Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / The Case for "Good" Capitalism
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome The Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
- 0:03Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
- 0:14Speaker 1: everybody is John Hope Bryant And this is the Money
- 0:17Speaker 1: in Wealth podcast series on iHeartRadio and Black Effect Network,
- 0:23Speaker 1: and today is a special episode. It is the case
- 0:29Speaker 1: for good capitalism and to really unpack what a lot
- 0:34Speaker 1: of people are saying about capitalism and socialism and communism,
- 0:40Speaker 1: wealth opportunity and why Marek keeps getting this conversation absolutely wrong.
- 0:48Speaker 1: Today is one of those episodes where there's no guess.
- 0:53Speaker 1: It's just me, So you're stuck with me for the
- 0:58Speaker 1: next forty five minutes or so as I began to
- 1:01Speaker 1: unpack something that I write about in my best selling book. Now,
- 1:05Speaker 1: thanks to all of you who've made this book number
- 1:08Speaker 1: one in three different categories Capitalism for All, which is
- 1:12Speaker 1: inclusive economics in the future, Proofing of America Forwards. Michael
- 1:16Speaker 1: Milkin ed Bashan and Andrew Young and bashor Andrew Young
- 1:20Speaker 1: together to get those three people on the same page
- 1:23Speaker 1: just tough. So give it a read because it just
- 1:27Speaker 1: might be the equilibrium that we all seek for this
- 1:31Speaker 1: very important conversation. Anyway, I think I've qualified at this
- 1:35Speaker 1: moment in time to speak on this complicated conversation in
- 1:40Speaker 1: a way that I think will resonate with you that
- 1:45Speaker 1: you will see and feel as fair and equitable and respectful,
- 1:50Speaker 1: but direct, which is my style.
- 1:53Speaker 2: So let's get into this. It's just me today.
- 1:57Speaker 1: I think we're living through one of the most important
- 2:00Speaker 1: economic conversations of our lifetime. Actually on the two hundred
- 2:03Speaker 1: and fiftieth anniversary of America itself. I think it's really
- 2:10Speaker 1: a referendum on who we want to be when we
- 2:13Speaker 1: grow up as a country, whether we want to adhere
- 2:16Speaker 1: to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and all
- 2:19Speaker 1: the things that makes this country aspirationally great, and whether
- 2:26Speaker 1: we're going to be light on the heel for the
- 2:29Speaker 1: rest of the world going forward as we have been,
- 2:33Speaker 1: or whether we're going to fall backwards because we began
- 2:39Speaker 1: to think and act small. And whether you recognize it
- 2:45Speaker 1: or not, you cannot be You've never had a leader
- 2:48Speaker 1: of the free world the superpower that wasn't the economic
- 2:53Speaker 1: leader at the same time. That just never happened, or
- 2:56Speaker 1: any phrase another way. It's always been that the superpower
- 3:00Speaker 1: was also the economic power. And I write in this
- 3:03Speaker 1: book Capitalism for all, how I prescribe how America can
- 3:09Speaker 1: continue to be the superpower and two ordred pages of
- 3:14Speaker 1: just math. To quote my friend Melody Hobson, I like
- 3:17Speaker 1: math because it doesn't have an opinion. So read the book.
- 3:22Speaker 1: Write a review online after you read the book. I'm
- 3:25Speaker 1: not telling you what to write. Write what you feel.
- 3:28Speaker 1: I think you'll find that the sixty or so reviews
- 3:31Speaker 1: that are already up in the short time the book
- 3:33Speaker 1: has been out are all basically just write about five
- 3:36Speaker 1: star and these are people who were surprised that they
- 3:40Speaker 1: liked the book. Anyway, let's get into this and let
- 3:42Speaker 1: me unpack this directly with you on this podcast, and
- 3:46Speaker 1: you'll tell me in the social media comments and questions
- 3:49Speaker 1: whether you want me to continue this as a series
- 3:51Speaker 1: or not.
- 3:52Speaker 2: I also plan on doing some.
- 3:55Speaker 1: Live discussions on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn as well, so
- 4:00Speaker 1: I can talk to you in real time.
- 4:02Speaker 2: Okay, but I can't talk.
- 4:03Speaker 1: I can't unpack that like I can unpack it here
- 4:05Speaker 1: on this podcast in a structured way. So everywhere I
- 4:08Speaker 1: turn these days, people are talking about what they think
- 4:12Speaker 1: is capitalism and a lot of frustrations tied to it,
- 4:17Speaker 1: which I actually I understand and with it. They're talking
- 4:20Speaker 1: about socialism and communism and billionaires. Okay, but before I
- 4:26Speaker 1: get into all that, let me lay some ground rules
- 4:28Speaker 1: right up front. In the first five minutes of this podcast,
- 4:33Speaker 1: a lot of my friends and people in communities I
- 4:36Speaker 1: care about say I hate rich people. My response, no,
- 4:42Speaker 1: you don't. You hate rich people until you become rich.
- 4:47Speaker 1: What you hate is a game system. What you hate
- 4:51Speaker 1: is a system that no matter how hard you work,
- 4:54Speaker 1: no matter how hard you hustle, you can't seem to
- 4:58Speaker 1: get ahead. That you see some half wit on television
- 5:05Speaker 1: that you believe strongly is half as intelligent as you
- 5:08Speaker 1: and works half as hard as you do, and they're
- 5:11Speaker 1: a billionaire or a multimillionaire, and it just looks like
- 5:15Speaker 1: a rigged game. And so you throw your hands up.
- 5:21Speaker 1: You say, this whole thing is corrupt. The system is rigged,
- 5:26Speaker 1: the system is gamed. It's a game system, and as
- 5:30Speaker 1: a result, you hate it. You don't hate rich people.
- 5:32Speaker 1: You hate rich people until you become rich. So let
- 5:36Speaker 1: me help you ungain the system. Let me help you
- 5:39Speaker 1: unrig the system by teaching you how this system works.
- 5:44Speaker 1: Because we don't need less rich people, We need more
- 5:47Speaker 1: of them, and we need them to include you because
- 5:50Speaker 1: you will be responsible, You will be caring, You will
- 5:53Speaker 1: do well and do good, You will prosper and then
- 5:57Speaker 1: make sure the latter is left down for those that
- 6:01Speaker 1: come but beyond behind you to lift them up too.
- 6:05Speaker 1: That is the legacy of this country. Up from Nothing.
- 6:08Speaker 1: That was my fifth book. I believe up from Nothing,
- 6:11Speaker 1: and so I believe financial literacy is the civil rights
- 6:14Speaker 1: issue with this generation. When you know better, you do better.
- 6:17Speaker 1: As an old Southern saying, no matter how much I
- 6:20Speaker 1: love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't
- 6:22Speaker 1: have wisdom, all I can give you is my own ignorance,
- 6:25Speaker 1: And so out of love, we pass down bad habits
- 6:28Speaker 1: from generation to generation, out of love because of what
- 6:31Speaker 1: we don't know. That we don't know that's killing us
- 6:34Speaker 1: what we think we know. So let's knock it off
- 6:38Speaker 1: with the bad advice. The reality is that even if
- 6:43Speaker 1: you want a distribute money like a socialist, you're the
- 6:46Speaker 1: first collected like a capitalist. Now think about that. You're
- 6:51Speaker 1: listening to this podcast on a device that the government
- 6:56Speaker 1: did not buy for you. I can say that with
- 6:58Speaker 1: confidence unless you're listening to it is from some communist
- 7:02Speaker 1: country and we are big all around the world, six continents,
- 7:06Speaker 1: So maybe you are, but entirely it's entirely likely, and
- 7:13Speaker 1: the overwhelming likelihood is you're listening to this from some
- 7:17Speaker 1: place where you have some level of relative freedom, and
- 7:21Speaker 1: you're engaging in free enterprise, and you are exchanging your
- 7:26Speaker 1: human capital, your talents as a worker at the very least,
- 7:29Speaker 1: or as a gig worker, or as a hustler, or
- 7:32Speaker 1: as an uber driver or whatever, a lift driver, or
- 7:36Speaker 1: as a structured employee hourly or a salaried employee. You're
- 7:42Speaker 1: trading that talent, that gift for a paycheck for compensation.
- 7:49Speaker 1: You are trading your human capital for money, just real talk.
- 7:55Speaker 1: And you're using that money to pay your bills, to
- 7:58Speaker 1: pay your car note, to pay your rent, to pay
- 8:00Speaker 1: your mortgage, to pay your light bill, to pay your
- 8:02Speaker 1: gas which is increasingly going up, to pay for your
- 8:05Speaker 1: school fees. I mean, those kids are not being taken
- 8:08Speaker 1: care of at school. I'm gonna get to this because
- 8:12Speaker 1: this is actually a little bit of a socialist vibe.
- 8:15Speaker 2: I'll explain that.
- 8:16Speaker 1: But if you're in Africa, you're paying school fees directly
- 8:20Speaker 1: to the provider in many cases, so that's like a
- 8:23Speaker 1: literal transact translations transaction. That's not socialism. We have a
- 8:26Speaker 1: little bit of socialism in America, actually, but every country
- 8:29Speaker 1: has a little bit of socialism, sharn pack. But if
- 8:32Speaker 1: you're paying somebody cut your hair, they're not cutting your
- 8:34Speaker 1: hair for free. You pay somebody to take care of
- 8:37Speaker 1: your your kids in daycare. They're not taking care of
- 8:39Speaker 1: your your kids watching them for free. They're too bad,
- 8:44Speaker 1: too much of a pain in the kazanga beans to
- 8:46Speaker 1: watch them for free. That's just not there unless as
- 8:48Speaker 1: your grandmother or your cousin or something that's it's not
- 8:50Speaker 1: their role in life. So you're transferring the opportunity for
- 8:55Speaker 1: a fee, the opportunity to take care of your kids
- 8:57Speaker 1: for a fee.
- 8:57Speaker 2: They're not doing it for free.
- 8:59Speaker 1: So just talk like from the time you get up
- 9:01Speaker 1: in the morning to the time you go to bed
- 9:02Speaker 1: at night, your life is a series of financial transactions.
- 9:06Speaker 1: You can't even watch or listen to this podcast without
- 9:10Speaker 1: subscription fees, acquisition costs, the phone, the smartphone, the iPad,
- 9:17Speaker 1: the car you're listening to, the radio, whatever it is
- 9:19Speaker 1: you're consuming this with. So let's just understand that financial
- 9:26Speaker 1: literacy is a civil rights issue.
- 9:27Speaker 2: Of this generation.
- 9:28Speaker 1: Let's understand that even the Bible talks about money more
- 9:31Speaker 1: than anything else, more than two thousand references. Let's understand
- 9:37Speaker 1: that the disciples of Jesus were overwhelmingly business people. Yeah
- 9:43Speaker 1: you heard it right from me here.
- 9:46Speaker 2: Check it out.
- 9:47Speaker 1: They weren't profits even though they were largely business people.
- 9:52Speaker 1: They had phishing companies, they had employees, they had infrastructure.
- 9:56Speaker 2: It wasn't casual.
- 9:57Speaker 1: He wanted people around him who knew what they were doing,
- 10:00Speaker 1: who can organize themselves. So let's get into this and
- 10:05Speaker 1: stop arguing over stupid stuff. We shouldn't destroy capitalism. We
- 10:09Speaker 1: should promote good capitalism, good capitalism, and get this out
- 10:12Speaker 1: of the way. So good capitalism where is where I
- 10:14Speaker 1: benefit and you benefit more so? Creating a comb as
- 10:19Speaker 1: an entrepreneur that gets the naps out of hair all right,
- 10:24Speaker 1: straightens or whatever. That comb which I manufactured for two dollars,
- 10:28Speaker 1: and I retail for let's say seven dollars, which is
- 10:32Speaker 1: the cost of production plus retailing marketing, administration, et cetera,
- 10:36Speaker 1: plus a profit margin, and then I sell that comb
- 10:39Speaker 1: for again seven eight dollars. You feel that it's worth
- 10:43Speaker 1: eight dollars or ten dollars to unnap your hair. Fair
- 10:48Speaker 1: change is no robbery. There's good capitalism right there, where
- 10:51Speaker 1: I benefit and you benefit more. Bad capitalism of capitalism
- 10:54Speaker 1: is where I benefit you pay a price for it.
- 10:57Speaker 1: Drug dealing and murder and mayhem for fear and human
- 11:01Speaker 1: trafficking and all kinds of crazy stuff, subprime mortgages, a
- 11:06Speaker 1: lot of stuff that has done from Wall Street and
- 11:07Speaker 1: Main Street can be described as bad capitalism. Or as
- 11:11Speaker 1: President Bill Clinton once told me, he said, John, is
- 11:14Speaker 1: hard to get someone to greet to the truth when
- 11:16Speaker 1: the lie is paying their paycheck. Let's again deal with
- 11:21Speaker 1: with the reality of the matter that this system is
- 11:26Speaker 1: all around us, and we need to understand how to
- 11:32Speaker 1: control master sorry, this system, because if it's not working,
- 11:38Speaker 1: if you're not working it, it's working you. Okay, So
- 11:44Speaker 1: let's not get angry, let's not get upset, let's not
- 11:47Speaker 1: tear it down. Let's refine it and make it better.
- 11:51Speaker 1: Because I can't help anybody broke, you can't help anybody poor.
- 11:56Speaker 1: There's a difference between being broken being poor. I'm starting
- 11:59Speaker 1: to preach to be broke is economic, but to be
- 12:03Speaker 1: poor is the disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition
- 12:07Speaker 1: of your spirit, and you must vow never ever ever
- 12:09Speaker 1: to be poor again. Folks joked and laughed at me
- 12:12Speaker 1: when I brought bankers into the inner city with bankers
- 12:15Speaker 1: bus tours in the nineties after our founded Operation Open
- 12:18Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two. In South Central LA. The nineteen nineties,
- 12:22Speaker 1: even the early two thousands, we had the biggest bus
- 12:24Speaker 1: tour was twelve of these chartered buses with police escorts.
- 12:28Speaker 1: And I treated it like it was a Third World
- 12:30Speaker 1: country at South Central LA, Washington DC, different places in
- 12:33Speaker 1: Oakland where we did these tours. Because if you hang
- 12:36Speaker 1: around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. I don't
- 12:38Speaker 1: care how smart you are. No one has capital, and
- 12:42Speaker 1: so these communities have drug dealers and well check cashers,
- 12:45Speaker 1: pay daylin lenders, rental owned stores, title lenders, liquor stores, pawnshops,
- 12:50Speaker 1: drug dealers, gangsters, and you're dying at sixty one years
- 12:55Speaker 1: of age because you're stressed out. Because people in a
- 12:58Speaker 1: five hundred credit scord neighborhood die at sixty one years
- 13:01Speaker 1: of age. Did you know that My hope financial one
- 13:04Speaker 1: is index. Go to operations website, putting your zip code.
- 13:07Speaker 1: I'll tell you how you live in and by the way,
- 13:10Speaker 1: for every fifty point increase in your credit score, you
- 13:13Speaker 1: live about another five years. So if you get to
- 13:18Speaker 1: your credit score above seven hundred, you live to eighty
- 13:22Speaker 1: one years of age on average. And we've z We've
- 13:25Speaker 1: mapped every ZiT code out in America. Now again, think
- 13:28Speaker 1: about that fifteen minutes away from the hood where we
- 13:31Speaker 1: are rejecting capitalism but are completely involved in hustling, which
- 13:38Speaker 1: is capitalism, but without the structure, without the incentives, without
- 13:42Speaker 1: the legal nature of it, without the ability to compound.
- 13:45Speaker 1: Because there's a difference between making money and building wealth.
- 13:49Speaker 1: You make money during the day and income. You build
- 13:52Speaker 1: wealth in your sleep. Things I keep trying to teach
- 13:55Speaker 1: you stocks, investing, stocks, bonds, education, business is real estate,
- 14:02Speaker 1: et cetera. And as your stress increases in these underserved communities,
- 14:07Speaker 1: you have a surviving mindset surviving mindset versus a winning
- 14:11Speaker 1: mindset or a builder's mindset, and winners are builders. I
- 14:14Speaker 1: need you to be a builder, and a builder's mindset
- 14:17Speaker 1: is optimistic. I can't guarantee the being positive it's gonna
- 14:20Speaker 1: make you succeed, but I absolutely guarantee that being negative
- 14:24Speaker 1: is going to ultimately make you fail, and that negativity
- 14:28Speaker 1: also is going to cause you your health to fail
- 14:30Speaker 1: because of thoughts are things. So you're gonna be broke,
- 14:34Speaker 1: You're gonna be Frustrated're gonna be depressed and be arguing
- 14:36Speaker 1: with your wife or your husband about money. You're gonna
- 14:39Speaker 1: have anxiety and have a heart attack or whatever, high pertension,
- 14:42Speaker 1: eating bad food. Also in these communities I love I
- 14:44Speaker 1: grew up in, and you're gonna drop dead on average
- 14:47Speaker 1: of sixty one but fifteen minutes away, whether a credit
- 14:49Speaker 1: score is seven hundred plus two, parent households, restaurants, grassy areas, calmness,
- 14:58Speaker 1: proper businesses, stress, more education, more aspiration, more ownership, you
- 15:05Speaker 1: live to eighty one ninety one years of age. Don't
- 15:07Speaker 1: trust me, look at the data. So let's start winning.
- 15:13Speaker 1: Because with the rules of published and the plain fullers level,
- 15:16Speaker 1: we kill it. Professional sports we kill it, the arts,
- 15:20Speaker 1: we kill it. I'm talking about black people now, faith
- 15:24Speaker 1: we kill it. Kill it means we've mastered it and
- 15:28Speaker 1: scaled it. Politics from slavery to the President of the
- 15:32Speaker 1: United States of America, as in President Barack Obama, who
- 15:35Speaker 1: just launched his Beautiful Library with his wife Michelle in Chicago.
- 15:40Speaker 1: He's a living legacies. But we live at a capitalist democracy.
- 15:45Speaker 1: That's right, I said it. And if you don't believe that,
- 15:49Speaker 1: look at recent elections and what's driving this whole situation.
- 15:53Speaker 1: Look at what's driving the conversation right now in this country.
- 15:55Speaker 1: Look who really has the power capitalists owners. Look at
- 15:59Speaker 1: the name. Think about the household names here and around
- 16:02Speaker 1: the world. Okay, you used to be politicians now as
- 16:04Speaker 1: business people, but they don't look like us, they don't
- 16:09Speaker 1: have our pedigree. I was just at a meeting last
- 16:11Speaker 1: week and I was the only black male founder, entrepreneurs,
- 16:15Speaker 1: CEO chairman up from nothing, formerly homeless, you know, from
- 16:19Speaker 1: the hood, in the whole group. Not because they don't
- 16:21Speaker 1: want us there. They invited me, but there's a bunch
- 16:25Speaker 1: of billionaires, multi millionaire CEOs, et cetera. But we're just
- 16:29Speaker 1: not sign up for this movement at scale with the
- 16:35Speaker 1: tools needed to sit at the table. And I want
- 16:37Speaker 1: to expand the table and add a chair. That's why
- 16:39Speaker 1: I'm trying to teach you how this game works. Because
- 16:42Speaker 1: Forbes just made me a Forbes two fifty with one
- 16:46Speaker 1: of the Forbes two hundred fifty greatest living self made Americans.
- 16:49Speaker 1: So they say, on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
- 16:52Speaker 1: of American Oprah Winfrey, who I can say now is
- 16:54Speaker 1: a friend and she's amazing, is number one on that list.
- 16:57Speaker 1: And number one of the greatest histori list of self
- 17:00Speaker 1: made Americans is President Abraham Lincoln. So what a trajectory
- 17:06Speaker 1: from Abraham Lincoln to Oprah Winfrey. And if she can
- 17:09Speaker 1: do it, you can do it. If I can do it,
- 17:10Speaker 1: you can do it too. Legally. And it's about it's
- 17:13Speaker 1: not about networth, it's about distance travel, right, it's the arc,
- 17:17Speaker 1: and it's proof of concept that this stuff works. My success,
- 17:20Speaker 1: Oprah success, all the other people on that list success
- 17:25Speaker 1: is proof that this works and it could work for you.
- 17:28Speaker 1: And my book is a roadmap capitalism for all. So
- 17:32Speaker 1: let's talk about this. Socialism, communism, billionaires, taxes, wealth, inequality,
- 17:43Speaker 1: the rich, the poor.
- 17:45Speaker 2: Everybody seems to have an opinion.
- 17:48Speaker 1: Very few people define the words they're using today. We're
- 17:54Speaker 1: going to define all of this and unpack it for you.
- 17:57Speaker 1: Because we want to only argue about the solutions. We
- 18:01Speaker 1: ought to just understand the problem. We shouldn't be admiring
- 18:04Speaker 1: the problem or debating stupid stuff, and I believe America
- 18:09Speaker 1: is actually getting this conversation wrong. So let's first talk
- 18:12Speaker 1: about why people are so angry?
- 18:14Speaker 2: Right, let me.
- 18:17Speaker 1: Just say, right off the bat as I tell my
- 18:20Speaker 1: wealthy and rich, my rich and my wealthy and uber
- 18:24Speaker 1: wealthy friends, including billionaires, when they ask me why this
- 18:30Speaker 1: movement of people talking about socialism and why people so
- 18:32Speaker 1: angry at me them, I tell them that folks have
- 18:39Speaker 1: a right to be angry, a right to be frustrated.
- 18:44Speaker 1: The system has not worked for them, and capitalism and
- 18:46Speaker 1: capitalists have done a crappy job of marketing itself and
- 18:51Speaker 1: its virtues to the least of these God's children, a
- 18:54Speaker 1: crappy job of making sure that the ladder of opportunity
- 18:57Speaker 1: reaches the bottom and people can climb up with their
- 19:01Speaker 1: own effort.
- 19:01Speaker 2: At the top.
- 19:02Speaker 1: People I know who are from the hood and the
- 19:04Speaker 1: hood adjacent, who want success, believing the James Brown version
- 19:08Speaker 1: of affirmative action, open the door. I'll get it myself.
- 19:12Speaker 1: They're not asking for handouts, they're asking for a hand up.
- 19:15Speaker 1: But you can't boots your up yourself without shoelaces. So
- 19:18Speaker 1: I tell my friends, you know, you guys got to
- 19:20Speaker 1: do a better job of doing something other than celebrating yourself,
- 19:24Speaker 1: and how great this is supposed to great. The system is,
- 19:26Speaker 1: we got a K shaped economy and somebody just told
- 19:29Speaker 1: me they might have turned it might have turned into
- 19:30Speaker 1: an E shaped economy. In other words, the E shaped
- 19:33Speaker 1: economy is worse because there's these like these ledges that
- 19:36Speaker 1: don't go anywhere. The kse shaped economy, Lisa is an
- 19:38Speaker 1: angle that you might be able to rocket up, but
- 19:40Speaker 1: it should be a V shaped economy, where V means
- 19:44Speaker 1: victory at some point. So people are rightly so frustrated
- 19:48Speaker 1: inflations through the roof. You might, by the way, understand
- 19:51Speaker 1: inflation came from COVID because it's never been a response
- 19:56Speaker 1: by the government to anything in the history of the
- 19:59Speaker 1: world before COVID with the T in front of it,
- 20:01Speaker 1: as in trillion. Never It's been hundreds of millions and billions,
- 20:06Speaker 1: the global economic crisis of two thousand and the mortg
- 20:09Speaker 1: crisis of two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine.
- 20:13Speaker 1: But this was billions, and it wasn't one billion, it
- 20:15Speaker 1: was two, it wasn't two, three, four five billion. Congress
- 20:18Speaker 1: did all up. You're talking about six seven eight billion,
- 20:21Speaker 1: a billion and a half of that was probably too much.
- 20:23Speaker 1: But no, there was no manual you put off the
- 20:26Speaker 1: shelf that said here's how you solve COVID or some
- 20:29Speaker 1: global economic not economic crisis, how how you respond to
- 20:33Speaker 1: a pandemic. The last pandemic we had was a Spanish
- 20:36Speaker 1: flu in the world. It was one hundred and twenty
- 20:38Speaker 1: five plus years ago. There was no manuals and it
- 20:41Speaker 1: was on manual now. So the whole economy just seized up.
- 20:45Speaker 1: It was like it was like, we forget this more.
- 20:46Speaker 1: We're so traumatized, we don't want to remember it. But
- 20:49Speaker 1: that's where the inflation came from. Because the government poured
- 20:52Speaker 1: all this money over the free that freezed up gears,
- 20:56Speaker 1: the locked up gears of the economy from big companies
- 20:59Speaker 1: all the way down to your house. When they send
- 21:01Speaker 1: you a check for a couple thousand dollars, remember that, Well,
- 21:04Speaker 1: that has to be paid back people. It has to
- 21:06Speaker 1: be flushed to the system that causes inflation. You can
- 21:10Speaker 1: bind that, and I mean, I'm a surprise, frankly, I'm
- 21:12Speaker 1: surprised inflation is not more like seven eight percent given
- 21:15Speaker 1: what we went through. And that just shows how dynamic
- 21:17Speaker 1: this economy is. And how amazing we are that we
- 21:19Speaker 1: recover from that. But people just forget. They want to
- 21:22Speaker 1: blame it on a president or something and come on,
- 21:25Speaker 1: knock it off. That was bipartisan stimulus money. Both Republicans
- 21:28Speaker 1: and Democrat gave that money during the pandemic, and presidents
- 21:32Speaker 1: from both parties contributed to this whole situation. It's just
- 21:35Speaker 1: with an unfortunate situation with no good answer. I understand
- 21:41Speaker 1: the concerns. I understand that people got too much month
- 21:43Speaker 1: at the end of their money and they're using credit
- 21:46Speaker 1: cards to get buy with their standard of living. I
- 21:48Speaker 1: understand the student loans are driving them crazy. I understand
- 21:50Speaker 1: you can't you can't buy a house. The interest rates
- 21:53Speaker 1: are too high because the interest rates are high because
- 21:55Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve is trying to stamp out inflation. So
- 21:59Speaker 1: you cannot have low interest rates without risking high inflation.
- 22:04Speaker 1: So they're trying to get the interest rates the Federal Reserve.
- 22:07Speaker 1: But you cannot have low interest rates without triggering high inflation.
- 22:10Speaker 1: You cannot have higher interest rates without dampening economic activity
- 22:15Speaker 1: and making things expensive. So buying a house is expensive.
- 22:20Speaker 1: Buying anything is expensive these days, and it has an
- 22:23Speaker 1: interest rate attached to it right, and then now you've
- 22:25Speaker 1: got oil is through the roof. So I mean people
- 22:28Speaker 1: are really frustrated. Whatever they turn you, affordable housing ain't affordable.
- 22:33Speaker 1: And I say, a on a purpose. And so wherever
- 22:35Speaker 1: you turn, you've got too much month at the end
- 22:38Speaker 1: of your money and you're just not a happy camper,
- 22:40Speaker 1: and you want somebody to cut you a break. Do
- 22:41Speaker 1: you want somebody to solve an actual problem in your life?
- 22:44Speaker 1: So millions of Americans feel left behind. I get it.
- 22:47Speaker 1: Young people wonder if they can ever own a home
- 22:50Speaker 1: in California. They're building what they call in Hawaii, ohannas,
- 22:54Speaker 1: I think, but they're building residences above the garage.
- 22:58Speaker 2: And the.
- 23:00Speaker 1: Chief of Sabrachel told me, because she lives there still,
- 23:02Speaker 1: that they're getting city, county, state government permits to build
- 23:07Speaker 1: a living unit over the garage so that the kids
- 23:10Speaker 1: can stay there, the seniors, the mothers and fathers can
- 23:12Speaker 1: stay there. I think it's actually a pretty innovative idea.
- 23:15Speaker 1: And I love how entrepreneurs and creative thinking and solve problems.
- 23:19Speaker 1: I love how crisis requires us to think outside the box.
- 23:23Speaker 1: And the housing crisis required California to come up with
- 23:26Speaker 1: this cool idea, probably borrowed from my friends in Hawaii. Anyway,
- 23:31Speaker 1: minions of Americans just don't know if they can ever
- 23:33Speaker 1: young people, if they're gonna have ever own a home. That's
- 23:35Speaker 1: the number one you build wealth in America's home ownership
- 23:38Speaker 1: families working two jobs right. Healthcare is expensive, Inflation hurts,
- 23:45Speaker 1: college debt just lingers like a noose around your neck.
- 23:49Speaker 1: Many people feel the system isn't working for them. So
- 23:53Speaker 1: here's the important point. Those feelings, as I said, are real.
- 23:56Speaker 1: People aren't stupid, they're frustrated. But frustration does and automatically
- 24:01Speaker 1: produce wisdom. Wisdom comes from experiences and time. So we
- 24:05Speaker 1: need you to get your stripes and your achievements and
- 24:07Speaker 1: your your wounds is where your wisdom comes from, and
- 24:10Speaker 1: your stripes, your activities, your actions is where your achievement
- 24:15Speaker 1: comes from. And that's how you ultimately know in your gut,
- 24:19Speaker 1: your intuition, what is the right thing to do going forward.
- 24:22Speaker 1: Is experience in life. So pain can make us blame
- 24:25Speaker 1: the wrong thing. But rainbows only follow us storms. You
- 24:28Speaker 1: cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. But that's
- 24:31Speaker 1: where we are today. Okay, So now let's define the
- 24:35Speaker 1: terms of where we are. So like economics one on one,
- 24:38Speaker 1: So get out a pencil or pen or or your
- 24:41Speaker 1: smartphone or whatever. Start writing this down. Let me talk
- 24:44Speaker 1: about capitalism real quickly. I'm giving you these are all
- 24:46Speaker 1: crib notes because you can be not because because you
- 24:49Speaker 1: can go in my book Capitalism for All. I've got
- 24:51Speaker 1: the definitions of all these things in the book. Just
- 24:53Speaker 1: go to the book as a reference as not. Somebody
- 24:55Speaker 1: told me it's not to read the book. It's a
- 24:56Speaker 1: work book, it's an underlining book, is a review books,
- 25:00Speaker 1: a study book. So let's talk about again crib notes here,
- 25:04Speaker 1: just the high points as you're listening to this podcast,
- 25:08Speaker 1: going to work or jogging or working out whatever you
- 25:11Speaker 1: want to get smart.
- 25:13Speaker 2: Quick and then go deep later.
- 25:15Speaker 1: Capitalism, private ownership, private investment, private enterprise, competition, innovation, risk,
- 25:28Speaker 1: reward for that risk. Here's some examples of what capitalism
- 25:33Speaker 1: has produced up from nothing Apple, I mean, I describe
- 25:37Speaker 1: it in the book Steve Jobs. He was the son
- 25:40Speaker 1: of a Jordanian Middle Easian immigrant, so they put the
- 25:44Speaker 1: kid up to adoption to a wealthy family. Anyway, that
- 25:48Speaker 1: family bounced out of the adoption of the last minute,
- 25:51Speaker 1: and the backup family that adopted Steve Jobs was a
- 25:53Speaker 1: Jobs family that was a white couple, engineer, a couple
- 25:58Speaker 1: out of Silicon Valley. So Steve Jobs shows up as
- 26:01Speaker 1: the adopted kit and he walks around the neighborhood and
- 26:05Speaker 1: he runs into another kid named Wolsnack, Steve Wozniack, who's
- 26:09Speaker 1: a genius coder. Steve Jobs was an okay coder. He's
- 26:12Speaker 1: really more of a designer marketer. He's really braiding in
- 26:14Speaker 1: his own way made technology cool. But it was Wolseniac
- 26:18Speaker 1: who really wired at the back end anyway. Together in
- 26:22Speaker 1: the garage, they created what we now know is a
- 26:24Speaker 1: trade dollar company, multi tree dollar company called Apple, and
- 26:27Speaker 1: it's changed all of our lives. Apple, Microsoft, Google, FedEx, Amazon, Tesla.
- 26:35Speaker 1: Even though I've got real problems with that company and
- 26:39Speaker 1: it's founder of anyway, I got to give credit what
- 26:40Speaker 1: credit is due.
- 26:42Speaker 2: There is brilliance there.
- 26:43Speaker 1: All the black businesses and brands that don't get enough credit,
- 26:47Speaker 1: Black Enterprise Magazine, Johnson Products. Off the top of my head,
- 26:51Speaker 1: what Robert Smith is doing now, I mean, just what
- 26:54Speaker 1: Oprah has created, Just Tyler Perry and Tyler Perry Studios,
- 26:57Speaker 1: all these industries, all these places, jay Z and his
- 27:00Speaker 1: wife Beyonce, et cetera. Millions of small businesses, because most
- 27:06Speaker 1: millionaires is literally the person next door. It's a boring business.
- 27:10Speaker 1: By the way, did you know that it's about I
- 27:15Speaker 1: think it's twenty four hundred or twenty five hundred millionaires
- 27:19Speaker 1: minted every day last year, every day in the world,
- 27:23Speaker 1: and half of those in the US twelve hundred new
- 27:26Speaker 1: millionaires a day. And that weren't doing fancy stuff, and
- 27:31Speaker 1: they weren't doing illegal stuff. These are legal entrepreneurs. They
- 27:35Speaker 1: were doing normal stuff and doing well and doing good.
- 27:39Speaker 1: Capitalism mostly and again, you can't even be a philanthropist.
- 27:43Speaker 1: You can't give it away unless you collected first. But
- 27:45Speaker 1: here's what it also came out of capitalism. Good capitalism,
- 27:48Speaker 1: new medicines, new technologies, new jobs, new wealth. Capitalism is
- 27:58Speaker 1: not perfect, okay. Unchecked capitalism creates monopolies not good, cronyism
- 28:05Speaker 1: not good, greed not good, abuse horrible, not good, Excessive
- 28:11Speaker 1: concentrations not good. That's not good capitalism. That's bad capitalism.
- 28:17Speaker 1: And I've already said capitalism where I benefit, you benefit more.
- 28:21Speaker 1: Bad capitalism is where I benefit and you pay a
- 28:24Speaker 1: price for it. The answer is an abandoning capitalism. The
- 28:27Speaker 1: answer is improving it. Let me tell you what capitalism is, right, capitalism.
- 28:32Speaker 1: Let's just say it's a table in front of you. Now, okay,
- 28:35Speaker 1: let's talk about negotiation. On one side of that table
- 28:37Speaker 1: is a capitalist and the other side of the table
- 28:39Speaker 1: is a consumer. Let's make you the capitalist for the moment.
- 28:41Speaker 1: Just to make this very provocative, Let's as soon that
- 28:45Speaker 1: you're selling a new comb, you create it to somebody
- 28:47Speaker 1: who wants to straighten their hair or comb their hair
- 28:49Speaker 1: on the other side. So, your job in this example,
- 28:53Speaker 1: as the capitalist, mister and missus capitalists listening to this,
- 28:56Speaker 1: your job is to extract as much price, resources money
- 29:02Speaker 1: from the consumer as you can while delivering the least
- 29:07Speaker 1: amount of acceptable value for quality product as you can,
- 29:12Speaker 1: just to maximize your profit. Now, the consumer on the
- 29:16Speaker 1: other side, the consumer's job is to pay the least
- 29:21Speaker 1: that they can possibly negotiate to that capitalist for that product,
- 29:26Speaker 1: while extracting as much as they possibly can in value
- 29:30Speaker 1: from that product and from that capitalist as they possibly can.
- 29:34Speaker 1: And every good negotiation at that table is when everybody
- 29:38Speaker 1: leaves that table slightly annoyed because nobody got actually everything
- 29:43Speaker 1: they wanted.
- 29:44Speaker 2: So there you go.
- 29:46Speaker 1: I've just explained capitalism and negotiation and I don't know
- 29:49Speaker 1: two minutes. Now, make that go viral. Let's now deal
- 29:55Speaker 1: with socialism. It's government ownership or heavy control of large
- 30:03Speaker 1: portions of the economy. Government ownership or heavy controls of
- 30:09Speaker 1: large or substantial parts of the economy. It's still capitalism,
- 30:13Speaker 1: by the way, in the Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden.
- 30:17Speaker 1: Sweden has got timber and technology, by the way, Finland
- 30:22Speaker 1: has got technologies. Norway when my brother the crown Prince
- 30:25Speaker 1: is my brother friend of the mother, it has oil
- 30:28Speaker 1: and again other things. But these are foundational things which
- 30:31Speaker 1: make money. Now the question is whether they're going to
- 30:34Speaker 1: do with the money. So now that talks about the
- 30:36Speaker 1: taxing system in these countries, there's heavy taxes. Taxes in
- 30:40Speaker 1: these places tend to be higher, Registribution plays a larger role,
- 30:46Speaker 1: government services tend to be larger. Right, But keep in mind, yes,
- 30:51Speaker 1: there's no body at the bottom in this example, nobody
- 30:55Speaker 1: who looks like you at the bottom. But I would
- 30:58Speaker 1: argue if you're black or brown, by the way, or
- 31:00Speaker 1: women or anybody left behind in society or feel like
- 31:03Speaker 1: you left behind. You will find in these places there's
- 31:06Speaker 1: nobody who looks like you. Nobody meaning a large portion
- 31:08Speaker 1: of people or even many who look like you at
- 31:11Speaker 1: the top. So you don't get you're not at the bottom.
- 31:13Speaker 1: I mean that falls in the cracks. But you're not
- 31:15Speaker 1: making it to the top either. You are being subsidized,
- 31:19Speaker 1: chilling in the midst You know, you're just getting by, right,
- 31:23Speaker 1: not bad, But that's what that is. So America already
- 31:30Speaker 1: has its socialist features. Okay, social security is a part
- 31:35Speaker 1: of socialism, or is an aspect of socialism. Medicare okay, medicaid,
- 31:40Speaker 1: public education, police, fire departments, roads, the military. You aren't
- 31:48Speaker 1: paying for these things. The government's providing it. These are
- 31:51Speaker 1: public goods, public goods, the public good. Having public goods
- 31:58Speaker 1: does not make America socialists, right, But there are social
- 32:03Speaker 1: aspects to this. There are social safety net which I
- 32:06Speaker 1: think actually helps to make this country great. You shouldn't
- 32:09Speaker 1: fall through the cracks. You shouldn't die because of health
- 32:12Speaker 1: or poverty of the mouth of food or you know,
- 32:16Speaker 1: you should everybody should have reasonable But I do like
- 32:18Speaker 1: the fact that you can go from the bottom to
- 32:20Speaker 1: the top, just like me.
- 32:22Speaker 2: In America, and you couldn't.
- 32:23Speaker 1: I could not be My experiment of me could not
- 32:26Speaker 1: have been proven out anywhere else in the world. Think
- 32:29Speaker 1: about that, John O'Brien would not have emerged from Germany
- 32:33Speaker 1: or Japan, or Russia or China, France, all these different places,
- 32:37Speaker 1: even though France is where the world entrepreneur comes from.
- 32:40Speaker 1: So this now deal with communism and communism. The government
- 32:45Speaker 1: owns virtually everything, controls everything, controls your movements. Little private ownership,
- 32:53Speaker 1: and if it is, it's micromanaged and can be snatched
- 32:57Speaker 1: from you in a moment's notice. No freedom whatsoever about
- 33:00Speaker 1: the government. The people entrepreneurs in China who just want
- 33:03Speaker 1: to say the wrong thing in one day, they just disappear,
- 33:05Speaker 1: like the wealthy is most powerful people in China just disappear.
- 33:08Speaker 1: That's not good in my opinion. So it's little private ownership,
- 33:13Speaker 1: little entrepreneurship, at least not in the traditional sense. Government
- 33:17Speaker 1: decides production, government decides prices. History has shown repeatedly that
- 33:24Speaker 1: this suppression and this suppressed innovation and economic freedom does
- 33:29Speaker 1: not work. In fact, some of the worst tragedies in
- 33:32Speaker 1: the world history have been socialist countries. Don't trust me
- 33:37Speaker 1: to do research, use that smartphone to be smart, use
- 33:40Speaker 1: AI to study the things I'm telling you. The track
- 33:44Speaker 1: record of countries that have pursued socialism has been absolutely tragic.
- 33:50Speaker 1: Communism even worse. In fact, the countries that say they're
- 33:53Speaker 1: communists today Russia and China are China and Russia, as
- 33:57Speaker 1: two examples, are really pursuing capitalism, but saying that they're
- 34:03Speaker 1: pursuing communism. I think about that. America was never pure capitalism.
- 34:12Speaker 1: This is where the nuance is important, and America has
- 34:15Speaker 1: always been a mixed economy like markets and rules, competition,
- 34:21Speaker 1: consumer protection, social safety nets, property rights, patent protections, infrastructure,
- 34:31Speaker 1: roads and streets, and all that stuff. Bank regulation, securities regulation,
- 34:36Speaker 1: isn't a wall street. The genius wasn't government. The genius
- 34:42Speaker 1: wasn't markets. The genius was balanced and unleashing untapped human
- 34:48Speaker 1: potential of her people us, which is what I'm all
- 34:52Speaker 1: about today. My website Brian grid Ventures, I encourage you
- 34:55Speaker 1: to go there and read my Brian Journal pieces that
- 34:57Speaker 1: I write every week and sign up for the difference
- 35:00Speaker 1: services and programs of all my companies and organizations, including
- 35:02Speaker 1: Operation Hope.
- 35:03Speaker 2: There.
- 35:04Speaker 1: But if you go there, it says in the right
- 35:05Speaker 1: of the homepage. Unleashing untapped human potential at scale. So,
- 35:10Speaker 1: now let's deal with the difference between good capitalism and
- 35:13Speaker 1: bad capitalism and begin to wrap this episode up. And
- 35:16Speaker 1: then I'll I'll go deeper if you want me to. Right,
- 35:18Speaker 1: But there's probably enough for this. But this is the
- 35:21Speaker 1: heart of this episode.
- 35:22Speaker 2: Right. I don't defend every form of capitalism. I do not.
- 35:28Speaker 1: I defend good capitalism. I have compassion for those who
- 35:31Speaker 1: are frustrated. I want to be an engine for those
- 35:33Speaker 1: who want to create wealth and opportunity for themselves through
- 35:37Speaker 1: good capitalism. It's not a depression of the bad. It's
- 35:42Speaker 1: a celebration of the untapped good. It's not like we
- 35:45Speaker 1: got the memo and screwed it up. We just never
- 35:48Speaker 1: got the memo. That's my fourth book. I think I
- 35:51Speaker 1: have seven books out. So good capitalism creates opportunity. Bad
- 35:57Speaker 1: capitalism protects insiders. Good capitalism encourages competition. Bad capitalism rewards monopolies.
- 36:09Speaker 1: Good capitalism grows entrepreneurs. Bad capitalism eliminates competition. Good capitalism
- 36:16Speaker 1: expands ownership. Bad capitalism concentrates ownership. Your head should be
- 36:23Speaker 1: nodding as you're listening to this. It should be like,
- 36:25Speaker 1: it's like an un it's just an unforced agreement. Like, yeah,
- 36:30Speaker 1: this makes sense because it's common sense, but commonism is
- 36:33Speaker 1: not so common. Good capitalism rewards innovation. Bad capitalism rewards
- 36:38Speaker 1: political connections.
- 36:40Speaker 2: Hello.
- 36:43Speaker 1: Good capitalism builds communities. Bad capitalism extracts from communities. Here's
- 36:49Speaker 1: a philosophy. This is what I've spent my entire life building.
- 36:56Speaker 1: It's called inclusive economics and good capitalism through capitalism for
- 37:01Speaker 1: all and all the eneities. I've created to stand it
- 37:05Speaker 1: up so that we can say PhDs are good, PhDs
- 37:08Speaker 1: are better. Let's actually and they let you know, five
- 37:11Speaker 1: billion dollars with a capital be deployed to set people's
- 37:16Speaker 1: dreams free and create opportunity for them. This is not
- 37:20Speaker 1: redist distributing wealth. That I'm doing is creating more wealth creators,
- 37:26Speaker 1: not attacking success, expanding what success looks like. So let's
- 37:33Speaker 1: stop hating on wealth and start creating some. I am
- 37:37Speaker 1: not anti rich, I'm anti poverty. I'll say it again,
- 37:41Speaker 1: I am not anti rich, I am anti poverty.
- 37:45Speaker 2: What about you? These are two different things entirely. America
- 37:51Speaker 2: doesn't need fewer successful people. The world doesn't.
- 37:54Speaker 1: America in the world needs millions and millions of more
- 37:57Speaker 1: successful people. These twelve hundred millionaires a day need to
- 38:00Speaker 1: look like us. Can I get an amen? Especially the
- 38:02Speaker 1: people who never thought success was possible for them? That's
- 38:06Speaker 1: who I want to win. This is where the civil
- 38:09Speaker 1: rights movement comes in. The third reconstruction, Economic empowerment, financial literacy,
- 38:16Speaker 1: the unfinished work of doctor martinther King Junior and my
- 38:18Speaker 1: mentor Andrew Young, access to good credit, entrepreneurship, home ownership, investment,
- 38:27Speaker 1: AI education, small business, employee ownership, stakeholder capitalism. I call
- 38:34Speaker 1: it Delta Airlines and divisions of KKR and Apollo. There
- 38:39Speaker 1: are great examples of this stakeholder capitalism model at work.
- 38:44Speaker 1: This is how we reduce inequality people. We get on
- 38:48Speaker 1: with building more ownership. This is an ownership generation in
- 38:52Speaker 1: my opinion, or it could be so. Driving wealth away
- 38:58Speaker 1: hurts everybody, so let me just deal with this. We
- 39:02Speaker 1: need to avoid the politics, the partisan politics that doesn't
- 39:05Speaker 1: solve anything.
- 39:06Speaker 2: We need to.
- 39:07Speaker 1: Educate ourselves and how economics really works, and educate people
- 39:11Speaker 1: so they can help themselves help themselves. When entrepreneurs leave
- 39:17Speaker 1: a city or a state who wants to penalize them,
- 39:22Speaker 1: tax them hunt them, humiliate them, hurt them, point fingers
- 39:29Speaker 1: at them. When that happens, they leave. And I've been
- 39:32Speaker 1: talking to billionaires and multi millionaires the last few weeks.
- 39:34Speaker 1: We're leaving out of a couple of states in particular.
- 39:37Speaker 1: That's not good. When they leave, economic energy leaves, investment,
- 39:41Speaker 1: leaves jobs, leave innovation and creativity that they fund it
- 39:51Speaker 1: or could fund, leaves charitable giving in the local communities leave, leadership,
- 39:58Speaker 1: leaves headquarters of companies, leave, opportunities leave, communities begin to die.
- 40:06Speaker 1: Every governor, every mayor, every governor, every business leader, she
- 40:11Speaker 1: asks this question, how do we attract more investment, not
- 40:17Speaker 1: how do.
- 40:18Speaker 2: We punish investment.
- 40:19Speaker 1: I'm involved in a big investment here in Atlanta, Centennial Yards.
- 40:22Speaker 1: I'm gonna investor in it. It's the biggest investment in
- 40:24Speaker 1: Atlanta since Atlanta. It was a debate here. Luckily we
- 40:27Speaker 1: came on the right side of it. It's six billion dollars,
- 40:29Speaker 1: the biggest investment in Atlanta since Atlanta itself. And it's
- 40:32Speaker 1: going to create jobs from the bottom of the top.
- 40:35Speaker 1: It's going to create opportunity, affordable housing, economic vitality. It's
- 40:38Speaker 1: going to create a downtown which Atlanta doesn't have it's
- 40:41Speaker 1: win win. The city wins, the state wins, the county
- 40:45Speaker 1: wins thirty percent of all contracts. And to those at
- 40:47Speaker 1: the bottom of the economic pyramid, they win.
- 40:50Speaker 2: Again. Affordable housing is going to come in hopefully. I'm
- 40:52Speaker 2: going to be part of that. You know what.
- 40:55Speaker 1: To me, it's a rational movement of common sense. So
- 41:00Speaker 1: this is the third reconstruction people, and this ties back
- 41:04Speaker 1: to the book Capitalism for All. America has already experienced
- 41:08Speaker 1: great reconstructions. Second, the first one was about freedom civil War.
- 41:13Speaker 1: Second one was about access civil rights movement. That's the
- 41:17Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. My mentor, Ambassador Andrew Young and his dear friend,
- 41:21Speaker 1: doctor Martha King Jr. And doctor Dorothy Heyde and all
- 41:23Speaker 1: the heroes and heroes who made that fight right. They
- 41:27Speaker 1: had the NAACP, they head of the Urban League, etc.
- 41:31Speaker 1: The next reconstruction is economics. It's ownership in nature, financial literacy,
- 41:38Speaker 1: credit ownership, entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, technology, when capital is code
- 41:47Speaker 1: real financial capital. This is the new civil rights movement.
- 41:51Speaker 1: I call it the silver rights movement. From civil rights
- 41:54Speaker 1: to civil rights, from the streets to the suites, not
- 41:58Speaker 1: because graces no longer matter, but because money touches everyone.
- 42:03Speaker 1: Color is not white or black, or red or blue.
- 42:06Speaker 1: It's green. It's always been green. So here's America I
- 42:11Speaker 1: believe in. My dream isn't in America with fewer rich people.
- 42:16Speaker 1: It's in America with dramatically fewer poor people. Can I
- 42:20Speaker 1: get an amen? My dream isn't redistribution, it's expansion. It's deepening.
- 42:27Speaker 1: My dream isn't resentment, it's aspiration. My dream isn't the storm,
- 42:32Speaker 1: it's the rainbow that follows storms. You cannot have a
- 42:35Speaker 1: rainbow without a storm first. My dream isn't dependency, it's
- 42:40Speaker 1: dignity through ownership. My dream isn't to tear down success,
- 42:45Speaker 1: it's to multiply it.
- 42:48Speaker 2: At scale.
- 42:49Speaker 1: That's why I wrote Capitalism for All, not capitalism for
- 42:53Speaker 1: Wall Street, not capitalism for Olive Guards, or capitalism for
- 42:57Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Not capitalism for the privilege, Capitalism for all,
- 43:04Speaker 1: Capitalism for you. If you're listening today, don't ask yourself
- 43:10Speaker 1: who should I blame? That's the wrong question. Ask yourself,
- 43:16Speaker 1: what can I build? What skill can I learn? What
- 43:22Speaker 1: business can I start? What investment can I make starting
- 43:27Speaker 1: with the one in yourself? What young person can I
- 43:30Speaker 1: mentor what wealth can I create? How do I bless
- 43:35Speaker 1: someone else that I'm blessed too? Because service is the
- 43:39Speaker 1: price we pay for the success that we get. Wealth
- 43:42Speaker 1: isn't just about money, It's about freedom. What are you
- 43:45Speaker 1: going to do with your freedom? Just help you or
- 43:48Speaker 1: help somebody else too. That's what I try to do.
- 43:52Speaker 1: To do well and do good, to do well by
- 43:54Speaker 1: doing good. Opportunity, dignity, legacy, and that that's the case.
- 44:01Speaker 1: That's the case I'm making for good capitalism. I want
- 44:06Speaker 1: to thank you for joining me for this week's episode
- 44:09Speaker 1: of Money and Wealth. This conversation challenged you, inspired you, hopefully,
- 44:16Speaker 1: changed you, moved you. Share it with someone you care about.
- 44:20Speaker 1: And get the book Capitalism for All and talk about
- 44:22Speaker 1: it as you read it. And remember, financial literacy is
- 44:26Speaker 1: not about getting rich. It's about becoming free through literacy
- 44:32Speaker 1: and understanding of how this game works. Until next time,
- 44:36Speaker 1: I want you to keep learning, keep growing, returning, keep building,
- 44:39Speaker 1: keep moving, and lead from the front. And I want
- 44:46Speaker 1: you to read this last book, which I think is
- 44:48Speaker 1: my best one, Capitalism for All, and I want you
- 44:49Speaker 1: to read it once and put it down. I want
- 44:51Speaker 1: you to read it once twice three times four times.
- 44:54Speaker 1: Listen gen on audiobook that we have to underline it,
- 44:56Speaker 1: underscore it, dog ear it, talk about it, create conversations
- 45:00Speaker 1: and barbershops and beauty salons and sororities and fraternities. Let's
- 45:04Speaker 1: start a movement that change the world. Let's be the
- 45:08Speaker 1: light on the hill. I'm John O'Brien and this is
- 45:12Speaker 1: Money and Wealth. Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is
- 45:16Speaker 1: a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more
- 45:19Speaker 1: podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app,
- 45:23Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.