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Language: en
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 neverending
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. Debtfueled 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 Mele and a new fighter,
Mamani, 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 Buenus Aries 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 lure 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 Mom Donnie
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 Herzgoina, 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 is 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 overaccumulation 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 selfmade. 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
burr. And rage skyrockets. So what does
this have to do with mom Donnie? 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? Mandani'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 Zoran Mandani, 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. Mom, Donnie, 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 mom Donnie 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 Soul 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
sore 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 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. Natada. 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 a 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
onethird 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 the 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 Peron, Argentina's
version of Mum Donnie. 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 justicealism. 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.
But 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. But they don't
call it that. They call it inflation. 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 1 peso in 1970 suddenly costs
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, erodess 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 Coralo
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 bubbled 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 Kersners, double 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 laugher 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 ownorous 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 trap themselves in a destructive
cycle. We'll get right back to the show.
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And now, let's get back to the show.
During the last decades, Argentina's
political and economic institutions just
fell apart. Corruption surged, the rule
of law weakened, and repeated IMF
bailouts only deepened their dependency
on the government, pushing Argentina's
GDP per capita, a clear measure of
prosperity, from around $8,000 in 1998,
down to just $4,500,
deflated by 2002. Argentina's story is a
crystal clear warning of what happens
when a country lets populist promises
and debt-driven policies steer the ship.
And Argentina's past is a warning about
America's future. Here's what we all
have to understand. When a country piles
up debt to pay for political promises,
the end result is always resentment and
inequality. And this resentment and
inequality drive people to vote for more
policies that promise more free stuff.
And that only drives up resentment and
inequality. It is the economic
equivalent of drinking to cure a
hangover. And that brings us to part
four. America has a debt hangover, but
Mani isn't the answer. Right now, the US
government pays roughly$ 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 dollar on
interest just to avoid defaulting on the
money we borrow 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 call it 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 Zoron Mandani. 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
Peron. 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 hellbent to learn this lesson the
hard way. Prominent economists,
including Larry Summers, have explicitly
warned that Manny'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 Ein 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 politicians 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, risktakers,
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
healthcare 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
Einran'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 a hundred 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 Malay was elected to
turn things around in Argentina and
swing the country from a taker hellscape
to being a pro-maker nation. Malay
slashed over 35,000
public sector jobs, repealed decades of
suffocating regulations, and eliminated
10 of 18 federal ministries. In less
than two 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
Einran's ideas, Malay 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 Buenus Areas
tripled and rents plunged by roughly 50%
after MLE 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. MLE'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. MLE's radical approach might
sound extreme, but it's working and it
represents the flip side of the Mandani
socialist coin in America. While Mdani
threatens to freeze rents in New York,
which will limit housing supply and
future investments, MLE completely
removed housing regulations in
Buenoseres, 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
MLE's Argentina is headed in the right
direction. MLE'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,
Zoron Mandani wants to steer New York
City in the exact opposite direction.
Mani's entire platform is built on
promises that sound kind, but have
proven time and time again throughout
history to lead directly to disaster.
Mani'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. MLE 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 takeroriented 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,
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
rembrace 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 ownerous 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 dollars a
day. And to pull all of that off, you're
going to have to carefully execute what
Ray Dallio 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 riding 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 in 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 Mandani, or the
makerfriendly road of innovation,
accountability, and prosperity
represented by MLE'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.
And 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