0:00

Peter Michael, what do you know about

0:02

a book called rich dad poor dad? So

0:04

I haven't read the book But I do know that the only difference

0:06

between a rich dad and a poor dad is that

0:09

one of them invested in GameStop

0:10

So, Rich Dad

0:13

Poor Dad is a book by

0:15

Robert Kiyosaki, which

0:18

was self-published in 1997

0:25

and

0:31

then published, published

0:32

in the year 2000. This

0:34

book is on numerous lists

0:37

as the best-selling Personal

0:39

finance book of all time. Oh, so

0:41

this is not ancient history I looked at

0:43

the personal finance bestsellers

0:46

on Amazon today of

0:48

The top ten four

0:51

of them are rich dad poor dad Wow paperback

0:53

hardback audiobook, whatever He has three

0:55

million subscribers on YouTube. Okay has

0:57

six million subscribers

0:58

on Facebook. That's that that's that rich

1:00

dad mentality I know

1:03

almost nothing about this book other than

1:05

it's like a sort of of

1:07

weirdly conservative

1:09

personal finance book, which is, that's

1:12

almost redundant because the, I

1:15

almost had the field of personal finance,

1:17

but that's not really what it is.

1:20

It's more of a convention center parking lot

1:22

where people are selling pizzas out

1:24

of the trunk of their car. They have to go

1:27

into sort of weird

1:29

bootstrap energy places very quickly

1:32

because actually good personal

1:34

finance advice is super

1:36

boring, right? Dude, yes. Make a

1:38

budget. Invest in mutual funds

1:40

and ETFs. Diversify.

1:43

You can't write a bestselling book based on

1:45

that. You need to bring a truly

1:48

dark, demonic energy into

1:50

it to get people going. Yeah. It's

1:52

very similar

1:53

to health advice, where it's like eat fruits

1:55

and vegetables, try to exercise every day.

1:58

It's like the actual retirement advice. you've

2:00

heard a million times. Try

2:02

to save some percentage of your money, put it in

2:04

early, get compound interest. The

2:07

books that actually make a

2:09

ton of valid points, never sell 30

2:12

million copies. No shit. Invest

2:14

in low cost mutual funds, the book.

2:16

That's zero airports. That's

2:19

the foundation of our podcast. So

2:21

I

2:21

want to get into the book as fast as possible, because

2:24

I feel like I really have to give you a portrait

2:26

of what it is like to spend 200 pages

2:28

with this man. The worst

2:30

thing that I can say about this book, and I mean this

2:33

in the most derogatory way possible, is

2:35

that it makes men are from Mars, women

2:37

are from Venus look good. There

2:40

was a period with Mars and Venus.

2:41

There's like a chapter or two where

2:43

I was like, maybe this isn't so bad. This book

2:45

was like a sentence or two. He

2:48

starts out with just like the basic premise

2:50

of the book. He says, I had two fathers,

2:53

a rich one and a poor one. One was highly

2:55

educated

2:55

and intelligent. He had a PhD

2:57

and completed four years of undergraduate work

2:59

in less than two years. The Other Father

3:02

never

3:02

finished the eighth grade. Both

3:04

men were successful in their careers, working hard

3:07

all their lives. Both earned substantial

3:09

incomes. Yet one struggled financially

3:11

all his life. The Other would become one of

3:14

the richest men in Hawaii. One died

3:16

leaving tens of millions of dollars to his family,

3:18

charities, and his church. The Other

3:20

left bills to be paid. This

3:23

was the part of the book where I thought he was like an ally

3:25

and he like literally had two dads.

3:28

He doesn't make it clear. I was

3:30

like, cool. This is kind of cool.

3:32

He's got, it's 1997. He's writing about his gay fathers. Poor

3:38

dad is Robert's actual birth father.

3:40

Rich dad is his neighbor's dad.

3:43

He says, my two dads had opposing attitudes

3:45

and thought. One dad thought that the rich

3:48

should pay more in taxes to take care of those

3:50

less fortunate.

3:51

The other said, taxes punish those

3:53

who produce and reward those who don't

3:55

produce. For one dad,

3:58

the idea of job protection for life and job

4:00

benefits seemed more important at times

4:02

than the job. He would often say, I've

4:04

worked hard for the government and I'm entitled

4:06

to these benefits. The other believed

4:09

in total financial self-reliance. He

4:11

spoke out against the entitlement mentality

4:13

and how it was creating weak and financially

4:16

needy people.

4:17

So already you're like, oh, we're not going to have to read between the lines

4:19

for the like, right makers and takers

4:21

shit. Okay. It's just straight up in the text.

4:24

I'm also immediately quite

4:26

convinced that these two people

4:29

are not meaningfully real.

4:31

He also throughout the book has

4:33

a huge amount of just open contempt

4:35

for his father, his real father. Shocker.

4:38

Who honestly seems like a really cool guy.

4:41

Just like a normal human being. Yeah,

4:43

he's a school teacher for basically the entire time

4:45

that Robert is growing up. Boo, poor

4:47

dad job.

4:48

Fuck this guy. And then

4:50

he eventually becomes the head of the Department

4:52

of Education for the state of Hawaii. Right.

4:55

He basically just like positions his father as just

4:58

a total chump

4:59

for working a full-time job his entire life.

5:02

Whereas this rich dad who he's very vague

5:04

on the details of is just like he's

5:06

independent like he's not a slave to his

5:09

wage and all this like weird philosophical stuff.

5:11

Like you know when you're growing up you kind of always think

5:13

that other people's parents are better. Yeah.

5:16

You know you're like well you can watch TV after 9 p.m.

5:18

or like whatever rule that you're parents gave

5:20

you that that your friends parents didn't

5:23

you you're just like wow this guy just carries

5:25

that forward into a best-selling book we're

5:27

we're like two pages into this book and

5:29

I'm gonna send you the paragraph that like turned me against

5:32

the book oh yeah hell yeah I

5:34

remember in school being told the story of Robin

5:36

Hood and his merry men my school teacher

5:39

thought it was a wonderful story of a romantic

5:41

hero a Kevin Costner type

5:43

who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor

5:46

my rich dad did not see Robin Hood as

5:48

a hero

5:48

he called Robin hood a crook. This

5:51

war between the haves and have-nots has been

5:53

going on for hundreds of years, it

5:57

is the take from the rich crowd versus

5:59

the rich.

6:00

Fuck this guy. Fuck

6:02

this guy. Hot take.

6:05

Robin Hood sucks. The early reveal

6:07

that Rich Dad is just his neighbor's dad is

6:09

the...

6:10

makes this all so good because

6:12

like, I don't know, you're just at your friend's house

6:15

and his dad is like, Robin

6:18

Hood is a piece of shit, alright?

6:20

Don't let anyone tell you that Robin Hood's a good

6:23

guy.

6:24

Also,

6:26

I got two editions of this book.

6:29

From the library, they had the original self-published

6:31

text. Then I also from Amazon

6:34

got the republished,

6:36

once a major publisher got involved, post-Oprah.

6:40

They updated the text. As you can imagine,

6:42

they cut from the later

6:44

text a real Kevin Costner type.

6:47

Why do you think he's a Kevin Costner type, Robert?

6:49

Is it because he was played by Kevin Costner

6:51

in the fucking movie? What

6:54

do you mean a Kevin Costner type? He's literally the movie

6:56

just came out, Robert. Right, a Kevin

6:58

Costner type. It's literally just his

7:00

neurons firing off basic

7:03

associations, right?

7:04

A paleobotanist, a real Laura

7:06

Dern type. Yeah, that's what we

7:08

associate with that, Robert. This is like

7:11

such a classic American

7:14

capitalist sort of thing where

7:17

poor people have the wrong mindset, right, then

7:19

you zoom out. You can look at a map

7:21

and see that poor people live here and

7:23

rich people live there. Are those

7:26

maps reflecting like geographic

7:28

mindset differences? That's

7:31

what you have to believe, to believe that this shit

7:33

is meaningful. Right, also Danish

7:35

people are just like on a grind set mentality,

7:38

has nothing to do with unemployment benefits or pensions.

7:41

And anyone who's ever met a Dane

7:43

knows that that's not true. All

7:46

that hookah has made them soft. So,

7:48

okay, now, once

7:51

we learn that Robin Hood is bad, We

7:53

then get to the

7:54

origin story, the mythos of

7:57

the rich dad throughout this book. Robert.

8:00

says that he's growing up in this middle-class household

8:02

where his dad is a humble school teacher,

8:05

and he's going to school with a bunch of the rich

8:07

kids. This is in Honolulu in the 1950s. He's

8:10

born in 1947. So he's

8:12

nine years old. He comes home, and

8:14

he tells his father that he

8:17

bumped into his friend Jimmy from

8:19

school, driving

8:20

a Cadillac. And he's like,

8:22

hey, Jimmy, where are you going? And Jimmy

8:24

told him, I'm going to the beach, but you

8:27

can't come because you're too poor.

8:28

Hell yeah. Get his ass, Jimmy. Yeah.

8:33

One of the first of many just

8:35

flagrantly fake anecdotes that we're going to get in

8:37

this book. He then goes

8:39

home and he asks his dad, dad, how can I be

8:42

rich? And his dad, of course, doesn't

8:44

know how to be rich because he's like a wage slave.

8:47

So he says, well, son, he begins slowly,

8:50

if you want to be rich, you have to learn to make

8:52

money. How do I make money? I

8:54

asked. Well, use your head, son, he

8:56

said, smiling, which really meant that's

8:59

all I'm going to tell you. Or I don't

9:01

know the answer, so don't embarrass me.

9:03

So then we get a long sequence where

9:07

Robert and his friend Mike go

9:09

around the neighborhood asking

9:11

for everybody's toothpaste

9:13

tubes. So they knock them to the door, hey,

9:15

do you have any used toothpaste tubes? And

9:18

they're gathering them up, and this is like a long sequence

9:20

of them going around. They go to grocery stores and

9:22

go through the dumpsters and get the used toothpaste

9:24

tubes. Okay. They go

9:26

in the backyard. These children are nine,

9:29

by the way. They go in the backyard, they

9:31

build a furnace, and they start

9:34

melting down the toothpaste tubes

9:36

because in the 1950s, toothpaste tubes

9:38

were made of lead. Okay. And

9:41

so when his poor dad

9:43

comes out into the backyard, he finds

9:46

his son and Mike melting down

9:49

the toothpaste tubes and pouring

9:51

them into

9:52

molds. And he says, I

9:54

put the steel pot down and smiled at

9:57

my dad. What are you boys doing? He asked

9:59

with a cautious. Watch, I

10:01

said. With a small hammer, I tapped

10:03

at the seal that divided the cube in half. Cautiously,

10:07

I pulled up the top half of the plaster mold

10:09

and a lead nickel fell out. Oh

10:11

my god, my dad said. You're casting

10:14

nickels out of lead. That's right,

10:16

Mike said. We're doing as you told us. We're

10:18

making money. What the fuck

10:20

is that, Anik? What? How is

10:22

that the story you make up? Like it's obviously

10:25

made up, but it's also so bizarre.

10:29

I know the basic dad joke I get

10:31

making money lol. Oh

10:34

got it gotta be illegal by the way to have

10:36

a mold for a Coin yeah 100%

10:38

wouldn't that nickel be half toothpaste?

10:40

I read this and I was like deep sigh I'm gonna have to

10:42

fucking look this up aren't I like what? So

10:45

it turns

10:45

out that it's true

10:48

that toothpaste tubes were made out of lead

10:50

before World War two And then in World

10:52

War two because factories needed lead for the war

10:55

effort Yeah, the toothpaste companies had to start

10:57

making it out of like different metals and

10:59

plastics and they started mixing it with other things. Eventually,

11:03

after the war, they started making them

11:05

out of lead again. All of this is roughly

11:08

true. However, this thing of

11:10

melting down lead toothpaste

11:12

tubes to get smelted metal

11:14

out of them, this is essentially a

11:17

urban legend. The kind of thing that your

11:19

grandpa would say, things were so scarce,

11:21

we had to melt down our

11:22

toothpaste tubes. I read various

11:24

academic articles about this. First

11:26

of all, by the 1950s, they put lead back

11:29

in the toothpaste tubes, but they were like 1% to 5% lead. Got

11:32

it. It was nowhere near enough lead to

11:35

actually get fucking lead out. And also, they

11:37

had toothpaste in them. Yeah. So

11:39

you'd have to be separating

11:40

the lead from the burnt toothpaste.

11:42

Go ahead and try to get toothpaste

11:45

all over the toothpaste out of your toothpaste.

11:48

Exactly. And you can't

11:50

separate them chemically

11:52

in this way. So clearly,

11:55

this is just like an urban legend that

11:57

he heard growing up and repeated

11:59

as as if it was true and nobody

12:01

throughout the publishing of this book or 42 million

12:04

copies ever bothered to Google

12:06

and be like, hey dude, you're just very obviously

12:09

making up this anecdote. Two nine-year-olds

12:11

smelting lead is guaranteed

12:14

to end in the death of at least one

12:16

nine-year-old.

12:18

Exactly. So then we

12:21

learn that Mike, he says

12:23

his dad understands money. They

12:25

sort of vaguely intimate that he owns a construction

12:28

company. He runs a chain of convenience

12:30

stores. He's just like

12:31

doing deals and like running stuff. And

12:34

so he agrees to talk to them

12:37

about money. It's like 9am

12:39

Saturday morning, like come over and I'll

12:41

like tell you about money. Mike and Robert

12:43

go over to the house. And when they get

12:45

there at 9, he's like on the phone,

12:48

like doing

12:49

deals or whatever. And he makes

12:51

them wait for an hour.

12:53

Finally, he like comes into the living

12:55

room. So we're going to run through a script

12:57

here. You're going to play rich dad.

13:00

Hell yeah. Because I feel like you have rich dad energy. Yeah,

13:02

absolutely. People say that about you. Mike says you

13:04

want to learn to make money. Is that correct, Robert?

13:07

I nodded my head quickly, but with a little intimidation.

13:10

Okay, here's my offer. I'll

13:11

teach you, but I won't do a classroom

13:13

style. You work for me, I'll teach

13:15

you. You don't work for me, I won't

13:17

teach you. I can teach you faster if

13:19

you work, and I'm wasting my time if you just want

13:21

to sit and listen like you do in school. That's

13:23

my offer. Take it or

13:25

leave it. May I ask a question first?

13:27

Go! Take it or leave it. I've

13:29

got too much work to do to waste my time. If you can't

13:31

make up your mind decisively, then you'll never learn

13:33

to make money anyway. Opportunities

13:35

come and go. Being able to know when to make quick decisions

13:38

is an important skill. You have an opportunity

13:40

that you ask for. School is beginning, or

13:42

it's over in 10 seconds. Take it. Good.

13:46

Mrs. Martin will be by in 10 minutes. After I'm through with her, you ride with

13:48

her to my super-ret and you can begin working. I'll pay

13:50

you 10 cents an hour and you will work for 3 hours

13:52

every Saturday. But I have a softball game today.

13:55

Mike's dad lowered his voice in a stern tone.

13:57

it or leave it. Peter.

14:01

Okay, fair enough. I think I

14:03

did do it with my voice. FYI. This

14:06

is my favorite stage direction.

14:07

He says, I'll take it.

14:09

I replied, choosing to work and learn

14:11

instead of playing softball. Oh,

14:14

thank you for that illustration. That's

14:16

what happened in the scene that we just read. Ah,

14:19

okay. I love the

14:21

way he's talking. Oh, you want to learn how to make

14:23

money? Well, I got a plan

14:26

for you. It's called work at my store

14:29

in exchange for wages. Wow,

14:31

rich dad, how do you do it?

14:33

He's doing this kind

14:35

of Glengarry Glen Ross vision

14:38

of what rich people are like and the kind

14:40

of person you have to be to be

14:43

wealthy where it's like this weird alpha

14:45

bullshit where it's like take it or leave it. Most

14:48

dads are just nicer than this and

14:50

just calmly walking you through. Also

14:52

I feel like if a nine-year-old was like, how do I

14:54

get rich? It's like, go play outside. Yeah,

14:57

exactly. I have a real life. So

14:58

Robert stresses that even

15:01

in 1956, $0.10 an hour is

15:03

a very paltry wage. That's a great

15:06

lesson. Here's how you get rich. Slave

15:08

wages to children at your

15:10

stores.

15:11

There is a section where his dad

15:14

is like, that's child labor. And he's like, my

15:16

dad just didn't get it. My dad's

15:18

such a fucking loser, he doesn't realize

15:20

you get rich off of child labor.

15:23

Okay,

15:25

so then Robert works for

15:28

a couple weeks, three hours every Saturday.

15:30

He does this for a while. He's not earning enough money.

15:33

And so he sort of storms into

15:36

rich dad's house to confront

15:38

him. And we have another

15:40

scene. This one starts with me. You

15:44

said you would teach me if I worked for you. Well,

15:46

I have worked for you. I've worked hard. I've

15:48

given up baseball games and you haven't taught me

15:50

anything. You're a crook like everyone in town

15:53

thinks you are. I'm glad you got angry about working for 10

15:55

cents an hour. If you had not gotten angry and had

15:57

gladly accepted it, I would have to tell you that that

15:59

I could.

16:00

teach you. You see, true learning

16:02

takes energy, passion, a

16:04

burning desire. When it comes to money,

16:06

most people want to play it safe and feel secure.

16:09

Passion does not direct them. Fear

16:11

does. So is that why they'll take a job with low

16:13

pay? Yes. Some people

16:15

say I exploit people because I don't pay as much as the

16:17

sugar plantation or the government. The sugar plantation.

16:20

I pay less than the sugar plantation. Great

16:22

sign. I say that people exploit themselves.

16:25

It's their fear, not mine. But

16:27

don't you feel you should pay them more? I

16:29

don't have to. And besides, more money

16:31

will not solve the problem. Just look at your

16:33

dad. He makes a lot of money, and

16:35

he still can't pay his bills. Most people, given

16:38

more money, only get into more debt. So

16:40

that's

16:40

why the 10 cents an hour. It's part

16:42

of the lesson. So do you still have the passion

16:44

to learn? Of course. Good.

16:47

Now get back to work. This time,

16:49

I will pay you nothing. What? You

16:51

heard me. You will work the same three hours

16:53

every Saturday. But this time you will

16:55

not be paid 10 cents per hour. That's not

16:57

fair. You've got to pay something. You said

17:00

you wanted to learn. If you don't learn this now, you'll

17:02

grow up to be like your dad, earning lots of money only

17:04

to be in debt up to his eyeballs, hoping

17:06

more money will solve the problem. Film. But...

17:10

Lessons. What the fuck is the lesson here? What the

17:12

fuck is going on? He just said that it was good

17:15

that he complained because most people exploit themselves.

17:18

And then he's like, I want you to work for less.

17:20

And the kid agrees. And he says that's good

17:22

too? He just told them not to do that. It's

17:25

like, wow, wisdom. Wow, you're going to be even shittier

17:27

to a child. Lesson number three,

17:29

you pay me and do

17:32

three hours of work every Saturday. What

17:35

the fuck is going on here? It's

17:37

also very funny to me that throughout the book,

17:39

he keeps presenting Rich Dad as this

17:42

like Gandalf figure who's full

17:44

of all this wisdom and he just comes off as such a

17:46

prick. Such a piece of shit. Like you talk like

17:48

this to a child? Talking

17:50

to a kid and being like look at your stupid

17:52

fucking dad. Yeah, look at your fucking chump of

17:55

a dad your dad makes money but he's

17:57

in debt which I know because I know your

17:59

father's

18:00

finances. Anyway,

18:02

now I'm enslaving his child. So

18:07

that's rich dad energy kid. You either have

18:09

it or you don't. So

18:10

I want to pause here. Like we're

18:12

sort of going to debunk this as we go along.

18:15

So one of the things that rich dad says

18:18

here, which is kind of a rich text, Robert

18:20

says, don't you feel you should pay them more?

18:23

And rich dad says, I don't have to. And besides,

18:26

more money will not solve the problem. This

18:28

is like actually fairly common messaging

18:31

among conservatives. Poor people think

18:33

that money will get them out of their problem, but all it does

18:36

is exacerbate the poverty if they

18:38

don't have the right mindset. Yeah. I mean, he says

18:40

most people, given more money,

18:43

only get into more debt. Later in the book, he says

18:45

more money will often not solve the problem.

18:48

In fact, it may actually accelerate

18:50

the problem. Money only worsens the

18:52

cash flow pattern running in your head. If

18:54

your pattern is to spend everything you get, most

18:56

likely an increase in cash will just result

18:59

in increase in spending. Thus

19:01

the saying, a fool and his money

19:03

is one big party. What? Just

19:05

not the saying. That's not the saying. What the

19:07

fuck is that saying?

19:10

What is that saying even me?

19:11

He clearly misheard a fool and his money

19:13

are soon parted. Which actually makes sense

19:16

in this context. Exactly. And

19:18

then my favorite thing about this is they didn't

19:20

update this for later editions of the book. It still

19:22

says a fool and his money is one big

19:25

party. A fool and his money is one big

19:27

party. Which doesn't make any fucking sense. The

19:29

same we all know and love. That makes it sound

19:31

like it rocks to be dumb with money.

19:38

Another thing that

19:40

I mean, because this book is thuddingly repetitive.

19:42

He basically just says the same thing in 50 different

19:44

ways. The only evidence

19:46

that he points to about this

19:48

is that a lot of lottery winners end

19:51

up bankrupt. They win the lottery or

19:53

they get this big relative dies and they

19:55

get this big financial windfall and then like

19:57

five years later they're

19:58

broke again right so It doesn't work.

20:01

Anyway, that's why I pay super low wages

20:03

to my convenience store workers. That's

20:05

why I don't pay children enough. Less than

20:07

my main competition, the sugar plantation.

20:13

So to the extent

20:15

that there are any fucking statistics in this book, this

20:17

appears to be a misreading

20:19

of a weird zombie statistic.

20:22

Have you heard this, that 70% of

20:24

lottery winners end up bankrupt? I don't know that

20:26

I've heard the 70% number, but I've heard some variation

20:29

on this lottery winners go bankrupt

20:31

at exceedingly high rates. You see it packaged different

20:33

ways, but this narrative is actually quite common.

20:36

This 70% statistic is typically traced

20:38

back to something called the National Endowment

20:40

for Financial Education. This

20:43

zombie statistic is so common that the actual,

20:45

this think tank had to put out a statement being

20:48

like, we've never said this and

20:50

it appears to originate with somebody who was on a

20:52

panel that we hosted. But it's

20:54

basically just some

20:55

random guy who said this thing that

20:58

is not true. I looked into this.

21:00

It's actually really interesting. This myth

21:02

reflects, I think, Americans'

21:05

deep ambivalence

21:06

about people who, quote unquote, don't work for their

21:08

money. If people are getting money unjustly,

21:10

it's much more comforting to be like, ah,

21:13

well, they end up really sad and poor. And

21:15

it reinforces this idea

21:17

that there are people who deserve

21:19

the money they earn and there are people

21:21

who don't. There's also a really interesting

21:23

journalistic

21:24

thing happening here where anecdotes

21:27

where somebody wins a million dollars and

21:29

they just are happy for the rest of their lives

21:31

and are fine, that's not really news. That

21:34

doesn't get into the paper. Whereas

21:36

every once in a while, you have these weird

21:38

outlier

21:38

cases where somebody wins

21:41

the lottery. Apparently, it actually happened once where

21:43

somebody won the lottery and had a heart attack when they heard

21:45

the news. That ends up in the paper.

21:48

a guy whose kids kill him

21:51

almost

21:51

immediately. That's the downside to

21:53

being a rich dad, by the way. These are outlier,

21:55

rare cases, and the reason they end up

21:57

in the newspaper is that they are rare. Right.

22:00

But the fact that these are the only stories

22:02

of lottery winners that end up in the newspaper

22:05

makes people think that, like, oh, well, most

22:07

lottery winners must have some sort of disaster

22:09

befall them. And it does make some sense

22:12

that, like, a lottery winner

22:14

would have a heightened risk

22:16

of, like, bankruptcy, for example, relative

22:19

to other people with the same amount of money because, like, they

22:21

probably don't have experience managing that much money. There's

22:23

actually a really interesting study of this where

22:25

they tracked lottery winners for five years. For

22:28

the first two years, obviously, they were much

22:30

less likely to declare bankruptcy,

22:32

but then in years three and four, they were much

22:34

more likely than the average to declare bankruptcy.

22:37

Some people end up blowing all of their

22:39

winnings really quickly. Then by years three and four,

22:41

maybe they own a boat ride or they bought a house that they

22:43

can't maintain. Then by year five,

22:45

it basically just goes back to the baseline. Average rates

22:49

of bankruptcy. Then bankruptcy

22:51

among lottery winners is really

22:53

rare. The overwhelming

22:55

finding from studies of lottery winners is that they're

22:58

just happier.

23:00

You look 10 years out and they're just like, yeah,

23:02

they're wealthier and happier. Only

23:06

around 3% of people retire,

23:08

quit their jobs and just do nothing for the rest

23:10

of their lives. Most people, two thirds of lottery

23:12

winners keep working the same job. And

23:14

this thing of people blow their winnings really

23:16

quickly or yeah, they give money to relatives

23:19

or they buy a two fancy car or something like that. It

23:22

seems people tend to blow some

23:24

portion of their winnings, but most people

23:26

are really prudent about it and just invest

23:29

in retirement.

23:30

He's playing on

23:32

this really widespread myth

23:34

that it's like getting more money won't help you,

23:37

but all of the data seems to be

23:39

that the solution

23:41

to poverty is just very straightforwardly

23:44

money. There's really not a grindset

23:47

angle to this. He's trying to make it more

23:49

complicated than it is. This is also very

23:52

funny as a justification for

23:54

paying your workers very little

23:56

money. Your child workers? They're child... Heh-heh-

24:00

They're just going to they're just going to fucking

24:02

get into debt or something. I'm actually

24:04

helping them. Like the fuck. I'm just

24:06

going to assume that if they're making not enough money,

24:09

they must have a bad mindset because if they had a good mindset,

24:11

they wouldn't be working for me. That

24:14

honestly seems to be it. It's like just a total

24:16

lack of respect for the common worker.

24:20

So

24:21

then we get a really

24:23

weird scene where it's it's

24:26

now like three months later. He's still working

24:28

at the convenience store as a slave a

24:30

child slave He's working there and

24:32

the rich dad shows up on like a random afternoon

24:35

and the rich dad is like, okay

24:37

I'm gonna start paying you again. How

24:40

how's 15 cents an hour and

24:42

he's like that sounds great What about 25 cents

24:44

an hour and he's like, uh even better

24:47

great. It's like what about a dollar an hour? What

24:50

about $25 an hour is the lesson don't don't

24:52

take the first offer? Uh, it's It's

24:54

significantly dumber than that, Peter. Okay.

24:57

Don't worry, this book is not going to take a turn into

24:59

actual useful advice. Okay,

25:03

and then that leads to another scene. How

25:08

did you feel when I tempted you with a pay raise?

25:11

Did you notice your desires rising? We nodded

25:13

our heads. Most people use fear and greed

25:15

against themselves. That's the start of ignorance.

25:18

Most people live their lives chasing paychecks,

25:20

pay raises, and job security because

25:23

of the emotions of desire and fear,

25:25

not really questioning where those emotion-driven

25:27

thoughts are leading them. So

25:29

what's the answer? What intensifies fear and desire is

25:32

ignorance.

25:33

That is why rich people with lots of money often have

25:35

more fear the richer they get. Money

25:37

is the carrot,

25:38

the illusion.

25:39

I've seen how money runs people's lives. Don't

25:42

let that happen to you. So

25:43

what does ignorance have to do with greed and

25:45

fear? Because it is ignorance about money that

25:47

causes so much greed and so much fear.

25:50

As we headed back to the store, Rich Dad explained

25:52

that the rich really did, quote,

25:54

make money. They did not

25:56

work for it. He went on to explain

25:58

that when Mike and I were c- casting five-cent pieces

26:01

out of lead,

26:02

thinking we were making money,

26:03

we were very close to thinking the way the rich

26:05

think. The problem was that

26:07

it was illegal for us to do it. It

26:11

was legal for the government and banks to do it, but

26:13

not us. He explained that there are legal ways

26:15

to make money and illegal ways. He

26:18

talked about the gold standard that America was on

26:21

and that each dollar bill was actually

26:23

a silver certificate. What concerned

26:25

him was the rumor that we would someday go off

26:27

the gold standard and our dollars would

26:29

no longer be silver certificates. When

26:32

that happens, boys, all hell is

26:34

going to break loose. The poor,

26:36

the middle class, and the ignorant

26:39

will have their lives ruined simply because

26:41

they will continue to believe that money is real and

26:43

that the company they work for, or the government,

26:46

will look after them. We really did not understand

26:48

what he was saying that day, but over the years,

26:51

it made more and more sense.

26:52

Oh my God.

26:55

So I feel like our

26:57

listeners might not understand

27:00

what is happening here. I know. But

27:02

there is a widespread

27:05

crank libertarian theory

27:08

that our departure in the 70s, was it?

27:12

Yeah, it was next time. From the gold standard was the beginning

27:15

of the decline of the

27:17

American economy because

27:19

when the dollar was pegged to gold,

27:21

it was pegged to something quote unquote real.

27:24

we are now in a place

27:26

where money is a fiction. You

27:28

could do a thousand podcasts diving

27:31

into this topic in and of itself. But

27:33

I think the only thing I will say about the validity

27:35

of that theory is that the value of gold

27:38

is also a fiction. It's all fake. Yes.

27:40

And so what this is, is this guy

27:42

in the 90s pretending that the rich

27:44

dad in the 50s was

27:47

doing the gold standard conspiracy

27:50

theorizing 20 years before

27:52

we were off the gold standard. He predicted

27:54

it all. And also that he would hear

27:56

this as a nine-year-old and remember it. Also,

27:59

what was the point? of being like, what

28:01

about a dollar? What about $25? Like,

28:04

what if I paid you more? What are you talking

28:06

about? Yes, I want the larger amount

28:08

of money. Why did you just make me work for three

28:11

months for no money at all? What

28:14

is going on? What is... There's

28:16

a big, there was a big section in the middle

28:18

that I cut where he's lecturing

28:19

them about greed, but

28:21

it's like, you're also going to lecture

28:24

me about greed in a book, scamming

28:27

me into get rich

28:29

quick schemes? Oh, you want more

28:31

money? I just gave you 15 cents

28:34

the last hour you worked and you want

28:36

another 15 cents this hour? Greed.

28:40

One of the main threads throughout this

28:42

book is this idea of like ignorance.

28:45

The reason why people are poor is because they

28:47

don't know anything about money.

28:49

I think one of the things that explains

28:52

the bizarre popularity of this

28:54

book is this overall narrative

28:56

that kids aren't learning about financial literacy

28:59

in schools. And it's kind of up to

29:02

these gurus to teach people about

29:04

money as they get older. You can argue that

29:06

schools should teach that. But the main reason

29:08

that schools should teach that is so people

29:11

like this don't become the ones who

29:13

are in charge of teaching it to our children. What's

29:16

really frustrating about this is that as soon as you

29:18

start googling around about financial

29:20

literacy,

29:20

you find out that financial

29:23

literacy programs in schools are nearly

29:26

universal. I mean, first of all, as a

29:28

general rule, whenever anybody says they

29:30

don't teach that in school, that's never being

29:32

said by somebody who knows what they teach in school and

29:34

what they teach in school varies widely

29:36

state to state. But

29:38

I found a report on this by

29:41

the Council for Economic Education

29:44

that found all 51 states, 50 states

29:46

plus DC, they all have requirements

29:50

for kids to learn financial

29:51

literacy. In 1998, when

29:53

he's writing this book, it was 39 states. The

29:55

idea that kids are not learning

29:58

personal finance in school is just the boss

30:00

this is like as close to a

30:02

universal lesson in american

30:05

schools as like the three branches of government

30:07

i think the reason people are always like

30:10

you need to be taught taxes and

30:12

shit like that people say that because you

30:14

hit like your

30:15

first tax and in your like

30:17

i don't know what the fuck in do right yeah oh yeah

30:19

but here's the thing you can't just

30:22

teach that to a sixteen year old and then

30:24

have it stick with them the next

30:26

several years right a lot of people are probably

30:29

learning this and then forgetting that they did

30:31

it is true that american adults

30:33

do not have super great

30:34

financial literacy it's not that bad

30:36

either it depends on how you measure it but i think we're kind of middle

30:38

of the pack compared to other rich countries like

30:41

that does not mean we're not learning it in school american

30:43

adults also do not know what mitochondria are

30:46

we all learned that in school right so

30:48

great for this episode i read a really

30:50

interesting book called pound foolish exposing

30:53

the dark side of the personal finance industry by

30:55

helene all and who talks

30:57

about this like drive for financial

30:59

literacy as basically like a forty

31:02

year propaganda campaign mostly

31:05

funded by credit card companies

31:07

bank and other financial institutions who have

31:09

a stake in this as proposing

31:12

as an explanation for america's

31:14

higher rates of poverty that people here

31:16

lack financial

31:17

literacy rate it's not our rights not

31:20

the fuckin twenty percent interest

31:22

rates the credit card companies are charging

31:24

it's the fact that poor people don't understand

31:27

how to manage their credit

31:29

hello all and in that book traces

31:31

all of his back basically to like the nineteen eighties

31:34

when the credit card companies other financial institutions

31:37

started pushing this idea and

31:39

actually started supplying financial

31:41

literacy curricula to schools

31:43

jews have some of it has you know

31:45

some of it has like basic stuff in there but like compound

31:47

interest in like don't fall behind like some of it is kind

31:49

of fine right but these

31:51

are companies that are basically pushing

31:53

the idea that like doing

31:55

spending on your credit card is totally fine in like student

31:57

debt is something that's really important normal ripley

32:00

Please, please step onto

32:03

the floor that is made of leaves

32:06

and sticks, please, right over there.

32:09

Exactly. This paragraph drove

32:10

me nuts. She's talking about the 1990s. She says, others

32:13

were jumping into the fray, including the National

32:15

Association of Securities Dealers, which

32:17

released a survey in 1997 demonstrating that 78% of

32:19

us could name at least one character in

32:25

a TV sitcom, but only 12% knew

32:28

the difference between a load and no

32:30

load

32:30

of mutual fund. Wow,

32:32

really? That says a lot about society.

32:34

People watch TV. But they don't know about whether

32:37

a mutual fund has a load or not.

32:39

When I dump a load in my mutual fund, it doesn't

32:41

follow me around for a week. Oh,

32:48

God. But also, 22% of

32:51

Americans can't even name one sitcom

32:53

character?

32:54

I know that seems low to me like

32:56

the the juxtaposition of the two numbers is just

32:58

so disingenuous But also like

33:01

yeah people watch TV and

33:03

don't know the technical details of retirement

33:06

funds, right? That's not like a some

33:08

sort of societal catastrophe That's

33:10

just like yeah people like things that are fun

33:12

And they don't like things that are technical and

33:14

horrible to think about I mean to

33:17

even imply that the average person

33:19

should have to understand like

33:22

every minute detail of different

33:24

types of fucking mutual funds yeah

33:27

is obscene and in fact sort

33:30

of signals that maybe something is wrong

33:32

with the financial system or broadly if

33:34

people need to understand

33:36

these sorts of minute details in order

33:39

to control their financial future what she points

33:41

out in this book is that the credit card companies as

33:43

they are entrenching this idea of like the

33:46

the importance of financial literacy they're also lobbying

33:48

against any effort to

33:51

make their own products simpler and easier

33:53

to understand. There was this initiative a couple years

33:55

ago where they were going to be forced to provide like

33:57

plain vanilla

33:58

products. I'm just like. Here's a normie

34:01

ass bank account and you must provide people

34:03

with super basic information in plain

34:06

words

34:07

what they are signing up for and what the risks

34:09

are and they push back against it successfully.

34:11

So, we don't have that. She also points out that this is

34:13

the beginning of this myth

34:15

of like, if you didn't drink so many

34:18

lattes, you'd be able to afford a house.

34:20

This is a big part of this propaganda push

34:23

that if you restricted your personal

34:25

spending, If you didn't eat out so much,

34:28

if you didn't take so many weekend trips, then you would

34:30

be

34:30

financially healthy. But

34:33

people in the 1970s spent significantly more

34:35

of their disposable income on personal stuff

34:38

like food, restaurants, all this quote

34:40

unquote frivolous spending was actually

34:42

higher in the 1970s. But people

34:45

had higher savings rates because housing,

34:47

healthcare, childcare, and education

34:49

had not exploded in

34:52

price. That's all because we left the gold

34:54

standard. Let

34:56

me go get my nickel mold, my illegal black

34:58

market nickel mold that I have.

35:00

But then what is also really

35:03

interesting about this financial literacy stuff is

35:05

that there's no evidence that having more

35:07

financial literacy makes you better

35:10

at spending or more financially well

35:12

off. Your financial fortune is

35:14

much more closely related to how

35:16

much money

35:17

you earn and stuff. It's

35:19

really not about knowledge. And then financial

35:22

literacy is also

35:23

associated with being more

35:25

susceptible to scams. I went to

35:28

Robert Kiyosaki's Facebook page, which is all

35:30

like crypto grifters and various

35:32

other like buy gold grifters.

35:34

And one of the most common messages is

35:36

like, you're a savvy investor. You're

35:39

above the crowd. You're not one of these sheep. They're

35:42

pumping you up as somebody who's smarter

35:44

than everybody else and isn't just going to follow the crowd

35:46

and put your money in a mutual fund.

35:48

This is key to the messaging. And

35:50

I don't like that's not really an argument that like no one should

35:52

understand retirement savings at all. It's

35:56

not clear that the

35:58

lack of financial lit- literacy

36:00

in school is a problem,

36:03

and it's also not clear that financial

36:05

literacy is like the solution to this stuff.

36:08

I love the idea that his friend's father took

36:10

him under his wing at like nine years old

36:13

because he could tell. He's like, this

36:15

kid is a real piece of shit. Just a real fucking

36:18

sociopath. This kid fucking sucks,

36:20

so I am going to mentor him.

36:23

Well,

36:23

do you want to talk about Rich Dad? Let's

36:25

talk about Rich Dad. We're like a third of the way into

36:27

the book. This is where he totally abandons

36:29

the chronological narrative.

36:32

The rest of the book is just like

36:33

grifty lists

36:35

and advice. It basically just becomes

36:38

like a long Facebook post. I

36:40

like that we never learned the

36:42

true lesson of the child slavery. He

36:45

was like, I'm working you for 10 cents an hour. The

36:47

kid's like, damn, that's almost nothing. He's like, that's

36:50

a good point. Now you're working for nothing. Then

36:52

he starts talking about the gold standard and that's it. There's

36:54

no lesson.

36:55

He does mention. He's like, the lessons

36:57

continued until we both went to college,

37:00

which Rich Dad did not pay for. Like,

37:03

aw, dude, you know, throw that in

37:05

there? Fuck this guy. Oh

37:08

my God, that's so good. It's

37:10

so good. So I want to take a little

37:13

detour and talk about what

37:15

we know about Rich Dad and what we know about

37:17

Robert Kiyosaki. After this book comes

37:19

out, the very obvious question is like, well,

37:22

who's this Rich Dad? And he

37:24

mentions various little clues.

37:27

He says he's one of the biggest landowners in

37:29

Hawaii. At one point, he refers

37:31

to a quote, billion dollar

37:34

empire. The

37:36

Honolulu advertiser looks around

37:38

and is like, well, you know, there's a finite number of

37:41

billionaires in Hawaii. They look around

37:43

and like they can't find anything.

37:46

And

37:47

over the years, Robert will

37:49

say that like Rich Dad is dead, but then

37:51

he'll also say that he's like still alive but he's

37:53

a recluse. Okay. In

37:55

the later editions of the book, they add a disclaimer

37:58

that says, although based on a true story,

38:01

certain events in this book have been fictionalized

38:03

for educational content and impact.

38:07

And in 2002, when he's pressed,

38:10

he says, why don't you treat Rich Dad

38:12

like Harry Potter?

38:13

Rich Dad is an idea. He's

38:16

a concept, an ethereal entity

38:19

that hates the fact that we left the gold standard.

38:21

We should also mention there's no

38:23

evidence that Robert Kiyosaki

38:26

had money before he wrote this book. The

38:28

girls have been Hawaii, as he says, he

38:30

goes to school to become a driver

38:33

boat captain and works for Standard

38:35

Oil. Grind set, grind set, grind

38:38

set. Yeah.

38:40

He ends up leaving to

38:42

become a helicopter pilot in Vietnam,

38:44

which sounds fake, but is actually true. People

38:47

have found his military record. The only

38:50

business that we know he had is in 1977, he starts a company

38:52

importing Velcro Wallets.

38:57

In the surfer craze, Velcro

39:00

wallets were cool,

39:02

I guess, or something like Endless Summer, Beach

39:04

Boys, whatever. Yeah, yeah. He

39:07

starts importing these wallets. He has

39:09

an extremely fake story, not

39:12

in this book, but in his previous book,

39:13

which I looked for more biographical

39:16

details in. He talks about

39:18

how he's walking the factory floor,

39:21

and he's like, the workers weren't having fun, and I

39:23

told them that they should be having fun at work

39:26

and a month later I came back and productivity

39:28

increased by 350 percent.

39:30

Like Robert,

39:33

you're just gilding the lily, dude. Like

39:35

no one... Say 10 percent,

39:37

man. It's still fake, but like

39:40

it's not as insultingly

39:40

fake. If I were on a factory floor

39:43

making Velcro wallets and

39:45

the boss was like, you guys aren't having fun,

39:48

I would just kill him on the spot.

39:49

But also there was no factory. This

39:51

is in his previous book, he pretends there was a factory,

39:54

but then in Rich Dad, Poor Dad, he admits that he's

39:56

just importing the wallets from South Korea. It

39:59

doesn't make any sense.

40:00

to manufacture wallets

40:02

in Hawaii at this time when they're

40:04

selling for like a buck or two, right? The

40:07

wallet one is like the only kind of specific

40:09

one that we know about, but it goes bankrupt.

40:11

It appears very quickly, like within a year.

40:13

And then there's this period where like in

40:15

various interviews and books, he sort of intimates

40:18

that like I was selling merchandise, I was

40:20

selling t-shirts, I was, he's

40:22

never really specific, but

40:23

it's very clear that none of these ideas

40:26

worked. I love this because he's getting,

40:28

he gets the various speeches

40:31

about like greed and fear.

40:34

Yeah. The implication is like you want to be like a different

40:36

kind of person so that you can get

40:38

rich. You're not one of the sheep. And then he's

40:41

racking his brain for three decades.

40:44

The only idea he can come up with is like,

40:46

all right, I'm going to buy cheap

40:49

merchandise and then I'm going to

40:51

sell it for a little bit more. But

40:54

he like can't get the shipping costs to work.

40:56

But then after 10 years

40:58

of various failed ventures, he

41:01

then pops back up on the grid in 1984,

41:04

basically delivering get rich

41:07

quick seminars. Mm-hmm.

41:09

Are you familiar with this business model where it's like there's a free

41:11

seminar? Yes. You hand out flyers

41:14

for a get rich seminar. A

41:16

guy who you are

41:18

told is rich, Yes. Stands

41:20

up and gives you a motivational speech

41:23

and then you subscribe

41:25

to some sort of service

41:29

to get the next level

41:31

of knowledge. I will teach you my system.

41:33

It's exactly the same business model as Trump

41:36

U where there's a free seminar, you

41:38

then pay 500 bucks for the weekend seminar.

41:41

There's a good expose of this that the

41:44

CBC ran in 2010 where they

41:46

went in Robert's seminars for the

41:48

CBC expose

41:49

and literally like 905, like

41:51

the first thing that they say on the $500 seminar

41:55

day is like, you didn't think you were going to learn everything

41:57

in three days,

41:57

did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As always.

42:00

the next step. Exactly. And so then they

42:02

get you into like the elite model,

42:04

whatever. So this makes me so

42:06

mad. They tell you you're going to be buying

42:08

real estate, right? And it's all this mindset stuff.

42:11

And so I need to know that you're serious.

42:13

So

42:13

I need you to call your credit card company

42:16

right now. Hell yeah. Get them to up your

42:18

limit. Hell yeah. You call your bank and you get them up

42:20

your limit and then it's all this mindset stuff

42:22

and blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, they're trying to sell you on

42:24

the next stage, Like the elite gold

42:26

plan, whatever. And then when you ask,

42:29

well, how much is the elite gold plan? They

42:32

say, well, how much did you increase your credit card limit

42:34

to? And there's

42:36

reviews and complaints and stuff on like better

42:38

business bureau

42:39

by people who spent like $40,000.

42:41

Jesus Christ. There's

42:44

this poor woman. I mean, it's just an internet

42:46

comment. I don't know if this is real, but there's

42:48

this poor woman who talks about like the years

42:50

long effort to get her money back that

42:53

she goes to like the municipal authorities and They're

42:55

like, oh, we don't really do white collar

42:56

crime. She goes to the state AG.

42:59

He's like, well, technically you signed up for it. She

43:01

tries her bank. That doesn't work. And she's like,

43:03

I spent eighteen thousand dollars and I

43:05

got nothing. Just a full on

43:07

scam. I guess technically there's like lessons

43:09

and you get like a mentor. Like they do provide something.

43:12

If you get to the top level, they teach

43:14

you that Zenu is. Can't

43:19

remember it exactly.

43:21

In the CBC expose,

43:23

they talk to somebody who falls for this.

43:26

They don't say where she's from, but she's an immigrant

43:28

in Canada. She seems to be

43:30

from somewhere in Eastern Europe. She's been

43:33

doing these low-level, poorly

43:35

paid service jobs for years. She's

43:37

in her 50s, and she starts looking

43:39

at her bank account. She's like, I don't have

43:41

anything saved for retirement.

43:44

She gets a flyer or whatever for this how

43:47

to invest in real estate seminar. And

43:50

she goes thinking like, hey, maybe

43:52

this is a solution.

43:53

And I don't think she ended

43:55

up getting scammed out of too much money. too much money luckily

43:57

I don't think she had enough honestly to to

44:00

get scammed out of too much. But it's like, these

44:03

are the people that they're going after

44:05

with this business model. It's people who have

44:07

a real need. And people

44:09

who believe you when you tell them,

44:12

hey, you can get rich nights and

44:14

weekends.

44:14

You can see something real. Investing

44:17

in real estate, that is something that normal people

44:20

do and get wealthy. If

44:23

you're a millennial and your parents are comfortable,

44:25

it's probably because they bought a house in 1985. Yeah,

44:29

no shit. So like this sounds real.

44:31

It sounds like a way that normal

44:33

people get rich because it kind of is. Yeah.

44:35

I also think this whole thing that

44:37

there's kind of there's something rich people know that

44:40

you don't. Yeah. I think that's also a very tempting

44:42

message because like, yeah, you look around America

44:44

at how unequal things are and you're like,

44:47

there must be some secret to this.

44:48

Yeah. I just like I struggle

44:51

to convey like how much contempt

44:54

I have for the people that do this. Oh, yeah. They're

44:56

disgusting. This is what really frustrates me about the

44:58

rise of this book into popular culture. So

45:01

this guy's a total nobody. The

45:03

only thing he's ever made money on is

45:06

these seminars. So this is a scammy

45:08

seminar as a book, right? It's a

45:10

natural extension.

45:11

This is basically how like Oprah

45:14

plucks him from obscurity. Without

45:16

Oprah, he's still a C-list

45:19

motivational speaker. She's doing the same thing

45:21

at scale, right? She's

45:24

selling bullshit to her audience

45:27

in the same exact way. Yeah, yeah,

45:29

yeah. Right? I, Oprah, am a billionaire

45:32

and how did I do it? Vibes.

45:35

Mindset. Right? That's

45:37

her pitch.

45:38

So, to get back to the book, we're

45:40

now on page roughly 80 of a 200

45:42

page book. We

45:45

finally get to something

45:47

resembling actionable advice. So

45:50

he starts by giving you some of

45:52

the worst fucking advice I've

45:55

ever seen. He

45:57

lists a bunch of like myths. like

45:59

these are These are common misconceptions

46:02

that a lot of Americans have, right? This

46:05

is the list of them. Your home

46:07

is an asset.

46:08

Get a bill consolidation loan

46:10

and get out of debt. Work harder. Save

46:13

money. When I get a raise, I'll

46:15

buy a bigger house. Mutual funds are

46:17

safe. Tickle me Elmo

46:20

dolls are out of stock, but I just happen

46:22

to have one in back and another customer has

46:24

not come by for it yet.

46:25

What?

46:26

What? Okay,

46:30

so let's put the Tickle Me Elmo one

46:32

aside for a moment. Every

46:35

other thing in there is

46:37

a solid piece of financial advice that he

46:39

is saying is in fact a misconception.

46:42

Save money. He's saying that save money is

46:44

bad advice. Your home is

46:46

not an asset. Your home is

46:49

what? What does he think it is? A liability,

46:51

Peter. He has a whole

46:52

tedious section about how you think your

46:55

home is an asset, but it's actually liability.

46:57

Because you have to pay interest on your mortgage? I

46:59

don't get it. He has this weird thing where

47:01

he says friends of his had

47:04

to pay $1,000 a month in property taxes

47:08

and it wiped out the value of their

47:10

house or something. I'm like, how

47:13

much is their fucking house worth?

47:15

He

47:18

talks about living in Phoenix in the

47:20

1990s and watching Good Morning America and

47:22

some like financial guru comes on and

47:25

he says his advice was to save

47:27

money. Put $100 away every month, he said. And

47:30

in 40 years you'll be a millionaire. Well,

47:32

putting money away every month is a sound

47:34

idea. It is one option.

47:37

The option most people subscribe to. The

47:39

problem is this. It blinds the

47:41

person from what is really going on.

47:43

They miss major opportunities for

47:45

much more significant growth of their money.

47:48

The world is passing them by. Oh God.

47:50

What is it blinds them from what's really

47:52

going on?

47:53

What the fuck does that mean? Let me show

47:55

you the secret knowledge of running scam

47:58

seminars

48:00

The cut like genuinely dangerous

48:02

in a sort of obvious way, but like

48:04

the best way to illustrate it I think is

48:07

imagine a society where everyone

48:09

follows this advice.

48:11

Society as we know it would collapse.

48:14

He also you knew he was going to get

48:16

to this place. There's

48:17

a section on like retirement savings where he

48:19

says like don't invest in mutual funds because like

48:21

they're all scammers and they're trying to like the fund

48:23

managers are trying to fuck you over. What? And

48:26

then he says, when I speak to adults who want to earn more money,

48:29

I suggest taking a long

48:30

view of their life. Instead

48:32

of simply working for the money and security, which

48:34

I admit are important, I suggest they take

48:36

a second job that will teach them a second skill.

48:39

Often, I recommend joining a network marketing

48:41

company, also known as

48:43

multilevel marketing.

48:45

It's like, okay, this is where I did a control F for timeshare.

48:48

I'm like, where is

48:50

he taking me next? What I would suggest is

48:53

actually being scammed. It's

48:56

not just running scammed, it's also being

48:58

scammed, the yin and the yang of being

49:00

a rich dad.

49:01

After he gives you all of this atrocious

49:03

advice, we finally get to the first piece

49:05

of actual financial advice in the

49:07

book. When you find subreddits

49:10

and stuff where people talk about this book, a lot

49:12

of people defend this book by

49:14

saying that this is an actual

49:16

genuine piece of

49:18

wisdom. His number

49:20

one rule for financial

49:23

security in your life is buy

49:25

assets, not liabilities. He

49:28

says rich people acquire assets. The

49:30

poor and middle class acquire liabilities,

49:32

but they think they're assets.

49:35

So then I'm not fucking kidding.

49:37

There's 40 pages go by before

49:39

he tells you what a fucking asset is. He

49:42

gives it to you in these vague

49:45

terms. It's like an asset puts money into your pocket,

49:47

but a liability takes it away.

49:49

There's all these fucking charts. And

49:51

you're like, right, what specifically

49:53

do you mean, Robert? It seems to me like there's

49:56

a very good shot that he doesn't actually have

49:58

a coherent definition of what an. asset is and what

50:00

a liability is. Do you want to get to it? It's

50:03

eight parts, Peter. Oh, finally. He finally

50:05

gives it to us. Ultimately, an asset

50:07

is something that earns passive income for you. He

50:10

finally gives us a list. He

50:12

says, one, businesses that

50:14

do not require my presence. Two,

50:17

stocks. Three, bonds.

50:20

Four, mutual funds. Five, income

50:23

generating real estate. Six,

50:25

notes,

50:26

parentheses, IOUs. Then

50:30

royalties from intellectual property

50:32

such as music, scripts, patents,

50:35

eight, this is the best one, and

50:37

anything else that has value, produces

50:39

income, or appreciates and has a

50:41

ready market. Yeah. Okay. Sure,

50:44

that's the catch all. So it's like stocks,

50:47

bonds, real estate, and

50:50

everything. Tickle me Elmos. Great.

50:53

Robert. He then literally goes

50:56

into a whole thing about tickle

50:58

me Elmos. I was going to

51:00

say, should we circle back to Tickle Me Elmo? So I'm glad

51:03

we got there. So he basically says that like,

51:05

you know, talks about like the run on Tickle Me Elmos

51:07

and you know, scalpers were selling these stupid toys

51:10

for like, I don't know, $10,000 or something. It

51:12

was like a big deal for one, whatever Christmas it was. Yeah.

51:15

You're again, just inviting people to get scammed, basically.

51:17

Right. He mentions baseball cards. Like,

51:20

I don't know if that's an investment, Robert. Well,

51:22

the baseball card market

51:24

notoriously collapsed in the 80s and

51:26

like through the 80s and 90s and is

51:29

now a tiny fraction of what it was.

51:31

Oh, I didn't know this. So great, great

51:34

hot tip. Don't buy houses, buy baseball

51:36

cards.

51:36

So his second money making tip is

51:39

avoid paying taxes. Hell

51:41

yeah, that's what I'm fucking talking about. It's

51:43

not really like a money

51:45

making strategy. It's more like

51:47

this is like advice to already rich people.

51:50

Right. Like there's no like hot tip on

51:52

how to avoid paying like

51:54

your W2 taxes. Yeah,

51:56

exactly. If you're an employee,

51:59

like... Your boss reports your

52:01

income and you report your income. Ha ha!

52:04

Mr. IRS, I actually don't

52:06

owe you any taxes because I was

52:08

working for free for my friend's dad.

52:11

Okay?

52:12

Yeah. So this one starts with

52:15

another little piece of dialogue. When

52:17

does your dad pay his bills? The first

52:19

of the month.

52:20

Does he have anything left over? Very little. That's

52:23

the main reason he struggles. He has bad

52:25

habits. Your dad pays everyone else

52:27

first. He pays himself last, but only

52:29

if he has anything left over. But he has to pay

52:32

his bills, doesn't he? You're saying he shouldn't pay

52:34

his bills? Of course not.

52:36

I firmly believe in paying my bills on time.

52:38

I just pay myself first, before I

52:40

pay even the government.

52:41

But what happens if you don't have enough money? The

52:43

same. I still pay myself first, even

52:46

if I'm short of money. My asset column

52:48

is far more important to me than the government. But

52:50

don't they come after you? Yes, if you don't

52:52

pay. Look, I did not

52:54

say not to pay. I just said

52:56

I pay myself first, even

52:59

if I'm short of money. What is he

53:01

saying? What the fuck is going on here? What

53:04

the fuck? He keeps doing this weird

53:06

thing where he's like, pay yourself first.

53:09

But he doesn't say what the fuck that means.

53:12

What that means is like you are from time

53:14

to time stiffing your employees

53:16

or the government. But then when

53:19

this child is like, is it this illegal?

53:21

He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I never said

53:23

I don't pay them. Wink, wink, wink, wink,

53:25

wink. I am going easy on him

53:27

and I'm cutting a lot of the stuff where

53:30

he talks about how much he fucking hates taxes. Huge

53:34

portions of this book. Shocker, shocker. And

53:36

he

53:36

just straight up lies. He says over

53:39

and over again, he's like, the more money you earn,

53:41

the more the government takes. But

53:43

we have marginal tax rates in the United States.

53:45

He also says that when his dad died, I

53:48

didn't even get any money because the government

53:50

took it all.

53:51

America has an estate tax that kicks in at $12 million.

53:56

Hawaii has an estate tax that kicks in at $6 million.

53:59

Right.

53:59

I thought his dad was broke as hell

54:01

and now he's complaining that the government took it all

54:04

of the actual advice in this is

54:06

It just sort of like scammy advice for rich

54:09

people so he says he's like set up a corporation For

54:11

like legal liability stuff and then you can write

54:13

off Your expenses

54:16

so he says by owning

54:18

your own corporation Vacations are

54:20

board meetings in Hawaii car payments

54:23

insurance repairs are company expenses

54:25

This is tax fraud. Health club membership is

54:27

a company expense. Tax fraud. Most

54:29

restaurant meals are partial expenses, but

54:31

do it legally with pre-tax dollars. Transparently

54:34

tax fraud. I love... This is like the third

54:37

time that he has described something that's patently

54:39

illegal and then just put it in a line at the end of it that's like,

54:41

but not in an illegal way. Right.

54:44

He also, he's got these little tips. One of

54:46

his little tips is, I always make offers

54:48

with escape clauses. In real estate,

54:50

I make an offer with the words, subject

54:53

to approval of business partner. Never

54:55

specify who the business partner is

54:57

most people don't know my

54:59

business partner is my cat also fraud

55:02

if they accept the offer And I don't want the

55:04

deal. I call my home and speak to

55:06

my cat This is just also fraud

55:08

and numerous like people who actually

55:10

like make money investing in real estate and like flipping

55:13

houses Have been like no

55:15

one would accept a weird clause

55:17

in a contract It's just like I need

55:20

approval from my partner, and I'm not gonna specify

55:22

who the partner is you know look I'm a lawyer.

55:25

I could write a book on how to try to sneak

55:28

weird deceptive language into contracts.

55:32

I wouldn't say it's a

55:34

way to get rich. I would say it's

55:37

a way to be an awful person.

55:38

His third piece

55:41

of advice is flipping real estate, which

55:43

is like invest in real estate. I'm not

55:45

really going to go into this. He has a whole probably

55:48

fucking fake story about He's

55:50

like jogging through a neighborhood in Oregon

55:53

and he sees a house for sale by

55:55

owner and the owner wants $65,000 for

55:58

it and he's like, I'll give you four And

56:01

the guy's like, I'm desperate to sell. I'm moving to

56:03

California. You can have it. He

56:05

sells the house for profit because Portland

56:08

is undergoing a housing boom. And

56:10

then he buys an apartment complex

56:13

in Phoenix that's owned by some

56:15

Germans, and they're not even there, and they were desperate

56:18

to sell. And they wanted $450,000, and I only paid $300,000.

56:21

Huge part of this book is

56:23

just finding desperate people and taking

56:25

advantage of them and then blaming them. Also

56:28

fundamentally, it's like, well, buy undervalued

56:30

real estate. Yeah. Yeah.

56:33

You should all be jogging all the time.

56:35

Sure. And just be on the lookout

56:37

for a house that's on sale

56:40

and just kind of vibe out the desperation

56:43

of the owner. Right. That's

56:45

business mindset. We're now going to watch a clip. Fuck yeah.

56:47

This is from the Oprah

56:49

episode. Okay.

56:51

Hey, during the commercial

56:53

break, you said what? Stand up, say it again. You

56:57

say that you can pay

56:59

yourself first. How am I going

57:01

to get somebody to loan me the money to buy a house when

57:04

I can't pay my bills and when I can't fully pay my

57:06

bills as I'm paying them now? One

57:08

thing that Paul said right there, he starts a home-based business.

57:10

The tax laws are written against, tax

57:13

laws are not equal. And if you

57:15

want, what I'm saying is you've got to get educated here. So

57:18

the tax laws are not equal. So if you're an employee

57:20

and you work harder and harder, the government's going to take

57:23

50% no matter what. So by being a business

57:25

owner, which is Paul did, he

57:28

has tax advantages that the middle

57:30

class and poor do not have. Just saving

57:33

money and investing is not enough. There is a complete

57:35

mindset that goes on. I think that's what these

57:38

people can. Paul

57:38

was saying, because we all have the mentality in this

57:40

country, you work harder, you work harder,

57:43

they will pay off in the end. It does not, because

57:45

the government always gets theirs. Right,

57:47

and then real estate is the least taxed

57:50

income you can get. So when

57:52

my wife and I were struggling, We saved $6,000, we

57:54

bought that house. Thing

57:56

went from 46,000 to 105. Thank

57:59

you. fifty thousand dollars.

58:01

But I think when people think of real estate they think about the

58:03

house that they would want to live in. So you start out buying

58:05

something that you wouldn't necessarily want

58:07

and you use that to build

58:08

more income. That's what she did. She bought seven. That's

58:11

my idea. I want to buy a three-flat,

58:13

live in the basement, ran off the two top two apartments

58:15

and haven't paid my mortgage for me. I

58:18

still need to come up with the original capital to buy the place.

58:20

That starts with a paying yourself first. Hey,

58:24

Oprah.

58:26

Cut. This

58:30

interaction is like one

58:32

of the bleakest things I've ever seen. Yes.

58:34

Oprah, who's at this point probably

58:36

a billionaire. I don't know what her status has been.

58:39

But she talks earlier in the interview. She's like, well,

58:41

not having enough money used to be my problem. But now my problem

58:43

is too much money. Kiyosaki is just like a

58:45

straight up grifter. And then this poor guy

58:47

who asked this super basic

58:50

question. How do I come

58:52

up with the money to buy a house?

58:54

And then Robert's like, right, that's

58:56

why you pay yourself first. And

59:00

they all just move on. It was very clear that they then

59:02

flash the applause sign and the entire

59:05

audience erupts into applause. Also,

59:10

this poor salesman who's like

59:13

asking the questions is like in a full

59:15

suit. You could tell he was like, I'm going to put

59:17

on my finest business wear to

59:20

impress the rich dad Poor dad guy.

59:22

Yeah,

59:22

this guy took a day off to

59:24

go to a taping of Oprah Oh God,

59:26

he clearly has the mindset

59:29

but Robert confronted with somebody who clearly

59:31

has it has Nothing to

59:34

offer all of personal finance

59:37

self-help grifting Eventually

59:39

just becomes buy real estate

59:42

and flip it. Yeah, because like yeah, you

59:44

know historically It's a relatively

59:46

safe way to make money if you

59:48

have money already already. You

59:51

never get the step

59:54

of how do I get enough money to

59:56

buy like a fucking apartment

59:58

complex or whatever. they're

1:00:00

doing, right? It's so

1:00:02

fucking frustrating and telling

1:00:04

because a lot of what these guys are

1:00:06

doing is being like, if you get your mindset

1:00:09

right, you can achieve anything. Get

1:00:12

your mind right. And yet the quote

1:00:14

unquote anything that they all achieve

1:00:16

is just buying an apartment complex, renting

1:00:19

it out for a few years and flipping

1:00:20

it. Buy a house in a city that's about to experience

1:00:22

a housing boom. Wow. Thanks,

1:00:25

man. Cool. So,

1:00:28

his last piece of financial

1:00:30

advice is to buy stocks.

1:00:33

Very innovative stuff. I'm going to send

1:00:35

you some text. Poor

1:00:38

people have poor habits. A common

1:00:40

bad habit is innocently called dipping

1:00:43

into savings. The rich know that savings

1:00:45

are only used to create more money, not

1:00:48

to pay bills. I know that sounds

1:00:50

tough, but as I said, if you're

1:00:52

not tough inside,

1:00:53

the world will always push you around anyway.

1:00:56

Focus on keeping liabilities and expenses

1:00:59

down.

1:00:59

This will make more money available to

1:01:01

continue pouring into the asset

1:01:04

column. Soon, the

1:01:06

asset base will be so deep that you can afford

1:01:08

to look at more speculative

1:01:10

investments. Investments that may have returns of 100% to infinity. Investments

1:01:17

that the middle class calls too risky.

1:01:20

The investment is not risky. It's the lack

1:01:22

of simple financial intelligence beginning

1:01:24

with financial literacy that causes the

1:01:26

individual to be too risky.

1:01:28

You're too risky, Peter, because of your low financial literacy.

1:01:31

He was a person. What going on

1:01:33

here? He specifically said that

1:01:35

having savings was bad advice. And

1:01:38

now dipping into savings is bad?

1:01:40

I think between the lines, he

1:01:42

thinks every dollar you earn, you

1:01:45

should pour into quote unquote

1:01:47

assets. I'm not

1:01:49

a math genius, but investment

1:01:51

returns of infinity, if I'm

1:01:54

doing the math correctly, are not

1:01:56

possible.

1:01:57

He follows this with a fucking prob-

1:02:00

fake anecdote about how he notices

1:02:02

that gas prices are going up. So

1:02:04

he invests in a company right before

1:02:07

it strikes oil, and then he

1:02:09

gets like 5,000% return or some shit.

1:02:12

What the fuck? Right, invest

1:02:14

in a company right before its value

1:02:17

goes up. That's very good advice,

1:02:19

Robert. I agree. This is literally an episode

1:02:22

of Always Sunny in Philadelphia where they buy

1:02:24

gasoline and then try to resell it.

1:02:27

But then, okay, this is the part

1:02:29

of the book that like totally changed

1:02:32

how I saw the rest of the book.

1:02:34

So he has a section

1:02:36

where he talks about his stockbroker. He

1:02:39

says, the really hot deals are

1:02:41

not offered to people who are novices.

1:02:44

The best deals that make the rich even richer

1:02:46

are reserved for those who understand

1:02:49

the game. I don't think that sounds like stockbroking

1:02:51

works. And he says, frequently,

1:02:54

my broker will call me

1:02:55

and recommend I move a sizable

1:02:58

amount of money into the stock of a company

1:03:00

that he feels is just about to make a

1:03:02

move that will add value, like announcing

1:03:04

a new product. Again, dancing

1:03:07

around the edges of outright saying

1:03:09

it here, but it does appear that

1:03:11

he is now advocating for insider trading.

1:03:13

This was my thought too. I was like, I don't think

1:03:15

that's like real advice.

1:03:18

And so I put out a call on Twitter. I

1:03:20

was like, do I have any followers who are like stock

1:03:23

brokers or do securities law?

1:03:25

Yeah. Three different people got in

1:03:27

touch with me. I sent them all

1:03:30

this entire kind of section paragraph.

1:03:33

All three of them said, it's something that could be

1:03:35

insider trading potentially, but insider

1:03:37

trading

1:03:37

is extremely hard to prove. People

1:03:39

who have like, I have a hunch about this stock. That

1:03:42

doesn't mean that you have any private information necessarily.

1:03:46

It's hard to say if this is really insider

1:03:48

trading. I once did securities law.

1:03:50

Did you? As a baby lawyer. Yeah.

1:03:53

You haven't given me any stock tips? If you want to lose as much money as I have in

1:03:55

the last four years, then you let me know.

1:03:58

You basically have one of

1:04:00

two situations happening. One,

1:04:02

your investment advisor is

1:04:05

doing some

1:04:06

basic analysis that anyone

1:04:09

can do, any information that he has,

1:04:11

the market would also have. Two,

1:04:14

he has information that the market does not

1:04:16

have. That would be material, non-public

1:04:19

information, and him telling

1:04:21

you to trade based on it is illegal. The

1:04:23

other scenario that the stockbroker

1:04:26

securities law people told me

1:04:28

is that either your stockbroker

1:04:30

is some weird dude who just

1:04:32

thinks that he's smarter than the market, in which case

1:04:35

you should probably get a different stockbroker,

1:04:37

or he thinks that you're a huge fucking mark.

1:04:40

He's fucking Jordan Belforting you. Yes.

1:04:43

You're like, ooh, I have a cool smart investment

1:04:45

advisor.

1:04:46

At one point, Robert says, I invest

1:04:49

in companies whose products are about

1:04:52

to get FDA approval. I

1:04:54

get the stocks cheap and they explode

1:04:56

and it's like that is the scam from

1:04:58

the movie Boiler Room Reason

1:05:02

this like made everything click

1:05:04

into my brain Was

1:05:06

one thing that he comes back to

1:05:08

a lot in this book is

1:05:11

like he tells you to get educated Right

1:05:13

fine financial literacy is like his big thing but

1:05:16

what he describes as learning

1:05:19

is like reading other get rich

1:05:21

quickbooks and and attending

1:05:23

seminars. So he says, what

1:05:26

do I do? I go to seminars. I

1:05:28

like it when they're at least two days long because I

1:05:30

like to immerse myself in a subject.

1:05:32

In 1973, I was watching TV and

1:05:35

this guy came on advertising a three-day

1:05:37

seminar on how to buy real estate for nothing

1:05:39

down. I spent $385 and

1:05:41

that course has made me at least $2 million,

1:05:43

if not more. I don't have to work

1:05:45

for the rest of my life because of that one course.

1:05:48

I go to at least two such courses every

1:05:50

year. So this is

1:05:53

a guy who basically

1:05:55

didn't do well in school and

1:05:57

had a huge amount of resentment

1:06:00

the fact that teachers were telling him to do

1:06:02

better. He had to repeat a grade. It

1:06:04

seems like his dad was pretty disappointed in

1:06:06

him. His previous book is called,

1:06:09

If You Want to Be Rich,

1:06:10

Don't Go to School, which

1:06:12

is originally published with a question mark. If

1:06:15

you want to be rich, don't go to school. Then

1:06:17

when it's reprinted, they add the question

1:06:19

mark because that's deranged. But

1:06:22

so then he gets very – he kind of

1:06:24

bounces around to jobs. He goes to Vietnam

1:06:26

and comes back. Nothing is really clicking.

1:06:29

And then he finds these

1:06:31

grifty fucking seminars. And

1:06:33

it seems like he was believing

1:06:35

them. He seems like someone who

1:06:38

thinks that he found this

1:06:40

secret knowledge, but he's never

1:06:43

actually done

1:06:44

anything. All

1:06:46

he's doing is repackaging

1:06:49

the bullshit that he's been getting in

1:06:51

these seminars and pretending

1:06:53

that he did it. When actually all

1:06:56

that really happened

1:06:57

was he absorbed all

1:06:59

this grindset bullshit from these seminars.

1:07:01

He tried to implement it in

1:07:04

companies. All of his companies failed because this

1:07:06

isn't real advice. And then

1:07:08

he just became one of these

1:07:10

seminar get rich quick grifters. This

1:07:12

is interesting for two reasons. One is like, again, like Rhonda

1:07:15

Byrne and The Secret,

1:07:16

the bullshit is what makes them rich, right?

1:07:19

Pretending that they know how to get

1:07:21

rich, makes them rich. The

1:07:23

other part of this is that this is the first guy

1:07:26

who I've seen

1:07:27

basically say that you should

1:07:29

get scammed. Yes. Join MLMs.

1:07:33

Do these seminars. Be a

1:07:35

mark. Yes. And this is why I

1:07:37

almost think that he's doing this in

1:07:40

something resembling good

1:07:42

faith. Oh, totally.

1:07:43

I think he's 100% earnest. Yes.

1:07:45

Right. Because he is

1:07:48

at his core a mark. He sort of turned being

1:07:50

a mark into scamming other

1:07:52

people, maybe not quite realizing

1:07:55

what was happening. He had been the

1:07:58

mark and he came.

1:08:00

perceive himself as such and so

1:08:02

he starts doing what the scammers

1:08:04

are doing to other people, writes

1:08:07

a book with this convoluted

1:08:09

nonsensical advice, gets

1:08:12

rich off that

1:08:13

proof of concept in his own mind,

1:08:15

right? Of course, I was right all along. Because

1:08:18

he still doesn't understand that

1:08:21

it's a scam.

1:08:21

I wanted to say he's like a Shakespearean

1:08:24

figure, like this tragic figure,

1:08:26

but he's never really had a fall. He's

1:08:28

not a Shakespearean figure. I think he's more of like a

1:08:30

character in like a Christopher Guest movie.

1:08:33

It's like he's going around telling

1:08:35

you like if you really want to get rich, you

1:08:37

should play three card Monty.

1:08:39

Yes. Outside of Madison Square Garden, you should

1:08:41

go give those guys 20 bucks, find the

1:08:43

red queen, great investment idea.

1:08:45

And you're like, you really believe

1:08:47

this, don't you? This is like the

1:08:50

boomer id because the entire

1:08:52

generation basically bumbled

1:08:55

their way into financial success. Just

1:08:57

like born into an era

1:09:00

where a basic job got

1:09:02

you a house, a pension, the

1:09:05

markets grow, houses quadruple

1:09:08

in value over the span of a few

1:09:10

decades, and there you are, a 70 year old, sitting

1:09:14

on millions of dollars despite having

1:09:16

done nothing spectacular

1:09:19

in your life, right? Just sort of like following

1:09:21

the basic advice. And then you look at millennials

1:09:24

and you see that they are struggling. It

1:09:26

was so easy for you

1:09:28

that the only way that you can make sense of it

1:09:30

is to think they are doing

1:09:32

something fundamentally wrong. They

1:09:34

don't really get it. Their problem is they don't believe

1:09:37

it enough because

1:09:37

you believe it. He believes it because if

1:09:40

you're selling grifty fucking seminars, then

1:09:42

like, yeah, it is all about the mindset because everything

1:09:44

is about being a charismatic speaker. That's

1:09:46

the only thing you need to demonstrate. There's

1:09:48

no actual

1:09:49

skill. Right. he's

1:09:51

this boomer mentality just like boiled

1:09:53

down into its essence like

1:09:55

it's dumbest form.

1:09:57

He's incredible. He basically becomes the

1:09:59

person he always- thought he was. He

1:10:01

thought he was a millionaire. He made more than $9 million

1:10:04

on this book. He's still doing these seminars.

1:10:06

Of course, he doesn't actually give the seminars anymore. They're now licensed

1:10:09

to this extremely scammy company.

1:10:11

There's been a series of lawsuits. He's

1:10:14

just delivering the same old bullshit and

1:10:16

raking in millions. All

1:10:19

of this feeds his self-conception

1:10:21

as someone who has knowledge,

1:10:23

but it's just air. Yeah,

1:10:27

there's something almost ethereal

1:10:29

about his existence. Yeah. Layers

1:10:32

of scams placed

1:10:34

atop one another until he

1:10:36

hits Oprah. Totally. I would love to see

1:10:39

Oprah just on air talking about

1:10:41

returning to the gold standard. Yeah.

1:10:44

But OK,

1:10:46

are you ready for the ending twist? Oh,

1:10:49

hell yeah. I could not believe this. So

1:10:52

since the book comes out, he's a Trump guy,

1:10:55

he's a fuckfouchie guy, he's- Shocker.

1:10:58

Distilling even more this like,

1:11:01

become a mark. Every financial

1:11:03

scam he is trying to sell you. Yep.

1:11:05

In all that time, he's

1:11:07

never really given any specifics about

1:11:10

who this rich dad is, right? He avoids

1:11:12

the question, he blows up at people when

1:11:14

they try to get basic confirmation

1:11:17

of this. Alludes to Harry Potter. Yes, exactly.

1:11:20

In 2019, we find out that

1:11:23

Rich Dad was real. There

1:11:25

is a guy named Richard Keeney

1:11:28

who dies in his 90s.

1:11:30

Robert then says this

1:11:33

is Rich Dad. I

1:11:35

mean, who knows if any of the stuff in the book is actually

1:11:37

true, right? There's so much, you know, he was never

1:11:39

a billion dollar empire. It doesn't

1:11:41

appear he ever owned convenience stores.

1:11:44

I mean, he's still doing a ton of

1:11:46

exaggerating and misrepresenting. That's good

1:11:49

because if the convenience store thing

1:11:51

was true, then that makes it more likely

1:11:53

that the child slave thing was

1:11:55

true.

1:11:56

Yeah, that's sort of what I'm hoping. And

1:11:58

also, this Richard K. The Hime guy

1:12:00

actually seems kind of okay. He's

1:12:03

like a Japanese American guy growing up in

1:12:05

Hawaii and he basically realizes that

1:12:07

all of the tourism industry in Hawaii is geared

1:12:10

toward the high end. It's all rich people. Somehow

1:12:13

he scrapes together enough money to buy some land

1:12:15

or buy a building or something and he opens a hotel for

1:12:17

like middle class people and

1:12:19

he works like he's the front desk person

1:12:21

doing baggage, working his ass off and

1:12:24

he basically creates the like

1:12:26

middle class tourism

1:12:27

industry in Honolulu.

1:12:29

Eventually, that becomes

1:12:31

a larger hotel and then becomes a chain of

1:12:34

hotels. He just goes from there. It's

1:12:38

an actual American success story. Like

1:12:40

identified an underserved

1:12:42

market,

1:12:43

created a product, and executes,

1:12:46

and it works.

1:12:46

He actually did the thing that Robert

1:12:48

never did. The

1:12:51

other weird thing about this is that apparently

1:12:53

there was... I don't know if this was ever But there

1:12:55

was a gentleman's agreement between Robert

1:12:58

and this

1:12:58

Richard Keemie guy to not reveal

1:13:00

his identity And Robert stuck by

1:13:02

it. Wow. This is like the one likable thing

1:13:04

I've ever learned about it Oh shit, probably

1:13:06

because the it wasn't a gentleman's agreement

1:13:09

and the guy was like if you say that

1:13:11

I'm the sociopath in rich dad Poor

1:13:13

dad, I will sue you into the fucking

1:13:16

ground and Robert was like, all right Yeah,

1:13:18

I do wonder if that's what's really going on because he

1:13:20

is a huge piece of shit in the book. Oh Oh

1:13:23

my god, I can't I cannot believe that

1:13:25

he had a real

1:13:28

Successful mentor and he's just like okay.

1:13:31

Don't pay your taxes That's

1:13:33

what you're learning. Did

1:13:36

his dad ever write a response book?

1:13:39

Cool son, dumb son. That's

1:13:41

the story of my two cents.