If Books Could Kill - The Millionaire Next Door

00:00:00.000 The only other thing I'll say about this is that every – you meet the prosecutors and stuff like me.

00:00:04.200 They introduce themselves. 0.92

00:00:05.120 But like they're all Italians from New Jersey. 0.98

00:00:08.620 And I was just like – 0.98

00:00:09.240 Really?

00:00:09.520 This was any other ethnicity.

00:00:11.580 It's not like every prosecutor was Indian or something. 0.89

00:00:14.700 Like J.D. Vance would be talking about it.

00:00:17.800 Do they have a Jersey Shore accent?

00:00:19.720 How do you tell them that they're Italians?

00:00:21.400 How do you know? 0.93

00:00:21.880 Their names were like, I'm Danny Goomba.

00:00:25.660 This is Jenna Posterone. 1.00

00:00:27.620 This is such an insane way to run a justice system, honestly. 0.82

00:00:30.280 There was a moment when we're all standing outside the courtroom, 50 people, dead silence, except for this one girl who, like, was having a full fucking chat with the woman next to her who obviously, like, was less into it. 0.70

00:00:41.680 We were right next to the elevator, which was under construction.

00:00:45.960 And she kept saying, are they doing construction or is that just, like, a very loud elevator?

00:00:51.100 and like when i tell you that it was like the most obvious construction noises it was like 0.93

00:00:56.040 fucking jackhammers and men shouting and she kept waffling every two minutes she's like maybe it is 0.95

00:01:03.440 construction you know maybe it is just a loud elevator and i think the other lady was a little 1.00

00:01:08.260 too polite to be like moron what are you fucking talking about also like several of the elevators 1.00

00:01:14.100 were blocked off with giant signs that said like i i michael i was like this woman is about to decide 1.00

00:01:19.800 whether a murder one case someone's life is in this woman's hands like there's a murder fucking 0.99

00:01:27.100 murder defendant in there all right we gotta we gotta jump in all right um get us in no you you 0.99

00:01:32.040 have to start you have to rant peter michael what do you know about the millionaire next door

00:01:36.440 finally a book that lionizes the rich

00:01:39.560 so the name of the book is the millionaire next door colon the surprising secrets of america's

00:01:58.460 it's by thomas j stanley comma phd and william d danko comma phd two guys two guys and two

00:02:06.400 importantly, to academics. So this book comes out in 1996. It is apparently on the New York

00:02:12.320 Times bestseller list for more than three years. It sells many millions of copies. It's extremely

00:02:17.700 influential. It basically launched a whole genre of book, this like ordinary millionaire book,

00:02:23.480 like millionaires are all around us. You can be an ordinary millionaire. I didn't know this until

00:02:27.320 I was reading up on it, but Rich Dad, Poor Dad is like a ripoff of this book. Like it's like a

00:02:31.880 dumber version of this book it comes out a year after this book so within a couple years we get 0.52

00:02:36.460 the one minute millionaire the top 10 distinctions between millionaires and the middle class 0.90

00:02:41.040 millionaire by 30 the millionaire maker the automatic millionaire the thin green line the

00:02:46.460 money secrets of the super wealthy secrets of the millionaire mind cracking the millionaire code

00:02:50.640 in 1999 there's one called smart women finish rich which i imagine a guy named rich carrying

00:02:55.940 around bars and like showing to women can we circle back is there a way that we can just talk

00:02:59.280 about the one minute millionaire because that is pretty quick and i feel like maybe worth a read

00:03:05.480 that's like the four minute abs you're like this is even faster this is three minute abs this is

00:03:09.460 two minute abs you can be a millionaire and have three minutes of abs remain right

00:03:13.720 and then one of the authors of this book also wrote follow-ups called the millionaire woman

00:03:19.360 next door and the millionaire mind the billionaire next door and then he's like obviously that was

00:03:25.300 about men girls can be millionaires too so the authors in interviews very explicitly say like

00:03:31.580 this isn't a get rich quick book we're not giving advice this is a descriptive basically study of

00:03:37.180 who has a million dollars in net worth and they also talk about how they've been doing for 20

00:03:42.240 years they've been doing focus groups where they kind of dig more deeply into rich people's

00:03:46.740 finances what are they spending money on how have they earned their money we're getting a real

00:03:50.000 portrait of people with high net worth in America. This is 1996, you said, right? So Millionaire had

00:03:55.500 a little more meaning back then. I did the math. A million dollars in 1996 is almost exactly two

00:03:59.540 million dollars. So any of the figures that they give in the book roughly doubled them. Right. So

00:04:03.800 this is a paragraph from the introduction to like the updated version of the book. This is like an

00:04:08.140 introduction of the book like 10 years after it was published. Prior to writing The Millionaire

00:04:12.420 Next Door, I spent nearly an entire year reviewing my survey data and the transcripts of the

00:04:16.860 interviews conducted between 1982 and 1996. This extensive research and analysis, I believe,

00:04:22.680 is what makes The Millionaire Next Door a perennial bestseller. For the price of a book,

00:04:26.820 the reader is essentially buying the equivalent of more than $1 million worth of invaluable

00:04:30.720 research and interpretation. So you're already a frugal millionaire. You're already having good

00:04:35.100 spending habits by buying this. This is like when people are like, would you rather have a million

00:04:38.840 dollars or 10 minutes with James Z? This is the first sign that this book, despite being written

00:04:46.420 by academics. This is not like that smart of a book. This shows that like if you have a PhD and

00:04:51.560 then you write a bestselling book, you get dumber. Yeah, absolutely. Like it's not just that dumb 0.99

00:04:57.360 asses write these books. It makes you stupid. So the introduction of the book, they give sort of 1.00

00:05:01.960 the origin of it. They've been surveying people in rich neighborhoods, middle class neighborhoods

00:05:06.760 across the country for years. What they find out is basically this idea that when you think of a

00:05:11.040 millionaire, you think of someone who like lives in a big house, they're driving a fancy car,

00:05:14.680 But what they've discovered in their research is basically there's this huge tranche of like modest millionaires, people who like drive a used car.

00:05:22.220 They wear normal clothes, but they're sitting on like a million, two million dollars in wealth.

00:05:27.320 They're trying to draw this distinction between people who earn a million dollars a year versus people who have a million dollars in net worth.

00:05:33.800 There's a lot of people who have a million dollars in net worth who are like teachers and firefighters and kind of ordinary jobs.

00:05:39.160 They talk about dull, normal jobs, but they're sitting on this like massive nest egg.

00:05:43.340 And then they talk about the kinds of wealthy people that they will be discussing in the book.

00:05:50.020 So here's the end of the introduction.

00:05:52.160 It is seldom luck or inheritance or advanced degrees or even intelligence that enables people to amass fortunes.

00:05:57.560 Wealth is more often the result of a lifestyle of hard work, perseverance, planning, and most of all, self-discipline.

00:06:03.740 It's because people are self-disciplined.

00:06:04.900 That's how they became millionaires.

00:06:06.640 You're like, do I make the one book joke now or do I make it later or do I save it for later?

00:06:10.780 there's like a myth that like rich people don't spend money and that's why they're rich yeah like

00:06:17.640 that like a rich person is you with better spending habits yes no dude have you ever seen

00:06:23.420 this there's a meme that's just like a drawing of two guys and one is like dripping out in like 0.97

00:06:30.720 all sorts of shit and it's like jacket two thousand dollars hat one hundred and fifty 0.90

00:06:35.300 dollars shoes three hundred dollars and above him it's like poor right there's a rich guy and he's 0.99

00:06:41.500 just wearing a twenty five dollar shirt and like fifty dollar pants or whatever and that's the

00:06:46.060 lesson it's like poor people are poor because they spend all their money and rich people are

00:06:50.240 rich because they're dressed modestly right and they live in a modest house and they drive a modest

00:06:54.140 car this i mean this is kind of the spoiler of the episode peter but this book essentially

00:06:57.960 invented that myth when i was in college i knew a woman whose uh uncle was mega rich like ceo of

00:07:09.640 like a fortune 50 company sort of guy and also super cheap yeah it was like you know hanging on

00:07:15.860 to a dollar yeah frequently when she told these stories someone would be like well that's how

00:07:20.060 that's how he got rich yeah yeah no no he got rich because his salary is 10 million dollars a year

00:07:25.560 So the first part of the book is basically just like a bunch of statistics on who are the millionaires in 1996.

00:07:31.720 3.5% of households in America are millionaires at this time.

00:07:36.120 92% of millionaires are men.

00:07:38.820 Half of them have wives who are like housewives who are not working outside the home.

00:07:42.100 Around one in five of them is retired.

00:07:44.580 Of the people who are employed, two-thirds of them are self-employed.

00:07:48.540 But then they immediately get to the number one factor that they think explains why people are millionaires.

00:07:54.720 So they do this throughout the book.

00:07:56.140 They use specific names for people.

00:07:58.540 So in this section, they talk about a guy named Johnny Lucas, who's one of these humble

00:08:02.460 millionaire types.

00:08:03.540 But it's not clear if this is like a real person or just like a name that they've given

00:08:06.360 this person.

00:08:07.360 So here is this.

00:08:09.080 Why are so few people in America affluent?

00:08:12.200 Even most households with six-figure annual incomes are not affluent.

00:08:16.100 These people have a different orientation than does Johnny Lucas.

00:08:19.840 They believe in spending tomorrow's cash today.

00:08:21.940 They are debt-prone and are on earn-and-consume treadmills.

00:08:26.260 To many of them, those who do not display abundant material possessions are not successful.

00:08:31.140 To them, non-display-oriented people like Johnny Lucas are their inferiors.

00:08:36.340 They're going to look down on you for being frugal.

00:08:37.940 I'm already annoyed.

00:08:38.840 Also, what are these guys, what are their PhDs in?

00:08:41.620 They're both professors of marketing.

00:08:43.540 I knew it was fake.

00:08:46.020 Thomas Stanley, before this book comes out, he's written a number of books called, like,

00:08:49.240 selling to the affluent networking with the affluent so that's why he's doing all this

00:08:53.500 anthropology on rich people this is like flattering rich people it's like you're

00:08:56.540 the people who aren't rich they're not disciplined like you are here's more of this

00:09:01.280 johnny lucas the affluent business owner is very punctual all right this guy this guy's fake this

00:09:07.060 is you can't really tell but they're clearly presenting all these millionaires as like

00:09:11.100 very virtuous throughout he is never late for meetings and arrives at work each weekday at 6 30

00:09:16.180 a.m. How does he do this? It must be his wristwatch. Could it be that Johnny wears an

00:09:21.860 expensive watch? Fully one half of the millionaires surveyed never in their lives spent more than

00:09:26.820 $235 for a wristwatch. About one in 10 never paid more than $47. Certainly some millionaires

00:09:34.140 purchase expensive watches, but they are in the minority. Even among millionaires,

00:09:38.940 only 25% of those surveyed paid $1,125 or more. Are you just doing this to bait me?

00:09:45.960 i i specifically chose this i could have chosen any kind of excerpt but he goes on about watches

00:09:51.400 for like a very long time and i wanted you to read it folks let me tell you about watches okay

00:09:54.900 let me ruin this episode with an extremely long digression about watches it's an investment it's

00:10:00.820 really an investment when you think about it so uh as we're hinting i i like watches i uh i have

00:10:06.040 a ton of watches there's no need for you to do this you don't need to you don't need to defend

00:10:10.180 yourself well i'm gonna i i need to i need to explain why i know so much about this because

00:10:15.460 i'm about to share information okay i have a ton of watches most of them are cheap some of them are 0.84

00:10:19.760 fancy but the thing that you learn very quickly is that no one gives a shit oh yeah other people

00:10:24.820 don't know and like the percentage of the population who likes nice watches is super small 0.94

00:10:29.020 so he's presenting this as like they must be so frugal but in reality 25 of these guys paying

00:10:38.700 $1,100 and change for a watch is actually pretty hefty, especially since that's like $2,200 now.

00:10:45.560 So a full quarter of millionaires are buying fancy watches for themselves.

00:10:50.080 What's so weird is like this, Peter, is like a third of the book.

00:10:53.020 Like they have a whole chapter on buying cars.

00:10:55.900 They have a whole chapter on buying clothes.

00:10:58.500 It's like very detailed how much they are spending on these consumer goods.

00:11:02.940 And it's all kind of the same point.

00:11:03.860 They say the typical American millionaire reported that he never spent more than $400 for a suit of clothing.

00:11:09.720 So that's $800 in today's money.

00:11:11.560 Yeah, that's like not cheap.

00:11:13.060 Yeah.

00:11:13.420 They say half of them have never spent more than $140 for a pair of shoes, but half of them have spent more than $280 for a pair of shoes.

00:11:19.940 You're hitting these thresholds where it's like, yeah, to spend more than $300 on a pair of shoes, you need to really want nice shoes.

00:11:26.380 You know what I mean?

00:11:26.800 You need to kind of like shoes, like fashion or whatever.

00:11:29.980 Big chunk of these guys don't really care about shoes or watches or whatever.

00:11:33.640 So they get a nice one and they move on.

00:11:35.340 It's also telling that they don't have a chapter about how many are sending their kids to private school.

00:11:38.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:40.120 Like major things that people actually do spend like huge sums of money for.

00:11:42.820 When they're like 50% of these millionaires have never spent more than X on a watch or X on a car.

00:11:49.500 It's like, OK, right.

00:11:50.580 It's not the same guy every time.

00:11:52.680 You might be a car guy and so you spend your money on cars.

00:11:56.200 You might be a watch guy.

00:11:57.440 You spend your money on watches.

00:11:58.500 You might be a shoe guy.

00:11:59.920 You spend your money on shoes.

00:12:01.320 They're not all frugal.

00:12:02.360 They just have different priorities and care about different things.

00:12:04.640 So this is also the section of the book where you see that they're just laying it on a little

00:12:08.940 too thick, right?

00:12:09.920 So you're talking about how it's good to be frugal, which is true.

00:12:11.980 I mean, like fundamentally at the heart of this book is like good advice.

00:12:15.300 If you don't have a ton of money, don't spend a ton of money.

00:12:17.140 Fair enough.

00:12:17.580 Whatever.

00:12:17.960 Or like if you're like upper middle class-ish and you save your money, you can be a millionaire,

00:12:24.160 right?

00:12:24.380 That might have been something that like someone in 1996 needed to hear.

00:12:28.420 Totally.

00:12:28.900 And like doing the math, compound interest, it's like kind of useful, right?

00:12:31.420 Yeah.

00:12:31.540 Fair enough.

00:12:31.940 Exactly.

00:12:32.360 Right. But if you're like, I don't know this. Yeah, it's getting a little too. He shows up promptly at 630. What are we talking about? Yeah. Does that make him more money? What's going on? The other thing that he starts doing is in the chapter about buying cars, he's contrasting doctors. There's Dr. North and Dr. South. One of them has like the good car buying method and the other has like the bad car buying method. So Dr. North buys used cars. He's like a very frugal millionaire. He's the good kind. So here's this.

00:13:01.100 By the way, Michael, you introduced these as like, I'm not sure if these are real guys, Dr. North and Dr. South.

00:13:07.980 But again, he goes back and forth between like obviously fake names and like maybe logistically real names.

00:13:13.620 I don't know.

00:13:14.540 So in this section, he's basically talking about how buying a used car, being like a frugal millionaire, saves you time compared to buying a new car.

00:13:22.360 Dr. North decided that his best choice would be a three-year-old Mercedes-Benz.

00:13:27.080 He telephoned a few dealers and advised them of his interest.

00:13:29.780 He also examined several advertisements in the classified section of the paper.

00:13:34.060 Finally, he decided on a low-mileage model offered by a local dealer.

00:13:37.820 The North method took only a few hours.

00:13:40.080 Contrast this with Dr. South's automobile purchasing crusade, a process that took him at least 60 hours.

00:13:46.300 As someone who only bought used cars back when I had a car, it's a huge fucking hassle to buy, like, a decently priced, not scammy used car.

00:13:54.760 I mean, I do agree that it's good to spend three hours as opposed to 60. 0.64

00:13:59.360 Yeah. I mean, I guess. But also people, if you're buying a new car, I feel like a lot of like

00:14:04.680 wealthy purchasing habits are like, they just don't want to think about it that much. They go

00:14:08.140 to the dealership. The guy's like 80,000 bucks for a Jaguar. He's like, yeah, fuck it. I'll get

00:14:11.260 it. This is like the biggest benefit of having money. Yeah. The idea of never having to think

00:14:16.120 about this shit because you can just, you're paying for the convenience of who cares. Right. 1.00

00:14:21.300 Exactly. But also I, this is, we're really slobbing on these guys, right? Yeah, I know.

00:14:25.920 it's really bad i know this is getting a little weird and also it's like why even do this it's

00:14:31.020 like you could say oh it's a hassle to buy a used car but it's worth the hassle you know compounded

00:14:34.900 interest blah blah blah yeah but instead they're just like lying to your face and being like oh

00:14:39.040 you spend way less time on buying a car if you buy a used one it's not true they also say in most of

00:14:45.180 the cases we've examined prodigious accumulators of wealth love working while a large proportion

00:14:50.020 of under accumulators of wealth work because they need to support their conspicuous consumption

00:14:54.500 habit for a book by two academics it's like what are you talking about people like oftentimes

00:14:59.700 teachers love their work and they don't make a ton of money but they do it because they love it

00:15:03.500 the idea that like right if you're wealthy you'll love your job it's like you don't need to do this

00:15:07.880 it's not it's like the virtuous millionaire and like the slovenly the slovenly middle class 1.00

00:15:13.960 idiots like it's what the fuck is this it's really like they're they're creating this binary but 1.00

00:15:18.740 they're just like doing it way too much the idea that like self-discipline leads to money and money 1.00

00:15:23.920 is replicated through self-discipline, I just don't think that's right.

00:15:27.160 And that this is the only meaningful factor.

00:15:28.540 I mean, that's basically what they're setting up here, right?

00:15:30.040 The mistakes that you can make financially if you have a high income, if you make $500,000

00:15:36.680 a year and you burn straight up just like no reason to have bought that 60 grand a year,

00:15:45.400 you're still so far ahead of someone making 150.

00:15:48.820 This is also the weird obsession with things like wristwatches, where if you're very wealthy,

00:15:52.780 the difference between a $1,000 watch and a $5,000 watch is not going to make a meaningful

00:15:56.380 difference to your net worth. It's weird that they focus on like almost exclusively these consumer

00:16:00.420 items. It's so weird to talk about wealth, like income is like the second thing. Right, right,

00:16:05.920 right. You know what I mean? The other, this is the other extremely like just laying it on too

00:16:11.640 thick thing. They have an extended anecdote about one of their qualitative interviews with

00:16:16.820 millionaires. The first time we interviewed a group of people worth at least $10 million,

00:16:20.660 dollars, Decamillionaires, the session turned out differently than we had planned. To make sure our

00:16:25.420 Decamillionaire respondents felt comfortable during the interview, we rented a posh penthouse

00:16:30.020 on Manhattan's fashionable east side. We also hired two gourmet food designers. They put together

00:16:36.440 a menu of four pâtés and three kinds of caviar. To accompany this, the designers suggested a case

00:16:42.280 of high-quality 1970 Bordeaux, plus a case of wonderful 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon.

00:16:51.020 Armed with what we thought would be the ideal menu, we enthusiastically awaited the arrival

00:16:55.780 of our decamillionaire respondents. The first to arrive was someone we nicknamed Mr. Budd.

00:17:00.880 Mr. Budd owned several valuable pieces of commercial real estate in the New York metropolitan area.

00:17:06.320 You would have never figured from his outward appearance that he was worth well over $10 million.

00:17:10.420 dollars. Nevertheless, we wanted to make Mr. Budd feel that we fully understood the food and drink

00:17:15.360 expectations of America's decamillionaires. So after we introduced ourselves, one of us asked,

00:17:20.580 Mr. Budd, may I pour you a glass of 1970 Bordeaux? Mr. Budd looked at us with a puzzled expression

00:17:26.660 on his face and then said, I drink scotch and two kinds of beer, free and Budweiser. We hit our

00:17:32.900 shock as the true meaning of our decamillionaires message dawned upon us. During the subsequent

00:17:38.200 two-hour interview, the nine Deca Millionaire respondents shifted constantly in their chairs.

00:17:43.080 Occasionally, they glanced at the buffet, but not one touched the pate or drank our vintage wines.

00:17:48.800 We knew they were hungry, but all they ate were the gourmet crackers.

00:17:52.760 That's something about Deca Millionaires. They hate pate and wine.

00:17:55.340 This is like when Kevin in Home Alone 2 gets the limo and the pizza.

00:18:01.080 What would a baby think that the rich people do? We got three kinds of... The idea that they would

00:18:07.400 be like they imagined a world where they supplied one type of caviar and the deck of millionaires 0.98

00:18:13.280 were like what the fuck is this right i don't eat this type of caviar i love that they're treating 0.99

00:18:17.600 them like zoo animals too they're like we have to make them comfortable like we have to do a penthouse 0.99

00:18:21.220 and like it's like the special kind of foods they eat also i like that the guy's like i drink two 1.00

00:18:26.460 kinds of beer free and budweiser okay the pate's free eat that bitch this whole thing seems really 0.91

00:18:32.560 fake and also just kind of unnecessary to the thesis of the book the fact that rich people 0.93

00:18:36.380 drive humble cars, live in humble houses, it's not like they're actively hostile to the trappings

00:18:41.300 of wealth. If someone put me up and was like, here are three types of caviar, I wouldn't be

00:18:44.880 like, I'm more of a chicken wings guy. Yeah, you'd probably just eat something. It's just like,

00:18:50.000 why lay it on this thick in your book? It doesn't need to be here. Right, right. It's like bizarre.

00:18:55.080 So this sort of all speaks to the weird between the lines ideology of this book that the only

00:19:01.560 thing that matters to net worth is frugality, right? Is your spending habits on these things

00:19:06.640 like food and clothes, et cetera. Throughout the book, they keep downplaying the influence of

00:19:12.200 income. So in a chapter on budgeting, they say one of the mistakes people make is people allow

00:19:18.140 their income to define their budgets. They also say it's easier in America to earn a lot than it

00:19:24.300 is to accumulate wealth. They just don't take it for granted. They're like, ah, yeah, yeah,

00:19:27.660 You're earning like hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1996.

00:19:29.800 But what really matters is how much you're spending, right?

00:19:33.640 And so this is an excerpt from a New York Times article about this book that came out

00:19:38.620 a couple of years later.

00:19:39.800 Because this book really does show up everywhere.

00:19:41.700 It shows up in articles.

00:19:43.160 It shows up in like there's a David Brooks column about it from like a couple of years

00:19:46.420 afterwards.

00:19:47.080 It shows up in academic articles.

00:19:48.780 It's like taken relatively seriously.

00:19:50.840 So many more of us could become millionaires, as was amply demonstrated by Thomas Stanley

00:19:55.040 and William Danko in their fascinating book, The Millionaire Next Door. They found that

00:19:59.340 inheritances or even extended educations aren't necessary. The main requirement given time and

00:20:04.580 a decent income is thrift. I love given a decent income. Yeah, right. Well, that's the hard part

00:20:11.340 is the given a decent income. Rather than saying some intelligent spending habits can make a well

00:20:18.100 off person kind of rich, which is, I think, probably true. They're going the other way and

00:20:23.920 saying like rich people are rich because of their frugality, because of their spending habits.

00:20:29.720 And they also, again, they're laying it on too thick. They say later in the book,

00:20:32.600 we've interviewed many people worth two or three million dollars who have total realized annual

00:20:36.540 household incomes of less than $80,000. So they're also creating a spread where you can

00:20:40.820 have massive net worth at like remarkably low income, right? I'm sorry, but how?

00:20:45.400 They're basically saying like, it's virtuous to save 15% of your income. And that's like the one

00:20:49.960 thing that matters. But of course, if you make $500,000 a year, and you only save 5% of your

00:20:55.580 income, you're going to be a millionaire much faster than like a teacher who saves 20% of her

00:20:59.940 income. Like that just is the case, right? This is such a simple thing to understand. But like,

00:21:03.860 let's say you make 150, right? You probably maybe you save 30 grand a year, right? If you double

00:21:09.400 the income, you're not doubling the savings. You're like quadrupling the savings. Yeah. I don't know

00:21:14.760 if this is to flatter rich people or if it's to like trick the middle class somehow. Yeah. Maybe

00:21:21.540 it's maybe it's like aspirational, right? Like you don't need a better job. You just need to like

00:21:28.080 focus up. It's your fault, basically. Yeah. Anyone can do this, right? Other people, other people

00:21:32.260 making $50,000 a year, they have three million bucks in the bank. I'm sorry, but the people

00:21:37.240 making 80 grand a year that have $3 million cannot exist. So I did actually do the math on this

00:21:41.500 because there's all these like retirement calculators online. So first of all, he says

00:21:44.900 $80,000 in realized income. So that's post taxes. And that's $1996. So we're talking about $160,000

00:21:52.560 in 2025 post tax, which first of all, is just a lot of money. Like that puts you firmly in the

00:21:58.640 top 10% of income earners in the United States, right? But even if you have this high salary,

00:22:02.980 starting at age 30, you manage to put away 15% of your income, which is what they recommend in

00:22:07.840 this book, every single year of your life, you will have $3 million in net worth when you are

00:22:13.400 78 years old. That's the way you get to $3 million. So this is actually kind of a demonstration of

00:22:19.460 how hard it is to get to $3 million in net worth. I mean, look, maybe you like, yeah, whatever. If

00:22:24.080 you fucking buy IBM in 1971, right? Like whatever. I don't know. There's a way, but I just don't 0.99

00:22:29.520 believe it. It's also very funny that throughout the book, they almost never talk about income

00:22:32.720 other than to like kind of downplay it. But they do mention at one point, one single point in

00:22:37.800 the book, they say in the survey that they did of, of people with high net worth, the household

00:22:42.420 median taxable income is $131,000 a year. So 260K in 2025 money. That's a shitload of money. And

00:22:50.480 they just like never talk about it again. I really don't think wristwatches are like that

00:22:55.080 important if you're making that much money. Yeah. I think, I think if you're making a quarter

00:22:58.400 million now and you're sitting there, like how do I ensure that I have $3 million when I retire

00:23:06.560 or whatever, then like, this is probably part of the calculus. But like, if you're sitting there

00:23:12.100 right now making 90 grand, like this is not the way that you're going to become a millionaire.

00:23:17.200 It's just not. So there's these kind of sketchy qualitative stories about these focus groups

00:23:21.920 they're doing. There's also the issue of like, where are these statistics coming from, right?

00:23:26.640 Because the entire book is based on this survey of millionaires. And it's actually not a given

00:23:31.700 that this is a population that's easy to study, right? Because by definition, this is only three

00:23:36.440 0.5% of households, right? So if you send out like a general survey to the entire population,

00:23:40.800 you're going to have so few millionaires that you can't really say anything meaningful about them,

00:23:44.440 right? So you have to find this population, but they're difficult to find, right?

00:23:47.560 Well, not if you lure them to your east side penthouse with caviar and pâté.

00:23:54.520 But so finally, in Appendix 1, they describe how they are finding millionaires.

00:24:00.260 Before you get into this, I'm going to say what I would do. I would go to the cheapest stores

00:24:04.640 because that's where the millionaires shop.

00:24:08.160 The used car dealerships

00:24:09.340 where the real beaters are getting sold, yes.

00:24:12.300 Go to the shittiest clothing store you can find.

00:24:15.080 Right.

00:24:15.360 And just talk to anyone there.

00:24:16.920 Go to the dollar store.

00:24:18.160 Every person in there is a millionaire.

00:24:19.980 So basically they start with neighborhoods,

00:24:22.300 which is like, yeah,

00:24:22.960 you look at sort of where our house is worth a lot.

00:24:24.920 You find rich people there, right?

00:24:26.460 But they specifically say

00:24:28.580 that they're not looking at wealthy neighborhoods.

00:24:31.860 They say that they're stratifying them

00:24:33.300 across what they call the estimated net worth scale.

00:24:37.160 They're looking for neighborhoods where people have a high estimated net worth, not necessarily

00:24:41.120 a high income.

00:24:42.860 And so in his follow-up book, one of the authors, Thomas Stanley, describes this in more detail.

00:24:47.100 He's talking about working with a researcher.

00:24:49.600 Actually, let me send this to you.

00:24:51.180 So his researcher's name is John.

00:24:52.700 John found that some neighborhoods have high concentrations of people who have substantial

00:24:56.900 investment income and thus would have the millionaire mindset.

00:25:00.620 From his national database of 227,000 neighborhoods, John selected 2,487.

00:25:09.880 His mathematical model predicted that these would contain high concentrations of people

00:25:13.960 who were actually wealthy as opposed to those who had big homes with big mortgages, but

00:25:19.040 low net worth.

00:25:20.140 So they're not looking at like rich neighborhoods.

00:25:23.300 They're basically selecting neighborhoods that will have frugal millionaires, right?

00:25:26.880 That will have people with relatively low incomes, but high net worth.

00:25:29.860 You're not looking at the wealthiest neighborhoods where the actual wealthiest people in America live.

00:25:34.260 You're looking for this like upper middle tranche that maybe has a million dollars in net worth but not super high incomes.

00:25:39.100 But that's also the conclusion of your entire book.

00:25:41.300 Right.

00:25:41.500 So the way that they're selecting neighborhoods is like pretty sketchy.

00:25:45.240 They also – the way that they're doing the actual study is they're doing it by mail.

00:25:49.780 Hello.

00:25:50.540 I am here to interview men of means.

00:25:54.040 Do you want to hear what they did, Peter?

00:25:55.320 Mash some caviar into the envelope.

00:25:58.100 They actually did a version of this.

00:25:59.620 So they say, we selected 3,000 heads of household.

00:26:02.860 Each received an eight-page questionnaire, a form letter asking for his participation,

00:26:07.260 and guaranteeing the anonymity and confidentiality of the data we collected,

00:26:10.740 and a dollar bill as a token of our appreciation.

00:26:13.620 Oh my God.

00:26:16.420 So they send out an eight-page questionnaire, which is just wild.

00:26:21.620 They say in the book that their response rate was 45%.

00:26:24.700 That can't be right.

00:26:26.140 I know. 1.00

00:26:26.560 I was like, what the fuck? 0.99

00:26:27.680 But then I posted this on Blue Sky to, like, social science researchers. 0.99

00:26:30.280 I was like, does this sound remotely plausible to you?

00:26:31.920 And people said response rates have, like, cratered across the board since the 1990s.

00:26:36.380 This was at least plausible.

00:26:37.940 It wasn't, like, laughably false.

00:26:39.640 I also feel like, again, this might control out some of the richer people, like, some of the higher income folks.

00:26:45.880 Exactly. 0.99

00:26:46.320 The people who are willing to talk about this shit might be your, quote, unquote, humble millionaires. 1.00

00:26:51.800 Right, exactly. 1.00

00:26:52.240 The people who are, like, more frugal or whatever.

00:26:54.020 But yeah, if you're just like a super high income person and someone's like, tell me

00:26:57.900 about your money, you're probably like, no.

00:26:59.260 So they're selecting neighborhoods with like frugal millionaires.

00:27:01.840 They're only getting a half and half response rate, which I think would select for frugal

00:27:05.860 millionaires.

00:27:06.300 And then the questions on this actual questionnaire, they don't print the entire questionnaire

00:27:10.220 in the book. 0.95

00:27:11.260 And there's no peer reviewed studies based on this data, which is fucking wild for two

00:27:15.280 academics, which also just like makes me very skeptical of this entire project.

00:27:18.500 But at a couple of points, they say what the questions are.

00:27:21.020 So when they're talking about like the predictors of millionaires, they have a list of questions.

00:27:25.680 So one of them is, were your parents very frugal?

00:27:28.460 Are you frugal?

00:27:29.780 Is your spouse more frugal than you? 1.00

00:27:32.500 Asking, are you frugal is fucking wild. 0.99

00:27:35.540 It's not great data. 0.99

00:27:36.800 Like everyone's going to say yes.

00:27:38.140 No one thinks that they spend too much money.

00:27:40.220 Frugal is like a virtuous thing.

00:27:42.660 It's like, are you generous?

00:27:44.300 Are you kind?

00:27:45.140 Everyone's going to say yes to that.

00:27:46.220 It's not meaningful at all.

00:27:47.520 Yeah.

00:27:47.800 I feel like you need to see the data on their spending.

00:27:50.520 Which they're not getting. It's all self-reported. Like how much have you spent on a suit? Like

00:27:53.500 all of that is just asking people. Yeah. And again, I think that data just kind of sucks because

00:27:58.460 people spend their money in different places, right? It's really hard to tell if someone is

00:28:03.040 generally frugal from that sort of data. So basically the rest of the book is them

00:28:07.960 describing the characteristics of millionaires. So we found all these millionaires. They're in

00:28:12.280 our sample. What distinguishes these people from the rest of the population, right? So the first

00:28:17.460 chapter on this, this sounds like I'm being mean to the book, but this is actually true.

00:28:20.700 The first chapter on what makes millionaires different is their ethnicity. And you'd assume

00:28:26.200 like, okay, with wealth data, you'd be like, wait, black, Asian, Hispanic, like you can find

00:28:29.880 these statistics anywhere. They don't include black people or Hispanics or Asians in this book at all.

00:28:35.100 Yeah. No, let's get down. Let's get down to business, folks. Which are the best types of

00:28:39.040 whites? So there's literally, this is the list, Peter. These are the ethnicities, English, German, 0.88

00:28:43.160 irish scottish russian italian french dutch native american and okay hungarian all i am interested in 0.75

00:28:49.060 here is what are italians doing doing like french as a subset here is fucking crazy doing hungarian 0.93

00:28:57.980 as a subset here is fucking crazy all right well do you want to peter do you want to know which 0.97

00:29:01.700 kind of whites are the most likely to be millionaires according to this data this extremely 0.98

00:29:05.000 non-representative data i'm going to knock some out of contention right away it's not the hungarians

00:29:10.620 It's not the Irish.

00:29:11.780 It's not the French. 0.59

00:29:13.000 It's not the Russians.

00:29:13.880 Okay.

00:29:14.060 Think we're, are we down to Germans, English, and Dutch?

00:29:18.420 Yeah. 1.00

00:29:18.760 Those are my top three contenders.

00:29:20.620 Who's number one?

00:29:21.260 I'm going to say that the Dutch are number one. 1.00

00:29:23.840 Trash. 1.00

00:29:24.320 Dutch are number fifth. 1.00

00:29:25.320 Fuck. 1.00

00:29:25.860 Fuck. 1.00

00:29:26.020 You got it way wrong, Peter. 1.00

00:29:27.560 I forgot about the Pennsylvania Dutch.

00:29:28.960 Keep in mind, this is like a fake survey, which is not really...

00:29:31.180 Obviously, it's a fake survey.

00:29:33.200 I do think that what I just said was probably more accurate than their survey. 0.94

00:29:37.420 my vibes about the subspecies of whites yeah are pretty scientific i have to say

00:29:44.640 did it was it the french it is the russians that makes a lot of sense to me in the sense that uh

00:29:50.380 i do feel like a lot of rich ass russians came here after uh in the like 80s and 90s oh that 0.56

00:29:57.920 is not what they say that is not what they say no they say that uh russians are ethnically inclined 0.93

00:30:02.720 to start businesses.

00:30:03.920 Hell yeah.

00:30:04.220 They have a quote from a Russian,

00:30:06.520 like a guy who grows up in the Russian community

00:30:08.360 who says, Russians, they are the best horse traders. 0.90

00:30:11.540 And like, obviously it's not the French. 1.00

00:30:13.440 They're lazing about, right? 1.00

00:30:14.960 They do also mention that Germans are trash. 1.00

00:30:17.200 Germans make up 19% of the population, 1.00

00:30:20.180 but only 17% of millionaires. 0.64

00:30:22.340 Obviously a pretty big hit to Hitler's theory.

00:30:26.600 I think it's mostly sampling though, 1.00

00:30:27.860 because it's all the large ethnic groups all do bad 1.00

00:30:30.800 and small ethnic groups all do well. 1.00

00:30:32.900 I think it's just like how big is their sample? 0.96

00:30:34.360 Like, again, I think this is just like fake ass data 1.00

00:30:36.300 because the English do bad too. 1.00

00:30:37.600 And there's a shitload of English people in America. 1.00

00:30:39.500 English have been here for too long. 1.00

00:30:40.800 They're too assimilated. 1.00

00:30:41.660 Dude, that's what they say.

00:30:42.320 They literally have a whole section

00:30:43.400 about the longer you're in America,

00:30:45.500 the more you acclimate to like

00:30:47.060 the American consumptive lifestyle. 1.00

00:30:49.180 But immigrants don't do that. 1.00

00:30:50.580 Yeah, immigrants are more likely 1.00

00:30:51.740 to start businesses and shit, 1.00

00:30:53.120 but that's not like some fucking genetic predisposition. 0.99

00:30:56.620 It's like if you're first generation, 0.99

00:30:58.800 you're more likely to start a business. 0.96

00:31:00.440 The weirdest thing, too, is that they have, even though Scottish people are number two

00:31:03.920 in millionaires, but do you know why, Peter?

00:31:07.100 Do you know why?

00:31:07.940 I would love to know. 0.95

00:31:08.900 But the theory is it's because Scottish people are cheapskates. 1.00

00:31:12.100 That rocks, dude.

00:31:12.840 They're like, Scottish people are known for their frugality, which is a stereotype about

00:31:17.780 Scottish people, but it's also not true.

00:31:20.320 They're basically just repeating, oh, because they never spend money.

00:31:23.440 That's why they're all wealthy in the United States.

00:31:25.180 I love that the only other time we've talked about Scots on this show was J.D. 1.00

00:31:29.620 Vance's book talking about how the Scots-Irish are like degenerate losers who like can't do 1.00

00:31:35.620 anything. But they're also cheapskates. I guess J.D. Vance should just hold on and wait for that 1.00

00:31:39.940 Scottish DNA to kick in and perhaps then Appalachia will lift itself out of poverty.

00:31:47.340 So that's the first characteristic of millionaires. They are the correct ethnicities.

00:31:50.700 The other thing about millionaires is that they tend to buy specific stocks. They say that

00:31:56.240 millionaires like hold on to stocks. They're not like day traders. So like, that's pretty good

00:32:00.580 advice. Also, who was a day trader back in the 90s? How would you even do it? You're like calling

00:32:04.280 a broker. You're like a degenerate gambler calling a broker and there's like a $20 transaction fee 0.96

00:32:10.380 on every single thing. You're like sweating and like loosening your tie. You're just losing $500 0.97

00:32:14.060 a day on transaction fees. So he says 79% have at least one account with a brokerage company,

00:32:19.520 but they make their own investment decisions. This is something they say a lot in this book.

00:32:23.500 The term like mutual fund and like index fund, target date fund, none of these appear in the book.

00:32:28.860 And they're basically saying like you should be spending an inordinate amount of time like investing in specific things.

00:32:35.620 So here is a little vignette of some of the millionaires we've met.

00:32:40.500 Mr. Willis, a highly productive sales professional, had a Walmart as a client for more than 10 years.

00:32:46.160 All during this time, Walmart was exploding in growth and value.

00:32:49.800 How many shares of Walmart did Mr. Willis ever purchase?

00:32:53.100 Zero.

00:32:53.500 Yes, zero. Even though he had considerable firsthand knowledge of his client's success

00:32:57.880 and an annual six-figure income. But he did purchase a foreign luxury car every two years

00:33:04.560 during this time. What a fucking scumbag. He could have been doing insider trading, 1.00

00:33:08.560 but it's steady on a vehicle. A high-income marketing manager, Mr. Peterson,

00:33:13.960 was employed in the high-tech field, but he never invested a dollar in Microsoft or any other growth

00:33:19.240 company. Never in spite of having considerable knowledge about many of the firms in the

00:33:23.460 technology industry. The owner of a printing business enjoyed having one of the leading

00:33:28.020 beverage companies in America as a customer. The customer bought millions of dollars worth

00:33:32.320 of printing from him annually. But how much has the printer invested in his customer's

00:33:37.500 equity offerings? Zero.

00:33:39.280 That's basically the advice. It's like if you're somebody who does like professional

00:33:41.980 services, you should invest in the companies that you work with.

00:33:45.660 What if the companies who are your clients are not good investments?

00:33:48.720 What if it's bad? It's such weird advice.

00:33:51.760 Also, like just having a little bit of vision into a company does not give you like advanced stock knowledge.

00:33:59.820 No, it's such this is egregiously bad advice.

00:34:02.880 I've read other reviews of this book that mentioned like the idea of having somebody else do this for you was like not as widespread in 1996.

00:34:08.420 So you can like kind of give them a little bit of credit on it.

00:34:11.020 ETFs didn't exist, right? There are mutual funds, but there aren't really.

00:34:13.900 Yeah.

00:34:14.120 You didn't have as many options.

00:34:15.980 That's why it was very popular at this time to just buy a handful of blue chip companies.

00:34:20.440 Right, right. 1.00

00:34:21.040 But yeah, this is just stupid advice. 1.00

00:34:23.300 Yeah. 0.99

00:34:23.480 And also my guess is that some of what they're looking at is that the richest people will

00:34:28.880 be people who put a ton of money into one company that did well.

00:34:32.800 Yeah, yeah.

00:34:33.180 That's just survivorship bias, right?

00:34:34.900 They're like, you happen to have invested a ton in Microsoft and you got like super rich.

00:34:37.940 But there's also people who invested a ton in like Kodak.

00:34:40.300 I remember seeing someone say, like, you know, the best investors are not investors who diversified.

00:34:46.920 The best investors, if you look at, like, the numbers, the Warren Buffetts of the world, are people who made huge bets on a single company.

00:34:55.020 And it's like, right.

00:34:55.980 The people who are the most successful will be people who took extreme risks and then hit.

00:35:02.360 But that doesn't mean that that's a good strategy.

00:35:05.280 That's just survivorship bias.

00:35:06.820 So as well as doing your own investments, they also have two entire chapters about how

00:35:10.720 you must make budgets.

00:35:12.120 You have to spend a ton of time budgeting every single piece of spending that you do.

00:35:16.780 Everything you spend on like leisure, food, activities.

00:35:19.000 Where is the tax fraud chapter?

00:35:20.580 Are we getting to the tax fraud chapter?

00:35:22.240 This is another thing where like, I give them a bit of a pass because this is pre-apps.

00:35:26.520 Yeah.

00:35:26.980 Nowadays, like your bank just kind of tells you how much you're spending on various things.

00:35:30.200 It's like very easy to track your spending.

00:35:31.620 Like the concept of like balancing your checkbook doesn't really exist anymore because you can

00:35:35.680 like check your app, like what am I spending? But at the time it was pretty easy to lose track of

00:35:39.000 things. Like what did I spend eating out last month? I think again, this is like fairly good

00:35:42.780 advice. Yeah. Yeah. But because this book so closely links virtue and money, they have this

00:35:49.140 thing where you have to be spending like a ton of time on it. So they say the average person in

00:35:54.620 their survey spends 8.4 hours a month planning their investments and planning, like knowing

00:36:00.860 what their budget is. That's a crazy amount of time. It's so much time. It's like, that's like

00:36:04.820 two hours a week in my mind every hour i spend budgeting is an hour i'm not podcasting and

00:36:12.000 that's bad business they also have a weird section about how you shouldn't give money to your kids

00:36:19.820 okay there's this paragraph what happens when weakened children become adults they typically

00:36:26.340 they typically lack initiative more often than not they are economic underachievers

00:36:31.000 but have a high propensity to spend.

00:36:33.580 That's why they need economic subsidies to maintain the standard of living they enjoyed in their parents' home.

00:36:38.980 We will say it again.

00:36:40.260 The more dollars adult children receive, the fewer dollars they accumulate,

00:36:44.440 while those who are given fewer dollars accumulate more.

00:36:48.280 This is a statistically proven relationship.

00:36:51.080 Yet many parents still think that their wealth can automatically transform their children into economically productive adults.

00:36:57.720 They are wrong.

00:36:58.860 Discipline and initiative can't be purchased like automobiles or clothing off a rack.

00:37:04.180 They have a section in this chapter called The Unemployed Adult Child.

00:37:07.640 Yes. 1.00

00:37:08.060 And no offense to all of our listeners who fall into this category, but they're right

00:37:13.820 about this.

00:37:15.140 I mean, again, it's like good advice.

00:37:16.860 Don't like spoil your kids.

00:37:18.280 Don't like go nuts.

00:37:18.660 Yeah, whatever.

00:37:19.320 Right.

00:37:19.580 I mean, look, everyone knows someone who's like, you know, on the extreme end of the

00:37:24.380 spectrum where it's like their parents are just constantly funneling them so much money that like

00:37:28.840 they don't ever really get a sense of what money is right but also this is not really based on the

00:37:33.200 data that they've collected this is just like a thing they want to complain about i would be

00:37:37.020 shocked if there's real data about this because i'll say this i know a few people who went from

00:37:42.060 this sort of lifestyle to just like making mid six figures in finance because their dad was in

00:37:48.040 finance the other tell that this is not based on their data is that they also have an entire chapter

00:37:52.420 about how millionaires marry the right kind of housewife. 0.94

00:37:56.580 So true.

00:37:56.940 So here is a little section of this.

00:38:01.160 Chapter five, how to keep your girl in check.

00:38:03.320 This is literally Peter in this chapter. 0.54

00:38:05.500 This rules.

00:38:06.360 All right. 1.00

00:38:06.800 How did the wife of a millionaire respond

00:38:08.780 when her husband gave her $8 million worth of stock

00:38:11.780 in the company he recently took public?

00:38:13.800 According to her husband of 31 years,

00:38:16.140 she said, I appreciate this.

00:38:18.160 I really do.

00:38:19.080 Then she smiled,

00:38:20.060 never changing her position at the kitchen table

00:38:21.760 where she continued to cut out 25 and 50 cents off food coupons from the weak supply of newspapers.

00:38:28.800 Nothing is so important as to interrupt her Saturday morning chores. 1.00

00:38:32.280 That's a wife you want.

00:38:34.380 There's, I think, three things I want to talk about here.

00:38:37.000 One is like, yeah, if you take a company public, the reason you're rich is probably not frugality.

00:38:45.020 I think it's that you did an IPO.

00:38:48.080 Second of all, if I did keep separate money with my wife.

00:38:51.240 and then I gave her $8 million and then she was like, thanks, I appreciate this and then

00:38:56.720 went back to what she was doing, the way the life would drain out of me, Michael. 0.97

00:39:01.500 It's like, you should marry a woman who hates you.

00:39:03.600 It's like, okay, this just goes back to what she's doing.

00:39:06.800 I understand they're trying to be like, look, she still does the coupons, which like, yeah,

00:39:10.900 how much are you saving?

00:39:11.720 But that's the thing.

00:39:12.200 They want you to perform frugality, right?

00:39:15.280 And like, it should be a hassle.

00:39:16.780 I mean, it's part of the thing with the budgeting too.

00:39:18.500 Like you shouldn't have financial advisors that do this for you, right?

00:39:20.820 You're only the good kind of millionaire if you're spending time doing it, right?

00:39:24.880 Even if it's totally useless and pointless, you should be clipping coupons because you're

00:39:29.380 performing frugality.

00:39:30.900 This could be a Manosphere TikTok video.

00:39:34.740 Totally. 0.99

00:39:35.060 People are rich because they're cheap.

00:39:37.720 They didn't throw it away on their weak children and their profligate wives. 1.00

00:39:40.960 Also, do not date a whore. 1.00

00:39:44.300 So we then get into the two kinds of housewives. 1.00

00:39:46.940 There are type A housewives. 0.99

00:39:48.140 They say, type A's tend to marry high-income-producing, successful men.

00:39:52.800 They tend to take leadership roles in caring for their elderly, sometimes disabled parents.

00:39:57.300 The gifts and inheritance they tend to receive are, in part, compensation for these efforts. 0.98

00:40:01.700 We then have type B housewives.

00:40:03.840 They say, type B housewives, in contrast, are viewed as adult children who need economic

00:40:08.580 outpatient care and even emotional support.

00:40:11.380 They tend to be dependent on others and are unlikely to be leaders in any capacity.

00:40:15.460 And that goes on for like many paragraphs.

00:40:17.100 Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

00:40:20.100 Like the bad kind of housewife. 1.00

00:40:21.980 And unfortunately, this is all of our female listeners. 1.00

00:40:26.380 I mean, all of our listeners are lesbians, so we want a type A and a type B. Those are the power couples. 1.00

00:40:32.440 You want one of each. Very important.

00:40:34.300 You need one leader housewife who takes care of her parents and one scumbag lesbian lady. One lead. 1.00

00:40:43.160 So the whole time I'm reading this, I'm like, why is this in your book?

00:40:46.760 This is not based on any of the survey data.

00:40:48.520 They haven't asked, like, what kind of housewife do you have?

00:40:50.420 This is just, like, they want to complain. 1.00

00:40:52.060 There's just, like, a chapter called, like, The Bitch Spectrum. 1.00

00:40:54.860 It's so funny that, like, you get to see, again, like, stretching out what should be a relatively short book into a relatively long book. 0.99

00:41:03.520 They're like, okay, well, first, we'll break down the whites by ethnic group and rank them. 0.78

00:41:09.020 Second, let's divide wives into wives we like and wives we don't like.

00:41:14.500 They also have an extended section about, they do admit that the gender wage gap is real.

00:41:18.900 They say, the objective data make it quite clear. 1.00

00:41:21.240 In America, the odds are against women earning high incomes, which is true.

00:41:25.120 But then they're like, but discrimination can't explain it all. 0.99

00:41:29.100 We think it's because daughters get more help from their parents.

00:41:33.620 And when you're a woman growing up, you see your mother not working.

00:41:37.500 And then you're like, well, I don't have to work either.

00:41:39.640 And then you basically freeload. 1.00

00:41:41.080 And so that's why we have the gender wage gap. 0.61

00:41:43.920 I feel like a lot of men never recover from watching women get their drinks paid for 0.77

00:41:51.260 for a period of time in their early 20s. 0.97

00:41:53.660 Yeah, you're like, this explains everything.

00:41:56.900 This all fades away by the time you're 40.

00:42:00.280 None of this exists anymore or like in much smaller degrees. 1.00

00:42:03.880 But if women could invest the cost of those drinks, they'd all be millionaires now. 1.00

00:42:06.820 That's so true. 1.00

00:42:07.180 Given compound interest. 0.99

00:42:08.200 If you're smart and you're a woman in your early 20s, someone buys you a drink, you sell

00:42:12.700 it and then you invest it in stocks. Do you have a share of a target date fund with you instead of 0.97

00:42:17.720 a mojito? That's what I'd prefer. But the most important characteristic of millionaires, and this

00:42:23.120 is a thuddingly repetitive book that returns to this like 3,000 times throughout the text,

00:42:27.060 is that millionaires are self-made. Yes. They go out of their way to sort of establish

00:42:32.320 this like salt of the earth kind of character of millionaires, right? And a lot of that is because

00:42:37.580 they did hard work to get where they are. So here's this. Who becomes wealthy? Usually the

00:42:42.840 wealthy individual is a businessman who has lived in the same town for all of his adult life.

00:42:47.280 This person owns a small factory, a chain of stores, or a service company. He is married once

00:42:53.440 and remains married. He lives next door to people with a fraction of his wealth.

00:42:57.860 He's a compulsive saver and investor, and he has made his money on his own. 80% of America's

00:43:04.260 millionaires are first generation rich. They're all business owners. They all took on great risk

00:43:08.800 to themselves. They have the right wife. They've only been married one time. They have like a type

00:43:12.780 A wife. The kind of lady who barely looks at you when you give her 16 million dollars in today's 1.00

00:43:17.640 money. A good Russian lady. Most of you might think that it's okay to marry a German. No.

00:43:22.580 They also go out of their way to say millionaires did not inherit their wealth. So they have

00:43:28.840 statistic after statistic about how inheritance just isn't an important thing for today's

00:43:32.980 millionaires. So here's this. Have you always thought that most millionaires are born with

00:43:36.800 silver spoons in their mouths? If so, consider the following facts that our research uncovered

00:43:40.860 about American millionaires. Only 19% receive any income or wealth of any kind from a trust fund or

00:43:46.900 an estate. Fewer than 20% inherited 10% or more of their wealth. More than half never received as

00:43:53.900 much as $1 in inheritance. 91% never received as much as $1 of the ownership of a family business.

00:44:01.880 So they really lay this on thick.

00:44:04.000 I feel like occasionally you'll find some people on the left are sort of like obsessed

00:44:06.920 with the idea that it's all a full dice roll.

00:44:10.020 Yeah.

00:44:10.220 That's not something I'm super invested in, but I will say that like 20% inheriting their

00:44:16.000 money or not being first generation rich feels like a decent chunk.

00:44:19.420 Like this is not nobody.

00:44:21.220 This is also a unique situation in that if you look generationally, somebody who's a

00:44:25.020 millionaire in 1996 and they're in their late 50s, their parents would have grown up in

00:44:29.040 the Great Depression.

00:44:29.860 Right.

00:44:30.260 Interesting, yeah.

00:44:30.940 The fact that they're more rich than their parents, it's kind of everybody's more rich

00:44:34.460 than their parents, right?

00:44:35.100 I mean, America just had a huge explosion in living standards and wealth and income

00:44:39.240 over the course of the last hundred years.

00:44:41.340 Literally everyone our age has a story about their parents buying a house.

00:44:44.460 Yeah.

00:44:44.680 And now they're rich somehow.

00:44:46.120 I mean, they do mention in this section, again, kind of offhand, that the children of millionaires

00:44:52.260 have a one in five chance of becoming millionaires.

00:44:54.640 And the general population has a one in 35 chance of becoming a millionaire.

00:44:58.280 Right.

00:44:58.540 that's that's like the relevant fact it's not necessarily did all rich people just get it from

00:45:06.040 their parents or whatever right it's how much of a leg up is it so this gets into like a lot of the

00:45:11.380 research that i did what what this book is doing is actually expressing an ideology of the new

00:45:17.760 class of wealthy people in america that has now become like the dominant ideology of wealthy

00:45:22.260 people the the first thing we have to talk about is there there really was a shift in the demographics

00:45:27.340 and the makeup of the rich around this time.

00:45:30.480 This is an excerpt from a super fascinating book

00:45:32.280 called Uneasy Street by Rachel Sherman.

00:45:35.180 The composition of U.S. elites has changed significantly

00:45:37.880 since Ostrander conducted her research

00:45:40.140 nearly four decades ago.

00:45:41.840 In that period, as in most of the 20th century,

00:45:44.680 the upper class was exclusive and homogenous,

00:45:47.260 dominated by old money families

00:45:48.800 such as the Rockefellers and the Astors. 0.95

00:45:51.740 Elite college and professional education

00:45:53.620 were typically closed to all but white men, 0.77

00:45:55.640 wealthy women rarely worked for pay. Social status was largely inherited, and the old elite looked

00:46:02.040 down on newcomers. In the past few decades, in contrast, elites in the United States have become

00:46:07.480 more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, and class of origin. The post-war opening of

00:46:12.660 higher education, especially in elite institutions, to people besides elite WASP men was a major

00:46:18.620 catalyst for this shift. Importantly, not only the composition but the outlook of elites in the

00:46:24.400 United States has changed from a view that accepted inherited status as legitimate to

00:46:29.320 one that stresses meritocratic achievement through hard work and cultural openness to

00:46:34.380 a diverse world.

00:46:35.180 So this is a real change.

00:46:36.360 The sort of old money elite, of course, those people still exist, but they don't dominate

00:46:39.860 the elite the way that they once did.

00:46:41.480 The Great Gatsby was entirely about how you can be super rich, but still not be accepted.

00:46:49.900 Yeah.

00:46:50.140 I really don't understand why we have to read that book.

00:46:53.240 I was like – I actually remember thinking in high school, like just being confused about this cultural dynamic that it was describing.

00:46:59.320 Well, one of the most interesting things I read for this was an article called Family, Education, and Sources of Wealth Among the Richest Americans 1982 to 2012 where they looked at the Forbes 100, every single member for this entire like 30-year period, and just looked at like their sources of wealth.

00:47:15.020 And you do see this huge shift, right, from like real estate empires to like tech CEOs, right?

00:47:21.160 And Piketty talks about the working rich, like people who are CEOs, executives.

00:47:26.060 I'm sorry.

00:47:27.060 I'm sorry.

00:47:27.920 We need to pause. 0.98

00:47:29.520 Michael Hobbes read Capital in the 21st Century, a fucking thousand page. 0.98

00:47:35.820 I audiobooked it. 0.99

00:47:36.720 I audiobooked it.

00:47:37.340 So I missed the charts.

00:47:37.900 Oh, my God.

00:47:39.020 The fact that you were like reading the slop and you're like, what does Capital in the 21st Century say about this?

00:47:45.680 But one thing he does talk about is this concept of the working rich, right?

00:47:49.380 Where people, not to say that like, oh, these people work so hard and they're so good or

00:47:52.520 whatever, but it's like, these are people with jobs, right?

00:47:54.520 You're not just sitting there getting, quietly getting money to you.

00:47:56.700 You are somebody with a job, right?

00:47:58.000 And that's a huge part of your identity.

00:47:59.440 It's not like salt burn money or something.

00:48:01.420 Right, exactly.

00:48:01.840 You are working and have income and that's why you're rich.

00:48:04.960 And what you find in this article about the Forbes wealthiest is they say, those in the

00:48:09.340 Forbes 400 today are less likely to have inherited their wealth or to have grown up

00:48:12.860 wealthy.

00:48:13.380 They are more likely to have started their businesses having grown up with some wealth,

00:48:16.400 what we consider to be the equivalent of upper middle class.

00:48:19.340 The Forbes 400 of today also are those who were able to access education while young

00:48:23.360 and apply their skills to the most scalable industries, technology, finance, and mass

00:48:27.240 retail.

00:48:27.840 Podcasting.

00:48:28.340 The percent who grew up wealthy fell from 60% to 32%, while the percent that grew up

00:48:32.200 with some money in the family rose by a similar amount.

00:48:35.000 The share that grew up poor remained constant at roughly 20%. 0.84

00:48:38.400 So getting from the poor to the rich is still really fucking hard and has only gotten harder,

00:48:43.600 but getting from the upper to the super upper has gotten a lot easier. 0.87

00:48:48.240 There's circulation between the sort of top 10% and the top 0.1%.

00:48:52.600 And that is the circulation that I think feeds this idea that the rich are hardworking, right?

00:48:57.180 Because if you are Mark Zuckerberg, you did work really hard.

00:48:59.560 You worked really long hours.

00:49:00.460 You launched Facebook.

00:49:01.240 You had this idea, right?

00:49:02.760 But also he was the son of like a dentist in Westchester County.

00:49:05.920 Yeah, it's like the Bezos thing where he was like given 300 grand by his parents or whatever.

00:49:13.140 And it's like, yeah, he probably doesn't get ultra rich without the 300 grand.

00:49:19.060 That said, you can give me 300 grand.

00:49:21.840 I'm not creating Amazon.

00:49:23.160 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:49:23.600 Totally, yeah, yeah.

00:49:24.480 So it's, yeah, there's a huge gray area when you're talking about who's self-made and who's not.

00:49:29.560 What's interesting about the way that they frame this in the book is they very narrowly focus on inheritance.

00:49:36.200 But inheritance, I mean, your parents don't typically die until you're in your 40s or 50s,

00:49:40.420 in which case oftentimes your kind of financial fortunes are relatively well-established.

00:49:44.020 The much more important form of wealth transfers from rich people to their kids

00:49:48.680 is in getting them into elite colleges.

00:49:51.900 Oftentimes wealthy people are helping their kids with down payments, right, for homes.

00:49:56.560 Oftentimes they're helping them with sort of startup capital for their businesses.

00:49:59.980 And we couldn't have done this podcast if your mom didn't give us $10 million.

00:50:04.640 But I didn't inherit it.

00:50:05.800 I didn't inherit it.

00:50:06.560 But what's interesting about the shift is not just that it's a shift in sort of quote

00:50:11.200 unquote meritocracy.

00:50:12.380 I mean, on some level, these people are self-made, but in other, I think, very meaningful ways,

00:50:15.760 they aren't self-made.

00:50:16.520 They're getting a ton of privilege.

00:50:17.880 But it also created an ideology among the rich that I did this myself, right?

00:50:23.480 Yeah.

00:50:23.780 In this book, Uneasy Street, it's essentially a series of qualitative interviews with like

00:50:28.660 mega rich people in New York where she's like sits down with them and talks to them about

00:50:32.300 money.

00:50:32.980 And she finds a couple of really interesting characteristics.

00:50:35.440 So the first thing is that rich people explicitly describe themselves as middle class.

00:50:40.800 So here is this.

00:50:43.220 Helen was a stay-at-home mother who had worked in banking and was married to a lawyer with

00:50:47.220 a household income of over $2 million and assets I estimate at well over $8 million, including

00:50:52.640 two homes.

00:50:53.580 She told me, I feel like we're somewhat in the middle in the sense that there are so

00:50:57.000 many people with so much money.

00:50:58.520 They have private planes.

00:50:59.660 They have drivers.

00:51:00.580 They have all these things.

00:51:01.640 And so you see this sense of like, well, there's people who are richer than me.

00:51:05.440 So I don't, I don't feel rich, right?

00:51:07.600 Yeah.

00:51:07.900 What you find in other qualitative interviews is they oftentimes refer to their childhoods

00:51:11.160 to say like, well, I grew up in a normal home, right?

00:51:12.800 I went to public schools.

00:51:13.840 Yeah.

00:51:13.940 Oftentimes they did.

00:51:14.800 It's a, it's almost a social identity more than it is a description of their wealth.

00:51:18.240 You also have survey data.

00:51:19.940 There's a 2025 survey that asks millionaires whether or not they're self-made and 79% say

00:51:25.140 they're self-made.

00:51:25.820 Okay.

00:51:26.060 So people have this like idea of themselves as pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

00:51:29.580 I'm actually kind of impressed with the 21% who were like, no, dude. 0.93

00:51:32.700 i'm a fucking loser dude i do not deserve this money at all there's also a survey that two 0.97

00:51:41.640 thirds of u.s millionaires don't consider themselves to be wealthy yeah this is also 1.00

00:51:45.640 how you you have these constant articles that are i think rage bait at this point they're like you

00:51:49.180 can't even get by in new york on five hundred thousand dollars a year and that's true folks

00:51:53.140 that's why i had to move out here it's also very important to wealthy people to constantly

00:51:58.720 emphasize how hard they work, right? That they're not one of the lazy rich. They're not just sitting

00:52:03.280 there getting like rent money. Here is another excerpt from Uneasy Street. Near the end of the

00:52:08.200 interview, I asked if he felt he deserved his lifestyle. I had started asking interviewees

00:52:12.560 this question after I noticed they often seem to feel conflicted about their advantages. Paul

00:52:17.300 responded without hesitation. Absolutely. Damn right. I fucking deserve it. Where I am today,

00:52:22.160 I've earned every dime on my own. No one's done it. I mean, my in-laws have helped, but I've done

00:52:26.700 it i mean tell them paul you know you know the money is real when it's like yeah sure my in-laws

00:52:33.400 help like not even like my parents right sounds like he has a type a wife one of those type a

00:52:38.100 housewives yeah was it helpful uh marrying in to the bezos family yes he goes on my job my career

00:52:45.980 my current employer my previous employer this is all me no one's helped me it's been me so i've 0.63

00:52:51.560 earned every fucking dime absolutely and then rachel asked him and people who have less than you 0.88

00:52:56.700 do you think they deserve less? He responded, some of them, absolutely. I mean, Occupy Wall 0.98

00:53:01.840 Street. I mean, what have they done? They sat in a park doing nothing, you know? Tell them all.

00:53:07.240 You haven't done shit. Look, it's so important to be self-made in the sense that you marry 0.99

00:53:14.120 a rich lady. It's underrated to count that as self-made. But what's also so interesting to me

00:53:20.580 about how consistent this is throughout the book is that people's advantages are immediately

00:53:24.220 written off. I did have advantages, but I worked hard, right? This is the number one thing that

00:53:29.440 people describe. Oftentimes, like totally unprompted, like how hard they worked. And

00:53:32.580 oftentimes this is true, right? You don't like take it away from somebody. They did work really

00:53:35.680 hard. What we're actually just talking about is how much of it was luck, right? How much of it

00:53:41.900 was outside of your control? Because it might be that it couldn't have happened without a ton of

00:53:48.180 hard work. I think in many cases that is true. The actual question though is, was a ton of hard

00:53:55.420 work on its own enough? And the answer to that is basically unequivocally no in almost every

00:54:02.160 single situation, right? There's like statistics on this. Yeah. There are a ton of people who work

00:54:06.800 very hard and don't have what you have. So can you explain what that gap is, right? Or can you

00:54:13.940 explain if you're a mark zuckerberg or whoever why you if you think you deserve what you have

00:54:19.780 deserve 50 000 times someone uh who works very hard in a normal job right right there's like

00:54:28.780 there's like almost a moral question in there especially if you're looking at income in terms

00:54:32.360 of like well did we order society in such a way yeah that this is a trade-off right right this guy

00:54:38.660 gets three million a year and our welfare state's a little bit smaller than it might be also speaking

00:54:42.940 of morality, Peter, another article I read for this, super fascinating, is called Wealth

00:54:47.120 Elite Moralities, Wealthy Entrepreneurs' Moral Boundaries by Anna Cantola and Hannah

00:54:51.320 Kusela, two Finnish researchers who interviewed rich Finnish dudes. And what they found was

00:54:57.460 that people have this like mythos of hard work, but oftentimes they keep that mythos

00:55:02.260 even after they're not really doing the hard work anymore. So here's a fucking brutal series 0.97

00:55:07.500 of paragraphs. 1.00

00:55:09.000 And this is just, this is the Finns.

00:55:10.660 I know, dude.

00:55:11.380 They're not even on the list.

00:55:12.940 Overall, the entrepreneurs create symbolic and moral selves as hardworking, risk-taking, humble, ordinary blokes who do not show off their wealth.

00:55:21.700 However, their actual lifestyles contradict this moral self.

00:55:25.440 Especially when describing their current lives, the interviewees share anecdotes of idleness and relaxation.

00:55:31.440 One interviewee, for example, states that everyone should work an hour more each day to save the national economy.

00:55:37.560 But when describing his own life, it is evident that he is not working at all.

00:55:41.560 After selling his company to foreign investors, he, quote, sunbathed for one or two years, unquote, and four or five years later, he still is not working.

00:55:50.840 At the interview conducted in June, he said he plans to return to work in October.

00:55:56.280 Quote, I don't really work.

00:55:57.960 I was just thinking of putting an automatic reply in my email saying, let's get back to the issue on October 1st.

00:56:04.500 I do some real estate business, which is not really that hectic.

00:56:07.440 And then there was investing, but I had people to do that.

00:56:10.640 So I don't really work.

00:56:13.120 This is what The Millionaire Next Door should have been, right?

00:56:15.860 Interviewing these people and be like, you're actually not working that hard, dude.

00:56:19.600 The only people I want to hear from are the 21% of millionaires who said they are not

00:56:24.520 self-made.

00:56:25.840 My guess is that those people are kind of cool.

00:56:28.100 But then what's also interesting about The Millionaire Next Door focusing so much on

00:56:31.580 frugality is that when you read both Uneasy Street and these qualitative interviews with

00:56:36.160 rich Finnish people, this thing of frugality comes up all the time. This is a huge part of 0.96

00:56:41.640 the ideology and the self-conception of people as someone who isn't like those other millionaires.

00:56:47.080 Rich people will mention out of nowhere all the time. They're like, I don't fly business class.

00:56:51.680 I live in a modest home. I don't wear designer clothes, right? In the Finnish interviews,

00:56:56.500 they say, another interviewee who kept his sunglasses on throughout the interview

00:57:00.080 regards humility as one of his defining characteristics. I consider myself a normal

00:57:04.460 bloke a sense of humility comes from my upbringing and because of that even if i was elite i don't

00:57:09.700 know how to show off i would i would love to do this interview as a gag where like i'm i i am in

00:57:15.100 like a full fur coat and sunglasses i would say my my defining characteristic is how humble i am

00:57:21.080 this is the mythology of the wealthy now right i think it's you see this in like mark zuckerberg

00:57:26.000 wearing hoodies a lot of the aesthetics are not about like bright gold and shit right like

00:57:30.700 ostentatious displays of wealth it's ostentatiously displaying how you're not like the bad kind of

00:57:35.040 rich person zuckerberg's a good example because they all yeah they all have this like a duality

00:57:39.780 where they are like sort of an everyman but then a large part of their life is like completely

00:57:46.580 ridiculous and unattainable right yeah zuckerberg is maybe in like a hoodie and some casual jeans

00:57:54.440 but then like has a yacht yeah yeah and also three houses or whatever but like in his self 0.64

00:57:59.720 conception, that stuff doesn't count, right? What counts is the hoodie. And you're seeing

00:58:03.560 there's a millionaire next door, right? Where it's like people are ignoring that they send

00:58:05.960 their kids to private school for $50,000 a year. And they're like, oh, my car is three years old.

00:58:10.480 Actually, a little Zuckerberg anecdote that ties into the watch stuff. Most normal people,

00:58:16.800 if this becomes your hobby and you're like, I want a luxury watch, then maybe you save up and

00:58:21.360 one day you buy a Rolex, right? One day you buy a Cartier. Mark Zuckerberg got into watches a

00:58:26.220 couple years ago and then just like immediately bought like 10 of the rarest watches in the world

00:58:32.240 oh yeah and there's actually something so weird and artificial about it where it's like i'm gonna

00:58:37.080 start this hobby and then like he like asks someone you know like yeah well what are like

00:58:41.720 the most what are the rarest most expensive watches because i'm worth so much money and

00:58:47.040 i'm so famous that i can just get them all right now yeah yeah yeah like every time you see him in

00:58:51.980 a public appearance he has a watch worth like three million dollars on his wrist and it's like

00:58:55.380 Yeah, yeah. 0.97

00:58:55.860 There's something so fucking fraudulent about it, right? 0.96

00:58:58.460 Where not only is he like not this character that he plays, this like regular dude that 0.95

00:59:04.420 he plays, but he actually doesn't even really know what to do anymore.

00:59:08.360 But yeah, what can you do with that amount of money?

00:59:09.800 It's like an infinity symbol.

00:59:11.000 Money makes having a hobby like that almost irrelevant, right?

00:59:15.320 Like he gets into watches and just buys $50 million worth of the best watches in the world.

00:59:20.340 And now what?

00:59:20.960 Now what are you going to do?

00:59:21.860 It's also, it's very similar to like normal people when you're like, my New Year's resolution

00:59:24.720 is to start running and then you go on Amazon, you're like, I'm getting running pants. I'm

00:59:28.160 getting running shoes. You go to like buying binge even though you haven't actually like

00:59:30.780 started the thing yet. It's the same thing that he's doing, except he's spending like $4 million

00:59:34.460 instead of like $200. There's something I can't quite articulate, but like their conception of

00:59:39.760 themselves is so fucked. They no longer even understand themselves. But this is also, this 0.99

00:59:45.940 to me is so key to like the political ideology, right? Because one thing Rachel Sherman mentions

00:59:50.000 in her book is that rich people voted for Harris in the last election, right? So this isn't

00:59:54.000 necessarily a sort of partisanly right-wing group, but these are all people who experience any idea

01:00:02.040 of increasing taxes on the wealthy as a personal affront, right? Because they're like, well, I

01:00:06.060 worked hard for this. I'm not the bad kind of rich person. I'm not an aster. I'm not a Carnegie.

01:00:10.320 You can't really get any kind of political consciousness out of these people because

01:00:13.360 they don't understand themselves as rich people, right? They will never admit it. And one thing

01:00:17.820 she mentions in the book too is this concept of luxury creep, where kind of like decision by

01:00:22.380 decision as somebody stays rich for many, many years, it's like they'll fly business once and

01:00:27.400 they'll be like, oh, I fly business. It's just easier for my neck, you know? And then they'll

01:00:30.740 fly private. Like over time, they just go up the wealth ladder, right? It's like on one decision,

01:00:36.500 like, oh, I'll buy a new car this time. But I'm not the kind of person who buys new cars, right?

01:00:40.360 And of course, like the cars become like a Bugatti and then it rolls Royce, blah, blah, blah. It's

01:00:44.200 like over time, they entrench themselves into these buying habits. But she also mentions that

01:00:48.900 they actually get stronger in their mindset of themselves as middle-class people, partly because

01:00:54.240 they're hanging out with more elites, right? So they are kind of in the middle of the income band

01:00:58.880 of people that they're spending time with. But there's never a point at which these people start

01:01:03.060 to identify as rich people, right? It's always like a fluke, right? They're like, I'm a middle-class

01:01:07.540 person. I'm an interloper here. But that makes it so hard to do any kind of political organizing or

01:01:12.500 like political punishment of these people because they experience such an attack if you try to

01:01:17.440 reduce the amount of wealth that they have because they don't think they have that much wealth.

01:01:19.800 Right. Because they don't view themselves as having done anything wrong. The idea that it

01:01:26.520 would be better or more moral to take some of their money from them never sits right in their

01:01:32.560 brains. Right. It's an injustice. It's like, well, I work for this money and you're taking it away

01:01:35.520 from me. Right. It's a theft. Right. You can't tell me that I've done something wrong to get

01:01:39.440 this. All I did was work hard. So we then get back to the book. We have to talk about his chapters

01:01:45.960 on taxation. Yeah. This is going to be a little script, Peter, about two IRS workers. So he says,

01:01:53.880 assume for a few moments that you are Mr. Bob Stern, a scholar who works for the IRS.

01:01:58.340 One morning, your manager, Mr. John Young, calls you into his office. So do you want to be the

01:02:04.000 IRS guy or the manager, Peter? I will be the manager. Okay. Bob, I keep reading reports about

01:02:09.760 the growth of the millionaire population. The number of wealthy people keeps rapidly increasing,

01:02:14.540 But our income tax revenue for a lot of these people is not keeping pace.

01:02:19.060 I wish Congress would wake up.

01:02:20.700 What this country needs is a tax on wealth.

01:02:22.720 I know what you mean, but sooner or later, we will get them.

01:02:25.200 Remember, it's inevitable.

01:02:26.460 Death and taxes.

01:02:27.440 Not so fast, Bob.

01:02:28.720 Look at this case study. 1.00

01:02:30.380 Here's a woman, Lucy L. 1.00

01:02:32.660 Fake names. 0.99

01:02:33.680 It's funny to not give the full name in a casual conversation. 0.99

01:02:37.300 Here's a woman, Lucy L., who had $7 million just a year before she died. 0.98

01:02:41.260 She lived on her pension money. 0.87

01:02:42.960 Never in her life sold a share of stock out of her portfolio.

01:02:45.920 Her wealth doubled in just the six years before her 70th and 76th birthdays.

01:02:50.480 But what did we get out of it?

01:02:51.780 In terms of income tax, nearly zip.

01:02:53.800 But the reaper, he got her, right?

01:02:55.520 Death and taxes.

01:02:56.500 Wrong, Bob.

01:02:57.260 She died last year.

01:02:58.700 And do you know what her net worth was at the time the reaper finally showed up?

01:03:01.780 Less than $200,000.

01:03:03.980 No estate taxes.

01:03:05.640 Some days I wish I were in another line of work.

01:03:07.840 The enemy is winning.

01:03:10.200 But where did her money go?

01:03:11.440 She gave it to her church, two colleges, and a dozen or more charitable organizations.

01:03:16.400 She also gave $10,000 to every one of her children, grandchildren, and nieces and nephews.

01:03:21.260 She's a real country, loaded with relatives, like a mountain of people.

01:03:24.380 No, like a lot of mountain people. 0.98

01:03:25.620 Oh, sorry. Oh, my God.

01:03:28.200 She's a real country, loaded with relatives, like a lot of mountain people. 1.00

01:03:32.020 She's the wrong kind of white. She's the wrong kind of white. 0.99

01:03:33.720 That's right. 0.98

01:03:34.260 Well, she sounds like a pretty nice person to give so much money to a church, colleges, and charities.

01:03:38.720 Bob. 0.93

01:03:39.080 bob shame on you every one of those churches is racist 0.99

01:03:44.400 bob shame on you she and her ilk are the enemy america needs their wealth to keep our government 0.99

01:03:52.700 operating we need her money to pay off the federal debt we need to fund all of our social programs

01:03:58.320 perhaps she feels that her church the colleges and the charities also have needs bob you are so

01:04:04.920 naive this woman is an amateur what type of experience does she have with doling out her

01:04:10.320 wealth we are her government we should decide where and how wealth is distributed we are the

01:04:15.700 pros we have to start taxing wealth before all the millionaires transform themselves

01:04:19.940 into non-millionaires so this isn't this is insane in general but it's also so insane to

01:04:25.560 include in an allegedly academic book about like the features like survey data like wealthy in 0.84

01:04:31.940 america fucking marketing phds are doing they're doing like an extended bit i don't think you 0.73

01:04:37.160 should legally be allowed to put phd on the cover of your book if it's a marketing phd 0.99

01:04:40.900 i love that they're just creating like the irs as these like demons who are like this 1.00

01:04:45.940 bitch gave money away right hate her for it and also it's just like some fucking middle 0.99

01:04:50.660 management asshole at the irs is like but you see like this weird kind of like radicalization 1.00

01:04:56.840 right that it's like you have to construct these efforts to tax rich people as somehow like totally 0.99

01:05:02.340 illegitimate and only appealing to like the worst kind of people like maha she gives money to charity

01:05:08.200 she's evil right right also in the book they say we believe in the next 20 years the affluent will 0.82

01:05:12.980 have to use every option within the law to remain affluent it's a segment of our economy that will

01:05:17.800 be under siege by the liberal politician and his friend the tax man yeah well look they got they

01:05:23.140 got that right the affluent of course uh under siege in our country since 1996 baby it's been 1.00

01:05:28.360 pretty tough for the affluent in america like fucking like newt gingrich got his fucking claws 0.98

01:05:33.960 into their marketing brains yeah and they were like my god in the next 20 years the entire 0.99

01:05:41.800 country is going to change rich people won't be allowed to be rich anymore the last thing i want

01:05:45.780 to read is also another part of the ideology that shows up throughout the book about like being a

01:05:51.860 frugal millionaire, right? They're basically creating this identity for yourself as like one

01:05:55.260 of the good kinds of rich people, right? So here is him talking about this millionaire that he made

01:06:00.640 up, Johnny Lucas. He has a long thing about like baseball players and celebrities have like all

01:06:06.560 their spending habits are so glorified by the media. So he's talking about whether you would

01:06:10.640 ever have a TV show about someone like Johnny Lucas. Is a show about the typical American 0.99

01:06:15.740 millionaire, one the mass TV audience would enjoy? We doubt it. Let's take a look at why not.

01:06:21.420 The camera zooms in on the typical millionaire household of Mr. Johnny Lucas.

01:06:25.980 Like most millionaires, Johnny, 57, has been married to the same woman for most of his adult life.

01:06:31.500 He holds an undergraduate degree from a local college.

01:06:34.500 He's the owner of a small janitorial contracting firm that has thrived in the last few years.

01:06:39.240 To his neighbors, Johnny and his family appear to be nondescript middle-class folks.

01:06:43.340 But Johnny has a net worth of more than $2 million.

01:06:46.400 How will the TV audience respond to the description of Johnny's wealth in the images of Johnny on the screen?

01:06:51.180 First, viewers will likely be confused because Johnny does not look like the millionaire most

01:06:55.320 people envision. What? A house worth a million dollars? What? I don't know. I don't understand.

01:06:59.200 Second, they may be uncomfortable. Johnny's traditional family values and his lifestyle

01:07:03.400 of hard work, discipline, sacrifice, thrift, and sound investment habits might threaten the audience.

01:07:09.220 What happens when you tell the average American adult that he needs to reduce his spending in

01:07:12.920 order to build wealth for the future? He may perceive this as a threat to his way of life.

01:07:17.260 It is likely that only Johnny and his cohorts would tune into such a program.

01:07:21.320 Why would Johnny watch a program about his own?

01:07:24.380 About a guy not buying stuff?

01:07:26.180 He's like, no, we'll go to the store today.

01:07:27.580 He's just like a guy at work.

01:07:29.300 What are you talking about?

01:07:30.860 Yeah, of course people aren't going to watch that show. 1.00

01:07:32.760 It's fucking boring as shit, dude. 1.00

01:07:34.720 But it's also, I think the other part of the ideology, right, is this sense of victimhood. 1.00

01:07:38.980 Yeah, yeah.

01:07:39.400 You're a millionaire, but no one wants to admit that the way you got there was with frugality.

01:07:43.520 No one wants to congratulate you.

01:07:45.000 Americans feel threatened by you.

01:07:46.880 Yeah.

01:07:47.220 Not only are you a special boy, but just hearing about it would upset people.

01:07:53.300 And you can argue that like sort of celebrity culture is like a lot of spending stuff.

01:07:56.300 But if you talk about like sort of standard financial advice, it's all about frugality.

01:08:00.220 It's all about like being prudent.

01:08:01.540 Yeah.

01:08:01.640 The idea that like a frugal rich guy is like offensive to people.

01:08:07.620 What are you talking about?

01:08:08.660 What is that?

01:08:09.120 Is that based on something?

01:08:10.500 There's later this whole section about how Johnny sometimes parks his like janitorial truck in the driveway and then his neighbors like try to kick him out of the neighborhood.

01:08:19.180 Yeah.

01:08:19.440 Because they're like, oh, we hate your values.

01:08:21.620 We hate that you – at one point they're like, they hate that he sends his kids to college. 1.00

01:08:26.420 If I found out that one of my neighbors was working class, that would be disgusting to me. 1.00

01:08:31.080 I would say no, no. 1.00

01:08:33.360 Start throwing your watches at him.

01:08:34.760 Unless you are doing some sort of rent seeking on American capital, then I'm not interested

01:08:41.220 in living near you.

01:08:42.100 If you heard a story, if you told like the average American a story, be like, oh, this

01:08:45.080 guy only makes $80,000 a year, but he has a net worth of $2 million because he lives

01:08:48.400 like a prudent lifestyle. 1.00

01:08:49.960 How many of you are going to be like, fuck that guy? 1.00

01:08:51.600 They think he's like a hero. 1.00

01:08:52.780 Yeah, you're not under attack for this at all.

01:08:55.000 I mean, the fact that this man like doesn't exist is pretty important because like you

01:08:58.860 are literally creating a mythical hero.

01:09:01.420 But this is what's so interesting is I think that this book Between the Lines is creating, giving rich people this story about themselves, right?

01:09:09.120 A lot of people read this book and this book showed up in popular media all the time.

01:09:12.820 And it really created this story of like you're not the bad kind of rich person, right?

01:09:17.660 And they hate you for being thrifty.

01:09:20.060 Not just that, but like where is the chapter that's like, yeah, look, some people are just like high income, big spenders, right?

01:09:27.740 Yeah, exactly.

01:09:27.940 Like, they seem to collapse all rich people into this category of, like, guy with reasonable income who's just very frugal, very smart, very responsible.

01:09:39.120 By the way, doesn't cheat on his wife.

01:09:41.280 Yeah.

01:09:41.520 Only been married once.

01:09:42.440 What are you talking about?

01:09:42.840 They hate you for only being married once. 0.99

01:09:44.400 Where does, like, the scumbag rich guy that we all know fit into this framework? 0.99

01:09:50.460 Right. 0.97

01:09:50.520 I mean, they basically talk about this and they basically say they're not really rich.

01:09:53.560 Right.

01:09:53.780 If you see somebody driving a Rolls Royce, he's not rich because he drives a Rolls Royce.

01:09:58.080 Right.

01:09:58.300 The guy with a fancy watch can't be rich because he's outside of the category that we have created.

01:10:05.380 Right.

01:10:05.560 But of course, wealth inequality, that guy might just earn like $10 million a year and 0.98

01:10:08.720 the fucking watch doesn't matter, right? 0.90

01:10:10.160 It's so interesting that they just carve those people out of the equation. 1.00

01:10:14.160 No, they're frauds.

01:10:14.980 With no real data on them because we didn't survey them basically.

01:10:17.140 My net worth, I pin at $25 million.

01:10:20.220 But that's mostly brand equity.

01:10:22.560 That's what I, that's where I value.

01:10:24.580 That's your IP?

01:10:25.560 That's my estimation, my personal calculation of the Peter Brands.

01:10:30.060 The only, the only epilogue I will say about the aftermath of this book is that obviously

01:10:33.640 it sold a billion copies.

01:10:35.320 They made a ton of money.

01:10:36.980 Thomas Stanley, one of the authors went on to write a bunch of these other slot books.

01:10:40.560 There's an article like following up on the book, like 10 years later that notes one of

01:10:44.940 the authors of this book, a couple of years after it came out, bought a brand new Mercedes.

01:10:49.540 Hell yeah.

01:10:49.880 In a book that says over and over again, never buy a brand new car.

01:10:53.280 And the other author bought a brand new Corvette. 0.98

01:10:56.440 So long, suckers. 1.00

01:10:58.280 Literally leaving their readership in the dust, just fucking just cruising away in the new vet. 1.00

01:11:03.960 Let's go, boys. 1.00

01:11:04.760 It was a fucking fraud. 1.00

01:11:06.840 Well, but there's their self-made. 1.00

01:11:19.880 Thank you.

If Books Could Kill - February 05, 2026

The Millionaire Next Door

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