Olivia: In 1965, the average big-company CEO in America made about 21 times more than their average worker. What do you think that number is today, Jackson? Take a wild guess. Jackson: Oh, wow. Okay, 1965. I know it's gotten way worse. I'll say... 150 times? That feels outrageously high already. Olivia: It’s a good guess, but you’d need to more than double it. The recent figure is 351 times. That's a 1,670 percent increase. The real question is… what on earth happened? Jackson: 351? That's not a gap, that's a different galaxy. How is that even possible? It sounds completely unsustainable. Olivia: That staggering statistic is one of a hundred that Scott Galloway uses to make his case in his book, Adrift: America in 100 Charts. He argues that number isn't an accident; it's a symptom of a much larger disease. Jackson: Galloway… he's that outspoken NYU marketing professor, right? The one who's also a serial entrepreneur and has that reputation for being… let's say, brutally honest. Olivia: Exactly. He's known for these brash, data-heavy takedowns, and this book is his full diagnosis of the country. His argument is that a few key decisions, a few philosophical shifts, sent America careening off course. And he says it all started with a story about greeting cards. Jackson: Greeting cards? That’s not what I expected. You have my attention.

Olivia: It’s a wild story from 1982. A former treasury secretary named William Simon saw an opportunity with Gibson Greeting Cards. The company was for sale for $80 million. Jackson: Okay, so a standard corporate acquisition. Where's the twist? Olivia: The twist is how he paid for it. Of that $80 million price tag, Simon and his partners put in only one million dollars of their own money. Jackson: Wait, one million? Where did the other $79 million come from? Olivia: He borrowed it. This was the dawn of the Leveraged Buyout, or LBO. Essentially, you use the company’s own assets and future earnings as collateral to get massive loans to buy it. You're buying the company with its own money. Jackson: That feels… like a cheat code for capitalism. You’re telling me you can buy a whole company with barely any of your own cash? Olivia: That’s precisely the point. It was a new form of financial wizardry. And here’s the kicker. After buying Gibson, Simon didn't spend years trying to make better greeting cards or improve the business. Within a short period, he took the company public in an IPO. That $1 million personal investment turned into $66 million in cash for him. Jackson: Whoa. So the goal wasn't to build a better company, it was just to use debt to flip it for a massive profit. Olivia: You've got it. Galloway presents this as a watershed moment. The focus of American business began to shift from creating long-term value for a community—employees, customers, the town the factory is in—to one single metric: maximizing short-term shareholder value. How can we make the stock price go up, right now? Jackson: And this was happening around the time of Reagan, right? I remember that famous line, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Olivia: Exactly. Galloway draws a direct line. That philosophy, combined with huge tax cuts—the top marginal rate fell from 70% to 28%—created the perfect environment for this new mindset to flourish. The government stepped back, and financial engineering stepped in. The incentive was no longer to invest profits back into R&D or employee wages, but to do things like stock buybacks to juice the share price. Jackson: It’s like the entire game changed. We stopped rewarding the people who build the widgets and started rewarding the people who invent new ways to slice up the pie. Olivia: That’s a perfect way to put it. And Galloway argues this "uncoupling"—the uncoupling of corporate profits from worker prosperity, the uncoupling of the stock market from the real-world economy—is the root cause of America being "adrift." Jackson: Okay, so a few financiers got incredibly rich. I get that. But how does a greeting card deal from the 80s connect to the lives of regular people today? How does it lead to that insane 351-to-1 pay gap? Olivia: Because it’s the other side of the same coin. When all the money and focus goes to maximizing shareholder returns, something else has to be starved. And that something is often the commonwealth—the shared resources and infrastructure that we all depend on.

Jackson: So you're saying the money that went into these clever financial deals was money that could have gone somewhere else? Like, into the actual country? Olivia: Precisely. And Galloway uses a truly heartbreaking story to illustrate this: the Flint, Michigan water crisis. In 2014, to save money, the city, under an emergency manager, switched its water source to the Flint River. Jackson: I remember this. It was a cost-saving measure, right? Olivia: A disastrous one. The river water was highly corrosive, but they failed to properly treat it. It started eating away at the old lead pipes across the city, leaching lead directly into the drinking water of thousands of homes. Jackson: And people knew something was wrong almost immediately. The water looked and smelled terrible. Olivia: They did. Residents complained for months, holding up bottles of brown, foul water. But officials dismissed their concerns, telling them it was safe. The final result? An estimated 12,000 children were exposed to lead poisoning, which can cause irreparable brain damage, lower IQs, and a lifetime of health problems. Jackson: That's just devastating. They poisoned children to save what, a few million dollars? Olivia: That's the brutal math Galloway presents. This wasn't just a tragic accident or a case of incompetence. It was the direct, foreseeable outcome of a philosophy that prioritizes short-term budget lines over long-term human investment. When the only metric that matters is the bottom line, public health becomes an externality. Jackson: It’s the Gibson Greeting Cards story in reverse. Instead of creating $66 million out of thin air for one person, they created a public health catastrophe for thousands to save a fraction of that. Olivia: And Galloway argues we see this pattern everywhere. He points to the Surfside condo collapse in Florida. Residents had been reporting evidence of major structural decay for years. Engineers warned that repairs were critical. But the work was delayed, debated, and never started, because it was expensive. Then the building collapsed, killing ninety-eight people. Jackson: It’s a pattern of neglect. We're not maintaining the foundations, literally or figuratively. Olivia: And it shows up in social data, too. Galloway highlights a chart on men's share of college enrollment. In 1970, it was nearly 60%. By 2021, it had plummeted to just 40%. It's a sign that a huge portion of the population is becoming disconnected from the primary pathway to economic stability. The social fabric is fraying from all sides. Jackson: This is all incredibly bleak. The charts are just painting a picture of decline and decay. Does Galloway offer any hope at all, or is the ship just sinking?

Olivia: It's a dark diagnosis, for sure. But he does pivot to a counterintuitive idea, what he calls "The Bright Side of Instability." His argument is that crises, as painful as they are, can be powerful catalysts for growth and change. Jackson: How so? It feels like a crisis just makes everything worse. Olivia: His theory is that crises force a reset. They shatter our expectations and clear out old, inefficient systems, making way for new ideas. He points to a fascinating chart: the number of new business applications in the U.S. Jackson: Let me guess, it went down during the pandemic? Olivia: The opposite. It skyrocketed. There were 5.4 million new business applications in 2021. That’s a record, and it was 35% higher than the pre-pandemic total in 2019. Jackson: Huh. So when the world got turned upside down, more people decided to start something new? Olivia: Exactly. It's like a forest fire. It's destructive, but it also clears out the dead undergrowth and allows new saplings to get sunlight. Galloway suggests that economic instability forces us to get creative and question where real value lies. Jackson: A surge in new LLC filings is nice, but how does that fix poisoned water or a 351-to-1 pay gap? That feels like a very different scale of problem. Olivia: That’s a fair challenge, and he doesn't suggest it's a magic bullet. He sees it as a sign of underlying dynamism. But he's clear that this energy needs to be channeled by bold policy choices. He's not a "let the market solve it" guy, despite his focus on business. Jackson: What kind of choices is he talking about? Olivia: He lays out a whole list of provocative ideas. Things like simplifying the tax code to eliminate loopholes, rebuilding our regulatory systems, enacting a one-time wealth tax to fund new investments, rebranding nuclear energy as a climate solution, and, interestingly, a huge investment in national service to rebuild a sense of shared identity. Jackson: Wow, those are some big swings. They sound controversial, which, given his reputation, isn't surprising. Olivia: They are. And critics have pointed out that his analysis is very US-centric and that some of his proposals are politically difficult, to say the least. But his goal isn't to write a perfect, universally-agreed-upon plan. It's to start the conversation and argue that we have agency. The future isn't something that just happens to us.

Olivia: When you boil it all down, Galloway's core message is that we're not helpless victims of fate. America is 'adrift' because of a series of deliberate choices made over the last 40 years. We chose to prioritize capital over labor, financial engineering over product innovation, and the celebrated individual over the health of the community. Jackson: And those choices created the world we see in his charts—the penthouse and the pavement, the soaring stock market and the crumbling bridges. But if we made those choices, it means we can make new ones. Olivia: That's the hopeful note he ends on. He's not an optimist in the cheerful sense, but he believes in the power of a clear-eyed diagnosis. You can't steer a ship back on course until you understand exactly why it went adrift in the first place. Jackson: There's a quote he includes at the end that really stuck with me. "All anyone can ask for is a level playing field, a fair start, and the security needed to take risks." It’s so simple, but it makes you wonder, what does a truly level playing field even look like today? Olivia: That is the fundamental question he leaves us with. It's not just about charts and data; it's about the kind of society we want to build. And it's a conversation we need to be having. We'd love to hear what you think. What's one thing you believe would help level the playing field in America today? Let us know on our social channels. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.