Trade Wars, Student Debt, and the K-Shaped Economy: Navigating Financial Turbulence Today | Morgan Housel On Impact Theory w/ Tom Bilyeu Pt. 2

Welcome back to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In this episode, Tom Bilyeu sits down for an intense, thought-provoking conversation with acclaimed author morgan Housel to dig into some of the most pressing economic challenges of our time. Together, they unravel the complexities around America's shifting role as the world’s reserve currency, mounting national debt, the rise of China, and the real dangers lurking behind our housing and student loan crises. You'll hear Tom Bilyeu challenge conventional narratives about economic cycles, inflation, and what history teaches us about the rise and fall of empires. morgan Housel offers invaluable perspective—tempering alarmist fears with humility, historical insight, and a focus on what individuals can actually control in the face of profound uncertainty. This episode is for anyone trying to make sense of the headlines, curious about what “trouble” really looks like for the U. S. economy, and seeking wisdom on how to navigate the rocky waters ahead. From global trade wars and demographic shifts to personal finance strategies for turbulent times, Tom Bilyeu and morgan Housel leave no stone unturned. Get ready for grounded optimism, refreshing honesty, and practical takeaways you won’t want to miss! 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: 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 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: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: 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. ********************************************************************** 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 Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodHomeServe: Help protect your home systems – and your wallet – with HomeServe against covered repairs. Plans start at just $4.99 a month at https://homeserve.comShopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact Sintra AI: 72% off with code IMPACT at https://sintra.ai/impact Huel: High-Protein Starter Kit 20% off for new customers at https://huel.com/impact code impact Bevel Health: Visit https://bevel.health/impact and use code IMPACT to get your first month free. Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order Cape: 33% off your first 6 months with code IMPACT at https://cape.co/impact Plaud: Get 10% off with code TOM10 at https://plaud.ai/tom Pique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impact SOCIALS Follow morgan Housel: Website: https://www.morganhousel.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/morganhousel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morganhousel Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morganhousel/ 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?

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• 1:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go. Okay, I'm going to give you my full argument in the hopes that you can pull me back to your side. Okay. So, Hurd, wonderful things that you put forward. Here's why I think they will not work this time, and we're going to need a different solution. So after World War II, we become the world's reserve currency. We are among the developed world. We're essentially the only untouched country. So everybody else has been thrashed. We're going to be, first of all, they owe us a ton of money, and we're going to help them rebuild, and we become the world's reserve currency. So now we can print our money like crazy and tax the entire world or anybody that holds our reserve currency.

• 1:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Through inflation. And so that switch alone is massive. And so we also haven't done the waves and waves and waves of money printing that we have now done. So yes, we're coming out bad debt to GDP after the war, but the war stops. And so now you're not having to pull all that debt. World owes you a ton of money. They're starting to pay that off. You start to export inflation. Way better scenario. Now you're in a position where the number of transaction or the dollar transactions taking place. It used to be, I think, seventy-two percent in the late nineties of all transactions globally were settled in dollars. That number is now in the fifties.

• 2:38Tom Bilyeu?

  So we've been steadily declining now for twenty-five plus years. The world is actively moving away from the dollar. For the first time in more than thirty years, there's central banks globally now hold more reserves in gold than they do in dollars. And they are specifically migrating towards that. You now have a true competitor economically, which is China, which we didn't have before. Russia sort of made it look like they did smoke and mirrors at the end of World War Two, but they obviously didn't. They end up collapsing. China really is a pure competitor. I think you said this on camera, but we China is better at making things than we are currently. So that puts them in the position that we were in at the end of World War Two. Yes.

• 3:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And they are actively trying to get the world to move away from the dollar and move on to the digital yuan. They're building a gold corridor so that people can hold the gold if they don't trust China. China understands we're authoritarian. So some of you guys are going to be a little bit skeptical that we won't confiscate your wealth. So we'll store the gold in your country. We'll decentralize it, all of that. Our goal is just to get you guys off the dollar. So we are, we haven't lost it yet, but we are rapidly losing the ability to export our inflation.

• 3:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Given the wild things that Trump is doing from an international perspective, maybe it all settles down, but it could also escalate. Europe is talking about using what they call their economic bazooka, which is to dump the debt that they own from America. And for anybody that doesn't understand the whole debt thing, it's if the US, if there's no appetite for US debt, the credit markets freeze. That brings us to the, meaning that US can't raise money to pay off its debt. Now you're in crisis. If the US were to default, it's like anybody going bankrupt. Suddenly, nobody wants to give you money. Where are all your friends? Nowhere to be found.

• 4:32Tom Bilyeu?

  And that brings the next thing, which is we can't raise rates. We're in fiscal dominance. We owe so much money already that just the interest on our debt is the second biggest line item. It's bigger than some entitlements. So this is a massive number. If that number were to go up to 10, 15, 20%, the whole system breaks. The US will, it will have to hyperinflate its currency in order to make those payments, which will cause anybody who's on the fence about the dollar to be like, well, we're done with the dollar. We're gonna move faster to gold, to silver, to bitcoins, whatever. But it isn't going to be the dollar.

• 5:17Tom Bilyeu?

  And so now you end up in this dust spiral. And this is exactly why Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund manager of all time, going, yeah, I Moved to Dubai. Moving to, I think he's more Singapore, but it's like, he obviously is super skeptical of the US. Buffett has publicly stated, I'm super skeptical of what the US is doing. I'm pulling back out of the markets. I'm sitting on this insane pile of cash and I'm also looking at markets outside of the US. It's like, I agree with you that history has these loops and some of the smaller loops are positive. If we were going into a recession, I wouldn't be worried about it at all. It's a couple of years of whatever. And as long as you're not trading on margin or underwater in debt, you're going to be fine.

• 6:02Tom Bilyeu?

  You make it to the other side. But there is a certain point where every single empire before us has taken on too much debt and printed too much money and then their empire collapses.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:15Tom Bilyeu?

  And I'm just saying, the bad news is, when you look at the mechanisms of the economy, structurally, right now, we are set up for one of two options. Trump's crazy unhinged global policies, he's able to bully our way to controlling oil and other resources, and he deregulates so much that we grow our way out of this because your point is the only option that I see.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Which is you have to grow.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Or we are going to either rapidly go bust or slowly go bust. But you don't have, without the growth, you don't have more than 10 years before you cross the 130% debt to GDP. And again, history says every, every empire fails for sure, 100%. And every country that has ever gone over 130% debt to GDP for more than 18 months has ended up with internal violence. So revolution or civil war. And like, we're just poised for that number to snap and grow very fast if we don't walk

• 7:30Tom Bilyeu?

  this insane tightrope of somehow, some way, having a president put policies in place that allows to actually grow.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think I have substantial pushback to what you said. But I would say this, if you may, if you said what you just said verbatim to me in 2008, you know, 15 some odd years, whatever, whatever that was, 17 years ago. I would have agreed with every word too. If you said that to me in 2004, and people were saying this in 2008, there was that argument that you just said was everywhere. It was everywhere. All there, that was the most popular argument was the dollar's doomed, too much debt, you can never grow away out of it. 2007, 2008, that was the narrative. And it didn't happen, at least to the extent that it did. So it's not to say that it can't.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Of course it can, it's happened elsewhere. But I think the mechanism that will cause it is not as obvious as it can be made out to be. And I would say this, as recently as this year, in the last eight weeks, when shit hits the fan, what do people buy? By and large, it's still treasuries and dollars. And so people can say they don't trust the dollar, printing too much money. You could say that all too long. They say that, but what do they actually do with their money? Now, will that last forever? Probably not. But the mechanism of, we've printed too much money, it doesn't work, too much debt, don't trust the politicians, don't trust Trump, whatever the narrative might be, what people are still doing with their money is there.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  The other thing I would say is, you mentioned a very interesting statistic, which is that in the late 1990s, the US dollar settled 70 some odd percent of payments, and today it's 50 some odd percent. What did interest rates do during those two periods? They fell like a rock. And this is another, your statistics are right. You're not making these up, you're saying right things that are actually true. But what the consequence of that, I think, is less fitting with the narrative of what you begin with. Because in the 1990s, when dollar dominance all day long, interest rates were higher than they are right now. Right? And so it's not quite as clear what that-

• 9:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you take that, though, as faith in the dollar?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  That we had higher interest rates back then?

• 9:49Tom Bilyeu?

  That people were still dealing in dollars despite any of our distresses, because there was still a sense that America was the stable global hegemon, that there really were no alternatives, we did not have any peers. And so it was like, you know, there's really nothing- Thing to do but the dollar. And by the way, we had not yet gone on the 2000.com bubble burst, money printing spree, the 2008 housing crisis, money printing spree, the COVID money printing spree, 40% of all dollars ever created in the history of America have been created since, what, 2020? So it's like,

• 10:33Speaker 01

  But what do people do during the COVID meltdown? When it really looked like we were on the verge of Great Depression 2.0? And probably should have been. We got a very lucky outcome, I think. What did global investors buy during that period? Treasuries?

• 10:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, but they're buying gold now.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  They've been buying gold in the last couple of months. Yes, and it did in 2010, 2011 as well.

• 10:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Even if you just look at central banks, you're not unnerved by that? In terms of them ditching the dollar?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  I'm not unnerved by it.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  I'm not complacent about it. Everything that you're saying could easily happen. And so this is not you and I debating separate points. I just think the economy is so unbelievably complex that anytime you say, because of A, we're going to have B, and then C, and then D, it almost never works like that. And there's, if you're familiar with the history of economic forecasts, it's the most humbling thing in the world. The smartest people, making the most logical predictions, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's the most humbling profession that's ever existed. Even if you're saying things that are so unbelievably, like, how could that not be the case? I was one of the people in 2008 who said, dollar is doomed, printing way too much money because of the financial crisis,

• 11:48Speaker 01

  way too much debt, bailing out the banks, bailing out the auto companies. It's never going to end. That was me. I was that. I wrote about it. So you can go find those articles. I wrote about that in that period. And I felt very confident about that. And I think what I didn't appreciate then that I do now is the complexity of it. It is just unbelievably complex. It's the most complicated system that we have in the world. You know, there's, you know, 8 billion people, there's 25 million businesses in the world, all interacting, different languages, different cultures, different wants, different needs, different time horizons, all interacting together. New politicians every two years, new presidents every four to eight years. It's a very complicated thing. And history is littered with. Terrible decisions and meltdowns.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  It's all that. It's also littered with examples, whether it is the end of World War II, or 1970s, or the late 1990s, or 2008, or maybe today, of the obvious narrative in hindsight being completely wrong.

• 12:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so you believe-

• 12:49Speaker 01

  So that's less of a pushback. I'm not saying what you're saying is wrong. I'm just saying I come from a level of pure humility when trying to figure out what the economy is going to do next.

• 13:01Tom Bilyeu?

  I think that's incredibly wise, and I'm the same. I write deep dives on these topics, and my punchline is always, remember, the future is going to surprise you in some way, so don't think that you see it clearly. I certainly don't. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned. There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60, and it isn't the cashmere. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for. Quince just works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So there's no need for a markup and no logo tax. The $60 goes to the actual sweater, not the fancy name on the tag.

• 13:43Tom Bilyeu?

  That's why everything they make runs 50 to 80% less. And it's not just the cashmere. I ordered a few things myself, their fleece joggers, a couple of their tees, which I wear obsessively. First thing I noticed was the quality. Soft, well-made, built to hold up. They make down jackets and wool outerwear now, too. So upgrade your stuff to things you'll actually wear. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Impact Theory. It's the best way to support the show.

• 14:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's talk about something that genuinely keeps me awake at night. My team at Impact Theory gets hit with phishing scams from bad actors pretending to be me all the time. And they keep getting more sophisticated attacks with details specific- Enough to look legit. AI has made a lot of things possible, including scams like this. But AI still needs raw material. It gets it from data brokers who sell your name, address, phone number to anyone willing to pay. Incogni goes after that supply. They handle removal requests across 420 plus harmful broker sites. And they keep checking back as brokers constantly try to relist you. On the unlimited plan, the exposure scanner hunts down your information.

• 15:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Send a link and their privacy experts handle the takedown. Track your progress in the app and get a monthly risk assessment showing exactly where you stand. Go to incogni.com/impact and use code IMPACT for 60% off an annual plan. Incogni is I N C O G N I dot com slash impact. Promo code IMPACT. It's completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. There are narratives that you feel comfortable with. So we started with the, the idea that housing is this incredibly important issue from which many other problems cascade.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Is there a narrative or a data point about how empires fall, about how currencies lose their status that you do believe in?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  One of the issues with this is that when we're studying fallen empires, the sample size that we're dealing with is so incredibly small. And it's never apples to apples. And if you really get deep into it, is there, is there truly any comparison between the Roman Empire and the United States today? Philosophically, maybe, but in terms of the structure of the global economy. And I mean, we're, you know, it's, it's very difficult to make direct comparisons. Well, like psychologically, philosophical comparisons, ego. See that, that kind of thing too, but.

• 16:39Tom Bilyeu?

  I'll, I'll give you one. So tell me if this is crazy. I think there is architecture in the human mind that says debt is incredibly useful, but it will stop working, but by then you're addicted to the growth. And so you will eventually dilute your currency like eternally. Everybody who's ever made money has always started devaluing the currency by mixing it with another metal, clipping the edges off so you don't notice. Somehow, some way, they find a way to inflate the currency.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Right now, we use money printing. We call it quantitative easing, whatever, but it's the same idea as shaving off some of the gold from the coin. Um, so given that every economic system ever in all of human history has done the same two things, take on too much debt and fake money, for lack of a better word, um, that seems directly applicable to why we have the problem now. And the third thing that we always do, always and forever, is we resent those who have more than us. And when those levels get intolerable, then we flip the tables.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:50Tom Bilyeu?

  And I see those, those, those are the only three things that I need people to believe in for me to say, we're in trouble. Not that I know that we're gonna collapse this year, next year, 10 years. I don't know. Uh.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  So here's maybe the difference between you and I. So I did, you have my.

• 18:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, please. No, no, no.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  We, we both agree we're in trouble. It sounds like maybe your definition of trouble is some version of collapse.

• 18:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  And I think the most likely definition of trouble is 10 years of muddling economic growth with high inflation. And by high inflation, I don't mean hyperinflation. I mean, maybe it's four, five, six percent, which sucks and pisses a lot of people off. But this is, but it's not, but, but that's not collapse per se, even if collapse is one of the options. I don't think it's the most likely option. It also hit me that I said earlier, that what you just said, if you told me that in 2008, I would have said, and it didn't necessarily happen. It just hit me. The year in which actually what you just said was being said by almost everybody, uh, was yes, 2008, but more, more along, it was 1930 to 1932, that every, the most common narrative

• 18:54Speaker 01

  was printing money, devaluing currency, way too much debt, bad politicians, way too much inequality.

• 19:00Tom Bilyeu?

  War is coming.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  War is coming.

• 19:02Tom Bilyeu?

  War came.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  And, and, and it came. And, and, and by the way, if, if that's the, if that's the comparison. Of just, oh, we're just gonna head into the Great Depression and World War II. And by the way, World War II by and large happened because of the Great Depression. Those two things are very closely linked, of course. And World War I before that. But if, you know, if I'm saying that's, that's the analogy, well, that's, that's not very optimistic as well, is it? And the other period of just real shit show economics was the 1970s. And that's probably, if I were to make, what is the most likely outcome to get out of this? Which is different than a prediction, just what do I think is the most likely? It's probably something like that. And we're, we're the 1970s, slow growth, high inflation, a lot of pissed off people,

• 19:45Speaker 01

  a lot of political revolutions, if you want to call that. You know, not terrible revolutions, but the Reagan Revolution, let's say. That by and large we muddled through and we look back at it as a, as a terrible period, which is why people don't think fondly of Jimmy Carter as president. And also within that era was Watergate and Vietnam. So there was just a lot in the 1970s, it was just, America sucks. America sucks right now. But we got through it. And I, and I think if we had a time machine and you and I went back to New York in 1976, we would not find it to be a hellhole. We might find the elements of it quite pleasant. Here's another example of this. What other country lost its empire because it had too much debt and overextended in the last hundred years?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  And ceded its power to the next superpower? The UK. The UK that ceded its power to the United States. But if you go back pre-World War I, certainly, the UK was the empire. You know, the, the Queen Victoria area, that was, that was the United States of its time. And then it ceded that power, lost that power because it had way too much debt, particularly after World War II, way more than we had. And, and, and several, you know, terrible things that happened. And by and large, it was a pleasant place to live over the last 80 years. And so that's why I say... The scenarios in which this could be, there's other scenarios other than Mad Max. And that was what the UK did. That was what the UK was. The UK ceded its power, had high inflation,

• 21:11Speaker 01

  had high unemployment, but it was not Mad Max. It was by and large, a pretty pleasant and quaint place to live. And I think that's, that's the most likely outcome in the United States.

• 21:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I certainly don't project a Mad Max outcome to America, but I look at countries that have had a previous empire and then what happened. Uh, yes, the UK has done well, but there's a very dark secret from where I'm sitting about UK's success coming out of it is they never relinquished control of banking. And so now as you get into the Brussels, London of it all, and you start talking one world government, this is conspiracy theory, this is tinfoil hat. I wanna, I always tell my audience that with this topic in particular, but there is something interesting about, we're living through part of the glory and the side effects of a hyper financialized

• 22:05Tom Bilyeu?

  world right now. So, um, I try to get people, people hate it when I say this, but I try to get people to understand that the stock market, while brilliant, amazing, and has given so many wonderful things, is best understood as a casino. And when you understand it as gambling, that you're betting on something, uh, that 20 years from now, people will value this thing more than they do today. That's what you're betting on. I'm not even saying day trading. I'm saying even long-term. You're just saying, my bet is that this will be more valuable to people than it is today. Great. Uh, and maybe looking historically, that's a good bet. I love it. And I'm super invested in the stock market. I think it's very wise and there are all kinds of wonderful things that come from it, but it really is a stock market. And by the way, the like really big players that you hear about are

• 22:50Tom Bilyeu?

  playing a totally different game unless they're value investors like a Warren Buffett. Like a lot of them are in there betting on things going up and down. They can make a ton of money off the stock market doing poorly. And so now there gets to be a lot of the manipulation of markets and the warfare that goes along. Who thinks that they're smarter in doing all of that kind of stuff? And so when you look at London, you look at this idea of one world government, who benefits the most from getting a K-shaped economy? The people that control the banks, the hyper elites that are playing this incredibly enriching or impoverishing game in the stock markets of understanding the flows of money, understanding the macro movements in economies.

• 23:30Tom Bilyeu?

  And so if you're a London banker and you see, ooh, we just lost our empire, we owe all this money to the Yanks, and we know how this game plays out. If you can hold on to the one thing, which is if we can get the Yanks to build a central bank, which we did back in 1913, now all of a sudden, if we can group up and Europe, which is true, has like the central bank of central banks, and then we can print money and siphon off through the worldwide tax of inflation, we can still siphon off a ton of wealth. And so it is like, there's a far more distressing game being played than I think people realize.

• 24:14Tom Bilyeu?

  They can feel something's wrong because of the K-shaped economy, but they don't understand the mechanisms of money well enough. And to be honest, like even I feel like I'm still early in my journey of like really understanding how all this stuff plays out, which is whenever I talk about London, I say like, this is pure tinfoil hat. But it's like, oh, it fits the outcome that I see a little too well. It doesn't mean that I'm not overfitting it. It doesn't mean that there's not some other completely innocent explanation. And maybe people have all the good intentions in the world. It just plays out like that. But nonetheless, there is this mechanism called inflation, and it benefits bankers, and it does not benefit the average person. And what the average person is dealing with right now is due to money printing and the knock-on effect of inflation.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  I think that's right. And the other thing I would say about why the UK analogy probably isn't, isn't the best right now is because the UK ceded its empire to a friendly rival, the United States.

• 25:10Tom Bilyeu?

  And after getting its ass handed to it in a war, like it was like, you're going to make different decisions when you're fatigued. And it's, it's a really interesting thing that if you look at Ray Dalio, Ray's just like, listen, eventually you'll get in a war so bloody, everyone will just fall down exhausted and say, fine, new world order is, is acceptable. And so that's where England was. It was like,

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Didn't have a lot of choices.

• 25:37Tom Bilyeu?

  They didn't have a lot of choices.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  When, when you go from number one to number two, and you're, and number one, who replaces you is a friend, your closest friend, your best buddy in the world who wants you to win, and you want them to win. That's different than if you cede your power, if the United States cedes its power to China. Now, this is maybe a separate topic. But what is now very well known, and was in the headlines this week, is to the extent to which China's birth rate has not collapsed, it has just fallen through the floor. The statistic this week was there were fewer babies born in China in 2025 than there were in 1776.

• 26:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Yo.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Right. And that's been going on for a very long time, but the decline has been going on.

• 26:19Tom Bilyeu?

  It tends to be bad when you enforce one child policy, yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  But even after they lifted that, and after they went out, it's a cultural preference for fewer children. And that decline's been going on for a long time. And it's not, it has not sped up. It has gone supernova in the last 10 years.

• 26:32Tom Bilyeu?

  How much worse are they than us from a birth rate perspective?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  If you look at the domestic birth rate in the United States, it's higher than almost everywhere else in the developed world. It's not high, and it's much lower than it used to be in the United States. The wild card for the United States, and almost no other country has, and certainly China doesn't have, is immigration, which goes through ebbs and flows. Unbelievably high three years ago, marching towards zero now. And so that, so that's very difficult to predict what that will be over the next 25 years. You brought up a point earlier that is, is I guess inarguable, that any empire that has this level of debt that has been extended to the extent the United States is, has, has collapsed. I would bring up another, another analogy, and I would say, and I know the answer to this, this is a rhetorical question. What country in history has succeeded for

• 27:21Speaker 01

  more than five or 10 years with a shrinking population? None, none, never, none. And China's population is by 1.4 billion right now. The new forecast, I think it was by 2070 maybe. So this is a long-term forecast. It'll be down to 600 million.

• 27:36Tom Bilyeu?

  Yo.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Right. And what country, when, you know, what creates GDP growth? There's two things, there's two ways to grow your economy. You increase the number of people or you make those people more productive. That's what economic growth is. And China took the first half of that equation, the increase in number of people. And it didn't bring it to zero. It put in a hurricane headwind on top of it. And so, you know, maybe AI and robots make us all so productive that it makes up for that. That could be the case. Cause US demographics are better. It's the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry bin. But that, but relative to what it was for the last century, it sucks. It's much worse. But relative, you know, but not just China. Japan's been a basket case for a long time. You know, the statistic 10 years ago, I'm sure it's worse now where adult diapers outsell child diapers in Japan.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Like, there's your sign.

• 28:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Heard that before, but that's still.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  There's your sign, right? It's just terrible demographics. But now, so Japan was kind of the for the front runner in this. China's terrible. Russia is abysmal. South Korea is very bad. Italy, going down the list, Spain, those are, they're, they're all absolutely terrible demographics. A lot of that is a very long history of the richer countries come, the fewer kids people want to have, which is why you go to Sub-Saharan Africa, they have 10 kids. You go to Manhattan where people will make $5 million a year, they have two. So there's a very long history of that. And I think we've just supercharged that. Back to, maybe we become first full circle to housing. You know, it's, it's more expensive to raise kids these days. And if half your income's going to rent or a mortgage payment, you'd be thinking less. The statistic that I started with, if you can't buy a house, you're less likely to get married and have kids.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  There's other factors going on here, but it's all kind of fits into that puzzle too.

• 29:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, will the inevitable mortality cliff that boomers are facing, is that going to alleviate any of these problems?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  The Boomers had a lot of kids. The Millennials are a big generation.

• 29:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, but I'm saying Boomers are about to die, so.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  And currently doing it.

• 29:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, so is that gonna free up housing?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Does it alleviate the housing situation?

• 29:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, are they gonna pass down enough money that some of this stuff starts to equal out, or no?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Maybe to some extent, but for the Millennial generation, for a lot of them, I'm a Millennial, and I think statistically, my parents will be alive for another 20 or 25 years, statistically. So, it might be, I think what you're saying is true, but it could be the case that by the time the Boomers are actually, my parents are Boomers, by the time that they, their generation is fully past the baton onto Millennials, Millennials are gonna be in their 60s. And so the idea of like, well, you'll get your house then, like when you're 65, that's not gonna move the needle too much.

• 30:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Woof. Okay, so, what do you think about, like, student loans, individual debt? Like, how does that play into your thoughts about where we are?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  I can give you two sides of this. One, particularly student loans, I think, it's not hyperbole to say it virtually ruined a generation, kinda, young Millennials and all of Gen Z, you know, just really, I think particularly Millennials, if you were of college age in the mid 2000s, everybody told you, go into debt, it's worth it, just do it, just pay, just sign the documents, sign the loan, your life will be better, it doesn't matter if you go to Jim Bob University and get a degree in art history, doesn't matter, go into 200 grand in debt, and that's what a lot of 18-year-olds who didn't have a pre-funnel cortex developed yet were told and did. And of course, the results are disastrous for us. And debt, student loan debt, is one of the only debts that will travel with you after bankruptcy. You can't discharge it.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  You know, you can go, you could, you can go into gambling debt and real estate debt and discharge it all in bankruptcy and walk away like it never happened, student loans are with you for life.

• 31:14Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think about that? That feels evil to me.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  On one hand, I get why it happens, because if it wasn't like that, most 22-year-olds who graduate have no assets, so they have no risk to go into bankruptcy. Just go, so graduate with your debt and go bankrupt. You have no assets, they can't take any of your assets, you have 20 bucks in your bank account, so you have.

• 31:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Then stop loaning to them.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yes, that's, I think that's, that's what it is. Make it much more contingent on what kind of degree it is.

• 31:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Correct.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  So the idea of going into 200 grand for a medical debt because you're going to be a surgeon, like still a lot of debt. But okay, the idea of going into that much debt for an art history degree or whatever it might be, no, no, no, no offense to the humanities, but. I mean, that's the, the, the idea that we price it the same and by and large, give the same amount of debt for the same degree is, is, is insane. And, and the other thing is that whenever you just stimulate demand like that, it just pushes up price. So let's say we lived in a world, it's, it's kind of too hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube now. We've like, if you just stop student loans tomorrow, this is, it would collapse. But let's say we go back and there was never government issued student debt, still private debt, you still go to JP Morgan, get a student loan, but it's priced differently. And they want to know what degree you're getting, but there's no federal student debt.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  What would happen is tuition at private universities wouldn't be 75 grand today, it'd be 35 grand or whatever it would be. When you stimulate demand, but you don't increase supply, prices go up, it's always going to be the case. And what an unbelievable business model for schools. You'd be like, we have 18 year olds who can barely tie their shoes, they're still technically effectively children. And they can sign a document and get 200 grand that they just funnel to us and we can raise the price by 20% next year and they won't even care. They don't even, amazing business model. So of course they did that and they build towers and sports centers and whatnot. I, I, I think they're all well, by and large, well meaning people, but the incentives of it were just so unbelievably broken. Now I can give you the other side of the story.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  If you look at debt interest payments and debt overall as a percentage of income, it's very low right now. It's very low right now. It peaked just during the financial crisis, 2008, nine, 10, where it was very high. And it's been being chewed down ever since.

• 33:18Tom Bilyeu?

  New people going in, not as an average across everybody.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  An average across everybody.

• 33:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Already come down.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  It has been coming down for 15 years and is at a level now that we haven't really seen in 20 or 30 years.

• 33:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, this is.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  I think probably a lot of that, well, it's a couple of things.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Some of it is bad, which is that the homeownership rate among the young generation is much less than it used to be. And so they don't have mortgage debt. They would love to have mortgage debt. The best thing in their life would be to have some mortgage debt, but they don't, they're renting, which is not debt. So that's part of it. I think there's also a, in, in, in, in a good way. Still the aftershock scars of 2008 that made a lot of people, particularly millennials, scared of debt in a great way, particularly credit card debt. And so their aversion to it, there's still a trillion plus dollars of credit card debt since it hasn't gone away, but as a share of income relative to what it was in the late 90s, early 2000s is much lower today.

• 34:17Tom Bilyeu?

  That's great news. I actually didn't know that.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And here's another thing. I've written about this before. This gets a little technical, but government debt as a share of GDP has gone way up. We've established that.

• 34:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Household debt and corporate debt as a share of their income has gone down. And if you average those two things together, the whole pot, all economic debt, government, private, corporate, everything, all debt as a share of all income, it's gone up. It has gone up, but not to the extent that it has because the increase in government debt has been muted a little bit by the decline in household debt as a share of income.

• 34:53Tom Bilyeu?

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• 35:36Tom Bilyeu?

  salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes.

• 36:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. I don't remember if it was Greenspan or somebody else, but there was one time where they were leveraging, like, I think they had to clamp down on treasuries and so, but they knew that they needed to get debt into the market to keep things humming. And so they really leaned on corporate debt.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:26Tom Bilyeu?

  And so it'd be interesting knowing that that number hasn't gone up as much. I wonder if they're

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Well, the number's gone up, but as a share of income, that's a different, different story. And I think what you're referring to is in the 1990s when we had balanced budgets and the forecast was balanced budget and surplus as far as the eye can see. And Greenspan, if that forecast came true, it obviously did not. It was almost the opposite. Forecasting is difficult in the economy.

• 36:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  If that came true, his fear was that central banking wouldn't work because there wouldn't have been enough debt to engage in open market operations to buy and sell debt. And so the idea was maybe the central bank, that maybe the Fed can start buying corporate debt because there wouldn't be enough treasuries. Obviously, we solved that problem by trillions of dollars of deficits. So if we don't have that issue now.

• 37:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, they also did buy corporate debt. That's the more

• 37:10Speaker 01

  During the financial crisis, sure. I mean, all those, all those acronyms, PIP and all these vehicles that they created in 2008 to buy it. I would say, I think if we did not, this, this might be very contentious. I have a feeling you're going to disagree with this. So maybe this is a good conversation. I think if we did not have Ben Bernanke at the helm in 2008, we would have had the next Great Depression. I think we got unbelievably lucky that the guy who ran the Federal Reserve was the world's foremost authority on central banking during the Great Depression and had gigantic balls during that time.

• 37:46Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting. It's one of those, like you're saying about, I look out in my backyard and there's a forest and how lovely that feels. And so, and my heartbroken that they didn't build the houses. Not really. I wouldn't have wanted to see us go through a depression, obviously. And at the same time, if you don't have moments of failure, then the bad behavior continues.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:11Tom Bilyeu?

  And I would rather

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Hard balance between Between those two.

• 38:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, no joke, and I'm certainly not saying that this stuff is easy, but I would rather we let micro failures happen constantly.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Rather than let these huge failures like I would even rather go through a depression than go through states seceding from the United States, which is like the path that it feels like we're on right now. I would rather go through a depression than us succumb to Thucydides' trap because we need some way out of the debt.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:44Tom Bilyeu?

  The just absolute growing hatred between the left and the right populism in general to me is entirely a result of debt and money printing. And so all of that stuff I think ends up with some percentage chance, I rank it high, you rank it low, but like some percentage chance of tearing at the very fabric of this country, not in a way that we're going to disappear. I do not think that. But I do think that history shows that, oh, no, no, no, you constantly go through these cycles of three to five years of catastrophic warfare inside your country or outside, from the outside, and millions of people die.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:27Tom Bilyeu?

  And that's just how it goes. And so would I rather go through a depression than millions of people die in war? Yes, I would.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  The one counter to that is I think a lot of wars are initially caused, the spark is is depression. It's economic depression that causes the spark. What's going on in Iran right now, I'm by no means an expert in the slightest in that. I'm just a tourist who reads the headlines. But what really sparked the recent protests is when their currency collapsed versus the dollar. You know, most people can put up with a lot of bullshit in government as long as they are gainfully employed and have full bellies. Once you take that away, there's a great quote from a Russian poet who's talking about people in the Gulags. And he said, you can turn any saint into a monster in two weeks. If you deprive them of food and shelter and warmth and whatnot, anybody turns into a monster in two weeks.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  And so I think, I think a lot of that was in, in Germany, how, how do you take one of the most peaceful civilized countries of Germany in the early 20th century and turn them into the absolute monsters that they became in the 1930s and 40s? Well, a lot of it is very, very complicated, but a lot of it is that their economy completely collapsed, utterly collapsed in the 1920s. Hyperinflation, everything went to hell in the 1920s. And, and there's a lot of evidence that in that situation, when you completely deprive people of any semblance of normalcy or even food in a lot of these situations, they say, what else you got? Let's try something else. Who's this guy Adolf over here? He's got, he's Samson's, just give him a shot.

• 40:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Nice and charismatic.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  And I think there, there's actually many scenarios in which it came damn close to that in the United States. The fact that FDR was, was elected and we got FDR, who was a flawed man and it was very unpopular at the time, he's become less popular or less unpopular over time. But at the time, especially in the 1930s, before he became the war hero of the 1940s, in 1930s, a lot of people hated the guy. He was, he was the picture of everything that was wrong with America and he was gonna be, he was the emperor kind of thing. He was not a, not a popular guy in the slightest. And very interesting thing, I, I think about this a lot, there was in 1932, a very well organized plot, it's called the business plot, where a lot of very wealthy business people

• 41:38Speaker 01

  in America came together and wanted to organize, did organize what was gonna be a coup. And they were gonna force FDR out of office and replace him with a marine general named Smedley Butler, who would effectively, Smedley Butler, great name, uh, and he would effectively become dictator of the United States. And in an era where that happened in Germany and Italy and go on down the list of where that was happening, and as I said earlier, fascism was not a dirty word at that point, it came damn close to happening. It didn't, obviously.

• 42:09Tom Bilyeu?

  I can't believe I've never heard of this.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Because it didn't happen. And so a lot of people don't pay attention to the things that didn't happen. They don't pay attention to the terrorist attacks that were thwarted.

• 42:15Tom Bilyeu?

  I'll take some information on near misses if I can get it.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's a, it's a very interesting thing because it was very well organized and funded by a lot of wealthy people, uh, to do it. And so we know the story that happened, but there's a lot of alternative histories in which. The United States wouldn't have survived the Great Depression. And so that's why, maybe to your point of you'd rather go through a depression than go through that, I think depression very often causes that, that war and misery.

• 42:42Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah, there's no doubt about that. Economics is at the base of the pyramid. All things spring forth from the economics.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:49Tom Bilyeu?

  And speaking of, what do you think about all the trade warfare that's going on right now between us and even historic allies?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Here's the analogy that I've used, and I think I stole this analogy from someone. I can't take credit for it, but you're actually the expert here on food and nutrition and whatnot. And very debate, there's a lot of debates in nutrition. How much protein you should eat, keto, vegan, there's a lot of debates. The one thing, the one thing, ferocious debates. I think the one thing everyone agrees on is that refined sugar is bad. Is that fair?

• 43:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, even that, you're gonna have people that say, all that matters are calories.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  But am I directionally fair in that?

• 43:30Tom Bilyeu?

  You're on the right one.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Economics is very contentious. What should we do? Should we go left, right, and tax rates? A lot of ferocious debates. The one thing that almost every economist agrees on from either side is that trade wars are self-destructive and tariffs are terrible. It's one of the only things in which there is bipartisan, both sides agreement. It's the equivalent of refined sugar. And I feel like what a trade war is doing is put your fruits and vegetables away, it's time to pound some white sugar. That's effectively what we're doing. It's self-destructive. And

• 44:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think that America needs to?

• 44:04Speaker 01

  I understand why it happens.

• 44:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Why?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  It's smart politically. Because what is

• 44:09Tom Bilyeu?

  You need to get re-elected?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  What has every company and country done in the last year? They come grovelling to Donald Trump on their knees and say, please, sir, can I have an exemption? Please, sir, what can I do? If you're seeking for power, it's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful sword to hold over people. But economically, it's always a disaster and always has been. I mean, we've tried it millions of times in other countries. Every, there's been trade wars for thousands of years. And we've tried it in the United States, we've tried it all over the place. It never ends well. And so I think it's self, it's self defeating.

• 44:42Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think that there is a necessary reordering of the world order that needs to happen right now? Or is this just a maniac on the loose?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  I think it's closer to the latter. Now, I have a lot of empathy for people who their jobs were lost to, to China in the last 50 years. And those people are right to be upset. Of course, I'd be upset, you'd be upset if that was your life and that was your livelihood. And you felt like you got shipped away and you want to do something about it. So you can have empathy for that and understand why something needs to be, to change. And also say, this is not, this is not the way to do it. That the way to do it is, but A, I think that this is true for a lot of things in economics. That the era in the United States from probably about 1950 to 1980, when the US had virtually a monopoly on global manufacturing, where there was a lot of peace and tranquility, at least relatively 1970s, of course, were kind of a shit show.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  But by and large, a pretty good era. That was the anomaly. That was not the norm for which we should expect to go down to. That was the outlier. That was so many crazy confluence of events that came together, that gave the United States this unbelievable bounty of economic prosperity that we enjoyed. And I think there's a lot of damage that has been done in the last 30 years or so of assuming that that was normal and what we're going through right now is abnormal, when I think the opposite is true. That what we're going through right now historically is probably closer to normal. And what we had back then was this unbelievable unsustainable advantage that we will never go back to again. And so when people want to recreate that old America,

• 46:20Speaker 01

  when we had manufacturing dominance with much higher wages and whatnot, that was, that was such an outlier event that I think is, is very hard to, to repeat.

• 46:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think it's something that we should be aiming for? Or is AI just like, uh, makes it unrealistic?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Well, certainly, the reason that. Garment manufacturing and plastic toy manufacturing was sent to China and Cambodia and wherever it was else. It's because we don't want to do that in America and we shouldn't because the wages are so low that we would not want to do it. And no, and no one will be willing to do it. You know, if we brought garment manufacturing back to the United States and we had a sock factory here, you know, the people would only, there's two options. You could either pay those people a dollar an hour or socks are going to cost 50 bucks when you cost them or, you know, whatever it would be. Neither of those outcomes would be, would be acceptable to anybody in the United States. So that's why those factories are shipped to Cambodia. And what we're really good at in the United States is very advanced manufacturing, building airplanes and rocket ships and things like that.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  And tech entrepreneurship, that tends to be what we're very good at in the United States. And people get, I think, caught up in the idea of a trade deficit as a symbol of unfairness. And the example I use, uh, if I had a leak in my sink and I called a plumber, plumber comes over to my house, fixes my sink, I give him a couple hundred bucks, whatever it costs. The plumber probably didn't buy my book, probably. Let's, let's, let's say the plumber didn't buy my book.

• 47:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's hope he did though.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  I hope he did, but let's say he doesn't. I have a trade deficit with the plumber. I gave him $300, he didn't give me anything returned other than his product that he sold me, his, his skill that he sold me. I have a trade deficit with him. Did he rip me off? No, it's a, it's a mutual exchange for someone, he had a skill that I don't and I benefited from him. It was a mutually beneficial transaction. And I think that is by and large what happens in global trade, which is that China is better at some things than we are. They're better at low end manufacturing and they're willing to do low end manufacturing when we're not.

• 48:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, heard totally. But do, can you understand why, if you're a country that's like, okay, I buy everybody's stuff, but nobody buys my stuff, why at some point they go, hmm, I'm gonna, I'm not even gonna let my people buy stuff from you unless you start buying stuff from us?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  I think that can be a false notion because we have a pretty big trade deficit in goods. We have a massive trade surplus in services. We sell a shitload of services to other people.

• 48:44Tom Bilyeu?

  Makes people act like that?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  I think it is a very understandable, that I can empathize with, yearning to go back to an era that for many people, not everybody, but for many people was better than we have it today. And a politician made a very smart logo off this, make America great again. The yearning to go back, which can be colored by false nostalgia. Like in many ways, it wasn't, it wasn't as great as we remember it to be. But in some ways, it was, it was better. And the yearning to go back to that, I think is always going to be very appealing to the people, whether it was them or their parents who benefited from that era. And they feel like on the K shaped economy, they're on the, they're on the lower end of the K. That's always going to be a very appealing thing to it. I think a lot of problems in politics is that if somebody disagrees with you,

• 49:31Speaker 01

  it is, well, you're an idiot and you're uninformed. That's the knee jerk reaction without asking, well, what have you experienced in life that I haven't? That makes you think that? And if I were in your shoes, would I believe the same thing? And I think nine times out of 10, the answer is yes. And so I can look at that yearning for nostalgia and I could come up with 10 reasons why it's dumb and we shouldn't do that. And it's false nostalgia to begin with. I can also say, if I was in your shoes, I'd probably be saying the exact same thing with as much fervor as you do. So I think that's, that's a lot of it.

• 50:00Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, tons of uncertainty. You're really good at helping people figure out how they should be thinking in any given scenario. How should people be thinking about this moment with the fact that I can't see the future? You can't see the future, but there's a lot of like, oh God, in the air. How should people be dealing with this uncertainty?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  I'll give you two answers, one technical, one philosophical. Technically, and this is what I do with my own money. If you are only saving for the risks that you can envision, that you can put your finger on, you're going to be caught off guard by the surprise 10 times out of 10. And what does the most damage by far in history are the surprises. Pearl Harbor, nine 11, COVID, that nobody sees coming until they happen and do all the damage in the world. The solution to that for me has always been, I have a level of savings and liquidity and lack of debt that seems excessive. And if you were to look at it right now, you would, you might say, Morgan, what are you saving for? Are you saving like, well, you have all this cash, what are you saving for? And I say, I don't know. I'm saving for a world in which the biggest economic risk of the next year is something that you and I are not talking about. It's not in the newspaper.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Nobody's talking about it because it's always the case, always will be the case. So save an amount that feels like it's excessive. That is the only way in which you have a fighting chance to survive the risks that you can envision. That's the technical answer I'll give you. The philosophical answer is. There's a great quote that I love, which is, "When you haven't engaged with history, everything feels unprecedented." And a lot of what we consider uncertainty today is the idea that what we're going through is unprecedented. And I think if you just become a loose amateur historian of Western history in the last hundred, 200 years, whatever you want to do, you will see that the cast of characters changes, the plot changes a little bit, but it's the same movie over and over again.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  It's the same amount of uncertainty, it's the same greed, fear, overreaching, it's the same thing over and over and over again. That doesn't make things better, or not even necessarily make you an optimist, although I think it can. But it relieves a lot of the uncertainty when you're like, "We've done this a million times before." And a lot of those times it ended bad, it ended very badly. But let's not pretend that this is the first time that we've been dealing with these things. It's not. And I think, for me, that's made me, I think it's made me calmer and humbler. It's made me calmer in the sense that if you think we've never dealt with this before, it makes it feel 10 times scarier. Whereas if you're like, "We've done this before," and a lot of times that ended poorly, but we've done this before.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  And it's made me humbler in the sense of, at every one of those episodes where it's been the same movie in the past, nobody was able to predict what happened next. Nobody made it. And so, rather than sitting here and dwelling on what might happen in the next 10 years, which I think nobody can know, I would rather try to live in the moment and hang out with my kids and go for a walk and read good books and enjoy it, without pretending. Because what a lot of stress is, is like yourself trying to remove the uncertainty by trying to create a narrative of what you know is going to happen next. It's a false sense of surety that you give yourself to remove the uncertainty. And I just don't even try it. I don't even try to do it. It's there, it's always going to be there, we're never going to get rid of it, so I might as well enjoy it.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Eat, sleep and be merry because tomorrow we die.

• 53:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Cheers to that. Morgan, thank you, man. I love spending time with you. Tell people where they can find the latest book and how to stay current with you.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  My three books, The Artist Spending Money, Same As Ever, and The Psychology of Money. Every half decent thought I've had about money are in those books. That's where you can find it.

• 53:34Tom Bilyeu?

  And they are excellent.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Thanks so much.

• 53:36Tom Bilyeu?

  For sure. Boys and girls, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And 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,

• 54:17Tom Bilyeu?

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