93: Ed Conard - The Upside of Inequality, Optimizing Prosperity

Invest Like a Boss

Sam Marks Johnny FD Derek Spartz

Business, Investing

4.8 • 518 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2018

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ed Conard is an AEI visiting scholar who authored two top 10 New York Times bestselling books: The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the MiddleClass (2016) and Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong (2012). He has written op-eds for most major news outlets and has made hundreds of media appearances. He is a retired partner at Bain Capital, where he headed the firm’s New York office.

On this episode, Ed corrects the misconceptions about the middle-class wagers being squeezed by the top 1% as we are all made to believe. He gives a fresh perspective of the upsides of inequality relative to economic growth. He also shares his vision of what the U.S. economy would be like in the next couple of years. At the end of this episode, Ed discloses his own personal portfolio including how he manages his money and where he invests.

Where we are:

Johnny - Bulgaria

Sam - Florida

Links:

Edwardconard.com

Books:

The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class

Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong

Time Stamps:

04:30 – The Middle Class vs. the Top 1%
06:21 – What’s driving slow growth for the middle class?
09:32 – Understanding the American economy
16:04 – Measuring GDP
18:57 – Financial stability of households now and then
23:30 – American households’ savings
26:44 – Taxes on Government Services
30:02 – To what point will taxes slow down growth?
33:38 – His stand on the Trump Economy
35:12 – What he sees in the future economy
38:32 – Ed’s personal asset allocation
41:09 – Long-term upsides of inequality

If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and share it! Also if you haven’t already, please take a minute to leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and claim your bonus here!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Invest Like a Boss podcast. I'm Sam Marks and I'm Johnny FD. We're self-made entrepreneurs who invest our own money and use modern technology to invest like a boss.
0:09.0	Join us each week for exclusive interviews with our network of modern investors, business owners, and multimillionaires to discover new ways to invest our hard-earned cash.
0:18.3	Hey bosses, this is Johnny and welcome to episode 93 of the Vest Like a Boss podcast. I am in
0:24.6	Bank School, Bulgaria in my new apartment and Sam is in Tampa, Florida and his. Welcome to the show.
0:31.0	Welcome to the show, man. It's been a while since we've gotten back on. We're doing some updates to
0:34.8	the site, logo, branding and a lot of new things in the way for
0:37.8	iLab. But it's good to reconnect. And I'm glad you got settled in Bulgaria.
0:42.1	Yeah, I just arrived today. I actually just spent the last about month or so in Greece.
0:47.1	And I think we missed an entire month. I think we recorded a little bit when we were, where was
0:52.9	I the last time we spoke you were in a
0:54.5	Paul I believe wow I can't believe we skipped a whole country normally we were on it but
1:01.6	I spent the last month getting moved in and rooms to go bed bath and beyond shopping in
1:06.9	Tampa that was an exhausting process we'll talk about more than that on our Q2 updates.
1:12.3	But this week, great new guests, Ed Connard. Big named guest. I mean, I've seen him on some
1:18.0	some big TV shows, big, like big financial companies. I mean, he's a big boss. He's a big boss.
1:24.6	He's the old founding partner, now retired, previous founding partner
1:28.1	at Bain Capital, where his partners with Mitt Romney. And he's wrote two of my favorite books,
1:33.4	the unintended consequences, and most recently the upside of inequality, which we're going to
1:38.3	dive into a little on this episode. Yeah, and they're both top 10 New York Times bestsellers as well.
1:43.5	So I think this is going to be an interesting conversation. I'm definitely hoping you ask them about the kind of ups and downs of inequality because a lot of people now are, especially, you know, the middle class, you know, they feel like they're getting squeezed. And that's all we hear on the news all the time is, you know, the top 1% or the rich are squeezing the middle class out. And I want to know what his thoughts are. And if that's true or not. Yeah, it's interesting because I actually hear this more from like my parents, but not from the standpoint of it's the top 1% that are squeezing us out.
2:19.6	It's more like it's government spending and inflation.
2:22.6	So I think all that everyone in the middle class feels like they're getting squeezed.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sam Marks Johnny FD Derek Spartz, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Sam Marks Johnny FD Derek Spartz and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.