Immigration, Culture and Tough Love

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact that we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Immigration culture, and some tough love here today. What a
big maga rift? Yeah, a big maga rift taking place,
and you're watching a transpire on X and other places
where again, who is the true maga? Who's this? And

(00:39):
anti immigration? It's gotten pretty brutal, quite frankly, it really has.
And well, I'm going to put it to bed today.
I'm going to start off. I want to read to you.
If you're not familiar here, I'm gonna I'm just going
to give you vives post on X. I think we
addressed Elon's last week. He said, the reason top tech

(01:02):
companies often hire foreign born and first generation engineers over
native Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit,
a lazy and wrong explanation. A key part of it
comes down to the C word culture. We'll get into
that a little bit. Tough questions demand tough answers, and

(01:25):
if we're really serious about fixing the problem. We have
to confront the truth agree wholeheartedly. Our American culture has
venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long, at least
since the nineties and likely longer. That doesn't start in college,

(01:51):
it starts young. A culture that celebrates the prom queen
over the math Olympiad champ or the jock the valve
of Victorian will not produce the best engineers. Little bit
of a problem with this sentence from Vivek and this
point that he makes prom queen. Yeah, yeah, okay, all right,

(02:14):
it's a beauty contest. Whatever I've long said here on
the program that schools need to not only compete against
one another on the athletic field, but also academically. Again,
this is some of my ideas that I put forth
into reforming schools, giving parents school choice. They allow kids

(02:35):
school choice when they want to play football for a
different coach in high school somewhere. But you're not going
to allow a kid to change schools because their physics
department is better, their science is better. That's stupid, and
he's right there, But again he talks about the jock
over the valle of Victorian. Both things. Both things can

(02:58):
be true here Vivek in the sense that one can
be a John and also do well in school, and
the work time and effort that it takes to be
great at a sport translates, translates to the real world,

(03:20):
translates to the real world. It's not just about winning
on the field. It's what you learned preparing for that
game Friday night. That's what translates. But anyway, I think
he talks about a culture that venerates Corey from Boy

(03:41):
Meets World. And I'm not familiar with these shows or
Zach and Slater over Screech and Saved by the Bell
or Stephan I'm Steve Erkle. I remember Family Matters, but
I never watched any of these shows. Those are not
He's basically pointing out certain characters. They're not going to
produce the best engineers, more movies like Whiplash, Fewer reruns

(04:02):
of Friends, more math tutoring, fewer sleepovers, more weekend science competitions,
fewer Saturday morning cartoons, more books, less TV, more creating,
less chilling, more extracurriculars, less hanging out at the mall.
Couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more? Again, Okay, I have

(04:22):
a little problem what he said there, but the collective
freak out by certain magatypes here by what Vivek had
to say, and again they start attacking. They start attacking
his heritage for some reason, which again makes you small,
you know, small minded, quite frankly and vile. In my opinion,

(04:51):
most normal American parents look skeptically at those kinds of parents.
More normal American kids view such those kinds of kids
with score. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normously,
normalcy is what you will achieve. That's true. That's true.
You go out there and you know, I don't want

(05:12):
to be normal. I want to be better. I want
to excel. This is now. Close your eyes and visualize
which families you know in the nineties or even now
who raise their kids according to one model versus the other.
Be brutally honest. Normalcy doesn't cut it in a hyper

(05:32):
competitive global market for technical talent, and if we pretend
like it does, we'll have our asses handed to us
by China. This can be our spotnik moment. We have
waken from slumber before, and then we can do it again.
Trump's election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden
era in America, But only if our culture fully wakes

(05:53):
up a culture that once prioritizes achievement over normalcy, excellence
over mediocrity, readiness over conformity, hard work over laziness. That's
the work that we have cut out for us, rather
than wallowing in victimhood or just wishing or legislating alternative
hiring practices into existence. I'm confident we can do it.

(06:18):
What in God's creation is so wrong? So offensive?

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Do you mark?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
What is so offensive? What because he's got dark skin
and he's got Indian heritage, you don't want to hear
it from him? Is what he says is not wrong? Oh?
I get it. I get it. Yeah, it's the h
one B visus. That's why our kids are not doing

(06:52):
so well. John Lefever put this out and again, this
is part of the problem. This is part of the
problem with many of the super maga types. They can't
have they can't have more than one idea going on
in their head at one point in time. Okay, you
do realize that more than one thing can be true

(07:17):
at the same time. Let me give you an example. Okay,
it can be sunny out and raining in Florida. Those
both of those things can be true. They just they don't.
Not just Florida, can happen in many other places anyway.
The H one B program, is it being exploited to

(07:44):
the detriment of American workers, Yes, that's true, there's no
doubt about that. That's true, and it needs to be reformed.
All you'd be are I gotta get rid of it? Right,
I'm going to see how many people said, Okay, is
the Medicare program being abused here in the United States?

(08:08):
It is? You want me to you want to shut
it down tomorrow? What I tend to give me one
government program? Give me one government program that's not abused, misused.
Our damn Pentagon can't pass an audit on any given years.
You want to just you want to dismantle a military tomorrow.

(08:31):
It needs to be fixed, There's no doubt about that.
But it shouldn't be done away with. What we need
are the top engineers and the top people staying here
and wanting to come and work here in this country.

(08:53):
This I do. No, No, I'm going to take American jobs. No, No,
I'll get into the logistics of engineering and H one
B visas a little bit. Yeah, yeah, the H one
B program needs to be fixed. There's no doubt about it.

(09:16):
Ben exploited. We've covered it here things that took place
at Disney. There are multiple companies as well that have
done the same exact thing. And quite frankly, I would
just like to do away with the whole visa program
and will not go change it. I want these people
to be citizens. You want these people to come here again,

(09:37):
Make them citizens. They want to be here. Let them assimilate.
Why do you want to send them away if they're
going to offer something down the road. It doesn't make
any sense. And don't even get me started on the
visa program. They used to be visa program that helps
countless businesses around the country staffing in the summer in

(10:01):
a various different ways. You know how hard it is
to find workers. I've got small business owner clients all
around the country. They can't find workers. You know it's
also true here in this country is many Americans don't
want to get off their ass. They don't they don't
want to get off there. But I put in a call,

(10:23):
I gotta need an electrician to come out to my
house to install a generator at my house. Everyone I called,
you're talking sixty days out before they're going to even
show up. Don't tell me we don't need workers here
in this country. Okay, there's a lot of jobs that
quite frankly, Americans just won't do. Oh I got to

(10:50):
pay enough? Right sure? Yeah, electricians and plumber they don't
make any money right anyway. We need to seal and
protect our borders. All of the Biden era illegals who
we didn't vet, most of them, most of them need

(11:14):
to go. We need to start deporting right away. We
need to know who's here, who really wants to be here.
We've got to stop the nonsense or people are coming
in and just sending money back to their home countries.
We have not been very good for a very long
period of time at growing growing talent in a in

(11:41):
a meritocratic way, and that's what we need to get
back to as well. But also true that we shouldn't
be demonizing going after immigrants, hard working immigrants that have
come here, that have started business is, that have created

(12:01):
jobs here in this country. These things can all be true.
Channel Ryan from She said the host that I said
on our way, and and she basically put it this way.
She said, yeah, you're offended. You're you're offended by what

(12:23):
vek Ramaswami said. You're basically DEI. You are you're just
against DEI. You're you're basically DEI and affirmative action. What
he's going after, What he's going after is what has happened,
What has happened to this country for decades now that

(12:45):
I personally, not just here on the show, in my
everyday life, my interactions with kids and coaching have gone
after the whole everybody wins, everybody where. We're not keeping
score that nonsense, that bull excrement, that Marxist crap that

(13:11):
has creeped into our schools. Schools. Oh no, we're not
going to have a val Victorian anymore. We don't want
to offend anybody that's that human ist crap that has
to go, that has to go anyway. They give me

(13:32):
another example of this, where I moved from on Long Island.
It's a very desirable place for people to live and
to talk about it, More and more people moving into
our neighborhoods from Flushing, Queens. Now Flushing Queen's been predominantly

(13:57):
a Asian area in Queens for a period of time.
These were immigrants that came to this country legally started businesses,
a myriad of different businesses, save their money, want what's
best for their kids, and are now moving out to

(14:19):
these areas that are well established. I've got no problem
with that at all. That's that's the American way. The
place was here glorer east side. What do you think
this hasn't happened before? Those those Asian Americas because they

(14:41):
speak maybe broken English, are they any less American than myself?
I was born here. I was born here, but it
didn't make him any less American than anybody else being America.
It's it's not your your family. You're not more American

(15:04):
if you're your parents' parents. Choose me your parents were
born here or your great great great parent great grandparents.
You know, came off on a damn Mayflower for crying
out loud. Doesn't work that way. We're not vampires. Okay,
you don't become a stronger American the longer you have
been here. And quite frankly, but maybe I've said this

(15:25):
before here on the program about America and American citizenship.
I think I think they should make it almost like
Catholic confirmation for crying out loud, where you get to choose. Hey,
you get all these kids there, and I hate America
all this stuff. Okay, do you want to give up
your passport? I've said it here. I don't think you

(15:49):
should be allowed to vote unless you can pass a
citizenship test. You don't want you know, you don't want
to be an American. You want to you don't want
to take an oath of citizenship. Mean kids do it
when they're eighteen years old and make them pass a
citizenship test because you were born here, right, like you're

(16:11):
owed something because you're born here. No. No, I was
a president John F. Kenny, you know, asks not what
your country can do for you, but what you can
do for your country. I want to talk. I want
to talk a little bit about culture. Now America. What

(16:32):
does America mean to you? Again? This is things we've
talked about here on the program in the past. America
America is. To me, it's always been kind of the
movie Gladiator, you know, when they talk about you know,
Rome being an idea. America is an idea. That's what

(17:00):
it is. That to me, that's what America is. It's
not most certainly not Washington, d C. It's not the
tax code it's not the Federal Registry, none of those things.
It's not the shape of our country, because the shape
of our country it was a hell a lot different

(17:21):
when this place started. It's changed thirteen colonies, right, and
you know, quite frankly, you got the Declaration of Independence,
and you know, we hold these truths to be self evident.

(17:41):
All men are created equal. How often do we talk
about this? Okay, we're not all equal in talents and abilities,
but we're equal under the law endowed by their creator,
with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. Again, you know, that's that

(18:08):
that came first, and the you know for it took
us some time. We figured it out. Oh geez, you
know what, we got to come up and get the Constitution,
which you can't knowther set of ideas. That's what this
country is about. It's again, it's not about a geographic
area by any stretch of the imagination. There's a great

(18:33):
writer online calls himself Cynical Publius, and he actually talked
about this as well, something that I reiterate all the time.
And America is unique in the history of the world
as a country based solely on ideas, without regard for
ancestry or ethnicity, or race, or religion or soil or

(18:58):
money or blood. If you come to America legally, become
a citizen legally and genuinely swear to support and defend
those ideas, you were every bit as much an American
as someone who can trace their heritage back to the
Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. He says, that's a hill he's

(19:22):
willing to die on, and I agree, and I agree.
Let's talk a little bit about this American culture. Guess again,
we always hear that word American exceptionalism, American exceptionalism, And

(19:46):
there's gonna be again, gonna be quite quite a few
obscure references today. And I just just thought of one.
I thought about the scene and stripes with Bill Murray
and his talking about America being MutS. Now, we're MutS
here in this country, but we're loyal and we're tough,

(20:07):
and we're this. Yeah, that's what we are. Let me
tell you one of our greatest attributes is and this
is an underlying belief system of mine that it goes
into everything that we do in regards to building portfolios,

(20:28):
into how I want to raise my kids and how
quite frankly you should be raising yours. Okay, I talk
about anti fragile Nassim Nicholas Talib again one of my opinion,
one of the most brilliant guys here in this country,
who also came here originally on an H one B

(20:50):
visa visus and failure and all sorts of stuff. Well
first and foremost. Okay, just so you know, just so
you know, as far as science and technology they are
and talent addresses this, they are so fat tailed. Eighty

(21:10):
percent of the output in those industries comes from less
than one percent of the contributors. You do understand that, right,
you got super skilled people. That's a tiny percentage of employment. Okay.
And again I've worked on Wall Street and the myriad
of businesses that I mean, we always talk about ten percent,

(21:34):
ten percent of your people doing the bulk of the work.
I guess in science and technology, it's it's much different
than that. It's it's that miniscule how many people get ahead.
But the key here to this country what part of
American exceptionalism? We have something in our water here. We

(21:57):
have you know, we special in any way, shape, matter
or form. Like I said, are our makeup. Okay, our
physical make up, our physical attributes are. We're no better.
We're not super human here, Okay, We're not a bunch

(22:18):
of Kryptonians. All right, It's just not the case. It
is what American exceptionalism is all about, is it's oh
kay to fail. I talked about we don't have an

(22:39):
entrepreneur's day here in the United States. That you know,
that's that's our You know that that truly is our edge.
Our edge is the fact that it's o k it's
okay to fail. Talum talked about this, well, say anybody,

(22:59):
any it can have an education, you need to learn
to fail. And he put this in his book The
Black Swan again highly recommend it. Talked about scalability, globalization.
He says, whenever you hear a snotty and frustrated European
middle brow presenting his stereotypes about Americans, again, this is

(23:24):
Nicholas Nassam Talent. He was born in Lebanon. He came
here h one b Visa. He's a professor, He's written
countless best selling books. Okay, genius when it comes to
risk management, He's just as American as I I wasn't
born here anyway. When he talks to you again European

(23:48):
middle brow presenting his stereotypes about Americans, he will often
describe them as uncultured, unintellectual, and poor in math because
unlike his peers, Americans aren't not into equation drills and
the construction's middle brow call high culture knowledge of Gold's
inspirational trip to Italy or familiarity with the Delf school

(24:12):
of painting. Yet the person making these statements is likely
to be addicted to his iPad, wear blue jeans, use
Microsoft word to jot down his cultural statements on his Macintosh,
using some Google searches as well. Well. It just so

(24:36):
happens in America is currently far far more creative than
these nations of museum goers and equation solvers. It also
is far more tolerant of bottom up tinkering at undirected
trial and error. And globalization has allowed the United States
to specialize in the creative aspect of things, the production

(25:00):
of concepts and ideas, that is the scalable part of
the products, and increasingly by exporting jobs and separate the
less scalable components aside them to those happy to be
paid by the hour. There's more money in designing a
shoe than actually making it. Let's let meet take this

(25:25):
a bit further, comes to failure. Went to a hockey
game the other night, and this was a conversation that
was coming up because watching hockey, it's just it's an
amazing one of the best sports to watch live. It's
just it's phenomenal to watch. And having the conversation with

(25:46):
the most difficult sport is and you know, I was like, well,
to find difficult, to find difficult? You know, soccer players
run ten miles over the course of the game. You
take a look at, you know, what professional football players
able to do what you know, the skill and the

(26:07):
strength and the stamina that's involved in hockey. But then again,
you also take a look at the most difficult thing
to do in all sports, and that's you know, hit
a baseball. And they could call, you know, baseball America's
pastime and someone say, well, you know, football is taken over. Yeah,

(26:28):
I get that, Okay, it has, but baseball one of
these baseball is such a difficult game is because you
fail all the time. You are an all star making
millions upon millions of dollars a year playing professional baseball,

(26:52):
if you fail seven out of ten times, that's right.
You're back in three hundred if you fail and again,
and you're right out there, okay. When you fail in baseball,
it's you know, you're all by yourself up there, you're

(27:14):
all by yourself. You got to think about it again.
That's part of baseball. It's just the psyche of being
able to let it go. The Yankees lost the World Series.
What was it? It was a game one of the World Series,
gave up the home run. There came in, boom, You're
done over. That's on you. You're all out there by yourself.

(27:39):
And that's again, that's what makes America great in our
system here is that we want you to go out
and take risks and you're going to fail, and failure
is okay, and we tall, you know, get knocked down,

(28:00):
pick yourself up. That great monologue from Rocky what was
it Rocky five or Rocky sixties lecturing as kid, it's
not you know, it's how hard you could get hit.
You get knocked down, you pick yourself up. That's that's

(28:20):
American exceptional. That separates us from everybody else doesn't work
that way, and other places around the globe all right,
I want to talk. Okay, now we're going to talk
about tough love. Time for some tough love. We did
immigration culture. Now time for some tough love and getting

(28:43):
back to some of the things that VEC had to say.
This this is these numbers are real. Okay, of gen
Z people kids there experience burnout at work. Twenty three
percent face unmanageable stress, forty eight percent feel drained. I'm

(29:12):
laughing because you know, again, I've coaching for years and
you watch kids complain whatever it. Maybe I'd suck it up, Buttercup,
you know I got a whole can of I got
a whole can of suck it up here for you.
Are you kidding me? Really? Six and ten employers report

(29:35):
firing recent gen Z hire. Seventy five percent of companies
said gen Z hires were unsatisfactory, thirty nine percent lack
communication skills, forty six percent lack professionalism. Okay, tell you something, Okay,

(29:58):
we're doing this to ourselves. We're doing this to ourselves.
Do you think the immigrant kids are acting like this?
They're not. Thirty one percent of eighth graders are proficient
in reading. Thirty percent are below basic readers, which is

(30:20):
basically functionally illiterate. Twenty seven percent of eighth graders are proficient.
Twenty seven percent of eighth graders are proficient in math.
Hey all you magotypes out there, Hey, you're going to
have them designing computers. I think so our education system

(30:44):
is a disaster here we talk about you know that,
the helicopter parents. Everybody's making life way way too easy
for their kids. Hard work driving your kids, it's it's

(31:11):
not you're not abusing your child. It's preparation for life,
you know, excellence and busting your ass is it's non negotiable,
non negotiable. In my book, again, I'm using myself as

(31:34):
an example. I don't care my show. One of the
things that when I'm coaching, Okay, I'm aware, okay that
kids are going to make mistakes. Okay, balls gonna get dropped,
gonna miss shots, whatever it may be that that's gonna happens. Physical,

(31:54):
physical mistakes are going to happen. Mental mistakes. Again, That's
that's something that's a little bit harder as a coach
to swallow. You're supposed to be sharp out there. You
have to focus while you're out there. But the thing
for me that is not negotiable is effort. You're not busting,

(32:17):
you're asking that going one hundred miles an hour all
the time when you're out there in the field, you're
coming off the field, drop a ball, miss a shot,
something goes wrong, next play, don't worry about it. This
is the Chris Markowski coaching line. I want you guys
to go out there and make fast mistakes, because you've
got to make mistakes. Make fast mistakes, go hard all

(32:42):
the time. It's all k to fail as long as
you're going at it at one hundred and ten percent effort. Dan,
what have we been preaching here on the program? Build, create, protect,
and teach, and as adults, guess what? You better be

(33:04):
exceptional yourself. You better be exception yourself as an example.
Stop going soft anyway again. I a couple more obscure
references for you. It was television show, I don't know

(33:27):
how old it was, was Aaron Sorkin program, and we've
played the clip here on the program was Jeff Daniels
was the an anchor man, and he goes off on
this rant I'm talking about America and he lists all
these things. You know, America is not not the greatest
country anymore. It's kind of how they started off the show,

(33:52):
and again they come into my mind. I was jotting
some down. It's Chris Rock kind of stand up skit.
I mean, this is a while ago talking about you know,
kids coming back home doing the right thing, you know,
getting their master's degree. Well you my master now like

(34:13):
it's it's some you know, going out and trying to
excel is is not a good thing. And I also
thought about John Adams in the television. The mini series
John Adams, which was on HbA, was fantastic. There was
a scene where he was in France. He was at
a you know, French aristocratic court and you're looking at

(34:34):
the decadence and the partying and all these fancy people
and their faces all makeup and wigs on. And they
asked John Adams in that scene about, you know, if
he's gone to see the opera or listen to some music,
and he's like, no, I really don't have time for that.
And they're all giggling and laughing and kind of having
fun with John Adams. He's like, I don't have time

(34:57):
for that. I only have time. I only have time
for politics and war so that my kids can have
the ability to study mathematics and philosophy, so their kids
can have the ability to study navigation, commerce and agriculture.
So maybe their kids can have the right to study

(35:22):
poetry and art and music. And again that scene always
stuck in my mind, and yeah, we can have the
right to study all these things and whatnot, and there's
nothing wrong with any of that. But maybe our focus
needs to go back to the basics again, and that

(35:44):
politics and war, but certainly mathematics. Nothing wrong with throwing
philosophy in there, construction, agriculture, all of these things. We
want to have. What we should be striving for is
an anti fragile country. Everyone out there so damn fragile.

(36:08):
No one's willing to think. And when someone's trying to
take something away from them, Oh, these terrible immigrants. Please please,
legal immigration come on, built the place. Just that simple,
and there's nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with having
people come here legally the right way and having a
system set up, and we should be doing that. There's

(36:30):
nothing wrong with any of that. There was another comedian
had the clips sent to me. His name is Ronnie Chang,
and he did this entire bit about you know, these
people out there. You know, I'm willing to die for
my country. I'm gonna I die for my country. It's like, Okay,

(36:55):
that's great, But how about you know you're willing to
die for your country. How about your willing to do
your homework for your country? How about you willing to
do your math homework for the country. They kind of

(37:16):
ended at comedic bit. He's say, well, you were dying
is easy. Math is hard. Anyway, we don't need to
divide us in what Vivec and Elon are doing. Two
immigrants to this country that have excelled. Is a little

(37:36):
bit of tough love. A little bit of tough love.
That's all we need. I mean, the numbers don't lie.
There's nothing wrong with kicking kids in the ass a
little bit and getting them to do the things that

(37:57):
they need to do, and getting this country to doing
the thing is that we need to do. The idea
that we should be handed everything. You're entitled to something
that we're entitlement. I'm a lease at how many MAGA
types out there, the entitlement mentality that they have just
as bad as the Democrats. You're owed something, you're owed

(38:18):
some high paying job, you ain't a damn thing. You
have the right to go out and earn it. Go
out there and do it. Make your way in the
world the easiest thing in the world. I point your
your your victimhood, okay, your situation, and blame somebody else.

(38:43):
You want to grow up, Stop placing blame. Grab ownership
of everything that happens to you and your life. Watch dog.
I'm Wall street dot com.