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Why Everyone Is Drowning In Debt (and how to get out) - Caleb Hammer - #1123

Explore episode Jul 13, 2026
Society & Culture
The Gender War Is Coming for the Economy

Why Everyone Is Drowning In Debt (and how to get out) - Cal… · Jul 13, 2026 Society & Culture

The political divide between Gen Z men and women is the largest of any American generation in history. People are filtering romantic partners by political affiliation on dating apps. Fewer relationships means fewer children, which collapses the retiree-to-worker ratio and eventually the entire social safety net. South Korea's trajectory — 96% population collapse in a century — is the extreme version of where this leads.

Where this was said

The Dangerous Consequences of the Gender Wars

At 1:23:28 · chapter starts 1:23:18

Caleb states flatly that the gender divide in Gen Z political affiliation during the most recent US federal election is the largest of any generation in American history, and he's genuinely scared. The downstream effects are concrete: people filtering romantic partners by political affiliation on dating apps means fewer relationships, fewer children, and an accelerating collapse in the worker-to-retiree ratio that funds Social Security and all social programmes. Chris adds the South Korea data point — 96% population collapse within a century at current rates, four great-grandchildren per 100 people today — as the extreme cautionary endpoint. Japan faces a similar trajectory. The US has a buffer in being broadly pro-immigration, but it's not immune. Both hosts resist the frame of who's to blame, instead noting that both extremes — the right that ignores historical injustice and the left that refuses to acknowledge progress — are making the problem worse. The winner, unexpectedly, according to Chris's newsletter data: Asian women now earn more on average than white men in the US.

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