This Is Why Young People Are Giving Up

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Lessons from the watchdog road trip. Yeah, I’m back and I’m sure many of you realize that whether you’re watching on the YouTube or you’re listening on whatever platform Obviously the sound quality has improved again when I go on the road. Yes, I still work I call them working vacations. They are what they are. You own your own business. You got your own time You’re never truly Truly checking yourself out on vacation, but that’s okay. I don’t mind it

at all. I love to travel. I do. It is something that I really, really enjoy. I was gone for about a month. went to six different places here in the United States, over in Europe as well. I’m not a cruise guy. Not a cruise guy. I can’t sit on a boat. Again, there’s a great comedy bit by Bill Burr. Just put into YouTube. Put in Bill Burr.

cruises, it’s hilarious. Not for me. I like going to new places. I like talking to people. I like experiencing other cultures. I like to learn from others. To me, it’s one of the best things about going on vacation. Talking with the people there, whether the people that are taking you in a cab.

of people working at whatever hotel you’re working at, restaurants, people in stores, you can learn a lot about the world. So again, I’m an enormous fan of, you know, I was, mean, the late great Anthony Bourdain and his programs. Stanley Tucci is doing a really good job. I think that those shows are great. I think they encourage people to get out and see the world and experience other cultures.

There’s a line that I’m constantly reminded of. One of the podcasts that I listen to is done by this father, Mike Schmitz, and he always calls upon a line by Mother Teresa. It says that, in essence, know, we have all the problems in the world because we fail to understand that we all belong to one another. And I always try to keep that in mind.

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You know, whether I’m watching people at an airport, whatever it may be, when certain things might annoy you, you got to say, gotta remind yourself, you know, we got to, we all belong to one another. Well, anyway, neither here nor there. Let’s, let’s, let’s get into the entire road trip. Shall we? Um, first and foremost, New York. So up in New York. Yeah. I got to see a great concert. was Dave Matthews concert, Jones beach. One of my favorite places to see a show was fantastic, but also.

I got to lay the land on how business was doing. Now, Long Island is a pretty popular spot in the summer for people to go on vacations, especially going out east. You have a North Shore, you have the South Shore. South Shore tends to be a little bit more of the upper upper upper upper upper crust, super big money types. North Shore is catching up. Boltshore’s

down, down big. mean down enormous. People not renting properties out, restaurants are down, traffic is down across the board. Again, talking to people that I know that have rentals, know, people are just nervous, nervous about the future. They’re holding out. They’re not, they’re not doing this and that’s splurging.

like they used to, which again, I found pretty fascinating. But anyway, moved on, was over in Europe and same thing. Same thing in areas that I traveled to, which are pretty much hotspots. A couple of them, a couple more off the beat and track. Few of them were off the beat track. I had started off, I started off in Santorini. I had an event there.

that I had to go to talk to the people at a hotel that we stayed at. Wonderful place, absolutely beautiful up on a cliff. Love it. Again, one of the great spots to go to in the world. Truly beautiful. Down 40 percent and it’s not because of the earthquakes. It’s not because of the earthquakes.

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by any stretch, know, that was not why they said these people were not booking at all. And it’s not just a matter of cancellations after the fact because of the earthquakes. It’s just very slow talking with people, restaurants, same thing, talking about with, you know, the drivers of the cars, you know, taking it to various different spots, the same thing. They did say, yes, you know, they said Americans are keeping us.

afloat. And let me tell you something, you know, this idea because was there was an article. So I think it was the Wall Street Journal talking about, you know, wow, Americans are going to be treated if they’re overseas. What do you talk again? Never experienced a lick of resentment. And people ask questions. What’s the deal with your president and whatnot? But they managed to separate the fact that the government is different from the citizens, because, again, they live that

too. They have their fair share of leaders that some like, some don’t like. But across the board, always come in and say, you know, Americans are generous. They’re funny. They’re fun to be around. And again, yeah, you know, again, I’m at an advantage because my wife speaks fluent Greek when we’re there. But overall, really kind of a nice experience. Again, little stories here and there. It’s one of the things I like. It’s just like being on land is, you know, I’m I’m trying

my limited knowledge of the Greek language, trying to order ice cream at night and, you know, guys, like to bust each other’s stones. And, you know, the Greek guys behind the counters, you’re not Greek, you’re Italian. And like you’re going back and forth and just having a grand old time with these people. Really, you know, it was interesting. Moved on, moved on to an area that I’ve never been to.

Greece up in the Ionian Islands and again highly recommend it absolutely beautiful beautiful I mean you can’t even you can’t describe the terrain there and just how beautiful it is the beaches are but what was interesting there was again I’d never been there before the crowd that was there you know I look at the license plates so you know tourists from different places Romania Moldova Bosnia Serbia

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And I had to admit, then I was kind of like, boy, you know, boy, boy, didn’t we indiscriminately bomb the hell out of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Serbia not too long ago. But no, it was very, very nice from there. Some of the conversations I have, I like speaking to younger people when I’m there. Basically, it’s nothing’s really changed.

This has been pretty much a similar conversation I’ve been having with people when I go to Europe and it’s not just Greece, but other places as well. More all around, you know, Southern Europe. They kind of almost given up. They’re just stuck. They don’t expect. They don’t expect to really rise up. In the ranks, they really don’t. They’re just it’s just not something that’s possible to cost.

what they get paid based upon what they’re paying for things is just high. And they can’t really, they can’t really seem to work their way out of it. Salaries aren’t that high there. My wife’s cousin who went to one of the best universities in the world, he’s making a decent salary. He’s doing well in London, but not well enough to really get ahead.

gets taxed at 45%. They really don’t like you moving up at all. They really keep you down. And again, I talked to them about that and I said, this is where we’ve gotten to here in the United States as well. And it’s…

It’s the reason why, and I know I did some podcasts when I was away on vacation with, what’s this day there, Mandami and New York and AOC. Why do you think these types have become so popular? Why do you think that’s the case? Our system, it doesn’t work. Okay, we are…

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solely but surely gonna turn ourselves into a European style, we’re not almost already there already. Where again, it’s very, very difficult to get ahead. You play by the rules, you’re doing the right thing, you’re working your butt off, you go to college, you get out.

and you find yourself, you know, you find yourself, you know, maybe you don’t go crazy. You got yourself even a little bit of student loans, a little bit of debt. You get yourself a job. You might even be doing even more. You may be working on weekends as well, trying to get ahead and you take a look at what the cost is for a home.

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And you automatically say to yourself, I’m not going to, you know, I got to be responsible here. I can’t afford to have children. You take a look at the demographics in Southern Europe, they’re falling off a cliff. Not having kids, I can’t afford to do it. I can barely, you know, get by as it is. And you’re looking right now here in the United States.

Okay. We got US housing market affordability is just is about the worst level we’ve seen in about 35 years. I’m going to go back to 1985. 1985, the median household income median household income in the United States was $23,620. The median price home

was $83,200. Right now, median household income in the United States is $74,580. A median home price in the United States is $468,000. I’ll just go back five years. Median US

homebuyer housing payment in January of 2020 was $1,505. It’s $2,800 today. This pisses people off.

It really does. listen, okay? know, I worked my tail off. I worked my tail off when I got started. The BS line right now is to stop going to Starbucks and everything is gonna be okay, is just that. It’s BS.

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It’s BS. The powers that be, the fools on CNBC, all these things that keep telling you that everything is awesome, the economy is great, the economy is fantastic. It’s not fantastic when young people…

feel like they cannot get ahead.

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That’s a problem. And nobody’s doing a damn thing about it. Nothing. You you could easily handle some of these issues you have with these big fund companies buying up all these US homes and outbidding people. You could handle that through property taxes in a heartbeat if you wanted to. I just say, hey, listen.

Okay, if you are a owner occupied home, okay, guess what your owner occupied home or you can even say you can have a home vacation home if you have a lake house or something like that. You you pay no property taxes or next to nothing. And all of the investment companies out there you have got to bear the brunt and you raise that up.

They’re not going to be able to afford to rent them. not going be able to do it. They’re going to have to sell. They’re going to have to liquidate and prices will come down.

It is a major issue. Between 2020 and 2023, the of homes bought by investors averaged 18.5%. 27 % of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by investors.

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Again, problem.

problem. this is this is why you’re having this, you wow, gee, that socialism thing sounds pretty great.

When you back people into corner or you people play and they do the right thing and they follow the rules and again, they can’t have a difficult time getting their way out of the situation that mom and dad are not helping them out. You’re gonna get this type of blowback.

You know, listen, no taxes on tips.

You think that’s going to solve this problem? You think I have all four extending the tax cuts from 2016. You think that it’s going to really solve this problem?

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I don’t.

I don’t, again, something needs to be worked out. Again, you talk about the massive amount of student loan debt.

And I get the argument from some kids out there. They feel like that they were duped.

Now again, that might be, you know, a bit of a stretch.

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But basically you’re keeping this entire generation, they’re gonna be in debt service with this. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how to get them out of it. I don’t know what it means for the economy moving forward. simply not gonna, people are not gonna have children because they’re not gonna be able to afford it. And again, we’re gonna end up like Southern Europe.

And again, there’s going to be political blowback.

unless this changes. These are the things that quite frankly need to be dealt with at this point in time. What are the arguments? We’re gonna open up all these federal lands to build more houses, people. You just don’t say, here you go, here’s land, build homes. You have to have jobs around those homes. It’s an entire infrastructure and it takes decades. I used to live, again, in a master,

Master Plan Community, I got in there when it was open, I think for about eight to 10 years. This is going back to 2002, 2003. And again, now you can’t even recognize it. It’s massive. I mean, it’s massive. It’s huge here. I mean, it just, it keeps growing, but there’s businesses there and they did it the right way. They did it little by little. You can’t just say, here we go.

There we go, got some parcel land here in Utah and all of sudden, yep, everybody’s gonna come running. No, it’s gonna end up happening is it’s gonna be one of those Yellowstone situations. They’re gonna end up building homes for wealthy people. We’ve got disconnects here in this country and the disconnects and the problems we have all stem.

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government and the decisions that we’ve made. It’s natural. It’s natural while kids are pushing back against capitalism because they don’t know what capitalism is. Over the next few days, next few weeks also on the radio show, I’m going to be delving into this. It’s again, it’s a problem. It’s a problem where we actually think we’re running a capitalist system here in the United States when we’re not.

We’re not running a capitalist system. You know, it’s funny. I get a phone call. Let me give you an example why. I get a phone call from my son yesterday. And he’s always, he’s got, you know, coming up with ideas for businesses. And I love the fact that he’s doing that. He said, dad, can I throw something by you? And he’s like, I’m riding. He’s like, I’m riding in an Uber with some of my friends.

You know, again, he’s visiting some of his friends in Long Island before he starts his job. I just graduated from college and, we asked the guy, we asked the guy, the Uber driver, you know, the bill for the Uber was 40 something bucks. How much money he keeps and he told him $15. And my son asked, well, how would if I started a ride sharing company where the drivers would pay like, you know, $50 a month and then they get to keep

Everything, everything that they got as far as the payment and the tips and everything goes along with it. said, see, it’s a great idea, but that works in a free market. Works in a free market. If you don’t think that both Uber and Lyft have managed to establish, and I said, look it up, look at the regulations that are involved with trying to start a new ride sharing service under that model. I can almost guarantee you

the laws and regulations would make it impossible. Because guess what? Uber and Lyft helped write the regulations by donating money to the right people to box competition out. In the same way, and I explained to them the same way, after the financial crisis, 2008, 2009, oh yeah, Dodd-Frank, and what do we do? We made the bank’s utilities too big to fail. They put…

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Thousands of banks, smaller banks all around the country out of business because they can no longer afford to keep up with the regulations. Same thing held true after the dot com collapse. put in was it Sarbanes, Oxley at that point in time, all these small investment banks poof, they’re gone. They can no longer afford to stay in business.

That’s not capitalism. was, you know, basically I told him, I said, I explained this before, it’s regulatory capture. And that’s the world we live in at this point in time. And again, I’ll delve into this. We’re gonna talk about the problem with zombies and the inability to fail in this country and cheat money in a myriad of things over the next several weeks here on the program.

Other than that, it was a great Watchdog road trip, it’s always nice to come home. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.