The American Dream Is Built, Not Promised | David Rubenstein

Ryan Hanley (0:00)

You know, you go to the grocery store, and what used to cost $200 now costs $250, and then in six months, you're worried it's going to cost $300. And we're like operating the same exact life on thinner and thinner margins every day.

David Rubenstein (0:11)

If you just look at the wealthiest people in the country, they're doing fine. But the people in the middle class and the lower income classes, they are not in good shape. The wealth that people have made in recent years by buying and selling sports franchises has made people think that sports is now an investment class. It's a way you can make a fair amount of money. If you don't have a thick skin, you shouldn't own a sports team.

Ryan Hanley (0:39)

Where I wanted to start, and we can take this any direction that you want to go, but I guess what enamored me too, I was watching Instagram, and then I reached out to your rep at Simon & Schuster, and just said, hey, I'd love to have David on the show. I'm very interested as to this amnesia that, so I'm 45 years old, I feel like at my generation, or the people within maybe a standard deviation of my age have some feel for the history of this country, but I was just in Italy, and I had a tour guide in Vatican, and she kept bringing up, do you know, and then she'd insert someone who was like famous beyond belief, Julius Caesar, she's just bringing up these names, and she'd say, well, have you heard of them?

After about 10 minutes, I stopped her and I said, I mean this with no disrespect, you don't have to keep prefacing it, do you know this person?

I know at least a decent amount about history. I said, are there really people that don't know some of these famous individuals? She's like, oh yeah, my tour that I had yesterday. I said, please tell me they weren't from America, and she was like, yeah, they were Americans. I was taken and she said, Americans tend to have the least, her perception, doesn't mean it's true, the least understanding or at least caring about history in some regard is what she had to say. I guess my question for you is just, why do you believe, do you believe, and if so, why do you believe there seemingly is amnesia of the history of this country that it's very tough to deal with?

David Rubenstein (2:28)

Let me try to explain. When I was an undergraduate about 50 years ago, about 9% of undergraduates in the United States were history majors. That percentage is now down to about 1%.

That's because today people are afraid if you're not a STEM major in college, you won't get a job at Google or Facebook or Goldman Sachs. Parents have obsessed about getting their kids to be STEM majors. The result is people know less about history.

It turns out that Americans know less about our history than people overseas.

For example, if you want to be a citizen in this country and you're not born here and you become a naturalized citizen, you have to take an effect, a history test, a citizenship test. And 91% of the people that take it pass. The same test was given to people born in this country not long ago. And in 49 out of 50 states, a majority failed the history test. So the result is we don't have people that know history very much. And why is that a problem? Because the theory of history is that those people that don't remember the past are condemned to relive it in the future. The theory behind stunning history is you figure out what was done wrong and don't do it again in the future. But we don't have that love of history so much in our country. In Europe, for example, which is much older than the United States, people teach history much more. It's considered a part of their DNA, a part of their fabric. In this country, even though we're celebrating the semi-quincentennial, many people might know Thomas Jefferson or the Declaration of Independence. But beyond that, they don't really know very much about our history, sadly.

Ryan Hanley (4:07)

It's very difficult to have conversations about what's happening today if we don't have an understanding of the past. And do you see that? Do you think that this is part of why we have... I mean, obviously, discourse has always been polarized, but seemingly today it feels exceptionally polarized.

Do you think this plays a big role in why we can't have, like, logical, honest conversations with each other?