Why the US Economy Is Going WARP DRIVE

How does America go? Warp drive and why we've lived in.

An unnatural world for the last 77 years. Because essentially the only winner out of World War II, there were lots of losers, but the only winner out of World War II was actually the United States.

Cynicized is when you become cynical by a system. Right?

Yeah.

And. And I.

That's a good word. I like that.

Hey, this is Mike Cannings, and I'm here with my good friend Dan Sullivan. And this is American warp drive. One of the things that you know about Dan is he is a big, big history buff. He's also a huge fan. So am I a Peter Zion who is. Or Zion who is an economist and a lot more. And Dan has been re reading his books, all of his books, and he has some great theories on the upcoming massive boom that's going to be happening in the American economy. He's going to give you some great reasons why. So if you're looking for some positivity about what's going to be happening for America, Americans and American thinking, manufacturing, even education, we tear into that and a lot more in this episode. So all that, Check it out. Any rabbit holes?

Yeah, the big thing, I. I just created a concept. So I read Peter Zion's book four times.

I've been. I've been tearing through it, but I'm not done yet. So.

Yeah, well, I've done it four times and I keep seeing new things that I didn't see before.

This is beyond the six Ds because we did the 60s episode.

We did that last time. But this time.

I've created what the bottom line is in all of his four books. And this one. I read two of the books twice. I read the third book three times. Wow. The first two. And I read this one four times because he's. I think he's got one of the most original takes on what's happening in the world right now. And he's doing YouTubes almost daily. He's doing YouTubes to bring you up to date with things that are happening in the world right now. And he's just got a unique take that I've not seen before in my previous.

Let'S say 70 years of really being interested in history and geography and politics since I was about 8 years old.

But what I did is I got to the real bottom line after reading the book. The book is called the End of the World is Just the Beginning. Okay. And I recommend on Kindle or you buy the copy so you can write all over the pages. And he's got great youtubes and several of them. You can just get his hour and 10 minute overview of the entire book. So if you're not a reader but you're a watcher, then go to YouTube. And he's really mastered YouTube. He's really good on YouTube and he's a great writer. But now he's a great presenter. And I find that really unusual that someone who is both a writer and has that same great communication capabilities. But anyway, I'm just going to share with you what I came to. And it was sort of a sub theme through all the books. And when I got to the end, I said, well, this is a single theme developed over an eight year period, but you're getting to the same bottom line. Okay. And I'm going to tell you what the theme is right now so we can explore it. And that is the bottom line is America goes warp drive. Wow.

Well, that doesn't go along with the current narrative. So how does America go warp drive and why?

Yeah, well, first of all, the story that Peter Zion tells is that we've lived in an unnatural world for the last 77 years because essentially the only.

Winner out of World War II, there were lots of losers, but the only winner out of World War II was actually the United States. You know, and the United States just went through a tremendous productivity jump during the Second World War. And they were, you know, it was 41 to 45 for the U.S. britain, which took a lot of the early hard work just surviving, but they started in 39. And of course they were closer to the troubles in Europe than the United States was. And Churchill, the great leader of the UK wanted to get the US into the war because he knew that once the US got in with their productivity, that the war would be over. And he was thinking about the European war. But in the meantime, the second front opened up in the Pacific with Japan.

The admiral who engineered the attack on Pearl harbor, he was asked, will this win the war for us? He says, no, but it'll set them back for six months. And we can run wild for six months. But after six months, if they're really determined, the war is over. We can't win the war against. And Yamamoto is the name of the admiral. And he went to Harvard, he actually graduated from Harvard and he spoke English and he traveled all throughout the United States. He took a train trip from the east coast to the west coast. And he just saw the incredible economic capability of the US and nobody else had that. And you couldn't bomb the United States, it wasn't possible to attack the United States. So once they unleashed the productive ability then they, you know, then it was only a matter of time really. And they also fought the war in Europe at the same time. So they, they had a double war. They had about, I think the total was somewhere around 15 million that were in the armed forces during the Second World War. Yep. And it was just sheer predict productivity and logistics. They could produce everything that was needed. And they had the logistical power to actually get stuff where it was needed just when it was needed. And they also produced all their own oil. You know, they were self sufficient and unlimited amounts of productive capability. So anyway, so the war ends, the bombs are dropped in August of 1945. The European war had finished about three months before that in May. And there was just one country standing. And about a year before the war ended, the US was already saying what's the world going to look like after the war? So they invited 44 countries to a place called Bretton woods. It's a big mountain resort in New Hampshire. And they planned out what the game was going to be. And there was going to be three rules. The dollar was going to be the reserve currency for the world. The British pound had been the currency, but now. But they were bankrupt.

The two wars. They had two very expensive wars and they were bankrupt little country too. I mean compared to the size of America. The other thing was that the US would loan any amount of money to countries that wanted to rebuild their economy and that.

They could sell their products.

Without tariff into the United States. The United States would buy all their products. Okay. So the US loaned them the money to rebuild their economies and then they produced and they would allow the products that they manufactured. Not only that, number three, the US Navy would protect all the sea lanes in the world so that nobody had to worry about their shipping being interfered with.

Yep.

Now does that sound like a selfish deal?

Yes, it's a great selfish deal, but.

It'S a very compelling offer.

It's an extremely, I mean here's the deal. Stabilized currency, free money and protection and.

Taxes and the biggest market in the world.

It's a no lose deal for all sides, I would assume. Unless you're the one who's paying. It depends what the interest rate is on one hand too. But still that, that's if you're a good capitalist, you're going to take all that into account, right?

Yeah. Seems to me there was one condition. There was one condition. Any country that accepted the offer had to align with the United States. Yes.

Yeah.

Russia's the bad guy stuff to the Soviet Union. So that was the deal. It was.

We'Ll guarantee prosperity if you enter into a security pact with us. Yep. And it went along. You know, it went along late 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and then you got into the 80s and actually 89, starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. And then you get to December of 1991, and without asking anyone's permission, the Soviet Union quits. Yep. But the rest of the world said, don't take any notice. Pay no attention to the enemy no longer being there. We like the deal. The thing that the people don't realize is that the United States didn't make any money on this deal. Okay? Everybody else made money on this deal. What the United States got was not having to send 15 million of their people over to fight another war. They fought some smaller wars. And. And more and more.

They sense that the other countries weren't grateful for what had happened. And they started talking about how the European Union was going to replace the United States and, you know, and everything. And the Americans took it personally. They just said, you know, you know, we don't.

We don't like this, you ungrateful bastards, you.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and countries don't have friends. Countries have interests, and countries, you know, countries act the way that they're going to act. But anyway. But the thing was that American workers paid for this because their jobs went overseas, you know, and the American taxpayers paid for all the expense of this. And so starting probably with Clinton and, you know, and Clinton was president and then Bush was president and then Obama was president and Trump was president, and even now with Biden, they just said, we can't be doing this anymore, and we've got to pull things back, and we got to start taking the money and putting it back into the United States and repair things. We haven't upgraded our infrastructure, our electrical system, our railroad system and highway systems and everything else. And let's bring it back and let's repair everything. And so they created globalization. So people talk about the global world, the United States created globalization as a process where everybody was.

By far more prosperous than was ever true in history, immensely more prosperous. And it didn't matter where you were because the shipping was guaranteed from wherever you were. And you had these huge, huge ships, these huge freighters that would have 2,000 big container boxes on them, and that might involve activities of 100,000 companies. As a matter of fact, when one of them got Stuck in the suez Canal for five days, it delayed about 100,000 supply chains for about six weeks.

And the reason why is it didn't matter because water transport is really inexpensive, you know, and you can ship anyone, everywhere. But one thing happened that the US Never was foreign trade.

Outside of the continent of the United States, trade has never been, in the 75 years, bigger than 10% of the US GDP. Yeah.

America's economy depends on Americans selling things to Americans. So they produce Americans. So that's the big thing. So the US Actually didn't enjoy the benefit of this other than they didn't have to go to war with the Soviet Union. And that's still true. That's still true. That's still true. And there is no Soviet Union. But for the most part, there's been almost no warfare between Americans and Russians during this entire period. Even now, the Ukrainians are doing the killing. They're using American weapons, but they're not doing it. And there won't be any Americans killed in Ukraine. I mean, there won't be any Americans. And the US Is rethinking this whole thing. And they're saying we're not going to be the global police person anymore. We're not going to be the global traffic cop anymore. And we're going to pick and choose who.

We do deals with. So no more multilateral trade agreements and everything. Japan, us, Korea, us, Taiwan, US all that. Actually, the two biggest trading partners of the US Are Canada and the United States, which is like a single economy. I mean, you, you spend time in Mexico, I'm in Canada. And it's the same economy, you know, and, you know, so that's it. So that brings us up to the day. But one thing happened as all the countries in the world got prosperous and it happened starting around 40 years ago. They stopped having babies. Yep.

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But the United States boomer generation had a baby boom. So Americans got a lot of young, have a lot of young. 20 to 50 is the important age.

For consumption and work.

Production, consumption and.

Paying taxes and everything. So it's 20 to 50 and all in the developed world, which you would call developed countries. And give you an example, the US Is the most developed country. All the European Countries are mostly developed countries, Southeast Asian. You have developed countries, some, you know, some South American. Not too many South American or developed countries, but there's about 40 of them, 45, what you would call developed countries.

All except five of them will have a lower population 10 years from now than they do this year. So 10 years from now, every 40 of those 45 countries will have a lower population. And some of them are dropping very, very quickly. Okay. And the biggest one who's dropping quickly is China. And the Chinese themselves have just put out projections that in 50 years from this time, so this be 72, they will. Their population will be half of what it is today. So they're 1.3 billion. They over counted by.

1.3 billion. They recognize that they've been out over counting by 100 million. So they have 100 million. And 70% of that 100 million are women that weren't born. And I don't know if you've, I mean, where you are with your thinking here, but women are still essential to giving birth.

Yep.

Still central. So here's the thing. You have five countries. You have the U.S. you have.

This is countries that will have a bigger population. You have the U.S. you have Mexico, you have France, you have Sweden, and you have New Zealand that will have equal or bigger population. No, none of the other developed countries are. Yeah. So we just hit 8, 8, 8 billion in the world. And people are saying, oh, in 50 years it's going to be 10 billion. 50 years from now it's going to be 7 billion and it's going to be dropping really fast. Yes. And, but meanwhile, the US Apart from the political news that's in our faces all the time, is the US is just completely reinventing itself. So in the last three years, 1.5 million manufacturing jobs have been created in the United States. It's the biggest growth of manufacturing jobs in U.S. history. Okay. And it's all going to be between the mountains. It's going to be the Allegheny Mountains on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west and that it's about 1500 miles, 1700 miles, the flatlands, the Great Plains and everything else. That's going to be the growth center of the United States. And they're probably going to be somewhere around. They'll be 400 million by 2050, and they'll be 500 million by 2100.

And China will be around 600 million. So the US will be still number three. India will, will stay big because they have a lot of young people and the US Is Pulling everything back. They're applying all the technology that's been created over the last 40, 50 years. And there's a lot of foolishness about microchips that the US doesn't make any microchips. The US designs 90% of all the microchips in the world and the design is where the money is. And the main manufacturers of these microchips are essentially Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. But from a dollar standpoint, half the microchips in the world are already created in the United States. They're already manufactured in the United States. Half the value of microchips every year, half of it is American manufacturer, not the total number of microchips. Yes, okay, but the dollar, where the money is is in the United States.

And now they're encouraging the big microchip factories in Japan and South Korea and Taiwan to move their factories to the United States. So in Phoenix, tsmc, which is the top producer of really sophisticated chips, they're building 20,000 worker factory north of Phoenix. And in Ohio, where I come from, intel is putting in a new 10,000 worker factory just north of Columbus. So what we're going into is a massive, massive manufacturing. And the only problem is that our universities have been over producing nonstop for the last 40 years. A.

Surplus amount of over educated, underachieving, under skilled people for the new economy.

Today in United states and Canada, 18 year old graduates from high school, takes a six week welding course and at the end of the first year he's making 60,000 or she's making $60,000 a year.

By the time they're 30, they're over 100,000 and they'll never be under 100,000. You can go to four years of college and spend three years in the marketplace and you're not making 100,000. Right. So trades are going to come back, you're going to see a massive expansion of community colleges. And you know, and they'll start the college work when they're in high school, they'll start doing their trades and there's going to be an enormous amount of building going on and all those trades are going to be important. And I think that the biggest worry, and it's been the biggest worry of everybody, if the United States just decides to transform itself, they're going to go into warp drive and leave the rest of the world behind. That's what I think. It's going to happen. But he keeps saying, well all these bad things are really true except for the United States. And then he'll say something else. And this is really bad for, you know, Asia and Middle east and everything. But it's not true for the United States. So after I listen to all the sub themes that this is not true for the United States, I say us is going to go into warp drive. So that's my story for today. And it's just the opposite of what everybody is predicting.

Yes. So I, as I was listening to you, you know, if, if.

The challenge we have is highly qualified workers and I just worked with someone recently.

A couple weeks ago. So you know, I've been building businesses and.

A woman, her name is Christy Schaefer, she's.

Has this vision, she's worked in the financial wealth management space and CPA for a long time and she thinks about this very thing. And her solution, she wants to create an apprentice model. The whole idea of creating apprenticeships and we've talked about mentorships, apprenticeships, but in the world of.

Highly skilled blue collar. But we're talking about again the highly valuable jobs, the dirty jobs.

Right. Work with technology. They have a skill, but they can work with technology.

Yep. But this being an accelerator where someone, the first one is. Her current vision is to create gap year opportunities so kids in between, it gives them some opportunity to create some value, realize their value, get some real world experience and get, you know, the world project on them what it's like to show up before they could get cynicized or.

You know, whatever. By the.

That's the first time that that word's been used in my hearing. What's. What is synthesized?

Cynicized is when you become cynical by a system.

Right. Yeah.

And, and, and that's a good word.

I like that.

Okay, well you can use it as often as you want.

I haven't even trademarked synthesized or terrified.

Yeah. And I think, I think there's a big distinction there though is if you're cynicized, you think the system isn't going to work for you and there's no space or room for you and, and.

The whole system has to be torn down.

Right, right. Yep. Communism's good. You know, it'll be like, well, you, yeah, 19 year old, you know, whatever.

Owning nothing is the way of the future.

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Studying history is helpful, but I think inside of here, what do you think about that? Because her vision is.

Created a small army of apprentices and right now we, we focused on what I think is the best market which are going to be founder owners of the, you know, we'll call it the same check writers that Dan Sullivan loves Which are founders of companies.

We know historically, they're usually between 2 and 150 million in revenue because they don't have to go and ask permission to a board or an advisory group. They can say, yep, I love that idea. And the question to ask is, what if you could bring in.

Young, highly screened individuals who want to work, want to create value, love the idea of being able to spend a gap year.

Learning and you'd have the opportunity to build a relationship with someone, give them skills and then get first dibs on them, you know, either right before or when they get out of college and get them back. Maybe you could bring them back each of the summers as well.

Well, I just want to tell you.

Google and several of the other high tech firms no longer requires a college degree to work.

That's right, their own certificate, they have.

Their own apprenticeship program. So my feeling is that this is already happening, but not with any system. But it's hundreds of corporations who are just.

Cooperating with local high schools or cooperating with local community colleges just to create a local apprenticeship program for all. And the trade industries themselves, the carpenters, the plumbers, the electricians. The only problem is the ones who are most against this are actually the unions. Okay. And so this is mostly happening in the right to work states that don't, you know, you don't have to bond to a union to make a living with a trade. And so I think that the unions who are smart will enter into a compact with the corporations and the schools and the unions that are not smart, they're part of the old world and they'll just lose clout. They'll lose clout, they'll lose members. And. Yeah, and that's all unions. I think unions.

Are doing it. But the big thing is that you can now kids who have an aspiration when they're young and they're good with their hands or they like solving problems, don't say, well, there's none of this matters because you're going to go to university and you're going to get a white collar. I don't think there. Have you worn a white collar for any reason? Work wise, have you worn a white collar for any reason in the last 30 years?

No. You know me, Dan, I'm fairly unemployable and I prefer to spend my time with those of us who are unemployable.

You know, I mean, this is my work uniform. You know, it's, it's a Uniqlo T shirt. And they're wonderful, they're Long sleeve and it's $26, you know, and they last forever and they're, you know, it's every great. So this is my take that the bottom line of. And he said this will really start showing up near the end of the 20s. He said this is going to be a tumultuous decade. He said, oh, all hell is going to break loose during this decade because all these structures that have been built up over the last 75 years thinking that it was just a Kumbaya world.

They'Re collapsing and people are being laid off. The energy prices are going to be the killer here. I mean the U.S. whatever you think you're paying for gas and it's going to go up probably because of the OPEC decision to actually reduce.

And the reason is that all the US but we're not allowed to develop new resources right now during the current political situation. But the US Fracking you can start back up if you've been closed down. Fracking, you can get back up in about three or four weeks.

So my sense is that all those who are living in this part of the world and they're optimistic, they have very good reason to because mighty forces are assembling.

But not everywhere. I mean if you want to stay part of the old game.

It'S not going to be good.

Yeah, well.

I like to joke about this, but I'm sure this isn't an always statement. But in my opinion it's a usually statement. So fundamentalist religions and unions have something in common because they basically prevent dumb apes from eating their own poop and they're, and they create tax bases for themselves. So you know.

Well, basically it's a, it's a non productive month. They're non productive monopolies.

Yeah, yeah.

They can stop things, but they can't, they can't start things.

Innovation's not their friend or.

Examining oneself. So usually they perpetrate bad behaviors and bad things for their own self preservation.

And I tell you who a lot of the skilled tradespeople are going to be.

They're probably second generation Mexicans who are, they're U.S. citizens and they mastered English. Okay. They've mastered English because the, the record is right now of all immigrant groups to the United States. Mexicans assimilate faster to US culture and they want to be Americans. They, they're, they're totally in favor of the American dream. Yeah.

And well, they don't have a victim mentality. I think that's, it's no one's fault. And I think a positive Moving future is part of the culture. It's one of the reasons I love being down there, frankly. It's. It's like, you know, the. The community that we've been building and growing. It was so interesting because I had a conversation with. She's actually an American who's lived down there now for over 20 years. So for all practical purposes, she considers herself a Mexican also. But the guy who's starting this business, I'll just mention it because it's actually. It's Chip Conley. And what they're doing right now is building a business. And as soon as parts of the business grow, they will break it off and basically allow the work people to start their own business. Because. So let's say it's the laundry side of things, or it could be the grocery prepping or.

The landscaping or whatever. The whole idea is they have their own teams right now, but as they create enough demand for this business within a business. So the vision of creating intrapreneurship. And I think anytime you meet a founder who sees the evolution of one of their own people and said, I will invest in your business, I want you to go do it. I think that's great mentorship at work and great vision because, you know, it's just a matter of time before they're gone anyway. Why not create a great partner? And I see. I see that from a cultural perspective, too, is I'm with you. You know, I live in San Diego. This is home of lots of Mexicans. And it's our best labor force with the best attitude. And the ones who hustle are the ones who succeed. And I completely agree, too, with the integration. You know, one thing that every. Every Mexican I know who speaks great English, they learned it by watching cartoons.

Yep.

You know, they consumed a lot of American media, so they're by nature Americanized. And their thinking and their behaviors. And I mean that in the best way, not in the worst way possible.

Well, America is not an ethnic culture. It's belief in certain ideas.

Yeah.

You know, so I mean, we're all immigrants, including the. The original. They were immigrants from Mongolia, you know.

Yeah.

And so, you know, and so the whole point is that I find, like, I've lived in Canada for 51 years, so, yeah, I've got. And Canada is also an immigrant country now. And, you know, and it was a British. More British than the US Was, but it's, you know, Toronto, where I live, is six point. It's about six and a half million. The gta, what's called the Greater Toronto area. And when I moved here in 1971, it was 2.2 million. Now it's almost three times. And 60% of the population was not born in Canada. So out of the 6.6 million, so 4 million of the people, and that would include Babs and me, we weren't born in Canada, but we live in here. So, you know, it's like 70 different languages are spoken in Toronto. There's, you know, and you hear it every day. You're out there and you know, and they come in all shapes and sizes and colors and everything else. But this was big opportunity. They came for a big opportunity. And I think the Mexicans have spotted this. And Mexico is the most perfectly geographically positioned country in the world that's not the United States. Because it's a younger population.

A lot of the lower cost labor can still be. Although they're fast ascending. Mexico is fast ascending. And actually the border problems right now are not Mexicans coming over, it's Central Americans. Honduras, Nicaragua. Yeah. El Salvador. That's there. You know, and the parents want their children in the United States. They, you know, you know, so. But American work, warp drive.

I.

That's my thesis. That's my thesis.

Well, I, I'll, I'll say I've been tearing through. I'm ashamed to say I didn't finish. I didn't know we were going to be talking about this book. But I'm not done with the End of the world is just be the beginning.

But I, I love the story. I love the premise. And when I look through everything that I've read so far, it just makes intuitive sense. You know, nothing about it seems misaligned, out of, out, out of line. And if there's one thing you know about American culture is our adaptability, our willingness to accept new tools and technology, by and large. And there isn't there, there are no problems we can't innovate our way out of.

Yeah.

And this we are entering if there ever was. Like, if you think what's the most important skill set and mindset that we need right now? It's adaptability and innovation and power as we know. And energy is something we can find technology solutions for. And we are.

Food production, population growth. I mean, the, the concern right now will be.

How quickly can we make sure our environment is clean. Because I think the one thing that I would pay pretty close attention to, toxins, soil, water, oceans. I live in the ocean. I've seen the changes. You know, whether it's, you know, whether my perspective Matters or not in the grand scheme of 10,000 or 100,000 years is a debate. Right?

Yeah.

But.

What we do know is that there's shifts going on and we're seeing more crud. I firmly believe that we'll have great technologies to solve these problems. We'll be able to implement and create financial incentives for entrepreneurs to create them, implement them, distribute them, just like solving educational challenges. So again, I look at this and say, wow, look at these amazing opportunities and how much prosperity we can create and how much abundance we can create because they exist. And the leg between finding and noticing the problem as a byproduct and fixing it, managing that nervousness.

Well, it has to be marketplace, Marketplace driven. There's got to be money to be made and fixing things, you know, and, you know, and I think that we've come to the end of, you know, that big, massive government bureaucracies have any feel. I think that they've lost enormous amount of credibility because of the way Covid was handled. And, you know, you don't shut down the economy because you're not protecting your old people. Yeah. I mean, if they had had a 60 and above age and they had devoted enormous resources to people 60 and above, we wouldn't have had to shut down the economy.

And. Yeah, and they'll never get away with. My feeling is at least where we live in the States and that they'll never get away with that again. And they're fighting to control, but they're losing.

Yeah, that's. It's.

Yeah. And. And you've got a highly sinicized next generation that can spot a lie. That's one thing I notice in, in Gen Z, and my son's part of it is, man, they ask questions and they don't just assume it's true. And they live in the world where a high percentage of the content they consume they know is distorted and yet, you know, it's what they grew up with. It's.

There's going to be a lot of opportunities for all sorts of use to amplify themselves. So.

Yes, totally.

Yeah.

Anyway, well, this has been another awesome, awesome conversation and looking forward to our next one. Dan.

Yeah, and what I like to do just in the various circles that you operate, just say, no, it's going to be America on warp drive. And just tell them.

Yeah. So do you think it should be America goes warp drive or America on warp drive?

I just call it American warp drive.

Okay.

The whole thing is, you know, that's boom, you know. Yeah. Okay.

Excited.

All right. Thanks a lot, Mike.

Another great episode. So, as usual, share this with anyone you think might benefit from it. And we love your feedback, so make sure you post that on itunes and the other platforms you'll find us on. Until then, check out our show notes for the links to the books and the other material we provided for you. See ya.

Okay, Mike.