No Mercy / No Malice: Europe IRL

**Scott Galloway** (0:01)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:33)
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**SPEAKER_3** (1:09)
When I scraped my car in that parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it. Like a landscaper's first day trimming a hedge man.

**Scott Galloway** (1:17)
I have definitely already been here.

**Barack Obama** (1:21)
Now, was it left right or right left?

**Scott Galloway** (1:25)
Maybe I'll cut a path out and find my way back later.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:29)
But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app, and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened.

**Scott Galloway** (1:36)
It feels good to get help quick.

**Scott Galloway** (1:38)
It feels good to Geico.
I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. Americans have been taught to believe that billionaires and universal health care cannot coexist. That's bullshit. Europe, IRL, as read by George Hahn.

**Scott Galloway** (2:00)
After roaming the earth for 35 years, my conclusion is the US is the best place to make money, and Europe is the best place to spend it. Though Europe does have dynamic countries that the shitposting narrative regarding structural decline ignores, living in the UK for the past four years and traveling around the continent, I've observed two versions of Europe, a stagnant welfare state limping toward insolvency —exaggerated, but true in places— and a dynamic fusion of capitalism, full-body contact violence in the market that unleashes innovation and opportunity, with a meaningful social safety net, real but overlooked by Americans. Let's discard the fiction and talk about the Europe I've encountered in real life.
Last week, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. His wealth is greater than the combined fortunes of the next three men on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos. Of the 500 people on the list, 180 are Americans or reside in the US. Their combined wealth is equivalent to that of the bottom 54% of US households. In American politics, the interests of the few are framed in opposition to the interests of the many. We can have billionaires, we're told, or we can have universal health care, but we can't have both. That's a choice. Sweden, among other countries, settles the argument. Billionaires and universal health care can co-exist. It's not capitalism versus socialism. Capitalism actually works better when built on a foundation of empathy and equity. Sweden is a contradiction, an F1 engine running inside a Volvo station wagon. On the one hand, Senator Bernie Sanders praises its universal health care system, 11% of GDP spent on health care, life expectancy of 82.7 years and outcomes on par with, or better than, those of other advanced economies. On the other hand, while the EU stagnates, Sweden is projecting 2% GDP growth. A recent analysis from Boston Consulting Group found that 30% of Swedish firms ranked in the top quartile of performance for their sectors, nearly double the performance of the best-performing EU nation, the Netherlands. The report cited three drivers of Swedish exceptionalism, a culture of risk-taking encouraged by worker mobility, paired with strong unemployment benefits, sustained government investment in R&D, and deep capital markets. As The Economist wrote last year, Stockholm is the new capital of capital.
Crucially, participation in Sweden's capital markets is widespread. Thanks to the creation of ISK investment accounts, which simplify trading and eliminate capital gains taxes in favor of an annual standardized income tax, Swedish households invest over half their savings in equities, more than twice the European average. Although it has the population of North Carolina, Sweden has produced more than 30 unicorns, including Ericsson, King, Klarna, and Spotify. With only 2% of the EU's population and 3% of its GDP, nearly one out of every five of Europe's best performing companies are Swedish.