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Scott Galloway: How the US is destroying young people's future [video]
- 0x53 2y agoBeen a fan of Scott’s for awhile. Don’t agree about everything but I think this video calls out the most important systemic problems.
- orwin 2y agoI agree on all his diagnostics. The solution part is the part I'm not totally on-board.
- miek 2y agoI agree, and it's sad to feel the need to say this, but it's so important in this inflammatory era to respond positively to ideas and opinions despite not agreeing 100% or even 80%, because too often the baby is thrown out with the bathwater (especially online)
- FredPret 2y agoGod yes, let’s bring this back. 80% agreement or even 50% is a foundation for progress. Insistence on 100% agreement is a recipe for fragmentation.
- jmclnx 2y agoHe is right, but the young can change things. The sad fact is they do not vote, and if they vote at all it is only in presidential. Even in those elections well less then 50% vote. They are a big voting block, if they all start voting, including in local elections, in about 10 years you will see change. But seems people these days want instant change. 2024 will be a big tell for the young, depending on who wins, things could get far worse for them. Right now, the corporations determine who runs the US, the young, if that have patience, can change things by voting in all elections.
- nox101 2y agodoesn't this assume they all vote as single block? if their vote is diverse then it won't make much difference
- qnleigh 2y agoNo. Political parties change their behavior to capture voting demographics. Right now politicians aren't motivated to win the young vote because we vote less.
- ncgl 2y agoGreat point
- voisin 2y agoIs there actual evidence of this occurring or is it just a hypothesis? I can’t recall offhand significant policy changes to capture voting demographics.
- ryandrake 2y agoMaybe because voting demographics change so slowly, policy changes slowly too. Thirty years ago, when I was still in K-12 school, Baby Boomers were the largest generational voting bloc in the USA, and they still are. With a few exceptions that the rest of us are grateful for, it's been politically status-quo for pretty much my entire life.
- voisin 2y agoRight, but I think you are making my point. Despite the boomers dominating for decades, we’ve seen the GOP swing far right relative to the 70s/80s. For example, Nixon massively expanded the Clean Air Act and enacted the Clean Water Act, which never would never have happened with the GOP in the last 30 years.
- dubcee349 2y ago
- andrewstuart 2y agoAustralia too.
- coretx 2y agoWith a "little" bit of help from China.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoHow so?
- tsujamin 2y agoLooking forward to learning how a sub 1% rate of foreign property purchases is really the problem in Australia https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/overseas-investors-are-buying-less-property-than-you-think-20230530-p5dcgl https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/overseas-investors-are-... https://foreigninvestment.gov.au/sites/foreigninvestment.gov.au/files/2023-10/res-insights-report-2021-22_0.pdf https://foreigninvestment.gov.au/sites/foreigninvestment.gov...
- freefrog334433 2y agoYes - I question whether his statement that the US has the highest housing costs in the world. Australia is out of control.
- siliconc0w 2y agoI find it interesting to think you can socially engineer a society. It's such a unfathomable complex system that most the time, I imagine we're probably only 'right' by accident. Like one of scott's prescriptions is higher taxes - sure maybe that could be good if paired with wiser government spending but realistically that may just get poured into unproductive subsidies, regulations, or healthcare and military-complexes. So maybe you just tax less and accept this will lead to wealth inequality but maybe a benevolent billionaire class will be more likely to 'fix' society more than our 'elected' representatives can.
- jonathankoren 2y agoYou know, your proposals are also engineering society. It’s just a society of the 1800s and before. It sucked. It sucked for the vast majority of people. Life may still suck, but it sucked a lot worse then. To be completely clear here. When you say, “ accept this will lead to wealth inequality but maybe a benevolent billionaire class will be more likely to 'fix' society more than our 'elected' representatives can.” You’re advocating for authoritarian oligarchy. Fuck. That. Shit. Fuck that in whatever they find the least desirable. Edit: Jesus. I really the above comment. It’s not even internally consistent logic. It’s just dumb.
- VS1999 2y agoDo you use twitter? The rhetoric in this post has the exact cadence of someone who spends a lot of time on social media.
- jonathankoren 2y ago[flagged]
- janalsncm 2y agoI guess we shouldn’t be surprised that a social media company owned by a billionaire would amplify such convenient talking points. He amplifies his own account there as well. If you read through his retweets and “original” content it is a litany of things which don’t matter and are meant to invoke an emotional response to distract you from the things that do.
- ryanchoi51 2y agoThe social contract of working hard and being able to own a home or start a family has been broken. This is especially true in Canada, where the government seems to be doing everything in its power to erase the middle class.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoOntario's conservative govt has made the entire state a third world country.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoJust to clarify the current Ontario premier comes from a family of drug dealing and massive fraud. His govt has played a part in the largest education scam in the country. All the immigration stuff you hear about comes about as students to fake universities who have been granted licenses by his govt in exchange for money and they have no intent to study.
- red-iron-pine 2y agoentire state? you sure you're from Ontario, mon ami? Cuz it's a province shillbots be gettin lazy again
- pylua 2y agoIn the U.S., a lot of places I go seem to be run by skeleton crews with workers that are deeply dissatisfied. Something is fundamentally going awry.
- janalsncm 2y agoAs I was waiting in a long checkout line at the grocery store (one checkout line was open of the 8 available) I looked up the owners. Turns out it is a subsidiary of a regional grocery owned by private equity. No doubt there is some calculation of cost benefit. I took the survey on the receipt I got and told them it was clear how their private equity ownership degraded my experience, and that they need to hire more cashiers.
- deadbabe 2y agoIs there any large country that has not utterly destroyed their young people’s future?
- ruined 2y agoglobal ocean temperature has broken records every single day for more than a year running now
- wakawaka28 2y agoWhat does that have to do with anything?
- deadbabe 2y agoIt seems off topic but yea I get what he’s saying, all countries are basically in this mess together because of climate change.
- janalsncm 2y agoIt’s a bit reductive. It doesn’t explain the discrepancies between countries. Every country is going to be negatively impacted, that doesn’t mean the problems we are already seeing are the result of climate change. On the other hand it does speak to the fact that governments can’t seem to get their shit together even when a problem is so clearly carved up and served on a silver platter as climate change.
- wakawaka28 2y agoClimate change is not a clear problem, much less one that is clearly due to humans. There are no clear solutions either if it is real. Everyone needs fossil fuels until some actual alternatives make sense, regardless of what hysterical "experts" have to say about it. These same "experts" are probably secretly plotting to kill off or imprison billions of people to reduce emissions.
- 2y ago
- gedy 2y agoThe whole world nearly is ruining young folks and couples by letting housing be so expensive. It's ridiculous given the amazing tech we have for comfortable shelter, but prices are still sky high. There's no excuse. Forget coastal California, lots of cheap land is available.
- nritchie 2y agoOne more "doable" for Scott - Campaign finance reform. It doesn't matter who you vote for if when they get to congress, they represent their donors rather than the voters. We could call our current system "free speech" or we could call it "legalized bribery." We made the wrong choice.
- peutetre 2y agoDonald Trump's only virtue is that what you see really is what you get. He bluntly asked for $1 billion in campaign funding from oil companies in exchange for government policy that will benefit the oil business. Everything is transactional with Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil...
- voisin 2y agoPeople took his rhetoric figuratively when they should’ve taken it literally. Now we know!
- red-iron-pine 2y agotransactional is preferable for many people. to paraphrase Aristotle Onassis, never trust anyone who won't take a bribe
- Sammi 2y agoA system where you can buy politicians is not democracy.
- hacky_engineer 2y agoBut it's still the one we have...
- Havoc 2y agoSame for UK. Salaries and house prices diverged so sharply that it’s a complete farce for anyone coming at this now without generational wealth
- e-colibear 2y agoInteresting that Scott mentions NIMBY as an issue early in the video, but doesn't list it in his final slide on the prescription to our societies ails. All of these problems seem downstream of housing affordability. It appears more wealth can be accumulated from young people having expanded access to more housing to build equity with. With more wealth, the young people can start sorting the mess out themselves. I'm hesitant to support many of his proposals because they seem much smaller in magnitude to NIMBY and many could have civil liberty concerns.
- gregwebs 2y agoThis is correct on the symptoms (it's harder to make a living now) but still missing a full understanding of the causes. Much of this comes down to debt. After the GFC, US government debt went from 60% of GDP to 100%. After the pandemic it shot up and settled at 120%. [1] Countries don't function well with this level of debt. Inflation is a way of dealing with debt without explicitly raising taxes. But it's the most regressive possible way of taxing people. If we talk about loving our children- non-functional government debt is simply stealing from them- our children have to pay it back. That's 25 trillion of public debt. The debt to revenue ratio is almost 7- that's 7 years we want our children to work to pay for the things we are doing now. [2] Debt is useful when it creates more value long-term than was otherwise possible. However, much of our government spending produces less than one useful dollar of value for every dollar spent. The most obvious being the trillions of dollars spent on most of the recent wars. I am not a libertarian- choosing between big or small government is still a mistaken line of thinking. The government should be doing things for us, but doing them well (productively, a dollar in produces more than a dollar of value). If they can't do them well then its probably better to do less until they can figure out how to do them well again. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Federal_debt_to_revenue_ratio.webp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...
- janalsncm 2y agoHe did mention debt towards the end. Debt is certainly part of it, but not the entire picture. I don’t think the substantial increase in teen girl suicide is because they spend too much time reading up on debt numbers.
- lIl-IIIl 2y agoI've been hearing a lot about how the latest generations have a lot less wealth than their parents. SonI was surprised to read The Economist reporting the opposite: https://archive.is/lwKKk https://archive.is/lwKKk
- gregwebs 2y agoThat article shows millennials doing poorly though. I don’t think that article tells the full story. It uses inflation adjusted numbers but almost everyone believes real inflation is higher than government figures. The numbers are also averages- it would be great to look at different percentiles. If we assume the article is true, that’s still not a great outcome – a younger generation achieving the same amount of wealth as much older generation. Younger generations should be achieving greater levels of wealth in an economy that’s growing and with larger amounts of deflationary technology.
- Teslazar 2y agoThe article mentions this, but housing is so much more expensive now that it's by far the largest cost for some people depending on where they live. For example, my father's first house was less than 2x his annual income. Now, in the same city, a similar house is about 17x the annual income of someone working a similar job. Even a small condo is about 8.5x.
- qnleigh 2y agoDid anyone else get served at ad for visiting Canada after finishing this video?
- JKCalhoun 2y agoThe most amazing thing I've seen all week ... and of course this gets "flagged".
- miek 2y agoYes, it's discouraging that HNers aren't resilient enough to handle differing opinions. I hope it's a vocal minority and not truly representative of the userbase.
- ryandrake 2y agoI'd love to hear a flagger's justification on this one. Does this video really violate the site's guidelines, or do you just not like the content and are using your flag as a "mega downvote"?
- paulus_magnus2 2y agoThe single biggest opportunity equalizer for the young generations come from 2 unlikely sources: COVID (mandatory WFH) and Musk (ubiquitous internet access). This opens doors for anyone who is hard working and can follow though a long term plan. No generation wealth needed. Study hard, get remote work, buy a cheap piece of land in the middle of nowhere, get married, get a mortgate, get kids. Focus on your own stuff. Avoid politics, avoid social media, avoid HCOL cities, avoid career ladder. Do your 9-5 each day, log off and invest time in a hobby, family, farm etc.
- debug-desperado 2y agoI'm not convinced that Scott's suggestions will move the needle. Most are good ideas (e.g. term limits, more vocational training opportunities), but some I find distasteful (e.g. forced identity verification for internet services, not being entitled to social security if you've accumulated too much, etc.). We've made too many terrible decisions for too long as a nation, to the point now I feel like the spiritual malaise for the young can only be cured by hard asset prices collapsing by 30% or more. His end slide recap is below. Economics: // Increase minimum wage to $25/hr // AMT for high income and corporations // Re-fund the IRS // Negative income tax (i.e. UBI) // Eliminate capital gains exemption Technology: // Remove 230 protection for algorithmically-elevated content // Identity verification // Break up Big Tech // Age-gating Social Policy: // Universal pre-K // Reinstate expanded child tax credit // Term limits // Income-based affirmative action // Expand college enrollment & vocational programs Mental Health: // Ban phones in schools // Invest in 3rd places // Big Brothers/Sisters programs // National service requirement
- baggy_trough 2y agoI don't know how anyone can look at what's going on with AI and think that now is a great time to make it illegal for people to work for less than 50K a year. It would be absolutely devastating for young people especially.
- SARAHBAKER4444 2y ago[dead]