 You're in the right place. You're at ThinkTech. I'm Jay Fidel. That's Roger Epstein. We're going to talk about transformations today. Roger used to be a tax lawyer, I guess, in a sense. You know, once a tax lawyer, always a tax lawyer. It's in my blood. In his blood. In my blood. Fifty years. But now he's with Shin Hear Trading Company. Shin Hear Trade and Technology, also known in English as Galaxy Trade and Technology. Yeah. And if that sounds Chinese to you, it's because it is Chinese. And Roger is doing magnesium. Can I say that? Yeah. We're opening up the 70% of the magnesium that China holds in the world to the rest of the world, kind of revising the dysfunctional distribution system. As they say, somebody's got it too. Somebody's got it. Magnesium is the new green metal. It's lighter than steel and lighter than aluminum, so it's perfect for electric cars and it's recyclable. But I don't want you to be worried. Roger has not just come from China. He was in China, oh, months ago, so. November is the last time I was in. November before it hit the fan, so to speak. Yeah, no fans, no fans here. So we're going to talk about the world today. It starts with the U.S., because the U.S. is a leader. And it also heavily involves China. And I called it, we'd better transform because we have so many issues that we're not going to be resolved unless we transform. Roger says we are transforming. So that's the tension here between us. Why do you say we are transforming? I mean, you got some information on this? Yeah, I got information. It's all in my head. So look at what's going on. Donald Trump represents the moving into the end of the American Empire. The last 30 years, we've had issues. It started when the Arabs took over the oil and all of a sudden everything began to change. Executives needed more money to live on, to compete with the Arabs. And then the Japanese later on. And so as they got more, they took out more from the pie and then the people on the bottom didn't have as much. So we started this wealth gap. And then as the other countries began to evolve after World War II, when we were the last man standing with good industry and no damage to our country, that began to change. And we were competitive. And then the manufacturing started to move. Move out of the country. Move out of the United States because our labor was too high in our costs. So it's been evolving for a long time. And Donald Trump is putting the nail in the coffin on the end of the U.S. Empire, which to some extent is good. You hate that when you're on top, you want to be top. Our country is devoted to this idea of number one. If you're number two, you fail somehow. American exceptionalism going on for 150 years. Right. Right. And before that, European exceptionalism and domination. And so the pendulum is moving towards Asia. We've known that for a long time. Do you remember when the Bank of Hawaii changed its name to the Pacific Century Bank back in 1995? Short lived. Short lived because there was the Asian flu, which was a big depression in Asia. And it made people think, well, maybe this isn't happening. But it is happening now. China is the number two economy in the world. And Japan is number three. Europe is having all kinds of issues and Brexit. And we're struggling with 78 percent of our population living paycheck to paycheck. Simon Winchester wrote a book called Pacific. Yeah. And in there, he talked about the Chinese with their military base in the ocean. And he got into a very interesting discussion in that chapter of the book. He said, get used to it. We do not have the power we had before in the Pacific. We had it in World War II for sure. But we don't have it anymore. Get used to it. China is the emerging nation. China is into power. China is accumulating and developing its power and so forth. And so it's the get used to it thing that interests me. How can we get used to it? This is a transformation in which we are not greater than we were. Make America greater than no. That's not really what it is at all. Make America recognize that it is not great. Well, it is great. And other people are great too. And what we want is... Everybody's great. Everybody's great. Everybody is the same. I've been going to Hong Kong since 1974, doing business over there. In China for many, many years. Japan, Canada, Austria. Everybody wants the same thing in this world. They want to have a decent life. They want to raise their kids to do better than they did. And they want to have food, clothing, and shelter. And one world. Not a flat world, but an integrated world. We're all the same, whether we're black, white, or yellow. Collaboration. Yes. Everywhere. It sounds like heaven. Okay. So listen to, you know, when you think of our concept of how evolution happened, Darwin's theory, survival of the fittest. That isn't how nature works. Nature works survival of the adaptable. Nature collaborates. The trees don't kill the grass, and the grass doesn't kill the trees. They work together in harmony. Now, there certainly is, we're all eating each other, and that you could look at. Why don't you say eating each other's lunch? That would be a better expression. Well, we're living off, my friend says, and my evolutionary biologist friend says, that the carrots and vegetables can hear, see, and feel. So we're eating now. And they have rights. And they have 50 years from now. We'll be voting for vegetable rights. But what I'm saying is, because of communication, we're no longer in a position where we can really look at different cultures and different societies and different races as the other. During World War II, the Japanese were the yellow peril. And to them, we were the barbarians. And now we're having lunch every day together and doing business all over and over. So you've got to know that people are the same once you begin to deal with them. Okay, but that's very idealistic in the sense that we have a lot of trouble in the world, a lot of trouble in this country. And you're talking about evolving, transforming to a time when everybody's at peace, where everybody is collaborating, developing technology, making a better world for everyone, no racism, no strife, no disparity, no nastiness, no politics. How do we get there? We've got to do things to get there. It doesn't happen automatically. Nature does not take us there. And it doesn't happen overnight. If you look at the changes in this country from 1960s, you remember the race riots, you remember the Black Power, you remember people being killed in the street. You think that's over? It's much better now. You think it's over? It's much better. And it's getting better all the time. You have the Black Lives Matter movement. You have, there was a Black guy that asked me to set up a corporation for him about five years ago here in Hawaii. He was a brain surgeon who a company that made brain surgical instruments used him to test their equipment. So I'm just saying the possibilities for the grandson of a slave to become a brain surgeon is now. When I was at Georgetown University, it was next to DC University. And I was walking back with this Black guy to downtown Washington. And we saw an advertisement with a little white girl in there. And he said, you'll never see my daughter in an advertisement like that. How many Black people do you see? How wrong was he? You see what I'm saying? There's an evolution. And you can stop at any point like we are today and say, hey, we ain't there. We got all these issues. Yeah, but we had slavery 150 years ago. We had Jim Crow 100 years after that. And so things are when I was in the third grade was the first time Black people were allowed to go to school with me 1954. But my question is, yes, how do we get there? You'll agree with me. We have to do things to get there. Okay. How? So the first thing is to accept reality. China and Japan and Asia is the growth area in the world. China has grown enormously. I went there first time in 1982. And it's just a totally different third world country to Beijing and Shanghai are the most modern cities in the world. Japan has grown since that. They died in 1991 when their bubble real estate burst. They didn't recover till after 2001. The Asian flu and they started working in China. I have a client who their whole business is having Japanese executives learn how to live in China and Chinese executives learn how to live in Japan. Great business. Great business for them. So I'm just saying there's a collaboration there after 1500 years of mostly killing each other. Vietnam, I had a couple of billionaires try to do real estate. Vietnam billionaires. I remember when I was almost drafted into the Vietnam War. We're no billionaires. We're no billionaires then. Now they're trying to do real estate deals in Hawaii. So the world is headed that way. While Europe and the United States are mature and we cannot compete with emerging economies. So we have to do what we do. Right now is a perfect time for the United States to collaborate with China. They still have a tremendous need. We're much more sophisticated experience. We have better technology. We may not in 15 or 20 years. That's why my company Galaxy Trade and Technology is a basically 50-50 partner with an electric company in a small rural area in China that's trying to help them connect with the world because people still don't trust them. But they trust Americans. So this kind of collaboration is the only sensible thing. And business will do it. Business is... How does business do it? Because business, unlike politics, wants to do what will make them money. I'm the CEO of a company. Yeah. An American company. Yeah. Make it an Ohio. Just for example sake. Right. What do I do? I'm the CEO. What do I do to achieve this? Well, if you want to sell your products in China or you want to use your technology in China to develop a business, there's an organization called CACC. It has 10,000 members who are looking to do business outside the country. This country. Outside of China. Oh. This is a Chinese organization in Beijing. It's like a Chamber of Commerce, but they also try to get business deals for their members. You can connect through me, frankly, to with them or you can go directly to them and find a good partner. And forget about what's happened in the last 30 years. Of course China was trying to take advantage of everybody. When Hong Kong first went back to China, all the Chinese Hong Kong companies went into China. They lost money for 10 years. Now they're making fortunes. Because China was a third world country and it said we got to take advantage of other people. How do you get by the China bashing that happens in this country? Well. And call it racism. Yeah. That's a good thought. You get by it by experiencing it yourself. Go there. Meet people. Go through this organization or others. There's lots of money in China looking for U.S. technology. Forget about their stealing it. Work a deal with them. If they steal it, you've got a partnership agreement that could be enforced either through arbitration in Hong Kong or even in the Chinese courts now. Everything's improving. And if you're looking 5, 10 years ago, you're really missing this fast-moving post. So many questions. So right now, today. Yeah. And you can call it temporary if you want. We have coronavirus in China. Yes. A lot of people are sick. A lot of people are dying. And the economy is being disheveled. Yeah. And we don't know how long it's going to last. Xi Jinping is saying he's working hard on it and he's trying to return the economy to sort of a semi-activity mode. You know, renew, restart the economy, but that may or may not work. It could be that gets a more coronavirus too. So we have a profound phenomenon going on that is undoubtedly going to affect the Chinese economy and way of life. How do you get by that? Have you factored that in? Oh, sure. Let me get into the last part of what we might talk about, which is spirituality and belief in how the world works. My belief, which is Taoism and Buddhism, as well as the Judaism and Christianity that we've grown up with, everything works out for the best. Even Donald Trump. We need Donald Trump maybe to give us more equality in the world instead of being way up here. I remember years ago when I was a kid, people in the United States were making $3,500 a year and people in Russia were making $125. Well, that inequality, foments, violence and all kinds of things. So if we get an equal playing field, yes, we won't be number one anymore, but we'll be good people. There's tremendous resources of people and technology in the United States. This question is whether the species is perfectable or not. I tell you, there's a lot of people who would be jealous and envious if they find that you're making more money than they are, not only locally in the same industry, but in the world. That's always going to exist as the way we are. Biologically, may I say. Yeah. So how do you fix that? Well, it is partly politics. If you look at what we're doing now, we're going in the absolute wrong direction. I was a tax lawyer for 50 years, and I can tell you this tax bill was the worst thing you can imagine. Economists will tell you we'd had five years of, since was 16. Anyway, about 2011, 1011, the economy started going good. You don't lower taxes when the economy's going good. It overheats it, and then you're going to have a crash at some point. There's no question about it. Has it overheated it? Yeah. Has it in fact overheated it? Well, the stock market is up so high. I mean, we've got good numbers. It was up so high a week ago. Well, 78% of the people are living paycheck to paycheck. Where is it going? It's going to the very rich, and that's not a sustainable society. And so you're either going to have big changes or revolution, and Wendy hit the bottom. If there's cycles, see, my thinking is there's always cycles up and down, but there's concentric circles. They're like a loop. It just keeps going up. We're not crucifying people anymore. We're not even stealing people's countries anymore. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Asia is collaborating around economic growth. All these things are very healthy. And yet you have Trump in office with roughly half the country supporting him, doing the most dastardly things, violating the Constitution at every turn and every day. Is that a good thing? Maybe it shows us what a good thing is by relief, by comparison and contrast. No, it also shows you how bad things can get if we don't do better, if we don't step up. And you remember all the pushback in the 60s against the Vietnam War. This is the biggest pushback since the Vietnam War with Trump. So the forces of let's do better are beginning to come together. And it's going to keep growing through the election and win or lose, it's going to keep growing. And so we're trying to see where does America go. And then, so we've got Asia growing like this and the Asians are investing in Africa. Africa and the Middle East are the last places in the world where there's this incredible violence taking place day to day. And so we haven't quite gotten there. But Europe is one country. Forget about Brexit. They're not going to have 100 years war anymore. But don't we need kind of a global leadership on this? The United Nations has not been a global leader in recent years and Trump has pulled the rug out from under it in so many ways. But don't we need somebody at least? I mean, I'll use the word coordinator to effectively coordinate all these different Sovereignty's and bring them together and say, why don't you guys collaborate? See, I don't know exactly what the coordinator may be an acceptable word. Certainly, president of the globe is not acceptable. And I'll tell you why. For the same reason communism doesn't work. It's top down. It's telling you what you have to do. And we're all individuals. We all know what's best for everything. I think of doctors and lawyers. I've been on the board of Queens Hospital and I was 40 partners in my law firm. You introduce a topic that nobody really understands, but they all know the answer. They got it because they're high professionals that have self-esteem and they think they know everything. You can't tell people what to do. You have to let them understand. What you're talking about a leadership has changed. Leadership in the ideal anyway has changed. Maybe. So what I'm thinking is if there's 192 countries, 50 of them got together and said, let's do this. We agree. Then the other 142 would maybe come along. Maybe they'd be out there somewhere. You wouldn't take a vote. You wouldn't. You don't need to have unanimity. You don't even need 50-50. You just need to do what's working. And it's trial and error. And Trump is an error. He's an error. And he cut all the taxes for the rich. This is the corporate rate went from 35% to 21%. And he made all offshore income non-taxable. Non-taxable. And the cost of repatriating it non-taxable. And the cost of repatriating. So he said, look, we got all this money that's being kept out of the country because if they bring it back, they got to pay tax. And we want the money back in the country. So he said, let's just let them bring it back tax-free. He could have said, let's tax it. What's the why if you have a corporation in Ireland? Do you get to pay no taxes in the end? You know how much it costs to set up a corporation? $500. Now you get to save all that. It would have been very simple to just say, wherever you pay tax, you get a credit for that. But we're going to have every company organized in the United States pay tax on the worldwide income. Then they would bring the money back because they'd already paid the tax. But he went the other way. Yeah. Same thing. Brother was agreed there. We can give you a better deal than you could ever imagine. Better deal than you can. And what do you need it for? We already have the .01. Three people have more wealth than something like 40% of the country. And the top .1% has more than 90% of the country. What you're telling me, Roger, is that it's actually in that sense, the disparity sense, which is very troubling because disparity ultimately, as you said, leaves the revolution. It leads to blood in the street. This is what happened in the 20s. Yeah. And then we had the Great Depression. It gets worse. It gets worse. But after the Great Depression and the war, which hopefully we don't need, we had the most effective, prolific economy in the United States in history, and the rest of the world is now catching up. Do we need to have a recession or a depression or a war in order to get balanced on these things, in order to realize the truths that you are articulated? Well, we do now because we're so out of balance. We're going to need something that, in some way, you know, when I first started out as an internal revenue agent, the tax rate had just come down the top rate, which is now 37%, had just come down from 90% to 70%. And everybody, we were doing terrific. Now, the times are different. But still, it's this idea of, oh, I can't pay taxes, and I can't... They were paying 70% and doing very nicely, and there was a lot more equality. And since this Arab takeover in 75% of the oil, executives who were making 30, 40 times what the guy on the factory floor was making are now making 350 or 400 times. So the rich guys decided that they're going to take it out with a shovel and they're going to stay up with Saudi Arabs and all the Japanese business people and they're... And that's what they decided. And now we're exacerbating it. Who changes that? I mean, do you need governments to step in and say no? Do you need the guy on the floor to say, I'm not going to work for this company? Do you need the executives to say, gee, I'm really being greedy here. I should change my ways. We're going to find out what we need. All those ways are possible. But we, as a human collective, our consciousness and our votes in the United States are going to change. There is no simple answer here, Jay. No simple answer. Fundamentally. And I'll take it to another level because I say I'm the only Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Sufi tax lawyer in Hawaii. I feel that's true. Maybe in the world. Yes. And so what I see is all these religions are telling us what science now knows. We are all connected energetically to each other, and we need to start living from that reality. And that may sound like a huge leap up, but it is a plateau jump for evolution and humanity. Evolution that started with people learning how to strike matches, and who knows what they did all these years, to where we are today, which is much more highly evolved. And so if we understood and we lived from the reality of our connectedness, we would begin to find solutions because I would understand that if I hurt you, I am really hurting myself. The ideas of karma, the idea of what comes around, goes around, whatever it is. These are physical principles in the universe. They're energy bouncing back and forth, and we now have the tools. We have Einstein's work and the vast amount of work done since then. We see people in how they are because of our connections through communication and air travel. And so we can get to this point. Will we do it next year or five years? Will we do it in 50 years or 100 years? We're going to have to because sooner or later, we're going to have pocket nuclear bombs. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then what will we do? And so if we... Well, humanity will blow them up. That's the nature of our biological makeup. No, it is the nature of our... How it is to use it. The nature of our biological makeup is to survive. Everybody wants to keep living. Everybody. Every tree. Every flower. Why do we have the bombs? Because we haven't evolved enough. We have... If you read Stephen Hawking's book, what's his last book? It's all about how, what you believe about the world. So the Romans, what they believed, and the pre-Egyptian, has a huge impact on your social actions. When we begin to live from the reality of our connectedness, we'll change our social actions naturally because we're operating from a different platform. And when I say live from it, I take this example from my wonderful mentor, Jerry Jim Palski. And he says, you go to Beethoven concert and you listen and you say, this is wonderful. Then you go home, you buy a piano, and you start to play. It sounds like nothing. But then after a while, it begins to sound like something. And then after a while, the notes are in your fingers. And then you can make nuances of it. Now you're living from the reality of playing the piano. This is how we have to live from the reality of we're all connected. And I think if you look at human history, you can say, oh yeah, we're all killing each other, but we all really want to live. We all really want to be happy. I went to Bhutan, by the way, in November. It's a fun place. They've changed. 15 years ago, they began to get more involved up from a third world, the kingdom. And so they said, we don't want all the other crap that goes with it, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. What you measure is what you get. So instead of using GDP to see how they're doing it, they use GNH, gross national happiness. And I think that ties in with Aloha. That's a beautiful idea. And I think it's something that we could really effect here. Lead the world on that. I give up on the ability of the federal government to solve our problems. It's just, we've just gone too far. And maybe that's where we are. The federal government's not going to do it all. But community by community. In the 60s, states' rights was all about we don't want integration. Now states' rights is we want to do it. We want to fix our own problems because in Hawaii, we know how to do it. By necessity. Yeah, by necessity. Necessity is the mother of invention. So it gets back to what we started talking about. The first thing is to be real. Age is growing. We're in a decline. It happens. Right. What do we do with it? That's what Winchester said. It happens. Okay, so we deal with it by facing the reality, seeing what our pluses are, seeing what our minuses are, and work it into the reality. Then we get on an individual basis, we begin to say, look, we're all connected. We've got to start, look, we've got to start doing more meditation so we slow down and begin to see the better things in life. We're moving too fast. Tim Ryan wrote a book called Mindful Nation. John Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction has been around for 50 years. So as we begin to learn techniques to slow down, we have the ability to see the bigger picture. And indeed, we're actually going to slow down now, Roger. Out of time. Thank you so much for coming around. It's always a great pleasure to talk to you today. I'm taking the risk. It's okay. We'll put sanitizer on later. All right. Thank you, Roger. No coronavirus. No coronavirus here. Aloha.