Yo, welcome back to another episode of the Jack Mallers Show. I am your host Jack, and you are listening to yet another edition of Mailbag Monday.
Ladies and gentlemen, France is burning, literally, and today we're going to get back or we're going to get to the bottom of it. Excuse me.
We talked about Europe and we talked about France in particular two weeks ago. We talked about distress in the bond market, why Europe might be the first to show signs of weakness and fall in the West, and we've talked a lot about this on the show about the fourth turning, societal distress, the youth and the emotions and the tendency to revolutionize from the youth against older generations where there's such a wide wealth gap, there's such a big wealth disparity.
It is not a surprise to anyone that loyally listens to this show that France is literally on fire. In fact, we kind of sort of actually called it two weeks ago to the day. So that is what we will be talking about today.
Quick, quick update. I told you guys yesterday on the Ask Jack Q&A episode that I was headed to Europe. I am in Europe. I have no idea how well my hotel Wi-Fi is, okay? Hey, not a professional podcaster. If it is super shitty, I apologize in advance. Hand up. Obviously, the local recording will still go up on YouTube. It'll be fine. You guys, if it's too choppy, you can just rewatch it when I'm done recording. But man of the people, they said it, not me. It is currently midnight here in Europe, and when we say we're to do something, we do it. Mailbag Monday, no excuses. France is on fire, and we have to talk about it. All right, let's go.
Before we get into it, let's take a little snapshot and timestamp this bad boy. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking to you all at a Bitcoin price of 82,000 flat on the nose. Wow, look at that, clean. That puts Bitcoin's market cap at 1.65 trillion dollars. Our all-time high remains at 126,080 bucks. We are a flat 35% off that all-time high made on October 6th, 2025, 378 days ago. The last Bitcoin block mined since I hit stream was block height 972,216. Tick tock, next block. The coin doesn't stop. Every 10 minutes, we get a new block.
All right, before we get into France, the MOVE index. So, I did an episode just breaking down what is the MOVE index, why you should probably pay attention more to this than the Fed. A lot of what Scott Bessent is trying to do is actually maintain stability and remove volatility as opposed to... Right now, it doesn't seem he cares too much about the yield on these long duration, on these US Treasuries necessarily. Not that he doesn't care at all, but it doesn't seem to be the priority for now. We spent an entire episode walking through why the priority is absolutely positively the MOVE index, which is the bond volatility index. And I just want to show you guys, this thing has crept back up above 100.
So, whether Treasuries yields, let's say the 10-year, whether the 10-year yield is going up or going down, what's critically important is that it remains stable because it's collateralizing the entire world. It's collateralizing the financial system and it has everything to do with credit creation and liquidity. And so, even if it's not necessarily going from 5% to 6%, but it's going from 5.1 to 5.2 to 5.3 to 5.1 to 5.2, that's volatility, and this measures that volatility. We know that things break in the financial system when this index hits 130. It got up to 115. The chief volatility officer, aka the CFO of America, aka Scotty B, aka Scott Bessent, pulled some strings, stepped in, and he drove it back down below 100 for a second, and now it's on its way back up. So, I told you guys we would check in on the MOVE index for the foreseeable future. It'd be a part of our Monday live streams. Just take a peek.
Just see where it's at. See if the free market—well, nothing's free about markets in the United States—but if the market is putting a whooping to our boy Scotty B, the chief volatility officer, or if he's able to tame the biggest market in the world, the bond market, the sovereign debt market, Treasuries at large. And if he's able to smooth out volatility in order for them to continue to act as collateral in credit creation. So, my eyes are on this chart. I got it open on a tab. I take a peek every now and then. Back above 100. We'll revisit this next week. Okay.
Meanwhile in Europe, let's chat. Let's do it. And you know, ignoring Europe at large for now, let's talk specifically about France because on this episode two weeks ago, I told you guys, I said France is the weakest link in Europe when it comes to what we talk about on this show. Signs of societal distress, signs of distress in their bond market, signs of distress in their voting base. The youth revolutionizing, the living costs, housing costs, okay? The amount of youth and newly educated and graduated youthful people being displaced or unemployed. Okay, I'll get into all of this in a second.
For now, I honestly apologize for having to show you guys this video because it's just really sad. But oh damn, how do I play it? Honestly, maybe I don't even play it. It's just terrifyingly sad. Honestly, sucks. It really sucks. But France is literally on fire.
Here, I got to show it, don't I? Oh boy, hold on. Give me a sec. Guys, I have to—I have to show it. It's sad though, man. Super breaks my heart. You know, I—there's so much research. Here, here we go. Let me just shut my mouth, shut my pie trap real quick and show it to you guys first and then I'll rant about it in a second.
This very unfortunately is France. This building was built in 1876. It survived World Wars, but unfortunately hasn't survived what is clearly a fourth turning, clearly sovereign debt crisis, clearly a revolution that has officially gotten violent. So, let me play this video just so that you guys can appreciate the severity of the times we're living in.
It's terrifying, man. It's terrifying. I mean, violence is obviously never the answer. But let's dig into this. So, I'm going to recap, you know, only briefly recap the episode from two weeks ago. Obviously, if you guys have the time and you support the show and you're a fan, I would encourage you to rewatch it. I mean, that's a timeless episode. It just breaks down why it's in America's interest that Europe actually splinters and that the Euro system collapses. And the really critical role Europe is going to play as the world resets in a way.
I mean, we've talked at length that the post-1971 dollar, the days of that monetary system are long gone. It doesn't mean that the dollar is long gone. It doesn't mean the dollar is not going to be the world reserve currency. I'm not going to sit here and pitch a bunch of hopium and pitch a bunch of trust me, bro. What I'm saying is this idea that America is going to run these massive deficits and that the rest of the world is going to finance them by taking the surplus when they trade with America and recycle it into American debt. Those days are gone, you know. China, the largest creditor, the world's factory, the country that runs the largest surplus, they haven't been net adding US debt in over a decade.
So, there is some change that is going underway. Obviously, we've talked about neutral reserve assets reentering the global financial system as a reserve asset, as a way to collateralize the world because US debt clearly, or just Western debt at large, the countries running these deficits, it clearly needs to change. It's run its course. It's destroyed a lot of the core importance of a well-functioning society.
And so, you guys can watch that episode. America wants a weaker currency. America wants to reshore its industrial base. America wants to bring blue-collar work back. America—there's all sorts of things that America is very obviously interested in and why a weaker Europe is beneficial to them.
Now, the other just very natural, obvious moment to appreciate is that physically Europe sits in between, like literally physically. Pull up a map. Europe sits in between America and China. And if America wants to reshore and America wants to fix its trade imbalances and America wants to eventually fix these massive deficits that it's running, well, they need to start selling products to somebody. China also is selling their products to somebody. Europe sits in between them. And so, the question is who is Europe going to buy from? Who is Europe going to form their strategic relationship with?
Now, obviously America and Europe and in their defense and NATO and everything, there's an existing relationship there, but, you know, Europe buys all of their goods and services, at least that they import predominantly, like technology and rare earths and all sorts of things from China today. And so, again, Europe is going to sit right in the middle of this world change. I honestly feel bad for my European brethren and sisters. It looks grim. European energy situation is not great. The Euro system really doesn't make a ton of sense and is destined to collapse. It looks like America, Japan are piling in on Europe potentially to expedite this collapse. It looks like they may be the sacrificial lamb in a beautiful, unbelievably cultured place like France may be caught just in a fourth turning and a change of monetary and world order because they're both physically sitting in the middle and economically for all sorts of reasons.
So, again, as a recap, Japan needed help from the United States. That's the very short summary that I'll give you guys for the episode. Japan needed help, and what was very bizarre, but obviously purposeful and intentful, and I explain on the episode two weeks ago, Scott Bessent, Scotty B, the CFO of America, our chief volatility officer, he did a very peculiar, strange, intentional move. He sold euros in order to support Japan. He sold euros to buy the yen. And that is a very deliberate move to do one thing. He wanted to signal to the world that if you need to bring capital home and you need to support your domestic local market, which is what Japan needs to do, you should not sell the US. We do not want you selling US debt, US equities.
You know, I've talked about it before. The net international position is that the world is short a lot of dollars and long a lot of US assets. And so, you know, a lot of the international world owns a ton of America, meaning American debt, American equities, American assets at large. And obviously Scott Bessent does not want all of that position to be unwound or even some of it. Not only because yields will spike and a lot of the American fiscal and financial position will blow up and they'll effectively default, but also again, guys, because he can't afford for these markets to become volatile. So much of the hyper financialized system that they've built relies on—it's all credit. So all of these assets like equities and treasuries act as collateral. And if your collateral becomes incredibly volatile, then the financial system as we know it is totally and utterly and completely screwed. There's no liquidity to support it.
And so, he basically signaled and said, "Sell Europe, not the United States, those guys." And that's what happened. So, anyway, just a slide to put it cleanly: Japan needed to bring capital home. Again, if you want to know why, watch that episode. Scott didn't want that to happen from Treasuries. So, he struck a deal with Japan and made a pretty clear signal flash in the sky and said, "Everyone sell Europe if you need money. Don't you dare sell us."
And listen, France has every single weakness that would catch them in the middle of this monetary world reordering, this fourth turning. I mean, if I were to highlight a country within Europe that's going to get hit first and get hit hard and that I'd be very, very worried about, it's France. And I said this, I literally said this two weeks ago. Go back, look at the timestamps. You guys know I'm a man of transparency and honesty.
Why? France has enormous amounts of debt, enormous amounts of deficits, a growing government, okay? Voters are fighting for cuts and austerity. You know, in order to fix these problems, like, "Hey, let's just spend less. Hey, let's just cut a lot of these government programs." Well, you have to have a voter base that's willing to do that. You know, people often complain, say like, "Why is the government spending so much money?" Well, you voted them in to spend all of this money. If there was a presidential candidate in the United States that ran on no more Social Security, no more Medicare and Medicaid, no more help, no more—we're just going to have to have high oil prices, extremely high levels of what—like that guy doesn't or girl doesn't win the election. And so, the voters are fighting cuts to government programs.
The other really, really key part—there's two really key parts that aren't necessarily as obvious as the first four. One is that a lot of France is owned by foreigners, similar to the United States. And France, unfortunately, can't print its own money, or maybe that's fortunate, honestly. I mean, listen, I love Europe. I'm so happy to be here. I think Europe is incredibly cultured. The history is fascinating. I love the aura, the vibe, the energy when I'm here. I love the cuisine and the food and the culture. I genuinely, genuinely do. I'm really excited to be here, but a lot of this system just needs to fail because it's uneconomic and untenable, and France doesn't have its own Federal Reserve. It doesn't have its own central bank. It doesn't have its own currency, and so it shares in this euro system, and so the ECB can't necessarily act in the interest of France. It has to act in the interest of Europe, and maybe France needs to fail, and the ECB can't justify printing money to save France, and so you can see a situation where France doesn't really have an ability to defend itself.
Now, what do I mean by foreigners own France? Well, foreigners have a lot of France to sell, and this is again what Scott Bessent was very clearly signaling by selling euros to support Japan. It's like, "Dude, no one's ever done that. Why would you do that? That's such a weird, bizarre move." Well, he understands that Europe shares a lot of the qualities that the United States does. They run deficits, really big government, voter base that is not willing to go through austerity and pain and cut spending. Everyone loves the idea of cutting spending unless it's about them.
You know, here's the problem, guys. Governments at large, especially in the West, have borrowed so much from our future. They borrowed and spent and wasted so much of our future time, energy, effort, and labor—our kids. And we say they've borrowed and screwed over our kids, but our kids are now 18 to 25 years old and lighting on fire in some of the most beautiful places in the world. That's like all of this hypothesizing about the future, it's already happening right now. These are the videos I'm playing for you guys. Like this is not a drill. This is not a joke. This is not like—hey, let's—you guys ever when you're growing up, a fire alarm test? Let's test if the building gets on fire. No, the building is on fire literally. France is on fire, okay?
And a lot of France's debt is owned by foreigners. So, 60% of France's government debt is owned by foreigners. 71% of France's bank debt is owned by foreigners. And so, Scott Bessent is saying, "Listen, I know you need to raise capital. Sell that. Don't sell America." And the way that I know for a fact that I'm right is these three charts. Again, I walked through this in detail two episodes ago, two weeks ago.
How would I know? Well, first, Euro trading against the Japanese yen, EURJPY. If I'm right and the world is going to basically sacrifice Europe and then France as part of—they're just the lowest hanging fruit, the weakest link, and as part of a really, you know, I expect the coming years to be potentially volatile, chaotic, maybe a little scary, hopefully not violent, but you just never know. You know, France and parts of Europe and the Euro system is likely to be sacrificed maybe even against their will. So, EURJPY is in fact down 5% off the summer high since Scott Bessent sold euros to support Japan. So, boom, check one.
EURJPY continues to struggle and continues to find new local lows since the summer and since Scott Bessent did that. The next chart in the middle is France's debt versus Germany's debt, and it's the spread between the two. And the reason that this is an important KPI for us to pay attention to is the more that this widens, the more the market—and mind you, guys, the markets are what matters. The markets—listen, anyone can tweet anything, anyone can podcast anything, anyone can say anything, any politician can promise anything. But again, money is our time, our energy, our effort, our labor in an abstracted form. So, watch where people put their money. Put your money where your mouth is. Put your time, your energy, your effort, your labor. You want me to say something, you want me to promise things I know are true or aren't going to happen, you want me to lie? Politicians do that all the time. But what's the market telling me? What's human time, energy, effort, and labor telling me? And what it's telling me is France to German debt spread is up to 150 basis points, meaning everyone continues to consider France as not credit worthy.
Right? If Europe was fine and France was going to be fine, then what's the difference between France and Germany? It's certainly not 150 basis points, not historically, right? Okay, maybe Germany, obviously, economic strength and exports and stuff, sure, fine. But not 150 basis points. Look at how much that has grown just over the last few months. It's up 60 basis points in the last 12 months. And this is the widest spread that it's been since the euro crisis itself.
And then the last chart, and you can see this green chart which peaked over the summer and has since collapsed. What is that? That is the biggest bank in France. Its equity is down almost 20% since the summer when Bessent sold euros to support Japan. So since Bessent did that, the euro is down 5% against the Japanese yen. France to German debt spreads have blown out entirely, and France's biggest bank, its equity is down almost 20% since the summer. Utter carnage.
So, you know, we want to philosophically disagree on things. People don't necessarily always align with my worldview or my diet or how I dress. That's fine. But this is data. This is math. This is markets. There's not much to disagree with here, okay? Now, let's get to what's happening in the streets of France, and let's talk about fourth turning.
You know, I think that there's a lot of talk and chatter about societal trends and historically watching empires fall and watching cities burn. And then there's a lot of people that talk about Austrian economics and monetary policy and government debt. I don't know many people that combine these two topics. They usually sit historically as fairly independent lines of thinking. And I think this show and me and Bitcoiners have a really unique ability to tie them together, and that's going to be my goal for the rest of this episode is just breaking down what's happening in France and why I think we can actually make a lot of sense about it.
And a lot of the youth and a lot of these movements are blaming things like capitalism and free markets. I think that blame is entirely misplaced, and we can almost make it a science as to what's happening. And I'm telling you guys, I mean, I predicted France literally burning to the ground. I predicted this, and I'm not complimenting myself as some form of genius. I actually think that there's a really sound path of logic to walk to arrive at a conclusion that leads you to things like Bitcoin, hard assets, tremendously weaker currencies, a reordering of the world.
So, by the numbers, the folks marching in the streets of France have surpassed 500,000. 550,000 marching as of October 17th, which is three days ago. Nearly 2,000 people had already been arrested by October 1st, which was three weeks ago, and over 1,000 high schools have already been hit. A lot of the protesting is around schooling. You guys can look into it. It's now grown to a much larger movement, but it was a protest against the degrading quality and access to education of teachers, the quality of schooling. And so, this was started as a youthful revolution. And over 1,000 high schools as of October 1st, again three weeks ago, were hit.
In mid-September, it was one high school had crumbling buildings, overpopulated classrooms, not enough teacher support, and today it is now a revolution that's, you know, clearly grown tremendously. Students, teachers, unions, yellow vests, farmers, retirees, it's grown into, you know, the cost to live a high-quality life seems to be out of reach for the majority of the public and they've taken to the streets and they've taken violence and they've taken lighting the city on fire as a course of action to be heard and to revolt back.
Now, let's talk in a little bit more detail about these concepts of the fourth turning. And, you know, again, I speak about these ideas as if there is science, and so I wanted to spend a little bit of time now that we're living through a literal example and try and break this down for you guys and give you an opportunity to also ask questions in the comments, ask questions in the Q&A at ask.jackmallers.com, and ask questions on Twitter and in my DMs so that any future episodes I can continue to follow through.
Because I mean, I'd be lying if I said that this type of violent revolution worries me at some point of America's future. I mean, I'm not claiming we're going to get there, especially anytime soon, but I mean, you're already starting to see signs of it like, you know, senior executives at companies getting bullets put in their back and people cheering on a murderer and calling him super sexy and hot. And, you know, like the amount of assassination attempts in the United States is growing exponentially and it's second only to the mid-1800s, which was obviously the Civil War of the United States of America. So, you know, it is a growing concern of mine and thinking about where I want to live, where I want to have children and raise my kids, it's something I think a lot about and I want to dive a little bit more detail into how I think about it and some of these vaguer concepts that I talk about, just trying to explain them to you guys in a way that the world can hopefully understand.
So, I've recommended this book before. It's called The End Times, E-N-D, The End Times by Peter Turchin. There's this historian named Peter Turchin, and to summarize it from a high level, he studies why societies come apart, okay? And his work and his claim says it comes down to really three ingredients. One is that ordinary people's living standards end up stalling and wages fall behind the cost to live.
And so, don't measure wages necessarily in nominal terms, like in fiat terms, in real terms. And we've talked about this, right? Like sure, you're getting a bonus or you're getting a raise of 3%, 4%. Congrats, because the life around you is getting 5, 6, 7% more expensive. So, if you're an idiot, you might think to yourself, "Wow, I can't believe I got this raise or this bonus." But then you're realizing, "Hold on a second. I don't have that much money after my paycheck. Rent is seemingly getting more expensive. I'm having to make shittier food choices because I can't afford the grass-fed version, or I can't afford the steak. I'm having to get more fast food."
And that's real wage growth decline, where maybe in fiat terms you're making more money, but in real terms, like who cares? We don't care about money for the sake of the money itself. We care about what the money can get us, and what all that matters is in real terms, right?
The second ingredient is what he calls elite overproduction. This is this idea that there's too many people educated and ambitious and young competing for too few good positions in society. And so, think about who started all of these protests. Think about who the assassins are in the United States of America. You know, maybe you would assume, "Oh, these are fentanyl-addicted homeless people." No, they're not. These are university-educated students. These are kids who did everything right, got their education, took out the debt, did their homework, and they see no ability to get a home, no ability to get a job, no ability to have any quality of life, be able to afford a family, be able to fall in love, be able to pursue interests, be able to be healthy and eat high-quality food and not obtain cancer, metabolic disease, obesity.
And if you put these together and add the third one, which is a government that's too broke to continue to print its way out because the bond market or a lack of their own central bank like France, then history says you get instability, societal instability. And obviously, instability could be lighting
The city on fire, violence, assassinations, all of the above, right? And this is this very common idea, okay? This is not a new idea. And again, if you look at history, so take a look at the Roman Republic, France, Russia, England, France again, the United States in the mid-1800s as I referenced, okay? This is not a new theory. So, this Peter Turchin guy, again, his work is fascinating. I highly, highly, highly recommend you guys take a look. They basically make sense of human history with data. So, they built a database of hundreds of societies across thousands of years, and this same pattern shows up again and again and again and again.
People get squeezed, too many elites fighting over too few seats, this idea of elite overproduction. And this is again why America, for example, wants to bring back local production and blue-collar work, because not everyone, in order to fulfill the American dream, it can't be everyone's a venture capitalist, everyone's a Wall Street hedge fund manager, everyone's the quarterback of the Chicago Bears, everyone is Michael Jordan. There's not enough room for everyone to be Michael Jordan, for everyone to be a hedge fund manager, for everyone to be a venture capitalist. But the problem is that's the only way to be a homeowner, to have kids and family and good quality food and a yard, and a car that's nice. That's the only way. There is no such thing as being a rare earth miner in the United States of America and having a quality of life that's worth living. And so you get everyone taking out immense amounts of debt to get an education competing for a scarce amount of societal rank.
And this is how you birth revolutionaries. And especially when you have also these kids and their tax dollars going to support programs like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Like they're paying for, you know, again, you're going to get, you know, generational tension and generational, um, you know, revolution. When you have young people that are displaced out of their jobs, up to their eyes in debt, have no place in this world, and all of their tax dollars and income is also going to supporting new knees, new hips for the older generation that's sitting on all the assets and owns majority of the wealth in the world today. They're going to start lighting things on fire.
I don't think they should, but I'm just trying to put you guys into the historical commonality, the common denominator here through all of it. Um, like again, the late Roman Republic, a century of civil wars, France's wars of religion, Russia's time of trouble, the English Civil War, the American Civil War. These are very, very, very common ideas. So let's take a closer look at France now by the numbers, okay? Let's take a look at their real wage growth or lack thereof.
From 1951 to 1996, real wage growth was plus 2.7%. So everyone was actually getting wealthier. They were earning more in real terms. So they were earning more than the things around them were getting more expensive. That's great. That's a flourishing, prosperous society. People are working hard and earning a higher quality of life for doing so. That should be the base level human tran— Well, that's the relationship that we need to have with our peers and with society without sparking revolution and violence, right? Now, all of a sudden, from 1996 to 2024, that began to flatten out. It went from 2.7% to 0.5%, marginally positive in real terms, but barely. And then, since COVID, that is now really negative. -1.4%. It was -0.5% in Q2 of this year alone. So, all of a sudden, I mean, this is a huge problem. Real wage growth is declining rapidly. And again, just according to data and history, this is one of the ingredients that ends up sparking a revolution.
Look at the bottom right, by the way. The young get it the worst. Under 25, net per month is getting 1,622 euros. Workers that are 50 years old and older are getting about twice that. Again, like it is the highly educated youth that end up revolutionizing society, okay? Now, let's go to ingredient two here. Um, so, how does falling pay turn into too many elite people? And, you know, Turchin calls this the wealth pump. I call this asset inflation.
But the logic is pretty simple. Again, this Turchin guy isn't necessarily a Bitcoiner. There are people that talk about, you know, the different chapters of the rise and fall of an empire or the rise and fall of society and why certain societies go through instability and distress and violence and why empires rise and end up falling. And then there's like Austrian economic fans and hard money fans and Bitcoiners. And I think, you know, we in this show, we have a very unique ability to make sense of both of them and how they tie together. So, he calls this the wealth pump. I call it asset inflation because it's just money printing. There's no growth in real terms, but his logic is that it's all just about supply and demand. Wages, all they are is the price of labor, how much you're willing to pay for labor. And when there are more people looking for work than there are employees needed, then the price of labor will fall, right? There's more supply than there is demand. And this is why countries and politicians argue over things like immigration. If you allow for immigration, then the price of your labor is going to fall because there's more and more and more people competing for— Just because immigrants are coming into a country doesn't mean that there's automatically more jobs. They're just competing for, you know, the job growth and maybe economic growth isn't rising as much as the people that need to be employed. Um, now, listen, I'm not trying to get too political on the show. I'm just telling you guys what the data is. So, he's basically saying when there are more people looking for work than there are employers that need work, then the price of that labor falls compared to everything else and owners of the business end up keeping the difference.
And so, maybe in the old days, like we're talking about the Roman Empire, the population grows, but the amount of land obviously doesn't. So, take a landlord for example. He or she is raising rents and the paid laborer is getting less, right? In the modern West, starting in like the 70s, wonder why the 70s, 1971, the divorce of the standard, the labor market got flooded. And now Peter Turchin claims baby boomers, women entering the workforce, he's not connecting it to the money, okay? What happened is in the 1970s, Western civilization started running these massive deficits and printing a ton of money. Okay? And what happened is if you owned assets, then you greatly appreciated in wealth. And if you didn't, then you greatly, whatever, opposite of that, depreciated in wealth. And causes a massive gap in wealth.
And that is, in my opinion, what happens. But then you get this level of elitism of people that own assets and then, you know, you get revolutionaries of people that don't. So, wages stall, you know, asset inflation gains flow up, then governments and central banks end up printing a ton of money, assets soar in these paper terms, and then the top swells, more people with elite money and elite ambitions.
And you can think of this idea of elite overproduction like a game of musical chairs, right? So, you know, there are only so many people that could occupy the top seats in society, like senior jobs or being the president of the United States or, you know, like I said, being the point guard of the Chicago Bulls. The number of people qualified and hungry for those seats keeps growing. There's more degrees, more ambition, more printed currency floating around the world. But then, when the music stops, when the bond market stops supporting all this nonsense, when the deficits get too big, when the music stops, then the question is who gets a chair?
And the insight here is that the educated, who did everything right, who did their homework, but frustrated because there's no chair for them, they become what he calls counter-elites. They organize, they lead movements, they turn popular anger into violence, into whatever, a cause. And this is a pattern before what's happening in France. This is a pattern before the French Revolution, before the American Civil War. Again, look who is lighting France on fire right now. This is very, very common, okay? This is how I called out France 2 weeks ago. It was very, very obvious. It had all the ingredients for this very unfortunate reality.
So, anyways, here is ingredient two, again, by the numbers. First, more than one in five young people in France who want a job can't find a job. Over 21% unemployed, age 15 to 24. Guys, that's not good, right? Next, the degree that they're getting doesn't buy them as much as it used to buy them. The share working a job below their qualification, before the degree they got, like being a grocer when you got a math degree, that has risen to 32%. So, one in every three workers that actually do get a job, so of the ones that are fortunate to get work and get paid for their labor, are getting jobs that are less qualified than their degree and their resume. So, they're just finding a place to fit into society that's entirely underwhelming and what they think is a raw deal.
And then the last one, in my opinion, is the most jaw-dropping. In 1983, 77% of recent graduates with a 2-year degree landed a professional or management track job. So, they're on pace to have a great life. By 2021, that number dropped to 43%. And this data is from the French government themselves. So, this is what I call musical chairs. More diplomas, fewer chairs. It doesn't get more simple than this, guys.
And then the question is, well, what's the solution? And when you have a bond market that's saying no and saying, 'You're cooked. You're dead. This system is awful. I'm not lending to you anymore to abuse and waste human time, energy, effort, and labor.' Well, then the state is too broke to calm things down. And this is kind of where it gets back to the bond market and looking at EURJPY and the spread against German debt. This is where it connects, right? When the state becomes fiscally in trouble, that's a government that borrows way too much and it can't buy its way out of all of the anger. It doesn't have the real productivity. All it can do is print money. And unfortunately, France can't even print its own money.
And so, now you have real wages falling. You have youthful students and educated revolutionaries lighting things on fire in the streets. And you have a bond market that's telling France, 'Fuck you. No way. Absolutely no chance. I'd rather own Bitcoin. I'd rather own gold. I'd rather own German debt. I'd rather own equity in Elon Musk's companies. There's 0% chance I'm lending you money.' So, France can't afford to fix the high schools that these kids are lighting on fire because the bond market won't let them. And by the way, the United States can't either. Printing money is not real productivity. Obviously, the fact that I have to say that out loud is embarrassing, but that's where we are in society.
So, I wanted to show you guys this. Now, this is US data. This is not French data, but it makes the point, okay? Look at— So, this is, you know, how expensive things have gotten over time. So, this is from 2000 to 2026. You can see what has gotten cheaper. Cell phone service, computer software, toys, television. All of the things that operate in a truly free capitalistic market where there's not much, if any, regulation, government intervention, central planning, involvement. Things get cheaper. Humans are naturally innovative, resourceful, life is deflationary, okay? What has gotten incredibly more expensive? Hospital service has gotten almost 300% more expensive. College tuition has gotten almost 200% more expensive. College textbooks have gotten almost 190% more expensive. Daycare and preschool, 162% more expensive. Medical care, 150% more expensive. Housing, 115% more expensive. Food and beverages, 108% more expensive.
Mind you, by the way, the official inflation rate over this duration is only 96%. So, somehow all of those things that we all likely need to consume or have to consume have grown far more expensive than what is somehow the official inflation rate. We've talked about this before. There's no official inflation rate. It depends on what life you want for me to tell you what the inflation rate is. But, notice a trend here? Everything that is government-heavy, that is funded, subsidized, centrally planned, regulated, zoned, has gotten incredibly more expensive. Everything without regulation, without central planning, that's allowed to operate in a free market, has somehow attracted innovation, competition, price suppression, and things have gotten cheaper. Okay? So, this idea that it's capitalism's fault, that it's the free market's fault, that it's technology's fault, again, the data, that's just absolutely, positively incorrect.
So, what's my read on the situation? These protesters are angry. But, this is, unfortunately, a very common theme throughout human history, and we have the data to identify this trend and prove it. And they, you know, not everybody, but I just want to make the point on here, and I hope, you know, nobody gets violent with me, but, you know, the claim for a lot of these protesters is that capitalism is failing them. And, listen, follow the money. Follow the data. Governments are borrowing more than they collect every single year, and then central banks keep printing money to make that debt affordable and bail them out. And that printed money is flowing into assets, homes, stocks, Bitcoin, gold. If you already own these things, if you become an asset owner, you get wealthier.
That's why I do this show, and I rant to you guys as much as I possibly can, because becoming an asset owner used to be incredibly difficult. How do you get your hands onto nice, fine real estate that will appreciate? How do you get your hands onto an incredible company equity at a good price that will appreciate? Everyone can get Bitcoin, guys. Even if you have a dollar, you can just start a DCA and get yourself some Bitcoin. It's the best thing that's happened to enabling everybody to monetize the destruction of fiat currency and short the dollar and become an asset owner and give everyone in the world real property rights like this. So, if you own these things, you get wealthier. If you're young and you only have a paycheck, you fall further behind, period. Like the real wages in France are falling. Right now, this year.
So, this— I know that the tendency is to blame capitalism, blame the entrepreneurs, blame the billionaires. The billionaires became billionaires because of all the money that they're printing. Think about the guy that bought 100 Bitcoin 15 years ago. And let's say he sat on his or her ass, maybe bagged groceries and played video games. Well, that 100 Bitcoin is now worth $8 million. Who made them a multimillionaire? It's just a lot of money printing. It's not capitalism. Capitalism is driving prices lower. The fact that technology and transportation and so many of these things are driving prices lower, we don't need regulation, we don't need central planning, we don't need government. You know, let humans build. The story of humanity is engineering a better world. It's naturally deflationary. The problem is with government, it's with the state, it's with fiat, it's with money printing. You see? This is just data, making sense of history.
Another thing, markets are always the first to tell you, okay? Again, 2 weeks ago, I'm looking at the bond market. I'm looking at EUR getting weak against the Japanese yen. And I'm telling you guys, like, human time, energy, effort, and labor will tell you the truth first. Politicians will lie to you. Social media will lie to you. Main Street media will lie to you. Television will lie to you. Markets, it's very difficult to scale markets lying through their teeth. It's very hard. And so, what told me to tell you guys 2 weeks ago? The market. And then the streets follow. Okay? So, we're going to keep our eye on the market and we're going to see what societies are in serious trouble.
And so, anyway, to end it on a little bit more of an optimistic note, listen, you know, I've always considered government debt as a form of time travel. They borrow from our future without our consent. They literally travel to the future and take our time, energy, effort, and labor. The fact that generations before us were able to work 5, 6, 7 years to own a home and now we're having to work, you know, 50, 60 years to own a home. Like literally own it, not on mortgage, pay it off, your property. That's theft of time. That's time travel. That's entering our future, grabbing our effort, our labor, our energy and spending it and wasting it today without our consent.
That's the other thing. On a gold standard, you used to have to deposit the gold to the government if they needed to defend themselves for war or they needed help financing something. And if I didn't consent to that, I kept my gold. And that was such a fair system. If we really needed to go to war and we really needed to defend ourselves, well, then the people would surely go into their savings and give a little bit of gold to make sure that we as a country were doing what we needed to do. But, if we didn't actually need to, you wouldn't get the financing to be able to afford it because everyone had to consent. Fiat money printing is a violation of our property rights and our dignity because it's without our consent. It is literally theft and abuse.
And so, my message to whoever's willing to listen is, 'Listen, you know, there are two incredibly powerful expressions, voice and exit. Okay? When voice is no longer sufficient, there's only one action left, and that's exit. And so, you want to protest? I've been protesting for 14 years now. Buy Bitcoin. It's not violent. I don't need anyone's permission. I don't need a specific politician or political agenda. Okay?' And I put the moral code, this is from my speech in Prague a few years ago, but you know, before Bitcoin is computer code or a network, I think it's moral code. And that moral code is, 'Thou shalt not inflate. Thou shalt not confiscate. Thou shalt not counterfeit. And thou shalt not censor.'
'Thou shalt treat everyone equally. Everyone is included. Everyone is treated equally. There's a freedom in coming and going. You cannot censor. You cannot counterfeit. You cannot confiscate. You cannot inflate. And you cannot steal.' It is moral code of protest. It is a peaceful protest to say, 'You know what? I'm out.' Because when voice is no longer sufficient, exit is the only option we have left to protect any dignity.
Okay. With that, some quick Strike updates, just a reminder of everything we've launched recently. So, firstly, as a brokerage, you're never paying more than 0.89% in the United States to buy Bitcoin on Strike, which I think is a remarkable deal given the quality of our products, and you pay as low as I think 0.1%. So, incredibly cheap fees, no fees on DCA-ing or direct deposit, like literally those services are on the house. Also, free Bitcoin withdrawals 24/7, as much as you want. We want to make sure that if you want to own the property yourself in a self-sovereign way and self-custody, you can do that on the house. So, I think having a DCA on Strike and with auto-withdrawing it to cold storage, both those products have no fees. It's probably the cheapest way, I mean, I don't know how it gets any cheaper than that, to acquire Bitcoin in your own hands ever in the history of the world.
People don't know this, you can pay your bills with your dollars or your Bitcoins on Strike. We have Bitcoin-backed loans and line of credit. I mean, that business is absolutely killing it. We're definitely one of, if not the largest, retail and small business, small to medium-sized business Bitcoin-backed lender in the United States of America. We just launched 3.6% interest paid in Bitcoin on your cash balance. So, if you have a rainy day fund, if you have operating cash, and you want to earn 3.6% interest, it accrues daily, paid out on the first of every month, and we pay that out in Bitcoin. We're also launching the ability to pay it out in fiat if you want. I don't know, some of you guys wanted that feature. Couldn't be me, but that's really cool. I don't need your interest to pay my bills. So, we pass it all back to you guys.
We launched stacks, which is an ability to organize your Bitcoins, your savings within Strike for goals. So, you have a stacks for a vacation next year, stacks for your kids, stacks for a new yard, stacks for that down payment on a house. You can set up DCAs to stacks, you can swap Bitcoin in and out and between stacks, and this feature is evergreen. You guys can imagine all of the add-ons we're going to continue to do. The reception's been great to it. I'm really glad that you guys love the feature and we'll continue to just listen to you and build what you want.
And then we've got a ton of security stuff shipping. We just shipped custom send limits. So right now I actually enabled this on my Strike account. My account can't send more than a certain amount of money on any given weekly 7-day rolling basis and in order to change that limit, there's a 5-day cool-off period. So if someone wrench-attacked me, physically attacked me, and tried to steal money from my Strike account, in order to change that limit, in order to get a bunch of money off my account, that would give me 5 days to reach out to Strike, let them, let us know what happened, prove it, and really, really, really protects your funds. And then on top of that, we have passkeys, 2FA, anti-phishing codes via email. So we want to become the most secure Bitcoin account in the world. I mean, this is the complete Bitcoin account if you ask me. You guys already know we're working on some custody stuff and some more security stuff as well, like whitelisted addresses. So really exciting.
There's no particular update. We're just shipping so much right now. I don't know. I figured this would maybe be useful if you missed one or two things. And then the schedule this week. As I mentioned, I'm in Europe, so I try and do as much content as I can, but you guys know this is not like how I pay my bills. I do it for the love of the game. I do it for the love of the people. I do it for the revolution. So I'm going to do the best I can. I know we've got a Bitcoin history episode that we're still editing and trying to make perfect, but this is what led to Satoshi's discovery before 2008. Just taking a look at the Cypherpunks and cryptography and distributed network technology and all of the things that led to Bitcoin and this discovery. Hopefully that comes out this week.
We should have a new animation tomorrow. I love these like short educational animated videos. And then I always, I told you guys if I say I'm going to do it, I do it. You'll always get a Q&A video out of me at least once a week. So if you guys want to ask questions, you can call in at ask.jackmallers.com. Literally ask me anything your heart desires. There are no rules. You can be totally anonymous if you want. And then I go through, try and listen to them all and pick some that I think are relevant to what's going on and some of the topics that are most requested and I just hit record and we just talk about it.
So with that, I'll see you guys tomorrow. We'll drop a new animated educational video tomorrow. Maybe about inflation. We'll see. We'll see which one I pick. And hopefully get the Bitcoin history video out. We'll do some Q&A towards the end of the week and I'll be back in exactly 7 days to do this all over again. Hopefully you learn something new. Hopefully you understand that a lot of the crumbling of society has to do with money printing, debasement, the distortion of wealth, the theft of human time, energy, and labor. If you guys ever have any questions, comments, feedback, we're all in this together. Just leave it below. I read all my DMs. I read all the YouTube comments. You guys are the ones that really drive the vision of my businesses and my show. I love you all and I'll talk to you later.
