good beef ribs, but I overestimated. My eyes were bigger than my stomach, so I couldn't finish it. But yeah, that was, um, but yeah, my my favorite. And then also, I mean, they're not very common, but I like Argentine restaurants, too. Um, and like the empanadas and like their like their there the way that they cook their skirt steaks or just their steaks in general. But like, yeah, so it's basically Italian, Latin American, or, um, like American seafood and steakhouses and barbecue are my favorite kinds of food. Um, yeah, and the only, and the my least favorite food is Indian food. I particularly, that's the one I really don't like very much. But, or vegan, those are the, that's the bottom tier.

Um, let's see. What, um, what cut of steak do you like and how do you like your steak cooked? Um, I like medium-rare steak. I used to eat ribeyes, but they're not good for my long-term cardiac health. So, I've cut those down quite a bit. And so, now I have more of a preference for, um, fillets. I mean, on special occasions, I still will eat ribeyes, but, um, those are kind of my, um, I, but yeah, th those are pretty good. Those two fillets is usually what I get, um, when I go to a steakhouse. But I like most of the cuts of meat. They're all usually pretty good. Um, and medium-rare is almost how I always get my steak cooked. Um, and when I cook it, it's usually a little bit more rare than restaurants because like it's really hard for me to find the fine line. Um, but yeah.

What do you think about leasing cars? It depends on your individual tax situation. Like for some self-employed people, it makes sense to lease cars, uh, whereas for other people, like W2s, it generally doesn't. So, it's it's an individual preference and also depends on the price. Like certain cars, you get really good deals via lease that especially if you don't plan on keeping the car for more than five years, it's you get a lot more car for your money. Um, so there's, um, that there's a lot of, I have a mixed opinion. So, it's it's like it depends on your own situation.

Um, do I like sushi? Generally not. I like teriyaki and Japanese barbecue and like a little bit of ramen, other Japanese food, but, and like when I do eat sushi, it's usually nigiri, um, or like some sort of crab roll, but it's not my favorite to be quite honest. I go to a lot of sushi places because like a lot of the loved ones in my life, particularly the women, like my sisters and my mom, really love sushi. So, I usually just order like a teriyaki thing when I go and maybe a bite of theirs.

Um, Nobu, I've never been to Nobu. I mean, it's known for just being a very expensive place where people go to show off and spend money more than the quality of the food. I mean, and if I'm gonna go to a like that high profile of a restaurant, I'd rather go in a genre of food that I like rather than a sushi place.

Um, what are your thoughts on the economic future of Chicago? Um, I think that I'm bullish on Chicago long-term. I think that it's the most affordable city relative to its cost of living of any city in, um, the world. Like it has world-class amenities at a fraction of the cost of similar cities. The cold weather is what keeps me from living in Chicago. But if it was, um, what's it called? If it was, um, if it was warm, the same weather as San Francisco, I would consider moving to Chicago. And so, yeah, um, that is, um, I think that their politics will eventually get fixed. If enough people move out and the pension system goes bust, they'll be forced to reform, and they have plenty of water. They have a warming climate which would help them a little, and they have again affordability which is a plus. So, I think you'll see young people move there and reclaim the city and redevelop it for the better in the long run. It's the only like city of its class in the Midwest, which helps too.

Um, I think if you want to have a preview for the picture of the future of LA, it'll probably be what Chicago is right now. Like the the the worst-case scenario for LA is it becomes Chicago. It will be the most important city still on the West Coast. But if the West Coast becomes just a collective rust belt due to like software moving out and other industries not being competitive due to bad policy, then LA will be the one that relatively wins. Whereas the other cities like San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Reno, they become more like the peripheral Midwest cities in our world.

Now, what are your thoughts on Akron, Ohio? I don't really have that much thoughts on it. It's where LeBron is from. It used to be a big Goodyear tire place, I think. And it was a big loser of the Rust Belt. I don't really see the the path to recovery. Um, so, yeah.

Yeah, LA right now is better than Chicago, but what about if you had 20 more years of bad policy running LA into the ground? How has that changed? I'm talking about for the future.

Um, what's it called? Is San Diego just LA light? No, it's it's very different. Different industries driving it. It's San Diego's more military, more biotech, more tourist-driven, no entertainment. It's not really a source of international trade like LA is. It's very different industries and a very different economic profile. Um, the only thing they have in common is they don't have enough high-paying jobs relative to the cost of living. Like the place in Southern California that actually has the highest paying job opportunities is actually Orange County, in between the two, um, what's it called?

One of my thoughts on Nick Fuentes. I mean, I'm not a fan of a lot of what Nick Fuentes has to say, to be quite honest. And it's unfortunate that he has to also have AF with Nick because I don't like being constantly confused with him. Um, I think I have a much different message that I am preaching on this channel than what he is. And, u, so, yeah, not, I, I, it's not really, um, he's not really in my guy. I mean, who knows, like, um, but that's my my take. I'm not going to go into a full breakdown on Nick Fuentes ideology. This isn't analyzing political philosophy with Nick. Um, this is analyzing finance with Nick. But yeah, you could probably, it's you can probably tell just based on even though I don't go too much into politics on this channel, that just my rhetoric is very different and my worldview in terms of like what my goals are for society are a lot different than his. Um, so, yeah, I mean, if he becomes the leader of the right in America, that's probably not a good sign for the future of the United States. Uh, but that's that's all I'm going to say.

Um, let's see. Um, what are your best industries to get into in Orange County? I mean, Orange County is a fairly diversified economy. So, there's a lot of opportunity because it's generally the most business-friendly area on the California coast. And so, and it's also a very nice place to live and it's a very different culture. So, it attracts like people who just don't like general California culture and want to live in our orange bubble. But like the most lucrative industries tend to be finance, real estate, um, a little bit of tech, and, um, what's it, and some light manufacturing of specialty goods and services. It's like a lot of experts who like people around the world will come to do business with them. They set their headquarters in Orange County. It's a nice place to live. Um, what's it called?

Do you do a lot of math and statistics in your approach to finance? I mean, I do some of it. I'm not a quant though, but you you've got to apply it somehow.

Um, is arbitrage in business going to end with AI taking over in the coming years? I think labor arbitrage will be heavily narrowed. I think like physical arbitrage will not because that's not really an AI-driven thing. But I think that, um, what's it called? Um, then, um, I think that, but I think that labor arbitrage is going to narrow. Like I think you might have more, at least in the developed economies, more wage parity net of like taxes and things like that. But yeah, I think AI does like it's you're not going to be able to get away with being a digital nomad as easily in the age of AI, assuming you're not self-employed. Like if you're self-employed, it's fine.

What are your thoughts on the Inland Empire? That's assuming what you're referring to the IE. I mean, I personally wouldn't live there. It's where people go if they want larger estates, like bigger plots of land or more affordable housing and don't mind long commutes or don't have to drive into Orange County or LA. I personally wouldn't live there. It's not my cup of tea. Like, if I couldn't be in my little coastal community, I'd probably move out of California, if not the United States entirely, to be quite honest. Um, I like my little corridor here between basically Huntington Beach or Seal Beach to the north and like La Jolla to the south. Otherwise, I don't, it's just not worth the taxes and the regulatory environment, all the other hassles of being in California outside of my little, um, orange bubble with a slight extension into San Diego County.

Um, but yeah, do you see, um, do you think the public pension funds will crash? I mean, I'll have to do an updated look on their funding status. I did a lot of deep research about this about 10 years ago when, um, and like I thought that was going, I think the crash is a very likely outcome, but I haven't, I need to do a more updated analysis of their funding status before I draw any conclusions. So, yeah.

Where were you move outside the US? Where would I move to? It's probably Switzerland. I have family ties there. It's one of the few countries that has better run governance than the US, especially in the developed world, and it has a very high trust society and it's a very high quality of life. I just, I mean, I'd probably live in Lugano, Switzerland, which is the warmest part of the country, if I was to leave the US. That, that's I think everywhere else that I'd be considering would be a distant second.

Um, what Alberta is likely going to be prevented by their feds to develop their oil pipelines. How likely is Alberta to secede in 2027? I don't really know the odds. I think it's more likely than it has been in the entire history of Canada. If I had to guess, low double digits, but you never know with these things. And I think if Alberta does secede, I don't think Canada is a viable country anymore. And I think I've talked about this before, like if you were to get an Albertan secession, I think Alberta would leave, Saskatchewan would leave, BC would would leave, and like the US would admit BC and Alberta as two separate states. Alberta and Saskatchewan combined would be the red state and BC would be the blue state because I don't think bipartisan, like they would not accept just entering one state on one side of the aisle. They need to have one Republican state and one Democratic state. So I think that's how Western Canada would, um, would be split. And I think the US would take that deal. They would take a B, they would take BC and Alberta, and then if they did that, they'd probably get the Northern Territories and none of it too. Um, and Canada would be just basically a rump state of Manitoba, Ontario, the Maritimes, and a land bridge in what is now northern Quebec. And that would be modern Canada. And then you have Quebec as an independent sovereign state, too. That, and then that would be like the new map of North America, I think. Um, so basically, if you're betting on Albertan secession, you're basically betting on Canada being split up into, um, into basically three different countries. You have a third of it next to the U, the western part next to the US, the central state, Canada, and then Quebec as an independent country.

In your opinion, how much should one save and invest in their portfolio and account by certain ages, 30, 40, 70, etc.? Well, by 70, you want retirement level. And retirement level is generally whatever income you want to live off of times 20 or 25. So say, for example, you want your retirement to be about $100,000 a year, you're going to need two to 2.5 million saved. Um, if you have a higher expected lifestyle, then you're going to have to ramp up those numbers. Um, 30 and 40, it's in, and 30, you need to be be positive net worth. Like, I think a realistic goal for 30 is about 100k net worth for most people to, like, to not counting, this is all not counting personal residence, I'm talking about liquid investable assets. Um, like for somebody starting from nothing, I think 100k is kind of what you should be at. Like if you're below that and you are not like an entrepreneur, I can understand like if you're an entrepreneur and you, what's it called? You took a lot of money out to start a business or maybe you used all your savings to buy a down payment on a house or something like there are certain circumstances where it might make sense, but that should be your general target should be six figures at 30. At 40, um, you'll have more time to compound and hopefully have higher income. I mean, I think the goal for 40 maybe should be like a million net worth, like, or 500,000 to a million. That 500k is probably what I would set as like kind of like what I should try to get to. I mean, also depends on where you live and a variety of other things, but the 500,000 to a million range is probably where you want to be at 40. And then 70 is whatever you need to retire. So, like 30, six figures, low six figures, mid 40, high six figures, and then, um, because your wealth compounds with age, like as you get older, investments compound, especially if you have assets, works in your favor. So, it's a lot faster. It's a lot easier. It's kind of like YouTube subscribers. It's very hard to get a channel from zero to a thousand subscribers or, and it's hard to get a thousand to 10,000. But it was a lot easier and faster to get to 10,000 to 90,000 than it was from 1 to 10 or zero to one. And it's the same with investing. It's a lot harder to get from zero to 100,000 than it is from 100,000 to 500,000 and then 500,000 to a million. Um, compounding works in your favor. Um, so, yeah, that's kind of, um, my take on that.

Um, what do you think about owning property? It seems kind of useless nowadays. Um, it depends on your stage of life, honestly, like, and if you're living it or investing in it. Investment property makes sense if the numbers make sense. It's really just a simple financial decision. Like, I don't think, well, I think what a lot of people mistake is like, oh, they want to own an Airbnb or they want to own a rental property just to have the title of being a landlord. Well, if you don't hire a property manager or if you overpay for the property, you're basically just buying yourself a low-paying job essentially. So, it's not really, you have like, you have to run the numbers and make sure it makes sense. Like, I think like, I mean, that's really my view on investment real estate. When it comes to a personal property, it depends. Do you plan on staying in the place at least 10 years? Um, do you have a family? Do you have a, do you know that you're not going to have to move for another job? Or is it in the town you ultimately want to be in? Like, if you don't buy a house, the intention of trying to trade up and upgrade three years later, I don't really think that's a that's a good idea. I mean, sometimes that happens like if your wealth goes up exponentially, you'll just eat it so you can have a better quality of life. But that's a little bit different than like just trying to buy something just to be in the market. And you generally, if you're going to buy real estate, and again, I'm not a real estate person. I'm a, I deal with all the liquid assets. So, take what I say with a heavy, heavy grain of salt, and also this isn't civic investment advice. If you want that, I'll put the consultation form link in here again. Reach out to me directly. So, the view on what's it? So, like, I forgot what was I saying before I had to do my disclaimer about real estate. But yeah, you don't want to live in the place that you have to live because that's all you can afford if you're buying. You're better off renting than doing that. You want to live in the place where people want to live. So, if you're going to buy real estate, you want to buy in the places that are already new money enclaves or that are going to become new money enclaves because there's not any space anymore on the current ones. You don't want to buy real estate in the place where people go because they can't afford it. Like look at the worst real estate market in California is Oakland, and it's not a surprise. People really generally move to Oakland when they can't afford to live in San Francisco. So, or like, example, be Inland Empire. Inland Empire tends to be way more volatile and underperform because people generally move to the Inland Empire when they can't afford the same quality property in LA or Orange County or San Diego. So, I, I mean, I think industrial real estate in the Inland Empire is probably great because that's kind of, I think the Inland Empire's bull case is that it becomes a manufacturing hub, and because I think you're going to have to have a manufacturing hub on the West Coast, especially if you're going to do Trans-Pacific trade. So, I think there actually is a bull case for that if they can successfully deregulate California to the point where it makes sense to build factories again in the Inland Empire. But until that point, people, it's it's it's not, and same with the Central Valley, and there's probably equivalent places in other parts. I'm just most familiar with California because this is my home state. But you want to buy real estate in a place where people want to live as their dream and end goal place, not where people move because that's the best they can do. That's my take on it.

Um, lots on Alaska, lots of land. It could be nice if global warming predictions are fulfilled. I mean, there's a lot of other places that will become a lot more nice a lot more sooner. I wouldn't be waiting on climate change to bail out Alaska. First, it'll affect just California north of Mendocino, and then Oregon coast, and then Seattle, and then BC before it gets to Alaska. So, I wouldn't really kind of bet on that. Um, but when it comes to, um, Alaska, it's got a lot of natural resources. As long as oil remains important, Alaska will be prosperous. It's just its remoteness and isolation drives up the cost of living very high. And the the extreme winters, particularly the extreme cold and the fact it's dark all year, makes it discouraging for people to want to stay there. Like, I don't know what that would do to people's emotional states. And though that's kind of the thing that kind of limiting Alaska's growth is just it's just a rough and tough place to live. But I've been to Alaska. It's one of the most underrated vacation destinations in North America. I would recommend all of you guys to take a summer vacation to Alaska. I had a blast when I did it. And I said I am going to do when I have a million subscribers on the channel, I'm going to do a meetup in Kodiak Island, Alaska. So, like, I remember somebody wrote that in the comments and I said they said, "When are you going to do a meetup in Alaska?" And I'm like, I'll do it if we break a million subscribers. So, if you want to have a meetup in Alaska, help me get up to the, um, the gold play button level, and I will host one on Kodiak Island, Alaska. I've heard they have a really nice golf course there, too. Um, and they have great seafood. Like, if you like crab legs, it's the best place to have them. Seeing the glaciers crack from a cruise ship is really cool. Midnight Golf, you can have a tea time at 10 p.m. and play till 5 in the morning in the summer. The Dolly National Park is really cool. It's got a lot of exotic like arctic and wild animals and nature and stuff. I, I, I, I really enjoy Alaska as a tourist destination. So, I think Alaska might become a blue state politically. That's the other kind of like, if any red state's going to shift to the left, it will be Alaska. Especially say, for example, we have a world where oil just matters less because alternative energies become more viable, then that's the only thing that's holding Alaska, the Republican party, is environmentalism and the energy industry. And if the left drops environmentalism, which I think there's a good chance that they do, I think that leaves Alaska open air open season for the Democrats. So, I think if you want to bet on like one of these surprise election outcomes for a state, be Alaska going blue.

Um, let's see. Um, thoughts on Alaska Airlines or the airline industry in general? I mean, the airline industry is difficult to make money because it's a commodity product essentially, and there's enough competition to keep prices in check. Alaska is a good one. I use it a lot when I fly to Seattle or to San Francisco. They're mostly a West Coast-based airline. Not. But yeah.

Um, what's it called? If the US were to get in a civil war, why? What would the different sides be geographically? There wouldn't be geographic lines. It's not, it's not really as straightforward as the North versus the South was in the 1860s. It's way more, like, it's city versus country, or like, it's very, like, there's even California is 40% Republican, or Alabama's 40% Democrat. So, it's not going to work that way. It'll probably more like a breakup of Yugoslavia situation where there's just pockets everywhere and it's a bunch of chaos. And I don't think that's going to happen. Honestly, I think the bigger risk for America is not civil war. It's the democracy being replaced by an authoritarian regime. And I'm saying this as somebody who is not, like, a paranoid person about Trump. He's not the one who's going to do it. It's going to be somebody else.

Um, let's see. Um, what are your thoughts? What is what's going on in the upper half of California? There's really not that much going on up there. I know people who live there. It's a lot of nature. It's a lot more right-leaning with its voting patterns. They have universities. Um, yeah, it's a very low densely populated place. Like, I've lived in California my whole life and I've never gone north of Lake Tahoe on the eastern side or north of Sonoma, Soma, sorry, um, on the western side. So, even like a lot of California natives never make it up there.

Um, let's see. Um, small world. I have an uncle and four cousins who live in Sacramento.

Um, let's see. What would it make sense for the manufacturing hub to be by the port? No, because the problem is the best use of real estate in Long Beach, the cost of real estate's too high to put a factory there. The better use for that is office or hotels or residential. Like, you put the factory in the closest place where the land is cheap, and factories require a lot of space. You can't build a factory in the modern era in a city block. These are huge giant complexes that require a lot of electricity and a lot of space for trucks to come in and pick up the stuff and a variety of other things. So, it needs to be in a somewhat remote area, and the closest place for that would be the Inland Empire. They don't have the space to build a, like, the modern-scale factories in the coastal cities. So, it wouldn't make sense to put the factory in Long Beach. Um, yeah.

Do you think Passport Bros will become more popular in the future as AI wrecks some countries' economies and widens the gap? Um, I think the Passport Bro trend is independent of that. I've done a debunking the doomer about Passport Bros, which is for my members only. So, if you want to watch that, join the bonus tier, um, members. But I think that a funny thing is you can kind of like, I've noticed, and I've been old enough now that I've noticed that countries that used to be places that were popular for Passport Bros to go to are now places where Passport Bros come from. And places that used to be where Passport Bros come from are now becoming popular countries for Passport Bros to go to. So, it's interesting how you can see the relative advance or decline of a country's economy based on the flows of Passport Bros.

Um, does America need new cities like California forever? I think it's a good idea, actually. Like, there's a lot of places that are artificially too small because of environmental or NIMBY regulations preventing development. The most common one would be like the Central Coast of California, like San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara should be major cities. There's no reason not to. They're nice places to live. They have the space to do it. They're just anti-development. They have the universities to have talent. Like UCSB grads or Cal Poly grads would stay there if there actually was an economy for them to participate in upon graduation. Like those are, and there's several places all across America that fit that category. Probably like Naples, Florida, could be a much bigger city, for example, or metro area. Um, or like, I'm trying to think of other ones off the top of my head, but there's a lot of like places where people would want to live but can't due to developmental restrictions. And so that's where I think you would want to do is just expand those cities more than trying to create some place in the middle of nowhere where there's no economy. But there are certain locations I think would make for good cities, like where the upper and lower peninsula meet in Michigan, could probably be a good new urban hub if you want to build one in the middle of nowhere. Maybe Eureka, that northern far north part of California, or somewhere on the Oregon coast, or like, yeah. Or maybe like a city like on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Um, or Savannah, Georgia. That's another one that has a lot of potential. I mean, hurricanes are the reason why you don't see that many cities on the coast of the South and why the South developed more inland, but, um, I do think that there is like, I think Savannah could be a big city too. Um, or Charleston could grow a lot more. There's a lot of places in America that have potential for that kind of thing.

Um, this is go, this live stream has gone way longer than I thought it would, and, um, I think that what's it called? Um, I don't know if there's any more questions or I think I might wrap it up. Let me just check if I missed anything that was particularly poignant.

Do you think the political sphere will ever consider allowing no property taxes for those over 65 plus? I mean, the boomers will try to do it because that's what they do. They try to vote for them not to pay for the cost of the government programs that they want. But, uh, do I think it's politically viable? No. Because most state and local governments wouldn't be able to finance themselves without it. Maybe Florida could if they had enough tourism to keep going, but they'll probably have to bring it back eventually once a lot of the old people moving to Florida depart. So, yeah, that's my take. Thank you for the, um, the $50 super chat. Um, and have a good night. Have a merry Christmas and happy new year in 2026 for you as well. I'm going to be taking the next couple weeks off, but you guys will have some content that I have cued to watch, so you won't even notice I'm gone. Um, but like, yeah, I mean, I don't, I think that it's the opposite is going to happen. I think you're going to see a shift away from income tax. You're already seeing it, like Hawaii's cut its income tax and it's a blue state. Mississippi is in the process of getting rid of its state income tax. I think Arizona and Ohio also are attempting to get rid of their state income tax. And so, because if AI is a real threat, you're not going to have as much income from W2 wages. And so, you're going to have to get that revenue somewhere else. It's going to have to be shifted to assets. And since financial assets can move across borders, I think real estate is going to be one of the targets. I think property taxes are going to have to go higher to keep state governments solvent. And then the other thing is there'll be increased sales and consumption taxes because on the federal level, if income tax becomes unable to balance the budget.

Have you noticed lately the dumbing down of verbal speech among the upper middle class and some of the rich, or do you think that's more for efficiency? I think it's a sign of verbal drift, honestly. Like, look at all of our major politicians. Like in the 2016 primaries, they did a study on this. The only candidate on either side of the aisle that had a high school or above, like reading level in the way that they talked, was Ted Cruz. Like Trump's was like seventh or eighth grade. And most, or even lower. I think it might even be sixth or seventh grade. And most of the other politicians were about middle school. Hey, sorry. I think I got cut off again for some reason. But yeah, like I think that's a product of verbal drift where people just aren't speaking at, um, what's it called? The, um, at higher reading levels because the average voter doesn't really read a book after they finish high school or college at all. So, yeah, that's kind of my answer to that question. It's very real and it's a problem that I don't really know how to solve exactly.

Um, last question. As a young person, do should I expect a round of high inflation in the US in order to shrink the debt burden? I mean, I think it will be higher than say, like the Great Moderation era, but it will be lower than like the 70s. Like, you can expect maybe an average of four to 5% inflation over a decade, which will probably lower the national debt in real terms. Um, and the way you have to adjust for that is like be in careers that have strong purchasing power and manage your investments accordingly because the stuff that worked in lower inflation regimes will not work as well in higher inflation regimes. Uh, but yeah, uh, it was great talking to you guys. I think I am going to wrap it up. I think maybe that live stream shutting down was God's sign of me to like get some rest. But talk to you guys later. Have all a merry Christmas and happy new year. And I look forward to seeing you on the tour in person in 2026 and also with more videos that are coming out. You. I think you guys will like a lot of the new stuff that, um, I'm doing on the channel. And if you want to vote on where I'm going for the tour, here's the form again. And if you want to just see all the places we have planned for Q1 of 26, here's that link again. But with that, I'm going to call it a night. This was lasted twice as long as I thought it would. Um, thank you guys all for watching.