No Mercy / No Malice: Boys to Men

As read by George Hahn. https://www.profgmedia.com/p/boys-to-men 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

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• 1:17George Hahn?

  This is No Mercy, No Malice. Some people have called this week's midterms a blue wave. Incorrect. This was a political earthquake that triggered a tsunami. The fault lines crisscrossed American society. An affordability crisis, ill-conceived tariffs, an unpopular war, racist and cruel immigration enforcement, metastasizing AI data centers, unprecedented levels of corruption, ever less accessible healthcare, a tight job market, and a desire for checks and balances. America rejected Donald Trump, and more important,

• 2:01George Hahn?

  his MAGA movement in the biggest electoral rout since 1974. And young men were the earthquake's epicenter, according to exit polls, swinging 36 points toward the Democrats in just two years, more than any cohort. As I said on the eve of the election, young men are the ultimate swing voters. But the reasons why many of them voted for Trump in 2024 remain the same when they voted for Democrats this year. Young men are struggling. I wrote this piece three years ago. Some of the numbers have changed. The trend hasn't. Young men aren't loyal to a party. They're loyal to a feeling.

• 2:46George Hahn?

  The system isn't working for them. In 2024, they sent that message to Democrats. This week, they sent it to Republicans. Same guys, same pain, different recipient. So here's my advice to everyone who won on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans alike. They didn't vote for you. They voted for change. And if it doesn't happen, there will be more earthquakes. Boys to men, as read by George Hahn.

• 3:28George Hahn?

  America has a vision of itself as the land of opportunity, with rights and liberty for everyone. That is not, and has never been, the reality. But for 250 years, we've been closing that gap at a greater pace than any other multicultural democracy. Lately, however, there's evidence we're losing ground. Life expectancy is down, inequality is up, and our discourse has become increasingly coarse. Every segment of society, except the wealthiest, can point to setbacks. One group's slide is particularly steep,

• 4:09George Hahn?

  and its decline presents a threat to the Commonwealth and our prosperity. Our young men are failing, and we are failing them. Boys start school less prepared than girls, and they're less likely to graduate from high school and attend or graduate from college. One in seven men reports having no friends, and three of every four deaths of despair in America, suicides and drug overdoses, are men. I've written about this at length and about how it relates to declining birth rates on the No Mercy, No Malice blog. Alienation and disaffection drive despair and violence.

• 4:53George Hahn?

  By age 27, high school dropouts are four times more likely to be arrested, fired by their employer, on government aid, or addicted to drugs than their peers who graduated. We face declining household formation, reduced birth rates, and slowing economic growth just as baby boomers enter decades of nonproductive retirement. The lack of an open dialogue about these issues has created a void filled by voices espousing thinly veiled misogyny, demonization of vulnerable groups, and a vision for masculinity that wants to take non-whites and women back to the 50s and Old Spain, respectively.

• 5:35George Hahn?

  The good news is the dialogue has become much more productive recently. There's a growing recognition of the size and severity of the challenges facing young men, and we can now turn our focus to solutions. In 1945, the US economy was the arsenal of democracy, a coast-to-coast assembly line of tanks, ships, and ammunition.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  And of all the things that American independence means to you, and to me, and to ours, never before, since Jamestown and Clement Rock, has our American civilization been in such danger as now.

• 6:21George Hahn?

  Forty percent of the nation's GDP went toward the war effort. Today, we spend 3% of our GDP on the military. But at the end of World War II, that economy lost its sole customer, and in short order, we had to find jobs for 10 million young people, mostly men, leaving military service and coming home. Wages fell, rents rose, workers in every major industry went on strike, and a nationalist movement began bubbling up. Leaders of every stripe feared a return of the Depression, or worse. Except that's not what happened.

• 7:05George Hahn?

  The next 30 years brought record-low unemployment, sustained economic growth, and world-changing technological innovation. Millions of households enjoyed steady increases in their quality of life, so much so that we had to invent a new social concept: the middle class.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  attractive home of John and Margaret Bryant, the home they've always dreamed of, the happiest investment they have ever made. At last, the Bryants have all the space they need. Big floor-to-ceiling closets for each member of the family, large, comfortable bedrooms.

• 7:40George Hahn?

  The term "working class" couldn't encompass the two-car garage, summer vacations, and son and soon daughter heading to college that exemplified an American middle-class lifestyle. And contrary to perception, the post-war middle class was not solely the province of white men. 27 million American women entered the workforce between 1950 and 1980, increasing their participation by 50%. The percent of black men who were in the middle class by income rose from 22% in 1940 to 68% in 1970.

• 8:21George Hahn?

  Underlying this prosperity was robust state support. The GI Bill funded college for 2 million soldiers and home loans and small business loans for hundreds of thousands more. Truman's housing legislation expanded the government's role in building homes and financing homeownership. Eisenhower launched a 40-year project to build a national highway system at a cost of over $500 billion in today's dollars. Income taxes were progressive. The top rate was 91%. And the wealth of the biggest earners was redistributed through social programs

• 9:04George Hahn?

  and investments in infrastructure, education, and science. The greatest innovation in the history of the West, the American middle class, was the product of intentional and sustained public investment. Our retreat from that vision has led to decades of prosperity, but little progress. We've slid into a cascading pattern of failure to rear, educate, and employ young men. Returning to our tradition of investment could rebuild the engine of capitalism and reverse the slide in their fortunes. Some ideas.

• 9:45George Hahn?

  The day a boy walks into school, he's behind half the class. With brains that mature later than girls, boys almost immediately fall behind girls in school. We should redshirt them, just as we hold back college athletes for a year so they can develop further. This proposal comes from Richard Reeves, who wrote last year's landmark book, Of Boys and Men. He joined me on my podcast and recently left Brookings to found the American Institute of Boys and Men. Once in school, boys have fewer male role models. Fewer than 1 in 4 teachers in America are men, down from 1 in 3 in 1980.

• 10:30George Hahn?

  It's a vicious cycle. As the fewer male teachers boys see, the less interested they become in pursuing teaching themselves. Lacking male exemplars of strength, kindness, and generosity, boys look elsewhere for models, like Andrew Tate, the global alpha male sensation.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  Women should clean up. Not only should women clean up, women should clean up unprompted. Why is your lazy ass not doing the work?

• 11:00George Hahn?

  And an accused trafficker, rapist, and self-proclaimed pimp. New York's NYC Men Teach initiative is a good start. It's focused on men of color, however. We need more programs encouraging men, all men, to go back to school and serve as role models for our boys. We need more extracurricular mentoring. One of the most influential people in my life was Cy Cordner, a stockbroker I met after walking into the Dean Witter Westwood office at age 13, who taught me about stocks and markets while in junior high. Cy, along with several other men who took an interest in me, helped shape the trajectory of my life and career.

• 11:45George Hahn?

  So do all mentors. Kids with mentors are 81% more likely to participate in sports, 78% more likely to volunteer in their community, and twice as likely to hold a leadership position at school. We need more male mentorship programs like Building Better Men, Growing Kings, and the Mentoring Alliance. At UCLA, I joined a fraternity my freshman year. Growing up without any siblings or a present father meant there were few men in my household. The Greek system has received a great deal of warranted scrutiny for encouraging reckless

• 12:26George Hahn?

  behavior, yet I would unreservedly advocate for a young man or a woman to join a fraternity or sorority. Zeta Beta Tau shrank an unfriendly place of 30,000 people down to a group of brothers who, in their own way, cared about one another. Within a week of pledging, my big brother told me to stop smoking so much pot and reduce my class load from four to three to ensure I did well my first quarter and gain some confidence. Common sense advice, which I lacked as a 17-year-old male who'd never spent more than seven days away from home.

• 13:07George Hahn?

  Without a network of other men serving as guardrails for me, I likely would not have graduated. Since the 1990s, preparing our kids for college has become entrenched in our DNA as the fundamental step to a brighter future for them. The rigid emphasis on national exams and $200,000 liberal arts degrees has crowded out vocational education as a path to success and stability. Parents shouldn't worry about children who opt for woodworking versus computer science. Instead, we should worry about men who choose day trading and pornography

• 13:49George Hahn?

  over building, creating, and repairing. Vocational training in Germany is a pre-employment system for youth, imbuing skills in kids at a young age even if they decide to pursue college. Establishing a household without debt and a marketable skill is key to building a foundation for a family and relationships. Some of our greatest citizens were apprentices, including Washington, surveyor; Franklin, printer; and Revere, silversmith. We need to sustain investment in this type of training

• 14:29George Hahn?

  along the lines of Biden's $150 million apprenticeship building program. Four-year colleges are still and will likely always be a tangible path to upward mobility. We should use the leverage we have over them as their primary financiers, i.e. taxpayers, to break a corrupt higher ed cartel and expand freshman seats. I wrote about this two weeks ago. Our fight over affirmative action and legacy admissions misses the forest for the trees. We need to add more seats, not reallocate our elites across a zero-sum game kept static by universities that aspire to be Chanel bags versus public servants.

• 15:13George Hahn?

  The vaccine to keep boys from becoming broke, lonely men is a stable childhood with male role models. Typically, that means two loving parents with reliable income and enough free time to spend with their kid. In 1960, roughly 5% of American children were born to unmarried mothers. Today, that number is 40%. Between 1975 and 2020, the share of children living without one or both of their parents doubled from 15% to 30%. Single-parent environments can be loving and can produce productive citizens. I am the product of one of them.

• 15:56George Hahn?

  However, we shouldn't pretend that every modern or traditional family is a harmonious and stable environment. Marriage isn't the only way to build a family foundation, but it's a potent one. Kids raised by married parents have stronger relationships with their fathers, see greater health and educational achievements, and are far less likely to experience physical, emotional, sexual abuse, or poverty. Interestingly, girls are less affected by family instability and single parenthood than boys. Likely explanation? Boys are physically stronger, and girls are emotionally and mentally stronger.

• 16:40George Hahn?

  How to keep more parents from divorcing? A: Money. One-third of American couples say money is a major source of conflict in their relationship. And research shows financial disagreements are the strongest predictor of divorce. Economic stress is tearing at the fabric of young families today as 35-year-old Americans have half as much wealth than they did in 1989. Meanwhile, 75-year-olds are twice as rich. We continue the inimbiist housing permit laws, rollbacks on child tax credits, preferential capital gains tax rates,

• 17:25George Hahn?

  and corporate tax loopholes to transfer money and opportunity from young to old. Congress should continue the bipartisan effort to extend the child tax credit, which relieves some of the economic burden facing young parents. We don't have to do any of this, but we're barreling toward a nation of old people where over half of government spending will be on seniors, diminishing our ability to invest. As is happening in Japan and Italy, this results in an anemic economy that loses relevance on the global stage.

• 18:07George Hahn?

  The population decline across the West is the biggest threat to democracy. Today, 1 in 6 Americans is 65 or older. A century ago, it was 1 in 20. We spend, as a percentage of GDP, 7% on seniors versus 0.5% on children. The demographic situation is getting so dire that ratings agencies are predicting half of nations' credit ratings will be downgraded to junk in the next 40 years. We discussed this on Prof G Markets.

• 18:48Speaker 06

  Scott, can you explain to us how demographics impact a country's creditworthiness?

• 18:54Speaker 07

  Well, in this instance, I mean, essentially, young populations are just more productive because old people want to stop working and relax, and they require more government assistance because they get sick, and they want pensions. So the ratio of young to old people is an indicator of the productivity and the economic vibrance or potential of a country.

• 19:17George Hahn?

  The population bomb predicted in the 70s was half-right. It has detonated, but it was an implosion. Democracy and capitalism need household formation, which means they need more economically and emotionally viable men to partner with women who've registered exceptional, hard-fought gains. One of the primary reasons women terminate pregnancies is they feel they do not have a reliable partner. Each year, $8 trillion worth of stocks and bonds trade hands. Of that $8 trillion, only $300 billion represents true investment

• 20:01George Hahn?

  used to grow companies via IPOs or secondary issuances. And that's a problem. We've become a nation of arbitragers versus investors. We arbitrage information, distributing whatever creates the most engagement versus pursuing the truth. We arbitrage fossil fuels and ignore the externalities. And worse yet, we arbitrage youth, milking them for capital and labor to enrich the incumbents. If there was ever a law that highlighted the war on youth other than a minimum wage that's below the poverty line? Student loan debt.

• 20:44George Hahn?

  Debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. A clean start, a second chance. These ideals are core to the American experience. However, our youth are sequestered from this American ideal. Think about this. Not given a second chance is the generation that deserves it most: young people. What is the point of all this? Our economy, education, laws, our society? I'd offer that the whole shooting match, the whole reason for a nation,

• 21:24George Hahn?

  is to create a context for deep and meaningful relationships. Deaths of despair, a lack of economic opportunity, and lost young men are all signs that our nation continues to offer prosperity, but not progress. It's time again to start investing. America needs young men. And they need us.

• 21:55Speaker 07

  Life is so rich.

• 22:09Speaker 05

  As soon as autumn rolls around and you swap your iced lattes for pumpkin spice, that's your signal to start thinking about the holidays: the decor, the gifts, the shopping lists, but more importantly, the holiday treats: cheesecakes, cookies. Is there anything better? And when the recipe calls for cream cheese, there's only one option: Philadelphia, the original cream cheese, made with fresh milk and real cream. This holiday season, whether you're going all out or keeping it simple, make it really Philly good.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Find your favorite holiday recipe at creamcheese.com.

• 22:56Speaker 01

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