1454: Never Bet Against America, Optimism & Preparation, James Altucher Part II

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 1454-1454. And this is Jason, your guide through turbulent times, through good times and bad. I'm here to guide you and I don't know, are times good or bad? Now I'm not sure. And what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is that every crisis is an opportunity. On the flip side, and that is certainly becoming more and more apparent with every passing day, with every investor I talk to, with every webinar I attend, with every everything, all of the different inputs are just amazing. Showing the kind of, what's the right word? The kind of resilience the American economy has. I mean, this is just an amazing time. It really is. And I don't mean amazing in a good way. I mean it's like an epic time in a crazy, bad way. You know, from the first perspective, right? The tier one perspective is, oh, it's a pandemic, it's awful, it's a tragedy. And the whole economy has been shut down and how will we ever recover? Well, the first thing that has really struck me about this is how absolutely unprepared people and companies, even large companies with lots of resources are for a pause in their revenue. It's absolutely shocking. It really is. And it just makes me keep thinking if we didn't have all of these dysfunctional safety nets that we have, right, Would people have been their own safety net? Would they have been their own self reliant backstop against these things? And what's the number one way? Save some money, stop spending so much.

Have an emergency fund. And I don't mean save too much money because obviously saving too much money is counterproductive because savings is getting attacked by taxes and inflation. Always, always, always. But having a rational amount of savings is. And an emergency fund is obviously a good prudent Idea. Even large companies with massive amounts of resources, literally billions and billions of dollars in revenue, seem like they've had no contingency planned. It's just, okay, there's a crisis, let's go to the government for a bailout. I mean, seriously, this is absolutely ridiculous. But I'll tell you something. All that said, and I don't know if you listened to the very unusual shareholders meeting with Warren Buffett that was just on. You can find the videos and so forth, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna play one of them for you. That's interesting. This is actually a compilation video of clips because one of the things he said in the last shareholders meeting in Empty arena where, well, Charlie Munger wasn't even there, but he had some colleagues there and so forth, like the guy that ran, I think, all of his businesses except insurance. And by the way, just a little mention about insurance because Buffett talks a lot about insurance. And one of the really interesting things about the insurance business and now how we are starting to see, and we're going to see more of it, we're going to see people use insurance to their advantage in this time of transition and crisis. Right. Because many businesses have some form or another or a policy that at least alludes to business interruption insurance, the way landlords will sometimes. And check your policies. Landlords have insurance against lost rent insurance. Okay. By the way, do you know you may have that insurance and not know it. So check your policy. And it may be lost rent for various reasons, like, you know, if there's a flood in the house or a fire or something like that may not apply to a pandemic, but this will be a heavily, heavily litigated item. There will be just a huge number of lawsuits that come out of this insurance claim business. And there will be many enterprising attorneys, AKA ambulance chasers that will be soliciting people saying, you know, sue your insurance company and I'll make you some money. And so this is all going to happen. But what's interesting about insurance and Warren Buffett has made a large, large sum of his massive fortune in the insurance business is that it's the only business, the only business, at least that I can think of on the entire planet with a negative cost of capital. What does that mean, the negative cost of capital? This is just something to kind of ponder. You know, I don't really have any action item for you here, but just understand how it works and why a lot of money has been made in it and lost. You know, many insurance Companies go under, they lose money and they have to fold. But the negative cost of capital just basically means that in, well, every other business that I can think of, at least, hey, if I can't think of one, Please go to jasonhartman.com Ask and help me learn jasonhartman.com Ask, and leave your comments, your questions, your thoughts, reviews, criticisms, whatever on the show. And by the way, a lot of times we read those on the air. So we love to hear from you@jason hartman.com ask. Okay, so every other business, you have to go out and spend money before you can make money. But in the insurance business, you can actually make money before you spend money. Now, of course, you'll have to spend money setting up the enterprise and maybe doing some marketing so you'll have some customers and so forth. Right. Obviously. But the, the basic business model is that people pay you before you have to pay for anything. And that's the negative cost of capital because they pay to buy an insurance policy for something that may never happen and you get the money before you have to pay any claims. Then, of course, courthouse records are riddled with claims for what is called insurance bad faith, where insurance companies don't pay claims, they try to weasel out of it, and then people sue their insurance company. Anyway, a lot of stuff there, but I just wanted to mention that. But Buffett, in his meeting, he said something pretty profound. And I think you gotta really, really listen to this and remember my philosophy, as I've taught you on this show over the past 16 years or so, is align your interest with the most powerful force, forces the human race has ever known. What is the most powerful country? It's the usa. What is the most powerful central bank? It is the USA's Federal Reserve bank, its central bank. The two most powerful forces the world has ever known. Second to that are other countries as superpowers and other big powerful central banks. But none of them eclipse the the United States in terms of its government or its central bank or its economy.

Or anything like that.

Right. And so Buffett said, as everybody's so concerned about what's going on now, obviously, and for good reason. But what did he say? He said again, and he said that many times over the years and he's been right all along. And for those doomsayers that say these crazy things like, oh, the dollar's not backed by gold.

Oh my gosh, it's not backed by anything. Yeah, right. Good luck with that. That's absolutely nonsensical. And Buffett said, he said never Bet against America, never bet against America. And he's right. And I'll bet you that he's going to be right. That statement is going to be right for the next five decades. Okay, yeah, you can talk about, hey, China had a quick rise, but now it's got a lot of problems on the world stage, obviously a lot of trust issues there. Hey, if you can't trust your trading partner, well, you're not going to have a very good trading economy. Right. So very important. So here's a couple clips just quickly from Warren Buffett.

You might say that our underlying premise, and I think it's a pretty sound underlying premise, is that this country will do very well. And in particular it will do well for business. Businesses done very well. You know, the dow went from 66 to 10,000 plus in the hundred years of the 20th century and we had two world wars and nuclear bombs and flu epidemics and you name it, Cold War. There's always problems in the future. There are always opportunities in the future. And in this country, the opportunities have won out over the problems over time. I envy the baby that's being born today in the United States. I mean, I think on a probability basis, that's the luckiest individual that's ever been born. And I think that they will do very well in life in all kinds of ways. Probability basis, better than existed when I was born.

In your letter this year, you really.

Took aim at some of the politicians who have been going around saying that things, things aren't going well in this country. You said that things are strong here.

Is that a shot at thinking we.

Don'T need to make America great again?

Well, America, America's never been greater. I mean, you can look at where we stand. I mean, it will be greater in the future, but America's never been greater. I mean, this is the best time to be alive in the history of the world. I mean, in terms of medicine, transportation, entertainment, you name it, or just in terms of aggregate wealth. Now, the distribution has gotten more and more skewed in recent years and it should be skewed to quite a degree. But I would say that skewing has been excessive. But as I mentioned in the letter, I live in a upper middle class neighborhood. Median income might be 100,000 a year.

And the most amazing thing is that Warren Buffett, at times he's been the richest person in the world, lives in the most modest home. It is absolutely amazing. He's lived in the same house since what, 1955 or something like that. It's worth about $800,000 today. I'm sure many, many, many of you listening live in more expensive homes than Warren Buffett. At times the richest man in the entire world. Truly amazing. So he's talking about where he lives and saying, oh, people make like $100,000 a year where I live. Ooh, so funny.

Every person in that neighborhood lives better than John D. Rockefeller Sr. Lived at the time I was born. In one man's lifetime, upper middle class neighborhood has evolved to a way of life that's better than the richest man than in what was the best country in the world in 1930 was able to achieve. He had power and prestige and all of that, but in terms of medicine, entertainment, transportation, you name it, my neighbors were better off than he was. So this country works and it's working now.

And that's what was so interesting when we went as the Venture alliance mastermind group, when I took the Venture alliance to Newport, Rhode island and we saw those amazing mansions. And one of our Venture alliance members who you've heard on the show before, our client Jeff Morris, he commented, he said, you know what? We all live better than these people did. We all live better today than these people did back then. The richest people in the world at the time.

But it's leaving a lot of people behind that are very good citizens and we can do more for them. But we don't want to do it in terms of screwing up the golden goose.

And so what he's talking about there and why that wealth inequality has increased, of course, is because of the financialization of the economy, which by the way, he is partially to blame for that. Isn't that funny?

We'll have bad years in capitalism. I mean, it overshoots in markets, it, it gets overcome by fear and greed and all of that sort of thing. But overall, we move ahead. And we not only move ahead, we move ahead at a pretty damn rapid rate when you think about it. I mean, when in the 20th century we had a 7 for 1 improvement in living and we did that, you know, we had slavery for a long time. We had blacks counted as 3/5 of a person. We didn't let women vote for 130 years or thereabouts. I mean, we were wasting human potential and we still are, but we were doing it more so for centuries. But we do keep moving forward in kind of fits and starts. And right now we're sputtering somewhat in terms of the economy, but the opportunities will win in the end and your kids will live better than you Live, and your grandchildren will live better. And we will find more and more ways to find easier and better ways to do things that we haven't even dreamt of yet.

All right, so enough of that. Anyway, never bet against America. I think Buffett has nailed that and he's absolutely right. And as dysfunctional as it is, align your interest with those powerful forces. How do you do that? You do that by what I've been guiding you to all along, which is simply buy properties, leverage them prudently, but as much as possible hold them for long term rental. And by the way, I was just listening to John Burns, who's been on the show a few times over the years and spoke at our Meet the Masters conference two years ago. And John Burns was talking about how there will be this migration out of high density. He must be listening to my podcast because I've been saying that from the beginning. Right, but he was even saying it at a more significant level than I've been saying it. He was just talking about how even people living in lower density, suburban style, sticks and bricks apartment complexes where there's, you know, maybe 300 units and those are the typical plan there is. It's two, three or four stories, right? It's not even a mid rise or a high rise like I've been talking about. And how people will be migrating out of those to single family homes. Hey, congratulations listeners, because that's what you've been doing and that's what we've been helping you do for many, many years. Okay, we've got to get to our guest today. James Altucher is back on the show. But before that, I've been remiss in getting some listener and client comments to you. And I just wanted to share a couple of those real quickly before we get to James. These won't take very long. And then we'll get back to James Altucher.

Just wanted to let you know, really enjoying the latest episodes of the podcast. Like over the last couple weeks, you've really stepped up your game. I mean, your game is always strong, but not only the frequency of what you're putting out stuff, but the guests, the episodes you're using, and even your solo, I like call them pontifications. But solo episodes, really good. So great stuff. I think in particular you're doing a great job of, you know, reporting on what you're perceiving to be true and also keeping that optimism. So it's like, here's where we are, here's the questions you should be asking, and here's how we should be thinking, but also, you know, maintaining that we will get through this. And, you know, reminding us all that optimism in the end always wins. It's not like blind positivity, but optimism, like believing that it's still a great time to be alive. That hasn't changed. And the future has always proven to be stronger. You know, that innovation and growth and all of that still will prevail.

It's amazing. Time to be alive, really enjoying it.

Keep in touch.

She learned how to save.

Jason Hartman, Real estate Investing in Chinese. So there's your message of the day.

Hey, Jason. So I'm not sure if this was.

A test to see if I was listening to the podcast or not, but I want to make sure our listeners know that I am not a Dodgers fan. Okay.

The link I posted about the the.

Cars parked, the rental cars parked in the parking lot was at Angels baseball stadium. So I just needed to make that clarification.

Hey, Jason, Just wanted to report, I know you've been talking a lot, and you were talking about it before. Lots of other people were about the population shift from cities and more densely populated areas into less densely populated areas. And I'm seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence among my connections here in New York and a lot of people that I've worked with in Philadelphia, where I'm originally from, who are indeed doing that. Every day in my Facebook feed or Instagram or I get a private message from somebody that I worked with. Not just actors, some business people as well, who during this time, you know, maybe they have a second home in the mountains or this one person I worked with, she's originally from North Carolina in this beautiful rural community that she grew up in. And her husband decided, like, you know what, this is a good time for us to recalibrate. And so they're moving. They've decided they've already started packing. There's three more that I saw last week, people in New York that are performing artists who realize, hey, you know, since theater's probably going to be shut down for a while anyway, why don't I just stay here, work on my stuff? And, you know, there's theaters in this area, too, so when they do open back up, you know, there'll be work here and I'll just pick up some other stuff since I know people here. So I'm just seeing at least a few a day. And if I scale that out, I know that if I'm seeing that anecdotal evidence, I'm sure I'm not the only one. So you probably like are not surprised to hear this, but I just thought I'd report since I happen to be connected to a lot of people who kind of had one foot in, one foot out, like New York already. I was just saying to Tanya, like the thought never even occurred to me to leave the city during this crisis. Like I consider this my home. This is the first place I've lived where I actually feel like I'm home. And I know it's expensive and stupid and I can get way better places, but I just like it here. So for those of us that do stay, I'm excited to see what kind of deals I can get on rent when this whole thing settles down. I would be definitely okay if a few hundred thousand people left the city and we didn't see that influx of college kids that come in May, June and July that jack up their rents on everything where they put seven people in a two bedroom apartment and the rest of us can't get one. So I'll be keeping my eyes on it and I'll report what I see on the ground with rent prices and stuff. They've already come down. Like our neighborhood. The rents I'd say since the crisis began have dropped at least 10%. So that's just been my observation. I expect them to go down further.

Anyway, so there's a couple of show voice messages for you. You can hear. It's an amazing time to be alive. People are migrating out of New York City already and a lot more, millions more are thinking about it. Very significant trend that you, dear listener investor are going to profit from that trend. So good for you. And hey, going to play some more messages about self management on a future episode here and some more stuff. So we'll get back to the show inbox on a later episode. But now let's get to part two of James Altucher.

James, share your hot stock tips. I almost bought Carnival Cruises when it got really cheap. I mean maybe it still is, but that's a real risky one. But Exxon's cheap. I mean I'm not even a Wall street guy. I like real estate. I think income proper is the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. I love my rental properties but.

I'm getting greedy. I'm getting tempted on the stock market. So fire away with a couple of tips. You like Shell?

Yeah, I like Shell. Again, I think the market as a whole, if you want to take a risk, don't buy the Spiders Spy, which is this ETF that represents the S&P 500 represents the overall market. I like RVT a little bit better. It's the Royce Value Trust. It also represents the entire market, but it's a closed end fund, so it trades at a significant discount to the assets it owns. So it's like buying the market at a discount. And because of the current volatility, they're at a larger than normal discount. So you get the upside of the discount closing. It's a little bit in the weeds here, but RVT is a better way to buy the whole market, is what I'm saying. I like there's a drone company, Avav, and drones are gonna do good. They're already testing out drones for delivery now. Like anything that was gonna happen in 10 years is gonna happen tomorrow.

You know, that's interesting you say that because, you know, one of my favorite economists is Joseph Schumpeter.

Right.

Creative destruction. And what any crisis does, since necessity is the mother of invention, is it just brings the future closer to us. We had all the online tools. We had Zoom, we had Skype before, but now everybody's been forced to use them. Even people that really.

You know, a bunch of the mastermind groups I'm in, for example, you know, they're doing Zoom meetings. And I'm thinking, do we really, after this is over, do we really need to meet in person again? It's so much easier to just have a Zoom meeting, right?

No, I used to. I agree. Like, I used to do all my podcasts in person for years and years until this lockdown. And now I'm loving doing the podcast remotely. Not because I don't want to see people in person, but it allows me to prepare right up until the very last minute. I don't have to go anywhere I could take. It's easier for me to take notes during the podcast. Podcasts are just as high quality. It's easy for me to book guests, actually, because they don't have to be in the city, so. And it shows me I don't have to be in the city either. I could be anywhere. Yeah. So, yeah, I do think things are going to change. I do think the stimulus eventually will work. And so I'm hoping we'll see a mini surge in Q3, Q4 of this year, and then in 2021. I'm hoping we see the big surge as people finally, you know, start buying real estate again or start traveling more again. But I do think there's too much uncertainty at the moment. And although there are bargains, I probably wouldn't Dive in. By the way. You know what's been interesting too is law enforcement. So in England there's been a surge of knife attacks against police because there's a little bit of social unrest. And I shouldn't just say England, I should say all countries in the US too.

Well, anywhere they have gun control you get more knife attacks, you know, so.

Yeah, right. And there's a little bit more social unrest right now. And I don't know, I think any search. Right now I'm out of the markets completely. I own one stock so I'm not recommending this stock.

I'm biased.

I own one stock.

Which one?

So it's called Wrap Technologies wrtc and they introduced a non lethal weapon.

I don't really know anything more than anyone about it, but it's the one stock I own because I do think the world is moving towards non lethal police forces for a solution. Police officers don't want to wake up in the morning and say today's the day I shoot somebody. They want an alternative between beating someone up and shooting someone. And this, this rap technology is as a weapon or a device that wraps a cable around you at the speed of sound.

Oh wow.

And you can't move. And so it's like Batman. And people, states and countries and governments need, need something like this. So it's the one thing I own is I feel it's economy, independent. There's always going to be a police force and security guards for stores and so on. And so that's the one thing I own. But I am looking at drone companies like Avav, iRobot, IRBT, Nvidia, the chip maker, NVDA, Palo Alto Networks, whatever their symbol is. I forget Royal Dutch Shell on the oil side. And then I'm just seeing if there's, I'm curious what you think. I don't really see any deep, deep value stocks yet also, which makes me nervous.

Yeah, I'm not thinking like it's totally time to dive into everything yet, but again, I'm not a stock expert but I do want to ask you about this. So last week I interviewed, interviewed Dottie Herman, the CEO of Douglas Elliman Real Estate on the show. And of course she's a New Yorker like you. She was in the Hamptons when we did the interview and we talked about money.

She's not a New Yorker, by the way. Everybody, everybody says they're a New Yorker and they all New York City went to the Hamptons. And I'm a New Yorker. I'm in the middle of New York City right now. I own a bar in New York City. I'm a New Yorker. I'm right across the street from my bar. I'm here with the gang.

You're the real deal. Stick it out. Okay. All right.

Warren here.

Yeah, good deal. So anyway.

Oh, but you were saying, she said.

Well, I asked her about my theory that after the lockdowns lift, will there be a mass migration from high density to low density living? And again, it could be just 10% of the people that live in high density areas. And high density defined by not just New York City, but by anything where you're typically living in a five story or more building, where you're forced to take an elevator and you're very likely to be using mass transit. Okay. Even after there's a vaccine, better treatments, whatever, I think there is going to be kind of a ptsd, a sort of suspension, suspicious nature with people that, hey, you know, maybe there's going to be another virus. You know, there's. What's the next one? Will it be SARS again? Will it be, you know, hey, remember, you know, now everybody's suddenly watching and learning about the Spanish flu back in 1918. So will there be this mass migration like that? And interestingly, she has a self interest. She runs a big New York real estate brokerage and she says, I think people are moving. I guess on one side you get a lot of listings, but ultimately you want people moving into your market to make money long term.

Well, don't forget, she sells also in, I mean, Douglas Elliman, the company sells in or represents people in Westchester, the Hamptons, New Jersey, the suburbs.

Some of it's suburbia.

Yeah, got it.

So she benefits either way. But it's interesting she says that. I agree though, because who's gonna come out of this day one and say, you know what, I'm gonna finally move to New York City. I don't care. They might have a second wave and they'll shut down the whole economy again and maybe there'll be riots in the streets. I'm just gonna buy. And furthermore, no one's gonna say, I can't wait to fulfill my lifelong dream of starting a pizza restaurant in the middle of Manhattan. Like they're just not gonna do that. So I agree with you. And that means there's gonna be less things to enjoy in New York City and more reasons to move away. And not just in the suburbs of New York, but down to Florida. I was just looking at real estate prices in Florida.

Come on down the Weather is beautiful. In fact, James, I coined a new term just yesterday to describe Florida. Now, note that I'm from California. Almost all of my life, the socialist republic was super high taxes. Worse than New York, by the way. 13.9% slightly worse. Yeah. And I moved here two years ago and I've coined a new phrase. I call it Florida has luxury weather. Luxury weather. It's a new kind of weather.

Luxury weather.

Yeah.

I love Florida weather. I love right where you are. Palm beach, that whole area. Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Delray, Miami. I like that whole quadrant.

But come down and bring your Missile Command game. Is that Missile Command behind you?

No, Missile Command is a horizontal box. That is Defender, Joust, Stargate, Robotron. The more vertical games.

You're reminding me of being a teenager when I used to play video games all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

That's why I got this. It's $300 for that box. You should get it. It's got 50 games on it. But what I'm hearing from real estate brokers is that the listing prices have not yet changed, but the offers are coming in 20 to 50% lower right now. Now, maybe people think they're going to get a bargain, and maybe that's going to be over once the economy reopens. But some of those offers have been accepted as well, and we're just not seeing the change in listing prices. But apparently they're seeing. And I don't know if she had any insight into this, but apparently they are seeing the change in and offers out there. But we'll see if that holds. Again, it's one of the unknown unknowns.

Yeah.

Right. Yes, yes. Rumsfeld.

Yes, it's in the Rumsfeld Known Unknown matrix.

I love it. Well, hey, is there anything else you want to share with our audience? Just anything I haven't asked you. I mean, you've got so many books, I wouldn't even know where to go with your books. There's just so many. But I loved Choose Yourself the concept that there's no gatekeeper, and about a year from now, you got another great book about skipping the line, which I can't wait to read that one.

Well, I think I just want to remind people that even if there is this ptsd, even if your job seems insecure or it's over or you're furloughed a little too easily and you get nervous, or this time alone has made you think you don't really want to go back to your job or career, I think there are A lot of opportunities out there. I think there is going to be money in the economy. So the stimulus is a very real trillions and trillions of dollars. Between Congress and the Federal Reserve, we're talking like six, seven trillion dollars. That's real money. And the dollar is not going to inflate so quickly. There will be opportunities when everyone else is scared to kind of step up and change your life if you want, or start a business or invest in yourself. Maybe don't buy stocks, maybe start taking a photography class and you know, change careers or come up with an idea for, you know, any kind of business.

James, actually, you know you wrote 40 alternatives to college, right?

Yeah.

And you know what's interesting about this too is that for the smart and ambitious people, they're using this time as a huge self improvement program. You know, they're either improving their mind, they're taking courses online, they're exercising. And interestingly, you know, the schools, the colleges and the universities and just school school has sent everybody home to learn. And I think this is going to cause a collapse in ridiculously high student tuition for colleges because nobody's going to pay 50 grand a year to learn online without getting a college experience and all of that college real estate because almost every university now is basically a hedge fund, real estate investing company and a branding agency. It's just ridiculous how far they've gotten away from their mission. I can't blame them though. I mean, I would do it too if I resist there. But all of that college real estate, it's going to be reused. It's going to come up for sale. Those dorms are going to be sold as condos or turned into apartments or I don't know what's going to happen.

Or become ghost towns.

Or become ghost towns.

Yeah, I agree. College is clearly the tide has come in and the colleges were left standing naked on the beach.

The emperor has no clothes. It's a rip off.

The college is clearly a scam because like you said, they sent everyone home and they were like, oh, we were kidding. You don't really need to be on campus to get the college experience. You can just do it all online. But don't look at Coursera where you have really great teachers teaching up to date stuff or Code Academy or Khan Academy or masterclass or LinkedIn learning. Don't look at those which have really great teachers and stuff. Just keep going to our old out of date textbooks that we charge you $1,000 a book for. And by the way, get the hell out of the Dorm rooms, because we gotta take those. But we're not giving you your money back.

They won't even refund the money. It's unbelievable. What a scape business.

101 possessions, 9/10 of the law. We got your money. See you later. So I don't know why people would be excited about going to college, but we'll see. We'll see. I agree with you though. I think again, it's one of those things that what would have been a conversation five to ten years from now is going to become a conversation tomorrow.

Much sooner, which is creative destruction. It's great. And the bottleneck in the college, I call it the, the university debt enslavement complex.

Okay.

Like the military industrial complex. The bottleneck seems to be the accreditation concept. Right. You know, like the Khan Academy or Coursera is not accredited. You can't get that document, you can't get that degree. And as soon as they somehow figure out the roundabout to the accreditation thing, I mean, certainly some companies like Google will hire people without a degree now. And that's awesome because there are tons of smart people walking around without degrees. Then when you get around the accreditation bottleneck, then I think things really would start to work.

I've thought a lot about this. So one thing is you and I know that accreditation aspect doesn't really make any sense. Like you say Google's actually hiring people without degrees. And many people would be willing to take a chance if they see you have the skills. They'd rather have that than an MIT degree. But kids are influenced by their guidance school counselors and their other friends and their peers. They think you need college. It's really the kids now. They think you need college to get a job. And it's not true. But maybe there's a business opportunity. Maybe you get a panel of experts or whatever, educators, and you say these online courses across these different platforms are, we're going to accredit. We're going to say this is a worthwhile computer science degree and we'll verify it.

If there's a financial course that James Altucher and Ray Dalio endorse and you have to pass it, a Wall street firm should hire that person.

Right?

Yeah. And I think that is a reasonable business plan. There's probably going to be some business models we're not even aware of now that are going to be in that category because remote learning is definitely a thing that's going to ramp up big time. And I think also maybe just people won't care about accreditation at some Point, which is the other extreme and the opportunity now is creating more and more online courses. So an online course is fairly easy to set up. It's a good way to make a living. It's one of those make money while you sleep things. We all have the capabilities to be expert enough to teach non experts something. If you just start now, within two years or less you could have a great online course that you're teaching and make a lot of money.

Yeah.

And just for the record, I want to say that I don't think college is a scam in and of itself. I just think it's massively overpriced, that's all. I think if you could work your way through school with a part time job and pay for it, it'd be okay. I have no objection to that. I just think when it's increases in price at three or four times the rate of real inflation, that's a complete scam.

Tuitions have increased faster than inflation every single year for 50 years in a row.

Well, the government insures the loans and floods money into the system. You get inflation. What a concept, right? Yeah, absolutely. James, give out your website.

It's jamesaltucher.com, or you could find me on Twitter aaltucher or find me on Instagram altucher or find me on TikTok at jamesaltucher. Just started doing my TikTok videos during this break.

That just proves beyond the shadow of doubt you are hip and cool that you do TikTok.

I hope my kids listen to this and you could tell them that.

Yeah, well have them listen. Definitely their dad is hip and cool, that's for sure. James Altucher, thanks so much for joining us.

Jason, thanks so much. Thanks again for having me on the show. I really enjoyed it.

Foreign.

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