 to make. I want to recommend to you a blog, a blog. I don't know how popular blogs are these days, but the blog of Aran, A-U-R-E-N Hoffman, H-O-F-F-M-A-N. Aran is one of the most successful, I think, serial entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. He's a successful investor, successful CEO. He's done it several times. He's also really, really thoughtful. I think somebody who thinks, and interesting. He's always, I don't agree with him, always. But he's often very thoughtful and interesting. And his blog is summation.net. Summation.net. He also puts out an email of the five most interesting articles one should read this month or this week. I can't remember how often I get it. And I always find the articles worthwhile reading. Again, I don't always agree, but I find the articles very worthwhile reading. So I encourage you to go to the blog and maybe sign up for the email. He had two stories that came in today that I thought were worth talking about. You know what, let me take, yeah, let's do that. And then we'll take the super chat at the end. Two questions, two articles that I thought were worth talking about. And that were somewhat interesting. And link up to certain themes that I've done in the past. So the first article kind of caught me by surprise because it's a little ridiculous, but it is a real phenomena. And this is the name they've given a phenomena. It's called tunes, teens, tunes, I don't know what, tunes, T-E-W-N-S, and that stands for the elite with no savings. And it's about a growing trend, a people who make $300,000 a year, or in our ballpark, six figures, who can't really save anything for short run consumption. He doesn't really, you know, nobody talks about this, but they save in 401Ks, they often withdraw money from the 401K to deal with emergencies. They save for the kids' college, but they don't have money in the bank. They live from hand to mouth. I think Kat Kalinsky talked about people living from hand to mouth. These are people who live for hand to mouth. Now, they live for hand to mouth with $300,000. Yeah, means they live in a house, but it's, you know, these are people typically living in New York, in San Francisco area, in maybe in Boston, and a few other metropolitan areas, where they get a decent house, but they're paying a huge amount of money for mortgage. Maybe, you know, they actually have a whole cash flow here in houses. Maybe $3,900 a month, $3,900 a month for mortgage, right? So they've got a relatively big mortgage, and that's probably for $3,900 is probably a $1,000,000 home, or maybe a $900,000 home, but it's a small home, because in these places, $1,000,000 doesn't buy you much. They're paying a lot of money for childcare, babysitting, and for private schools for their kids. They've got all the insurance. They've got public insurance, and life insurance, and umbrella policies, and they pay, you know, they pay for healthcare, but it's subsidized by their employer. They pay a lot for toys for their kids. They go on nice vacations, decent vacations, not great vacations. They've got a decent car, like an SUV, you know, probably not a Volvo, but a Toyota Highlander. They have a lot of money, they have an iPhone, again, they give a little bit of charity partially to get the tax deduction, and they have Netflix, and they get entertained, and all of that stuff, right? All of that happens. But at the end of the day, if you add up their wages, $300,000, and you take out their 401 contribution, and you take out the taxes that they pay, both at the federal and at the state level, because these are all people living in states that have high taxes, they basically have nothing left. They eat out, I think there's a line here for restaurants, let's see, they don't eat out that often, but they do eat out, they, oh, food for three. They're calculating food for three is $55 a day, including weekly date nights, so they have, once a week, they go out, but the rest of the time, and this is our family, right, this is, let's say, our family of three. $55 a day for food for three is not a lot of money, so they're not exaggerating the cost of food for these people, right? 1650 bucks a month for food. I mean, what's really killing them here are taxes and real estate, and the fact that they're sending their kids to private schools, not to mention property taxes and everything else, that's what's killing them, and they're living in these places and they are struggling. I mean, it's a little bit of a joke for anybody who makes less than six figures to think that these people are struggling, but they are, if they have an emergency, whether medical or car breaks down or anything like that, they indeed do have to go and ask their parents maybe for a loan or use their credit cards, a lot of them are juggling high balances on credit cards. So he has a whole blog post about this and what I found interesting, and indeed what he says is there's actually a massive difference in quality of life and standard of living in these places, places like San Francisco and New York, between somebody making 300,000 a year and somebody making 600,000 a year, and certainly somebody making a million or two million. Now these people in the top 2% and there's a massive difference between people at the bottom of the top 2% and the people at the top of the 2%. So what's interesting about this is his solution to this, which is similar to mine, but I've always given the solution for people who are working class, you've often probably heard me if you watch the show. You've often told me if you're still working in Ohio, get in your car and move to Northwest Arkansas, to Texas, to lots of other places where there are jobs. Don't just sit there taking your opioids, waiting for jobs to show up. Take responsibility for your own life and go make your life somewhere else. He proposes and I agree with him completely, that people making that kind of money, these are people who typically have Ivy League degrees, the people who went to school, they've got advanced degrees, they're well trained, they're young, they've got young children, they're ambitious, but they wanna live well, they wanna go out to eat more, they wanna live in a bigger house, they wanna have more money at their disposal. Now, they could get California to lower taxes and the city of San Francisco to engage in massive building projects or allow developers to engage in massive building projects to lower the cost of housing, but they're not gonna do that. So what can they do? They can get in their car and they can drive out of San Francisco and go work somewhere else. And it stuns me, they're not more of them are. They could go to Austin, Texas or Denver, Colorado or Tennessee or Dallas or Houston, cities where you'd probably still make close to $300,000 and you would live really, really well. You could buy double the size of a house for the price in San Francisco, you shouldn't because now you can save a little bit of money, even private schools are cheaper, taxes are significantly lower, including property taxes. I mean, the same thing that applies for the working class family, applies for people in the middle class who wanna make their life better. Get out of New York, get out of California. They are sinking ships and they are sinking ships because they are treating their own citizens like shit by taxing them, by forcing the cost of housing up. So you're in technology in San Francisco, there are lots of jobs for technology in Austin. Now it's true, this is true. If you wanna make $100 million, then stay in San Francisco because the likelihood of making $100 million by starting a company, taking it public or selling it or something, anyway outside of San Francisco is small, much higher in San Francisco. It's small, tiny, miniscule, even in San Francisco, but it's higher there than anywhere else. But if you just want to be really, really good at your job and be the best that you can be and really rise up and make some good money and live well without being a centimillionaire, then go to Austin, go to Tennessee, to Nashville, go to Denver, Colorado. Now I know a lot of you in Denver going, oh my God, keep those Californians out of here. We don't want Californians. They're the ones who are trying to turn Colorado into California. There's a certain truth to that, so. Even Seattle, which used to be the place that people escaped California to go to, well maybe because California's escaped to Seattle, now Seattle has become like California. So there are plenty of places in this world to go. I live in Puerto Rico, for example, where you can live much better, much cheaper, the much highest standard of living. That you can in these big cities, or in about the same Atlanta as another place, Wally Durham, Charlotte, Tampa, lots of great places in this country to live. Relatively low taxes, good quality jobs, great quality of life, decent weather. Why are you stuck? Why are you stuck living a mediocre life where you cannot really afford, where you cannot really afford to live? So that's one thing he mentions. The other thing he mentions is that the problem with these people is that they are motivated by trying to be like the Joneses. They are motivated by trying to live beyond their means like their neighbors. And it becomes this rat race. And here again, philosophy has something to tell you. The first part philosophy told you is take control over your life, evaluate. Don't let yourself be caught up with momentum. We're just, I've always lived here or I've lived here now or what do I do? How will I survive? Think it through, figure out where's best to live and go live there. Don't just accept reality as given to you. Take control over your own life. But the second thing is, stop trying to mimic the Joneses. Live by your own standard, by your own mind. Live within your own means. Don't evaluate your own progress by how you're doing relative to other people, relative to your neighbor. Evaluate it based on your own personal goals, your own personal values. Live not based on other people's perception of you but based on your own core ideas and core values. So the two things that are preventing people is the courage, the first-handedness, the thoughtfulness, the sense of control and self-esteem that moving requires. By the way, moving in the US is a massive decline. So there's a graph of interstate migration which has been in steady decline since the late 1970s when there was significant interstate migration. Steady decline, it's been rising a little bit since the financial crisis because I think people had no choice after financial crisis but to move. But basically Americans are becoming more and more and more and more people who stagnate. Sit around waiting for jobs, accept that if you're in Silicon Valley, you have to stay in Silicon Valley. If you're in New York, you have to stay in New York. Take control of your life and then stop thinking of other people. Think for yourself, your standards are what matter. Now what Arun Hoffman says is one of the problems of this phenomenon politically and I agree with him here. He says that people who typically are making six figures who are living relatively in let's say top 2% of owners in the United States, are typically not radicalized politically. They typically like the status quo. They typically like things as they are. They're not attracted to populist politics of the left or of the right. But what is happening right now is that these tunes, tweens that he calls them are being attracted to that populist politics. And these are well connected people. These are people not just with money but these are people who went to school with people who have risen in our political world. These are people who went to school with some of the most influential people in the media. These are people who have influence and yet they are more and more and more attracted to populist policies. They are more and more and more attracted to what many people who feel like there's a dead end among the working class are attracted to. And that is a real danger politically. So lesson, which he summarizes the blog posters, the lesson is don't follow the Joneses, try not to be like the Joneses, try to be your own person and move, move, move, move. My general standard, if it's cold, move. If it's hot, move. If you can't find a good job, move. The world is filled with opportunities. The world is filled with amazing places, filled with amazing places that you can, you can take advantage of, you can enjoy, you can make yours. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broads. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support and those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not showing the next.