0:00

of my favorite quotes is from David

0:02

Packard, who once said, I

0:05

see

0:08

this all the time. It is so common with

0:10

money, whether it is for you individually

0:12

or for your business, that people get

0:14

so tangled up in the big complex projects

0:17

that they drop the ball on the

0:19

small stuff. To do well over time,

0:21

you have to get the simple stuff right

0:23

first. And one of those

0:25

fundamentals in business that often gets

0:27

overlooked is expense management. And

0:30

that is why 25 ,000

0:32

businesses use Ramp. Ramp

0:34

is a corporate card that includes

0:36

the best expense tracking and reporting

0:38

software that I have ever seen.

0:40

It makes expense management so simple

0:42

by automatically capturing every transaction the

0:45

moment a card is swiped. For

0:47

listeners of the show, Ramp is offering metal

0:49

cards for the next 30 days. Just

0:51

go to ramp.com slash Morgan.

0:54

That's ramp.com slash

0:56

Morgan. Cards were issued by

0:58

Sutton Bank, number FDIC, terms and conditions

1:01

apply. Before

1:08

I start today's episode, I want to share

1:10

with you an article that I

1:12

just stumbled across just before I hit

1:14

record just now that I thought was so

1:16

fascinating and got me thinking about a lot of

1:18

different things. There's an article

1:20

in Scientific American that talked

1:23

about these eye doctors who

1:25

recently, I have no idea

1:27

who would sign up to do

1:29

this experiment, but these eye doctors, Ibiscus

1:31

did a very extreme form of

1:33

LASIK eye surgery on five patients to

1:36

manipulate their retinas. And

1:38

after the surgery, this was the idea, these

1:41

patients, there are five of them, can

1:43

now see a color

1:45

that you and I and everybody else

1:48

cannot. Now, by definition,

1:50

it's impossible to explain what that color would

1:52

be because, like, how do you explain the

1:54

color red to someone who's never seen red

1:56

before? It's impossible. It's just red. And

1:58

so this color, they explain it as

2:00

a version of teal with a

2:02

level of saturation that my

2:04

brain and your brain cannot even

2:07

fathom. And that's amazing on its

2:09

own because the idea that You

2:11

and I think that we can see the

2:13

world. We have eyes. We can see everything. Everything

2:15

is in front of me. This plant, this

2:17

desk, this computer, this microphone I'm speaking to. We

2:20

can see it. And it's true, but there's

2:22

a lot out there that we cannot see. In

2:24

this case, literally. There are colors out there

2:26

that our eyes and our brains cannot even percept.

2:29

And once you do a surgery like this, all of

2:31

a sudden there's a world out there that you

2:33

didn't even know existed before. I think

2:35

that is a good analogy. for

2:37

how a lot of things in the

2:39

world works. We were talking about

2:41

politics, the economy, investing,

2:44

science, whatever it might be. It is

2:46

very common for everybody. The natural state

2:48

of affairs is to assume that you

2:50

can see all of the world, that

2:52

you understand at least the world that

2:54

you live in without the knowledge that

2:56

there is so much out there going

2:58

on that you cannot even perceive. Ideas

3:01

that you're unaware of, science

3:03

that you're unaware of, cultures

3:07

values, views of the world that are

3:09

having a big impact on the

3:12

world that you and I cannot even

3:14

perceive. That happens all the time.

3:16

And I think it explains a lot of what's

3:18

going on in the world today. Most

3:20

arguments in the world about the

3:22

economy, about politics, about culture are not

3:24

really people arguing with each other,

3:26

so to speak. They're not really disagreeing

3:28

with each other. It's people who

3:30

have seen a very different side of

3:32

the world talking over each other. And

3:35

I think when you View it through

3:37

the lens, no pun intended, of there are

3:39

literally colors in the world that our

3:41

brains cannot conceive. So of course,

3:43

are there ideas and values that we

3:46

are completely oblivious and unaware of? Of

3:48

course. I love that idea. I just

3:50

wanted to share it with you before we get into

3:52

the bigger idea that I want to talk about today. And

3:55

what I want to talk about today is a

3:57

topic that I think has always been important, that I

3:59

wrote a little bit about in my book, Same

4:01

As Ever. But I think it's

4:03

probably more important Today over the

4:05

last year and probably going forward

4:07

for the next couple years then

4:09

it's been in a long time

4:11

and that is understanding shifts and

4:13

expectations and what the average ordinary

4:16

American considers to be an average

4:18

ordinary life. It's very easy to

4:20

look over the fact that what

4:22

counts as a decent, dignified life

4:24

today has shifted dramatically over the

4:26

last 80 years. And why that's

4:28

important today is because, of course,

4:30

there is a lot of talk

4:32

about going back to a world

4:35

that we used to have. Tariffs

4:37

are largely based around that idea. We've

4:39

talked about this in previous episodes that

4:42

we used to have a very strong

4:44

manufacturing base and good manufacturing jobs, and

4:46

we don't anymore. Now, there

4:48

is truth to that. As I spoke about

4:50

two episodes ago, a lot of that is

4:52

simply automation. It's not necessarily shipping those jobs

4:54

elsewhere, although that has been a factor, of

4:56

course. But the general idea here

4:58

is that we want to go back to

5:00

a time that was better. We used to

5:03

have a great economy. We don't anymore. Let's

5:05

go back. This isn't working. Let's go

5:07

back to that. I understand and empathize

5:09

with those feelings. And to some extent,

5:11

a lot of that can be true.

5:14

There are parts of the economy that

5:16

used to be more prosperous than

5:18

there are today. There are cities and

5:20

towns and regions that used to

5:22

be more prosperous than they are. Of

5:24

course, that is true. But I

5:26

want to use an example of what

5:29

I think was the peak of

5:31

Americana middle class prosperity that I think

5:33

if you wanted to put an

5:35

image on the nostalgia that we're trying

5:37

to go back to, it would

5:39

be this. I'm going

5:41

to start the story. at the

5:43

end of World War II,

5:45

1945, when 16 million American soldiers

5:47

came home. And of

5:49

course, when they came home, they had

5:51

just suffered and adored and took part

5:53

in the ravages of World War II,

5:55

the most horrific event of the 20th

5:57

century. And before that, before that began,

6:00

most of the GIs grew up as

6:02

children during the Great Depression. and

6:04

experience the poverty, watch their parents

6:06

endure the poverty of those eight years

6:08

or so of the Great Depression.

6:10

So when they came home in 1945,

6:12

there was such an overwhelming desire

6:14

to relax and enjoy the life that

6:16

they had not been able to

6:18

enjoy up until that point, at any

6:21

point during their adult lives, or

6:23

even in any part of their life

6:25

that they could remember. So

6:27

much what happened during the Great

6:29

Depression was people moved Inwards physically inwards

6:31

you had if you had a

6:33

house or an apartment your grandmother your

6:35

cousin maybe even your neighbors moved

6:37

in with you That was what happened

6:39

when you lost your house to

6:41

foreclosure You couldn't for the rent anymore

6:43

people moved in housing got very

6:45

very dense and as World War two

6:47

ended and the people came home

6:49

What was so common among the soldiers

6:52

who returned home was I want

6:54

space I don't want to live

6:56

in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with

6:58

my grandmother and my cousins and my

7:00

aunt and my uncle. I want my

7:02

own space. I deserved it. I've earned

7:04

it. And that view was noted very

7:06

clearly by a guy named William Levitt. William

7:09

Levitt worked in what was kind of like

7:11

the Army Corps of Engineers in World War

7:13

II. And when he came home from the

7:15

war, he noticed there was going to be

7:17

incredible demand to take farmland

7:19

that was on the outskirts of big

7:21

cities and turn them into what we know

7:23

today as suburbs. That was kind of

7:25

a new idea back in the 1940s and

7:27

1950s. Up until that point, you pretty

7:30

much had two places to live, a

7:32

farm in the middle of nowhere or a

7:34

dense urban city. William Levitt

7:36

really pioneered the idea of the

7:38

suburb. A lot of these were on

7:40

the outskirts of cities, not not far

7:42

from New York or Philadelphia, where

7:44

you could live in a nice area

7:46

where you had your own house.

7:48

in a backyard. It wasn't a

7:50

cramped apartment, but you could still

7:53

drive into the city to work. That

7:55

was a new pioneering idea made

7:57

part by and large by the automobile,

7:59

which that too was a fairly

8:01

new idea and the new interstate highway

8:03

system and roads that were being

8:05

built. And so Leviton Sons, the home

8:08

building company, started buying up hundreds

8:10

of acres of farmland in New York

8:12

and Pennsylvania and later in other

8:14

areas around the United States to build

8:16

what were known then and now

8:18

as Levittown. The first was

8:20

Levittown, New York, and then it moved

8:23

into Pennsylvania. I think there's one in New

8:25

Jersey. And Levittowns are kind of the

8:27

peak ideal of what Americana was. It

8:29

was these gigantic communities. They eventually

8:31

built more than 50 ,000 homes in

8:33

America. And this there are

8:35

so many documentaries that were made about

8:37

Levittown because it is the ideal

8:39

leave it to beaver neighborhood. That was

8:41

the view then and I think

8:43

to a large extent the view now.

8:45

The idea of a middle -class family,

8:48

a working husband, a stay -at

8:50

-home mom, three kids, a dog named

8:52

Spot, a white picket fence. The

8:54

kids came home and they were well

8:56

behaved and they played baseball in the

8:58

front yard and everyone was happy and

9:00

they had picnics and they took the

9:02

canoe out on the lake on the

9:05

weekend. Like the ideal perfect Norman Rockwell

9:07

American life. That was Levittown. I

9:09

found this documentary about Levittown. It

9:11

was made in the 1990s. And

9:13

the name of the documentary, I

9:15

think sums up the feeling that

9:17

people had for Levittown then and

9:19

in modern times. The name of

9:21

the documentary is Wonderland because that

9:24

was what Levittown felt like. It

9:26

was absolutely incredible that a middle

9:28

class. working American family, the

9:30

vast majority of whom were GIs

9:32

could come home and buy their

9:34

own house. They weren't

9:36

renting an apartment. They weren't even living

9:38

in a cramped apartment. They had

9:40

their own house with a backyard and

9:43

a driveway. That was absurd. That

9:45

was amazing. It felt just

9:47

bonkers to people that you could

9:49

do this. And when you contrasted that,

9:51

that life when they were buying

9:53

these homes in the 1950s to the

9:55

war and the Great Depression and

9:57

the cramped apartment in Brooklyn that they

9:59

had experienced up until then, Levittown,

10:01

the American suburb, felt like

10:03

a dream. There's

10:05

a quote in the documentary of a woman

10:08

who had lived in Levittown for 40

10:10

years at that point. And she says, quote,

10:12

when we moved to Levittown, it was like

10:14

a utopia. That was

10:16

that was the only way that you could describe

10:19

it. a wonderland, a utopia. It was the ideal

10:21

of America, like this leave it to beaver land.

10:23

One other guy who had lived there since he

10:25

was a child, he'd been there for about 40

10:27

years at this point. He said, quote, it

10:29

was so perfect. It was like a sitcom. We

10:32

were expecting there to be a laugh track in

10:34

the background. Just these perfect,

10:36

ideal family suburb. Everyone's

10:38

happy. That's the view of it. But

10:41

there's another part in the documentary that

10:43

I think is the most important. And

10:45

this was back in the

10:47

1990s. Levittown was just starting

10:49

to lose its charm, lose

10:51

the glamour, lose this Americana

10:53

utopia that it used to

10:56

be. And it interviewed

10:58

someone who had been there since the original

11:00

1940s. Remember, this is in the 90s. So

11:02

there were a couple of residents who had

11:04

been there since day one. And

11:06

he's talking about how

11:08

he, for his generation, the

11:10

greatest generation, Levittown

11:12

was as good as it got. Even when

11:14

they lived there for decades, it still felt

11:16

like a utopia. But for his children and

11:18

maybe his grandchildren, it wasn't. They

11:20

wanted to get out. They hated it. They wanted to

11:23

make as soon as they graduated high school or college,

11:25

they couldn't wait to get out of there. And so

11:27

this guy who lived there for 50 years said, quote,

11:30

the idea was probably great 40 years

11:32

ago, but something happened along the way

11:34

to take away the dream. He

11:36

said, quote, this is my

11:39

dream come true because this is what I

11:41

expected to have in my lifetime. I

11:43

don't know what my children expect, but

11:45

this is what I wanted. This

11:47

is my dream come true. And

11:50

what he was pointing to is that Levittown

11:52

for him was amazing. It exceeded his expectations by

11:54

so much that even when he had lived

11:56

there for almost half a century, it was still

11:58

the utopia that it felt like when he

12:00

moved in. But for his children's

12:03

generation, it wasn't. They

12:05

didn't like it. They hated it. They wanted to

12:07

move. And so we

12:09

could go down that idea for

12:11

a long time, but I want

12:13

to sum this up. I mean,

12:15

I put a pin in this

12:17

idea with one statistic of the

12:19

50 ,000 Levittown homes that were built.

12:22

How many today have been altered

12:24

as in have a new

12:26

addition put on them? A

12:28

garage that was added on a

12:30

third or fourth bedroom that was

12:32

added on a new family room

12:34

or dining room that was added

12:36

on to them? And the answer

12:38

is virtually every single one of

12:40

them. except for one. Apparently the

12:42

address is 52 Oak Tree Lane

12:44

that is effectively untouched in its

12:46

original footprint. Virtually all

12:49

of the other 50 ,000

12:51

plus Levittown homes have been

12:53

added to. Because this

12:55

is really important, the original

12:57

Levittown house, the original footprint,

12:59

they were all virtually the

13:01

same, was 750 square feet.

13:04

It didn't have a garage. It didn't

13:06

have a basement. It didn't have a deck, it

13:08

didn't have a porch, didn't have air conditioning. It

13:11

was two bedrooms, a

13:13

living room, and a kitchen, and one bathroom,

13:15

and that was it. So

13:17

imagine, by the way, the typical 1950s

13:19

leave -it -to -beaver family that had three

13:21

and a half kids, they were living

13:23

in a house with two bedrooms. Your

13:26

three and a half kids shared a

13:28

bedroom. Everybody shared one bathroom. Air

13:30

conditioning. forget about it. Garage, forget

13:32

about it. Porch, forget about it. The

13:34

average lot size for the Levittown

13:36

house was 6 ,000 square feet, which

13:38

I had looked this up so I

13:40

can't really contextualize that, is very

13:42

small. The average new house

13:44

today in the United States, the

13:46

lot is almost 9 ,000 square

13:48

feet. So almost 50 % bigger than

13:50

it was back then. The point

13:52

I want to make is that

13:54

what was considered to be a

13:57

life that was so incredible you

13:59

could only describe it as a

14:01

utopia. Those Levittown houses back in

14:03

the 1950s would be considered barely

14:05

livable by today's standards. Again,

14:07

let me explain that with

14:09

some statistics. The median new

14:12

house in the United States

14:14

in 2024 was 2 ,157

14:16

square feet. It was

14:18

three times the size of the Levittown

14:20

utopia house. three times the size. The

14:22

average new house today is, of course,

14:24

two stories. It has a two -car garage.

14:26

It has air conditioning. It has a

14:28

porch made from half a deck. The

14:31

Levittown houses had none of those

14:33

things. And I found

14:35

this New York Times article from 2007

14:37

that was trying to find an

14:39

original Levittown house. And this journalist is

14:41

on the hunt for an untouched

14:43

Levittown house. And he can't find one

14:45

anywhere. Because as we now know,

14:47

virtually none of them exist. Every one

14:49

of them has had another bedroom

14:51

attached, a garage attached, a huge new

14:53

addition that has a new kitchen

14:55

or a new living room. They've all

14:57

been added to because nobody in

15:00

the year 2024 or for a long

15:02

time wants to live in a

15:04

700 square foot house with no garage

15:06

and no air conditioning. And

15:08

this article finds this guy who buys an

15:10

original Levittown house and he's very quickly about

15:12

to add to it. He's going to add

15:14

a garage and add a bedroom to it.

15:16

And there was a museum back then that

15:18

wanted to buy the original Levittown house. And

15:20

when they learned that this gentleman bought one,

15:22

but he's about to alter it and turn

15:24

it into a modern house, they're like, no,

15:27

no, no, please don't do it. And this

15:29

guy who buys a house, his name is

15:31

Mr. Schrader. He says, quote, I

15:33

hate to disappoint the historical society, but

15:35

I need a home, not a

15:37

museum. I mean, it's cool

15:39

living in a bare bones Levittown house.

15:41

People do tell me, wow, it's an

15:43

original levite. That must be very rare.

15:45

But people don't want to raise a

15:47

family in a house that size anymore. That

15:51

last line is so important. People

15:53

don't want to raise a family in a house

15:55

that size anymore. The world

15:57

that we have so much nostalgia

15:59

to for the 1950s would be considered

16:01

a deep poverty today. I don't

16:04

think that's an exaggeration whatsoever. In

16:06

2024, America, if you're trying to

16:08

raise four kids, in a house

16:10

that has two bedrooms, no air

16:12

conditioning, no garage, 700 square feet, that

16:14

would not be considered within 10

16:16

miles of middle class. In the vast

16:18

majority of America, I don't think

16:20

that's an exaggeration whatsoever. Now,

16:23

of course, people do that, or many

16:25

people who do that in the United States

16:27

in apartments and whatnot, but nobody in

16:29

that situation, literally nobody would be using words

16:31

like wonderland and utopia to describe raising

16:33

four kids in a 700 square foot house.

16:36

And so look, the very simple, but I think

16:39

very important point that I want to make

16:41

is that the definition of what a good life

16:43

is has shifted. It's increased

16:45

substantially in the last 80 years

16:47

or so. By the way, what do

16:49

you call that shift in expectations? Progress

16:52

is what you call it. It's wonderful.

16:54

It's not a bad thing that it used

16:56

to be a 700 square foot house

16:58

with no air conditioning was utopia. And now

17:00

We have 2 ,200 square foot houses with

17:02

three car garages and four bathrooms and

17:04

air conditioning and going down the list. And

17:07

that's considered average. That's what

17:09

progress looks like. That's great. I

17:11

want to live in a world in which our

17:13

definition of a good life expands. But

17:15

I think this is true, too, for

17:17

the jobs that we yearn for. As

17:20

we go through tariffs, we're trying to

17:22

bring manufacturing back to the United States

17:24

and yearning for a time when middle

17:26

class people could work in manufacturing jobs

17:28

that we now think have been disappeared

17:30

to China and Mexico and Canada and

17:32

other places. It's true.

17:34

Look, to some extent, that is true.

17:36

And this gets more touchy because you're talking

17:38

about people's dignity of their work and

17:40

their employment. But what's true is that a

17:43

lot of the manufacturing jobs that existed

17:45

50 or 80 or 100 years ago would

17:47

not be considered good jobs at all

17:49

anymore, would not be considered acceptable jobs in

17:51

the slightest. Let me give

17:53

you one statistic to put a point on this. Building

17:55

the Hoover Dam, which is

17:57

like incredible feat of engineering when

17:59

it took place. Just an amazing thing

18:02

that happened. 96

18:04

workers died building the

18:06

Hoover Dam. If something

18:08

like that happened today, before we got even

18:10

remotely close to that, before when 10 people

18:12

died, we would have shut the whole project

18:14

down. Workplace deaths in the

18:16

1950s, that's not when the Hoover Dam was

18:18

built, but just using that as a

18:20

reference point, were almost four times higher than

18:23

than they are today. People just

18:25

had much more tolerance for the indignity,

18:27

the physical pain, the physical suffering, and

18:29

even the death that was required of

18:31

the manufacturing jobs back then than they

18:33

are today. And look, maybe this is

18:35

the wrong way to phrase it. But

18:37

to the extent that people are softer

18:40

now than they used to be, that

18:42

they will not put up with a

18:44

job where 96 of your coworkers are

18:46

going to die around you building one

18:48

project, the fact that we don't put

18:50

up with that anymore, that

18:52

too is progress. Isn't that great? Don't you

18:54

want to live in a world where dying

18:56

on the job is not acceptable anymore like

18:58

it used to be? But

19:01

that too is an example that

19:03

our definition of a good job

19:05

has shifted over time. I

19:07

think it is largely true

19:09

that a big chunk of

19:12

America, particularly in urban and

19:14

suburban America, the definition

19:16

of a good life in the

19:18

eyes of let's say a 22 year

19:20

old is a bachelor's

19:22

degree from a flagship university, a

19:25

six -figure job waiting for them when they're done, a

19:28

2 ,500 -square -foot house with a

19:30

30 -year fixed -rate mortgage to buy

19:32

it with. That's like

19:34

the baseline level of success. That's what

19:36

they expect. Now, that

19:38

too, I'll say for the 10th time on

19:40

this podcast, that's progress. Compare Levittown

19:43

and dying on the job

19:45

to that today, that's progress, but

19:47

is a massive shift in

19:49

expectations. And I

19:51

think when we fall for the siren

19:53

song of nostalgia, of wanting to go

19:55

back, we should always keep that in

19:57

mind that the definition of a good

19:59

life has changed substantially and that we

20:01

might be surprised and shocked in a

20:03

bad way if we are constantly yearning

20:05

to go back and we actually take

20:07

a step back. Because I

20:09

think the fact is if you and I

20:11

had a time machine and we can

20:14

go back to Levittown in 1958, let's say,

20:17

and we stepped off that time machine.

20:19

we would instantly see two things. One

20:22

is, I think, yes, people were

20:24

happy. They were pretty satisfied. They

20:27

couldn't believe that they were living in this utopia.

20:30

That would be our first realization. The second realization

20:32

is, I think, we would look around and

20:34

say, that's the house you live in. That's

20:37

where you live. That tiny little thing, that's

20:39

your house. That's your utopia. I

20:41

think a lot of us would say that. Now,

20:44

I know that could be a touchy point. It's different

20:46

for everybody. Maybe it's actually good.

20:48

This was unintentional that I started this

20:50

podcast with the Experimental Surgery and these

20:52

people who can see new colors because

20:54

all of us me included everybody Has

20:56

that in their own world When we're

20:58

trying to make sense of the world

21:01

and defining what a good life is

21:03

and taking stock of how other people

21:05

live how we live and our expectations

21:07

Everybody is a little blind to what

21:09

others are going through But more importantly,

21:11

I think it's easy to become blind

21:13

to what we ourselves used

21:15

to be in the past, the lives

21:18

that we used to live, the definition

21:20

of success that we used to have. That's

21:22

true in your individual life, and

21:24

it's true for society as a whole.

21:29

That's it for this episode. Thanks

21:31

again for listening, and we'll see you next time.