Why Argentina Is the Test Case for the Whole World, 1.93 Million Americans Have Been Jobless for Six Months, AI Will Break the Banks| Weekly Recap

Tom Bilyeu (0:00)

Observe, the North American dad, 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes.

SPEAKER_2 (0:10)

Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval.

Tom Bilyeu (0:19)

No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss.

SPEAKER_2 (0:23)

He's still on the couch.

Ryan (0:25)

Astonishing.

SPEAKER_2 (0:26)

Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pick up fees may apply.

SPEAKER_4 (0:31)

And speaking of Milei in Argentina, he's doing a Victory Lab right now because inflation numbers came in and they came down huge. We're talking 20 percentage points. So in December of 23, when he took office, it was at 25.5.

Tom Bilyeu (0:44)

That's monthly, man.

SPEAKER_4 (0:45)

June 24th, it was 4.6, December 24th, 2.7. So every six months, it's been fluctuating or going trending down ultimately. But like it or not, going from 25.5 to 1.7, that is a win. And shout out to Milei for actually cutting it down.

Tom Bilyeu (1:02)

It is a massive win. Yeah. What he's doing there is absolutely incredible. It's a great example, but of course people look at it. They want to see him fail. So there's tons of propaganda against what Milei is doing, but it is absolutely fascinating to see him actually get that country under control. And it starts very simply, you must balance the budget. And so he's got government surpluses for the first time and God knows how long and is actually using it to get the country stabilized and moving in the right direction. It is not easy. And of course, there are going to be plenty of difficulties along the way. But what he's already accomplished is breathtaking. It would be very interested to see if he's able to retain power. We'll see.

SPEAKER_4 (1:43)

Do you think austerity can work in America with our mannerisms, our culture, stuff like that?

Tom Bilyeu (1:48)

Will we go for it or will people revolt in the streets? We will probably look like France, which France is an embarrassment. What a tragedy. What a tragedy. But yeah, I fear that we're going to look very similar to that. My only hope is because we have a very strong contingency in America that is very entrepreneurial. And my only hope is that we're able to push back much harder against the lunacy of...

I hate saying the lunacy on the left. It just makes us so partisan. But people that have that mentality of like, we don't want to grow. The capitalist system is the root of all evil. They're completely divorced from the reality of the human experience. Like we have to avoid that mentality. So France, I don't know if they ever quite had that. So my hope is that America spending 250 years collecting the most entrepreneurial people in the world, that we have a little bit of cultural juice, that we can lean on, we have a way better origin story that we can point people at, that we can revitalize that. Gen Z, Gen Alpha, like I'm really looking at you guys, man. And so wanting to see them rise up with a mentality of, wait a second, I want to play to win. I don't want to just sit back and, you know, not live a life with meaning and purpose.

So, fingers crossed. But I do worry that it's going to look very French for a while, as the two sides go to battle, where austerity in and of itself is met with violent protests.

SPEAKER_4 (3:25)

And just for the record, austerity is different than trickle-down economics. Austerity is pretty much balancing the budget, fiscal discipline. Trickle-down economics is a political talking point.

Tom Bilyeu (3:36)

Well, let's talk about trickle-down economics, because it's something that people use to try to make out like, hey, rich people getting rich doesn't help anybody else, so fuck those kids. I don't want to hear another word. It never seems to trickle down.

There's a mechanism. Once you identify the mechanism of why it doesn't, quote unquote, trickle down, then you can stop the madness from happening. When people are doing well, when the wealthy class is doing well, it does create jobs. And this is why you see in the 80s, we pull out of the death spiral that was the 70s. And I think people lose sight of that. So it actually did work. And so the question becomes, why do you still get this hollowing out of the middle class? Because that ultimately is what people care about. The reason you get the hollowing out of the middle class is you go from the 80s into the 90s, where we start globalizing and we start bringing in cheap labor and we start sending jobs overseas. And that is why the quote unquote trickle down economics never actually reach people is so many of the jobs that were being created by the boom just ended up going elsewhere. This is why you've got to figure out like if you're on the left, you've got to figure out, okay, what are we going to do that's like Trump's policies but are better? I'm super open to something better. But what he's trying to do is return to Hamiltonian economics where you're trying to be protectionist so that your industry is here. And so by building here, by making things here, not only are you in a much stronger position from just, I don't have everything being made by an adversary, but you're also creating jobs. Remember, not everybody wants a white collar job. Not everybody's cut out for a white collar job. If you don't have blue collar jobs, there's a huge part of your population that's just not gonna be able to make enough money and your workers are disempowered. And if you wanna see people get more money, it isn't about bringing in unions. I've covered this over and over. It is about the ability to actually do a thing that we're not just sending somewhere else. I'm gonna set AI aside for now and robotics for now. But if you just look at what it takes to empower the workers so that they can drive their wages up, you've gotta be manufacturing here in the US. And so the fact that we were importing cheap labor and exporting jobs, you've got this double whammy. It didn't have to do with the fact that, oh, wealthy people are getting wealthy. So you want to see people that are productive with their money, that's a huge part of this, meaning they're builders. So getting mad at Elon is fucking.