Were so glad could join us for what is going be just an excellent event. We were so excited to have carol roth with us today. My name is Wayne Winegarden am a senior fellow with the Pacific Research institute. For those who aware pride, were a think tank advance free market policy across a number of areas health care, education we have a whole new free cities project. You can learn about all of these and more at pacific dot org. Okay. I just mentioned today really honored to have with us a New York Times bestselling author and as she to say, a recovering invest ment banker, a carol roth. And we will also welcome your questions. So please any questions you have for carol about fantastic book please and to those in the chat box and were going to try to get to those at toward the end of our are our together and carol you know youve written really what is an incredibly its an important book its provocative its also especially the title its terrifying and you will own nothing but the book is you really just also correct me if im wrong the point of the book is youre trying to help people be aware of these trends and so that they can navigate what is, in a sense, an emerging Global Financial issue. How do we preserve and grow wealth kind of given all of that so i guess to just throw something in in that big kind of 40,000 foot level, lets why is private ownership so important for individuals and families. Well, wayne, thank you so for having me here. And for pr. I do wonderful work and everybody should supporting the work that youre doing out and i take the whole of ownership and the American Dream very serious firstly i came from a blue collar family and neither of my parents from college and they worked their way up and had the opportunity for me to go out and seize that American Dream and. I wanted to make sure that we preserve for for everybody and over my more than quarter of a century of experience in working with people and helping them create wealth and go after Wealth Creation opportunities and preserve the wealth that theyve created. Theres one thing that ive learned above. Theres just one complete truth out there, and that is that wealth comes ownership. You have own assets and, particularly those assets have the opportunity to retain value and to appreciate in value. So the first time i see this meme, youll own nothing and youll be happy across social media several years and i saw ads tied the World Economic forum, which is littered with the business and political leads. I thought like, this has to be raw, right . We know that wealth comes from ownership. Why would the business and political lead who have benefited from being owners, why would they be the end of private property by 2030 . Somebody must have taken this out of context as. Often happens right on social media. And it took very Little Research for this particular case to find the video which is still on the World Economic forums twitter stream, at least as were having conversation. And you know, you get that first prediction of aids all eight, by the way, are fairly terrifying. The first one, which came from Global Futures council, thats it says on the video, is that youll own nothing and youll be happy. And so there are a few things that struck me from that. You know, one was obviously the barriers to ownership that were talking about. The second the phrase it was, youll own nothing. It wasnt will or nothing they werent predicting that outcome. They gave the tell in the way that put that out there that that somehow there is a class of people who will still be owning many things, but you just wont be owning anything. So that sort of struck me and then youll be happy and this idea that if you could buy in to this concept of what a free life you would have wouldnt it be great . Couldnt just be the instagram, yolo lifestyle of i, you know, im just to traipse around the world and nothing its one of those pipe dreams that we know people throughout history who have not had ownership of property and havent had their private Property Rights enforce. They have been unfree, they have been unhappy and. Many cases, theyve lost their lives. So you have to ask yourself why, you know, why is that that theyre pushing youre not only the non ownership but the buy in piece and. I think as we see the Global Financial stakes shifting, which can get into and you have people who see that happening, you know, they want to make sure that they stay wealthy and powerful, but the will that was left out of the yall and if they can get you to buy into that concept, you just go along with this and that youre going to rent your life as a subscription or a service and become the product. It makes it much easier them. If youre going along willingly versus them trying to have to force upon you is the justification that youll be happy they its like a carefree, no responsibility lifestyle. I mean, how do you justify youll be happy. So i dont justify at all. I the the literature that i have seen whether is you know from organizations like the wef or the media cover is this concept that yes its very carefree. You wont have a trouble in the world its sort of what the government does you know come in and depend on government and will take care of you instead of going out there and finding your own way and getting your success. Its a very different mentality that obviously has outcomes. And as we know that, you know, that doesnt really work out in reality. But the dream sounds amazing. You know, it great that youll have this wonderful place to live and you know, if is a leak in the roof, someone else will come fix it and you dont have to worry about mowing the lawn because its somebody elses problem. But the implications of that are many. And i think for a lot of people whos battling sheets have been racked by, im sure many of the things that well talk about and certainly a lot of things i talk about and you will know nothing, i think theres a psychological mechanism going on. If youve been told that youre a victim or youve been told that the American Dream is no attainable for you, or its to be really challenging you see your Balance Sheets, you see the cost of everything that have been inflated by policy, and youre just not feeling really great about it. Its much easier you to lie to yourself and, to others and say, well, this isnt something i wanted anyway. I to have this detached life, right . And its really actually sad. You know, you want young people to be excited to be going out in the world and, say, yes, i want it to own things they also particular that the younger generations have been trained for non ownership theyre living in these digital where they have basic take in what i call roi return on investment. Its a it with roic return on equity or return on ego are we redress ego and theyre trading the investment aspect for clicks and like x and you know im going to go and spend all my time to generate, you know, a lot of attention for myself. I get that dopamine hit and i feel but i dont know how many likes it takes to pay your rent or to then actually invest in a house. I think its an infinite number. So weve had this sort of training for young people and weve seen the implications for that is that many of them arent getting drivers licenses or getting them later than you previous generations did. And theyre struggling with things like home ownership. And so, you know, there is this this training under, you know, many different facets, whether its from big tech, whether its from the the climate catastrophize or whatnot, that that keeps reinforce, saying that, oh, yeah, no, its good, good. You definitely dont want to own things. Youre going to be so much happier. And if they dont think, you know, they can actually things to begin with, they just start to go along with that narrative. Right. And know. And the irony of course being that the ownership creates the growth innovation to address the of Global Climate change of these other issues that were dealing with. One of the things that struck me and looked at to turn our conversation toward is you mentioned this earlier, the obstacles, because one of the things i think your book does excellent, you will own nothing. Ill keep talking by the title. But the the that theres lots of different unrelated obstacles that are out there there actually when you kind of put the picture together and connect the dots you see that theres all of these obstacles. Sure. Just class, family to gain wealth to have outside ownership. One of those and im an economist, go straight for the fiscal policy and, National Debt, and you have a whole chapter about this where our National Debt for the first time, which about size of our entire economy and this is one of those kind of warning bells that typically go off when you have that much debt. Thats the size of the economy, people start to really get concerned. So i guess this is thought open to you, you know, because you have a great chapter talking how debt impacts our prosperity, our National Power and from an individual perspective ability to to amass well so i love to kind of hear your your thoughts on that though ends up being even more timely expected at the time that were recording this is right after the us is just received a credit downgrade from. Fitch just the second one in history, the first one in 2011. Youre still being in from s p and fitch issued. A warning at that time. And now they have gone and said, okay, were going to were going to take action and its funny because that year, the rumblings everybodys incredibly surprised this. But as you said, weve got debt to gdp on public basis that is exceeded 100 . I think its almost 125 as were having a discussion. The imf has put out numbers which to janet yellen, the treasury secretary, has noted previous slave seems to have forgot about them in recent that the debt to gdp reload becomes unwieldy somewhere in the 70 to 80 range as the, you know, many of us would like to see it much lower, but thats the place where it really starts to top out and become a concern. We, the treasury and the cbo has put out many charts and many analysis that has said were on an unsustainable fiscal path. So the idea that all of a sudden were waking up and going, oh, wait, you know, the fiscal situation of the United States isnt great, is a little crazy. And i think its one of the reasons why were seeing shift in the global order because you know with debt comes because the people who are power at the governments and at the Federal Reserve, they only have so many things they can so many levers that they can pull and then theyre out of options. So if you think about the government know everybody likes to think that they money because they collect it and because they can also make up money. But its you know, if you think about money as the proxy for productivity, theyre not actually producing anything value. So its not like theyre out creating something and adding to the productivity to to back up that money. So they only have so many choices right . They can take more. They can extract from us via taxes or, fees or whatever direct amounts. And at some point, you know, not only does that become politically unpopular, but we know it has impact on the economy. You know, you cant keep taking money away from people and not have that have an impact their own receipts. In fact, weve seen as weve had these temporary tax cuts outside of a little blip for covid that the government has actually increased the receipts that theyve collected when, theyve cut taxes. So thats one mechanism that they could they can use they can cut services, which is also very politically unpopular. And i used services. Many of them are promises, you know, things that we could have other. But the things that the government has promised you we could cut back on that we saw how well that out for france several months ago when they decided they were going to the retirement age from 62 to 64 and a bunch of people decided to burn down paris and response. So thats a challenging road that a lot politicians dont really have the backbone. And then their option is basically issue debt, which at this point youre not only takes away from your basically our our productivity in wealth because you have to have more money going towards debt service and whatnot. But were at a point where theres nobody left to that debt. You know, its not like theres this huge demand from other countries. We have some of the biggest countries in the world that have actually been getting rid of their treasury, albeit, you know, we have some renewed investor demand for low duration treasuries like tbills because Interest Rates are super high from a long term financing standpoint. There isnt just, you know, tons of interest in having that finance thing. And if you look at some of the work thats been done by other economists, youll see that before 2014, youd have other Central Banks that are were financing our deficits. But really, since 2014, weve been financing it ourselves. So the fed has been monetizing the debt, coming up with money out of nowhere and purchasing the debt. We saw that via a covid. And then weve seen the outcome of what happened when the fed did that, they added 9 trillion to their Balance Sheets and we have been paying the price for that quite literally in terms of a decrease in purchasing power in massive increase in inflation. So all of those mean have some sort of an impact from you you know that direct grab of your wealth the decrease of your purchasing power or the cutting of promises and. Those are the only choices that they and so it becomes desperate and they do things that more ridiculous. And when look back at the changes and, you know, kind of major financial over time, its not usually an outside force that has made them collapse you know, it may be part of the final straw or the catalyst, but these empire is all collapsed from the inside you know, whether its the roman empire or the or the british, its because they do the same things, the same pattern that rhymes over and over again with these governments getting to bed big and taking on too much debt. And then they cant fund the military and it weakens. And its the same pattern over and over again. So this scenario sets up the whole not only for the shifts in the Global Financial order, but also for the implication and for your wealth. Some which we have started to live through, some of which, you know, may be coming, but none of which are great. The prosperity of the middle and working class and and to one of the things that really reinforces what you were saying in the book is the idea that with these higher Interest Rates were now going to be or soon will be spending more on interest than national defense. And that when you talk about the British Empire the book and in the dutch and the romans that really the rhyming of that is kind scary. It is. I mean, one of the things i like to share on a frequent basis is that think because Technology Evolves that your civilization has evolved as human nature has evolved the background may have evolved, but human nature remains very constant, which is why we see rhymes throughout history. And these things. Oh, i feel like ive seen this movie before. Oh, then i saw the sequel. Now were in the trilogy. I kind of know how this ends and it its staggering and know, unfortunately, even though many of us have seen this along the way of seeing the signposts the nature of who have that power is to just wait until somebody elses problem so theyre just to prolong it as long as and do what they can to get what there is and get out of the way even though theoretically, you know, the system comes down in meaningful way or changes in a meaningful it really will impact, i believe, to everyones detriment. But the short term myopia that we see, whether its wall street or with, you know, some of these global central planners, just ends up being the same thing every time. And i know Everyone Wants to think its a big and theres some big master, honestly. Its just basic human nature and human nature. Unfortunately, is just highly, highly predictable. Its like a swarm of bees just of going for the waterfall. No one directing it, but here we go. This this really kind of dovetails well into this thing. You you talk about in the book called the good ideas the bad outcomes. Because i think that we talk about excessive Government Spending or excessive regulation, it really comes from that or something you could kind of tell our listeners kind of what that and why its so important. Yeah. So i actually got this in part from peter teal. I was at an event, alex epstein, his great book, fossil future and they were having a discussion and peter put this great framework around it that resonated with some of the other frameworks that i had used. But a lot of the things come out of theres an issue or perceived and people really believe in it or some some heartfelt thing that they want to do and. Its a its a good idea. And ill take the climate scenario of the environmental. Its like we all to be good stewards of the planet we want to breathe clean air. We all want to make sure that the animals are weak while taking care of. I think that, you know, thats pretty universal. So maybe there are a couple of anarchists that dont want it, but most of us can can believe it. The challenge is that it ends up morphing into this model when you have Central Planning and so it starts out with this good idea and then there is a class of till called them racketeers i call them profiteers just because think that thats slightly more generous but he might be more right in that and there ends up being a whole class of people who really rise that by jumping on this idea and really trying to shape it and control that. Theres a ton of to be made. And again, very human nature. And its somewhat in nature, but have to kind of understand the reality of it is that, okay, we see this as green movement. Think about all of the money that we can make around this. Its a normas and it puts us in the position that if we get in early and we it and its to our benefi