This went viral. Estimated percentage of

30 year olds who are both married and

homeowners. So two of the American

dreams, dare I say, getting married and

starting a family, having kids, and um

in the 50s that was, you know, half of

30 year olds already were married and

already had homes and now we're down to

12%. There's a lot of factors here

obviously Chimov but your thoughts

generally on this you were

>> I sort of

>> I started to do some research on this

and

it's really sad actually what's

happening right now

>> so I think if I had to kind of frame

this that chart that you showed is more

of the outcome and so you have to go all

the way back and try to explore what are

the potential root causes that causes

this kind of an outcome and There are

there are a bunch of them.

I think one of the first ones that we

have to look at is what has happened to

young men. And I think what's happened

to young men is

a little concerning. So I don't think

it's our generation, but I do think if

you talk to people 30 and under, you

start to hear a consistent theme from

guys, which is one, it's they don't

really have the social skills to really

talk to girls.

It starts with that. And so what happens

is they go to these different outlets.

They go to video games.

They kind of communicate more online.

As a result, they tend to have brittle

or fragile emotional relationships and

social relationships. They don't date

the same way that they used to.

Then a lot of guys just feel like they

also don't want to get caught into being

perceived,

you know, post the me too movement in

any way, shape, or form as being

untowart. You take all of these factors

and you put it together and there's a

lot of guys that have just opted out and

they just kind of move in a direction of

parasocial relationships instead. Then I

started to look at like the the data on

porn usage. It's out of control. I had

no idea. But do you guys know what the

average age now of a porn watching

>> male is?

>> That's scary to think. The average age.

>> Yeah.

>> Would it be the average age of an

American man or does it skew younger? I

would assume skews younger.

>> It's gone. It's gone from 20 down to 16.

There are more than 50% of 12-year-old

boys now that watch porn.

>> I was shocked. I was like, "What are you

even talking about?" I was a teenager,

late teenager, I think, when I like I

mean, we had like you found a magazine

here or there, whatever.

>> They got a girly magazine. Yeah.

>> But can you imagine what it does to a

12-year-old boy when they start to get

instant gratification and you compound

that all through high school and they

don't have quote unquote what we would

call gain, right? The ability to just

talk and just kind of like carry on a

conversation. What do you think happens?

And then you go into the dating pool and

what are these dating sites optimized

for? These dating sites are optimized to

keep people there, not for you to find a

relationship and for you to churn,

right? And so the gamification and the

and the dynamics of those systems are

where many young men and women now look

to to find a relationship. And so you

have lonely young men that creates

lonely young women. a small cohort of

very eligible men and women that

everybody's chasing and fighting over.

Everybody else kind of left on the

sideline.

And so what do you think happens over 15

or 20 years of this activity? It's what

you see in this data. People aren't

coupling up. They're not having

long-term committed relationships. So

obviously as a byproduct, they're not

getting married more. Obviously, as a

byproduct of that, then you're not

combining two incomes. You're still with

one income. At the same time, Nick, I

just pulled this data. You can show it.

What has happened to the underlying

things that people would look to as

satisfying

markers of progress in life? A home, a

good education, those are way out of

reach, right? So, if you look at this

chart, the price to income ratio of a

home from 1980 to now has effectively

made it so that

you have to make an enormous amount of

money as a single individual to afford a

home today. M

>> and then if you only have a small

percentage of people actually getting

married and bringing two incomes

together, you see what you're seeing

today in that chart. So I don't know. I

think that we have a an issue in the

American fabric we need to figure out. I

don't exactly know what the solution is,

but it's taken me this long and maybe

this is what all these young people have

been screaming about and I have ignored.

So I apologize for not really

understanding the gravity of it. But I

think that this is a big problem and I

think we need to start talking about it

a lot more

>> and here's a manifestation of it. If you

look past year prevalence of major

depressive episodes US adults 2021

pretty recent data and that 18 to 25

spike look at that Shimoth and then 26

to 49 and then the older generations

maybe not having these massive

depression episodes. Frey any thoughts

on the American dream changing and young

men? Yeah, I think there's a lot of

conflated factors here. They can

certainly be related, but there's just a

lot to unpack in all that. I mean, I can

I can comment on the one piece. I I

think we talked a little bit about, you

know, getting lost online. I mentioned

when I was in college that year, 1996,

when that that woman got lost in AOL, we

had dialup internet. It was, you know, a

very different world where we're all

connected 24/7 on our phones. I'm sure

we all have average phone usage of 7

hours a day today. So, there's a lot

more rabbit holes to fall into that

reinforce this isolation. It doesn't

actually solve your isolation or

loneliness problem when you get stuck on

a phone or stuck on the internet. It

actually magnifies it, makes it worse

because you start to see all the things

you don't have and you start to feel

worse about yourself and that leads to

all of these kind of I would say

difficult social context that Simon's

talking about. With respect to

affordability, as you know, I think that

that's a distinct point which is related

to our expectation that the government

can and should always solve our problems

for us. And as a result, we created the

federal home loan program much like we

created the federal student loan

program. Both of which I believe created

bubbles in those markets. We created

this concept that every American family

should be able to afford a home. And our

solution was to pump a bunch of money

into homes through the federal home loan

program. And that ultimately led to

bubbles of inaffordability for for

homes. If we really want to solve this

today, besides solving the government

spending problem and inflation problem

and dollar devaluation problem, which

obviously require cutting spending, I

think it's going to need to be some sort

of set of rules around making sure that

homes are not being bought up by

institutions. That that's one that I

think is going to be a pretty popular

point that's going to come up in the

next year or two, particularly in the

next election cycle. So, you know,

there's two sides to that to that one. I

think you you're kind of dancing around

the the issue there and I think it's

very real which is the financial piece

of this Freedberg boomers have just

absolutely this these couple of

generations if you look at the cost of

homes like you mentioned the cost of

education and then you just look at real

wage growth I don't know if I sent you a

chart Nick if you can take a look at

this you know the big problem in the

United States is wages have not grown

except for people who have a lot of

money already and so if you wanted to

start a family and you're in $100,000 in

debt for your student loans and homes

have double, triple, quadrupled in price

when compared to your income and we

don't have real wage growth. That's an

issue and I think this will become the

issue of the next election. We see

Mandami and the socialist movement. We

talked about it last week. If you really

want to make a compelling argument for

the next election cycle, I think it's

real wage growth. And if you look at

something like minimum wage and this

disparity between what top earners make

and minimum wage, here's a chart of

where minimum wage is in the United

States versus other developed countries.

There is a real argument here even

though we might all be free market.

>> Well, there's a very different approach.

There's a very different approach to

higher education in literally all of

those countries except for ours.

>> It's affordable. Yeah.

>> Well, yeah. And and I think that we have

to call a spade paid. There was an

entire generation, if not two

generations of young men and women

younger than us, right? So, not in their

late 40s, early 50s who were told that

they must, not should, not it's nice to,

they must go to university. And these

folks took out an enormous amount of

financial support to do so. And part of

the underlying reason was that they were

told and it sounds very credible.

Technology is coming and there's going

to be so much automation of all of the

other kinds of jobs that you may do in a

trade school. You should go to

university and protect yourself. Well,

lo and behold, it's turned out to be the

exact opposite. So, could you imagine

where, you know, you could have gone to

trade school, been an electrician, been

a plumber, build, done something,

welder,

made a couple hundred grand, married

somebody, you know, she does a good job.

Now, all of a sudden, she also makes

$150, $200,000 a year. You're making

$400,000 and you have no debt. That is

the key. You have no debt.

>> When you make 400K and have no debt, I'm

sorry, but that is probably actually

better than being the doctor making a

million bucks. And then there are all of

these other jobs that aren't a doctor

where you're still saddled with the

300,000 and you have no way of paying it

back. So I think that that's also a

really important issue that we have to

figure out at some point. There was a

framing of the issue for an entire

generation

that was probably wrong. If I had to

bet, I would bet that engineers are more

likely to have their jobs replace in the

short term than welders and plumbers.