The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:02:43 · Kyla Scanlon
[00:02:43] S2: I mean, I think it's sort of the big question because forever, home policy has definitely favored... Or policy in general has definitely favored homeowners. And as a renter, it can feel pretty difficult, you know, homeowners able to write things off on their taxes. And with renting, it feels like you are just throwing money away to a certain extent because you're not building towards equity, you're not building towards ownership. And so I think it's not necessarily that policy has to favor one over the other. I think just more equal policy would be good, like giving renters a little bit more space for tax breaks, allowing maybe a rent to own type model where people can start building equity earlier on would be super helpful. So I don't think it's like favoring one over the other or just making it
00:03:26 · Aziz Sunderji
[00:03:26] S3: a bit more equal. Aziz? Yeah. I think it's a tricky problem to solve for politicians because there's there's kind of a symmetry in housing markets. You have two thirds of households owning, and they certainly don't want lower prices. Like, Kyle has written about this in The New York Times, for example, that your home is is a nest egg for many people. It's their major source of wealth. And it's it's very tricky. Like, you've heard president Trump say that he doesn't want lower home prices. He wants higher home prices. And this has happened around the world. Politicians, when they're kind of nailed down on this topic, do you want higher or lower home prices? They kind of... They panic because there's no good answer. And to be honest, I don't think I have a good answer either. My view is that, look, it's gonna take time for people to stop using... Stop relying on their homes as their main source of wealth. We need need need to put in place policies that allow them to do that. And in the meantime, we can help folks who need help getting on the property ladder and also the renters. I think renters are really struggling in this country and we can certainly do a lot more for them too.
00:04:28 · Scott Galloway
[00:04:28] S1: I'm surprised that the two of you, given your age, are so balanced. I see this as policy that's done nothing but transfer wealth from your generation to my generation. And that one of the biggest errors we made was taking housing permitting out of the hands of bureaucrats and putting it into homeowners who obviously have a vested interest in seeing supply remain quite frankly undersupplied. Permitting costs have gone up. And the result is young people can't start in some ways this major step to starting their life. They become, they feel bad about America. They start getting angry at everything and everybody. And I think even people who own homes, would think, see this. And that it's, you know, we have built as much housing or enough housing for, you know, two thirds of America to own a home, including the 20,000,000 black Americans that own a home. And then we just stopped doing it for a lot of reasons. But it feels as if this has gotten to a point where it is a real social ill and that if mom and dad's home goes down by 10% and also, you know, the homes that would be built would be, you know, kind of on the more modest end. I'm not sure that's gonna really have that big an impact on mom and dad's home. And then a lot of this is interest rates, but it's like the perfect storm for young people to not be able to kind of launch if you will. It to me, it feels like an enormous failure on the part of our leadership. Instead of drill baby drill, it should be build baby build, you know, five to 7,000,000 homes, tax credits, know, Yimbi laws. But hasn't my generation at the end of the day just sucked your generation dry of all capital and opportunity? I'm not quite as elegant and balanced as the two of you.
00:06:17 · Kyla Scanlon
[00:06:17] S2: That's easy. I'll answer that first.
00:06:19 · Aziz Sunderji
[00:06:19] S3: Well, I appreciate being lumped in as a much younger generation. I feel like I might span you guys. I'm born in 1979, so I'm like... Yeah. Technically, I'm I'm late Gen X, but I think, like, psychologically, I'm an old millennial. So maybe I'm kinda between you guys. But... Yeah. I mean, Scott, I think you're I think you're right. You know, I come at this partly as like an economist and data nerd. And so I would note that like this is this is not uncommon, right? Like, it's always been the case that older people have more wealth than younger people. It's not totally surprising that that gap is bigger now than historically because, you know, the the stock market has gone up a ton. And the problem that we're talking about, home prices home prices are the major asset for a lot of households. That's gone up a lot as well. So in a way, it kinda reflects some positive things about the country. If we were, like, in a huge depression, that wealth gap would would be much smaller. So I think it's it's partly a good thing. But, yes, I hear you. And I I... You know, as a person spanning both generations, I have owned... I'm renting now. The rent is is way too high. And I think young people are are rightly very frustrated. I would... I I think that, you know, the problem... And hopefully, we'll get into this, but there are all kinds of problems for for young people getting on the property ladder, and it actually starts much earlier. It starts with leaving your parents' home or getting... You know, moving out of a house that you're renting with friends. You know? So it's it's like a really... It's a deep seated problem that starts very early in life. It's it's not even just about ownership. It's about just being able to to move into your own household.
00:07:56 · Scott Galloway
[00:07:56] S1: Kyla?