How are your financial choices shaped by the system?
Exploring Scott Galloway's insights on intergenerational inequality and the path to collective prosperity through community collaboration
Over the last two months, I’ve written about why we have poor money management skills: is your scarcity mindset screwing you?, who is really in control?, are you sleeping walking through life?, smart yet foolish: what can monkeys teach us about human loss aversion?, can you break free from your comfort zone and overcome status quo bias?, is the promise of a secure future broken?, why do we make money decisions the way we do? and is wealth an illusion? how to break free from the gambler's fallacy.
Why? Because make no mistake: our poor money management skills come from and benefit our current economic system, which thrives in an uninformed environment. If you don’t know what you are missing—in this case, how the super-rich are taking advantage of the system—you are none the wiser. Each time you’re gambling, hoping for a magic outcome, they are the house, getting a small but assured outcome.
While capitalism thrives on fear of losing what you've got (scarcity) and extracting everything you can (super profits), individuals do not. On the other hand, individuals are more likely to thrive with boring financial strategies, like compounding interest and community care. To beat the house, we have to relearn what money is, how it works, and where the odds are skewed against us.
TED talk: How the US is destroying young people's future: if you haven’t watched this I’d strongly encourage you to.
The social contract that is now no longer in place and for the first time in the US's history, a 30-year-old is no longer doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. This is a breakdown in the fundamental agreement we have with any society, and it creates rage and shame — Scott Galloway
In his talk, Galloway unpacks the root causes and effects of this "great intergenerational theft," asking why we let it continue and showing how we could make it end. Enable display images to see a summary below:
It's never been easier to be a billionaire, it's never been harder to be a millionaire — Scott Galloway
We can only move from “winner takes all” to “everyone wins” by reaching a level of self-acceptance that turns our focus away from comparison and onto community. When we do so collectively, we can take the next step toward “everyone thrives”—twenty-two centuries after Julius Caesar’s divide and conquer strategy was imprinted on our society.
This is the true antidote to the global threats we face: community collaboration, not competitive division. The power is in all of our hands. By coming together, we are empowered to do, be, and create something bigger than ourselves, for more than just ourselves.
With gratitude,
Arunjay.
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Pp.s. if you’d like a free copy of my book, Generation Hope: How Inclusive Economics Can Help Us All Thrive, please click here.