Your Parents’ Wealth Matters More Than Your Salary — with Eliza Filby

Eliza Filby, historian and author of Inheritocracy, joins Scott Galloway to discuss why getting ahead increasingly depends on your parents’ wealth. They explore how the bank of mom and dad shapes careers, homeownership, and inequality. Plus, why time has become the ultimate status symbol, how businesses profit from Gen Z’s financial anxiety, and what changing gender roles mean for modern relationships. Check out Dr. Filby’s work: https://drelizafilby.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:21Speaker 01

  Welcome to a bonus episode of the Prop G Pod. We're now bringing you an extra conversations episode on Tuesdays. More time with people who help us think differently about work, life, and what matters. Today, we're joined by Dr. Eliza Filby, historian and bestselling author of Inheritocracy. It's time to talk about the bank of mom and dad. We discussed with Dr. Filby why the middle class is disappearing in the US and UK and climbing the ladder isn't as attainable. Why men and women aren't seeing eye to eye and how the business model of financial nihilism makes it all that much worse. With that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Eliza Filby.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Dr. Filby, where does this podcast find you?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  South London, a place you know quite well, I think.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  I do. Let's bust right into it. Your latest book, Inheritocracy, opens with a very striking data point, and that is over 5.5 trillion sterling in property wealth will be passed from baby boomers to millennials in the UK over the next few decades. In the US, the equivalent figure is $124 trillion through 2048. Let's start with the basics. What is an inheritocracy and how did we get here?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Right. So I kind of deliberately chose this word, a provocative title that essentially made up, right, as the antidote to a meritocracy, the idea that hard work led to reward. In an inheritocracy, it's a defeatist narrative in which basically your opportunities don't come from what you learn or what you earn, but whether you have access to the bank of mom and dad and eventually inheritance. And I wanted to explain what I felt was increasingly the narrative for young people is this idea of we were pushed into the knowledge economy and encouraged to really work hard and build that sort of academic prowess and get into a career.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  But actually, the truth is really since the 2008 financial crisis, it's really been an increasing tale of, you know, opportunity coming from your parents' wealth and generosity.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  You've argued that the shift from a wage economy to a wealth economy left this generation more soft than the parents were at the same age. You've also said we've had over 30 years of over-parenting with parents more involved in their adult children's lives than ever. How much of this inheritocracy comes down to economics and how much of it comes down to more societal influences such as parenting?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I think that's such a great question because I think one impacts the other, right? I mean, we saw this narrative of we have to invest in our children, the deliberate use of financial language when we talk about parenting. Parenting becomes, I mean, Richard Reeves, your great friend, talks about this, you know, active, you know, proactive selection and series of choices that we make in order to ensure that our children can succeed. And I think it really emerged in the 1980s and has intensified since the 2010s because there's no guarantee, in fact, the opposite is happening, that our kids will do, you know, as well as us or better than us. And I say that as a millennial who saw my parents invest in the property market in

• 3:36Speaker 02

  London, really build their wealth through that property surge. And I invested in my education and certainly they did in my education and that not generating the same return on that investment. And I think so, I think there is and has been this massive culture towards helicopter parenting, intensive parenting, you know, the average, you know, in-work mom now spends more time with their kids than stay-at-home moms did in the 1970s in America. And that's reflective of the insecurity that parents feel around, you know, what's best for our kids? How do we build children that turn into, you know, not just happy adults, but like productive and, you know, secure families?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  And I think so parenting is a reflection of the level of economic insecurity that we feel right now. And that's really been the tale since the 1980s. And I, so I think there is right now a real obvious narrative building. We have changed the economics of adulthood, but we've not changed the expectations.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  So it feels like the perfect storm of an upward spiral for some people. And if you aren't on that spiral, you're, you're just basic nutrition, if you will, for the people on the spiral. And that is you can take care of their grandmother, or you can bring them their food, or take them in, you know, an Uber to where they're going. But the upward spiral, I'm going to try and describe the spiral. It starts at a very young age. Your parents have money, so they instill a sense of education in you, importance of education. And then by the time you're in high school that you're part of the tutorial industrial complex, where on average, someone from an upper income home scores 380 points above on the SAT, someone in a lower income home.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  They get into a quote unquote elite school where they not, they may or may not get a better education. I think the actual education is overrated or the delta between good schools and great schools. What you get is proximity to other really rich kids who have their own contacts and want to do business with each other. And then, so the upward spiral continues. And then because of tax policy, we've decided not to intax. The US has become much more like Europe. Europe used to be dynastic wealth, low taxes on, high taxes on income, low taxes on wealth. The US is now low taxes on both.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  And so there's this upward spiral of dynastic wealth that starts from a young age where the most important forward-looking indicator of your wealth, quite frankly, is how wealthy or how rich your parents are. Has the US not opted for a caste system more similar to Europe and kind of the golden age of European power in the kind of, you know, 19th and 20th centuries?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I think you're absolutely right. I think the first thing to say there about what you've described and outlaid is this idea that the bank of mom and dad isn't just something that is reflected in help with the down payment. It is also manifested in education, of course. It's also manifested in their networks. You've seen the rise of the LinkedIn parent, like literally networking on behalf of their children. We've seen the bank of mom and dad not just be the springboard into adulthood, but quite often the safety net through the cost of living crisis. I think that it's really important to see the bank of mom and dad in very holistic terms that impacts actually low income, middle income, and high income families, just to different and varying degrees.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  But on your point about the difference between Europe and America, you're so right. I mean, in the, in the US, I always like, you know, I'm slightly struck by the openness, not only the way that you talk about money, but the proud sort of belief in the American dream and, and that idea of building generational wealth, right? And, and, and I think in Europe, we have a much more sort of shy, particularly in the UK, frankly, where we like to assume that our aristocratic dominance is now confined to the TV in Hollywood, in Downton Abbey, when in actual fact, the data will, will kind of illuminate the fact that we have seen an extraordinary rise and a persistent level of control of those that own land, own property, own significant amount of wealth,

• 8:00Speaker 02

  and a real decline in social mobility and meritocracy. I think that actually in so many ways, America is ahead of Europe in so many different ways, particularly on the economy. But on the rising in heritocracy, I think it's probably slightly behind. We've been talking about the bank of mom and dad in the UK really since around 2012, when in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, we really saw, you know, assets appreciate and, and younger millennials being unable to get on the housing ladder. And, and so much of wealth concentration in the UK is around property, particularly in the London southeast. And that really kind of concentrating this wealth and, and really concentrating those that had access to a core marker of adulthood, which is homeownership, right?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I think in the US, you're beginning to have this conversation and, and beginning to actually use the word inheritocracy. And I think it's, it's, it's reflected in obviously kind of, you know, the culture and expense around college and how, and the questioning of perhaps some of that expense in the age of AI. I think it's definitely starting to impact your, your property economy, you know, one in four Gen Zers now rely on a parent for a down payment. And I think, you know, generally speaking, the average American parent now expects to be funding their kid until the age of 30. And, and, you know, we have, as I said, you know, we've, we've changed the economics of adulthood and we berate young people for not, you know, gaining a foot on the ladder, not, you know, putting up, working, working their way up the ladder.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  But frankly, the economics of adulthood has changed and people are relying on their parents to get that foothold on that ladder.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So something I adopted from the UK was the members' clubs. And that is, I mean, that's part, that is part of the spiral. When I socialize, I'm not going to meet a middle-class guy at a bar watching the Fulham game. I'm going to meet someone else from the cast, the upper cast at Maison Estelle or, you know, whatever it is, a Five Herford, right? The homogamy, I think it's called, only associating with people in your kind of social or economic weight class just creates further upward spiral. And I'm guilty of it. Well, it's too late for me, but I joined, I basically, I never was admitted to any of these clubs when I was a younger man. So now that anyone invites me to anything, I join it.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  So I'm a member of about five or six members' clubs in New York. So I went to one called Costa Cipriani downtown and I went with three buddies. And we ordered some appetizers and two rounds of drinks and it was 800 bucks. And the manager, I was a new manager and the GM came over to introduce himself and I said, Sam, I said, can I ask you a question? And he said, sure. And I said, okay, 800 bucks, whatever, you know, how about it? More power to you. Everyone here is either a woman in her twenties or thirties, they look like they're in their twenties, or a dude in his thirties, maybe his forties. I said, how is anybody paying for this? And he said, well, one, no woman is paying for anything here. Okay,

• 11:06Speaker 01

  so Casa Traballones, where feminism goes to die. And two, and two, he said, half the men here, this was what really struck me, half the men here are, it's not their credit card, it's their dad's credit card, and they're mostly nepo babies from New Jersey. So that massive amount of wealth is now, you know, being pushed into, you're a hedge fund manager, worked for JP Morgan for 20 years, owned a series of car washes in Montclair, you were at 10, 20, 30 million dollars, and your son now has your credit card, because the reality is, your son, you want your son to have a good time, you want your daughter to have a good time, you want your daughter to pursue that great job in the city, you

• 11:48Speaker 01

  want your son to be social and, you know, move to San Francisco to pursue his dreams in tech. They can't afford it. It's just unrealistic. I moved to New York when I was out of UCLA. My mom lent me, I think, 100 bucks for a suit. I was able to dance between the raindrops and make it. You can't do that now. You just can't.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Well, I just think so much of what you said is absolutely true. You know, this is where it's really important to recognize that that period from 45 to 79, 80 was the exception, not the rule, in terms of social mobility, but also mixing between the classes. You're so right about the siloing of classes. And how do people used to mix? Through social clubs, really through the army, like, the army was the great social leveler.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Service.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  And, and also, education, right? And, and, you know, communities, I would say, were, were, were less siloed and more integrated than they are now. But I think you're so sort of on the money when you talk about this idea of, of, you know, parents don't, don't, they're perhaps aware of, of the sort of term nepo baby, but also, they don't want their kids to fall behind. They want to help their kids where they can. And like you say, in the major cities across the world, and it's not just New York, it's not just San Francisco, it's not just London, you know, increasingly, it's Beijing, it's, you know, Shanghai, there are places all over the world now where unless you have that parental prop up, you don't have access to those, those cities, let alone private members' clubs.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  You don't have access to those jobs. You don't have access to that network. You don't have the, you know, and I think that the situation that we get into is that, and I did a lot of research this in the book, we asked, you know, we asked people aged under 45, do you think you live in an heretocracy in the UK? Right? And overwhelmingly, the people that said, yes, we do, were those earning over $150,000. So those in the higher income bracket were the ones that said, yes, we definitely do. And then you ask them, okay, do you, do you, are you a recipient of support from the bank of mom and dad?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Or worse, the bank of, you know, your in-laws, right? And majority of them were. So we've seen this really important disconnect, where wealth is no longer defined by your wage. Okay? And so, that's the first thing. The second thing to say is, the ones that recognize, perhaps reluctantly, and maybe never in public, the importance of the bank of mom and dad in order to build wealth, get on the springboard, make your way up, are often men in high-earning professions, who have worked really hard, potentially earn a lot of money, but still, in order to, you know, build a home, build a family in New York, have to rely on the

• 14:40Speaker 02

  bank of mom and dad, or as I said, the really emasculating factor, the bank of in-laws. And one of the things that you're really seeing is that disconnect between what I earn and what I'm able to build. And actually, what I'm able to build is really ever increasingly reliant on your parents and their capacity to help you build it.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 15:11Speaker 03

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• 15:52Speaker 01

  It's, so I grew up, and by the way, Dr., hopefully the producers warned you that our guests are just a vehicle for me to talk about myself.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  I love it. And I loved your book, by the way.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. So, when I grew up, the general gestalt among all families was, if you were even wealthy families, I'll pay for my kid's college. Like, my parents were not in a position to, they helped a little bit, but they weren't in a position to pay for my college. If you're wealthy, the general American way was, I'll pay for my kid's college because I have money. But when they graduate, they're on their own. And not, not because they weren't generous, good people, but there was a general recognition that the need to make it on your own was key, was critical training, from a character and from a finance standpoint. And they could do this. And not only that, but, and I know this as someone

• 16:49Speaker 01

  who didn't have money growing up, but has money now, I think I enjoy my money more than rich people or kids born with money. I didn't get to go to amazing hotels and fly business class. And now that I get to do those things, I just think it's fucking amazing. I'm just, I'm kind of overwhelmed with joy at how amazing these things that money can buy you are, because I didn't even know they existed when I was in my twenties and thirties, much less when I was a child. Having, and so I grew up with, you know, when my kids were little, yeah, help them, give them what they need, you know, maybe loan them some money for their first house, pay for their college. The same thing has

• 17:30Speaker 01

  happened to all my friends. We all say the same thing. And then, our daughter's a good kid, and she wants to teach high school math, and she can't live in San Francisco on $44,000 a year. There's just no way. But your kid's a good kid, they play by the rules, they got a degree, even if they want to be a lawyer, and they want to pursue their dream of law school. Okay, that's half a million dollars to go to NYU law school. They want to, they want to pursue their dream of acting. Okay, maybe that's a little bit more indulgent, but, or ballet. Your kid, your kid has studied dance their entire life, they're really good

• 18:12Speaker 01

  at it, they need to live in one of five cities. And every one of my friends, except for one, is still financially supporting their kids in some way, directly and indirectly. They don't send them cash, they let them stay at their house, they don't sell their house, they move and they get to stay in the house. And again, it creates more, that's the spiral.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  But do you know what? I interviewed someone who was a 35-year-old actor, and his, he said to me, in his own words, I had had a completely over-parented, completely comfort-driven childhood. He grew up in very sort of leafy suburbs of London. He'd had a very smooth path through private school, Oxford University, and then his parents, who were both lawyers, had access to a central London apartment. He had that basically rent free throughout his twenties. And they were both frustrated actors. He really wanted to be an actor, they

• 19:17Speaker 02

  put him through acting school. And by the age of 35, he had failed to become a successful actor. And as I was interviewing him, I was saying, you know, your parents just invested so much in you, you must be, you know, incredibly grateful for all of that. And his words were quite... Revealing, because he said, yes, but I really wish they hadn't. I really wish they'd kicked me out at maybe twenty five, certainly not thirty two, when they eventually did, and say, go and get a job, go and make something of yourself. We've given you all that we can. It's now time to basically be independent. And I think one of the questions that any parent should pose, and I have a nine year old and a six year old, I'm not there yet, but certainly it's present at the top of

• 20:02Speaker 02

  my mind, is this is the question, right? When does support become disabling as opposed to enabling? Right? And that's the great question, because what you eventually want, right? The whole point of being a parent is to push them away, push them out of the nest. And you want them to be independent, you want them to grow, you want them to build their own thing and ultimately build a family, one would hope. And that is really difficult to do if all you've done is frankly over parent them and over overly supported them. And in this economy, that's a really hard call, right? That's a really hard call. And I commend anyone that has got that balance right. But I would say the more money that you have earned, actually, the harder it is to

• 20:47Speaker 02

  make that call. And I lecture a lot of, you know, give a lot of lectures and a lot of talks to ultra high net worth families. And one of the major challenges you see is if the father, and it is often the father, has made the money in their first gen wealth, the disconnection between their childhood, right? Often, you know, growing up in poverty and making it compared to their own child, like there's a total lack of relatability, first of all. But also, they cannot understand why, just by demonstrating hard work, that they don't instill hard work in their children. And parenting doesn't work like that, because quite often, kids, you know, basically, you

• 21:30Speaker 02

  know, it's, they don't listen to what you say, they look at what you do. You know, phone usage is a classic example. You know, so it's like, it's a really difficult call to be able to kind of build, you know, financially independent kids when you have grown up in wealth. I would argue it's one of the curses of too much money.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Oh, sister, you have no idea. I mean, this is what, when, when my mom and dad got divorced, my mom, our vacuum cleaner broke down and we couldn't afford to get it fixed. And so we used to, we borrowed a rake from neighbors and we used to rake our shag carpet because it made it look sort of vacuumed. And, I mean, it's not a sob story, we never went hungry. But I've said oftentimes, if I had what my kids have, I wouldn't have what I have. I was just so moti-, I mean, the biggest source of stress in my life growing up was not that my dad wasn't around, or my mom was, you know, struggled a little bit with

• 22:33Speaker 01

  some issues, is that we didn't have any money. And so from a very early age, I'm like, oh, walk your dog for three bucks? Yeah, I'm in. Oh, get up at work to job so I can maybe afford to go on a date? Oh, wait, start working tomorrow after school lets out? Because if I don't save twenty eight hundred bucks by fall, by September one, I'm not re-enrolling at UCLA. I mean, those, that muscle, those muscles that build have served me well my whole life.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  I totally agree. And in very, in very different degrees, I had a childhood that was very chaotic. And the drive, and frankly, the hunger I have to create a certain level of financial stability for my kids that I didn't have is the thing. And it's a curse as much as a blessing. And one of the things that I often go into companies and say is, you know, all I hear about is young people lack hunger. They lack the commitment. Why don't they put up and shut up and work their way up like I did? You know, that's the classic trope from a Gen Xer, right? And I was like, well, you do realize we're living in an economy where you're more likely to get on the housing ladder, your younger folk are more likely to get on the housing ladder by being loyal to their parents than being loyal to their boss.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  So, you know, if you want hunger, right? You want that drive, find someone who is not supported by their parents. Find that person who is supporting their parents. And, you know, that's, that's quite, you know, forty three percent of lower income millennials and Gen Z'ers have helped their parents. So we talk about the money cascading down the family tree, but it's also going up as well. And in an uncertain economy, you know, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for families to pool their resources together. And that's, you're seeing that more and more and more. You know, the rise of most generational households, you know, in the US, it's higher now than it was in the Great Depression.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  You know, and that tells you something, is that actually there's a huge amount of stability and solidarity that people are finding in bringing that, bringing those, that generational sort of wealth together and pooling their resources.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  There's so much, so much here. The, you know, I'll speak to senators on both sides of the aisle, and the Republican senators want to talk about income inequality and how young people aren't doing as well. And we've weaponized, incumbents have weaponized housing and college degrees and made it harder for younger people to, to kind of get on the ladder, if you will, and say, well, yeah, but the young people are about to inherit all this money. It just doesn't make for a healthy dynamic that your only means of buying a house is to kiss your parents' ass. It's just not. I mean, a lot of people don't have those parents. And it's also, and also, quite frankly, our parents are living too damn long. Great, I'm going to get a house when I'm eighty and they're a hundred.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  I mean, it just creates, I find it creates an unhealthy dynamic.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  And you're absolutely right. So, so we talk about, so, you know, the milestones of adulthood. In a way, we perhaps over emphasize the economic hardship and obstacles that young people face and under emphasize the greater freedom that young people frankly have now. You know, my mom had her first, first child in her twenties. I couldn't have coped with a child in my twenties. Like, that was, I'm glad I had those extra years of freedom before I had kids. But, but the second element to this is, is this idea of the life course genuinely is changing. So we talk about extended adolescence, you know, we celebrate our thirtieth birthday now like we used to celebrate our twenty first as the entry point into adulthood, right? But also, we're living longer.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  So at the other end of, of, you know, the life cycle, we're living longer, but we're not just living longer, we're living longer with complex illnesses. And so one of the things that I write about in the book, and I was really intrigued as to how people, young people were thinking about this, is, you know, it's a very real prospect that millennials and Gen Z will spend as much of their time, maybe more of their time, looking after elderly parents than looking after infant children. You know, I interviewed a woman in the book who looked after her mother for fifteen years. And that was, in her own words, a massive burden. And it was only, you know, she was in her sixties when her mother eventually passed away.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  And so I think we need to talk about, you know, not just delayed adolescence, but what longevity means for the family at large, not just for the older people going through that. And obviously, the impact on inheritance. We could say that these millennials and Gen Z are going to get all this money, but how much of it is going to have to go on social care? You know, and, and in an age where women frankly cannot do the amount of care that they used to do, because a lot of them are still are working, we've created this weird dynamic where we have seen this absolute, you know, workplace revolution for women, but no infrastructure to replace the work that they do less of, which is caring for children and caring for the elderly. And to a certain extent, they're now doing all three.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  We'll be right back.

• 27:55Speaker 04

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• 28:49Speaker 01

  We're back with more from Eliza Filby. I want to return to the notion of what you do, kind of parenting advice. And my way isn't naturally the right way, but my plan is the following. I've given up the notion that I'm going to be, that's it, out of college. You're on your own and they'll develop character and the reward. Who am I kidding? The approach I'm going to take is what I call scale up or scale down. And that is if one of them wants to be a math teacher and live in Delray Beach, which is expensive, I'm going to help them out. If one of them at 24 is living in the basement and borrowing a Range Rover and, you know, my credit card, I'm going to scale them down. At some point, it's going to be, boss, you know, I'm rich, you're not.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  So, okay, so can I add a complication to that? Is any partner involved? You know, this is why, you know, we have 42% of millennials and Gen Zs have prenups. And, and we associate that idea of prenups being, you know, a way to fix gold digger women who are, you know, this sort of historic caricature of the gold digger woman. Actually, what's really happening is that prenups are being pushed by parents, actually quite middle-class parents, who are wanting to protect their wealth. And, and given that, you know, we are living in a society with such a high divorce rate, that's actually perfectly logical. Here's the thing that's happening in the UK, right? So it used to be this process of assortative mating, okay?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  So the educated Gen Xer would partner up with the educated Gen Xer. And most people would meet at college or, or, you know, work being the principal place. And, and, and what's happened over the last 15 years is that you're getting assortative mating play out slightly differently in an inheritocracy, which is it's no longer graduates marrying graduates, okay? You're getting one graduate with the bank of mom and dad marrying another graduate with the bank of mom and dad. And where the prenup is coming in is where you're getting one graduate with the bank of mom and dad marrying one graduate without the bank of mom and dad.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  And I think one of the, you know, we talk about this sort of return to Jane Austen world of dating, where we've kind of basically fixated on, on the wealth of, of the potential spouse. And we are living, it's really interesting. If you look at all the data around Gen Z and how they're talking about financial capability, like sort of matchmaking, people within that demographic recognize the importance of marrying someone of equal wealth. And, and I find it fascinating that Gen Z have a really unromantic view of, of the role of money in, in partnering up with someone.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  And I think it's very wise because essentially it has become a more and more important factor. And that's not because women are wanting to marry a guy in finance. No, they're probably, you know, rather than that being the advice, it should probably be marry a guy whose dad worked in finance. No, women are bringing so much more money and so much financial competence and their own wealth and their own assets to a partnership. And so money has become more important than ever. What's happening in the UK is that we, there's certain conditions, you know, our inheritance tax laws are very different here. We have a tax system where we're encouraged to gift before death. Where in the US, it's the opposite. But the, the tax breaks is on gifting before death.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  But that comes with the uncertainty, right? That doesn't exist when you gift when you're dead, because you don't know what's happened. Gifting in life, okay, well, am I going to put certain conditions on that? Am I going to actually say, well, hang on a minute, let's ring fence that for, for you? And then don't get the partner involved because I don't really like her. And, and let's, let's go straight to the grandkids because that's uncomplicated. And people are losing inheritances in divorce settlements. So it's, it's a very complex thing, which I wish you a lot of luck with.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, under the auspices of, of, of good problems, I find a lot of it is in the batter. And that is, I have one son who has returned hoodies. I've purchased them because he thought they were too expensive and credited my credit card. And then I, my other one, if, you know, if I gave my black card, he'd show up with a Range Rover and a cocaine habit. And there's just so much of it is just kind of who they are. And it's like First Lady Obama said, we like to think, you know, they come to you. And I'm not sure there's a lot, I'm not sure there's a lot we can do. Fortunately, I think I'm going to, I'm going to die before any of this gets really real. On your Substack, you wrote a post titled, "The rich don't flaunt money, they flaunt time",

• 33:43Speaker 01

  where you argued that wealth and luxury have moved away from material goods and are now more synonymous with privilege of time. Now the scarce goods seem to be attention, sleep and an unhurried life. How did we get here?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  I, I, I think it goes back to actually your brilliant point. I quote you in the essay about, you know, that the advertising is something that, you know, if you have enough money, you're not, you're not exposed to. And I think you, time has become the, the new luxury because essentially it used to be a major flex to sort of exhibit how busy you were and, and how committed and enslaved you were to the corporate ladder. But now that that's no longer paying, where the major flex is, is, is having control over your time, having control over your attention and having control over your wealth that you're not basically driven by wage alone.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Gen Z and the business model of financial nihilism. You've written about how Gen Z are not the first generation to experience instability and uncertainty in their youth, but they're the first to experience an infrastructure built to monetize it. You say that financial nihilism has become a business model. How does Gen Z's lived experience compared with that of previous generations?

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Do you know what? I think it's all about a level of, a sense of, of jadedness that's palpable amongst Gen Z because of the expectations. What they were told, young adulthood and that pathway into adulthood would be like, hasn't materialized and, and has been replaced with a level of uncertainty and actually a monetization of that uncertainty. I write about their prediction markets, but also OnlyFans. You know, OnlyFans isn't just pornography. It's actually monetizing the crisis of loneliness we have right now amongst young men.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  And, and, you know, we are living in this era of economic nihilism, you know, popularized by the likes of Kyla Scanlon, because we are, we are seeing these, you know, this is a response to the absolute collapse of expectations of what early adulthood and that path and route into adulthood should be like. And, and, and I think we are, are living in the era of the broken promise. The idea of life being linear, the idea that you work hard, that there's a reward, that that, you know, manifests and materializes in a home and a family. And that being not just something that men can achieve, but also women, right?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  And I think the era of the broken promise is, is creating this level of false expectation, but also, you know, how do we respond to that? Well, prediction markets is one response, immigration is another. You know, investment culture is another. Setting up micro businesses, you know, in window cleaning and funeral provision is another. You know, there's all sorts of ways in which people are responding to the era of the broken promise. And I think what's interesting is that politicians haven't really responded. People are.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, crypto, I would put crypto and buy now, pay later in there. There is, there is again, another perfect storm. And that is, the, the average 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. They used to control 12 or 13% of GDP. People under the age of 40, now it's nine. There's just no doubt about it. There's been a regulatory capture and a leaking of economic power and wellbeing and affordability on education and housing through artificial scarcity that has taken everything and floated upwards. And if you're fortunate enough to have parents in the upward, upward, you know, decile, you'll, at some point, you'll, you'll have money rained on you.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  That's great, but it doesn't, it doesn't benefit the lower 90 of young people. The, the other reality is that things aren't as bad for them oftentimes as portrayed on social media. Because if you actually, if you look at their actual purchasing power, if you look at what they're able to buy, if you look at their services, if you look at their lifestyle, you know, I wasn't taking Ubers and having, having chicken pad Thai delivered to my house. The amount of streaming media, the content, you know, there, there is an argument that...

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, the the the middle class person is living better than the wealthiest king from 100 years ago. What Warren Buffett said kind of is relevant here, and that is the key to a happy marriage is low expectations. Our species is memetic. And you would never tell a woman, well, you're 97 times less likely to die in childbirth right now than you were 100 years ago. You should be grateful. That doesn't work. That's not how young people think. 110 times a day, they're reminded of someone else's wealth. And that, I mean, the nicest thing that happened to me in my 20s and 30s was I didn't know what it meant to be rich. I just didn't know. I mean, I had ambitions around it, but it wasn't a lifestyle I expected. Now, if you have a phone, it feels like everyone but

• 38:48Speaker 01

  you is in Ibiza, partying with black coffee, waiting to get on their Gulfstream back. And if you haven't achieved those things, you failed.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Do you know what? There was a brilliant experiment done in 1950s America. In 1952, there was a survey asked, do you think you're an important person? Right? And and just 12% of Americans in 1950s from this pool, from this sample, said, yes, I'm an important person. The survey was run again in 1990. So who that included, it included the Greatest Generation, it included the Boomers, it included the Silence and and Gen X. Okay, 1990. So not millennials, not Gen C. 80% of people thought they were an important person in 1990. Now, I say this to illustrate a key point here. We've seen this rising individualism, the importance of the self, the inward analysis of the self and the decline of the collective

• 39:39Speaker 02

  as a result. But what happened with smartphones, and you know, we talk about smartphones endlessly, I think, but fundamentally, it gave people access to the world's information and the world's marketplace in their pocket. But it really heightened the self. And and what the dysfunctional relationship with social media is about, is it the set, at one time, it's telling you, you're the most important thing in the world, and everyone's praising you and notifying you and commenting on your outfit and your holiday and all that. And then immediately, almost in the same scroll, saying you're worthless, because look what, look what's happening over here, look what this person is doing here. And it puts everyone in a race. And it heightens this sense of comparison culture, which we know

• 40:21Speaker 02

  is the thief of joy. Right? But ultimately, it gives, you know, gives when it comes to work, when it comes to wealth, when it comes to, you know, dating, all of this, this endless sense of choice, and this heightened sense of self. And actually, paradoxically, that's creating a society that even though, historically, young men and young women have more choice now than ever before, are the generation that feels they have no agency. And so I totally agree with you. The economy is tougher than ever for young people to get through those milestones of adulthood that they were told would be accessible. Right? That's the

• 41:03Speaker 02

  key thing. They were told they would be accessible. And yet, there are certain things now that are more accessible, and where there's more freedom than ever before. And one of them, actually, I think, you, when you have access to the world's information and the world's marketplace in your pocket, my God, the world is your oyster. You can build things, you can scale things, you can create a market, you can turn your passion into someone else's need, and you can build a business. And you're seeing that, you know, America is the great factory for millionaires. And they're quite often making their money through doing quite, you know, unsexy things like window cleaning and funeral care. But this is the key thing, right? We have to just, you know, whilst telling the structural story of the economy

• 41:46Speaker 02

  is really important, and people should be aware of the inheritocracy, I'm also super, super conscious, there's a really defeatist narrative that probably doesn't serve young people beyond them being aware of it. So let's raise your antennae. Let's recognize the right, the the rise of the bank of mum and dad. But let's also talk about the agency that young people have in modern society. And and it's not all about AI taking everyone's jobs and the career collapsing. Yes, it's important to be aware of that. But I think we are, I think, we are potentially susceptible to a doom cycle. And, you know, the algorithm doesn't help. But actually, I think we need to really help, you know, our young people get out of that and say, what are we in control of? What can we change in our lives? And

• 42:31Speaker 02

  I think your book, actually, just to kind of push it right back at you, does, does, does a really good job of that.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Well, along those lines, you wrote that my book, Notes on Being a Man, fell into a typical trap by telling men what women want without asking women what they actually want. Well, you also said, hold on, the world has changed, women have changed, and even more fundamentally, the economics of work and family life have changed. We can't turn back the clock. So I ask, I generally, Doctor, I ask the question to learn not to call you out, because I get it wrong all the time. So it is a genuine question. I very reductively say that generally speaking, in the mating market, women are attracted to men based on three things, their ability to signal resources, their intelligence, and their kindness. And

• 43:21Speaker 01

  I realize that's very simplified. And again, I'm asking this to learn. I'm not, I'm not trying to push back on it. What did I get wrong there?

• 43:29Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I have a copy right here. I, what I thought you got brilliantly was speaking to men.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  You're so British. You're so polite. You can go straight to what I got wrong.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  I thought, I thought you were gonna say hypocrisy. No, what you got right was talking to men. And I think the, the, the messaging of, of, of kind of really invigorating, the conversation about what is masculinity in the 2020s is really important. And Richard Reeves obviously writes brilliantly on this as well. But where I think there's a real challenge in what you write, but actually, frankly, a lot of what is written now about and and sort of is the counter narrative to the manosphere, is that we need to acknowledge the, A, the massive divide that is, that is exist, you know, in existence between young men and young women. I mean, they're literally living two parallel universes, two different

• 44:27Speaker 02

  realities, two different algorithms. But secondly, the difference in the economy is that it's not appropriate for men to just think in a singular guise of what do I need to be a man? They need to be thinking, what do we need to be a couple? And that's where, you know, I've written about my failures as a female breadwinner, because I emasculated my husband when I earned more than him, and I was angry at him for not earning and not having a job. And I think women need to move the dial as well. We need to be recognizing we live in a dual income economy. We live in an era where women have stepped up economically,

• 45:08Speaker 02

  and men have sort of stepped up domestically, but frankly, not enough. Okay, not on parallel with women. And I think in in an age of an inheritocracy, elder care is is as important as childcare. So it's great that men are pushing more prams and changing more nappies. But are they, you know, are they looking after their their mothers and fathers in the same way? No, the majority of women not only look after their parents, they look after their in-laws. So, you know, I think, I want to kind of open up the conversation and really kind of discuss this in a way that is both appealing to men and women and right, you know, right holistically, because we need each other more than ever. And yet, we've never been so divided.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  I agree with you. And I also want to acknowledge the point that, I mean, I think outside of your blood relatives, relationships are mostly a transaction. It's a function of currency and cadence. And to a certain extent, you're deciding to partner with a spouse is a bit of a transaction. You think you're going to get a lot back, and you think you're going to contribute a lot. And I do think there's something to the notion, well, there's just no getting around it. Women have ascended economically faster than men have ascended domestically and emotionally. And so there's a gap in the transaction. And a lot of women are saying, I'd rather get divorced, I'd rather not get married, or I'd rather be with another woman.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  But it's also a basic fact that when, when a man has children, it tends to accelerate his career. When a woman has children, we know that it does the exact opposite.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Well, that's a complicated one, because it it increases their, if there's a place where sexism, in my view, is still thriving, it's when women have kids. We have mostly caught up, caught women up to men. Women in urban centers are now making more money than men under the age of 30, where women fall off, fall down again, is, in terms of wage, the wage gap is when they have kids. Now, there's also data saying that a lot of women decide not to go back to work. I think there's the way, I think we have a tendency in the media to talk about stuff in the abstract around the way the world should be. And then there's the way the world is. And I think there's some very deep rooted

• 47:25Speaker 01

  things in our anthropology around things like mating. And as we stand here today, amongst a very educated populace who has subscriptions to The Atlantic and understands the importance of dual income households, when the woman starts making more money than the man, she becomes twice as likely to divorce him. That might be because he has insecurity on his own, and he is three times more likely to use erectile dysfunction drugs because of his lack of self-esteem. Traditional gender roles, you know, they're pretty, they're pretty hard baked in. And also, I, I, I, I don't think TikTok, and a lot of what we talk about, about what people really want.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Then the check comes, or then we talk about what women are actually attracted to. And then we talk about young men who actually have more agency than they want to admit and are just, quite frankly, lazy and not putting in the work. There's just a lot of realities here that are politically incorrect to talk about. Your thoughts?

• 48:31Speaker 02

  I agree. I agree. It's the same reason why women are attracted to tall men. I think, I think there is that layer, but I think it's, I'm coming at this because I am married to a man who does all the cooking. He does all the washing. He does a fair proportion of looking after the kids when they're school holidays. He's very fortunate that he has a semi-flexible job and I earn more than him, right? Now, there is a balance there. And the reason there's a balance there is because of my mother-in-law and what she taught him.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  And every day, honestly, I thank my mother-in-law because there's a lot of millennial men that were never taught to cook. There's a lot of millennial men that were never taught to care. There was, there's a lot of millennial men that are fixed on a, on a, on a very, sort of very straitjacketed view of what, what a partner should look like and what a partner does. And, and look, my marriage isn't perfect, far from it, but I also have a son. And let me tell you, I have a son and a daughter. And I, I am determined, and I'll probably fail in this, but I'm determined to create a domesticated male, right? Whatever his reluctance, he's, he's learning to load the dishwasher and unload the dishwasher. He's learning how to cook. He's learning how to clean.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  He's, he's learning it all because I'm fully aware that it will essentially make him more attractive to live with, whoever he lives with, frankly, in college or, or, you know, down the line. And I think there is the onus on parents to really think about the adults we are cultivating. Okay? We talked earlier on about how much money we give them. Well, what are we also teaching them? Okay? And, and I think this is, we are living in a world where we are so only focused on ourselves. You know, you pick up someone else's phone, it's a foreign land. We are so self-involved. Becoming a partner and building a life with someone else is so hard.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  It takes so much collaboration and so much endless compromise and, and so much, you know, suppressed aggression. And you add kids into that mix and sick parents, my God. But that compromise is, you know, one of the most fulfilling, if you can get it right, the fulfilling things you can do. And, and I think it's harder than ever because the economics have changed, individualism has changed, and, and we necessarily, I think with, with millennial men, maybe a bit better than Gen Z men, not create a generation of men that could deal with that revolution. We created a generation of women that were equipped to step up and stand up in the economic

• 51:14Speaker 02

  sphere, for sure, but not men, I think, in the care sphere. But I would add one final thing is that we are overly harsh on men. Women themselves, and I, I count myself in this, also have to look in the mirror and think about how we talk to men, how we, how we divide and discuss these things openly within the household, how we talk about money and how it's earned and how it's shared and how it's divided. And, and really, I think we perhaps overly criticize men and women need to recognize that men need validating, need boosting, need their egos nurtured in a way that shouldn't deter from how we feel about ourselves.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot there, but I think you're zeroing in on what is the epicenter of any real tangible solution to move the needle here, and that is we need to raise better men. And I don't care if it's what's going on at Cornell or drug addiction or living at home or, or young men who don't have the economic or emotional viability to deal with a modern day society. I come at it through the lens of a father, that fathers need to be much more involved and have much more open and honest conversations and be better role models. And some, I agree. If we want better men, we've got to, we've got to raise better men. I also think we need a, an armistice or a détente between the sexes.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  The genders have done a great job blaming each other.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  And where I find men not stepping up, I do think also that a lot of women lack empathy for, for what men are going through. And I think you could, I think you could label almost any podcast with two women that men are irredeemable and incompetent, and that is 50% of their dialogue.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  I, I experienced that. I, I did a, I interviewed a feminist academic who had done an academic paper on the femisphere. And she wasn't equating the femisphere with the manosphere, but she was detailing the nature of the femisphere and how, and, you know, obviously anti-male it was. And the hatred and the vitriol that she got on social media, genuinely, I was shocked. Like, I, I had opened a sort of door into sort of the type of social media that young women were being exposed to and how anti-men it was. It genuinely shocked me. It genuinely worries me about how this then plays out in real life.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  And we know it's playing out with, you know, basically the decline of dating and, and the decline of, of, of, of, you know, partnership and eventually children. But I, I, I worry like you do that the, this division that exists between the sexes, particularly amongst Gen Z, is, is, is, is just one of the cancers of modern society. I really do think that.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Dr. Eliza Filby is a historian and bestselling author of Inheritocracy. She is the creator of the weekly Substack newsletter and YouTube show. It's all relative. She joins us for, from her home near the great team of Fulham. Doctor, really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for your time.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Pleasure. Thank you so much.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez, Laura Janier, and Asher Schwartz. Our video editor is Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Kami Reek is our social producer. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thanks for listening to the Prof G Pod from Prof G Media.

• 54:57Speaker 05

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