Labor Market Failures & Opportunities — with Byron Auguste

Byron Auguste, the CEO and co-founder of Opportunity@Work, joins Scott to discuss what he sees as the biggest labor market failures, specifically around our nation’s obsession with college degrees. Follow Byron on Twitter, @byron_auguste. Scott opens by discussing leadership and connective tissue in Silicon Valley. Algebra of Happiness: what can you modulate? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  Episode 242. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposing maximum income of $25,000, equivalent to roughly $460,000 today. And duct tape was invented by a female factory worker during World War II. I use duct tape during sex and my therapist thinks I'm a pervert. And all I could think of was, how did he get the ball gag off?

• 1:43Scott Galloway?

  Go, go, go!

• 1:52Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 242nd episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Byron Auguste, the CEO and co-founder of Opportunity at Work and the former deputy assistant to the president for economic policy and deputy director of the National Economic Council. That's a lot that fit on a business card. Anyways, we discussed with Byron... What he sees is the biggest labor market failure, specifically around our nation's obsession with college degrees. Okay, what's happening? Volatility across the banking sector continues, although it does appear to be waning, mellowing out a little bit, taking a chupa, a little bit, not a full Xanax, but a half a Xanny, a half a Xanny. Wait, quick story about Xanax. Quick story about Xanax.

• 2:34Scott Galloway?

  My dad, who is 92 now, is staying with me at my place in Florida, not right now, but like a year, two years ago. And I hear him rustling around in the bedroom, and I go in there, and he's like, I can't sleep. I'm like, well, what's up, Dad? And he seems very disheveled and upset. He said, I can't find my Xanax. And he takes Xanax to help him sleep. And if you're thinking, well, your father shouldn't be taking Xanax every night. When you're 92, take whatever you want. The term "long-term effects" takes on new meaning. And he dropped his Xanax down the sink or something, and he was all upset. And all I needed to do was literally like make one call to the Real Housewives of Del Rey. The answer wasn't, do I have Xanax? But what size of Xanax would you like? My God, Xanax is everywhere. Anyways, don't know where I was going with that.

• 3:18Scott Galloway?

  And while we're talking about Xanax, we're not going to discuss the ins and outs of why Credit Suisse ended up in the hands of a competitor, nor why in the US we might be slowly marching towards a two-tiered banking system. We're going to talk about leadership and the importance of connective tissue, or at least playing a part in being a connective tissue, or connecting tissue across the US. A lot of connective tissue metaphors here. That is, there is a group of individuals in the Valley who recognize they have a vested interest in America, that they see that it makes sense that the system thrives, that America and Americans are prosperous. Unfortunately, there's a growing vein of people in the Valley who feel as if their interests are inversely correlated to the interests of America.

• 4:03Scott Galloway?

  They beg for government officials when they need them, but have a total disdain for them at all other times. The 23 hours and 50 minutes a day where their businesses are doing well, they shitpost government. They should just stay out of the way. That things run better when regulation isn't here. The government officials, according to Sam Bankman-Fried, are stupid. There is a total screed that began in the eighties with Thatcher and Reagan saying the government isn't the solution, government is the problem. Margaret Thatcher claimed there is no society, just businesses and families and individuals. And that is absolutely not true. And this inability to recognize that government is us, the government is us cooperating, is

• 4:47Scott Galloway?

  really coming back to haunt us, if you will. Think about the space race, higher education, DARPA. How was Tesla built? Well, on the back of a $350 million loan, given to them when they were a very risky business, on the back of multi-billion dollar investments in charging stations. Nearly every one of the most valuable companies in the world built that extraordinary value on one simple algorithm. An incredible thick layer of innovation and risk-taking, set on top of massive infrastructure investments, sponsored by the middle class of America, made by the most successful venture capitalists in history, the US government. I don't care if it's satellites, I don't care if it's GPS, I don't care if it's our

• 5:25Scott Galloway?

  highway system, or whether it's the internet itself, the US postal system, the grid, whatever these companies are built on. Moderna, one of the most successful companies of the last few years. Well, guess where vaccine research got its start and who funded it? You did, specifically, American taxpayers. And yet, and yet, there's a group of individuals, who are the most blessed individuals in America, who seem to be the least patriotic, who seem to have the least amount of connective tissue to the rest of Americans. And the collapse of several banks just cements this point. As Barry Ritholtz put it, "Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are also no libertarians during a financial crisis." These individuals...

• 6:08Scott Galloway?

  Feel as if, okay, on the way up, we're the Hunger Games and capitalism and rugged individualism and get out of the way and we deserve the fruits of our labor and it's like a 19-year-old that just finished Ayn Rand. This is total bullshit and terrible for America. Marjorie Taylor Greene has proposed that the nation split into two, that we go red state, blue state, that we just can't get along. And as Bill Maher pointed out, okay, then what? What about in the red states where Republicans are getting more and more comfortable with gay marriage, but some are still not? What about in blue states where there's huge support for Bernie Sanders and then the number two among Bernie Sanders supporters is Donald Trump? Exactly how many times are we going to split? It was a terrible bullshit

• 6:53Scott Galloway?

  idea when Louis Farrakhan proposed it, and it was not only a terrible idea, but the most violent war we've ever engaged in when it was proposed about, I don't know, what was that, 160 years ago? Government leaders are not elected to propose and even contemplate how we should split apart, but how we come together. And we are splitting apart. And the place we are splitting apart is in Silicon Valley, where there are people behind the scenes who are not screaming in all caps on Twitter, are not hoping for embedding on a decline in the banking system such that their crypto and web three assets and investments will go up, who don't see themselves as libertarians where the United States is just a bunch

• 7:35Scott Galloway?

  of fucking idiots that are supposed to buy their analytics for their security agencies, their cloud services for the CIA, pay for their second headquarters, give them tax breaks, weaponize governments so they can pass tax credits like 1202 with the first $10 million in gains are tax-free, tax-free. Think about that. Attempting to figure out a way such that you could gamify subsidies such that firms ranging from Amazon to Nike to FedEx don't pay any taxes. Think about that. Five of the biggest 100 companies in America paid no taxes last year. And where is ground zero for this lack of appreciation for connective tissue? In Silicon Valley, where it is divided into two camps. And that

• 8:17Scott Galloway?

  came to bear last weekend. There were people behind the scenes, including Reid Hoffman, including a group of venture capitalists trying to foment or trying to orchestrate an orderly sale, working with the governor of California, Governor Newsom, Speaker Pelosi.

• 8:32Scott Galloway?

  Representative Connagh, who are trying to be constructive, weren't screaming at the top of their lungs on Twitter saying, "Look at me, I'm right, I'm gonna cause a panic and then I'm gonna scream that the Coast Guard and the Navy and the Fire Department haven't shown up to put out the fire I set in my own backyard." These people are literally arsonists who grab a hose and then pin a medal on themselves for calling about the fire, for accurately predicting the fire. These individuals are not venture capitalists, they're venture catastrophists. And at some point, we need to realize in America, okay, do we want to continue to fund? Do we want to continue to have this bullshit Hunger Games capitalism on the way up and have the same people advocating for the Hunger Games pretend that we're Denmark on the way down?

• 9:16Scott Galloway?

  Capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down is neither, it's cronyism. What we have is a group of cronyist venture catastrophists in the valley who see the government and middle-class taxpayers as idiots, but it's okay, they have their go-bags, they have their rough-cut gems, they can lube and shove up their ass and head to their bunkers in New Zealand. And that's what they should be, they should be citizens of New Zealand because they're not acting like citizens of America. Does it make sense that we have incentives in America, and some of this is our fault, some of this is tax policy, idolatry of innovators, where we create an ecosystem where young people, unless they're in the top 1%, unless they have the right credentialing, end up with less income than young people had 40 years ago?

• 10:00Scott Galloway?

  People under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago, people over the age of 70 are 72% wealthier. So what do you know, young people feel very discouraged, they see these innovators as being the answer to all our problems, which is what these innovators claim, they take advantage of the system and they feel absolutely no fidelity to the Commonwealth. In 1907, two individuals tried to corner the copper market and their scheme failed. And the banks that backed them started going out of business. The first was Knickerbocker Trust, went out of business, and the contagion started and it was moving to First America Trust. So JP Morgan, who saw himself not only as a business leader, but as an American, called the seven biggest bankers to his Upper East Side townhouse, locked the door and said,

• 10:45Scott Galloway?

  "Okay, this ends here." And he pledged half of his wealth that he would put into the banking system to shore up the finances. He convinced all the other wealthy dudes, including Getty, and also the government, to do the same, and the banking crisis was averted. Can you imagine? Can you imagine any of the wealthiest Americans in the world, I don't care if it's Bezos, I don't care if it's Musk, I don't care if it's Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, can you imagine any of these individuals pledging 5%, much less 50% of their wealth to shore up the banking system? This entire crisis could have been cauterized. It likely would have never happened had there just been one tweet from Marc Andreessen or Peter Thiel

• 11:28Scott Galloway?

  saying the following: "We have instructed our portfolio companies to keep all of their funds in Silicon Valley Bank." Why? "We appreciate the role that Silicon Valley Bank has played in the growth of our companies and my wealth." Two, 73 of 73 banks that have failed in the last 10 years have had their depositors covered, 100 cents on the dollar. And finally, "It's good for America." It would have stopped it right there. But instead, they were taking pictures, or portfolio firms of these venture capital firms were taking pictures of their Slack channel, showing how there was a run on the bank. And guess what? If you scream loud enough, fire in a crowded stadium, you will, in fact, incite a panic. And that's what's happened here. And it's a very simple question. America,

• 12:11Scott Galloway?

  the reason America is wringing its hands over the backing or the backstopping of Silicon Valley Bank is not because it's not standard operating procedure. It absolutely is. Now we're 74 for 74. But they're wondering, should we be backstopping?

• 12:26Scott Galloway?

  Agents of chaos. Aren't we supposed to backstop Americans? Aren't we supposed to backstop citizens, not survivalists? So we need to take a hard look at, one, what is it about our system that's given rise and incentives to some of the most powerful and talented and well-resourced people to invest in assets and behave in ways that are contrary to the well-being of America? Two, do we need some sort of national service or some sort of leveling up of young people or some sort of ability to give our nation more connective tissue such that we don't have the emergence of the most powerful people who, quite frankly, want to see America burn? Where is this citizenship from Silicon Valley venture catastrophists?

• 13:09Scott Galloway?

  There have been three major puffs of emissions into the atmosphere over the last 50 years. The first was the suburbanization of America, the second, the industrialization of China, and the third, an ecosystem where the most blessed Americans feel less American. And my question to us is the following: do we want to continue to idolize, support, and subsidize a group of venture capitalists who are not venture capitalists but venture catastrophists, who are not Americans but agents of chaos, who are not citizens but survivalists? We have this all wrong. We need more connective tissue. I've given up on these guys. I'd like to think at some point they'll find their inner American. It is not showing up.

• 13:53Scott Galloway?

  America needs different incentives. We need to hold these people accountable. There should be congressional hearings on what exactly were the incentives behind these individuals' actions that led to a bank run and potentially put every American's prosperity on the line. And the majority of us, the majority of us, don't have bunkers in New Zealand. We'll be right back for our conversation with Byron August.

• 14:21Scott Galloway?

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• 15:24Scott Galloway?

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• 16:44Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Byron Augist, the CEO and co-founder of Opportunity at Work. Byron, where does this podcast find you?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  I am in Washington DC.

• 16:57Scott Galloway?

  You're in DC. Good for you. A great place to live. Let's bust right into it. Walk us through what you see as our society's biggest labor market failures.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Well, I guess it's hard to know where to start, Scott. I mean, the labor market in a lot of ways has all the dysfunctions that economists have ever spotted in a market and more. So maybe let me start on what we typically call the supply side, right? Which is sort of people looking for jobs because the labor market is a bilateral market. In principle, it's employers looking for the right people to hire, but it's also people looking for careers, earnings, satisfaction, all the rest of it. It's half your waking hours. But if you start with, let's say, 17-year-old, or for that matter, a 27-year-old, how many jobs out of that 1,000 or 2,000, depending on how you want to cut it, how

• 17:48Speaker 02

  many jobs do they actually know anything about? How many jobs are they informed enough to say, you know, that might be a great one for me? And, oh, how could I get there? I don't know. It's like maybe a dozen, maybe half a dozen, but there's a couple thousand jobs. So you start with that level of just ignorance. I mean, you're not an informed consumer in a sense. But then you go into, well, how do you get a job? And one of the things that Opportunity at Work, my organization, has worked on a lot is, in the last 30 years in particular, it's become the case that for most decently paying career path jobs, the gateway is to have a bachelor's degree, right? A four-year, well, quote-unquote, four-year bachelor's degree. And you have now millions and millions of jobs, by the

• 18:30Speaker 02

  way, jobs in which lots of people don't have bachelor's degrees, that say you need to have a bachelor's degree to be considered for the job. So that is a massive dysfunction, one we don't pay that much attention to. There are others like it, like licensing requirements and all the rest of it. And then on the employer's side, because the actual process... On the on the job site isn't like this perfect market that sometimes you know you envision in an economics textbook. There's a tremendous amount of risk aversion because a bad hire is a very visible damaging thing. It costs you money, it costs you time, it costs you, you know, embarrassment and demoralization. So there's a huge risk aversion. So the the way the demand side of the labor market tends to work is there's this huge effort to sort of screen people out as fast as possible.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  And and really get down to it to a shortlist, which might be okay if you were just looking for fit. Except we're using this incredibly expensive signal of a bachelor's degree as table stakes to even be kind of part of, you know, again, the decently paid parts of the market. And then to top it all off, we say, oh, if you want to apply for a job, you apply for, you know, fifty jobs, a hundred jobs. And every employer has to decide whether to put in, you know, money and time to figure out whether you are on the shortlist for this one job that hundreds of people have applied to. So it's really kind of backwards. It would be much better market if we're show what you can do and the jobs look for you, right? Like you're you had your profile and the jobs hit you up.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I could go on because there's macroeconomic characteristics. There's, you know, right now we have a, you know, a part of the business cycle where the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. They think, you know, there's too much employment, all the rest of it. So, um, yeah, but it's it's a honestly for an individual just trying to get to a better place. It's a bit of a mess.

• 20:18Scott Galloway?

  Doesn't it all come down to sort of one central theme or a change in the complexion of how corporate America approaches the labor market? And that is ideally, they should move from a certification based criteria set to a skills base that they should allocate ideally a certain percentage of entry level jobs based on a skills assessment, not a certification assessment.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we're big advocates at opportunity work for more skills-based hiring, absolutely, and to not have this, what we think of as really using degree as pedigree, as a pedigree screen rather than as a signal of skills. I mean, degrees, certifications, they certainly can also be signals of skills, right, if they're based on a curriculum that's sort of well-understood. And so it's not that degrees or certifications are necessarily a bad thing. They're a good thing insofar as they, A, that they carry real information content about someone's skills, and that they're accessible. So I think the problem is not that, for example, college degrees are one way of kind of, you know, sort of

• 21:24Speaker 02

  taking as an indicator of skill. It's that it's far too concentrated as the screen and only considering other indicators of skill afterwards. I mean, to be fair, it's not that easy to tell what skills someone has in a limited period of time. So there's real value in credentials, right? I mean, in theory, because they kind of carry that indicator. If they're validated by a third party, for example, but we need just a much wider array that are much more tightly kind of mapped to job skills and are more modular and flexible. And the final thing, Scott, is if the only way to get the credential is through a formal education program, that's particularly if it's mostly full-time, well,

• 22:07Speaker 02

  then it just limits the number of people dramatically versus learning on the job. You know, you can sort of validate what people learned on the job. That would be incredibly powerful.

• 22:16Scott Galloway?

  And a big sort of push of ours here is vocational training. Fifty percent of Germans have some sort of vocational certification. In the US, it's five. What role does vocational training play in all this?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Well, I think vocational training plays a big role, and The degree to which we think of different kinds of learning as class markers or status markers, I think is a big mindset problem that we've got here in this country. You know, when they, when they were doing all the work on, on the Common Core and even in English Language Arts, one of the discoveries in that research is that an auto mechanics manual is just as complex cognitively as any kind of piece of advanced literature. I mean, so this idea that there's some hierarchy of learning, some of which is vocational and some of which is, is, you know, more theoretical, I think is, is mostly a mistake.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And, but, but I think the bigger thing, Scott, relative to any educational program, is that most people actually learn those skills on the job. And, and I think if we kind of say, only if you're in a formal education program, even if it's a vocational education program, those are the only skills we're going to validate, then you take off the table the way most people build most of their skills most of the time and do so affordably because instead of not earning and paying money, you know, they're actually being paid money, you know, and they're, you know, they're earning as they, as they go. So one, one thing that's very important, if you, if you actually think of someone's learning as a combination of A, the main course is the work they do and how they're

• 23:56Speaker 02

  learning, and then almost like the, the side dishes are these top ups of, of different kinds of education, including vocational, that is a much more viable way and a much more flexible way and a much more genuine way actually of, of reflecting people's skills.

• 24:10Scott Galloway?

  It just feels so un-American that one of our biggest, one of our competitive advantages of, you know, we have the best higher education brands in the world, but it feels like it's gone absolutely way too far. Do you think the corporations are responding to this externality of the, are you seeing movement on their ends to start thinking about skills and apprenticeships and how they upskill people?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, we are definitely seeing movement, but I, I think just a realistic view is, you know, given that it was companies that mainly made this move in the first place, I do think it's mainly companies that need to undo it. Companies have outsized. Power in this market because of course, everybody wants a decent job. Now, not everyone wants to work at Morgan Stanley, but everybody wants to, you know, earn, earn a good living and have a career path and have their employer kind of invest in their, their training. It's, it's very important. So yes, I think it's incredibly important that first of all, wherever possible, companies remove the absolute ban on people, actually on people without bachelor's degrees, people

• 25:17Speaker 02

  who are skilled through alternative routes or stars. Because if you're actually looking for skills and companies say they are, then, uh, you know, actually look for skills. And if, so if you remove the degree requirements, right? You can think what you want about the degree, maybe you prefer it, but really remove the degree requirements. Now, the next step is if you can't screen people out just because they didn't go to a certain school or because they didn't complete college, on what basis would you screen them in? Because it is true that you can't interview everybody and it's true that not having a degree or not going to a fancy school is also not a qualification for a job. And so a lot of the work we do with companies and some of the best work going on is like, what are the screening signals?

• 26:00Speaker 02

  And then the other thing, Scott, that I think a lot of companies underestimate is within their own ranks, if they're a big company, there are a lot of frontline workers who actually have really relevant skill sets. So we see companies that are, that say, oh, we can't get great salespeople, but they've got all these customer service people, the best performing of whom would be amazing salespeople. And we, we have a database arbitrary work of the skills distance from every job to every other job, as well as the pathways people travel, like 140 million job transitions. And it's very clear that people can move from, for example, these, these, these second level help desk kind of positions and, and customer service positions into sales and they do great.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  But it's, it's almost like you've got to first take the blinders off and take the barriers away and then force yourself to ask the question, now you're doing your job. Like, how do we actually identify the skills? And sometimes those people are within our own company.

• 26:56Scott Galloway?

  So when I think of ground zero for kind of an elitist certification mindset, I think of your old employer McKinsey. Has consulting, I mean, I used to, I have, I play this game where I say, if you don't think stereotypes are powerful, I have every kid stand up, give me their background, and I say, based on the way you present yourself and your certification, this is who you're going to go to work for. And loosely speaking, I get a lot of them right. And if a kid with a deep Northern European accent and is ridiculously overeducated and then wearing German glasses, I'm like, oh, you're going to work in consulting. Because as someone who ran a consulting firm for the better part of my career, you want to show up with big biceps and thick hair in the form of credentials.

• 27:41Scott Galloway?

  That way, people think you're, you know, everything you say is smarter than it is. Have you seen any movement among consulting firms? I see that as ground zero for the problems you're talking about.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting that you see it as ground zero. And I, we have seen some movement. So I'll get to McKinsey in just a second. But Accenture, which is, you know, a consulting firm, very, very large one, with a whole range of activities, including a lot of operations and tech operations. They've been a leader in moving to apprenticeship models. And they actually, the first piece of analysis that Opportune Work did back in, well, we released it in 2020, just before, just before the Washington DC shut down for COVID. But it was, we did that with Accenture's economics team, and Accenture's been involved in this analytic work.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  But in their own, they've been a part of an apprenticeship network that they've been building around the country. And I think from, and I know from Accenture's side, while there's definitely an element of corporate social responsibility, when they look at the numbers of, of, of the talent numbers they need, they absolutely kind of need to build this out. So they've been ahead of, ahead of the curve there for the last few years. Now McKinsey's a really interesting case because, as you say, McKinsey's historically been in certain circles, you know, kind of byword for kind of very elitist credentialism. But McKinsey joined the Tear the Paper Ceiling campaign. And that was, and when they approached us, I said, I would love to have you as part of the campaign, but recognize that

• 29:18Speaker 02

  If you don't actually do the work yourself, right? You're not going to be happy you joined the campaign because everyone's going to ask. And to its credit, they have been actually removing degree requirements and they have been explicitly aiming to source stars and there's actually a McKinsey partner who is a star, who came in through, you know, kind of an acquisition of one of these tech companies that have been leading the charge and there's been a tremendous enthusiasm there.

• 29:46Scott Galloway?

  And talk a little bit, you're sort of on the front lines here. The labor market is a bit of a quagmire right now because we've all been waiting for the recession that doesn't seem to be showing up anytime soon. And when you look at the labor market, the stuff I read, what 1.7 or 1.9 open jobs for every person seeking a job, wages continue to accelerate. That's kind of the stubborn part of inflation, which you could argue is probably a good thing, as a lot of workers will overdo for a raise. But what are the dynamics you see in the labor market?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, it's interesting because the wage growth has been particularly at the lower end, you know, of the labor market. So I think it's a little bit amusing that when wage growth is among investment bankers, that doesn't seem to be the same kind of

• 30:31Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, people don't have their hair on fire.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Social crisis as when wage growth comes from people who are, you know, essential workers, frontline workers. And to me, that's just a supply and a demand thing. I mean, the fact of the matter, and it's a great thing because the more opportunities people have to move up, then the more opportunities people who are out of the job market have to move into it. The actual problem people should be worried about is more than one we had 10 or 15 years ago when the labor market was stuck. It's actually a great thing that the labor market is more dynamic, that people are more able to change jobs, that wages are rising particularly at the bottom and wages are a relative price, right? Like, I mean, when profits rise, well, that's a relative price, it's returns to capital. When wages rise, that's a relative price, it returns to labor.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  I don't think we should be panicked about that at all. But the thing that is true is that there is this tremendous gap. We've got a lot of work to do. We have these massive programs of industrial policy investment, public dollars going into infrastructure, going into reshoring semiconductors, supply chains, clean energy. I mean, when you look at that, these are millions of jobs that need to be done. Work is solving problems. You've got problems to solve, but you can't scale third graders fast enough, right? So you absolutely have to be tapping into the existing workforce. Markets can adapt if you let them and you support people, but right now, we're literally putting barriers in the way of people doing work that

• 32:01Speaker 02

  they could do today. That's nuts. And if you say, oh, we need more training, that's fine. But if you train someone without a bachelor's degree, and then you still exclude people without bachelor's degree, then your training hasn't done any good. And that's, I think, one of the missing elements that people haven't seen but need to.

• 32:19Scott Galloway?

  I'm curious if you think that some sort of combination of vocational training and mandatory national service should be on the table, if that would be good for America?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Well, I think widespread national service that would be great for the country in the sense of we have a class structure, I mean, race too, but like to race always, but to a very large extent, class now where people are living in such sort of small kind of niches and not knowing each other. So I think from a civic standpoint, it would be very valuable. From the standpoint of the labor market, if the work in national service was understood and the skills developed were understood, then it would be very valuable, you know, jumping off point. But even those who serve in the armed forces today have way more problems than should be the case in kind of when they go back into civilian life to having the skills they've

• 33:14Speaker 02

  developed in the armed forces being recognized. So there's multiple parts of this problem that certainly the part of like making sure that every young person kind of gets into the mix early is one part of it. But helping those jobs that they do, whether it's in a national service or otherwise, to be really recognized on a career path, that's another problem we have. And that's a signaling problem. And that's something that we could do better at on purpose. And that's a lot of what Opportunity at Work is working on.

• 33:43Scott Galloway?

  Byron Auguste is the CEO and co-founder of Opportunity at Work, a nonprofit organization that seeks to expand access to career opportunities. Prior to co-founding Opportunity at Work, Byron served for two years in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, where his policy portfolio included job creation and labor market skills and workforce policies, innovation, investment, infrastructure, transportation, and goods movement. He joins us from our nation's capital. Byron, appreciate your time and your good work. Thank you. We'll be right back.

• 34:20Scott Galloway?

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• 35:05Scott Galloway?

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• 35:28Speaker 03

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• 36:05Scott Galloway?

  Algebra of happiness. I want to talk about substances and I'm not sure where this is gonna go, but it's been on my mind a lot lately. I am taking, or I'm trying to take action against reducing my alcohol content, or alcohol consumption, I should say. And by the way, I'm pro alcohol. I've gotten, as Winston Churchill said, more out of alcohol than it's gotten out of me. I've really enjoyed it. One of the reasons I stay in shape, one of the reasons I try to eat fairly well, is such that I can drink. I find that it's a great lubricant for social connection. And it's like, well, that's pathetic that you need alcohol. Okay, call me pathetic. But I've found that having a couple of drinks with friends, new friends, old friends, makes me feel closer and makes us feel more uninhibited and creates bonds. I think it's a lot of fun. And for me, it's been a great source

• 36:50Scott Galloway?

  of stress relief. Having said that, having said that, I drink a lot. And it's not, I don't think I'm addicted to alcohol. I don't have an addictive personality. There's been periods in my life where, when I was just working so goddamn hard, I just didn't have time for alcohol or THC. And I didn't, I don't want to say I didn't miss it. I missed having free time and having fun, but it was go time and it was time to make money. But I have, I drink a lot in the sense that I don't drink for taste. I drink to feel better about myself and the world. And unfortunately, when it comes to THC, I'm a lightweight, like one small piece of an edible or one hit off a joint, and I'm very, very high. And that's one of the things I don't like about THC, or one of the reasons I like edibles

• 37:32Scott Galloway?

  is it's easy to calibrate. But I'm a heavyweight when it comes to alcohol. And that is, if I head out, and I have dinner out almost every night, I start, I order a Makers and Ginger, and the waiters are like, would you like another one? And my glass is constantly empty. And I can easily drink four to six Makers and Ginger. And I am not fucked up. I am not sloppy. I'm more affectionate. I am more complimentary. I am more talkative. I'm a better version of me, a little bit drunk. And unfortunately, it takes me four to six drinks to get a little bit drunk. And then if you're doing that two or three times a week, when you add it all up, what you realize is you're drinking a half or

• 38:12Scott Galloway?

  two thirds of a bottle of Maker's Mark. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a biologist to realize that's probably not good for your liver. And also, as my liver is getting older, unfortunately. You know, the assault on my body of this kind of level of alcohol just isn't a good idea. So that's the first lesson. And that is, as you get older, I mean, there's some basic things here. Are substances getting in the way of your life? Would you be a little less shitty to a bunch of things if you reduce your alcohol or your THC consumption? I think everyone has a certain level of addiction or vice. Figure out what yours is. If it's adding value to your life, which I think a lot of them do, fine. But if you modulated your intake, would your life get better? That's the first test. That's not my test.

• 38:56Scott Galloway?

  My test is recognizing that as you get older, your body just can't absorb the kind of punishment that it used to. I take an overnight back from LA to London, which I will do on Saturday. It will take me two days to recover. Jet lag literally kicks the shit out of me now. And I noticed that alcohol, whereas I didn't used to have very much of a hangover, I just felt kind of dehydrated. Now I have a full-fledged hangover. So I'm trying to reduce the amount of alcohol consumption. So I don't think it's a bad idea to just take pause and say, given where I am in my life, given what I have going on, you know, track your intake of substances, trans fats, sugars, you know, grain, whatever it might be, seed oils, treated grains, and

• 39:41Scott Galloway?

  say, is this an opportunity to modulate? I'm not saying go cold turkey. I'm not that kind of guy. I'm saying modulate. This is not a rental. And when I say this, I mean, your body, you want to be in great shape. You cannot be happy, or it's very difficult to be happy, if you're physically unwell. That is just sort of the first box that needs to be checked. And some things we don't have in our control, our genetics, we don't have in our control, but actually, they play a lesser role in overall health than we once thought in some. A lot of it is in your control, how you feel, right? How you're treating the thing, maintaining, curating, loving the thing that's going to make you happy or

• 40:25Scott Galloway?

  not. Press pause, look at your intake and decide, given my age, given where I am in my life, should I be modulating? Should I be adjusting?

• 40:36Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Caroline Shageran. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly markets show.

• 40:57Speaker 04

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• 41:06Speaker 05

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