Prof G Markets - AI is Taking Jobs — Here’s How to Stay Indispensable

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Scott Galloway and Ed Elson break down Big Tech’s latest earnings and discuss which companies might be over or undervalued. They also examine how AI is reshaping the job market, and how workers shou...ld plan accordingly. Finally, they unpack the recent trade meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter  Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Quantum computers, the next great frontier of technology, offering endless possibilities that stretch the human mind. But for Roscoe Cudullian and the Phoenix Colony, quantum computing uploads the human mind with life-altering consequences. Audibles hit sci-fi thriller The Downloaded returns with Oscar winner Brendan Fraser, reprising his role as Rosco Cudulian in The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. This thought-provoking sequel from Robert J. Sawyer takes listeners on a captivating sci-fi journey, a mind-bending must-listen that asks, what are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?
Starting point is 00:00:48 The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix Colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible original Blockbuster, the Downloaded, it's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide.
Starting point is 00:01:36 Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.
Starting point is 00:02:18 Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible original Blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The downloaded two, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Today is number 80. That's the percentage of Inveral.
Starting point is 00:02:57 video employees who are now millionaires. I had true story. My girlfriend right out of college, her name was Melanie, and she was this lovely woman, and I don't know if you know this, or would find it even believable, but I didn't get off to a really fast start professionally. And I remember saying to her, I love you, and I realize I don't have as much money as my friend, Jack, but I'm a good boyfriend, and we have a wonderful future together, to which she literally broke down in tears and wrapped her arms around me and said, I love you, and if you really love me, you'd introduce me to Jack. That actually kind of happened, Ed.
Starting point is 00:03:28 That kind of happened. Yeah, it was quite a long and winding joke. It sounded rooted in experience. So was his name Jack? What was his real name? I've changed the names to protect the innocent. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:41 Who was it? No, I'm not going there. I'm not going there. I'm so excited. I'm here in New York. I'm ready for Halloween. I'm super excited. I love being here. And you went with, you're going with Deadpool, right? 100%. I just did round three, round four. A second, round two. Only the second time. You can wear an outfit twice. I used to go to Starship Commander Jean-Luc Picard. Huge crowd pleaser. Huge live long and prosper. Literally every dork would come up to me. Every girl that it was, every guy that was still a virgin in Manhattan would come up to me and like give that weird handsome. We'll go live long and prosper. I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Not the audience I want it.
Starting point is 00:04:28 There's a U-Porn super user. And here I have a Halloween story. I moved back to New York, and even though you don't need a car, I was raised in California where it was all about the car. And so I bought a seven series thinking that would make me seem more interesting to other guys and more attractive to women. And I bought it from BMW of Southampton. And they gave me one key. And I'm like, it's supposed to have two keys. And I said, yeah, we can't find the other one.
Starting point is 00:04:54 And I'm like, well, when you find it, please send it to me. Anyway, so I'm out, parting Halloween, come home, totally fucked up. I was at Lotus. I remember that I came home in my Starship Commander outfit, and I was in the back of my loft that faces the street, and I hear my car start up. I'm like, what? And I look down, and my car's lights are on. Someone's in my car. So I go running down.
Starting point is 00:05:17 My car is being stolen, so I chased the car to the 6th Avenue and 15th Street. I'm running after it with my phaser drawn, true story. and I catch up to the guy. He hits a red light, and I catch up to him. And I look in the car, and he looks at me, like, what the fuck is this Star Trek person chasing me for? And I was still young and dumb. I was not your age, but a little bit older, and I still had decent levels of testosterone. And so I looked, and I saw in the corner, you know, your idiot male masculinity, weirdness, violence hits in.
Starting point is 00:05:52 I'm like, oh, no, steal my car must die. And so I pick up, I start to pick up, you know, those big, wired, steel trash containers on the corners of New York? Yep. I literally thought, I'm like, okay, I'm going to put this through the window and try and pull them out. And the car, the light hasn't turned green yet. And so, and then I was at that age of my life where I was just starting to get smart, just starting. And my light turned green, and I put the trash can down, and he just drove away into the night. And so there's a couple lessons here.
Starting point is 00:06:24 Why didn't you do it? Because I didn't want to get fucking shot, Ed. Okay, so you came to your senses. Yeah, I didn't. I mean, any guy who's willing to steal your car may have a gun on him. So anyways, a couple lessons here. BMW of Southampton, you're clearly engaging in organized crime. And then they found the car like six months later.
Starting point is 00:06:48 And they called me and said, did you lose your guy? And I got in a big argument with BMW. I'm like, you guys clearly are engaging in an organized crime. crime. I'm not going to continue to pay payments. And it was a big cluster fuck. So you got it back? Yeah, but it had the GPS pulled out of it. I guess the first thing they do is pull the GPS so you can't track it. This is like 20 years ago. But anyways, the moral of the story was it happened Halloween night and I was chasing after a car, a Starship commander, Jean-Luc Picard. That is a good moral to the story. You're like Aesop. There's a Scott Galloway fable.
Starting point is 00:07:22 There I go. Many lessons to be learned. There you go. What's going on with you? Let's see. I'm not going out tonight. I've got a birthday dinner for my friend. So we'll just have dinner and I won't be out partying. I assume you're going to be out late into the night. I am except I'm going on, it's such a bummer. I'm going on Fried Zakaria tomorrow morning, so I can't get fucked up. You like being hung over for the media appearances. I never like being hung over. I like my voice. I didn't drink last night. So my voice sounds like yours. It sounds kind of weak and feeble. But when I drink a lot, the next day I sound like, you know,
Starting point is 00:07:57 Luke, I am your father. Scan your emotions. You know this to be true. That's my one invitation. You want to hear my other great impersonation or imitation? Please. This is Dr. Evil. How about no?
Starting point is 00:08:20 That's good. That's good. And by the way, I am so sick of people saying they like you more than me. I am definitely funnier than Ed. I am definitely funnier. Anyways, get to the fucking headlines. Stop dicking around here. Yeah, that's my bad.
Starting point is 00:08:39 That's really my bad. Okay. New York. I got to lock in, huh? Now there's the time to buy. I hope you have to have. plenty of the wearer's all. Most of the magnificent seven reported earnings last week.
Starting point is 00:08:57 Overall, it was a strong quarter with Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple, all beating expectations on the top and bottom line. So, big week, Scott, let's just go through these companies one by one. We'll start with Alphabet. Let's see here. Beat on top and bottom lines. Revenue up 16% to $102 billion. Crushed it on YouTube revenue, crushed it on search revenue, which actually accelerated.
Starting point is 00:09:21 cloud revenue up 34%. The stock rose 8%. It's up 48% year to date. Best performing big tech stock of the year so far just as predicted. Your reactions? The Google Cloud is emerging as the preferred platform for AI workloads. So essentially, the Google Cloud is becoming known as sort of the AI cloud. And over 70% of existing cloud customers now use Google AI products. And the company, I mean, their Google cloud backlog hit $155 billion. That's up 46%, not year on year, quarter on quarter. It was up 82% year on year. Just nothing short of extraordinary here.
Starting point is 00:10:02 These are companies well positioned who's made forward-leaning investments who have outstanding management. The interesting thing that the team pulled together is saying that these firms are flipping from asset light to asset heavy. Essentially, they're becoming utilities of the information age. I used to say there were toll boosts. I guess the kinder way to say it's their utilities. Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet are each allocating a larger share of revenue to
Starting point is 00:10:27 Cappex than the average global utility. And historically, these kind of Cappex super cycles have signaled lower returns on capital. We'll see. But, you know, the Cappex growth of Microsoft year on year is up 74%. Google 83%, met at 128%. Because the market is rewarding these forward-leaning investments, believing that similar to the cloud, the more you invests. the best early, the better the leverage and the revenues later on.
Starting point is 00:10:53 Look, there's just nothing. It's like you can't, even the naysayers and the people that are glass half empty like me are having trouble finding anything that isn't outstanding about these earnings. I just want to keep going down through the list here. We also saw Amazon, which also beat on the top and bottom lines. Revenue rose 13%. AWS grew, 20% beat expectations. They added almost four gigawatts of new.
Starting point is 00:11:18 power capacity, ad revenue grew 24%, shares rose more than 10%. So Amazon was another big winner in these tech earnings. I know that you are bullish on Amazon at the moment. I am too, trading at 31 times earnings right now. The five-year average for Amazon is 59 times earnings, so trading at a historically low multiple, considering its history. Quick reactions to Amazon. The little thing in here that stood out to me was the Traneum 2. That's Amazon's in-house AI chip. I didn't even know they had a fucking in-house AI chip has become a multi-billion dollar business growing 150% quarter on quarter. It's just, and they too have also raised their cap extramatically as the market response to these forward-leaning investments. Essentially, these companies are sort of replacing or supplanting government's big bets that typically were sequestered only to government. And now that the government's spending all of its money on interest. interest rate payments and, you know, making sure our seniors are taking care of, they don't have the capital to make these forward-leaning investments, and these companies do, which in some ways is really great. It's good for the economy. The question is, are they the type of technologies
Starting point is 00:12:32 that leak out into the general public, right? When the government makes investments in vaccines and communications technology like DARPA or GPS for weapons, it melts into the private sector into a variety of companies, medium and small business, whereas these investments will, the return on these investments will be sequestered again to a small number of companies. But I just, even Apple, I have the new iPhone. I'm not that enthralled with it. Their iPhone sales are up 6%, which isn't great. But they guided to double-digit iPhone growth next quarter, meaning the numbers look really good.
Starting point is 00:13:07 And their gross margin expanded at 47.2%. I'd just like to remind people that Apple, which until recently was the most valuable company in the world, who's pulled off the impossible, and that is you either have a niche product with high margins or a mass-produced, you know, kind of mass-market product with lower margins. Essentially, what Apple has done
Starting point is 00:13:24 is they have the production volumes of Toyota with the margins of Ferrari. I mean, it's just extraordinary. The iPhone is the most profitable product in the history of mankind. That's an actual physical thing. Yeah, Apple, it was a good quarter, beat on top and bottom,
Starting point is 00:13:39 gross margin expanded. Shares initially fell, but then they actually popped back up. The only thing I would highlight, you know, iPhone sales growth, which, as we covered in one of the daily episodes, everyone was super excited about because of this third-party research about how well the iPhone 17 was doing, iPhone sales actually underperformed in terms of their growth. It was up 6%. That was below expectations. The thing that people that investors were really excited about was the guidance that Tim Cook offered. He said that we were going to see 12% overall growth,
Starting point is 00:14:09 sales growth next quarter. So that's why the stock rose, but still the worst performing big tech stock so far this year, up 8% year-to-date, trading it 36 times earnings, which is significantly higher than, say, meta. It's also still higher than Google. So, again, I'm not super bullish on the stock right now,
Starting point is 00:14:32 but let's just keep going through here. Microsoft, also an incredible beat. Azure revenue, that's their cloud business, up 39%. The stock dropped, which was interesting, I think, mostly because they were spending a lot of money on this Cappex. They said that the most recent quarter would be $30 billion in CAPX. It was $35 billion. So investors were surprised by that, but what we are seeing across the board here is massive AI spending. And then the most interesting was probably meta, beat on revenue, did miss on earnings, but it was kind of a one-time tax thing, as we often see. But
Starting point is 00:15:08 revenue crush, 26% year-over-year growth, people are spending 30% more time on Instagram, year-of-a-year, everything about that business is killing. But again, the trouble is that investors are worried about CAPEX. Cap-X is now 38% of revenue up from 20% just a year ago. There are concerns that they're getting too into the whole AI infrastructure thing. And so the stock fell around 10%. And now they're down, 29 times earning. So they're are trading the lowest multiple of any big tech company right now. If I had to, I mean, there are two clearly undervalued stocks right now, Amazon, as you've discussed. And also, I think, meta. And the big, the big staff for me is, again, the time spent on Instagram.
Starting point is 00:15:55 You look at Instagram Reels, now making $50 billion a year. By comparison, the entire US TV ad industry makes $65 billion. So give it a couple years. Instagram Reels is going to be bigger than the entire ad industry in the U.S. for television. It's crazy. So, very interesting. But certainly all these companies are crushing. The question is, how does Wall Street feel about them? And I think the theme here is if you're spending more than Wall Street would like on your
Starting point is 00:16:24 AI infrastructure, then that makes investors nervous. The only, I mean, the company looks overvalued here is Apple, which is growing 8%, which isn't, you know, good growth for a TSP company. It's not great growth for big tech. and yet they trade. They have the highest multiple with the exception of Microsoft at 36, Microsoft's at 37. I also love the data that you guys have been pulling. Look at their five-year average PE versus the PE multiple today. And every company is trading at a higher multiple than their average over the last five years because of the historic run-up of the markets, except for Amazon that traditionally the five-year average PE has been 59, and today it's trading at 31. So, you know, when people say, when you talk to young people, they always say, I like this company and they list the reasons why they like it, I get it. You always have to set that against the valuation, right? At some point, any stock is overvalued and at some point every stock, unless it's going to zero, is undervalued. So the time, the thing that retail investors
Starting point is 00:17:21 don't spend enough time talking about is, okay, all of what you said, good or bad, fine, but now you have to spend as much time doing the work and thinking about the relative valuation. And as Amazon poised most strategic, strategically, you know, is the strongest positioning relative to these other firms. Maybe, maybe not. But it looks right now to be less expensive than the others when you look at its growth and when you look at historical trading multiples. So anyways, we're bullish on Amazon.
Starting point is 00:17:52 As you mentioned last year, of all these firms, we picked Alphabet. And Alphabet, as of today, is up 62%. We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show, send it to a friend. and please follow us if you haven't already. Support for the show comes from Vanta. This message is for startup founders, engineers, IT professionals, and business leaders
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Starting point is 00:21:24 sofi technologies and is not intended to be financial advice We're back with Profji Markets. For the past year, the leading narrative around AI has been, don't worry, it's not coming for your job. And maybe that will be true in the long run. But right now, it appears companies are telling a different story. UPS has cut 48,000 jobs this year, a shift that it says is driven by automation.
Starting point is 00:21:55 Chegg is cutting 45% of its workforce, with its CEO citing, quote, the new realities of AI. YouTube is offering employees voluntary exit packages as part of a larger AI reorganization, and Amazon plans to cut up to 30,000 jobs, as Andy Jassy admitted that greater use of AI tools will mean fewer corporate roles. Overall, the company plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots and eventually automate up to 75% of its operations. So, Scott, there has been this big debate as AI has come onto the scene, which is, is AI going to take your job? And we've heard many opinions, we've discussed this a little bit before, but the tech community seems to have developed kind of unanimity on this idea that it's not going to take your job.
Starting point is 00:22:52 Or at least maybe it'll shave off some jobs here and there, but the value creation is going to be so great. that ultimately it doesn't matter. And it seems that there is this ethos, at least among discussions about AI, that AI is not going to take jobs. And I'm just going to play you a quick clip of different leaders making this point. I think as in the past, what generally tends to happen is new jobs are created, that are actually better, that utilize these tools or new technologies. It's what happened with the Internet, what happened with mobile.
Starting point is 00:23:23 I think it would be assistive to people in doing their jobs. You're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to somebody who uses AI. So these are all, you know, fair arguments, but I think it's probably a little difficult to appreciate those arguments if at the same time we're seeing thousands of jobs being cut across the board, and all of these CEOs and all of these leaders are saying, yeah, it's because of AI.
Starting point is 00:23:48 We don't need these jobs anymore. So this is a pretty large debate, but I'll stop there and get your reactions. So honest question. Did I steal that quote from Jensen Juan or did he steal it from me? That's exactly what I said. I'm trying to, did he take that from me or did I take it from me? Well, he told you he listens to you, right?
Starting point is 00:24:06 So maybe Jensen is taking from me. Look, I've been saying that for a while, that AI won't take your job. Someone who understands AI will take your job. And Greg Schofer runs my company section or company I founded that's trying to help companies in what he refers to as the adoption layer, how to actually implement AI. He called me the next day and he was like, you're full of shit. It is taking jobs. He's like, be clear.
Starting point is 00:24:31 He's like, this is going to take jobs. And there's the narrative, if you're the CEO of a company, you can't get up there and say, oh, yeah, we're going to absolutely recognize a ton of efficiencies. It just doesn't make for an inspiring all hands to say, I got good news. Our revenue growth was 20%. And I've got great news. Next quarter, I think I can lay off a quarter of you. They also don't want to raise the antenna. I have legislators and regulators and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who will,
Starting point is 00:24:56 come in and say, you know, you know, the oligarchs have to pay the fair share. You're like, they just don't need that shit right now. State to Dr. Evil, I think. How about no? Anyway, I have said for a long time, and I think it's playing out that this is AI's Corporate Ozempic, and that is if you're on a board, the CEO presents the plan in Q3 for the next year. And he or she comes in and says, here's the,
Starting point is 00:25:26 plan, we're going to grow our revenues 12%, and these are the resources I need to grow the, to grow the company 12%. Do we need to raise capital? Do we not? What's our CAPEX? And we expect to hire 6 to 8% to more employees, which should take our earnings up hopefully 8 to 15%. It was just a given that if you were, if you were reducing revenues or increasing revenues, you are going to reduce employment or increase employment. And just the same way that we have been taught that if you want to live, and if you have the opportunity, because there's a scarcity of salty sugary and fatty foods, if the food is available, you just eat until you're, you know, you can't eat anymore. And then GLP1 turns off the switch that I don't
Starting point is 00:26:10 necessarily need to eat. And what's happened here is AI has for the first time broken the cycle and the kind of the conventional wisdom that if I'm growing, I need more employees. It said, no, you may not need more employees. And the stat you read the other day on profiting market that just blew my mind was that I think in the retail unit of Amazon, they're projecting that they can double the revenues by 2032 with the same number of people. I mean, that just spells an explosion in earnings, right? It has some, it has some, you know, societal implications we've got to deal with. But that's just striking to think about, I think everybody's trying to be matter right now when they announced that they had grown their revenues 23% with 20% fewer
Starting point is 00:26:57 employees. Now, the interesting question is, who's next? There's been a lot of companies that have announced layoffs. And I asked Mia to do some analysis and say, who are some information age companies who have hired dramatically through the pandemic seem to have probably kind of eaten a lot, if you will, have consumed a lot of young capital or managers. I remember at one point, Amazon was, and Google and Meta were hiring 40% of my MBA class. They were just literally hoovering up people. And I also tried to find companies that have avoided, haven't had a big layoff yet. So these are the companies that Mia came up with that seem vulnerable right now. And our prediction is that they'll probably announce some pretty
Starting point is 00:27:42 significant layoffs in the next three or six months. Etsy, Pinterest, Airbnb, PayPal and HubSpot. But those are the companies that Mia came up with. What are your thoughts, Ed? It's tough because this whole argument about whether AI is going to take your job has been front and center. And in many cases, the arguments that we heard
Starting point is 00:28:06 from those tech leaders are actually correct. It's going to create a lot of value. It's going to probably create new jobs in interesting places that didn't exist before. And that's always been true of any big new technology. What seems to be lacking from the conversation is a recognition of the short term. We all, I think, agree. I agree.
Starting point is 00:28:32 I think you agree that over the medium and long term, you're going to see value creation and therefore job creation. We seem to all be unwilling to acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is the short-term job destruction, which is what we are now seeing this week and what we have been seeing for several weeks. The fact that Amazon is cutting 30,000 corporate jobs, 10% of the white-collar workforce. The fact that Intel is cutting 24,000 jobs,
Starting point is 00:29:02 Microsoft cutting 7,000 jobs. And all of them, when you get down to it, are doing it because of AI. And it's not just white-collar, it's also blue-collar, because as we just learned for The New York Times, this report, looking at Amazon's internal documents, they're planning to automate 75% of their operations,
Starting point is 00:29:20 which is going to wipe out more than half a million jobs. They're the second largest employer in America. And if Amazon does it, look at Walmart as an example, they employ 2 million people. Do we really think Walmart's not going to follow suit? So I think what is missing from the conversation is a recognition that actually some people should be very worried about their jobs. and some people are going to get laid off
Starting point is 00:29:44 and we can look through history and see this happen time and time again when you had the computing revolution of the 80s and the 90s. There were entire swaths of occupations that were just deleted, typists, file clerks, bookkeepers, etc.
Starting point is 00:30:01 Those aren't interesting or important to us now, but back then it was quite painful. And there are studies that show that, you know, some people were able to retool but the older people actually weren't. Many of them actually just had to retire early, so we saw significantly higher retirement rates and then also dramatically lower earnings among those people.
Starting point is 00:30:22 And so we can look at this stuff long term and we can say, yes, we're going to see lots of jobs 30 or 40 years from now. And at a societal level, great. But on a personal level, that's a really long time. So I think what is important and what we will get into in this conversation is, okay, a recognition. Actually, some of you, some of us, should be worried. And we can talk in sort of broad generalizations about the future
Starting point is 00:30:55 and how society is going to prosper. But yes, there will be individuals who get burned because of the AI revolution. And it is worth addressing those concerns and thinking about who's going to get burned. learned exactly, and also what they can do about it. I don't think it's a bad idea to always be a little bit worried that you're going to lose your job. You don't want it to be creating anxiety.
Starting point is 00:31:19 You don't want, you know, to be debilitating. But it's never a bad idea to just think, okay, how can I be indispensable? How do I increase my currency in the workplace? And also just to do an assessment, if you've figured out a way to kind of have a great remote gig where you don't, maybe work four or six hours a day, not the full eight, you you add enough value, but you're not really driving value. Just know, you may fool your corporation for a year, two years, three years. Eventually, they figure it out. And AI is creating all sorts of tools now where they can absorb all sorts of data from the frequency of your emails,
Starting point is 00:31:56 the content of your emails, your logins, your time on the computer, the type of activity on your computer, which they all track. It's scary, but yeah, we are living in sort of an, you know, information age, Stasi's Germany. And then AI will say, you know, these 300 people don't appear to really be working very much. And so I don't think it's a bad idea to assume there's total transparency into what you're doing. And okay, so what does that mean? Quite frankly, if you're not adding that much value, you're not working that hard, eventually they're going to figure it out. Maybe you don't care, maybe willing to lose the job, it's worth the risk. But one, assume they can see everything. And then if you're doing a lot of good
Starting point is 00:32:33 work, also at that point, assume maybe they don't see everything and make sure that people around you and your manager and your reviews, kind of know the work, the good work you're doing. I just see, when people are drawing up these lists, I hate to say it, it's somewhat rigorous, but it's somewhat not. And that is, you're going to see a disproportion, I believe, amount of layoffs in remote workers because they have weaker emotional bonds with the people making these decisions because relationships are functional proximity. But also, if you were able to go into your boss or present on how AI is going to impact your group
Starting point is 00:33:12 and show three, four, five dozen actionable steps for more productivity and how you think it can really improve your group's performance, that impression is probably a good impression for them to have, or any other technology. A good impression of your brand before they drop that list. Yeah, so play offense, not defensive. I think trying to hide during layoffs thinking they're not going to notice you is the worst thing possible. Terrible idea. It's the invisible people that get laid off first.
Starting point is 00:33:42 Just because they don't know you, they don't care about you, they don't know what you do. The other thing is just emotionally, two things. One, recognize a lot of your success and a lot of your failure is not your fault. And you shouldn't take a lot of your success and a lot of your failure personally. And that is, these layoffs are pretty indiscriminate. and they're going to, sure, the superstars, someone evangelizing for them, will try and save their job and probably will, or they'll find something else for them within the company. But a lot of people get light off. There are very few people, the wealthiest man in New York, Michael Bloomberg, I think he's a wealthiest man, he got laid off from Solomon Brothers. There's just very, I think I've been fired from every job I ever had. There's just, it just happens. And you should recognize that it's not an indictment on you. It doesn't mean you're not going to be really successful. It's just a natural part of the corporate life cycle. Don't be afraid to ask people for help. Yeah, I just got laid off. I'm looking for a new gig.
Starting point is 00:34:41 Also, this is such a cliche, but maybe think of it as an opportunity to really, really reevaluate where your human capital would be best served. So I think it's an interesting time to sit down, clear your head, go speak to a couple people or a few people, say, this is what I'm good at, this is what I like, these are kind of my financial needs, what's important to me. and brainstorm potentially about an entirely new career, starting a business. Maybe it's sticking in the same industry and just going doing the exact same thing for a competitor. Maybe it's going back to graduate school. And the other one thing I would say is maybe take a couple days to mourn, but immediately get on to the next thing, whatever that is.
Starting point is 00:35:22 Immediately start interviewing, immediately start networking, be really social, go out a lot, meet friends. you know, I think if you want to help your career, the best thing you can do over the long term is to be more social. But also, just to be honest, there is going to be a lot of layoffs here. And, you know, my fear is that young people, I remember, I've had several young people break down and cry when I've laid them off. And I just wanted to figure out a way to say, you've got to trust me on this. This isn't that big a deal. You're going to look back on this and you're going to be more upset at how upset you were than, what happened here. And also, if it's not working for you here, you don't want to be here. This isn't good for you. If for whatever reason, fairly or unfairly, the people here and the organization doesn't value your work, you don't want to be here. You want to go somewhere else. I first just want to clarify, like, who should actually be worried. Like, there is no question. AI is taking jobs, but it might not be taking your job, or it might be taking your jobs. Or it might be taking your job. So I think the question you have to ask is like, okay, who is actually at
Starting point is 00:36:32 risk here? Who should be worried? So Microsoft had this AI report where they basically did this giant study and looked at all of the jobs that are most at risk of being replaced or having the tasks done by AI. And I just want to go through a few of these jobs because it's important if you have one of these jobs, the point being you should probably be worried and you should probably be listening and thinking about ways that you can protect yourself. So just going to go through the list here. Sales representatives, customer service representatives, ticket agents and travel clerks, telemarketers, public relations specialists, management analysts. Here are my favorites, news analysts and also market research analysts. So in a lot of ways, me. There are many
Starting point is 00:37:26 other jobs that they have in this report, but they are kind of smaller jobs, jobs that don't really have high employment. But the jobs that I just outlined there, these are very, very common jobs in our society today. There are more than one million sales representative jobs in America today. There are more than two million customer service representative jobs in America today. So these are big, big occupations. They employ a lot of people. And according to Microsoft, and I agree with the report, they are most at risk of being replaced. So those are the people who I think you should, if that describes you, I think you have real reason to be worried. We'll come back to what you do about it. Now I just want to go over the jobs that are actually not at risk and which I
Starting point is 00:38:14 think are going to be rewarded in the future. So some of the jobs that are described in the report. water treatment plant and system operators, roofers, industrial truck operators, tractor operators. So a lot of jobs that are vocational and that honestly require use of your hands, things where you have to be getting in there physically and have some technical and physical expertise. And then the other side is there's a lot of human care work that is not at risk of AI. So nursing assistants, housekeepers, phlebotomists, massage therapists, those are the kinds of jobs that are least at risk of AI. So when we think about this, you want to think about who are the AI winners and it's construction, it's physical maintenance, it's healthcare, it's surgery, you know, human care work, vocational, physical technical work. And then the AI loses, it's all of the sort of, I mean, just think it through logically.
Starting point is 00:39:17 It's the jobs that AI can do. Sales, administrative support, data analytics, computer science, mathematics, those are all the jobs that are most at risk. So I think the question then is, what do you do about it? And if you are an AI loser, I will just go through some of my recommendations that I think are very similar to yours. So the first thing that I would recommend, if you're about to see Layson, you want to be the person who is close to the guy who decides the layoffs.
Starting point is 00:39:48 So what you've got to do is you have to identify the decision maker at the company and you have to establish a personal relationship. I mean, Scott, you said it. Don't hide. If you're invisible, then it's very easy to cut you off. Second thing I have on my list here, try to become the AI person. That might mean you adopt some fluid. with AI tools, you start using them, it makes your work more productive and more efficient.
Starting point is 00:40:16 But also, quite importantly, you want to brand yourself as the AI person. You want to communicate to your peers. I'm the guy who knows about this stuff. And that might mean you start writing blog posts or you talk about it on LinkedIn or you, you know, send podcasts to people about AI. You want to show to the decision maker, I understand this stuff. So if you're cutting people, you don't want to cut me because I'm the one who's going to help turbocharge your business with AI. I have two more. Have an opinion. AI is very good at analytics, but it's very bad at having an opinion. So if you can figure out a way to develop a position on issues, if you can weigh both sides of the argument and then ultimately take a side, because AI is bad at doing that.
Starting point is 00:41:04 All that says is here are all the different things that are going on. But if you can be the person that says, yeah, I know all the different paths that we can take as a company, but I believe that this is the one that we should take because this is my opinion on the issue. That's alpha. That's something that AI can't do. And the final thing here, and it goes back to what you said, and I think it fits with also your career. I think you need to be willing to reinvent yourself, and I don't think you should be ashamed of reinvention. That's what a lot of people are going to have to do here. If you're being laid off at many of these tech companies, you're kind of being faced with this decision of like, do I go out into the market as the same thing that I was that
Starting point is 00:41:47 got fired or do I rebrand and do I reinvent? And I think there's a lot of shame in reinventing, but I just want to highlight that many of the most successful people in history completely reinvented themselves. Just some great examples here. Vera Wang, who is the legendary designer. She was a figure skater before she got into design. Martha Stewart was a stock broker before she became the media mogul. Reed Hastings was a math teacher and then he founded Netflix. Ray Kroc was a door-to-door equipment salesman before he built McDonald's. My favorite reinventer is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a bodybuilder who then decided he wanted to be an actor and then he decided he wanted to be the governor of California and he was able to do all of it. I think
Starting point is 00:42:36 my point being, there are many people who were incredibly successful, who reinvented themselves and who leaned into it, who were not afraid or ashamed to say, I used to be this and now I'm this. And as I say it, I think you're a good example of that too. I mean, you were an analyst. And then you said, okay, I'm going to go to business school and I'm going to try something completely different. You started companies. And then after you started your company, he said, now I'm going to be a professor. And then after you're a professor, you said, now I'm going to be a podcaster. So I think a lot of this is also about reinvention. AI might take your job and let's just acknowledge that.
Starting point is 00:43:16 But as you say, take stock of your talents and your abilities and don't be afraid to reshate them, to rebrand them, and to reinvent yourself. I think that's right. I think that the cautionary tale is that my friends, I have a lot of friends in the hedge fund. business or the finance business. And in the odds, it was sort of the golden age. I think like 95 to 2010, I think people look back and say, maybe with the exception of this era in technology or AI, never have so few people made so much fucking money with so little talent than hedge fund managers from 95 to 2010. And that's not to say that they weren't talented, but if you were a really talented lawyer, accountant, you know, actor, whatever, a journalist, you made X.
Starting point is 00:44:05 If you were a reasonably talented hedge fund manager from 95 to 2010, I'm not exaggerating, you made 50X. And there are a lot of people, especially white men, who, if they get the right certification, for the first 10, 5, 10, 20 years of their career post-college, it's just up into the right. And I'm not exaggerating. When it goes flat, or they get laid off, or they can't raise their fund, or whatever it is, they literally fucking freak out. And I don't mean freak out in a extroverted way. I mean, they become paralyzed. And what I would suggest is you have to, if you have to take a pay cut, switch industries, whatever it is, your emotional resilience and not feeling sorry for yourself
Starting point is 00:44:49 and not, you know, acknowledging everybody anchors off. They look at the year they made the most money and they think, that's my fair market value. And the next year's fair market value should be 12% more. And right now, you could argue every person in AI is wildly overpaid. None of them think they're overpaid. Nobody, I've never had anyone after a job review and a bonus go, thanks very much. Let's be honest, I'm overpaid. I've never heard anyone say that. It's either like, well, okay, I'm fucking amazing. Thank you for paying me this ridiculous amount of money at a ridiculous a young age, but I'm, I'm the fucking bomb. Is there a sub-tweet?
Starting point is 00:45:28 Or, or, or, or what? This is an outrage. It's never like, wow, look, the company's doing great, the economy's strong, we're making a ton of money, and I'm probably making more, you know, my comp's probably about, I've never heard anything resembling that. People anchor off the top, and that's, okay, fine, but emotionally, in your career, you're going to have ups and downs. And the winners are the ones that, quite frankly, endure the downs. They use it as motivation. They get out there. They use it as an
Starting point is 00:46:05 opportunity to rethink what they want to do next, and they're resilient. And that's what I worry most about your generation, Ed. If you're 35, you've never known anything but a bull economy. The other thing about these people being laid off, these are some of the most remarkably credentialed people in the world. I mean, you got to keep in mind that 30,000 people are about to go, whatever it is, the 14,000 or 30,000 people from corporate at Amazon, 99.9% of the world's population would kill to be the person who just got laid off from Amazon. Why?
Starting point is 00:46:41 It means you likely went to an elite university. You're obviously very good, or you never wouldn't have got a job at Amazon. You have Amazon on your resume. You're now, like, pissed off because you're not going to make 300 grand a year. You might have to take a job at 220. 99.9% of the world would kill to be one of those people that just got laid off from Amazon.
Starting point is 00:47:01 I mean, I see what you're saying, but I slightly take issue with it because, I mean, 30,000 of those jobs that are being cut, I don't think the majority of them are making $300,000 a year. Plus, it's not just limited to white collar work and high-end white-collar work. We are seeing it kind of,
Starting point is 00:47:17 kind of across the board. We're seeing it with entry-level jobs. And we're also seeing it, we're going to see it down the road with blue-collar work too, which is why this report from the New York Times is so important, the fact that 600,000 jobs
Starting point is 00:47:32 are going to be lost. And these are blue-collar jobs. The fact that they're going to basically replace humans with robots. So I think the question for people, that individual you described of someone who was just laid off who was sold this story about how AI isn't going to take their job
Starting point is 00:47:55 and then they wake up one day and actually AI did take my job and now I'm resentful, I'm angry and I feel that I was lied to, there are going to be not hundreds or thousands of people, but hundreds of thousands of people who are in that position over the next few years. And I think the question is, what do you want to do about that? Do you want to be the person who does flatline, and many of them will?
Starting point is 00:48:23 Do you want to be the person who is grieving about the lie of AI and is never unstuck from that position? The danger is this flatline, and the flat line can come from different places. I've never... What's interesting is, what sidelined me and I never would have thought about it, when I lost my mom, it liked sidelined,
Starting point is 00:48:43 And I wouldn't have thought that that would do it. I would have thought, I was so focused on money, I would have thought, okay, a business or going out of business or the market's going down, you know, the dot-com implosion hurt, but it didn't take me off track. And the great financial recession scared the shit out of me because I had just had a kid. The thing where I should have reached out for help sooner because it almost took me down, and I didn't expect it, was losing my mom. And the reality is all of us are going to face tragedy. It's the only thing I know for certain. is that everyone will have joy in their life and everyone will have tragedy. And how you respond to the tragedy is really probably the biggest indicator of your success. Because some people just never recover. They just never, they never manage to get back on their feet. They lose their sense of,
Starting point is 00:49:31 Winston Churchill summarized it perfectly. Success is the ability to move through failure without losing your sense of enthusiasm. This was a guy that made the military decision to sacrifice thousands of young Australian men with a total fucking military disaster called Gallipoli. He was responsible for terrible decisions that killed a ton of teenage and early 20s young men.
Starting point is 00:49:55 And yet he managed to, he, I mean, that must have been devastating. Maybe it's even a little bit, you know, sociopathic, not psychopathic, but he managed to believe I can add value. And I think there's a practice around meditation, maybe seeking therapy if you feel like you're stuck and also just repeating over to yourself. I remember thinking to myself, I know I'm a great entrepreneur. This company went out of business, but I'm hardworking. I'm willing to take risk. I know I got hurt very much a couple times when I was younger because I had women break up with me that I was madly, at least in love with. And of course, as an insecure young man, the
Starting point is 00:50:34 man, when they broke up with me, I decided that that was the one that I would never recover. And being able to look in the mirror and go, I know I can, I know I can add value to someone's life. I know I'll be a wonderful boyfriend. And also to say, you know you can add value to a company. You know, I think it's really important to just tell yourself that over and over and start manifesting it until you start believing it. And also every day to just one foot in front of the other. Also, this is sounding a very, you know, like a bad version of Mel Robbins with a Gen Z and an old man who drinks too much. But use it as an excuse to get really fucking fit. I try and take an hour or two hours a day, try and limit your alcohol and your THC consumption and use it as a means to get really fit because I find just being strong is really good for you emotionally. Try and catch up on some stuff, maybe spend some time.
Starting point is 00:51:29 I just, I think try and look at it as, all right, I'm not going to wait around, I'm going to get right on it, but also you will have at least a couple hours for you a day. Try and channel that into important activities as opposed to just sleeping in or feeling sorry for yourself or becoming, you know, really getting really into that new porn site.
Starting point is 00:51:46 I can imagine and just sort of hear the retorts from people, say, from someone who just got laid off, who would say, oh, so the solution is chin up, be resilient, you know? Work out and look in the mirror and tell me I like me. To which I say, actually, yes, that is the solution.
Starting point is 00:52:04 Like, these soft things that people often kind of poop poo as like, oh, you're just offering some wishy-washy advice as to how, when it's like, this is a structural problem. It's like, well, give me an alternative. If you really want to improve your life, what are you going to do about it? And I agree. I think my generation, I don't know, maybe we, I think we perhaps we underestimate this generation.
Starting point is 00:52:32 So I think we'll see, we'll see what happens and how we react when AI inevitably wipes out a ton of entry-level jobs as we are seeing today. My hope is that we will be very creative and resilient, and I think I'm actually somewhat optimistic that we will be. But that is the question for young people. AI is going to take your job potentially, depending on what job you have. How are you going to respond to that? We'll be right back. And for even more market's content, be sure to sign up for our newsletter at profjeemarkets.com slash subscribe. Scott, we're hitting the road, bringing Pivot Live to the People, Seven Cities, Toronto, Boston, New York, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and L.A., of course. You went to Oasis, you went to Beyoncé, you saw the remake of Wizard of Oz in the sphere.
Starting point is 00:53:35 all those suck compared to the Pivot Tour. This is the biggest tour. Same people that are organizing our tour that organize Taylor Swift's tour. They are much more excited about our tour. All right. That's enough, Grandpa. It's going to be so good. And we're bringing our brand of whatever we do to the people.
Starting point is 00:53:56 And we're excited to meet our fans. We love our fans. For tickets, head to PivotTor.com. See you there. First, it was one alleged drug boat back in September. U.S. military forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Trende-Aragua narco terrorists. Eleven on board were killed.
Starting point is 00:54:18 When you flood American streets with drugs, you are terrorizing America. Then a second strike in the Caribbean, then another and another, almost every week for two months. In total, more than a dozen ships have been hit. and at least 57 people left dead. We're going to kill them, you know? They're going to be like dead, okay. And Trump is still upping the ante.
Starting point is 00:54:44 He's sending warships to the coast of Venezuela. But the question is why. And what Stephen Miller got to do with it? Okay. I'm a stead-Herndon, filling in around here for the next few months. That and more on Today Explain from Box. CNN is a big, important cable news channel.
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Starting point is 00:55:51 We're back with Profi Markets. Last week, President Trump and Xi Jinping met face-to-face in South Korea. It was their first in-person meeting since Trump's second term began. The result was a trade truce. China agreed to pause its export controls on rare earth elements for a year, and in return, Trump cut tariffs on China-related fentanyl products to 10%, bringing the overall tariff rate on Chinese goods down to about 47%. But there's still a lot that we don't know, like whether this truce will affect Nvidia's chip exports or TikTok's future in the US. So, Scott, Trump and Xi, they met. The overall takeaways. The Fentzel tariff has been reduced from 20% to 10%, so the overall tariff on China is now down from 57 to 47%. America is also going to suspend these port fees that we saw.
Starting point is 00:56:48 China is going to end its boycott of the soybeans, which Trump and the farmers were very upset about. China is also suspending these new export controls on rare earth minerals. They said they're going to step up their control on the chemicals that are used to fentanyl we'll see but those are that's the long and short of it your reactions to this meeting my reaction is this is a lesson in really poor strategic thinking and that is the key to one of the keys of strategy when you're negotiating is to really have an accurate assessment of your leverage and their leverage and i feel this is one of trump's many achilles heels and that is he plays he thinks he's playing with a stronger hand than he is he thinks he's the biggest customer of china and just
Starting point is 00:57:29 can just muscle around. We're actually the third largest trading partner with China. The biggest is Asiana, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Number two is the EU. The EU is more important to China than the U.S. And he acts as if he's their only customer. He's the only member of a club, if you will. So he's never really appreciated that he's playing with cards that he doesn't have. And two, I don't think anyone really game-theoryed out. What is their bazook? and unfortunately they've learned what it is or they figured it out and they're willing to use it and that is rare earth materials.
Starting point is 00:58:07 I mean, these things, you know, a single submarine can require 8,000 pounds of rare earths. The F-35 jet requires 900 pounds. It's literally a security issue for us. And they threaten to not only reduce exports to us but to put controls on any product. It has rare earth such that it can't get to a Western nation, which it didn't take people very long to say
Starting point is 00:58:31 this could end the war in Ukraine in a way we don't want to end it if all of a sudden the U.S. has an inability to produce many weapons as they thought because we did not stockpile these rare earth materials on the marginal side we would cut armed shipments to Ukraine so they pulled out this weapon and if you'll notice what they've agreed to again I hate this word framework meaning
Starting point is 00:58:53 we want to pretend this was a productive meeting but we don't actually know what's going to happen And the thing that really struck out to me is that it's a one year. They've suspended rare export curbs for one year. That's nothing. That means that, okay, China got some stuff back. They lowered the tariffs. They seem to have come to some sort of like, it feels like they're just kicking the can down the road.
Starting point is 00:59:21 Meanwhile, their bazooka, I mean, it's not, they've put the safety switch back on, but they're still pointing that gun at us in six or nine months. It's going to be, okay, what if we do if we don't find, what if they decide to cut this off? They basically said, when you say I'm only suspending this critical technology or this critical mineral using your weapons, your cars, and if you don't do it, you know, if we can't figure out a way to get along, we're going to use it. This is nothing but this feels like a very tenuous ceasefire. to me. My sense is there hasn't been, and quite frankly, until Trump's out of office, I don't think we're going to have a sustainable, enduring relationship with China. And I'd like to say, well, what about she? She's probably there for the next 10 or 20 years. He's consolidated power. So I don't, I don't know if this is, this feels like we've avoided an all-out economic war at a time where he didn't want it right now. But I don't feel, I don't feel we came away from. from a lot of this here.
Starting point is 01:00:27 Their bazooka is still aimed at us. We put it off. They've agreed not to fire it for 12 months, which just means in six months, we've got to start freaking out about it again. Or we'll start freaking out about it in a month because they'll just abandon it, as we have seen over and over again.
Starting point is 01:00:43 I mean, I think that's the problem with these framework agreements and these handshake deals and this press release economy or press release politics is what we have found is that it's very easy to just break these agreements. we keep on seeing this, because they don't really put it in writing. Signatures are not put to, pens are not put down to paper. We don't see signatures. We don't see contracts signed and people going over the language and understanding what the language actually means. Or we see
Starting point is 01:01:14 our press releases, which means that the cost of abandoning or doing a 180 on your quote-unquote agreement is not that high, which is why we keep seeing it over and over again. The tariffs go up, the towers come down. They're on, they're off. We have a truce. We don't have a truce. They say, oh, we're going to have these, we're going to loosen the export restrictions, but then they're going to tighten them again. Now they say they're going to loosen them again. I think the point being, saying the words, we're going to suspend these export restrictions for a year is not a powerful or binding statement. And so I think what we could probably expect is that it will not last. And so this is definitely still a problem, the rare earth issue.
Starting point is 01:01:59 And I think all that this is done is highlighted China's leverage on the U.S. I mean, none of us really knew what rare earth minerals were like a year or two ago. I certainly didn't. Or at least I knew conceptually what they were, but I didn't know their significance. And I certainly didn't know that China was a major player in that industry. And now we all know, China has big-time leverage over us. I mean, we didn't even realize how important these things were, but we need these minerals for missiles and for cars and to create chips. I mean, because of those export restrictions, we saw a ton of stoppages, a ton of closures, because there was this shortage in rare earth magnets.
Starting point is 01:02:47 I mean, Ford had to close down an entire factory in Chicago because they didn't have enough magnets to build a lot of. the cause because China shut, shut them down. And we all learned now, China controls 60% of the rare earth mining 80% of the rare earth processing in the world. None of us knew that before, and now we do, because they flex their muscles, and it has shown, okay, China does have a one-up on America. So I like what Josh Brown says, and that is you have to always ask what could go right. And just as China figured out workarounds for when they, when we, embargoed our highest quality AI chips, and they came up with their own LLMs and chips that required less energy. I don't, I think there's actually, what could go right here is that
Starting point is 01:03:35 we figure out different supply sources for rare earths. A good friend of mine, who has been in private equity this whole career, just took a job with the Defense Department. And his job is to find and invest in companies who reduce our reliance on Chinese rare earth and other critical components that weaken our defense posture. So to the administration's credit, they've been thinking about this. Retroactively, after they realized, oh, oh, fuck, was screwed. You could argue they probably should have figured this out sooner that we were so dependent upon these things for critical. Right. Before you launch a trade war, maybe make sure that you have the leverage. You sounded more and more like me. So, but, you know, under the auspices of, again,
Starting point is 01:04:19 asking yourself, what could go right? Potentially, we find different, different supply chain here, different sources here. I don't know enough about them, but the investment opportunity, which we would like to come down to, I would love to go further downstream and say, okay, what company, if you're some shitty little company that's in Latin America, I know wherever that's been, that does have the ability to produce these things and these, I guess, these magnets, you got to think that company's getting a lot of attention right now. And it's going to have a lot, would a lot of suppliers would love to do business with them because they'll think of them as being a more, not being tainted by geopolitical concerns.
Starting point is 01:04:53 But this is, like, I've said that I thought that at the end of the day, by the time Trump leaves office, we're going to end up with largely trade agreements that largely reflect where they were before he came into office with, you know, some higher tariffs, but we will have erect alliances, created unnecessary tension, unnecessary risk. And this is all just a massive, it feels like a massive distraction that kind of gets us, I don't always say it gets us nowhere. I think it gets us backwards. and just don't just don't get the, don't get the strategy here what they're hoping to get out of this. I do think his instincts around China were right. I do think we had an asymmetric trade relationship there where they were taking advantage of our open markets and theirs weren't open. But they have, they have kind of, I had never heard the term rare earth material still about a year ago. And all of a sudden, you find out that, like, we can't produce fighter jets or submarines without them. And our biggest, arguably our biggest adversary or our most powerful adversary controls all of
Starting point is 01:05:52 the market. Right. And by the way, the big question is, did Trump even know what that was before he launched this attack on China? Was he aware of rare earth minerals and critical minerals, and was he aware that we need them for our defense industry and to manufacture missiles and tanks? Did he know any of that? Or is he only just realizing this now? The team of the best players wins. And there's a couple of things we're not focused on, and so is the boring shit underneath the surface that really fucks you. Two-thirds of researchers are now saying they're open to moving abroad. So we're about to lose our intellectual capital, which people don't appreciate, and these guys don't appreciate because the effects, you know, pop up. You don't even miss the fact
Starting point is 01:06:32 that you didn't come up with a new way of pricing derivatives that makes your local, you know, makes a U.S. Bank much more competitive than internationally. You don't miss, okay, we're no longer producing the best CT scanners in the world, right? You just someone else does it. It's now coming out of Siemens because the world's top researchers and, you know, mammography or whatever it is end up at the University of Cologne because they're like, I'm sick of this shit. So when you look at them, generally speaking, if you look at how incompetent some of the higher profile hires have been in the Trump administration, you've got to think it infects at every level. And I just wouldn't be surprised if no one even brought up rare earth until they showed up and said, oh, we're in barren. when you're rare earths. Certainly what it looks like.
Starting point is 01:07:20 Well, if you want to see how good a baseball team is or how good an organization is, you look at how clean the dressing room is. You look at the quality of, you know, you look at how well run the cafeteria is because it's a general approach and a culture to hiring outstanding people and making sure they feel appreciated and putting in place right compensation and right incentives. And if his senior level hires, ranging from a guy who's a vaccine denier to a former TV Fox host, fat-shaming people as any indication or a former head of a wrestling federation is now in charge
Starting point is 01:07:52 of the Department of Education and didn't know what AI was. Did you believe that? When she was grilled about AI, she called it A-1. She didn't know what AI was. I forgot about that. So what do you think the number two, three, and four thousand of the Department of Education who have been hired by Trump are like? And they just hired this. I mean, anyways, I'm ranting here, But would it surprise me if no one, when they showed up and said, well, we're going to block shipments and exports of rare earth? And someone said, what's rare earth? And it shows in the way they have negotiated. They launched the attack. They say, we're going to flex our muscles. China flexes their muscles right back. And then suddenly trumps off in Asia, meeting with Xi Jinping saying, hey, man, please, please, stop. Stop doing what you're doing. Like, you're putting forward a thesis that a lot of people would say, like, oh, you're just being, you know, Trump derangement syndrome. It's like, just look at the way events unfolded.
Starting point is 01:08:50 That is simply what it appears, what appears to have happened. They didn't realize that China could do what they did. And so then they suddenly started panicking. It just reflects poorly on us and our competence. And I don't think, I think Americans have taken for granted for a long time, just the quality and depth of talent we have working for us in our government. and there's a general like, oh, you know, it'll be fun to see what it's like to not have air traffic controllers or all these people, all these employees, you don't realize there's a lot of talents of people trying to figure out a way to get you a grandfather's prescriptions mailed to
Starting point is 01:09:23 them in a rural area. You forget how hard it is to do physical rehabilitation for our veterans. You forget how important it is to have in tax laws and force such that we actually have a treasury. You forget how hard it is to actually guide a plane when there's 11,000 planes in the sky concurrently. You know, these people, these people are good at what they do. And a lot of people who have a lot of opportunities to go into other industries decide they want to work for the government and because they find purpose in it. And we've just taken for granted these folks, their competence, their commitment, the fact that most of them, a lot of them are working below market, some are probably working above market, but many of them are working for below
Starting point is 01:10:04 market fees. And I think we're finding out painfully what it means to have a cacostocracy, which means a society run by fucking idiots. And anyways, I'm not, back to China. I think we've just kicked the can down the road here. I think she knows who's playing with a stronger hand. And Trump has made a rookie mistaken strategy, and that is believing he has assets he doesn't have. All right. Let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see earnings from Palantia, AMD, Uber, Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, Spotify, and Airbnb will also see the results of the New York City mayoral election, and the Supreme Court is set to begin hearing oral arguments on the tariff case on Wednesday. Scott, any predictions?
Starting point is 01:10:47 Mondami is going to win, and my prediction, though, is that you're not going to see an exodus from the city. I think there's actually one of the most unfortunate things about the city I think right now is it's become so expensive. There's been so much. inflation, that the scrappers, really talented, hardworking people in a variety of industries who want to come here and just kind of make it on raw talent and dancing between the raindrops. I think we've lost those people, which will hurt the economy over the medium and long term. That has nothing to do with Mondami. He's going to win. But all these people threatening to leave and corporations threatening to leave, I just don't think that's going to happen.
Starting point is 01:11:23 One, I don't think that the structural, he has actually, I don't think he has the authority to make many of the changes of these corporate leaders are worried about. And I just, I've always found that, quote, unquote, whenever people are threatening to leave, that's not when they leave. You know, everyone was going to leave California. And as someone who's in New York, a lot, the reason why there's the highest taxes in the world here is because it's worth it. And if you have the money, which these corporations do,
Starting point is 01:11:53 and these rich people do, I'm not, and I don't think these, it's sort of a moot of false argument, because I don't think he's going to be able to raise taxes. I don't know if he's going to be able to do it. I think if you look at his actual power, I'm not sure he has the power to do these things. That's one small prediction, but the other prediction just goes back to what we were talking about before,
Starting point is 01:12:14 and that is I think we're going to see significant layoffs, and Mia did this work at a variety of other information age companies in our picks were Etsy, Pinterest, Airbnb, PayPal, and HubSpot. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Mia Silverio is our research lead. Our research associates are Isabella Kinsel, Dan Chillon, and Kristen O'Donohue, Drew Burrows, is our technical director. And Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.
Starting point is 01:12:44 Thank you for listening to Property Markets from Property Media. Tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets. You have me in kind reunion as the waters.

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