 So let's jump in, American decline. So how do we measure this decline? Is there indeed a decline in America? Because by a lot of measures, America's never been better in America. Certainly economically, we're richer than we ever were. And in spite of what he says in The Rich Man, wages are higher than they've ever been in real terms. In spite of what people complain about all the time, the pushing power of those wages is higher than it ever was. Technology has made life cheaper than it ever was. Indeed, trade with China has made life cheaper than it ever was. So if you're working in America, you're a state of living. What you can do with that money, what's available to you with exception of real estate and education, you've never had it better. Real estate is difficult. Real estate is tough. If you live on the coasts, if you live in a city where demand is so high that for political reasons they don't keep supply to match it, but in most of the country, real estate is not that expensive. Interest rates are high right now. Mortgage is high. We talked about it this morning. That's expensive, but its rates are lower than they were in the 1990s, early 90s, or 90s generally. They're lower than they were in the 70s, in the 80s. So mortgages are lower now than they were back then. Real estate prices are high. We know the cause of that, lack of building. But overall, people live in America in bigger houses than they used to. They live in bigger houses even though they have smaller families. They drive nicer cars. They have iPhones. They have the internet. They have chat GPT for. They have GPSs. In so many dimensions of our lives, particularly in the material dimensions of our life, life has never been better. Never been better. So what am I talking about? What are you talking about, you're on American decline. It's not decline. And not only that, given the positive case here, not only that, America is in better shape than anywhere else in the world. Europe is significantly poorer than America, growing at significantly lower rate. People make significantly less money, live in significantly smaller homes, drive significantly smaller cars, and have just the significantly lower standard of living. They're significantly poorer than average Americans, average Europeans, average Americans. Japan is significantly poorer. There's no country in the world. There's no significant economy, large economy in the world that matches the United States in terms of wealth, in terms of prosperity, in terms of the standard of living, in terms of quality of life. So from a material perspective, things have never been better. So why are we in decline? Never been better, never been richer than other place. You know, the gap is larger than it used to be. But in almost every other realm, in almost every other realm, there is an enormous amount of angst, of frustration, of envy, of resentment, of hatred. America is a divided nation, deeply divided nations, maybe more deeply divided than any point since the Civil War. People despise each other. Paul after Paul after Paul shows kind of the deep, deep resentment some Americans hold against other Americans. So culturally when declined, we're unbelievably pessimistic. We're convinced that life is terrible, that we're in decline materially, that we're losing, that the guy next door has more than I do and that's not fair, that inequality is exploding and that injustice is exploding and that every corner, something bad is happening, people are becoming obese, it's real. And we're convinced that our money is funding their obesity through the welfare state. That's to some extent, real as well. So there's a lot of frustration, a lot of angst, a lot of anger, a lot of envy, a lot of resentment in our culture. We have a culture that is the opposite of, we'll talk about the way America used to be or at least used to be in some parts of America. That, you know, a lot of Americans, even on the material side, have lost, have lost their belief in the American dream. Americans are there convinced their kids will be poorer than they are. By the way, that was true 10 years ago as well. It seems to be a recurring theme every 10 years or so. Parents think they're the last generation that was richer than their kids, than their parents, sorry, than their parents. We're pessimistic for our children and indeed even an economic front, even though we're richer than we've ever been and stand of living quality of life up in some dimensions. As I said, it's hard to buy a house. Housing is unbelievably expensive. It's expensive to get an education but it's also not clear what value education has. What do I get by going to college other than large debts? People are very negative about the upside of education. And the economy itself is growing slowly. And every 10 years, there's some kind of major crisis. And then we kind of come out of the crisis and we grow slowly. Some people and some companies do fantastically well but on average the economy generally is just growing slowly. It's stagnating. It's growing but slowly, much slower than it used to. And I think people feel that. People know what it was like when the economy was moving along. People know what it was like when new inventions kind of came out of nowhere and changed the world fast and regularly. People know what it was like when their stand of living was rising, not just rising but rising fast and they had a vision of the future that said, oh my kid's stand of living is gonna rise fast. This is gonna continue going. Today's stand of living are rising but slowly. The only dimension in which we're really achieving progress and success is digital and electronic and available more to some people than others. And the general sense is because it's true is the economy is moving slowly. The welfare state has created real resentment. You see that in Richmond, North of Richmond. Why do I have to work for a living? BS wages. I do overtime but it's worthless. I work for the man. Why do I have to work for a living? Other people here, they're getting checks for nothing. They do nothing and look at them. They're obese. So there's this resentment in the book. I think that's The Myth of Inequality by Phil Graham. Is it The Myth of Inequality? Anyway, Phil Graham is a book that came out last year. Let me just find out. Phil Graham was the former Texas president senator. Let me just find this. Former Texas senator and he put out a book last year. Yeah, The Myth of American Inequality. And one of the points he makes in The Myth of American Inequality is that if you're receiving welfare and you're working, your standard of living is if you've got a lower middle class job and you're receiving welfare, your standard of living is about the same. And yet one person is working and one person is not. And yet the income, the amount of money they receive is about the same. Yeah, he didn't say he didn't want to work for a living but he didn't want bullshit wages, right? Wages provided by a market. That's what he said. Wages provided by, not the government as far as I can tell, but by Richmond whether they're North and Richmond or South of Richmond, Richmond. So I think stagnation. I think the perception that inequality is unjust, even though as Phil Graham shows in his book, The Myth of American Inequality, inequality is now risen in the United States. If you take into account the welfare state, it's actually shrunk. People resent their neighbors because they don't know what their neighbors have, they owned, they resent Washington because Washington, the government, because the government is constantly violating their rights, is constantly interfering in their lives. They resent reality because reality forces them to actually have a job. Well, not necessarily, because some people get welfare and they don't keep going back to that. So America is in decline spiritually. America is in decline socially. Think about that. The real hatred that exists today between Democrats and Republicans. I mean, survey after survey show that Republicans and Democrats hate each other, not just dislike each other, not just disagree with one another, but literally hate each other. I mean, you see this in like, dating surveys, would you date a Republican? No, if I'm a Democrat, would you date a Democrat? No, if I'm a Republican. I mean, I don't think that was the case 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago. I don't think everything was political. Everything was politicized. So I think in many respects, America is in decline. In the prospects for the economy, it's in decline. And culturally, socially, it's in decline. It's become a vulgar culture. It's become an angry culture. Now again, the areas even culturally and socially that are better, we don't have Jim Crow laws. If you're black in the South, life is much better today than it was 50, 60 years ago. Not that some of the black activists would admit to that, but that's the reality, much better. If you're gay, life is much better today in America than it was 20 years ago, never mind 50, 60 years ago. But overall, the atmosphere, the attitude of Americans is resentful and angry, intolerant of disagreement. Not intolerant in a sense of, I have to tolerate every view, but intolerant in the sense of, I don't wanna listen to people who disagree with me. We become tribal, we become clannish, we don't associate with people who agree with us. That is America in decline. It's a country that lacks unity, lacks benevolence, lacks optimism in the future, lacks excitement and energy about what is possible in the future. It lacks, we've lived through a period, at least on the pessimism side, I think the 70s were very similar to this. And in many respects, the 70s were worse from an existential sense, crime was much higher than it is today. The economy was a much worse situation than it is today. But there was still an American spirit underneath that all. So Ronald Reagan could flip it very quickly. First of all, he could win an election. And secondly, he could make a few speeches and people would became very optimistic and very positive and very energized and very passionate and very productive. In the 1980s and 1990s were periods of real economic growth and real economic success and prosperity and culture. You know, we had arguments and disagreements and didn't like each other and everything else, but the American dream seemed to be alive and well. People believed in it and people were striving to make it better. And generally, there was a certain benevolence in the air. Within 20 years, that's gone. Doesn't exist today. And we've seen it being sucked out of the American culture and sucked out of the American society. Over the last, I don't know, since second term in Bush, maybe since 9 to 11, but certainly since the second Bush, the second term. Sucked out. Yeah, I think in important ways, America is indeed in decline. So what caused the decline? What caused the decline? I think to understand it, we first again have to talk about the positive. What made America unique? What made America great? What made America optimistic and energized? And what made American society relatively united around goals? And what made Americans patriotic? Patriotic in a sense of love of country, a country worth living. What is it that made America great to begin with? That created a country that has been so successful, materially. But also, so ultimately, there'd be no revolutions here. There's been very little political violence in our history. Again, 60s come to mind as a period of particularly bad political violence, but most of that are subsided. In January 6th was horrific political violence, but that's now, now you can imagine political violence. Now everybody's talking about political violence and need some people have been talking about it, less so right now, but have been talking about a civil war in America and new civil war. So what made America so peaceful, relatively speaking? What made America so benevolent? What made it possible for the American dream to be alive and well, and for people to believe in it and perpetuate it? What is a kind of the average American life in a thriving, successful society look like? It's basically an individual owning a home, family, kids, suburbs, has a car, has a job, optimistic about the future. Do it's time to advance against Korea, learning what he needs to learn in order to master the new technologies coming about, works hard and befriend some of the neighbors, doesn't befriend other of the neighbors, basically lives under the motto as I think most Americans have in history. I'll leave you alone, you leave me alone. We'll cooperate when it makes sense for us to cooperate, when it's in our self-interest, when there's a value to be shared, we won't when there's none. We don't have to be friends, we can be friends. If we're not friends, that doesn't mean we're enemies. And each one to his own, I'm not a, an individual like that is not afraid of others, not resentful of others. It's somebody focused on his own life, on his own career, on his own family, on his own success, on his own ability to move upwards. He views his fellow Americans as, you know, fellow travelers, very much live and let live. What America had going for it was this sense of freedom. People came here with all kinds of rotten ideas. But America, it didn't matter what your ideas were, you either made a life for yourself or you didn't. You either succeeded at living or you didn't. You either fit into this way of life of live and let live, or you probably failed at living. It was a strong self-selection bias. Many people went back to the homeland. Others who stayed, maybe the first generation didn't get it, but the children did. An idea of live and let live, the idea of liberty, the idea of freedom, the idea of individualism, the idea of responsibility for your own life, responsibility for your own ideas, responsibility for your own soul. In a logic stand, you got to decide who you're associated with, who you didn't. And again, you don't put aside all the problem areas that clearly existed, whether it was racism, whether it was overtly passionate, religionists. America would not have succeeded if that was the dominant thing. America would not have succeeded if that was what overwhelmed everything else. The reality is that America succeeded because individuals felt free in America, and they were left free in America to live their lives and shape their own destiny, to live their lives and shape their own lives, to live their lives and do for the most part as they so fit with the agreement that they would not violate their neighbor's rights and the neighbor wouldn't violate theirs. And just in case, just in case, there was a government to make sure that that didn't happen, or if it did, the right party was penalized for it. America for the longest time, at least for a majority of its population, protected the rights of individuals. If left them free to associate or not, it left them free to live their lives as they so fit. And that enabled the entrepreneurial spirit, it enabled hard work and people taking responsibility for that work and feeling like they owned it. And I think even the attitude of taxes, even though I think we should always have a negative attitude of taxes, I think was a lot smaller back then because the basic idea was I pay my taxes, why I pay my taxes so that my rights can be protected? So that we have a military to protect us so we have a police force around. You know, they also believed in education and in infrastructure and things like that, but generally the idea was taxes are there to serve my interest to facilitate the ability of government to protect my rights. It wasn't perfect, it's never been perfect. America has never been perfect, far from it. Maybe on the day they signed the declaration of independence, but that's about it. But they had the right idea. The general concept was right. The direction was the right direction. And America thrived as long as it held to that direction, the direction of individual liberty, the direction of individual rights, the direction of personal responsibility, responsibility for your mind as well as your material possessions. So what happened? Well, what happened was that that vision of America, that view of America, that reality of America was never grounded in a solid philosophical underpinning. It was never grounded in a proper philosophical defense. So it eroded slowly, very slowly, but it eroded. You know, people say it's all about the constitution, right? That's what we need to follow. But it's the understanding of the constitution that matters. Constitution is just words on a piece of paper. Understanding of those words can change over time. And it did. And starting in the late 19th century, the understanding of what that constitution represented and what that meant changed. People forgot or gave up or never knew or never understood. And all those continental philosophies, the philosophy from Europe started to seep in to America. And slowly the individuals mattered less. We had to consider the economy and society and the state and the nation. Ooh, monopolies, they're bad for the state, the nation. We have to find an optimal arrangement for business. Not one that is determined voluntarily between people, but one that we, the philosopher kings in this case, can dictate. So you get antitrust laws. And you implement those antitrust laws. And you start chipping away at businesses. And that the idea of earned success, the idea that merit matters, the idea that we all can voluntarily choose who to deal with and who not, not anymore. In some cases, the government will tell you who you can and who you cannot deal with. And then we slowly chip away and start regulating what businesses can do, what they can say, who they can do what to. And then starting in the 1930s, we start redistributing wealth. We start not only taxing you for the things that you seem to be benefiting directly from, but we start taxing you in order to redistribute wealth. And we start sending you, the American citizen, a clear message. We don't trust you to take care of yourself. We don't trust you to plan for your own future. We don't trust your mind. We don't trust reason. We don't trust your ability to think long-term. So we are gonna advise Social Security for you. We're gonna make sure that you save enough. We're gonna force you to save it. And we're gonna call, it'll be a tax and we're gonna use the money in the meantime. But we're gonna force you to put the money aside and then you'll become dependent on us. And of course, Social Security takes away, and Medicaid takes away one element of, okay, I don't need to be responsible for myself when I'm old. I don't need to think about that problem. Okay, that's taking care of, somebody else is taking care of that. The government's taking care of that. And why shouldn't I think about it? Well, because they tell me I can't. I'm not good at it. I'm irresponsible. They tell me, long-term planning is a false game. They tell me reason is impotent. Reason is incompetent. Good reason is not my tool. I cannot live by it. They're telling me now what products I can buy, what products I can't buy. They're telling me now what I should save for retirement, what I shouldn't. They're telling me now how much I can play my employees and how much I can't. They're telling me now I'm too stupid or too exploitative or too greedy or too something to negotiate salaries with my own employees or to sell whatever products I deem appropriate and that my customers deem appropriate to buy. They'll tell me I'm incompetent. They tell me I'm a fool. They tell me I can't think for myself that my mind is impotent. And wait a second, if my mind is impotent, so is my neighbors. Wait a minute, how do I trust him? And what, what if he becomes destitute and they come after my stuff to feed him? I don't trust him anymore. And slowly as the mind recedes, as the mind recedes in importance, well, how do I defend myself? How do I protect myself? How do I move forward in life? I need to join the group, a union, an organization, a lobby group, somebody who can help me out, somebody who can protect me, somebody who can stand up for my interests because my interests are being crushed by their interests. And slowly we turn into a country of pressure groups, of little cliques, each trying to grab as much of the pie as possible before the other group does. Because now it's a pie being distributed by the people, I'd say powerful people, politicians, North of Richmond, but not just North of Richmond, in Richmond, and in Tallahassee, and in Sacramento, and in Austin, Texas, not just the federal government and every state level government. They're taking my stuff and giving it to others. They're taking my business and handing it over to other people. They're telling me I can't buy my competitor because of antitrust, but they're letting that deal go through and they're letting those people do it by what standard? What has destroyed America as the mixed economy? Now, yes, America did very well for a long time under the mixed economy because it held on to that spirit of individualism, but that spirit of individualism is eroded constantly, eroded and eroded and eroded by an authoritarian state, by a mixed economy, by pressure group politics, by promises of politicians to take from this and give to there and destroy those people's rights in favor of those people's rights. Our intellectuals and our politicians have turned us one against the other, have turned American against American, neighbor against neighbor, individual against individual, and in order to defend ourselves, we had nothing, a vague sense of something the founding fathers said, but how many people understand what the founding fathers said? How many people understand what America was really about? How many people understand that FDR is the beginning of the end in that sense, the beginning of the decline of America, not the savior that both left and right believe he is? The great American decline is the decline of American liberty, of American freedom. It's the rise of the mixed economy in every respect. It's the rise of not just pressure groups in economics, but pressure groups in employment and pressure groups in academia, rise in little tribalistic groups that wanna grab whatever they can, not only material stuff, but cultural and academic power. You don't get a job based on what you know, you get a job based on the color of your skin, you get a job based on how much suffering you suffered as a child, you go into the university, Harvard or whatever, based not on your ability, not on your intelligence, not on the hard work you've put in, but based on some kind of stuff, some kind of criteria by which you can articulate how much you overcome, I don't know, suffering or overcome oppression or being a victim. And somehow this culture, somehow this country of individualists and people who say, don't tread on me of pioneers, of entrepreneurs, somehow this culture has become a culture of victims, of victimhood, of elevating victimhood, of chewing on victimhood, and wanting to inflict victimhood on other people in order to reduce mine, because that's the solution, force. So the idea, the fact that force was never really eliminated from American politics and the fact that force has been embraced as a tool in American politics, and that is the tool of the mixed economy, the tool of redistribution of favors, that has to lead to the kind of distrust and frustration and anger, and then of course, you create a political system that can hand out favors, that's required to hand out favors, that demands handing out favors, a political system that has massive amounts of power and the lives of not just people in the United States, people all over the world, then what kind of people are you gonna attract to politics? You're gonna attract people who are power lusters, you're gonna attract people who are corrupt.