America May Not Survive the Next Decade Unless We Do THIS

In 1913, Argentina was a global superpower, on par with the United States and England. It was wealthier per capita than Germany, France, and Japan combined. These days though, it is a cautionary tale. 5,000% hyperinflation made cash worthless overnight, unemployment figures at times reaching towards 50% and the government has defaulted on its debt not once, not twice, but nine times. And while people think that debt defaults are something that only hurt the bad guys, it's often the average citizen of a country that holds the country's debt. So, when Argentina defaulted, not only did they guarantee wealthy people and foreign investors would stay as far away as possible, they performed daylight robbery on their own citizens, condemning the country to a never-ending cycle of poverty. So, how does this happen? How does a country go from being richer than Canada to regressing back to being a developing nation? How does a once wildly prosperous nation plunge into nearly 100 years of chaos? And how is it that America is now racing towards the same obvious cliff? Unfortunately, it's really straightforward and it is a pattern we see over and over all around the world. And you do not have to look any further than the balance sheet of most Western countries to see that the odds of us sliding backwards is very high right now. Don't believe me? Consider these two facts. One, 98% of all countries with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 130% or more have ended up in civil war or revolution in short order. America's debt-to-GDP ratio right now is 122% and climbing. Second, an openly socialist candidate just won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City and the younger you are, the more likely you are to have voted for him. This is a very familiar trend that leads to cultural warfare between the makers and takers in society. Who wins the war though is never certain, but in times of economic stress the battle is guaranteed. Today we're going to survey the battlefield and see if we can nudge the world towards a beautiful outcome. Here's my thesis. Debt-fueled policies, unchecked populism, and a culture that rewards taking over making have placed the US at a dangerous tipping point. Argentina's past failures are our present warnings. There is a way to stop this debacle or at least put it into slow motion so that we have enough time to react, but to do that we're going to have to make some surprising choices. So, buckle up. This is a cultural cage match where Rand, Milay, and a new fighter, Mamdani, battle for the soul of the West. Now, if you don't know who those three are yet, do not worry. By the end of this you will. And by the end of these five easy parts, you'll know exactly what to do to avoid calamity even if only for yourself and your family. Just be sure you do not skip part four. That's where all of the action is, but it won't make sense if you don't understand the parts leading up to that. So, welcome to part one, where we are and what Argentina tells us about our own future. In the early 1900s, Argentina was attracting more immigrants than America. People were literally choosing Buenos Aires over New York City for opportunity. Today, more than half of Argentina's children live below the poverty line. How does a country that once lured dreamers away from the land of opportunity end up with over 50% of its kids growing up waiting in bread lines? That's where socialists like Mamdani come in. Let me walk you through the tragedy step by step. Debt and money printing cause countries to weaken their own economy, leaving them vulnerable to crisis. And when that crisis hits, the country tears itself apart from within. The Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, just to name a recent few, all fell apart due to economic reasons. But instead, what we read about in history is the violent clash between the two sides. There is just so much hatred in a country by the time they fall, history often misses that the hatred was born out of the economy. The economy is the thing to watch. By the time polarization has set in, the system is already in big trouble. Here's how it plays out, the cause and effect that leads to the battle between capitalism and socialism. The over-accumulation of debt causes inequality. People think it's billionaires hoarding money, but that's not how the economy actually works. Billionaires are the result of three factors: debt, money printing, and owning assets. Roughly 70% of all millionaires and billionaires in America are self-made. But in a world where people, companies, and countries take on too much debt, the government eventually has to print money to cover the inevitable shortfall. And when they do, asset prices go up and the dollar goes down. So, asset holders, aka the people that build successful companies and the people that own equity in a successful company, get richer and the people who don't own assets get poorer. It's that simple. And this happens in runaway fashion, pushing ordinary middle-class people either up into being wealthy if they own assets, or down into being poor if they don't. That is how inequality sets in. But what happens next is the real kicker. Inequality leads to populism, and populism, which is just a fancy way of saying inequality makes people really mad. It leads to people voting emotionally instead of rationally. And once people start voting emotionally, things spiral fast. Debt goes up because politicians get elected by promising free stuff. And sadly, there is no such thing as free stuff. Government deficits come out of your pocket via inflation. I know if you don't know how this all works, that sounds crazy, but it is actually true. Populist politicians also promise to punch the enemy right in the kisser. And the enemy is always the other guy. So, the left promises to punch the right, and the right promises to punch the left. This drives everyone into tribes because you need a team to protect you when it's all going down. If you're in the middle, you're going to get clobbered from both sides. So, very few people stay in the middle, and when they do, they are the first killed in the revolution, and I don't mean that figuratively. That is a true story. So, people pick teams, and they fight. Ethics go out the window because everyone believes in a populist moment that they are fighting for survival. And the political candidates that get elected in a populist moment are the strong men who don't mind fighting. That's because everyone wants to elect a tough guy who will fight for them and get them a bigger piece of the money-printing pie. So, money printer go brrr, and rage skyrockets. So, what does this have to do with Mondani? I'm glad you asked. The right already has a tough guy, Trump. But, the left is still trying to find their new identity post the 2024 defeat. The question everyone has been asking is, will the left go towards the middle or towards the extreme? Mondani's rapid rise to popularity indicates we're going to be following in history's footsteps here and choose the extremes. With that thought bubble hovering over my head, enter Zohran Mamdani, the self-proclaimed socialist who wants to make New York City more affordable. He was just elected as the Democratic mayoral candidate for the global financial center, New York City. The problem is, like Argentina before him, he has not learned the lessons that even the Chinese Communist Party has learned, namely, that if you want to pull people out of poverty and make things affordable, the only proven tool is capitalism. You have to orient towards private citizens getting rich off their innovations. Remember, the problem is debt, not capitalism. More on that coming up, but for now, I'll just say this. Mamdani and reality agree on one thing, the inequality in America has become intolerable, and if it is not addressed, America will tear itself apart. Where Mamdani and reality diverge, however, is on the causes of the intolerable inequality. So, welcome to part two, the physics of money. In 1905, a 26-year-old patent clerk named Albert Einstein did something that seemed impossible. He proved Isaac Newton, one of history's greatest minds, wrong. Newton discovered gravity, invented calculus, and architected all of classical physics. But he was just wrong enough that civilization was trapped until Einstein saw he had mapped the cause and effect of the universe wrong. By rejecting what everyone knew to be true and rethinking physics from first principles, Einstein effectively made the 21st century possible. Lasers, GPS, smartphones, digital cameras, solar energy, and even the modern space movement. That's the power of getting physics right. And just like the universe has physics, economies and money itself have physics. There is a string of cause and effect that once understood allows you to intentionally produce some startlingly wonderful results. Much like understanding the laws that govern our universe allowed us to unleash the power of the atom and usher in the modern world, understanding how the economy works made America the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen. Thinking about that and thinking about the astonishing number of people that capitalism has pulled out of poverty in the last 100 years, I'm reminded of the Thomas Sowell quote, "The more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew dismantling civilization bit by bit, replacing what works with what sounds good." That's what happens in moments like these. Inequality makes people so angry and suddenly charismatic politicians show up telling you greedy billionaires are keeping you poor, not paying their fair share, driving prices up. They talk about freezing rents, subsidizing city-run grocery stores with tax dollars, promising free transportation, and providing free child care whether the parents work or not. But, that's like saying you can walk out of a 10-story window and not fall to your death. Free stuff only sounds good if you don't understand the physics of the economy and are totally blind to the lessons of history. To oversimplify it, but not by much, economies boil down to debt, inflation, interest rates, innovation, and confidence. That leaves out a few bits and bobs, but I think most people just hide behind nuance and complexity. People will argue with me in the comments, I know that, but those five items get you more than 80% of the way to understanding how the economy actually works. That is exactly why we see economic patterns repeat in history. All right, let's look in detail at the mechanics of the most important one of these patterns, the debt to inequality feedback loop. Countries start off by balancing their budgets. Sure, they tax people, but they don't spend more than they take in in taxes. And if they spend those tax dollars wisely and orient themselves towards infrastructure and unlocking innovation, the country rises economically. Productivity and optimism soar during this phase because debt is only used to fuel positive GDP growth. The revenue generated by the makers in society goes up, taxes collected therefore also go up, and everyone is happy. The economy is booming. But, inevitably, the growth is going to slow down because innovation is very difficult. But, instead of reducing spending to match the decline, governments always take on debt faster than the economy is growing. Debt becomes like a drug and the government starts borrowing to chase the prosperity high. But, if the borrowing doesn't result in growth via innovation, debt begins to outpace GDP growth, and that becomes a death spiral. The more a country borrows, the more interest they have to pay. The more interest they have to pay, the less they can spend on things that actually help the country grow. The debt burden becomes so bad that they turn on the money printers and then the inequity flywheel begins to spin. Billionaires start becoming more and more common because asset prices are pushed higher and higher as people realize owning assets is the only way to escape the destruction caused by inflation, which is caused by money printing. Worst of all, printing money only creates the illusion of more money. In reality, money printing is just a trick. The reality is that every dollar printed just lowers the value of all the other dollars that already exist. That's the physics of inflation. It is the very thing that makes prices go up. This is what happens every time a politician promises something for free. Unless the government brings in more in tax than they spend, they have to print money and create inflation to pay for it behind your back. To make matters worse, inflation doesn't hit everyone equally. It crushes the poor and middle class the most because that's who relies on wages, which are paid in dollars, and remember the dollars are going down in value through inflation when the money printer goes on. And if they have any money saved at all, it is likely to be saved in dollars that are going down in value due to inflation. And as mentioned before, in a cruel twist of fate, assets like stocks, bonds, art, crypto, and houses go up in value automatically with the rise in inflation. That's why it is inevitable that when a government spends more than it brings in in taxes, the rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer mechanistically. Ironically, the act of promising free things to poor people is exactly how you guarantee to keep them poor and guarantee that you will make more billionaires. Promising people free things prints billionaires. That is until you collapse the entire system, which is sadly what many people want to happen right now. Over the last 500 years, guess how many governments have done this debt dance so well that they didn't collapse their own system? Zero. None. Nada. No one avoids this fate. On a long enough timeline, every country becomes Argentina, even America. And they do it by promising things for free. Politicians absolutely cannot help themselves because we, the voters, insist on it. 101 times out of 100, we will vote for the person that promises free stuff over the person that promises to balance the budget. So, welcome to part three. Free stuff wrecks economies the way sugar wrecks your body. In its heyday, Argentina was an economic powerhouse. But the Great Depression caused global demand for their exports to collapse brutally. They lost nearly 1/3 their total value effectively overnight. It would be like America losing the economic output of California, Texas, and New York combined, just poof, gone. They went from being the Paris of South America and drawing ambitious immigrants from all over the world to drowning in debt in a heartbeat. Commodity prices collapsed. Terrible news for a country whose economy was so reliant on beef, wheat, and wool exports because when commodity prices plummeted, Argentina's export revenues declined sharply. And that made the payments on the insane amount of debt that they had racked up trying to keep the good times rolling made it increasingly difficult to keep up with. The global financial crisis led international lenders to withdraw credit, limiting Argentina's ability to refinance or service existing debts. That caused their financial crisis to accelerate because a combination of high debt burdens and collapsing revenues forced them to institute austerity measures. And people hate austerity measures, especially when they're used to deficit spending. So, this triggered even deeper social and political instability, pushing people onto teams and ensuring emotional voting where people clamor to get more stuff for free. Enter Juan Perón, Argentina's version of Mom and Dad. He came to power promising the moon delivering expansive social programs free healthcare pensions welfare benefits he promised anything he needed to to secure popular support people loved it but here's the catch economies have physics and Peron's government violated them they spent money faster than the country could actually make it requiring them to deficit spend and pile on debt year after year ever seen a turtle with so many barnacles that it drowns that's what happens to socialist economies now Peron didn't call it socialism he called it justicialism but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck here are the facts Peron nationalized everything he could get his grubby little hands on including major industries like railroads funding it all with billions in foreign loans the result Argentina's debt continued to balloon inflation soared to 40% by the 50s and the very policies designed to secure prosperity via free stuff ended up setting the nation on a path to ruin because again there is no free stuff that's what politicians do they borrow from anyone they can and when they can't borrow anymore they tax and when they can't tax anymore they confiscate they steal they don't call it that they call it inflation but if it walks like a you know by the 1970s Argentina's economic machine was choking to death on debt to keep up with the endless promises made the government began printing money literally pulling pesos out of thin air to cover its deficits inflation went up even more reaching an unimaginable peak of 5,000% per year by 1989 let that sink in prices doubled every few weeks imagine going to buy bread and the loaf that cost you one peso in 1970 suddenly cost over a million pesos by 1989 people watched their life savings go up in smoke trust in the currency vanished and investors wouldn't go anywhere near Argentina the brutal reality is that money printing is economic poison. It destroys productivity, erodes trust, and widens inequality. The middle class, the backbone of any thriving economy, is the first to be decimated, turning productive citizens into resentful survivors who depend on government handouts. And once that happens, it's not long before the entire society begins to unravel. By 2001, Argentina was staring into an abyss. They had borrowed their way into a catastrophic debt hole, unable to make payments, setting the stage for the largest sovereign debt default the world had ever seen. And when a government defaults, chaos isn't far behind. Bank runs erupted as panicked citizens rushed to withdraw their money, only to find the government had already frozen their accounts under the infamous corralito policy. Unemployment exploded, businesses shuttered at pace, and poverty rates soared past 40%. People watched helplessly as their lives collapsed because politicians had prioritized short-term vote buying over long-term economic reality. This stage of the debt cycle is inevitable. Once debt exceeds productivity, the system is going to break. It's just a matter of time. Inflation spirals out of control, defaults wipe out trust, and economic stability just vanishes. Political unrest and anger bubble to the surface, and one more society tears itself apart from the inside. After the catastrophic default of 2001, Argentina didn't bounce back. Instead, it entered what economists now call the lost decades, a long, grim period of economic stagnation and institutional rot that lasted well into the 2010s. Populist leaders, particularly the Kirchners, doubled down on the same disastrous playbook. Massive subsidies, sweeping nationalizations, and social programs funded with borrowed money. On paper, this sounds compassionate until you realize that every new subsidy has to be financed with debt, the thing that drives inequality. The plan, of course, is to raise taxes and balance the budget, but that's not how taxes work. There's an entirely predictable mechanism that stops raising taxes from working in a linear fashion. The principle is called the Laffer curve. It shows that beyond a certain point, increasing tax rates actually decreases overall tax revenue. Now, how is that possible? It's possible because owners taxation discourages economic activity, investment, and even compliance, leading to people who work less, invest less, flee, or just outright evade taxes. Simply put, when the government takes people's money, they stop working. There was a joke in the former Soviet Union. We pretend to work, and the government pretends to pay us. That's why even authoritarian policies to confiscate people's wealth or physically stop them from leaving the high-tax area under threat of violence doesn't work because additional revenue requires a miracle. Innovation. Innovation must occur, and innovation requires an insane amount of dedication. There's no way to force people to get inspired and create something new. It's just too hard. You have to create an environment where they want to dedicate their lives to discovering something new, to building something that didn't exist. And you do that by allowing people to capture the majority of the upside of their labor. Argentina, however, was unwilling to walk that path. They failed to understand the physics of how the economy works, and thus trapped themselves in a destructive cycle. We'll get right back to the show, but first, I want to share something that's completely changing how people think about sleep quality. For millions of Americans, staying asleep is harder than falling asleep. I'm one of those people. Like many of you, I found that listening to audiobooks helps me sleep through the night. It was a game-changer. But, if you're a side sleeper, traditional earbuds dig painfully into your ear when you lie on a pillow. That's why Oslo Sleepbuds are such a breakthrough. 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Argentina's story is a crystal-clear warning of what happens when a country lets populist promises and debt-driven policies steer the ship. And Argentina's past is a warning about America's future. Here's what we all have to understand. When a country piles up debt to pay for political promises, the end result is always resentment and inequality. And this resentment and inequality drive people to vote for more policies that promise more free stuff, and that only drives up resentment and inequality. It is the economic equivalent of drinking to cure a hangover, and that brings us to part four. America has a debt hangover, but Mamdani isn't the answer. Right now, the US government pays roughly two and a half billion dollars every single day. Not on education, healthcare, or defense, on the interest for our existing debt. Think about that. Every 24 hours, America burns through 2.5 billion dollars on interest just to avoid defaulting on the money we borrowed to give people free stuff. That's like setting fire to a stack of $100 bills 10 times taller than the Empire State Building. It's 1.7 miles of cash burned every day. America has a debt hangover from decades of monetary partying, but socialism isn't the cure. That would be like getting blackout drunk to cure your headache. We have a cultural problem. We have saddled millennials and Gen Z with an obscene amount of college debt and credit card debt, made it impossible to discharge the college debt through bankruptcy, something history is never going to forgive us for, and taught them to hate themselves and their country. We have made it impossible for them to get on the property ladder, which is the only asset that people have an intuitive understanding for. So, they just keep getting financially demolished by inflation. A foreign adversary controls their favorite algorithm and feeds them a non-stop barrage of divisive content. And the message they get is that hard work is for suckers. We've created multiple generations of takers who think making is toxic grind culture. For every one person in their cohort that buys gold or crypto as an inflation-resistant store of wealth, there's 50 that yellowed into a shitcoin hoping to get rich quick. Instead of playing the long game in the stock market, they weaponize it to punish the hedge fund managers they think are hoarding the money and keeping them poor. Unless we figure out a way to get them on the property ladder, stop stealing their future through debt, and get them to embrace the miracle that is innovation, and not redistribution, we are racing full speed toward the socialist cliff of much and infinite despair that has held back Argentina for nearly 100 years. America's political divide is getting dangerous, and without intervention, it will tear us apart. Partisan hostility has reached levels we haven't seen since the '60s. Trust in institutions is plummeting, and the sense that the other side isn't just wrong, but evil, is now mainstream. Politicians on both sides are promising voters endless handouts, benefits, and favors funded by money we simply don't have. The more divided we get, the more politicians promise to buy our votes with things that sound compassionate, but are financially disastrous. Instead of inspiring young people to build and create, we're teaching them to stand in line with their handout, and that brings us back to Zohran Mamdani. He's promising free transit, frozen housing prices, universal child care, and wealth taxes so extreme the billionaire makers of New York are guaranteed to flee, as history shows us time and time again that they will do. His policies are straight from the Argentinian playbook used under Juan Perón. Promise massive welfare programs, nationalize industries like grocery stores, and fund it all through mountains of debt. This won't lead to prosperity, but somehow each generation seems hell-bent to learn this lesson the hard way. Prominent economists, including Larry Summers, have explicitly warned that Mamdani's policies will devastate New York City's economy, driving businesses and wealthy individuals to pack up and leave. Every country that tries socialist policies, including Argentina, ends up hollowing out their own economy from within, leading to decades of runaway inflation, poverty, and institutional collapse. Now, we've danced around the ideas of makers and takers several times so far, but now it's time to pin it down. Author and economic philosopher Ayn Rand famously argued that every society inevitably divides itself into two groups, makers and takers. Makers are the entrepreneurs, innovators, and builders, the people who create real, tangible value and drive society forward. They generate the tax revenue. Takers, on the other hand, are those who rely on extracting the value created by others, often through government handouts, subsidies, and political favors without contributing anything productive themselves. Rand's essential warning is simple but powerful. When a culture shifts too heavily towards rewarding takers instead of makers, it begins a spiral of moral and economic decay. Prosperity doesn't come from redistribution. It comes from innovation, entrepreneurship, and personal responsibility. Argentina's tragic story clearly illustrates that that's true. Initially, Argentina was a nation of makers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and productive citizens who built real wealth through creativity, hard work, and enterprise. They turned Argentina into a global jewel that drew enterprising young people from all over the world. But over time, debt shifted Argentina dramatically towards a taker culture. Populist promised endless government handouts, subsidies, and welfare programs, and citizens became increasingly dependent on the state rather than their own productivity. The incentive to innovate, to take risks, and to produce real value evaporated, replaced with the impulse to tax and print money. The result was an economic and cultural crisis that crippled the nation for generations. Today, America is displaying many of the same troubling signs. Historically, America's success was driven by makers, entrepreneurs, innovators, risk takers, all who created unprecedented prosperity. But increasingly, our culture is shifting towards entitlement. People expect the government to provide solutions for every problem, from free health care and universal basic income to widespread student debt forgiveness. The idea of personal responsibility has become cringe. Support for broad-based government entitlement programs has surged dramatically, marking a clear shift towards a taker mindset. If Ayn Rand's warning holds true, and history clearly suggests that it does, the very productivity and innovation that built America's wealth will rapidly dissipate as Millennials take control. America's middle class, once the envy of the world, will be gone. Maybe not forever, but 100 years is a long time. So, what can we learn from Argentina, which now, after roughly a century, actually shows signs of getting back on track? Welcome to part five, the return of the makers, Argentina's potential recovery. I want you to imagine this, a chainsaw-wielding former rockstar turned economist turned politician gets elected president by promising to slash spending, eliminate entire departments of the government, and finally balance the budget. That's not an acid trip, that actually happened. Political outsider Javier Milei was elected to turn things around in Argentina and swing the country from a taker hellscape to being a pro-maker nation. Milei slashed over 35,000 public sector jobs, repealed decades of suffocating regulations, and eliminated 10 of 18 federal ministries. In less than 2 years, his actions have brought inflation down from a devastating 211% annual rate to a monthly rate of just 1.5%. Known for passionately quoting free-market economists and openly celebrating Ayn Rand's ideas, Milei represents a fierce rejection of Argentina's taker-friendly culture. And under his watch, the Central Bank reserves, once sitting at a negative $3 billion, have surged to nearly 30 billion to the positive. Housing availability in Buenos Aires tripled, and rents plunged by roughly 50% after Milei abolished strict rent controls. He also secured a landmark $20 billion financing deal with the IMF, a clear sign that his policies have already begun to improve investor confidence in Argentina's economy. Milei's core philosophy is simple. Shrink government, unleash private enterprise, and empower individuals rather than politicians. He cut government spending by 30%, eliminated half of Argentina's bloated ministries, and his fierce commitment to fiscal discipline even delivered Argentina's first budget surplus in 16 years, showing what's possible when you align with the physics of money. Milei's radical approach might sound extreme, but it's working. And it represents the flip side of the Mamdani socialist coin in America. While Mamdani threatens to freeze rents in New York, which will limit housing supply and future investments, Milei completely removed housing regulations in Buenos Aires, increasing supply, increasing investments, and lowering rents dramatically. New construction jobs skyrocketed and urban development surged once again as investors flooded back into Argentina's markets. It's clear that in moments of high inequality, people hate the idea of creating opportunities for other people to win. But the reality is, that's what you have to do to drive prosperity. That's what even China does. That's why Milei's Argentina is headed in the right direction. Milei's policies are rapidly returning Argentina to being a place where entrepreneurs, businesses, and individuals are empowered to build, innovate, and thrive, lifting the country out of decades of decay and decline. Meanwhile, in New York City, Zohran Mamdani wants to steer New York City in the exact opposite direction. Mamdani's entire platform is built on promises that sound kind, but have proven time and time again throughout history to lead directly to disaster. Mamdani's heavy-handed rent controls alone are projected to slash New York's housing supply by nearly 20%. Historical data clearly shows that rent control policies do not expand affordable housing. Instead, they scare off developers, dry up investments, and cause both businesses and wealthy individuals to flee the city, taking valuable tax dollars with them. It's just not how you're going to tackle America's growing problem of inequality. Think of it this way. Milei's spending cuts were like trimming the fat off an athlete, and taming inflation is like no longer feeding that athlete a steady diet of sugar. And deregulating and encouraging innovation is like getting that athlete back in the gym. And now, back in fighting shape, Argentina has a shot at the title once again. It required a lot of hard work, but in the end, an economy built on innovation and productivity is the thing that leads to growth. It's the very thing that is required if you want to prosper. Now, contrast that with what's happening in America. Despite massive government spending and soaring deficits, real wages for the American middle class remain flat, and in the last 5 years have actually been wildly outpaced by inflation. So, Americans that don't own assets are getting worse off by the day. In a taker-oriented economic model where government spending outpaces real economic growth, productivity stalls, and ordinary citizens get absolutely demolished, which has the paradoxical effect of causing them to vote for the very thing that's creating their problem. So, now what? Where do we go from here? Welcome to the conclusion, the thrilling path forward. The following is true. There is a single country that has been so successful that it accounts for more than 25% of the entire globe's GDP. Its economic output is bigger than China, Japan, and Germany combined. I did not misspeak. You can look it up. It has attracted so many innovators that it's home to more billion-dollar companies, over 600 unicorn startups, than every other country on Earth added together. It leads the world in Nobel Prizes, technological innovation, and university rankings. Its economic influence is unmatched in human history. Now, I imagine it's not hard to guess that I'm talking about America. But despite all of the incredible accomplishments, a America is at a tipping point. The next decade will decide our future because there is a shocking flip side to America's accomplishments, America's social mobility. It was once the envy of the world, but now has plunged to 27th place globally. The majority of young Americans now believe their living standards will be worse than their parents for the first time ever. Life expectancy is falling for the first time since World War I. ASCE gave our infrastructure a barely passing C- minus grade, and half the nation now has less than $400 saved for emergencies. This is the stark crossroads America stands at right now. We have everything to lose and everything to gain. Whether we re-embrace capitalism and innovation or we lean into socialism and a well-intentioned death loop of poverty will determine our future. Will we renew America's position as a global beacon of prosperity or march down Argentina's dark and chaotic path? I know what I want to happen, but it's hard to tell what will happen. Hopefully, I've convinced you that debt and money printing create inequality, and that politicians promising free stuff is exactly what leads to debt and money printing and therefore inequality. Assuming I have, here is how we pull back from the brink and get America back on track. Our number one priority has to be to reduce inequality by ending reckless deficit spending and getting out from under the onerous burden of our current debt. That's not going to be easy, but we cannot move forward until we solve that problem and stop money printing as a way of life. We cannot continue to burn $2.5 billion a day, and to pull all of that off, you're going to have to carefully execute what Ray Dalio calls a beautiful deleveraging. This requires the use of a hyper-strategic and temporary blend of the following four things. One, austerity. Two, limited wealth distribution. Three, selective debt cancellation. And four, limited money printing. Yes, this combination might sound counterintuitive given how hard I've railed against wealth redistribution and money printing, but the reality is there's no way to get out from under $36 trillion in debt without some pain. By blending these four levers as strategically as humanly possible and getting back to growth and innovation as rapidly as possible, we'll give ourselves the best chance of righting the ship. Now, if you want to go much, much deeper on this topic, I did a whole deep dive on it that you can watch here. The second thing we have to do to get America back on track is we must fundamentally reform our broken college debt system. Instead of saddling young people with impossible loans for degrees that are never going to pay off or giving people loans and then just forgiving them, we need to get the government out of the loan guarantee business. We also need to allow people to discharge their college debt via bankruptcy. That one move will force discipline on the lenders. The third thing we need to do is remove regulations from the housing industry to increase supply and naturally lower costs and ensure young people see a path to home ownership. Affordable housing must be a priority because it's the only inflation-resistant asset that everyone understands intuitively. Fourth and perhaps most critically, we have to swing the cultural pendulum back towards makers. America must again become a culture that inspires young people to build, innovate, create, and solve problems rather than to passively wait for government handouts. The only way to continue to win is to relearn how to be a nation of people that actually strive for greatness. And finally, we must teach Americans, especially millennials and Gen Z, the power of asset ownership. If nothing else, they must understand how owning assets, stocks, real estate, gold, crypto, homes, etc. can help them avoid the devastating impacts of inflation. Even if we can't get the government to change, individuals can still protect themselves and their families from financial ruin through wise investing and economic education. We are now standing at the most pivotal moment since World War II. The choices we make today between the taker-friendly path of socialism, dependency, and decline represented by Mamdani, or the maker-friendly road of innovation, accountability, and prosperity represented by Milei's new Argentina, will determine America's fate for the foreseeable future. Here's the truth. History is filled with cautionary tales of once-great nations who lost their way, but it's also filled with powerful examples of countries that found the courage, clarity, and determination to rebuild, renew, and face the challenges ahead logically instead of emotionally. It often comes after tremendous pain though, and my hope is that we can avoid that. This is our moment. We get to decide which story we're going to write. So, ask yourself now, what kind of America do you want to live in? One that follows a tragic path of debt and decay, or one that reignites our spirit of innovation, freedom, and prosperity? I know which one I will choose, and I hope you'll choose it with me and we can build something wonderful together, united on one team. Now, if you want to watch me explore ideas like this live, make sure you join me live on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6:00 a.m. Pacific time. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. In just the last 100 years, there have been over 260 major wars and armed conflicts worldwide, resulting in more than 150 million deaths. That means