Hello, my fellow extraordinary Americans. Welcome back to the show, in today’s episode, we have Max Sutherland. 

Max Sutherland is the president and CEO of the World Trade Center Atlanta, and he’s committed to expanding global trade by uniting and connecting the international business community across the region and around the globe. With headquarters in New York and more than 325 Centers, strategically located around the world, the WTC Atlanta promotes and facilitates international trade and investments providing the commercial environment, industry and government access, trade services, and educational programming that brings executors, entrepreneurs, governments and businesses, and markets together. 

Max has been on WTC, Atlanta’s board of directors since 2017. Is chairman of the Executive board. And has a seat on the World Trade Center’s Association’s global trade advisory council. Prior to joining the WTC Atlanta Max worked for over 25 years on Wall Street. At Citicorp, the Chase Manhattan Bank, the UBS, and Bank of America, and the BIG4 Consulting at KPMG and Deloitte. 

He specializes in solving challenging issues, which include global growth strategies enterprise-wide. Turnarounds, investment funding, and Strategic International CEO initiatives. His global experience and responsibility span 6 continents and multiple cultures and industries providing insights and alternative practices to bar broad business challenges and investments. 

Max is a very unique insight into how the American economy works and is truly an extraordinary American, and I’m honored to have him on the show. Max, are you there? 

I am… Cosmos. Good afternoon. How are you?

Yeah, I’m doing good. How are you?

I am good and thank you for inviting me to your podcast. 

No, it is truly an honor to have you on this show. So, Max, I know that you are like President and CEO, and also like you’ve been in the banking industry. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got started? 

So, I’m actually very lucky in the fact that my parents were from America, from the United States, the other from Europe, from Germany, my mother, and at a very early age I was exposed to multiple cultures, languages, economies, and policies. 

And I enjoyed it a great deal, and it was just a natural progression for me. My parents actually, and my grandparents actually wanted me to go on the diplomatic course, so I was groomed from a very early age to be a diplomat. When I was in college in my undergraduate, I had an experience of a lifetime that actually changed my direction.

I realized that if I wanted to make a great impact on the world. The best way to do that would be through business. So instead of going into the foreign service that I felt was not as effective as it once was, I felt that the big corporations were the organizations that were leading change around the world and impacting change around the world. So, I headed off to Wall Street. 

Wow, that’s pretty interesting. Normally a lot of people have a very negative view of Wall Street and banks in general. Your perspective is interesting because this is how the world generally works. 

Well, exactly because I was actually in for the most part international payment products. And I was responsible for global businesses three global businesses when I was at Chase when I was at Citicorp, I was responsible for the German, French, and Italian accounts throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa. And was up for relocation at one point early in my career. But the Latin American. Phone defaults kind of stepped up from it. Stop that from happening, and as a result, they sent me to believe it or not, Buffalo NY instead for a yearlong internal MA project, and that MA project was actually what kind of catapulted or set the direction for my career and catapulted me to nice positions on Wall Street? 

Well, so I have a question, Max. During your time during your career, what were some of the biggest lessons that you learned while you were working with the banks and Wall Street and also with WTC Atlanta?

Well, I’ve always had the end goal in mind, I mean, I still want to be able to impact the world somehow on some kind of level. And bring positive change that increases and raises the wealth levels of countries and populations around the world. 

My thought has always been that I’ve been offered many, many great positions that anyone would consider would be great positions, but I didn’t feel somehow, they fit into my end goal. They didn’t add to what my end goal was. 

So, I turned them down. There were a number of positions that with very blue-chip names that I turned down. My advice to anybody would be, to know the end what the end result is that you’re shooting for it and consider every opportunity carefully to make sure that it falls in line and will give you some added skills that will help you achieve your end goal.

I see. So, like the thing and one of the questions that a lot of people would have been how do you basically strategize your life goal into like these one-year three-year, five-year plans? Because I know like you, you have to like to look way ahead to basically plan everything out and you were very strategic in your thinking. So how would you advise Somebody who is Starting their own business or something to basically be strategic with?

Again having the end result in mind is very key, and then you can then compartmentalize. From there, what? And you figured it out? What is that? What is that strategic route going to be? Is it education? Is it on the job or is it job experience or work experience? Is it working for a large corporation? Is it working for me instead and there are different ways to get to that end result? You have to sit down and be honest with yourself as to what is realistic. 

I’ve been asked many times throughout my career. By already seasoned professionals, guys that were my age and at that time it was already in my 40s and early 50s. Asking me. How can they gain global experience? And if you’re asking that question in your 40s and 50s? It’s already too late. You need to start that quest from undergrad on and get as much undergrad international experience as possible, whether it’s through international studies or work-study programs abroad. Either way, you need to leave undergrad with at least an international perspective, if not a global perspective. 

One of the things that I transitioned to when I was an undergrad by my initial major for going into the diplomatic corps. My initial major was just international political science. However, as I mentioned, had this once-in-a-lifetime experience that changed my career and changed my life as result of that midway through my undergrad years, I added Economics, and macroeconomics to my studies and I had a double major degree in political science and economics. 

My focus was consistent with political science, and international relations, and my focus consistently on economics was macroeconomics. Because I wanted to understand how nations interact with each other. How the rich nations interact with the developing nations and what those rich nations do, both from a political policy perspective and also from an economic policy perspective. What they need to do to elevate those wealth levels in those developing nations is to then become strategic markets for the developed nations, the wealthy nations to be able to do business in. 

Because you can’t be as wealthy, a wealthy nation cannot just go into a market with products that they produce that are much more advanced than a developing nation needs. They have to 1st raise the wealth level of that nation and the standard of living to expect those kinds of new products. 

It’s really interesting that you bring up this point, Max, because I know like a while back, I read the book, the Wealth of nations. It was a really interesting book and there’s a lot of debate on capitalism and socialism. But the thing is, you have to have a certain way of giving exchange to others and you got to like, have products and services. You have to be in a producing mindset. But a lot of people don’t understand that on a macro level and like how it works. My question to you would be, what is the greatest epiphany that you had during your time? Understanding how macroeconomics work 

So, my thought was always that there has to be a natural progression for a, especially for a developing country. I don’t think personally, and this is my personal opinion, I think it’s very difficult for a poor developing nation to go directly to capitalism. Because if they make that lead directly to capitalism, pure capitalism as we have here. If they make that lead. There will be a lot of not only individuals but generations that will be lost. 

You’ll then have this incredible divide between the very wealthy individuals and the majority of the population, which will still be poorer. There has to be a program. Whether you call it a social program or whether you call it an architectural type of program that brings the entire population along the bell curve so that it raises everybody up instead of just a few at the top. And a lot of that has to begin at the very grassroots, not only the grassroots and the villages, countryside, and even in the cities, but it has to start at the grassroots of the young population. 

So, they need to be educated with an understanding of how to help their fellow man A and then understand the mechanisms of capitalism. I think it’s a very difficult leap for a lot of countries to make. For us, it was a different situation because we were never truly a poor country, not a poor country like a number of nations around the world. We were a colony of the greatest, one of the greatest empires on Earth, and one of the greatest. In history, we had an advantage because of that and because of our English roots. We already had an understanding of early understanding of how corporations were set up, how stocks and shares were exchanged, how profits were shared, and things like that. That all came out of the UK, I believe, because of and I think a lot of that had to do with the expansion of the empire. 

No, I mean that’s a really interesting concert on that evolution of how America came to where it is. One thing I would notice though is you’re mentioning that in developing nations, there would be a big disparity, but a lot of people say that right now there is a big disparity in America itself between and then they’re saying that America is like no longer like a Dell it’s turning into a third-world country, but what would be your opinion regarding that? 

Yeah. So, I Don’t think it’s turning into a third-world country, and 1st off. I think people use the term third. From my understanding of my studies, years ago, Third World actually refers to countries that are neither that were neither aligned with the United States nor aligned with Russia, especially during the cold, Cold War, when the US and the USSR were the two global world powers. And countries were either aligned with the Russians or they are aligned with the Americans. 

But there were many countries around the world that were neither aligned with either one nor were actually what was termed the Third World countries. I think a lot of people, especially businesspeople, have hijacked the term. It now refers to poor countries. That was not the original definition of what Third World countries are. 

We are here having it though, following up on your question. We do have here in the US this major disparity and that gap is growing wider and wider and wider between the haves and the have-nots. And I think a lot of that has to do with our education system, our educational system primes and sets students up to be employees and government workers. Or small business professionals like dentists and art and lawyers and accountants and things like that. 

They don’t necessarily train students on both the financial literacy requirements to be a big business owner or entrepreneur. Nor do they teach the students to be investors. True investing. And I’m not talking about day traders. I’m talking about this serious investor who can take the financials of a company and determine the viability and lucrativeness of that company. To see if it is worthy of any investment either… first off is that company already a mature company or is it still a nascent organization that needs funding in order to grow?

We don’t train, we don’t teach our students to think from that perspective. And in that in that space, we think that we train them to be employees. And like I said, professionals like lawyers and accountants and things like that, and government workers, and not that there’s anything wrong with any of that but. When years ago, when we still had these large companies that provided benefits and pensions for their employees. And a young person could join one of these companies like a GM or any of the steel manufacturers and things like that. They could join as young individuals and spend their entire life there, their entire career in one place, and 45/40/45 years later. They can retire and they get used to getting a monthly pension from that employer that enables them to keep continuing living without having to work. That has all changed in the past few decades. When they switched.

Because a lot of these pension plans were draining the companies and they were going bankrupt because of the heavy burden because people were living longer than they did before. Life expectancy expanded up into the 80s, I think we’re in the mid-80s now, depends on actually it depends. I think we’re in the high 70s at the moment like 76 to 78. But if there are studies that if someone has a degree or even just a bachelor’s degree, it actually reaches up into the low to mid-80s for life expectancy. 

Having said that though, because people are living now longer and people were still retiring at 65, the companies were having to pay these pensions for longer than they originally expected. And it was draining on the company. So, they changed that to a defined contribution. 

So now instead of the employer putting money into a fund that will years later pay you a pension check every month. They now expect the employee to … and this was passed by Congress because so many of the defined benefit plans were going bankrupt and collapsing, the Washington Congress set up and changed the law so that there was a defined contribution plan, so the individual employee contributed into a mutual fund, a monthly or an IRA, or something like that on a regular basis. Currently, you would think that would give the individual control and give the individual employees some a bit of control, but it doesn’t give them the knowledge of really doing this properly and really where there are so many mutual funds out there first off, there’s a high growth, there are conservative ones there. I don’t remember what all the different categories are, but. There are some people that put all their money into high-risk, high-growth plans and they lose it all because they’re not investing smartly and that’s because we’re not giving them the skills and the knowledge to do that. 

You bring up an excellent point, Max, because that’s like we’re going to like the gist of, like, what’s happening, what has happened over the past 50-60 years. So, like there was a time around the 50s or 60s when there was a healthy middle class. But now because of all these policies and because of these, these hidden causes, like most people, they don’t know why things are happening, but they just see the change, but they don’t know why it’s happening; so, because of what you just said right now. 

So like the middle, like the companies made all these changes and now the middle class started like all the many of the jobs also got outsourced. And it just created a lot of things like loss, loss of jobs, and people like they don’t know what to do about it altogether. 

So, my question to you would be a lot of people have this American dream, like they go back to the 1950s, nineteen 60s and they had this vision of, like, OK, I’m going to like the Company will take care of me for life and things are going to go fine. I can have a family. I can have kids and then everything will be fine, but obviously, the reality is not that it’s uncertain. 

So what is your opinion overall about how this has changed and how it affects the American worker?

So that is a very big question and not only… And I want to back up a little bit here. It wasn’t really the corporations that changed from defined benefit to defined contribution. That was actually Congress that did that. And I think that happened in the 70s sometime in the 80s. 

And that was the intention, was a good intention. Congress wanted to protect the individual because they were because of these pension plans that were going bust, and people were retiring and there was no pension for them to live on and they hadn’t saved all those years or planned for their retirement because they knew they were going to be taken care of by their former employer because this impacted so many people, Congress, with good intentions, changed the law. Take the power away from the companies and put it in the hands of the employees. 

Unfortunately, they did not close the circle or close the loop here by giving those individuals, the employees, the training on how to do this properly. I remember back in, in the early days of my career in the 80s, they would have, and I was working for Citicorp. At the time. I believe they had someone come in from benefits to explain these different mutual funds and all this other stuff. That’s all it was. I think it lasted maybe an hour, possibly 2 tops. It wasn’t certain enough information at all for anybody to be a serious and responsible investor. So now that responsibility is taken off the plates of the corporate executives, they no longer have to plan for portions of the revenue that’s coming in to have to be set aside for pension plans. 

So now all of a sudden, they have more money to work with Than what they Used to have then we. Struggled a bit in the 70s and 80s with quality of work and innovation. Smartly, and rightfully so. And I think this is… This is a double-edged sword but… I’ll get to that as to what the ultimate benefits, though, are from this, but they needed to develop their R&D capabilities. They needed to build out those research and development capabilities and new technologies. 

The only way to do that is because of the workers here, especially the. The manufacturing workers here in the US were getting paid back in the 70s and 80s, fifty to 60 to $70.00 an hour, which is, you know, 100 to $140,000 a year in the 70s and 80s. That was a lot of money. I remember that in the early 70s, my parents took me out when I traveled for the first time by myself, at the age of 11 transatlantic. My parents took out a $90,000 insurance policy on me in 1971 in case I were kidnapped. My parents could pay ransom for that. They could pay the ransom with that. The $90,000 doesn’t today. Doesn’t sound like a lot of money. Back then, it was a lot of money in today’s value. That’s that $90,000 is worth over $650,000. 

So someone who is making them in the 70s and 80s working at an auto factory. Or any of these other factories where they are making 50, 60, or $70.00 an hour. They’re pulling in big bucks. These companies could not they? They didn’t have the excess cash to sink into. Research and development come out with new technologies and new products that were more in line with and advancing nations’ capabilities and especially of wealthy nations’ capabilities. 

So, a lot of those jobs did have to in order to shrink the cost and to be able to have more money to sink into research and development they had to offshore a lot of these jobs now. I wonder if sometimes there could have been a better way of offshoring this process. I mean, it seemed like it was a gold rush, and everybody was heading instead of heading to California in 1849, they were going to Asia. And that was the proverbial goal. Because labor was so inexpensive, and they could have. 10/15/20 people do the job that one person here in the US was doing and they were still paying only a small percentage of what that one person was earning or being paid here. 

So, it didn’t matter about having as much efficiency there because they because the manpower was there, the labor force was there and there was always a new generation and younger generation come. I know that in a number of the markets as recently as the 90s and early 2000s or even the late 2000s if you did not, a young individual had to make as much money as they could by the time they hit 30, because usually by the time they hit 30, they were replaced by a younger person, they no longer had a job, so they had to do something else and it certainly was not earning the kind of money that the American companies and plants were paying them there. That was huge, that’s a huge problem. It did raise the wealth level and we see that with China, and we see that now with Vietnam. We see it in Thailand. In a few other Southeast Asia, Malaysia now is a very well-to-do country. 

So, you see these the effects of the American corporations offshoring to those, those countries and those labor markets at the same time, while they were doing that, could then invest. Their surplus cash, I know that a lot of this went to bonuses, which was wrong, I agree, however Even with all the bonuses, there was still excess cash that was being paid as dividends. And a lot of that money was going into research and development, coming out with new products that could compete with the European Products, especially on the automotive side, the 60s, seventies, 80s, especially the 70s, the 80s, the European auto market or auto models were far more advanced than what our hours were here. 

And yet we developed here the entire not… I’m not sure if the car was actually. First developed here in the US or the UK. But with Ford doing what’s called the assembly line, the United States perfected the creation and manufacturing of automobiles on a large scale that had never been done anywhere else. And then everybody else took care of our technology and the way we did things here. And they improved upon them there. And they also improved upon the quality of the work and the lines and the sleekness and everything else. 

So, Europe in the 70s and 80s, was that actually pumping out far superior products than what we were here? So that money, that excess money, had to go into developing new product lines, sleek product lines that would compete with the European market, the European models. But it also had to… They also had to develop new technologies that would bring the cost down. So, the American population could still afford these products. And this is one of the reasons. Why we have seen here in the US the stagnation of wage growth. Over the past 30-40 years, we’ve had. We got a little bit of wage growth out of the pandemic. But now we also have inflation. 

Backs. That is exactly what the next question I wanted to ask you was regarding exactly that. 

So, everything that you’re saying is true like these things happen beyond the American worker’s control, but now they were faced with not just loss of jobs with stagnant wages, but you were mentioning how $90,000 is equivalent to six, $50,000. It’s obvious that inflation has happened, right? There’s been a lot of

Inflation has no doubt surpassed our wage growth dramatically. And I think that’s part of why this has trickled into other aspects of our economy and our market. It has trickled into the healthcare industry because as time has gone on, there have been a lot of, there are a lot of healthy products that are developed out there. But there are also a lot of fast-food junk products that are available on the shelves and grocery stores that are cheaper than these healthier products, and if an individual’s wages are not growing, to be able to afford these healthier products, they then migrate to these cheaper products which only exacerbates then the health conditions that we’re seeing today. But I think it has proliferated the entire obesity pandemic that we have here. 

I don’t like love it, but it’s just so fascinating how there’s like an interconnection between everything. But like basically what I realized like when I was studying the American economy was OK, these people lost their jobs. There’s now stagnation of wages, relative stagnation, but because of the inflation is more the wages are not keeping up with the inflation, and then on top of that, the American worker now has to deal with debt like where he has to take on debt to maintain the lifestyle that they already had in the 1950s and 90s because nobody wants to lose the lifestyle that they have like they’re trying to hold on to it. 

But as a result of that, two people, the mother, and the father are working now, and they have two jobs and they’re trying to maintain the same lifestyle, but inflation keeps going, and now the debt, now they have to take on debt. So, what is your opinion regarding the entire situation that we find where there are stagnant wages, inflation, and debt, and then there’s the disappearance of the middle class in general? 

Yeah. So when I was young. This is way before your time. I remember I was still very familiar with most families where the husband worked and the mother and the wife stayed at home to raise the children and take care of the household, for the vast majority of people that work quite well, a husband could bring home the bacon. And they live quite comfortably. I mean, they weren’t necessarily upper middle class, but they lived. They were a good, solid middle-class family. And two people. And then even so husband and wife back then could live as cheaply as one. You know, as I’m not sure if you’re single or not, but single individuals create a lot of waste. Because when they go grocery shopping. 

I am single but. 

They buy even if they don’t buy. Bulk they may buy a loaf of bread and how many single individuals get through the entire loaf of bread before it starts getting moldy? Not very many people. I think there’s some waste there. There’s a lot of waste and other things as well with regard to groceries, they always said that two people could easily live as cheaply as one because. That second person is not going to require more food to eat, but we’ll just help consume the amount that the single individual was buying for himself, or herself. Today, however, that’s different today.

It does take 2 wage earners to feed the family. That wasn’t the case years ago, and that is because of the. An increase in inflation has increased our prices throughout. I’m sorry, let me just mute this, increase our prices out there for everything from groceries to transportation to automobiles. To even gasoline, I mean, I still remember the days when the 70s, when gasoline was $0.24 a gallon. I even remember in the late 90s. When gasoline was only and this was in New Jersey, just outside of Manhattan, on the other side of the tunnel, gasoline was $1.17 a gallon. 

I’ve never seen a dollar-center gallon of gasoline, but it’s my time, you know. 

I mean it literally. It was as low in the 70s as 20-4 cents a gallon. That’s the 22 to 24 cents a gallon that was the cheapest that I remember in my lifetime. I don’t remember what it is, what it was in the 60s because I wasn’t paying attention, but I started paying attention during the oil embargo of the early, early mid-70s. 

So, you see. Like over here, I’m seeing an A-like cause and effect on a very intricate level. 

So you have had the traditional household where you had the husband bringing in the bacon. There was like the traditional wife, they had those, the family, this was the American dream. if you ask a lot of People, have a view of that as the American dream where you have this manufacturing job that’s paying the big bucks. 

Like really good money. And then now, because now all of a sudden that American dream is just taken away, and now two people have to do their jobs and you know how financial stress. To marriage problems and you see the divorce rates all going up. 

So, what is your opinion in general about how an American like let’s say you have an American worker right now; how should he see the entire cause and effect what should? How should he go about it? What’s the right thought and action if you had to speak to somebody? 

So, and we touched on this a bit with regard to employers, we kind of alluded to it. Employees are no longer loyal to their employees. And as a result, employees are no longer loyal to their employers, and an individual, a young individual, joining the workforce today is expected to have upwards of 10 plus jobs if even more by the time they hit their late 30s or 40 or even early 40s. They will have already gone through not only a number of different jobs, but they may have switched industries and they may have refocused their careers.

That wasn’t heard of way back when. That was people who job-humped and hopped back then. But was typically Someone who did not want to hire. Because they were not loyal to the employer, and they would be gone in a couple of years today, you’re like if you get a couple of years out of an employee, right? And the individual, the young, the young population, today they’re entering the market. They need to 1st off be aware of that and know that every time they switch jobs, whether they do it voluntarily or they get downsized or outsourced or something where they lose their job, there’s always going to be a few months in there or potentially a few months in between the job. They’re leaving the new job they’re starting. 

So, they’re always tapping into their savings. So, it’s really hard to build up that savings A&B. It’s even harder to continue that type of investing mentality. Contributing into a plan, because typically when you leave an employer, you have to transfer that money over within a certain amount of time. 

Otherwise, it’s just distributed to you, and when it’s distributed to you, you have to pay all these penalties, so you lose all this money that you put into this contributed to the plans. I’m not a big fan of mutual funds, to begin with, but for the individual who doesn’t want to take the time to become financially literate, those are good for them. But I think that they should also, though, work very focused on becoming financially literate’.

Financial literacy is extremely important so that they understand the mechanisms. The analysis lies in the analysis capabilities of being able to identify a good investment opportunity, or they can start doing investment on the side themselves. Whether it’s through real estate or a new business or anything else, start-up and then continue working their day job while they’re doing something else on the side and then bringing and then be able to make that transition at some point over to either becoming an investor, a full time or becoming an entrepreneur full time. 

It’s a process, though. Our education system doesn’t do it right, so the individual has to take control and they have to also develop the skills That they can leverage as well in the interim until they’re able to be an investor full-time or to be an entrepreneur full-time, they need to develop skills that an employer will want to hire to bring on because you need, you need to be able to cover your monthly expenses, right? You need a roof over your head. You need food in your belly, and you need transportation to get from here to there. Whether it’s through mass transit or you own a car, those are the three basic things that you need to have. 

So, you need to develop the skills that enable and make it easier for you to get those jobs that are going to pay for the fact that those jobs at the moment are really high-tech jobs. We talked about companies, these corporations that offshored manufacturing, and sent them to Asia. I think actually we missed the boat here. I think our corporations really hold a lot of responsibility for what’s happening at the southern border. I think that companies should have gone 1st To Central America and South America to Latin America and worked in the Western Hemisphere to build up those markets throughout the Western Hemisphere and stabilizers, especially in Central America.

Had they done this people would not have the crime went rate wouldn’t be nearly what it is today, and people, citizens of those Central American countries, would not have felt the need for safety reasons to flee and illegally emigrate or migrate to the US across the board. Illegally, but These jobs we’re now seeing a lot of things going on with China because of the pandemic and the supply chain and how this pandemic has seriously disrupted our supply chain. And there have been a lot of cargo ships that have gotten backlogged in the Asian ports and a lot of them, they’re even backlogged that were backlogged for a while Offshore outside of LA. 

We see that now and as a result, a lot of companies are beginning to restore those jobs. They’re either restoring them back to the US or they’re nearshoring them South of the border, which is good as well. But those jobs that are coming back are not the same jobs that are left. Those jobs that were left were very hand intensive. They were very manually intensive. 

The jobs that are coming back today because they’ve had the time to develop new technologies and put a lot of funding into research and they have, these companies have built these highly automated plants, so as a result, those were those jobs that were needed in the plants here back in the 50s, sixties, and 70s and even in the 80s before they were offshored. Those jobs are no longer being done by an individual. Those jobs are being done by a robot or a machine of some sort. 

Automation, yeah. 

Automation, right? So, the jobs that are required today are the people who run those robots, the people who can repair those robots, the people who can maintain those machines and those computer systems? And who can write the code so that these machines and these robots know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing or do these computers know what they’re supposed to be doing? And I mean, we’re getting up into that artificial intelligence we’re pushing into that space very quickly and those are the skills that are highly needed. And now for those jobs that are coming back. 

So, Max makes a wonderful point here. 

So, my question to you would be doing the transition cause so you know the American worker like they were used to this certain skill set, it was outsourced and now it’s being restored back. But with they need. But there’s a requirement of a different set of skill sets, but a lot of people. They’re having difficulty with the transition process. 

So, what kind of structures would be needed to help these people transition smoothly from the old sort of jobs to this new world?

So, I think that first of all, again education is key. And I think our educational system has dropped the ball a great deal because it hasn’t prepared any of these generations or the past few generations to be able to do the work that needs to be done now. I think that we have to open up. Because so much is not being done at the high school level and educating our young generation. 

It used to be back in the 50s. You only needed a high school education. You could get a very well-paying job. By the 70s, you needed a college degree, and an undergraduate degree to get a very good job. Today, it’s almost as if you need a master’s degree to get a very good job. The talent, the capabilities that are coming out of our K through 12 system, our secondary education system is so much lower than what it was years ago. There are students that are coming out of school, and they don’t nearly have the skills that prepare them for not only today’s work requirements but they wouldn’t have been qualified for the same work requirements that were available back in the 70s and 80s. Let alone you know the 50s because in the 50s all they needed was a high school education. 

I think that we need. I think it’s a very good idea to make community colleges an extension to go beyond two things, to go beyond high school and go from high school to Community College and get those skills and that knowledge that will help them to go on further perhaps to get a four-year degree if they want to go that direction, I think we also need those community colleges I believe should be free to the public because we’re not giving the students in high school the kind of skills and education that they used to give you to go. I also think that we need to seriously bring back vocational schools. 

There was a time I remember year years ago. A student going from grade school to junior high, and I don’t remember if it happened in junior high already or if it happened in high school when they went from junior high to high school. But when one of those two transitions, they could either go the academic route, which was high school, which would give them knowledge and language skills and mathematics skills, mathematical skills, and that kind of stuff. Didn’t necessarily prepare them for any specific job. It basically prepared them to go on to college. Other individuals could go to vocational schools and those vocational schools could have been mechanics could be accounting, could be secretarial schools. 

I mean, there were so many different vocational schools that they could take a path that they could take but. There were plenty of them back then. I haven’t seen a vocational school in many, many, many years. I don’t know what has ever happened to vocational schools. I know that some high schools have some vocational programs in their high schools, but I don’t know to what extent that is.

So, Max you bring up the point that’s necessary like it’s education and transition. It’s just that a lot of people, a lot of Americans find it difficult to adjust to reality and then they’re looking for something outside that like the politicians to fix the problems. But we have to know that we are our own Saviors. We got to take matters into our own hands.

Right, absolutely. I mean the individual, the individual, and the end are responsible for what happens from now on.

Most People don’t want to hear that they want to talk.

No, they don’t want to hear that they want to hear that the government is going to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Those days are over, especially here at the moment. Those days are over. You know, we just saw each other this past week. Even the eruption during Biden’s state of the Union with the. There is and I think it’s representative Scott out of Florida, who put together a plan that would sunset or eliminate Social Security and Medicare and require Congress to vote on it every five years. I remember when I was growing up, we never expected Social Security to be even available. To us when we retired. Let alone any of the other programs. Because it just wasn’t sustainable. 

So, if there’s always going to be that looming threat or concern that Social Security is going to be there and forget, even whether it’s going to be there or not, I can guarantee that whatever you get from Social Security will never be enough to pay your monthly bills because you also have to pay taxes out of that. So, with rents going up and cost of living going up and food going up and transportation going up and Social Security remaining flat or getting very meager minor increases over the years, it’s not that’s not keeping up with inflation and it’s not covering expenses. 

So, we’re going to have a huge problem at some point when the last of the baby boomers and I’m towards the end of the baby boomers. I think they’re like five years after me and that’s the end of the baby boom generation. When those people turn… Over these next 10 years, you’re going to see a flood of retirees in the market here and not enough people that are out there working that are contributing to this system that is going to be able to pay for all these retirees that are now living longer lives. 

So, it’s up to the individual to be able to start working for themselves. To plan for that future and what that planning is, they’ve got to sit down and really think hard about what they’re going to need years from now and how they get from here to there through a higher education where they go on to become and get a job that pays very. High wages or salaries, but that’s never a guarantee. 

Not everybody graduates with degrees. Whether their bachelor, master’s, or doctorate ends up with a great paying job, that’s kind of a myth that the educational system, the higher education system. Is promoting is that go for your degree and you will get you will land this great paying job. There are a lot of people out there that have very high degrees and are highly educated and can’t get a job. So it’s important that the individual takes control of them, their own destiny, as opposed to leaving that up to the government and buying into a lot of these myths that Are out there.

Max, everything that you’ve said so far essentially literally compliments and motivates my reason why I’m doing extraordinary America like, and like why this had to happen because extraordinary America is ultimately about financial literacy and financial education because of individuals taking matters into their own hands. Because ultimately, we can’t rely on people. Outside of ourselves, we have to do this ourselves, ultimately. 

So, you bring up an amazing point. But so Max on a different note, could you tell me and the audience a little bit more about WTC Atlanta and what it does and all that?

Yeah, certainly. So, the World Trade Center organization is, you know, everybody thinks that there’s only one, or a lot of people think there’s only one in. That’s the one in New York. To be honest with you, I thought that too, having lived in New York for 18/19 years, working on and off Wall Street, the World Trade Center, and the Twin towers were part of my daily life, whether I traveled to Wall Street and got out of the whether it was the pass station or the subway station at Wall at the World Trade Center, or I would lunchtime, go to the World Trade Center because they had a great a lower level Shopping mall with great restaurants and everything and I really miss my smoked salmon Salad sushi rolls that this one restaurant got, and you had to get there early to get it. Otherwise, you missed out on it. I missed those. I’ve never been able to find them since, but the World Trade Center, I thought. That was the only. One in the world. And when I moved to Atlanta one of the board members reached out to me. In the World Trade Center, Atlanta asked me if I’d be interested in a board seat. 

My first response was what? There’s a World Trade Center, in Atlanta? And not only is there one but here, there are about 320, some around the world. It’s a very large organization that is focused on the mission of developing markets. And facilitating commerce. Both inbound and outbound, there are some organized World Trade centers. And mind you, they’re all licensed, so they’re able to run their business as in the business model that they choose. I mean there. Are certain legal guidelines and branding and marketing guidelines that they have to adhere to? But beyond that, it’s not like a franchise where the operations are consistent everywhere. You have the opportunity to create whatever type of World Trade Center you want as long as you adhere to the legal, branding, and marketing aspects or requirements. 

So, there are some World Trade centers out there that are purely real estate and they have they typically are developers that have and architects that have developed a building commercial building and they lease out the office space and they create this ecosystem of international trade and investments service providers or companies that engage in international business. There are other World Trade centers out there that also offer conferences, programming, education, and investment opportunities. And they are more engaged in the community and play a more pivotal role in the community. 

The World Trade Center Atlanta’s mission has been to do all of that; to not only go back to 1982, but we were also our conception was 1982. The three founding fathers were John Portman Junior, Ambassadors Andrew Young, and Maynard Jackson, who created this back in and purchased the license back in 82. They have donated that license to the company, the Corporation of the World Trade Center, Atlanta. Inc, the Board of directors. Nobody owns that license. The Board of directors because the corporation owns it. The Board of Directors has a fiduciary. And custodial responsibility of maintaining that license and a good stand. 

So, we offer conferences, program events, and spotlight events on different markets around the world. We have an Academy that students can take and the track that we have at the moment, there are four different modules. These are all the way from strategy to operations and legal aspects, and financials and all that for someone who is wanting to either branch out into new markets overseas or foreign companies that want to come into the US market here. 

So, we have the Academy program we’re working on securing real estate. We are in conversation. Some of the owners of buildings in downtown Atlanta brand the building as World Trade Center Atlanta and create an ecosystem here of international trade investment and then in which we want to then be able to have dedicated space where we will launch First off, incubator space or Center for… Not for local companies’ startup companies, but rather foreign companies that want to enter the US or SE or Georgia market or Atlanta market and dip their toes into it without committing long term for office space. They’re able to do it Through us, and they would have that, that office space and they would also have that connection affiliation with the World Trade Center Atlanta, which would give them more panache when they’re out there marketing who they are. 

And then we also want to launch an international trade and investment. It’s called the center for International Trade and Investments. So, it Is an R&D-type think tank that will convene power brokers and players not only from around Atlanta because we have one of the highest concentrations of Fortune 500 headquarters here in Atlanta. But we also have a high level of Foreign companies or international global companies that have operations here in Atlanta, but we also have 70 consulates, we have 30, some by national Chambers of Commerce. We have 54 local Chambers of Commerce and the greater Atlanta area. We have a number of global organizations. And we have access to the global World Trade Center’s Association around the world and we have 60 universities here in Atlanta in the greater Atlanta area. 

So we can tap into this incredible pool of intellectuals as well as experienced individuals, executives who know and have the eyes and ears on the ground through their companies around the world and know what needs to be done, where we can then identify, you know, can convene these power brokers and economically challenged markets around the world that can benefit from trade investment with Georgia, but first, need to be somehow shored up. Whether shoring up is a requirement or a need from a financial perspective or the financial system. That is the healthcare system and many times it’s the healthcare system, but also it could be political stability. 

We have the Carter Center here. That is very, very active in ensuring that there are fair elections that happen around the world in quite a number of countries, and they play, and they are very they’re very welcomed in these countries to make sure that the results are always fair and equitable to all parties. The winners win and the losers don’t try and do a coup over the winners or anything like that, right? 

So they want to make sure that all the elections are transparent and fair and just and those are the types of things that we have, the resources we have here in Atlanta that we can collectively go to these economically challenged markets and rollout initiatives, whether it’s the political stability initiatives through the Carter Center or the help of the Carter Center, whether it’s shoring up then their healthcare system, we have the CDC here. 

Not only do we have the CDC, which is headquartered here in. But we also have the global health crisis coordination. That is and they have the eyes and the ears on the ground of what’s happening around the world, health-wise because they collaborate with Coca-Cola, we have Coca-Cola that’s equated here. Coca-Cola is one of the few products that are in every single market around the world. They are in poor markets, they’re in rich markets, they’re in middle markets, mid-markets, they’re middle-class markets. They are in the coldest environments. They’re the hottest environments, they’re everywhere and they as a result are a wealth of information as to what’s happening on the ground in these markets around the world.

Wow, That’s Awesome, Max, and thank you so much for sharing that with us. So Max, if it, let’s say, our audience. Wants to connect with you. How would they do that?

So let me also say that if and if an individual or a company wants to create or have the World Trade Center, Atlanta is part of their legacy. We reactivated our 501/C3 status a year ago this month. We actually were reestablished and reactivated on February 15th of last year.

We can now take sizable donations as tax write-offs for the individual donating. Because we’re now A501/C3. Again, we are actively working to build up an endowment fund of 10 million so that we can then bring in a higher full-time staff to take on a lot of this work off of the Board of directors’ plates. So that’s one of the initiatives that we’re working on to be able to launch this not only this, the incubator center and the Innovation Center, the Innovation Center. 

That’s where we’re looking for the Innovation Center for International Trade investment, we are to be able to have this space inside a branded building and be able to pay the leasing rents and all that stuff for that space and create this ecosystem of international trade investments that will only increase and build jobs. 

So we’re looking for individuals and companies and organizations that want to be part of that legacy, the best way to reach out to me would be to send me an e-mail at max@wtcatlanta.com. They can also send me a text. I typically don’t answer the phone if I don’t recognize it, but I will if somebody sends me a text, I will respond if they explain what it is so they can send that to my phone number on 914-374-1250 and I’d be happy to talk to anybody who is interested in being part of that legacy and being part of this. It’s more than an experiment. This is something that is greater and bigger than all of us. Right.

That is awesome, Max. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And I want to conclude this podcast by letting you know that it was an extreme honor to have you on this show, I like your insights into how everything works, the macroeconomics of it is so amazing. And I would love to definitely have you as a guest back on the show at like a later time. 

I would love to thank you. Thank you. Thank you for giving me. The opportunity to speak. 

It is an honor for me to interview you, and I want to conclude this podcast by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, there’s an extraordinary within each and every one of us, and it’s our duty to awaken it and unleash it the till next time. Bye for now.