Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Billionaire "King of Bankruptcy" Who Rebuilt America's Broken Industries | Wilbur Ross - Fmr U.S. Secretary of Commerce & WL Ross Founder

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Lessons - The Billionaire "King of Bankruptcy" Who Rebuilt America's Broken Industries | Wilbur Ross - Fmr U.S. Secretary of Commerce & WL Ross Founder · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lessons episode, discover how instant gratification and social media can reshape attitudes toward work, ownership, and success.
• 0:07
  Understand why building wealth requires patience and delayed gratification.
• 0:10
  Explore how short-term thinking can undermine financial security and uncover why hard work and personal responsibility remain essential for long-term independence.
• 0:26
  You've seen, I mean, I think that if you look at some of the CEOs of major tech companies, you see people that come from other parts of the world that move to the U.S. that take up these positions again, which is great.
• 0:39
  But you do have to have a culture of entrepreneurship, of hardworking, of not being afraid to build things and fail.
• 0:49
  And I think that we're moving so far from...
• 0:55
  people being willing to do uncomfortable work that we're not even talking about, like you said, entrepreneurship.
• 1:02
  We're just talking about people working a nine to five, Monday to Friday job.
• 1:06
  Because if you're gonna be a successful entrepreneur, like I came from a nine to five environment and I worked hard there, then I realized that
• 1:16
  I wasn't moving fast enough and my career wasn't progressing as quick as I wanted to, so then I'm going to take that into my own hands.
• 1:22
  And instead of working 9 to 5 Monday to Friday, I'm working 24-7, 365, but at least I can now move at my own pace.
• 1:29
  But the nine-to-five was, because I didn't have entrepreneurial parents, the nine-to-five was this little bit of like an incubation for me as a professional to then say, okay, this is great, but I want to go farther.
• 1:43
  If I had never even had the exposure to the nine-to-five or if I was –
• 1:47
  I see some people traveling all over the world and working in the gig economy.
• 1:51
  Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
• 1:54
  But if a culture promotes that and social media promotes lifestyle and all that stuff,
• 2:02
  I think that, again, another component that you didn't mention is we look on social, we think other people's lives are so great, and how can they work two hours a week and make a million dollars a year?
• 2:16
  Well, that's not reality.
• 2:18
  But social media is a megaphone, and it broadcasts this reality, and people assume it's the reality, so then they try and architect their lives like that.
• 2:26
  And amongst all the other things you mentioned, it's just a very...
• 2:31
  We're in a dangerous place, I think, because there's so much influence telling us how we should live or what hard work should be or shouldn't be.
• 2:40
  And I think that it's, I think we're kind of messing up the minds of a younger generation as to what life can look like.
• 2:47
  Well, I agree with that, and I think you see it in another context.
• 2:53
  It used to be people's dream was own your own home.
• 2:58
  That was a big, big dream.
• 3:01
  Get married, have a kid, own your own home was part of the cultural scene.
• 3:08
  Now, people are not so interested in owning things
• 3:13
  They seem to settle for having the use of things.
• 3:18
  There's even an industry now where people are renting their clothes rather than buying.
• 3:27
  I mean, what could be more weird and what could be more inefficient than renting your clothes?
• 3:35
  Because you know the guy renting them to you is making a high rate of returns.
• 3:41
  Well, where is his rate of return coming from?
• 3:44
  It's coming from you because you're such a fool.
• 3:48
  You won't even want to front end the price of your clothing.
• 3:53
  And so I think it's gotten to a very, very extreme point.
• 4:00
  There's nothing wrong with wanting to own things.
• 4:03
  And for most families, owning the home was central to their ability to develop some semblance of wealth, because homes tend to appreciate over time.
• 4:18
  My father had a pretty good saying, even though he was not wealthy.
• 4:23
  He said, I know a lot of people have gotten rich collecting rent.
• 4:28
  I don't know anybody who got rich paying rent.
• 4:32
  And that's a philosophy that the people don't seem to have.
• 4:38
  Everything is measured in terms of monthly payment, not am I earning something, not am I getting somewhere, not am I getting ahead.
• 4:49
  It's a whole attitudinal thing that, as you point out, is very, very dangerous.
• 4:57
  You know what I'm actually, I'm really concerned because it seems to be compounded with short-sightedness.
• 5:04
  What will happen is people will make enough money to rent their whole life.
• 5:10
  And then what happens is...
• 5:12
  When you can't work anymore or when you have some – when you get sick or when you're just of old age, you can't put in those hours or the cognitive performance just isn't there or the physical performance isn't there.
• 5:26
  I mean, we haven't really –
• 5:28
  seen that generation get to that age yet.
• 5:32
  And that's going to be scary unless something is done because the generation that is of the age that can no longer work, most of them will have pensions or they'll have some sort, or they came from the mentality of, I want to buy my house.
• 5:45
  I want to invest.
• 5:48
  Yeah, it's very scary.
• 5:50
  The people that are 70, 80, 90 now did not rent their clothes.
• 5:58
  when they were growing up.
• 6:00
  Well, a sociologist that I met at a cocktail party had an interesting encapsulation of that.
• 6:08
  He said one of the real problems of the younger generation is the inability to postpone immediate gratification.
• 6:19
  That's what leads to they want everything quick, easy, now, very accessible.
• 6:26
  The idea of saving up to buy a home is quite different from that.
• 6:31
  That generally, especially for younger people, used to mean some postponement of immediate gratification because you put away a little money, put away a little money.
• 6:44
  And then you got to do something by way of a home with it.
• 6:50
  But now they're happy to rent the house, happy to rent a car when they need it.
• 6:55
  happy to rent even their clothes.
• 6:58
  And it's a dead-end street because what they're doing is raising their current cost of living to the point where they're not going to be able, as you point out, to have something to take care of them later on.
• 7:15
  And that, in turn, is important.
• 7:19
  producing and encouraging a very unfortunate relationship between the population and government.
• 7:28
  Remember the old communist manifesto, the way to make socialism permanent is first of all get to where a majority of the adult population pays no tax.
• 7:41
  Well we're just about there.
• 7:44
  Second is,
• 7:45
  get to the point where a majority of the adult population
• 7:49
  depends on government for its livelihood.
• 7:53
  That's where we're starting to head with all these programs.
• 7:57
  And once we get through that second thing, if we do, unfortunately, and most people pay no tax and are dependent on government, forget it.
• 8:09
  Society as we've known it, our culture as we've known it, and tragically, our economy as we've known it will be no more.
• 8:20
  Talk to me about, I want to talk about your transition to public service, but can you just explain that point?
• 8:29
  Because I understand being dependent on government, but can you explain the pay no tax point?
• 8:37
  Well, it is arithmetically true that almost half of adult Americans do not pay any tax because they have all these tax credits in refund.
• 8:51
  When the government says, I'm going to give you a tax credit for having a child, let's say, now that may be a worthwhile idea to help people have children.
• 9:04
  But
• 9:05
  What it works out to in reality is if you don't have enough income that you're really paying tax, you get that money directly.
• 9:17
  So instead of being what it's presented as, which is just a tax credit, it's not.
• 9:23
  It's an actual gift to the people who don't have taxable income.
• 9:29
  Yeah.
• 9:30
  And in some cases, even if they do, it's small.
• 9:33
  And again, it becomes a cash payment rather than a tax credit.
• 9:40
  So it encourages the wrong behavior, basically.
• 9:43
  Yes, yes.
• 9:45
  And I'm not opposed to childcare.
• 9:48
  I'm not opposed to people having families.
• 9:50
  Obviously, those are important.
• 9:53
  But when you create those two things, nobody pays tax and people are dependent on government, now you've changed the whole society.
• 10:06
  And it's a very, very slippery slope.
• 10:10
  because the theory of it is that somehow the rest of society can afford not only to maintain themselves, but pay the bills to government to maintain the half that aren't working, that aren't productive.
• 10:28
  Well, that's a very different world from the world that we used to have.