How the US Is Destroying Young Other folks’s Future | Scott Galloway | TED

My name is Scott Galloway, I teach at NYU,and I appreciate your time. I have 44 slides and 720 seconds. Let's light this candle. (Laughter) OK so for those of you who don't know me, I'm actually a global television store. True story. I've had four TV seriesin the last three years.

Two of them have been canceledbefore they were launched, and two were canceled within six weeks. Let's recap. (Video) If we want to juice this thing, if we want to put a cattle produp the ass of the economy. Bloomberg. The most trusted name in financial news. Not for long. Andrew Yang: I'm going to dowhatever I can for this country of ours.

Scott Galloway: Jesus, come on, dude,you’re 0 for two. (Video ends) SG: Face for podcasting. So first insight of the day. I'd like to be the first personto welcome you to the last TED. (Laughter) OK. By the way, it's clear –what's it called? What are we here for?.

“The Brave and the Brilliant?” It's clear that Chris is a frustratedsoap opera producer. (Laughter) Essentially what we have hereis a telenovela where, after a night of unbridled passion between Bill Gates and Malcolm Gladwell, they give birth to theirbastard love child, Simon Sinek. (Laughter).

OK, I start us with a question. Do we love our children? Sounds like an illegitimatequestion, right? Well, I'm going to tryand convince you otherwise. Essentially, as we go down generations, we're seeing that for the lasttwo generations, people are making less moneyon an inflation-adjusted basis. In addition, the cost of buying a home, the cost of pursuing education,continues to skyrocket.

So the purchasing power, the prosperity,is inversely correlated to age. Simply put, as we get younger, we're taking away opportunityand prosperity from our youngest. The social contractthat is now no longer in place and for the first timein the US's history, a 30-year-old is no longer doing as wellas his or her parents were at 30. This is a breakdown in the fundamentalagreement we have with any society, and it creates rage and shame. (Applause).

As a result, people over the age of 55feel pretty good about America, but less than one in five peopleunder the age of 34 feel very good about America. This creates an incendiary. Righteous movements, cuts to our society end up becomingopportunistic infections because generally speaking,young people have a warranted envy, they're pissed off and they're angry that they don't enjoythe same spoils and prosperity.

That were provided to our generation. A decent proxy for how much we valueyouth labor is minimum wage, and we've kept it purposely pretty low. If it had just kept pacewith productivity, it'd be at about 23 bucks a share. But we've decidedto purposely keep it low. Out of reach. Median home price has skyrocketedrelative to median household income. As a result, pre-pandemic, the averagemortgage payment was 1,100 dollars,.

It's now 2,300 dollars because of an accelerationin interest rates and the fact that the average homehas gone from 290,000 to 420. By the way, the most expensivehomes in the world, based on this metric,are number three, Vancouver. Why? Because 60 percent of the costof building a home goes to permits. Because guess what, the incumbentsthat own assets have weaponized government to make it very difficult for new entrantsto ever get their own assets,.

Thereby elevating their own net worth. This is the transfer I'm goingto be speaking about. (Applause) This has resulted in an enormoustransfer of wealth, where people over the age of 70 used to control 19 percentof household income, versus people under the ageof 40, used to control 12. Their wealth has been cut in half. This isn't by accident, it's purposeful.

This is me at UCLA in 1987. I know your first thought isI haven't changed a bit. (Laughter) This is also Mia Silverio, who is the analystwho put together these slides. By the way, Mia is 26. I did the math, just by virtueof her being in this audience, it brings the average ageof the entire conference down 11 days. (Laughter).

When I applied to UCLA,the admissions rate was 76 percent. Today, it's nine percent. I received a 2.23 GPA from UCLA. I learned nothing but how to makebongs out of household items and every line from “Planet of the Apes.” And the greatest public schoolin the world, Berkeley, decided to let me in with a 2.27 GPA. And that's what higher ed is about. Higher ed is about takingunremarkable kids.

And giving them a shotat being remarkable. (Applause) And every year it's gotten more expensive. Higher ed and homes and the ability — not only is higher edincredibly expensive, it's not accessible. Because me and my colleaguesare drunk on luxury, and I'll come back to that. We've embraced the ultimate strategy.

Me and my colleagues in higher edwake up every morning and ask ourselves the same questionwhen we look in the mirror. How can I increase my compensationwhile reducing my accountability? (Laugter) And we have found the ultimate strategy. It's called an LVMH strategy, where we artificially constrain supplyto create aspiration and scarcity such that we can raise tuitionfaster than inflation. And old people and wealthy peoplehave done the same thing with housing.

All of a sudden, once you own a home, you become very concerned with traffic, and you make sure that there's nonew housing permits. And here is a memoto my colleagues in higher ed: we’re public servants,not fucking Chanel bags. (Applause) Harvard is the best example of this. They've increased their endowmentin the last 40 years and have decidedto expand their enrollment,.

Their freshman class, by four percent. Any university that doesn't growtheir freshman class faster than population that has over a billion dollarsin endowment should lose their tax-free status because they're no longerin higher education. They're a hedge fund offering classes. (Cheers and applause) My first recommendation:.

Biden should take some of that 750 billion earmarked to bail out the one thirdof people that got to go to college on the backs of the two thirds that didn't and give a billion dollars to our 500greatest public institutions, size-adjusted, in exchangefor three things. One, they use technology and scaleto reduce tuition by two percent a year, expand enrollments by six percent a year and increase the numberof vocational certifications and nontraditional four-yeardegrees by 20 percent.

Where does that get us? In just ten years, in just ten years, that doublesthe freshman seats and cuts the cost in half. This isn't radical. This is called collegein the '80s and '90s. Another transfer of wealth. Look at what's happened to wages. Oh, they've gone up?.

Not as much as corporate profits. There's a healthy tensionbetween capital and labor. But for the last 40 years, capitalhas been kicking the shit out of labor. Well, you think, what about wages, right? They've gone up. Well if you compare themto the S and P, they barely register. It's been an amazing time to own assets. But your attempt to getthe certification or the income such that you can acquire assetshas gotten harder and harder.

In my class of 300 kids, it's neverbeen easier to be a billionaire, it's never been harderto be a millionaire. By the way, our job in higher ed isn't to identify a top onepercent of people who are freakishly remarkableor have rich parents and turn them into a superclass of billionaires. It's to give the bottom 90a chance to be in the top ten. (Applause) You know who doesn't need meor higher education?.

The top 10 percent. The whole point of higher ed is to givethe unremarkables, i.e. yours truly, who was raised by a singleimmigrant mother, a shot of being remarkable. The transfer has been purposeful. While the cohorts, corporationsand the ultra-wealthy continue to garner moreand more of our wealth, we have decided,”I know, if they win the gold, let’s give them the silver and the bronze,and let’s lower their taxes.”.

This transfer is purposeful. It’s not by accident, and it works. Senior poverty is way down,and we should celebrate that. Meanwhile, child povertyis flat to up. The third rail. I'm going to talk about Social Security. It would cost 11 billion dollarsto expand the child tax credit. But that gets stripped outof the infrastructure bill. But the additional 135 billion dollarsa year to Social Security,.

That flies right through Congress. And every year we transfer1.4 trillion dollars from a cohort that isincreasingly doing less well to the cohort that isthe wealthiest cohort in the history of this planet. I'm not against Social Security,but the criteria should be if you need it, not whether you have a catheter. 80 percent of you, 80 percent of youhave absolutely no reason.

To ever take Social Security. It is bankrupting our nation. And we have fallen under this mythology that somehow it's thisgreat social program. No it's not. It's the great transfer of wealthfrom young to old. (Applause) How is this happening? Because our representativesare in fact, representative.

Old people vote. Washington has become a cross between the “Land of the Dead”and “The Golden Girls.” (Laughter) Quite frankly, this is fucking ridiculous. And if I sound ageist — (Applause) If I sound ageist, I am. And you know who else is ageist?.

Biology. (Laughter) When Speaker Pelosi had her first child, get this, two thirds of householdsdidn't have color televisions, and Castro had just declared martial law. But she's supposed to understand the challenges of a 17-year-old girlwho’s 5′ 9″, 95 pounds, getting tips on dieting and extremedieting from Facebook? She's supposed to understandthe challenges.

That a 27-year-old single mother faces? By the way, young and dreamy. (Laughter) Young and dreamy. (Applause) The great intergenerational thefttook place under the auspices of a virus. I know, let's use the greatesthealth crisis in a century to really speed-ball the transfer. This is the Nasdaq from 2008 to 2012.

We let the markets crash. And by the way, you need churn, you need disruption because it seedsand recalibrates advantage and wealth from the incumbents to the entrants. It's a natural part of the cycle. But wait, lately, no, a million people dying would be bad. But what would be tragicis if we let the Nasdaq go down and guys like me lost wealth.

So we pumped the economy, which again, increasedthe massive transfer of wealth. The best two years of my life? Covid — more time with my kids,more time with Netflix, and the value of my stocksabsolutely exploded. And who has to pay for my prosperity? Not me. Future generations who will have to dealwith an unprecedented level of debt. Why am I here, and why do Iget the prosperity I enjoy?.

Because in 2008 we bailed out the banks, but we didn't bail out the economy. We let the markets fall. So as I was coming into my primeincome-earning years, I got to buy, no joke,these stocks at these prices. This is where those stocks are now. Where does a young person find disruption? When you bail out the baby boomerowner of a restaurant, all you're doing is robbing opportunityfrom the 26-year-old graduate.

Of a culinary academy that wants her shot. We need disruption. We're economically attacking the young, but I know, let's attack their emotionaland mental well-being. Let's take advantageof the flaws in our species with medieval institutions,Paleolithic instincts and godlike technology. I'm just going to say, I think Mark Zuckerberg has done moredamage to the young people in our nation.

While making more moneythan any person in history. (Applause) Oh, but wait, it could be worse. It's as if we let an adversary implanta neural jack into our youth to raise a generation of civic, military and business leaders that hate America. How can we be this stupid? (Laughter) This all adds up to a bunch of graphsall headed up into the right.

And what are they? What's the first one? Oh, that's self-harm rates,which have exploded, especially among girls since my colleagueJonathan Haidt pointed out, it's really, really gone crazysince social went on mobile. What's the next one? Teens with depression. The next one, men and womennot having sex. Biggest fear of my parents was that I wasgoing to get in too much trouble.

My biggest fear, honestly, is that my kids aren't goingto get into enough trouble. My advice to every young personwatching this program is go out, drink moreand make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. (Laughter and applause) Next graph, cumulative gun deaths. You're more likely to be shotin the United States if you're a toddleror an infant than a cop.

Next graph, obesity, way up. By the way, the industrial food complexwants to addict you to shitty, fatty foods so they can hand you overto the industrial diabetes complex. We should not romanticize obesity. You're not finding your fucking truth. You're finding diabetes. (Laughter and applause) Overdose deaths, way up. Deaths of despair.

When I was in high school,it was drunk driving, now it's kids killing themselves. Young people don't wantto have kids anymore. Two-thirds of peopleaged 30 to 34, able-bodied, used to decide to have at least one child. It's been cut in half. It's now less than a third, 27 percent. As a result, people over the age of 60in the US, pretty happy. People under the age of 30, not so much.

Some of the lowest in the free world. What can we do? Nothing wrong with America that can'tbe fixed with what's right with it. We got the hard stuff figured out. There are programs to addressall of these issues, they cost a lot of money,that's the hard part. And we have figured this out. In just five minutespost an earnings call, we can add a quarterof a trillion dollars to the economy.

We've got the hard partfigured out, the resources. We have the money,but we decide not to do it. This is per-capita spendingon child care in the United States relative to other nations. This is housing permits. Things are doable. We increase minimum wageat 25 bucks an hour, it goes into the economy. The wonderful things about low-and middle-income households.

Is they spend all their money. We have to have or restoreor a progressive tax structure with alternative minimum taxon corporations and wealthy individuals. We need to refund the IRS. We need to reform Social Security. It should be based on whetheryou need the money, not on how old you are. We need a negative income tax. My friend Andrew Yangscrewed up a great idea,.

But he branded it incorrectly. Instead of calling it UBI, he should’ve got Republicans on boardby calling it a negative income tax. (Laughter) We need to eliminatethe capital gains tax deduction. When did we decidethat the money that capital earns is more noble than the moneythat sweat earns? Shouldn't it be flipped? (Applause).

We need to remove 230 protectionfor all algorithmically-elevated content. We need identity verification. The reason we can haveidentity verification is because we have a First Amendment. Break up Big Tech. We have monopolies that are incurringgreater and greater costs on every small business and parentsbecause again, see above, our representatives don'tunderstand these technologies. We need to age-gate social media.

There's absolutely no reasonanyone under the age of 16 should ever be on social media. (Applause) We need universal pre-K. We need to reinstatethe expanded child-tax credit. We need term limits,see above, Andrew Yang. We need income-based affirmative action. Any visible signs of affirmativeaction make no sense at all. You would rather be born gay or non-white,.

In the United States today than poor. And that's a sign of our progress and our need to recalibratewho we give advantage to. Affirmative action,of which I’m a beneficiary — I got Pell Grants,I got unfair advantage — affirmative action is a wonderful thing,and it should be based on color: it should be based on green. How much money you have or don't have. Expand college enrollmentin vocational programs.

Mental health, ban phones in schools,invest in third places, Big Brothers and Sisters programs. We need national service. We need to tell peoplein the United States and Canada that they live in the greatestcountries in the world, and we need to remind themof that every day by exposing them to other great Americanswhere they feel connective tissue. We can do all of this. We can do all of it.

We have the resources. The question is, do we have the will? This is my last slide. It is an emotionally manipulative slideto try and get you to like me more. (Laughter) But it does have a message. This is the whole shooting match. Anybody here without kids,ask someone with kids. You have your world of work,.

You have your world of friends,you have your world of kids. Something happens here, your wholeworld shrinks to this. (Applause) So I present, as I wrap here,with just a few questions. One, if you acknowledge that our kidsare the most important thing in our lives, that everything elsewe do here is meaningful, but our kids' well-beingand prosperity is profound. If you acknowledgethat they're doing more poorly.

Than previous generations. If you believe there’s a chance that the illusion of complexityhas done nothing but provide cloud cover for the unbelievabletransfer of good will, of well-being and of prosperityfrom young to old. And if you believe we canactually fix these problems and we have the resources, then I present to you, I posit, I augur the question that I hopehas more veracity.

Than it did 17 minutesand 24 seconds ago. And that's the following question. Do we love our children? My name is Scott Galloway, I teach at NYU,and I appreciate your time. (Cheers and applause) Thank you. (Applause)

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