The American Dream Is Built, Not Promised | David Rubenstein
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Why are working families feeling squeezed and how does it affect belief in the American Dream?
You know, you go to the grocery store and what used to cost two hundred dollars now costs two hundred and fifty dollars and then in six months you're worried it's gonna cost three hundred dollars and we're like operating the same exact life on thinner and thinner margins every day.
If you just look at the wealthiest people in the country, they're doing fine. But the people in the middle class and the lower income classes, they are not in good shape. The wealth that people have made in recent years by buying and selling sports franchises has made people think that sports is now an investment class. It's a way you can make a fair amount of money. If you don't have a thick skin, you shouldn't own a sports team.
Where I wanted to start, um And and we can take this any direction that you want to go, but I guess what enamored me to I was watching the Instagram and then I reached out to uh to your rep at Simon and Schuster and um you know just said, Hey, I I'd love to have David on the show. I'm very interested as to this amnesia that so I'm forty-five years old. I feel like At my my generation or the people within maybe a standard deviation of my age have some feel for the history of this country. But uh I was just in Italy and I had a tour guide in Um Vatican. And she kept she kept bringing up do you know? And then she'd insert someone who was like famous beyond belief, Julius Caesar. Jor you know what I mean, she's just bringing up these names and then she'd say, Well, have you heard of them?
And if I after about ten minutes I stopped her and I said, you know, I I mean this with no disrespect. You don't have to keep prefacing it, do you know this person? Like I'm I know, you know, at least a decent amount about history. I said, Are there really people that don't know some of these famous individuals? And she's like, Oh yeah, my my got my tour that I had yesterday. And I said, Please tell me they weren't from America. And she was like, Yeah, they were they were Americans. And I was kind of taken and she said Americans tend to have the least her perception does doesn't mean it's true, right? The least understanding or at least caring about about history in some regard is what she had to say. And I I guess my question for you was just why do you believe, do you believe?
And if so, why do you believe there seemingly is a amnesia of the history of this country that it's very tough to deal with?
Let me try to explain. When I was an undergraduate about fifty years ago, about nine percent of undergraduates in the United States were history majors. That percentage is now down to about one percent. And that's because today people are afraid if you're not a STEM major in college, you won't get a job at Google or Facebook or Goldman Sachs. So parents have obsessed about getting their kids to be STEM majors. The result is people know less about history. Um, it turns out that Americans um know less about our history than people overseas. Uh for example If you want to be a citizen in this country and you're not born here and you become a uh naturalized citizen, you have to take a in effect a history test, a citizenship test.
And ninety-one percent of the people that take it pass. The same test was given to people born in this country not long ago, and in forty-nine out of fifty states, a majority failed the history test. So the result is we we don't have people that know history very much, and why is that a problem? Because the theory of history is that those people that don't remember the past are condemned to relive it in the future. The theory behind stunning history is you figure out what was done wrong and don't do it again in the future. But we don't have that uh love of history so much in our country. In Europe, for example, which is much older than the United States, people uh uh teach history much more. It's considered a part of their DNA, a part of their fabric.
In this country, even though we're celebrating the semi quincentennial Many people might know Thomas Jefferson or the Declaration of Penance, but beyond that they don't really know very much about our history, sadly.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why are working families feeling squeezed and how does it affect belief in the American Dream?
0:00–5:37
2
How does America’s loss of historical memory impact civic conversation and policy?
5:37–11:08
3
Why are sports franchises now seen as investment class assets rather than vanity purchases?
11:08–16:38
4
How is unlimited campaign money reshaping political polarization and public discourse?
16:38–22:13
5
Why is declining immigration and low birth‑rate a threat to U.S. economic growth?
22:13–27:45
6
How does owning the Baltimore Orioles serve both a philanthropic mission and a city‑revitalization strategy?
27:45–33:33
7
What are the key factors in building a competitive baseball team and negotiating player contracts?
33:33–38:58
8
Why are most sports franchises not profitable on an operating basis and what does that mean for the future?
38:58–43:51
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