Can You Still Get Rich in 2025? The Income Inequality Debate That Has Everyone Fighting | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Tom Bilyeu and and Producer Drew dive into the fast-paced world of current events and economic realities. The discussion covers a wide range of topics from the Department of Defense's efforts to cut wasteful spending, to the ripple effects of modern economic policies under the current administration. This episode is a must-listen for anyone keen to understand the dynamic interplay between economics and politics, promising engaging insights and revelations. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Pentagon Cuts $580M in Wasteful Spending 09:10 "UK's Social Safety Net Dilemma" 10:26 Energy Crisis & Leadership Challenges 16:51 "Asset Ownership Shields Against Inflation" 24:57 "Embrace Market Correction" 27:16 Lateral Eye Movement Reduces Stress 35:14 Critique of Power and Messaging 37:48 Trump's Urgent Task: Prevent Recession 45:49 Tax-Free Future with Natural Resources 51:42 Cuban Critiques Rapid Reform Strategy 55:18 Addressing Foundational Issues, Not Symptoms 59:13 AI's Economic Sustainability Challenge 01:03:49 AI and Robotics' Unprecedented Impact 01:09:17 2,000ft Deep Pyramid Discovery Skepticism CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Range Rover: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://rangerover.com/us/sport Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Thrive Market: ​​Go to https:thrivemarket.com/impact http://thrivemarket.com/impact for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! Tax Network: Stop looking over your shoulder and put your IRS troubles behind you. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://tnusa.com/impact ITU: Ready to breakthrough your biggest business bottleneck? Apply to work with me 1:1 - https://impacttheory.co/SCALE American Alternative Assets: If you're ready to explore gold as part of your investment strategy, call 1-888-615-8047 or go to https://TomGetsGold.com https://tomgetsgold.com Mint Mobile: If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://mintmobile.com/impact. https://mintmobile.com/impact DISCLAIMER: Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5 gigabyte plan required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes & fees extra. See MINT MOBILE for details. ********************************************************************** What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. The DOD makes hundreds of millions in Doge recommended cuts. Mark Cuban joins the ranks of people who used to sound Doge. Biden is rumored to be attempting a Trump-style comeback. Bernie and AOC do America. Gary Economics hands the Dems their comeback playbook. Howard Lutnick lays out plans for a US sovereign wealth fund.

• 1:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Elon says the Optimus robot will be the biggest product ever by a long shot. Nvidia and Disney drop a robot that looks like a real-life Wally. And maybe aliens really did build the pyramids. Drew, it feels like life is stuck on two X-Men. This is getting crazy. The conspiracy theorists were right, man. They're always right. Dude, this is, that was nuts. I can't wait till we get to that. But first, we have to start with the The more immediate news in terms of what's going on in the DOD. We're going to play a clip for you from Pete Hegseth. What I love about this clip is the growing sense that the government is trying to be transparent, that they feel accountable to the taxpayers. I love that.

• 2:12Tom Bilyeu?

  We are entering into an era where everything is just going to play out in front of the camera. There's good and there's bad. There's no doubt that I was super conflicted about the fact that the White House clash between Trump, Zelensky and Vance played out in front of us all. I think that that deranged it. But seeing the head of the Department of Defense going through line by line and telling people what we're cutting, I actually like this. All right, play that clip.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  We're back with another quick update on our efforts to cut wasteful spending and cut it quickly at the Department of Defense. So we get the dollars to the things that the warfighters need. So today I'm signing a memo directing the termination of over $580 million in DOD contracts and grants that do not match the priorities of this president or this department. In other words, they are not a good use of taxpayer dollars. Ultimately, that's who funds us and we owe you transparency and making sure we're using it well. So here's quickly what we're canceling today. There's an HR software effort that was supposed to take a year and cost $36 million,

• 3:21Speaker 01

  but instead it's taken eight years and is currently $280 million over budget, not delivering what it was supposed to.

• 3:29Tom Bilyeu?

  That's crazy.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  So that's 780% over budget.

• 3:33Tom Bilyeu?

  That's so.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  We're not doing that anymore. Number two, another batch of DOD grants, $360 million worth this time. Decarbonizing emissions from Navy ships, part of the Obama-Biden green agenda, that's $6 million bucks. $5.2 million on something that would diversify and engage the Navy.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  By engaging underrepresented BIPOC students and scholars, another $9 million at a university to approach equitable AI and machine learning models. I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models. And number three, in our ongoing effort to cut wasteful spending on external consulting services, 30 million bucks in contracts with Gartner and McKinsey. It's IT purchasing, unused licenses. So when you add it all up, $580 million in DoD contracts and grants, DOGE is helping us cut today. What does that bring our total number up? Total cuts, running total, $800 million in wasteful spending canceled over the first few weeks

• 4:40Speaker 01

  as DoD partners with DOGE here to make sure that our warfighters have what they need by cutting the waste, fraud and abuse. They're working hard, we're working hard with them. We appreciate the work that they're doing and we have a lot more coming.

• 4:54Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, what I absolutely love about this is now people get to decide. If they hear that list and they're like, this is ridiculous. This is not what I want cut. How dare you? Now you know. So I don't need people to agree with what they're doing. I like the transparency. I want to see more and more of this so that people understand exactly what's happening in government. They understand the kinds of things that the government is interfacing with. They understand the kinds of things that we're spending money on. And now they're more informed and can start making their voice heard, whether they love or hate what they're hearing. This is fantastic. Long may it continue. Now, I'm not a fool. I understand that these guys are going to tell us the things that they think maximally make them look good. But the reality is when we speak, we cannot help but reveal ourselves.

• 5:37Tom Bilyeu?

  And so even if they're trying to position PUSH or whatever, the more that we're able to get a glimpse into what we're doing, the more the taxpayers can decide if this is what they want or if they're like, no, man, this, we can't have this. This is taking us in the exact wrong direction. At least it's not being done in the shadows anymore.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and my favorite part was the fact that he acknowledged we owe the transparency to you, the American people. And I just like that that shifting government in general, I like that the Democrats are now going live and they're talking more to their constituents like, I don't like this, I talked through bills or I talked through CNN to talk to you. No, let me hear it live. What's actually happened, give me the full list, give me a website I can link to, give me the bill PDFs, I can throw it in the chat. Like, let me actually follow those steps and have more of a partnership versus here, you take my money out of my check every two weeks and I'll figure out what I get two years from now.

• 6:25Tom Bilyeu?

  There, you know Peter Schiff?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:27Tom Bilyeu?

  So he, the intro to the Peter Schiff show, there's a clip that he plays, I can't remember which senator it is that says it, but there's a very famous senator, one that we would all recognize her voice. And she goes, well, we'll have to pass the bill for you guys to find out what's in it. And I was like, how can you let those words cross your lips? Like, that's so crazy. So between AI, between cameras just being everywhere, between the public having an increased sense of I want to know what's going on and holding people to account, I'm here for it, man. I love it.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Increasing transparency, we had a spicy exchange between Gary Economics and Daniel Presley on the Diary of a CEO Show, and I wanted to get your read on the real problem of can you become a millionaire?

• 7:12Speaker 03

  I think the reality is for kids from poor backgrounds, it is almost impossible to realistically get even financial security, never mind wealth.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  But why do you think you could do it, I could do it, he could do it, but you don't think other people could do it?

• 7:25Speaker 03

  I won every math competition I've ever been in, you know what I mean? Since I was a little kid, I was one of the top students at LSE and I still had to win my job by cheating in the card game. You know, that's the world that we live in. I don't think that's a very replicable strategy.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  What I see is that most often the people who do really well financially, who are young, they dropped out of school, they dropped out of university, they started learning how to do things by doing their own research, they start their own business or co-founder business, they take a very alternative path. When people sidestep that and say, okay, I'm not going to get into university debt, I'm just going to go off and actually figure out how the world works, there's actually loads of opportunities.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  I guess we've sorted it then. All of our viewers need to do just be more entrepreneurial. It's as simple as that. More entrepreneurial, start a business. Listen, my friends can't feed their kids, okay? And if it was as simple as going out and being an entrepreneur, I can bet you they would do it. I can bet you they would do it. Let us, I'm I'm sick of multimillionaires telling kids who can't afford to turn the heating on. You just need to be more entrepreneurial. It's sick, Dan. It's sick. But I suppose this gives people mental illness. It gives people mental illness.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  The thing that I know that gives people mental health issues is feeling that they have no agency in their life, that they can't do anything. Your video where you talk about if you don't have a rich dad, you're screwed. There's no such thing as meritocracy. You're never gonna be successful. To me, if I had have come across your content at nineteen, twenty years old, I would have been screwed. I'm so glad that I came across people who said, Daniel, you weren't born into a a rich family. You don't have any bank of mom and dad. But it's cheap and easier than ever to start a business. Start by working for someone who's got a business. Then figure out what's your opportunity. And there's a way. There is a way. I'm not saying everyone ends up as a millionaire and I'm not saying everyone ends up uh equal. But I'm saying you can make improvements in your life. And the thing that causes mental health issues

• 9:14Speaker 04

  is the feeling of having no agency or no control over your circumstances until the world changes the whole economic system.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  I've never said don't work hard, okay? When I brought my book out last year, The Hardback, I was at some event and I come out, I was drinking in London Bridge. And I come out late. It was like, it was like one AM. And um some guy come up to me when I was unlocking my bike. He said, I've been watching you on YouTube. This guy started crying. This guy started crying on the street, right, in front of me. He's like, I worked so hard, Gary. I worked two jobs. Um my mom's sick and I'm trying to help, I'm trying to support and and I don't understand why. And and I'm sorry that I'm crying, but nobody ever told me that it wasn't my fault before. That's what he said to me, okay? And listen, listen. I believe 100% aspiration, ambition, entrepreneurial spirit. I would never say, see a kid that has that and say, turn it off, okay?

• 10:05Speaker 03

  But the flip side of your, if you just work hard enough, you can make it. Is if you didn't make it, it's because you didn't work hard enough and it's your fault. And I would like to sit and think very hard before you send that message to young men and young women in our society.

• 10:18Tom Bilyeu?

  The thing that I found so engaging and so fascinating about this clip is they are both right. I think that Gary has really captured the emotional desperation, frustration that people are going through. Now, remember, he's talking about the UK, a country that is farther along on the socialism spectrum than we are. They have put way more time, energy and money into the social safety net. So the question I hope people are asking, and this is the side that Daniel represents, is it's still not working? So to me, the magical question is, and now what? And now what? If you're in a situation where you've got people that cannot make ends meet, saying my friends can't feed their kids.

• 11:03Tom Bilyeu?

  You can't tell somebody who can't even afford to turn the heat on, that they just need to be more entrepreneurial. My question to Gary is, why is it that even in a country where they have such an aggressive social safety net, more so than we have in the US, why are they still in that situation? And my thing with Gary is, if I'm, if I'm the Democratic Party, I'm like, watch this guy? Mimic everything from his body language to the way that he, he comes across exasperated, like this is so self-evident. And how can people continue to ignore this? To be very empathetic to people that are in that situation and make them feel seen and make them feel heard.

• 11:47Tom Bilyeu?

  That will get you re-elected.

• 11:51Tom Bilyeu?

  The problem is, he's not offering any solutions. And so when you ask, and now what? I want to know, like, what's his real answer? Because the reason that people cannot afford to turn their gas on in the UK, it's for a whole host of reasons, but not the least of which is that you have energy uncertainty because certainly as a small island nation, you're going to have to lean on places like Russia to get your oil and natural gas. But you don't want to do that because of the war that's going on. England is the most recent failed empire. So they've inflated the value of their sterling to basically nothing. I mean, it's lost over the last hundred years. It's lost like 99.9% of its value.

• 12:36Tom Bilyeu?

  And so when you're living in a world where people cannot save their way to making ends meet, like I'm not saying that everyone's going to be able to save their way to wealth. But when you can't even save your way to making ends meet, that's when you find yourself in the kind of situation that we're in. And the thing that I really want to hear Gary articulate is why exactly are we in this position? Not just that we are in this position. Why are we in this position? And then what do we have to do at the architecture of society in order to get out of this situation? And if his punchline is tax the rich, if you're still just inflating the money supply ad infinitum,

• 13:19Tom Bilyeu?

  you're never going to get to the point where someone can save their way to success.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Okay, I hear that. I feel like we've been, I'm gonna ask questions because I just want to confirm. We've been doing inflation since what? Bretton Woods? Like, we've been doing inflation last 80 years, last 100 years?

• 13:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, really, when the US started, when they broke the peg to gold, they were doing it before that. And it was, they finally had to break it because they were, they'd inflated it so much you couldn't turn your gold in. Because people understood what was going on behind the scenes. But yeah, call it from 1971 is when it really just became completely unhinged. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors. Luxury brands are not charging you more for better cashmere. You're paying for the storefront, the ad budget, the name on the tag, but Quince cuts all of that out. They work directly with ethical factories. They skip the middlemen and sell 100% Mongolian cashmere, starting at just 60 bucks.

• 14:19Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:03Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:47Tom Bilyeu?

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• 16:10Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Copy. So from 1971 to 2025, we've been doing inflation the entire time.

• 16:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes. And if you look since COVID, it it's something like 80% of all. This isn't the literal number. You should look it up while we're going here. But since in the last five years, we've printed something like 60 to 80% of all the money that's ever existed.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  The reason I'm taking it that approach is because I feel like inflation is a problem that we've had since the 1970s.

• 16:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes. Longer than that, but yes.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yes. But there is something about the current cost of living that is fundamentally different. Where there was a time, whether it was the 2000s, whether it was the 90s, whether it was the 80s, whether it was the 70s, you could go to a, you could work at a Starbucks and your wife could be a teacher and you can afford a home. Okay. So maybe when you get a little bit older, you can afford a smaller home. But now we're getting to a point where like, I work at a Starbucks and I have a nine to five. I work at, I have worked my nine to five. I work at Starbucks on the nights and weekends. I have a wife, she's working and we still can't afford a home.

• 17:18Tom Bilyeu?

  What I hear when I hear that is shock over the fact that you had a child that was born in 1971 and you're shocked that it's now taller when it's 18 years old. It's like, that's what happens. When you start printing money and the rate at which you print money escalates and escalates and escalates and escalates, the problem is going to get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Now, we are oversimplifying the problem. I want to be very clear. You and I have talked many, many times about there are problems in housing as well. But all of it stems back to when you start inflating the money supply, you create a relationship between money and assets that is so dysfunctional that people end up in this horrific situation. So let me walk you through what has happened.

• 18:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Just looking at housing prices, energy becomes a whole nother thing, which is tied to the green revolution and things that we've been doing that are making energy prices even worse. So it's like all of these things designed to help people end up having these second and third order consequences that people just are not paying attention to. But all of these things are identifiable. You can point at them. They become a very entangled nest and I'm happy to go literally one by one if you want. But I'm going to give you a simple story that people can hold on to so they understand at least the essence of the problem, even if they don't have all the specifics. So Gary is right, people are stuck, they cannot save their way to success. A person who's working two jobs is still struggling to make ends meet. The reason that they're struggling to make ends meet is because when you inflate the money supply,

• 18:45Tom Bilyeu?

  the cost of everything goes up. And the reason the cost of everything goes up is because the value of your pound in his case, or the dollar in our case, is going down. The only way to combat that is to what they call a flight to safety. So you leave cash and you go into an instrument like a house that's going to keep pace with inflation. So it isn't that the house is actually becoming more valuable. There are complexities because if you artificially limit supply or you let, like you talk a lot about with BlackRock, you let them snatch up all the family homes, that's going to exacerbate an already big problem.

• 19:22Tom Bilyeu?

  But the house isn't actually becoming more valuable. What's happening is the dollar's becoming less valuable, so it takes more dollars to buy the same thing. Because people do not understand that there is a point nine correlation between printing of money and the rise of prices, they get very confused as to what's happening. What is happening, this is an oversimplification, but not by a lot. What is happening is money is being printed. That robs purchasing power from everybody. And then the way that they get that money back into the system is by buying assets. So the central bank buys literal debt instruments, which is an asset. And so they will buy that. So now, given that, at least in the US, 50% of people in the US do not own assets,

• 20:06Tom Bilyeu?

  which means that 50% is you inflate money, they only lose. The 50% that have assets, they lose because they also had their money inflated. But they then win in roughly the same amount because they're holding the assets that go up in value illusorily to keep pace with inflation. So at least by being in assets, if they're careful, they're going to be able to. Mash inflation. So Gary's looking at the world and he's saying, hold on a second. Like, why are these guys all getting screwed? And the reason is the people that he is fighting most for are the people who don't own assets. So they don't have a thing that keeps up with inflation. So as the house becomes more valuable, and now speaking in the US, you have the government going, the American dream is to own a home.

• 20:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Why did they say that? Because homes are the only asset that the average person just gets intuitively. Intellectually, they understand it. I can live inside of it. I can't live inside of a treasury bond. Um, I can raise my kids in it. I can decorate it. I fall in love with it. It, I love everything about the way that it feels. It keeps me warm. It keeps me safe. And so the government wisely was like, okay, cool. Let's just get everybody to focus on just own a home. Now, if they weren't inflating your money, you wouldn't have to do that because you could save your money and your money would retain its value. But when money is going down and 2% is what they aim at.

• 21:32Tom Bilyeu?

  But if you look at trueflation, it says over the last five years, we've inflated the money supply. So inflation has gone up by 25. It's actually more than that. It's like 26.2%. But we'll just say north of 25%. So not two, 25% in the last five years. So if you had a hundred dollars, you now have the buying power of 75. And so whether people understand it or not, what it triggers is I need to spend my money. Because it's going to be worth less. So you derange debt and all that. I'm not going to get into those complexities right now. I just want people to hold on to that idea. So Gary is right. And I, he needs to keep banging this drum. But what I really want Gary to start talking about is to take his magical ability

• 22:15Tom Bilyeu?

  to articulate the emotion of this and say, and now do this. But the only thing I have heard him talk about is taxing the wealthy. And here's the thing.

• 22:26Tom Bilyeu?

  You can intake more money by taxing people. So it's not like unhinged, it's not deranged. But you end up having second and third order consequences when all you're trying to do is confiscate more money, confiscate more money. The government is not good at allocating resources. They will overspend and to meet the, because you always have to balance a budget. When people say we have deficit spending, that's not the right way to think about it. You're just going to inflate the money supply to cover your bases.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  I'm gonna jump in though, because historically, we have played with the tax rate to meet certain needs. If we were to enter into World War IV, we need to go against Europe.

• 22:59Tom Bilyeu?

  At least get to three first.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  It's already happening, right? So we would then say, okay, just like we did previously, the tax rate, the tax rate on the highest 1%, 2%, whatever that threshold is, it goes from 50% to 70% for this certain amount of time. We get these resources, we get out of this tough situation, we can bring the tax rate down. Do you think that this could be something that happens now? Because what I'm hearing is, it's not your fault, it's the government's fault, they inflated the money, but it's okay. But the government is a faceless gray blob that the person who works in the two jobs who can't buy a house can't yell at, can't, he can't get to the Fed to tell them to stop printing the money. But what can happen is maybe there could be programs that can help them. There should be something that helps them who didn't have it. Because if what you're saying is, it's the government's fault, it is inflation, and that's

• 23:45Speaker 02

  the bottom line, then at that point, it's a luck thing. We're just not lucky enough to be born 40 years before inflation got bad.

• 23:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Let me talk to you about a period of time where I had a skin rash. This is a real story.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:58Tom Bilyeu?

  I wake up one day and I'm like, huh, my chest itches. I have no idea why. And it keeps getting worse. Now, I eat a super clean diet. So I'm like, this is weird, something's going on. Everyone's like, oh, maybe the housekeeper introduced a new soap or something. So we're asking, housekeeper, did you do anything different? No, no, no, it's all the same, it's all the same. So I start buying all these soaps that are like, they don't have deodorant in them and all this stuff, just really like trying to purify them. Like, it's clearly something I'm putting on my skin. And it just keeps getting worse. And one night, I wake up in the middle of the night and I want to cry. I itch so badly that it's waking me up, it's starting to appear on my face. I'm scratching uncontrollably where it's starting to bleed. And I don't know what else to do other than sit on the edge of the bed at 2:00 in the

• 24:43Tom Bilyeu?

  morning and I'm like, I wish I were a crier, because I just need to release this frustration. It, everything about this is terrible. And I said, okay. You've been to the skin doctor. They've given me a cream now, so I'm applying the cream. The cream is helping, but it says like you can only use this for so long. And I'm like, what would I say to somebody if they came to me and said, hey, Tom, I've had this skin outbreak. What could it be? I'd be like, oh, it's something you're eating. I'm like, I don't even need to know what you're eating. I just know it's something, your skin is an organ that responds to that. So I was like, okay, take your own advice. I'm like, I don't know what it is that I'm eating, but I'm going to stop eating it. And so I simplify my life. If you boil things down to just go eat a rumen animal, so beef as a simple way, elimination diet, I do it, boom.

• 25:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Seventy-two hours later, the skin condition starts to recede. Taxing the rich is the cream. It will help. It will reduce the inflammation. It will stop the like insane itching like I'm out of control. But if you keep doing it, you damage the economy. And so what will end up happening, and we see this in wars, you tax the life out of everybody. And if you don't stop doing it, you go into recession. We were talking about this in our last episode. I don't have the notes right in front of me, but it was like in the late 40s. Sorry, no, it was during the Great Depression. They extended the Great Depression because they just kept the tax rate so insanely high. And so they realized, okay, whoops, we probably now just extended this. We need to back off. So it's one of those things that will

• 26:13Tom Bilyeu?

  give you short-term relief, but it's not addressing the actual problem that's making this be an issue. It is a topical solution. You have to stop printing money. You have to stop printing money. This is the derangement. And if people don't address it at that level, all you do is kick the can down the road. There is already a reason that Europe is so far behind the US in terms of the ability to innovate, in terms of the ability to big, build big companies. And if people have a negative sense of big companies, remember, that's the whole game. You don't have money to redistribute if you don't have these companies that are very successful. We can get into also the products or the thing that makes our lives better.

• 26:57Tom Bilyeu?

  So to say a phrase that I hope becomes very

• 27:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Repeated by our community. The miracle is not redistribution. The miracle is production. The miracle is making something that you can sell for more than it costs you to make. Because what that says is, I want that thing from you. It's so valuable to me that I would rather give you this money. This money seems um worth less than the thing that you're going to give me. And that that is the human experience. That that's the whole game is that we have made a better and better future. We've pulled how many billions of people out of poverty? We've ended uh death by microbes and all these things through innovation that all come because people have the financial incentive to pursue it.

• 27:46Tom Bilyeu?

  So if we were in a war and they were like, hey, we got a tax higher to um get us through this. I'd be like, yes, you do very much so. Let's go.

• 27:56Tom Bilyeu?

  But they're looking at this as if the cream on the rash is the solution and that there will be no long term consequences to using that cream. And there will.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  If I had a magical golden switch, I could flip inflation off. Do you think that that flip will then make income inequality reverse?

• 28:13Tom Bilyeu?

  It will stop the problem from exacerbating. Then you're going to have to start addressing things like, okay.

• 28:21Tom Bilyeu?

  The reason that people are saying, hey, maybe the Trump tariff hokey pokey that's like really battering the stock market. Maybe that's not so bad because it's making assets more accessible to people. You have to deflate the bubble somehow because you've made all of these things so expensive because you've got all these dollars fighting for those same things. At some point, the government has to stop printing money to go in and rescue banks or uh to save an industry that's struggling or in trouble. You have to let those things die. And if the wealthy get hurt in that, it is what it is, man. You've got to let that creative destruction happen. And I'm saying that as somebody who owns assets. And if I own an asset that gets in trouble, you got to let it go, man. And so I I am perfectly willing to suffer the slings and arrows

• 29:05Tom Bilyeu?

  of a policy that is going to be better for the average American. To me, that is the only play. It is the only way forward. This stuff is so knowable and.

• 29:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Partly because it is complex, people don't look at it. They know it's not a message that they can explain to people. What they can explain to you is own a house and we're going to make that price go up. Because I don't want a fractal, I'm not going to explain how making homes became so, making homes the American dream became problematic because now, instead of getting people to invest in something like the stock market, which is actually better for the country than a bunch of people owning individual homes. They wanted to make sure you got a return on it. Anyway, so there are reasons why even things like that can derange. But it's, it's the government stepping in and saying from the top down, we're going to deal with this, we're going to put the ointment on the rash, rather than saying, what are we eating that's causing the rash?

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Well, if it's just a government problem, we'll see. I hope Bernie and AOC got the answers because they-

• 30:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, before, before we leave that, I want to now take Daniel's side. So here, here is what worries me. Daniel's right about people.

• 30:15Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm almost certain that data is out there and backs up the following claim. I can't point you to the study right now, but I'm very, very convinced that this is real. That learned helplessness is the thing that spirals people out of control. That's when people slide into despair. There is a reason that lateral eye movement is how you can pull people out of anxiety and stress and depression, because it is what your eyes do when you move forward. Now, why would evolution reward you by getting you to move forward? Because the way to solve your problem is to attack your problem. And so when you move towards something and your eyes scan side to side so that you can navigate the landscape, your nervous system begins to calm down.

• 30:59Tom Bilyeu?

  And I've been saying for years and years and years, trying to teach people mindset, action cures all. Now, I couldn't have explained it the way that Huberman can explain like the eye movement and how deeply it's embedded in the nervous system. But I just knew every time I'm feeling stressed, every time that I'm tempted to feel overwhelmed, if I just go, okay, what is the problem? How do I attack it? Nobody's coming to save me. I can get myself out of that stress. I can get myself out of the anxiety. I move myself into solution oriented mode. And so Daniel is right, but that's so at odds with the emotion that people feel. And that's why Gary is, I just got the chills. Gary is really capturing this moment.

• 31:42Tom Bilyeu?

  This, though, is where things get dangerous. When people let their resentment cloud their judgment in terms of what is actually going to work. And if, long term, your goal is, "I want to make sure that I'm making progress in my own life, but that my kids," and I mean financially, "that my kids are going to do better than I'm going to do." That won't happen by the government doing handouts. Everyone that can hear my voice right now knows my take on, "Look at Mao's China, look at Stalin's Russia." The only way to go further down that path requires tyranny, force, death, destruction, forces you to make people lie. And when they start lying, people start dying. I mean, it's literally a whole mess. And I worry about moments like this

• 32:26Tom Bilyeu?

  because I look at Gary and I'm like, yeah, if I'm advising the Democrats, I'm like, "Learn from everything he's doing and saying." This is exactly why Bernie was so popular. And the problem is, it won't work. If it would work, then England would be closer to success than we are. And they're not. Uh, if it would work, then Xi Jinping wouldn't have had to use capitalism to pull his country out of poverty. He would have used more communism. But he didn't. He went the exact opposite direction. It just is the physics of the human experience.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  I got nothing on that.

• 33:05Tom Bilyeu?

  But the problem is, and the funny thing is, I want to keep attacking myself because I want people to understand, like, um, there is a way to solve this, but it's hard to explain.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  It's because the goalpost moved. And it sucks that the goalpost moved, but it already moved. So we can-

• 33:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Define the goalpost. What is the goal?

• 33:26Speaker 02

  The level of output you needed to accomplish to get you meet your basic necessities.

• 33:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes. And now, if everybody could go, "That's because of money printing," we win.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  But okay, that's become a money printing, bad government, don't ever money print again. Okay, my bad guys, I won't ever money print again. That doesn't move the goalpost back forward.

• 33:45Tom Bilyeu?

  So.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 33:47Tom Bilyeu?

  This is.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  They count out the.

• 33:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Like. This is the, I'm no longer adding to the problem. So step one of getting out, getting yourself out of the hole that you dug is to stop digging. So that you're at least, now we've stopped digging. Okay, cool. Now we can start to build the ladders out. Now we can use light touch regulation. Let's just take housing. You could use light touch regulation to say something like BlackRock and any other company. You cannot own more than three private homes, whatever.

• 34:16Tom Bilyeu?

  That you start lessening some of the zoning restrictions so that people, when they go to buy a house, they have the option, I can build a house, I can buy a house. So now, when people choose to build a house instead of buy a house, that's another house that's on the market. So the, that neighborhood, the values of the houses all go down a little bit. Because instead of being, think of Manhattan, right? The only way to go is up. And given that you can only go up, the prices stay really premium. This is why when people use examples, they're like, buy Manhattan real estate, buy coastal real estate. Because the coastline isn't going to magically get bigger. The coastline may in fact get smaller as global warming. So when you find something that is inherently scarce,

• 35:00Tom Bilyeu?

  now you've got a shot of that price going up. But when it's something that's, I mean, look, houses are not easy to replicate, but they are far easier to make more of than they seem to be currently because of the restrictions.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  So just like they socialize the losses, we should also then, in essence, socialize the correction as well.

• 35:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, I hate the use of the word socialize. What you want to do is address the foundations of how the economy works. Modern monetary theory is a joke. People need to stop embracing it immediately. It is the thing that is deranged.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  No, but I don't want to fight that. I'm going specifically to the point that when you inflate the money, everybody who owns a dollar now has 95 cents, hypothetically speaking.

• 35:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Of buying power.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, of buying power. Now, when we flip it on the other side to your point of, okay, now we increase the housing. Supply, we allow, we ease building regulations. The people who, there was a hundred houses, now there's a hundred and fifty houses.

• 35:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Inflated the housing supply.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  The housing.

• 35:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Perfectly said, Jesus.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 35:56Tom Bilyeu?

  That is brilliant.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  So in that way, we are socialized, what I mean by that, like.

• 36:00Tom Bilyeu?

  I hate the use of that word, so I would just.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Use a different word. Well, inflate, inflate.

• 36:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Inflate the housing supply.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  I'll meet you there.

• 36:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Now houses cost less, a hundred percent. Yay. So in fact, that's a great way to thought experiment to, is what I'm saying actually true? Because once you realize that, yup, if you inflate the housing supply, houses become worth less dollars. And now more people have access to them and they still supply all of the things that they did before. Terms of comfort, the place to raise your kids, safety, security, et cetera.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Happy.

• 36:32Tom Bilyeu?

  But it becomes a worse asset to hold.

• 36:35Tom Bilyeu?

  But that's, to me, that is a wonderful trade off.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's a good problem to have. I have too much money and I need to invest it somewhere else. Cool. Go and build a local community center. Go do something else. Go.

• 36:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, look, Thomas Sowell is right. There are no solutions. There are only trade offs. Because the next thing people should say is, oh, I want the cost of eggs to go down. In fact, why did the cost of eggs go up? Because it killed a whole bunch of chickens. They deflated the chicken supply, which deflated the egg supply, which made eggs more expensive. If you want eggs to drop in price, you need more eggs on the market. So you need more chickens laying more eggs. Man, that's maybe easier to explain than people think it is. Create more of something, it becomes worth less. Create less of something, it becomes worth more. But there's something weird because you have the same number of dollars in your bank account, but it buys less. That's where people break.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Supply and demand curve, supply and demand curve.

• 37:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.

• 37:31Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Moving on, Bernie Sanders in AOC, where I don't want to call it campaigning because I don't want to talk about elections because we just had one. But they are campaigning.

• 37:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Wisely so. They got to build back, man. Democrats have been all time low popularity.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  So Bernie tweeted about his rally last night and saying fifteen thousand in Tempe last night. Trump visited the same space 12 days before the 2024 election. He couldn't fill it. AOC and I had overflow crowds. America will not accept oligarchy and authoritarianism. Onto Greeley, Colorado now. Denver tonight. Huge crowds expected.

• 38:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  He's trolling with the huge too.

• 38:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Huge. It's big. No one's ever seen anything like it. Uh, here is what I love about this. When you are the, um, the outsider, you get to be the rebel, you get that cool energy. Uh, you get to paint a picture and nobody can say whether, uh, it's going to work or not. When you're the ones in power, all of a sudden it's very easy to point at and say, well, the things you're doing are not helping. Uh, it's very easy to point at Trump and be like, you're causing chaos. So this is their opportunity to really push forward. And I think that they're doing a good job of getting out there, uh, getting people hyped up, giving them a message that they can believe in.

• 38:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Now I have a feeling it's all going to be a motive, which admittedly is what I would advise them to do, but isn't ultimately going to be the thing that's good for the country. But what I hate about this is first of all, oligarchy just means ruled by the few. Read James Burnham. There's no way to not be ruled by the few. Bernie's Bernie and AOC are the few that were running the country when the Democrats were in power. So that's nonsensical. The authoritarian part, both sides right now, Trump obviously displays authoritarian tendencies. But so does anybody who's like tax, tax, tax, take their money. That is also authoritarian because you are saying, I'm going to take your money. I don't care whether you earned it or not, and I'm going to do with it what I want.

• 39:34Tom Bilyeu?

  And the only way that you can do that is with what? Guns. And if there was no threat of we will put you in prison, we will come and take your stuff, people wouldn't pay. So let's not pretend like what they're saying doesn't come at the end of a gun barrel. It very much does. So, uh, both sides have a tendency towards authoritarianism.

• 39:55Tom Bilyeu?

  The last, uh, real check in that we had with a group of people that were absolutely terrified of that were the founders of the country. And so thankfully they put in, uh, checks and balances, which is the thing that everybody I think should be rightly worried about with Trump. Because homeboy makes way too many, um, authoritarian noises with, whether it's teasing, I wish he were teasing, he's not at all about running for a third term. Uh, whether it's ignoring judges, uh, it's just.

• 40:29Tom Bilyeu?

  It's nerve wracking. Like tho- those are things moving in the wrong direction. But yeah, the, this is calling the kettle black for me. The pot calling the kettle black.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Um, it's interesting kind of seeing the ping pong of political office and when one team is in power, everything you're doing is terrible. When the other team is in power, everything they're doing is terrible. So I'm curious to how they sustain momentum over the next four years because as much as the Democrats are unpopular right now, there's a lot of anti-Trump rhetoric. So they have a whole recruitment base. They have a whole bunch of people that want to vote for the other side. So I think they do have momentum coming into this next election. It's just gonna be interesting how they execute on that.

• 41:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Trump has a little less than two years or he will lose the house. It, it is so cut and dry, man. And if he cannot pull off getting, um, getting on the other side of what will almost certainly be for sure, uh, you're going to have a rocky stock market because you're already seeing that. You could go all the way to a recession. If you go all the way to a recession and he doesn't start onshoring more jobs, making prices go down. If he doesn't do that, then he loses the house, lame duck for the last two years. Republicans lose power, Democrats are back in office and the seesaw continues. When you look at the last 50 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if this carried out to 250 years.

• 41:51Tom Bilyeu?

  But if you look at the last 50 years, it's almost exactly even. 25 years, there's been a Democratic president and 25 years, there's been a Republican. If you split the last 25 years, 12 have been Democrat, 12 have been, or 13 have been Republican. So, and I'm, or the other way, I don't remember. But, um, we just go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, because it's so easy to paint a picture that we're the right guys when we're not in office. And then once we get in office, you realize we're not solving the problem. The one thing I will give Trump, he, he is really trying to renegotiate everything in the government. He is trying to redo so many things. Now it may just be a suicide run, but you can't say that he's not trying something novel. So we'll see if he's able to pull it off. I don't know.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  You said they went back and forth, how many years going back?

• 42:38Tom Bilyeu?

  So of the last 50, it's split almost evenly 25 25. It's not, it's not perfectly even, but it's very, very close. Last 25 years is one had 12 and one had 13. I just don't remember which had 12 and which had 13. So it's like almost no matter what timeline you look at it on, it's just this back and forth, back and forth.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  You know who was around 50 years ago?

• 42:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Say more.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Joe Biden.

• 42:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's go.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  He said, I'm not going, I'm not going out.

• 42:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Nice transition. That was too good not to say something.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  He said, I'm coming back. Jill Biden is reportedly, is reportedly urging Joe Biden to make a bid for the 2028 Democrat domination.

• 43:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Please use the.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Believe me, he can mount a Trump style comeback. Biden, give it up, bro. You've been, you've been there since 1970s. You, you had a good run. You had a couple of houses. You got, you got a good in track card. Go retire, man. It's okay to be an old person. You could just go be an old person. Write a book, something, but no, please, no.

• 43:28Tom Bilyeu?

  He has dementia, cognitive decline, whatever word you want to put to it. That, that would be a level of crazy that I, it's never going to happen. There's no way. This is going to pass. No one's going to be talking about this in a month. It is just not possible. Like when you look at, first of all, Bernie would be a way better choice. People are talking about Hillary Clinton running again. Please, Dems, for the love of God, give me somebody that I can vote for. That would be amazing.

• 43:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Moving towards the middle, I think everybody knows my take. I want to see somebody that is way more centrist, somebody that can articulate the underlying cause and effect of all of this. Ah, I really don't want to be in this seesaw, whiplash, back and forth world. And the only way to really avoid that is to have both sides way closer together.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  There's 350 million people in this country. I don't know why Democrats keep scrolling the last seven. Like we have, there's so many, so many other choices. Please.

• 44:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, people think that AOC is going to run 2028. I think she'll, I don't know how old she is, but she'll for sure be over 35. I have to imagine in 2028, uh, if she's not already, but yeah. There's no way it's not going to be Biden. No way. I'll plant that flag right now.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't buy that either. Um, I wanted to revisit this Howard Lucknick all in interview from our Friday episode.

• 44:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Um, cause one thing we didn't get to was a sovereign wealth fund and really kind of the actual strategy and idea of it. So to your point of Trump is trying to add novel, like novel, novel strategies to the government. This is something we haven't thought about, but on paper it does sound interesting.

• 45:00Speaker 05

  We can enjoin together in this concept. Crypto, obviously Bitcoin, you guys announced the strategic Bitcoin reserve. But broadly speaking, you also announced sort of this idea of the sovereign wealth fund. Can we talk about that? Sort of what is the, what is the vision behind that? How do you want that to be executed? How do you think it should be run? What assets are on the table? What assets and strategies may, should never be on the table? How are you thinking about it?

• 45:25Speaker 06

  The greatest customer in the world. The United States government. The most powerful, greatest customer buys stuff. We walk in, we're gonna buy, here's an example I like to use. We're gonna buy 2 billion COVID vaccines. When we buy it, Pfizer and Moderna stocks are gonna triple. They're gonna triple. So then we say, everyone's gonna have this vaccine.

• 45:53Speaker 06

  If I, after Jared Kushner negotiated the best deal he could. If Howard Lutnik walked in the room, Howard Lutnik would say, what do you think? 20% warrants? 20% warrants?

• 46:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 46:05Speaker 06

  Right? What? So we'd make $50 billion. Off of who? Nobody. We didn't take from anybody. We did it, okay, the shareholders of Pfizer, who we just tripled them with our order.

• 46:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 46:17Speaker 06

  Now, how many of my customers in my life have required that from me? All of them?

• 46:23Speaker 05

  All of them.

• 46:23Speaker 06

  Like, this, this isn't like, oh, Howard, this is the greatest new idea ever. This is just.

• 46:28Speaker 05

  Business.

• 46:29Speaker 06

  Proper. So I don't view risk of the sovereign wealth fund. I view the first couple of years of the sovereign wealth fund, or Scott Best and I, making money Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Say, well, but you can't invest and lose, don't you lose money? No. Why? Well, if I have big daddy of the United States of America behind me, right? And I'll give you, I'll give an example. We buy missiles episodically. Launch a missile, buy a missile. Launch a missile, buy some missiles. Right? The people who sell us missiles have bad quarterly earnings or good quarterly earnings. But they're episodic.

• 47:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  Here we go. I will sign a contract with you.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  10-year contract. Cancel it at the end of 5 years to buy X amount of missiles. And I'll pay you quarterly.

• 47:28Speaker 06

  Then they can take that contract, they can go finance, their financing costs go, their earnings are steady and their multiple improves and their stock doubles.

• 47:39Tom Bilyeu?

  The thing that I love about the Trump administration is that he has some of the best minds in all the different areas. You've got the greatest capital allocator of all time going into the government and saying where we're spending money well and where we're not.

• 47:53Tom Bilyeu?

  The Commerce Secretary is one of the most successful financial managers, I don't know what the right word to put on it is, ever. I'm literally, when nine 11 wiped out basically his entire staff, he just rebuilt the company again. Like this is a guy that understands money. And you have Scott Besson, the same thing. I'd never heard of him. I had no idea who he was. And when I hear him talk, I'm like, oh my God, like this guy really understands finance. And so you have these guys that understand finance that I know cynical people think that they're doing it to enrich themselves. When you look at what they're doing, it will be, if it works, if it works, it will be good for the average American.

• 48:38Tom Bilyeu?

  And so

• 48:41Tom Bilyeu?

  I am only just beginning to really think about a sovereign wealth fund and how that will play out well. So I certainly reserve the right over time. I may realize that there are some downstream consequences that I'm not anticipating. But when I look at other countries and the way that they've done this and how they've been able to lower the taxes of their people. So you look at Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, no tax. I don't think Dubai has taxes either because they have oil money. And so, I mean, the bad news is partly to keep their population quiet. They give them money and have royal families. Obviously, I would not want to see that happen in America. But giving people money such that you can reduce their taxes, that is amazing.

• 49:21Tom Bilyeu?

  And there's obviously a playbook for it. We're seeing it with people that have been able to monetize their national resources as well as they have, have been able to reduce the tax burden in some cases entirely. So it is entirely possible that we have financial guys.

• 49:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Involved in helping the government structure deals, leverage our own natural resources to the point where something like what he's talked about being the goal of this administration to make it so that people making a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or less don't have to pay tax. Dude, that would be amazing. That is how Trump stays in office. If they're actually able to show that they're moving towards that by the midterms, ooh buddy, people are going to be here for that. If you start seeing manufacturing jobs return, if you start seeing the tax burden going down, if you see prices on essential things coming down, that will be excruciatingly popular, but it's a race.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we have on one hand, the DOD reductions, Doge happening, getting the cost of government down. On the other hand, we have the sovereign wealth fund that hypothetically can bring the revenues of the government up. So that is kind of a race to just that balance. When can we get to a?

• 50:36Tom Bilyeu?

  He talks about that in the full interview, which I highly encourage people to watch. Again, I'm perfectly fine if people watch it and they hate it. They understand it and say, this is garbage. Cool. Great. That's a democracy. I want to hear what people think. But he lays out the strategy of if Elon Musk and Doge can go in and find a trillion dollars in waste, fraud and abuse and cut that, and then he can make a trillion dollars in new revenue through things like better deal structure, through the Trump gold card, through a return on a sovereign wealth fund that better monetizes the assets that we have as a nation on our balance sheet like natural gas, things like that. Then suddenly that becomes a real thing.

• 51:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And this is why I think people, you can be disingenuous on both sides and we covered this in our Friday episode, but there's two ways to be disingenuous about that. Way number one would be to make out like we never had income tax and oh, this is a brand new thing in 1913 and we only did it because of the war. It's not quite true. It's a nice, simple story. It's not quite accurate. The other way to be disingenuous is to make out like taxes are like, people will always say, there's only two things that are certain in life, death and taxes. But reality, that's not true. I think we've had taxes for less than half of our lifespan as a country. If it's if it's more than half, it's not by a lot. So there's a huge swath of time that we had a country where we weren't doing income tax.

• 52:03Tom Bilyeu?

  I should be very clear where income taxes are not a necessary fact of life. And so I don't want to see either side be disingenuous about that. There are ways that we could do this where you could certainly dramatically reduce the tax burden. And this is why I think that some of this is just emotional. Some of this is just I hate the rich and I want to take their money. And so the thought experiment I would have people run is ask yourself, if you dislike the External Revenue Service, why? And would you not be happy if it didn't break our allies? But it did make it so that we didn't have to charge our own people income tax? Wouldn't you be excited about that? If people are like, no, I would hate that, that that's emotional. That's an I hate the rich thing.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's interesting too, because we're also seeing the blowback that Doge is getting. And I have a clip up here queued up from 2017 where Mark Cuban, calling himself a libertarian, pretty much identified the one of the goals of Doge.

• 53:00Speaker 07

  As a libertarian, I think we can reduce employment in government by at least a third, reduce the overhead and administration by that much or more, so that we can offer more to services for for our citizens. And so if if when it comes down to it, where I tend to disagree with everybody, and this is the libertarian, I mean, I'm happy to push down the size of government, and I'm happy to make work on making government more efficient, because then more money can pass through and help the people who need it. And that's what needs to change as a libertarian.

• 53:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Man, I really want to be inside of Mark Cuban's mind. Towards the end of the Trump race, he really started to sound like a propagandist for the Democratic Party. Now, if you're going to have a propagandist, Mark is the guy to have. And I was really watching what he was saying because he's so good at articulating a stance. He is an exceedingly bright business guy.

• 54:00Tom Bilyeu?

  understands finance, all of that. But I have to say, and I know what his take is on why to him, this is completely congruent with where he is now. But it's funny to me that Obama sounded like he would support Doge. When you play stuff that he was saying when he was president, uh, that he put Biden in charge of what it was effectively his version of Doge. Uh, you had, um, Clinton and Gore both doing their version of Doge. Like you've got all these Cuban, you've got all of these Democrats that are very clear that they like the ideas behind Doge, but they don't like Doge itself. Now to me, and I'll get to what, um, Cuban's explanation is in a second. But to me that they're just playing team ball. Plain and simple.

• 54:46Tom Bilyeu?

  They want their team to win and they're now going to make it sound like this thing is a terrible idea. Instead of saying, hey, this is a phenomenal idea. We absolutely have to do this. Here's the way that we need to do it. Now, this is where Cuban comes in and says, hey, I still think this is a good idea. I think that you do want to reduce, um, the size of the government. You do want to, um, get rid of wasteful spending, but the way that Trump and Elon are doing it is so fast, it can't be metabolized by the people, by the government, that you're going to inevitably make a mess, cause chaos. And so I want to reduce the level of chaos.

• 55:25Tom Bilyeu?

  But the counter argument to that, and this, I, I believe in this far more than I believe in Mark's, um, reasoning is that the way that a bureaucracy works, they are going to slow you down so fast that you have to move very, very quickly. This is momentum. And just like you can take, um, like a skimboard and you can go out and surf on the water. But as soon as you lose momentum, you sink. That's what I think this moment is. Trump is betting that if he can keep enough momentum going, he can actually make the changes. But given that he already tried to come in and make a bunch of changes in his first term, he saw, wow, you get bogged down very, very fast in the quote unquote swamp. And I think that's true.

• 56:07Tom Bilyeu?

  And I think that I know Mark Cuban understands business so well. He knows how hard it can be to turn a large company. And the government is like the ultimate large company.

• 56:19Tom Bilyeu?

  So it feels like team ball to me. Like there's some amount of you just have to do this hard and fast.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  All right, let's hear it from his mouth. I am all for cutting government costs then and now I'm even more for efficiency. I would have a plan. Ready, fire, aim is not a plan. Cutting programs without knowing if they would have saved taxpayers more than they cost or saved lives is a mistake. Terrorists, cutting programs, agencies and employment all at once, without doing any analysis of the impact on city, towns and states they impact is going to backfire big time. Some cities have nine percent or more of their employment as federal workers. Colleges losing millions in funding, government contracts and grant recipients having to close their businesses and lay off everyone, repeated in the city after city, town after town. What do you think the economic impact on their tax base is? What do you think happens to home values? What services will they have to end? What about the local businesses?

• 57:07Speaker 02

  How many people lose their jobs at homes because this was all done all at once? Cut federal government bloat in an organized fashion and it's great. Ready, fire, aim and the uncertainty it creates is a huge mistake.

• 57:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, we've had decades and decades and decades to do it the right way. You had, in fact, the person who did it the right way was Clinton and Gore. They managed to get a surplus and then we instantly turned that back into a deficit. And that was all pre-COVID. Now it's like the money supply has been inflated so far that the time to do this in an orderly fashion has passed. We're way too partisan. We are pulled way too far apart from each other. I don't see how this gets done now in like a slow and methodical fashion. You would need bipartisan support and you're just not going to get that because people are playing team ball. I agree with him conceptually.

• 58:01Tom Bilyeu?

  I would love to go back to a Clinton-type moment in the country where we could still come together, we could get things done, we could reduce costs, we could get a surplus going.

• 58:14Tom Bilyeu?

  You're just not gonna see that. The, the characters are too divisive. Trump is too divisive for sure. Biden was too divisive. So, yeah, the, do I think Trump introduces too much chaos? Yes. So, does it swing too far? Yes. Do I have a high level of confidence that this is gonna play out the way that Trump wants it to? No. Do I think that

• 58:38Tom Bilyeu?

  doing something radical at this point is gonna be the only way that you break both paralysis by analysis, which is part of what he's calling out. Look at the Department of Education. All the increased spending in the world did not solve the problem because you have a foundational issue. Whatever ideas are guiding them just are broken. The ideas that have been guiding the government around printing money and that budgets don't matter and blah, blah, blah. That, I mean, we talked about it with the Gary economics thing. You are not addressing the foundational problem. This is the first administration I see attempting to address the foundational problem. So we'll see. And I mean, on that, if I were going to debate myself, I would say, um, I would come at me from the angle of, well, all these tariffs are gonna raise prices. I don't know that that's actually true. It's gonna raise prices on certain items.

• 59:21Tom Bilyeu?

  There's no correlate here in America, but at least you now it's a consumption tax. If they lower taxes, obviously by putting the tariffs, they have to lower the taxes. If they make things more expensive and don't lower taxes, it's just a loss. Uh, and they will suffer at the polls as they must. But I think that there's at least a shot. When you hear Besen talk, when you hear Letnick talk, you can see the pieces they're trying to put together. When you hear Trump talk, it just sounds like chaos. Uh, but when you hear his cabinet talk, I'm like, okay, this might actually work. We'll see. Again, um, this stuff is hard and the economy is complex. So there are no guarantees here, but at least they're trying.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Hmm. In AI news, Caifu Lee had an interesting take about the

• 1:00:03Tom Bilyeu?

  He's been on the show, by the way.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, about the AI race.

• 1:00:06Speaker 08

  In both US and China, the pre-training of a giant model has consolidated and is consolidating. And it's become clear that open source will be the winner. Um, there's still many that will not concede, right? OpenAI, Anthropic, who build their businesses. Believing they can build a better closed model than everyone else. I think they got shocked when they saw a model as good. If you think about OpenAI's cost of $7 billion of operating costs in 2024, DeepSeek probably operated with 2% the operating expense. So the issue really isn't whose model is 1% better. I think they're all very good. But the issue is, is OpenAI's model even sustainable?

• 1:00:51Speaker 08

  Right? I mean, you're spending $8, $7 billion a year making a massive loss. And here you have a competitor coming in with an open source model that's for free. And that company also is infinitely, infinitely lasting. Because this founder has enough money to fund it at the current level. And has reduced the cost of computing by a factor of 5 to 10. So with that kind of formidable competitor, I think Sam Altman is probably not sleeping well.

• 1:01:22Tom Bilyeu?

  I think he's definitely right about that. So about Sam Altman not sleeping well. Okay, let's break the problem down into its constituent parts. Here's the thing that people have to understand about AI. You've got training and you've got inference. So training is I'm studying for the test. Inference is I'm now taking the test and how well do I score? How well am I able to pull the information out? Inference is totally meaningless if you don't have the underlying models. And so we needed that model phase to happen. And so whether Sam Altman goes out of business or not, we all benefit from the fact that those, what are called weights, that those weights now exist. But the reality is that AI is not at all where it needs to be for the kind of future that I want to exist in, this post-capitalist idea.

• 1:02:04Tom Bilyeu?

  All of that is only going to happen if the models begin to understand physics. If the models can't understand physics, then I know that intelligence has some upper bound and they're just butting up against it. And so training is going to remain like a big thing. The models are like anybody that's interfaced with AI, you'd be like, oh, if you're really using it, you're going to be like, oh, my God, this is amazing. This really propelled me forward. But it propelled me forward in the way that the internet just made information so much more accessible. And certainly, there will be many, many businesses that spin out using it. AI and it's it would even if the progress stopped today, it would already be transformational. But it's not going to be like what people think of when they think of AI in a future where we have literal super intelligence.

• 1:02:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Unless we can keep on with the training model because the training again is understanding the world. And the models, I don't think, understand the world well enough for you to put an inference layer on top of it and suddenly have the kinds of breakthroughs into physics and things like that. But Caifu Lee has his finger on a question, which is, do you get like, can you train the model on harder and harder things like that?

• 1:03:14Tom Bilyeu?

  In a financially responsible way where you have a self sustaining economic engine? And that I don't know because as the inference, that's how you and I interact with AI. We just care about the inference. And so at that level, if it's so good that it blunts everybody's desire to pour capital into more training models, then you may just stall out because you can't make the economics make sense. Now, if that ends up happening, then you would need like a government space program or an AI Manhattan program where the government is footing the bill to say, okay, look, we've got to train these models better because we've hit some sort of ceiling. So that future feels very uncertain to me. I don't know what's going to happen, but I certainly don't want for the future

• 1:03:55Tom Bilyeu?

  where the inference models become good enough that they gut the financial viability of training the models? Because I think we still have a long way to go with training.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  This reminds me kind of of the cell phone race, the internet browser race, where the thing that first hit the market was good for a little bit, then something else overtook its spot. So as much as I love anthropotic, as much as I know you love chat GPT, it's kind of giving me Nokia vibes, Nokia Motorola vibes. And then Apple, yeah, BlackBerry is another. So there, there is going to be this second wave of AI technologies that I think is going to eat this first wave. But I'm curious which companies develop moats and are able to sustain the different waves that will eventually come and which companies are like, yeah, I mean, open source. I'm only using this to make grocery lists and do my budget. I don't need an eight billion dollar a year model. I'm good with the $500,000 model and you know, we kind of get to that point, so.

• 1:04:43Tom Bilyeu?

  The great news is. That the Biden administration, which was trying to use a stranglehold technique, regulatory capture on AI is no longer in power. And from a technology innovation standpoint, that is a very, very good thing. And so now at least we're going to find out will because his initial pitch was the open source is going to be way better than the closed models. I don't think you can make a universal statement like that, just like Apple exists in a world where PCs exist, Apple exists in a world where Androids exist. There's always going to be people that can do things in a closed model way that other people are going to look at and say, yo, that's way better, way cooler. They're able to aggregate capital and make this really cool thing. And I want that really cool thing.

• 1:05:26Tom Bilyeu?

  But thankfully for all of us, that open source exists so that you'll get just a plethora of all these other small ideas. Every little thing is going to come into existence. So in aggregate, the little things are probably always going to trounce the closed models, but the closed models, at least historically, have been able to build just unbelievable stuff because they are able to create like their own ecosystem. They're able to guarantee standards, things like that, that when you're doing everything open source, you can't do. But as somebody who's interfacing with the toy that we're trying to build that syncs up with the in-game character, I need open source on that. I need Llama or something like that. So I'm certainly glad as a builder that open source exists, but it's not going to be an

• 1:06:10Tom Bilyeu?

  either or, it's going to be a both. The only thing that that battle could really come down to is what we were talking about earlier, which is the inference may just rob the financial viability from the training models.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  We shall see, we shall see. In robotics news, Tesla had their shareholder meeting yesterday.

• 1:06:29Tom Bilyeu?

  I think this was shareholders, was it? This was him talking to his actual employees, I think. Oh no, shareholder, there it is. My lie, it's all, my bad.

• 1:06:38Speaker 09

  The only company with all the ingredients for making intelligent humanoid robots at scale is Tesla.

• 1:06:47Speaker 09

  This is a super big deal. Like, my prediction is that, on this front, is that Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far. Nothing will even be close. It'll be, I think it'll be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made.

• 1:07:06Tom Bilyeu?

  I don't think that people really understand just how big robotics and AI are going to be. The fact that he is making the claim that this is going to be the biggest product ever, not the biggest product at Tesla, not the biggest product he's ever made, the biggest product of all time. He's said in previous talks that he thinks they'll be able to make a billion robots a year. I don't know that he was saying just Tesla, but that robots in general will be made at that kind of rate. And at that rate, it doesn't take long for there to be more robots in the world than there are humans by a lot. And if that ends up being true, and I don't see why it wouldn't, if you can get the cost

• 1:07:45Tom Bilyeu?

  cheap enough, phew, it is going to be a future that is very different than the present.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  I feel like it's only a matter of time at this point, because between this robot releasing, we have the Nvidia Disney robot that they just kind of teased out as well.

• 1:07:59Tom Bilyeu?

  It is for sure only a matter of time. You gotta pull that thing up. That thing is absolutely incredible. I want one of these immediately. I thought this was CGI. That looks fake.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  This is a collaboration with Deep Google's DeepMind, Disney Research Lab, and Nvidia. This is definitely gonna be walking around like Disneyland, Disney World, like, I completely see that. They're gonna have Star Wars optimized versions.

• 1:08:23Tom Bilyeu?

  There's no way they don't sell these at some point.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Tom Bilyeu?

  And I want one immediately. When this thing jumps up on stage with Jensen Huang from Nvidia, oh my god. Because I honestly thought the first time I was seeing that it was CG, until it popped up on stage and started walking around and talking to him, not talking, but doing R2D2 sounds.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Are you ready? Let's finish it up. We have another announcement. You're good, you're good. Just stand right here. Stand right here. Stand right here.

• 1:08:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, I don't know if that's being controlled off camera by someone.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Right there.

• 1:09:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Which is entirely possible, but if it's not, and that's just voice.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  All right, stand.

• 1:09:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Compliant, that's crazy.

• 1:09:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, this stuff I find incredibly exciting.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Okay, you're gonna put on your conspiracy theory hat?

• 1:09:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's do it. Put it on. Oh, I know where we're headed now.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  The conspiracy theorists were right. The pyramids is not what they, what they say they were. There was, uh, okay, I don't even know where to start on this one. So there was a scan that did like, almost like a sonar scan. They did a thermal mapping of the pyramids.

• 1:09:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Like ground penetrating scans.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they found an entire structure underneath the pyramid. So much so that it was spiral shaped cylindrical structures stretching over 600 meters. That's 2,000 feet straight down beneath the great pyramid.

• 1:09:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Jesus.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  On top of that.

• 1:09:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Who thousand feet?

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  2,000 feet. On top of that, there's like five buildings on top of it. Like, there's something here, yo. Uh, I don't know if you heard about the Iwunaki tribe? That was another one. This one, somebody claimed that this was kind of like, almost like earthquake, uh, like pillars, like. So this is back, it like, they told us.

• 1:10:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Are you sure about the 2,000 feet thing?

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  2,000 feet? About stretching over 600 meters, about 2,000 feet.

• 1:10:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa. 1.2 miles below the pyramid's base. What on earth? An enormous hidden construction deep underground. It's so funny. I saw this at the headline level. I did not dive in. This is even crazier than I thought. I cannot believe how big that is.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  So there's some people that think that the aliens came down, taught the people how to use the pyramids, and then they disappeared, flew away, got killed, died, whatever happened. There are some people that think that we are the dumb generation and that our ancestors were way smarter than us.

• 1:10:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Nah, you'd see, you'd see way more advanced technology. Uh, but this is from just a, an ability to excavate and drill down. That seems impossible. I just asked ChatGPT, what do the haters of this discovery say? And it says, recent claims of surface regarding the discovery of extensive underground structures beneath the Pyramid of Giza, uh, purportedly extending over 2,000 feet below the surface. These assertions are primarily based on a study by researchers, name, name, name. Uh, you, they utilize. Synthetic aperture radar SAR tomography to identify features such as multi-level structures and vertical cylindrical walls beneath the Kafer pyramid. However, these claims have been met with skepticism from the scientific community.

• 1:11:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Critics argue that the SAR technology is not capable of penetrating to the depths claimed as it typically reaches only a few meters below the surface. Additionally, previous comprehensive studies employing advanced techniques like muon tomography and infrared scanning have not detected any significant underground complexes beneath the Giza pyramids. Furthermore, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has emphasized that the existence of void spaces within the pyramids is not a new revelation and that such features have been known to Egyptologists for years. They caution against premature conclusions without thorough research. That, I want this to be true because if they have built 2,000 feet deep structures beneath

• 1:12:14Tom Bilyeu?

  the pyramid, however many thousands of years ago, that would be cool beyond belief. But boy, oh, boy, it is hard to believe.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  Chat is part of the conspiracy theory. I thought chat would be on our side. See?

• 1:12:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, listen, listen in full.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  They got to AI. They got to AI.

• 1:12:30Tom Bilyeu?

  I should read.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  The FOIA community, we still, we sit out here, alright? It's the aliens.

• 1:12:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Let me read the prompt so that at least we have full disclosure. So you can do with this what you will. My exact prompt was, there was a recent discovery beneath the Pyramid of Giza that supposedly goes down 2,000 feet, that supposedly goes down 2,000 feet. What do people who don't believe it say? So I specifically sought out disconfirming evidence. So if we had done a different search that was like, you know, people that buy it, what do they say? It'd be very different. But I mean, here it is. You guys look on the screen, you can see for yourself, they're showing all the drawings and everything that they have extrapolated from their SAR scans. So do with that what you will. I am very eager to see what comes of this. If it just hits a kill switch where enough people that know this stuff are like, bro,

• 1:13:19Tom Bilyeu?

  come on, like this is ridiculous, or if it just starts gaining steam. But, I mean, I hope other people are thinking the same thing. I'm thinking, drill, fucking drill.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Just go in there, just go find it.

• 1:13:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, like. Pick a, pick a spot big enough for a camera and just

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  You know how we all raided Area 51? It's time to go raid the pyramids. Bring a shovel.

• 1:13:40Tom Bilyeu?

  I think you might need something a little more than shovel. But I, man, I really want to know. I hope that they do like a nice, thin camera down there. Non-destructive, but I very much want to see what's down there. That's fascinating, man. That was a very enjoyable conspiracy corner. All right, everybody, there it is.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  That is all I got.

• 1:13:59Tom Bilyeu?

  If you guys are enjoying this show, please go to wherever you listen to your podcasts and give this five stars. It helps more than you know. All right, everybody. Until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care, peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do? You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics,

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