[Music] hey YouTube Alex here and I'm here today in Benji Kitty Park in Bangkok Thailand and I wanted to come to you today with a video discussing the push factors as to why so many people are leaving Western
countries Point number one is high taxes and I know some people are already thinking oh high taxes well you want to live in a educated Society right the problem is the outcomes for the public education system are dismal
I went to Public Schools it was not a great experience I look at the dysfunction and the damaged people that came out of that system many of them are having real problems as an adult numerous students I went
to school with that have serious legal issues have serious relationship issues as far as education goes in the public school system even though it's paid for by tax dollar I never received any personal finance education I didn't learn
anything practical in my public school education you'll hear me say this a lot nobody really wants to fix the problems in the United States anymore people just want to make enough money so that the problems don't apply to
them hey I don't care if all these people are uneducated as long as I can live in a gated community and have things delivered to me I don't have to deal with all that I don't have to deal
with the slums which is a thing that's returning to all the Western democracies you see slums and all the Western democracies places that are rundown dilapidated High population density pollution trash we could go on and on about that
and in terms of high taxes you have that you need to pay your fair share crowd what this has resulted in is that high earners people who earn a lot from a job pay a lot of taxes and
people who own assets pay much less in terms of taxes people are frustrated because you have a lot of people that make money without working that also don't pay into this system and on the opposite end of that
you have a lot of people working and paying into the system but not really having a lot to show for it there are plenty of people that love the trappings of civilization but they don't want to participate in
Civilization on the other end of that you have people that don't want to pay taxes and you ask them well how do you plan to bring that into reality well I watch Fox News so you watch Fox News
and that's how you're going to avoid taxes what are you going to do to make up for the limited funds well I don't want to do anything I don't want to participate in society that's what it's come to
is that on one hand people who work a lot pay a lot of taxes and then there's a large population of people that just own everything and don't pay any taxes so you have people that are busting their
behinds that are struggling to get ahead because of things like layoffs designed to help those asset owners on the other hand you have the asset owners that are like you know this BMW is not enough I want a
roll and I say this cuz I have friends that are immigrants that's why I don't necessarily agree with the anti-immigrant sentiment it's like okay well a lot of those people come over to the US and work in high-paying
jobs and as a result pay a lot of taxes pay 40 50% of their income in taxes States like California for example without those people one all these Services would go and fulfilled right your immigrant doctors your immigrant
Engineers your immigrant lawyers all these positions would go unfilled nobody would pay for the upkeep of the country because the asset owners don't want to pay for that stuff they want to enjoy it they want you to have
a road so that you can deliver their luxury goods do I have a problem with high taxes I don't inherently I think that what would make a lot of people happier is if they felt like they got something
in return if I wanted to get my tax dollars back by the way this isn't financial advice I'd be buying locky Martin Ron northop Grumman these different publicly traded defense companies where a lot of our tax dollars get
funneled right into these companies through being able to sell defense equipment what would be a more fair and Equitable system is one in which the asset owners would contribute to the system that protects the value of their assets
and allows for them to earn so much of our hard-earned dollars that are spent on things that we need to survive but yeah all this talk about you just need to go major in this or that and go
get a good job if you want to be wealthy you're much better off starting a business now not everybody can start a business and that's why I think the system should be more Equitable more fair businesses are limited
by the population and in much of the world the population is declining so how that changes the economy I'm not sure but if your business relies on an ever increasing number of people I don't see how that's sustainable
in a world where very few people are having kids in summary if you want people to stop leaving the Western countries then what you would need to have is a situation where one the taxes are lowered or two
the taxes are done in a way that is for the benefit of society as opposed to the benefit of the elites and the asset owners as a side note this is a little bit dark but some people will
say oh no people are rushing into the West haven't you seen when people don't have children they're effectively opting out of the system they're essentially leaving when they're gone there is no lineage there is nobody there to replace
them there is no future for their line so even those people that say I'm going to stay here and make a bunch of money that don't have children are in effect leaving they're just leaving at a later date
the number two point here is High Cost of Living I've beaten this drum so many times but I'll beat it once again we see that in the western democracies many people are paying paying like 50% of their income
for substandard housing roommates are now replacing the studio apartment as a way to save money this shows no signs of slowing down because anytime the Western democracies want to boost the economy they just bring more people in because
the people are consumer worker Bots you're going to consume at least this much you're going to Output at least this much I don't care what you look like I don't care what your culture is just come on in
just come on in you're going to boost the economy you're going to make sure that we have the things that we want that I can go and I can have my cheap fruit because I don't want to pay
a high price for these things so we'll just interchange you and use you such that we can still have this high standard of living without helping out the people who have no choice I often talk about this people
say well we need to help these other people and I'm like what about the people who have no choice you've got a lot of people who don't have a choice of living in the United States they are only
US citizens they don't have the money to go overseas they don't have the resources to get out of there for better or worse they're stuck there now this video is not to rail against immigrants obviously look at my
skin color I'm the children of immigrants and grandchildren of immigrants but at the same time you have to wonder is this system sustainable I think it is not sustainable to treat people this way the Western democracies no longer
care about their people they no longer value their people they look at their people as interchangeable you will see the high costs of living continue to go up in our lifetimes because these policies that contribute to the High
Cost of Living are not going away they benefit the asset owners people who own real estate who own all this stuff all these policies benefit those people the High Cost of Living has eliminated the middle class you have
people that can't afford to go to work and stay at home and you have people that are wealthy and can afford to do whatever they want and not much in between and so people will say oh well how
do you know the prices will keep going up all the data about our society is available for purchase so if you're in business you are a large company you can calculate exactly how much you can charge for everything
and you'll charge the maximum we see this with hotel prices we see this with food prices everybody that's in business at a large scale is tasked with delivering maximum share holder value their job is to make as much
money as possible so they use this information to extract as much wealth as they can from society that's why you have a bottle of Coca-Cola what's essentially a bottle of sugar water costing like $250 because they know hey
there's a section of our population that the only thing they have to look forward to every week is Friday night where they go to the adult beverage store and they get their Coca-Cola and they get their adult beverage
and they mix together and that's all the joy they have to look forward to in the week and so we can charge them more and more for that because they're not going to ever have the money to go
on International vacation they're not going to have the money to get a great education where they could get some kind of corporate job which is soul sucking but at least they've got some extra money to enjoy that's an
example where you see that things are priced to the maximum of what people are willing to pay once again I'm not saying everybody should be drinking Coca-Cola I think Coca-Cola is not good for your health but I think
it's an example where you see that something that doesn't really create a lot of value for society that doesn't really help people self-actualize or make their lives better that can command a significant amount of their purchasing power because
they're not doing it just once I mean I've lived with people who have an adult beverage problem it's not just a one-time thing this is a thing they're doing all the time this might be the only thing they
have to look forward in a normal work week will the high prices come down no because corporations have to deliver year-over-year growth and profit they will keep charging higher and higher prices because as long as some people are
capable of paying or willing to pay then you can just keep charging more and okay just don't pay sounds great let's just not pay try not paying for housing try not paying your property taxes try not paying your
car payment try not paying for your parking try not paying for your food try not paying for your insurance payment oh just don't pay well not paying means that your life will just start falling apart we can't all
just not pay I mean we can't all just live intent cities and eat bugs the only way I was able to save enough money to come to Thailand was that I lucked out and got a decent corporate job
in California I lived in a cockroach infested apartment basically spent as little money as I could didn't go out didn't have a social life didn't leave my apartment unless it was to go to the office and I did
that for a year and was able to save up some money to come over here but most people are not willing to do that most people do not want to live in a building with pest problems it did
have rent control which was nice ultimately I got laid off from that job as the interest rates Rose the company needed to move toward profitability this meant getting rid of a lot of people I was included in those
layoffs and not having significant experience only a couple years experience I struggled to find another role I think it was like 12 hours of getting laid off I booked a one-way flight here to Thailand and I've been here
for the last year it was a great decision I spent about a third of what I spent in the United States living here I live a much happier life it's a lot more pleasant place to live and I
dread the day that I have to go back to America number three is the declining standard of living now I know some people would tie this in with Point number two which was the ever increasing cost of living
by declining standard of living I look at things like homeless encampments in all the major cities the Border crisis where we have these human rights violations happening with people who are being taken advantage of and mistreated many of
whom are women and children who are defenseless and it's absolutely disgusting that any of this would happen in the western world but here we are going back to the homeless encampments a lot of people blame the homeless for
their own circumstances I would point out to those people that there are plenty of policies that make housing hard to come by we talked a bit about the mass immigration policies that are halfhazard but we also would need
to talk about the nimbyism right there are a lot of policies in the western world that prevent the construction of new housing this is to increase the value of property increase the value of assets make them in artificially
short supply I posed the question is housing such a conundrum that the Western World responsible for many technological and medical Innovations of the last half century incapable of solving this problem is housing that complicated that we can go
to developing countries that have much more affordable and plentiful housing and yet in the western world it's just this mesmerizing problem that nobody can solve now I do think that the homeless population is used as sort of a
stick in the carrot and the stick scenario to show people hey if you don't work if you don't grind it out for the system this is going to be you you see this guy over here that lives in
a tent and uses public bathrooms to shower and shave that could be you so you better be careful finally at one time the homeless encampments were limited to San Francisco Los angelist people said oh just avoid the major
cities it won't be an issue for you but nowadays many of the small to mediumsized cities also have a homeless problem when my grandfather worked for the local police department in my hometown their policy was to buy the
homeless people a oneway bus ticket to Florida they just dumped the problem on somebody else but now the problem is so widespread that while the nice areas don't have them every single city has a section of homeless encampments
even in the mediumsized city that I moved to in my mid-20s just for a couple of years to go back to college even that City now has homeless encampments the conservative people there get mad oh why is this
liberal mayor helping these people out it's like dude these people are diamond dozen there's so many homeless people they can't ignore the population anymore because you can't just send these people to recycling plants and turn them into productive
members of society Point number four rapid change resulting in a lack of community some of this has been spurred by technology some of this is also just societal changes most of the workingclass people in my hometown have left
they can no longer afford to live there they've had to go seek places that either have a higher salary which is what I did I moved to the San Francisco Bay area and you have other people who have
to go seek out a lower cost of living because they can't afford their rent anymore because of this worker consumer bot phenomenon you have people who no longer have attachment to one place for me I have very little
attachment to my hometown beyond my friends there aside from my friends I have no interest in ever living there again and if it weren't for my friends that live there I would never go back to my hometown have
a lot of painful and unpleasant memories there that I don't want to repeat but not only that I would have nowhere to live so if I were to go back to my hometown I would find myself homeless pretty
quickly and when I went to other people adults and my Social Circles and I mention hey I found a job in California I'm going to move out there how could you live out there you can't stay here how
could you go out there it's so expensive so wait a second I should stay here and be homeless or I should go out there where I have a job that's going to actually pay my bills and so you
have all these people that give terrible advice that because they come from a wealthy family that has assets that allow for them a very comfortable standard of living without working they don't understand why you would want to go
contribute to some other economy contribute where you're actually going to be rewarded for your work no they want you to sit around and be poor and miserable so that they have somebody to feel better than look at this
chump he works for $15 an hour meanwhile I have 100K a year in rental income what a loser oh no loser don't go don't go over there and make all that money I want you to stay here I
want my pizza and so you've got this issue in Middle America where nobody wants to address the change so they get dragged by it Kicking and Screaming I personally have lived in 4 different locations United States and cycle
between them as necessary when I found a high-paying job in California I moved out there when I lost that job I went back to Tennessee for a few weeks before I came to Thailand because I'm in my Prime
earning years I am applying to jobs back in California because there is such great opportunity there and that's the most likely shot I have at making enough money to eventually permanently leave the United States finally when I did
visit my hometown recently I asked my buddy hey do people people still hang out is there still a Social Circle here and he explained to me that when he goes out he never sees anybody he knows that people
basically stick to themselves a few people who are still there typically have inherited or are going to inherit housing from their parents if you're not in that position then there's not much reason to stay the final point in
this heavy topic is five the reason that so many of us are getting pushed away or feel pushed away is that we don't have hope for the future I do recommend if you are struggling with your well-being please
contact the appropriate resources this video while I understand it's a bit ranty it's a bit negative that I need to get these thoughts out of my head now the first point that I'll make in regards to the lack
of Hope is the decline in having kids I think that a lot of people are not having kids because they are uncertain about the future of the economy they don't feel that they can provide a good standard of
living for themselves let alone extra people in the form of dependence another would be the growing homeless population people that have essentially given up on moving forward in their lives you've got a lot of people who had their
own struggles gr up and they're thinking well if I had those issues and what was supposed to be a much more prosperous time what would it look like to try to replicate that lifestyle today while I have some
sense of empathy for the childree movement you could even say I'm part of it the child free movement wasn't a thing 100 years ago why was it not a thing well people actually got a benefit from having kids
a lot of people lived on farms and each extra kid was an extra pair of hands helping out on the farm now we all live in cities where rather than helping out kids are often regarded as expensive by
a lot of people I'll throw in another nval quote here and nval talks about how safe societies devalue young men until the wolves are at the door and I think that's what we're seeing now where we have all
these extra Young in the west 2third of young men in the west are single and Society is like look we don't know what to do with you we can't legally get rid of you but we can create these
policies that make it harder for you to have the positive emotion needed to move forward in your life I think what we're starting to see now is all of these young men who don't foresee themselves being able to
start families check out of the system you see this with the passport bro movement you see this with digital Nomads you see this with expats you see this with all these these different communities that a result of all
these problems in the west what would it take for people to have hope again you'd probably need to see something like the plague that affected Europe in the I think it was the 13th century where you had substantial
population decline people could demand higher wages hey look you don't have that many of us so if you want us to help you out you're going to need to pay up that actually corrected things for a while and
of course 700 years later or so seems like we're running into the same issues where people are being taken for granted by the powers of be people are really feeling like there's a boot on their neck post 60s
you had a lot of people opting to live on the fringes of society opting to not get married to not have children now you have people totally opting out of society you have people that are moving to the
developing World southeast Asia to Latin America some parts of Eastern Europe and you never would have heard of that happening 30 years ago 30 years ago if you told somebody I'm going to move to Colombia they would have
looked at you like you were insane why would you move to Colombia when it's got all these problems going on all these crime issues the social unrest and now we see a lot of these issues in terms of
social unrest coming to Western democracies if you've worked in the medical industry lately you can see that Western Society has moved away from prioritizing support for births and people having kids toward end of life care and taking care
of senior citizens this is not too different from Japan I think Japan is ahead of the curve and the Western democracies are following Japan in its footsteps what are the consequences of this lack of Hope well I see
a future in the western democracies that is much less plentiful much less resource wealthy you're going to have a lot of older people who are not capable of doing hard labor manufacturing or construction or the trades things will
just start to disappear things that used to be considered normal will become luxuries things like having a toilet that Works having roads that are wellmaintained all these things that require maintenance and upkeep will falter when you don't have
people to do the work this is another area where immigration is not a solution because we see the birth rate of immigrants drops after like one generation people become more secular and realize what purpose do I have in
procreating when I don't have a religious compulsion or a cultural compulsion to do so they look around and they're like oh wow all these people that don't have children they have so much more disposable income they can sleep
in on the weekends they can take some free time to call up some old friends or go engaged in an activity or a hobby so this disincentivizes people from having kids which reduces the resources available for parents you
don't have economies of scale it's why Child Care is so expensive it's why diapers are so expensive the fewer people that need those things the smaller the market is and a higher premium can be charged for that contrast
this with video games which are cheaper than ever because more and more people find that it's an affordable hobby it's something they can do at home it's something that can be done for as little as an hour for
as long as 12 hours and it's accessible it's accessible to everybody it doesn't require a dramatic lifestyle change it's one of those things that's for everybody used to be kind of a nerdy thing now it's common place for
lots of different kinds of people to play games now how about me do I have hope yes I have hope I'll be able to make enough money in the United States to suck enough dollars out of the declining
system to take that take that money go somewhere else that I'd prefer to live and enjoy the rest of my life in a place that better aligns with my values and preferences is it a foolproof solution no it's
not but it's the best I've got I know this video has been heavy let me know what you think down in the comments do you agree with these points you disagree do you think I'm full of it it
helps to generate interesting dialogue or discussion when we talk about these things give us a thumbs up if you did like the content finally subscribe to the channel down below if you want to see more content like this
and we'll see you next time [Music]
