Scott Galloway: Why Young Men Are Falling Behind | PBD #758

**Scott Galloway** (0:00)
I think if you spend enough time telling young men that they are the problem and that they're predators, they begin to believe you.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:06)
How much of a young man struggling today is them versus the system?

**Scott Galloway** (0:10)
And the most frightening statistic is that if you go into a morgue, and there's five people who have died by suicide, four are men.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:18)
I don't think we have enough voices of men that are good examples and challenging boys to become men.

**Scott Galloway** (0:26)
If you reverse engineer to the single point of failure when a boy comes off the tracks, it's to one point, and that's when he loses a male role model. The far left hasn't been any more productive, because their advice is to say, OK, you don't have problems, you are the problem, and my advice to you as a young man is to act more like a woman.

**Patrick Bet-David** (1:08)
The future looks bright.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:10)
My handshake is better than anything I ever saw.

**Patrick Bet-David** (1:13)
It's right here. You are a 101 So I've been looking forward to our visit today with Professor Scott Galloway. He's got a great podcast. When you speak on the topic of men, fatherhood and finance, I think everybody's got to listen to it. Of course, you know, New York Times bestseller, done great work, made millions, very successful. I even think at one point you were the majority, was it a majority shareholder or New York Times or something about New York Times, you were sitting on the board. But anyways, incredible, incredible voice for young men. Professor Scott Galloway, great to have you on the podcast.

**Scott Galloway** (1:56)
Patrick, thanks for the kind words and I'm glad to be here.

**Patrick Bet-David** (1:59)
Yes, so a question for you if we can just get right into it because I don't think we have enough voices of men that are good examples and challenging boys to become men. And I love seeing the stuff you say to you. I have four kids, two of them being 14-year-old and 12-year-old and a lot of things you talk about were aligned when it comes down to men. But I want to read you three stats and I'll get into a question and today I want to talk about fatherhood, boys to men and finance. So seven out of ten high school valedictorians right now are girls. 20% of men 25-34 live with parents, up from 14% a decade ago and 15% of young men have zero close friends, five times higher than what it was in the 1990s.
How much of a young men struggling today is them versus the system?

**Scott Galloway** (2:51)
That's a thoughtful question. Let me just pile on with a couple more stats. 62% of men under the age of 30 are not even trying to date, 42% of men 18-24 have never asked a woman out in person and the most frightening statistic is that if you go into a morgue and there's five people who have died by suicide, four are men.
And if any other special interest group was killing themselves at four times the rate of the special interest or the control group, we would weigh in with programs. And one of the things that's really hurt this community and these efforts is there's a lack of empathy for this group because of what I think is a fair accusation or observation and that is men of my generation have had a disproportionate amount of advantage, but we seem to be holding young men accountable for my advantage. And it was to your point, is it them or is it society?
I think it's both. I would say the majority, it's a complex problem. There's biology at play here. A boy's prefrontal cortex is 18 months behind a girl's. You're going to see, you said you have two boys and two girls. You're going to have, I don't know if you've already had this moment, but you're going to have your 15 or 16 year olds are going to have a party and boys and girls will come over. And the boys are dopes. Can't you look you in the eye? They look like boys. And then there'll be two or three 15 or 16 year old girls who will come who could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania. I mean, girls are just maturing faster than boys. And they're excelling and good for them. They're ascending. I think it's wonderful. But the gap between boys and girls, if two seniors, a boy and a girl, in high school or applying to college, essentially the girl who's a senior is competing against a 10th grade girl. The boy biologically is 18 months behind the girl. There's economic issues. A lot of the traditional on ramps in the middle class for boys who don't get a college degree. Do you remember that guy, Patrick, in high school, who was just never going to go to college, but he could fix your car, and he was going to get a job? There was auto shop, there was metal shop, there was wood shop. There was primarily sort of vocational programming, such that men who weren't going to end up at University of Florida or Carnegie Mellon could still find an on ramp into kind of the manufacturing sector. A lot of those jobs have been offshored, so there's fewer and fewer sort of on ramps into the middle class economically. Also, sociologically, I think if you spend enough time telling young men that they are the problem and that they're predators, they begin to believe you. And so, you know, the way out here, the far right, I would argue, and I'm curious to get your feedback here, to their credit, they recognize the problem before anybody else. They said, look, there's a problem with our young men. They're struggling, lack of empathy for them. But I would argue the solution was to take, was not the right solution, and that was to take non-whites and women back to the 50s. And I think a lot of people on the right have conflated or incorrectly correlated the ascent of women with the descent of men, and I don't think that's true. At the same time, the far left hasn't been any more productive because their advice is to say, okay, you don't have problems, you are the problem, and my advice to you, as a young man, is to act more like a woman. That's not helpful either. I went to the Democratic National Convention. I know you're a conservative, I'm a progressive. And I saw a parade of special interest groups talking about the very real issues that still face special interest groups in the United States, but not one word about the group that has fallen furthest, fastest in America, and that is young men. So it's a combination of economic, sociological, biological, political issues that have all converged to basically rob opportunity. And then the last comment I'll make on this is that our tax policy has effectively transferred wealth from young people to old people. The average seven year old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. Housing and education prices have skyrocketed. Those are the two primary means for getting ahead and for building economic security and finding a mate. And we've transferred wealth from young to old. The two biggest tax deductions, mortgage interest rate and capital gains, who owns homes and stocks, people my age, who rents and makes their money from salary, young people. So we've had just a series of kind of moons line up that have robbed opportunity and dignity and cultural standing from our young people and especially our young men.