Transcription
What do you think is the most dangerous idea that's gaining traction in culture if what we want is a prosperous America?
So I think when you get a guy that's pitching socialism, communism in the capital of capitalism and it's resonating where they want him to be the mayor of the town, you have to be paying very close attention to it. This concept of new generation that's coming up, the new kids that are coming up. We had this conversation last night about Gen Z's maybe a little bit tougher where they can kind of do something about it. But for me, it's amazing that after all these decades of us seeing that communism doesn't work, socialism doesn't work, that idea is resonating in the number one city with the most capitalist billionaires. Very weird.
Very weird. Why do you think this moment makes probably mostly millennials open to the idea?
Um, you know, it's it's it's a it's a love affair. It's a romance. It's the idea where, you know, when I was a kid, my parents got a divorce. I'll never forget that every night I would see at 8:15 my dad would walk up her stairs and I knew he was there. So I I romanticize when my mother and my father being together. Okay. And it's this idea of oh my god one day again they can be married together. You know every year as a boy I was like no this is going to be the year they're going to come together. No they're going to come together. No they're going to come together. And you're like is that even a good idea? I don't think it is. I don't think it's a good idea for this to be taking place. And this young girl who went viral last week, who used to be a staffer for AOC that helped AOC win when she was 26, she's now 33, 34 years old. She says this fantasy of being able to help people out and these rich people are bad people. And she starts breaking things down, saying if there's no incentive, why would somebody keep making the apartments better? If there's no incentive, why would somebody make the place better? Like I'm asking a question for New York City. Do you know in New York City how long it takes to get a permit? Two to five years to get a permit. It's the worst city to get permits. So imagine if you and I want to build a building and we have some money we want to deploy and we want to get get out there and finish a project. You're sitting there waiting 18 months on a permit, 24 months on a permit. The permits needs to go. One of the biggest most important qualities of a city that expands like Austin permits goes like this. Houston is 6 months. Austin is six to 12 months. New York is two years to five years. That's insane. So when you watch some of these ideas and the newer generation, the younger, no, I think we're going to do it better. I think we're going to do it right and then it takes 5 to 10 years to see what happens there. But for me with New York, that's kind of confusing. Is after COVID that happened. Two cities, two states lost the most money.
And we know this number. You and I have talked about this. New York lost a trillion dollars of wealth under management. California lost a trillion dollars. Californians went to Texas. New Yorkers went to Florida. Okay. And now in Florida, when we run into a bunch of different people, these are New Yorkers. So a lot of those job creators that left phase one, they left to come down here.
Yeah. It's crazy. So to me, when I look at this, it is an echo of the economy. When people, they can feel that something is wrong, but they don't know what the physics of money are. So they have no idea how the economy has left them in this situation. But if they can't afford housing and inflation is robbing them of their buying power and so many of them have gone into a tremendous amount of college debt. I get how we end up here. But there is a quote that always scares me that this generation does not understand which is that the miracle is not redistribution. The miracle is the creating of the capital. And I think it was Musk that said uh once you realize that an a successful company is a company that can create something that outputs something more valuable than the inputs and it's like that is a miracle but I think today people are so blind to how economics works that they don't even understand that the government doesn't make money. The government takes money from the makers who create these machines that output something more valuable than the inputs and then they employ people and then the government swoops in and taxes those people. And so every time I hear solutions where it's like in some way going to unduly encumber those people, I'm like, uh, they'll leave as history shows that they will. That makes sense, right?
But but to me, some of the stuff that keeps, you know, patterns coming back up. My son right now is is at a camp for a few weeks. Uh last night he calls me. We haven't spoken for four or five days. And I talked to him like, "So, how you doing?" Says, "Oh my god, Dad, I am so excited. Let me tell you all these kids I'm meeting." And he's kind of going through the pro. And I'm remembering the first time I'm away from my family and how this is my chance to show up to my dad that guess what? I can hang. I can do my thing. and and you're letting him go through it. But now, as they're going through this process, he's also going to go have to figure certain things out on his own. Unfortunately, every generation, even though we understand capitalism in a different way, they're going to go through it. Every time we have babies, this next generation, they're always going to start off as being socialist or communists or coming from a place of rich people are bad. Why? the greatest monopoly we have in America today that still hasn't been addressed. It's the biggest monopoly. It's the biggest monopoly and regulators can't do about it. For every one pro- capitalist, pro-conservative professor in school, there's 13 that are on the opposite side.
Yeah. For every one. So, you got 13 to one. Typically, when AT&T went through the monopoly law or they were looking at Facebook to kind of trying to break them apart or Google or some of these companies in the past, you get to the 50 55% number where you have the market share. Like Apple is flirting like smartphone, they're flirting, right? with that monopoly that they have. What do you think is going to happen when we send our four kids or two kids or three kids to go to school for four years to be around people that hate billionaires that can't stand rich people that don't believe in what they believe in? And the books they recommend to the kids are Communist Manifesto and they're teaching that to your kids and then you're around other kids who either have bought into it or they're about to be bought into it. What do you think is going to happen when they're in that environment? I mean, we keep sending our kids to the same place to get brainwashed to come back and hate their parents for a few years and then go back to it again. I I can't tell you how many of my executives, they lose their daughter or son. They send them to school for 250. They come back hating capitalism. They don't want to be around mommy and daddy cuz they're like, "I cannot believe you voted for that guy. I cannot believe you did this. All you care about is my money. I'm going to go and work for UNICEF. I'm going to go and work for this." And then you lose your kid for five, six, seven years. And then they show back up. You're like, "Why did I spend $200,000 that I worked my ass off for this kid to go to school to come back hating me?"
Like, for example, if I see your employees and you're not around, I come to your place, my job is to say, "Listen, you guys are lucky to work with Tom Bill." Let me tell you why. Do you know this is a guy that's a relentless guy? Do you know how important is to work with somebody that's got a big vision they're pursuing? You know why that's important? Because when you work with somebody else, you know he's not going to be slowing down and you know he's fully committed. You guys are lucky. Learn as much as you can. Okay? Because as it gets bigger, you're not going to have as much time. Now, let's flip the script. You ready? You're not around. I come talk to your employees. Why would you guys work for him? You know, he gets all the money and the accolades and credit. You guys get nothing. Why are you guys doing this? What's this all about? He's using you guys. That's what they're doing in school non-stop.
Who the hell thinks that's a good idea? So, so to me a part of why this has happened and you got me thinking is parents are still subscribing to the old way of what it is that we want our kids to do to be successful and we are responsible for continuously repeating this pattern until somebody puts a stop to it. It's going to continue happening.
Yeah. And I think it happens largely invisibly to the vast majority of the public. But if the whole idea of the long march of the institutions is sort of one of the ultimate conspiracy theories that whatever the French back in the 40s50s decided this is how we're going to do it. We're going to take over these institutions, they did it. It spread to America. It happened here as well. It's uh Thomas I think sums this up really well that the last 30 years though he said this 20 years ago. So the last 50 years have been marked by exchanging what works for what sounds good. And because it sounds good, especially if you're young and emotive and you're just wearing your emotions on your sleeve and you want to matter, uh, all these ideas sound phenomenal. The bad news is they don't withstand the test of time. And so when a country ends up crumbling, it's far more dramatic than people realize. It happens all the time. It happens to big countries just like America. I mean, unfortunately, history, when you look back, it is just a a neverending stream of countries that at the time seemed impossible to fail. they fail, it's a bloodbath for a generation or two or in the case of Argentina, a hundred years of essentially being in the economic hinterlands. And so it's these ideas have consequences and they definitely play out very poorly. And I think the next 10 years for us in America, a different phenomenon, but there's going to be something that plays out that's going to force America to decide who are we? What are we willing to publicly say? This is what it means to be American. And the way that we define that is going to define how well we do moving into the future. And uh just uh I'll be so curious to see if you agree. The thing that I think is going to force that test is that we are going to immigrate people into America that don't share America's core values. I mean, that's a large part of So my beef with immigration isn't with low-wage workers. It's you didn't do anything to find out if these people share our values. Like I I love the vision of America as a nation of immigrants, but they're a nation of immigrants that over hundreds of years because long before we founded the company, we were still a nation of immigrants.
We had we ended up building a set of ideals and then when we founded the company, it was on a set of ideas that were already like pervasive. And now I see this being a collision of essentially Judeo-Christian ethic versus Islam. and they've already gone so ham across Europe and you're seeing now I saw the stats on the major cities in the Netherlands and they're like 45% 55% um first or second generation immigrant and then in Brussels it's over 70% first or second generation immigrant and again I'm all for immigrants but if you have immigrants that don't assimilate or they uh don't share your values you're going you're going to end up in a tugof-war Yeah.
So, and that's why we need guys like you to encourage your viewers to have more kids because we need to have more kids. And here I'm the worst guy because I haven't had kids. But hey, the good news is I actually do tell people it's probably the right