American Happiness: The Book

Dan Sullivan and Mark Young discuss the rise of progressivism and the impact it had on American politics. Dan shares his personal experience growing up in a blue-collar Democratic family. The episode explores the Democrats’ singular focus on highly “educated” professionals, and what this means for the future of work.

In This Episode:

The GI Bill probably was and probably still is the biggest social legislation that ever happened in the United States.

After the baby boom, going to university became the expected norm for everybody.

Progressivism was really introduced by Woodrow Wilson.

You can earn about $150,000 a year as a truck driver, or you can graduate with a four-year degree and earn $40,000 working in an office.

Government workers are about input, not outcome. Entrepreneurs don't care about input. They only care about outcome. They care about results.

Intellectuals see entrepreneurs as their enemy.

While the Democrats keep repeating the same rehearsed talking points, President Trump is telling the truth. He has every audience he’s in front of right where he wants them, and that’s always been his way. In this second episode of a two-part series, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young share the ways in which President Trump is different from anyone we’ve ever seen before, and how he has the skills to put an audience in a trance.

In This Episode:

President Trump has the skill to wander away from what’s written on a teleprompter.

Entrepreneurs look for problems because they find problems to be opportunities.

When the Democrats share a talking point, it’s highly coordinated on every social media platform.

President Trump understands neurolinguistics programming and how to use language, cadence, and timing.

You hold an incredible advantage when you understand the entertainment model of modern American society.

Links: 

Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour by Helmut Schoeck

Mark Young and Dan Sullivan discuss media biases, and the search for truth. They shed light on why it’s critical to develop your own philosophy in the face of external noise. Discover why President Trump’s political philosophy was always to challenge the mainstream, and to unravel the trances that dominate US perceptions.

In This Episode:

People have every right to say what they want, and you have every right to not hire them if they’re not a good fit for your organization.

What moves some entrepreneurs from left wing to right wing is their first payroll.

Think of your conscious mind as a spam filter preventing information from passing into the subconscious mind.

If you don’t hold your own philosophy, the world will never stop trying to craft one for you.

All humans are going from hypnotic trance to hypnotic trance.

Television news has always been entertainment because it has to compete with everything else on television.

Media knows that putting you in a trance is more important than the information they give you.

Even if he intends to run, President Biden is not in a good position to get re-elected. Meanwhile, President Trump should have never been counted out. Americans are ready for a change. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young discuss why a big change is due, and what we can expect to shift over the coming years.

In This Episode:

Forty years of college graduates have been found wanting in the eyes of the average American people.

The Republicans winning the house has turned out to be much more momentous than anyone thought.

Investigations into the Biden family will go back to when he was senator of Delaware.

Lifetime bureaucrats have never created anything.

At some point, there will be consensus in the Democratic Party to get Biden out of there.

The percentage of the American economy that’s involved in foreign trade is 12% of the GDP.

The Democrats fall into the Great Society model, which states that there are only a few gifted people in the world who have the intelligence to make decisions.

All the economic flow will go to people who actually know how to do things.

No blue-collar jobs are endangered by ChatGPT.

Resources:

The Storm Before the Calm by George Friedman

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan

Visual Capitalist

Blunt Force Truth podcast

Plenty of people are confused as to why President Trump acts the way he does. That might be because Trump was the first entrepreneur in the White House. Dan Sullivan and Mark Young share how Trump’s mindsets line up with those of the most successful entrepreneurs, how he differs from Democrats and career politicians, and why bureaucrats misunderstand the approach he takes.

In This Episode:

Entrepreneurs see problems as opportunities.

In 20 years, all new combat airplanes will be drones.

There’s a wisdom and skill that come from doing presidential campaigns.

Trump knows that U.S. domestic policy is a form of entertainment.

Democrats have only one type of fuel in their tank, and that’s power.

Trump isn’t an ideologue; he’s a problem solver.

The left doesn’t understand that the more they attack Trump, the more they feed him.

You have to take extra steps as your chronological age moves forward.

No matter what you’ve done up until now, your future has to be bigger than your past.

The closest historical precedent to how Trump thinks about developing the economy is the Whig Party.

What is capitalism? Everyone thinks they know the answer, but a lot of people are completely wrong. There’s also the danger of unhappiness that comes with misunderstanding it. Dan Sullivan and Mark Young explain what capitalism really means, the history of its development, why a few people consider it a dirty word, and how one’s understanding of it is the dividing line between happy and unhappy Americans.

In This Episode:

The American Constitution is an operating system for creating a continually growing capitalist country.

Over 50 percent of people under 35 think socialism is a better option than capitalism.

Jealousy means you are afraid to lose something you have, while envy means that you want someone else to lose something they have.

Envy became institutionalized in the form of socialism.

Capitalism was named by its enemies.

Ideologies including communism, socialism, and fascism are emotional reactions to the methodology that is capitalism.

Capitalism is the only organizing structure that starts with individual uniqueness.

Capitalism is a system that has winners and losers.

There are five stages of capitalism: pricing, property, productivity, profitability, and prosperity.

The frequency bias is that humans tend to believe the thing they hear the most.

It’s abundance, not scarcity, that makes people uncontrollable.

Links:

Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour by Helmut Schoeck
https://www.amazon.com/ENVY-HELMUT-SCHOECK/dp/0865970645

Capitalism—And Everything Else by Dan Sullivan
https://resources.strategiccoach.com/home/capitalism-and-everything-else

Teammate AI 
https://teammateai.com/

A lot of things have changed since Donald Trump’s first presidency, and a lot will be different about his second presidency, should he win. In this episode, Dan Sullivan and Mark Young share predictions for the upcoming election, factoring in all of the changes that have taken place in the U.S. and in the world.

In This Episode:

The Republican takeover at the state level began during the Obama administration.

Since the beginning, New York and California have been the two biggest American states, population-wise.

This is the first time in history that California is giving up seats, and it’s because of the outpouring of population from California to mainly red states.

The U.S. does not tend to choose presidents who come from the country’s biggest states.

Donald Trump is the only person who learned politics by getting elected President of the United States.

Trump now understands that an empty chair is better than a chair occupied by the wrong person.

The rules that applied up until 2016 were all Cold War policies and considerations.

The Biden White House is deliberately trying to set the stage for the U.S. to be at war with Russia.

What happened in Afghanistan was a replay of the abandonment of Saigon and the Vietnam War.

High-level bureaucrats don't really relate to Americans.

For the last 75 years, the United States has helped the rest of the world prosper by providing security and stability. This has come to an end, even though many people argue the U.S. should continue acting as protector and financier. Dan Sullivan and Mark Young give examples of world change happening right now and discuss the very different positions that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are in when it comes to the future.
 
 
In This Episode:
 
The Republican Party is far more optimistic about the future than the Democrats are.
 
This isn’t the same Republican Party that Americans grew up with.
 
There’s a big shift going on in the world, which means there has to be a big shift going on in the country.
 
The Democratic Party has no “basics” because they’ve distanced themselves from the American Constitution.
 
The U.S. created the entire global economy so that as many countries as possible could make their way up the ladder in terms of quality of life and living standards.
 
Russia and China have been experiencing their best times in history because the U.S. made it possible.
 
The government not allowing its people to see information automatically makes people skeptical.
 
The two main courts that are the future of law in the United States are the circuit courts and the courts of appeals.
 
 
Resources:
 
The Storm Before the Calm by George Friedman
 
Blunt Force Truth podcast with Chuck Woolery and Mark Young

The Democratic Party has been the dominant party in American politics for most of the past few decades, but they may soon be facing a long period of losing. Dan Sullivan and Mark Young discuss some of the issues currently facing the Democrats and share predictions about the party’s future.

In This Episode:

The socialist wing of the Democratic Party is now its controlling faction.

The U.S. is the most protected country on the planet.

The Democrats are allied with the old European culture that the American Revolution got the country away from.

Society has gotten much more complex, so it needs more agencies, but not to the degree that we have agencies today.

The U.S. federal government is the largest single employer on the planet, but they produce nothing, which is a drag on society and the economy.

Corporate America has been receiving bribes from China.

The U.S. isn’t even in the same category as any other country because it's essentially a continental empire.

When the federal government makes a decision, it's a one-size-fits-all decision, and that doesn’t work across the entire country.

The Democratic Party overplays their hand because they know the end is coming.

Resources:

Blunt Force Truth podcast

Only One Party Might Never Recover

As we inch closer to the U.S. midterms, it’s clear that the Democratic Party is in a horrible situation based on their unpopular policies and decisions. Dan Sullivan and Mark Young discuss some of the issues facing the Democrats right now and how they seem to be ignoring them rather than listening to voters.

Highlights:

• Increase solar panels:   President Biden isn’t using the Defense Act to generate more oil or to cut oil prices; he’s using it to increase solar panels.                            
• Not grasping:  The left says people need to buy electric cars, but they’re not grasping that the cheapest electric car costs $40,000 to $60,000.                                       
• Totally disconnected:  The bureaucracies are totally disconnected from the people on the ground, working in every state.                                                              
• Can’t message correctly:   You can’t message correctly to a people you’ve never personally interacted with.                                                                                                  
• Not same education:   Some people think others are where they are because they don’t have the same education.                                                                                 
• A class war:   There’s a class war between the very small majority of leftists who have college educations and the rest of the country.                                                      
• You get out voted:   The problem with being a contemptuous minority is that you get out voted on voting day.                                                                                       
• The proper authorities:   The proper authorities to determine whether abortion is permitted in the U.S. are the governments of the individual states.                         
• Most people:   Most people who seek power never want to relinquish power.                
• Been a liar:   If you observe President Biden’s career over the past 50 years, he has always been a liar.                                                                                                     
• Crush the party:   A big loss in November would launch a civil war in the Democratic Party, which will crush the party for the next two decades