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Smerconish

NYT Essay Reignites Fight Over School Choice And Academic Standard. Who Is Really Rich In America?. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired September 26, 2026 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:00:15]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN ANCHOR: A journalist is making news. I'm Michael Smerconish in the Philly burbs.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is a highly honored and controversial writer for the New York Times. Her "1619 Project" won the Pulitzer Prize and she's been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, better known as the Genius Grant. The latest piece she wrote has everybody talking about her and her parenting. It's a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine that some see as a mea culpa. It's entitled "In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?"

Hannah-Jones has long been known for her reporting on racial discrimination in American education. It's been her beat for over 20 years, going back to her first newspaper job in North Carolina. Ten years ago, she wrote a very personal story for the New York Times Magazine, choosing a school for my daughter in a segregated city. That daughter, Najya, was the child on the cover.

The story caused a sensation. It led to speaking invitations and book offers. She became a hero to some, though others thought what she did was absurd. Still, say what you want, Nikole Hannah-Jones didn't just talk the talk, she walked the walk.

Back then, Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to a public school with a large representation of low income African-Americans when she could have chosen public or private schools that were considered superior. Her reasoning was that we have bad public schools because upper middle class parents keep their kids out of them. If more of these parents with plenty of money and clout sent their kids to such schools, the schools would improve. That was the theory.

So Hannah-Jones did what she saw as her duty. She puts it this way in the new article. Her role in this struggle meant upending the status quo and sending her child not to a wealthy white school, but to a poor Black one. And now, 10 years later, Hannah-Jones sees the results of her decision and she has regrets.

The school didn't improve and her daughter could have gotten a better education. Her daughter is aware of the situation. Hannah-Jones essay starts with an anecdote where Najya asks her point blank, "Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?" And later in the piece, in a very emotional moment, Hannah-Jones admits to her daughter, "I feel like you got cheated. And I'm sorry for that."

To which Najya replies, "Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education that I wanted." And that's the one thing that most seem to agree on. Najya's school and others like it aren't good enough. The article is filled with anecdotes demonstrating how the school fell short.

Some examples, a third grade teacher who was regularly absent and the substitute teacher didn't teach. And sometimes there was no substitute teacher. Lunchtime with kids running around pushing and hitting each other while the adults do nothing. Najya's homework not even being graded. So Najya wasn't as good in math as she thought and her writing had many uncorrected errors.

Hannah-Jones sending e-mails to the school about her concerns and not getting any response. As a piece by Coleman Hughes in the Free Press notes, "Hannah-Jones article helps demonstrate these aren't schools so much as government funded daycare centers."

And even when Najyah switched schools when going from elementary to middle school, the problems continued. In these later grades. Najyah didn't even receive homework, though she wanted some and teachers spent too much time dealing with kids who were acting out. After her daughter expressed frustration with where she'd been sent, Hannah- Jones let Najyah choose her high school. She wanted to go to one of the city's eight prestigious specialized schools, but she didn't have the test scores to get in.

She ended up applying and getting into a top school that was predominantly white and Asian, though with her educational background she struggled for some time, not being as academically prepared as her classmates. Hannah-Jones ends her piece saying she's sorry that her daughter had to bear a cost for her mother's beliefs. But the problem still remains. She still blames the bad schools for an unfair segregated system. But it's worth noting that the New York State spends more on education per student than any other state.

And according to the piece in the Free Press, Najyah's school spent more than $50,000 per pupil, far more than the national average. Further, according to the New York Post, teachers in that state with a master's degree and eight years' experience make by union contract about 100,000 to $140,000 annually in a job where they don't work the entire year. And of course, let's not forget they are rarely fired for incompetence.

Of course there are many sides to this debate, but we should not forget the words of Najya's middle school principal, Emily Page. Hannah-Jones found her gifted and compassionate and quotes her in the New York Times as saying, "It is important to not in our pursuit of being antiracist, lower expectations. Because this is what happens, right? It's racism under the guise of antiracism."

[09:05:17] In any case, there's a lot of debate as to what is the proper solution. At least we can all agree we've got a problem.

Here's our poll question today at smerconish.com with this case in mind, should parents who can afford a better school send their child to a struggling one to help improve it?

Joining me now is Danielle Belton, former editor in chief of HuffPost and The Root. She's written about her own experience in Black and white public schools and why she says no single family can fix an unequal school system.

Danielle, thank you so much for being here. It occurs to me that Nikole could afford to send her daughter to a better school district. Most families can't. Why not let the education money follow the child so that everyone gets a choice?

DANIELLE BELTON, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, HUFFPOST: Well, I mean, the reality is our schools are unequal and very unfair in this country. I mean, a lot of it's contingent on where you live and the amount of money that you make. And the New York City schools are very, so generous. Like, the reality is that, yes, more money is spent in New York than there are in other areas, but for whatever reason, because of the systemic issues that are in place, they're not actually going to the education -- proper education of these students. These problems have multiplied over the years.

I mean, this is not a new problem. Absenteeism is a huge problem in New York City schools. And a lot of parents choose to send their kids to private or specialized schools instead, when reality is everyone should have access to good public schools because that's where our tax dollars should be going to.

SMERCONISH: So I'm all for that. I'm the product of a public K through 12 education. My father was a public school teacher turned guidance counselor. And you've written and I've read what you've written about your mom and your own experience. But what occurs to me is that your parents had choice.

Najya's parents had choice. But a lot of those poor kids who are trapped in those schools just don't have the choice that you did or that she did.

BELTON: Well, I mean, you can't solve a systemic issue as an individual. You know, like we're -- the people who are trapped in these poor areas that don't have access to better schools, have so few options. Our society is not set up for these parents to ultimately win and find solutions that work.

So, I mean, my mother and what she did with our schooling was remarkable. But she was able to do that because she had a husband who had a good job, she could be a stay at home parent, and she was a former educator herself who understood how the system worked and she used that to her advantage. But she shouldn't have had to do that. You know, I think we all agree that no one should have to go through the lengths that my mother had to go through to make sure that children got a proper education. And Nikole Hannah-Jones shouldn't have to go through what she had to do to ensure or what she was hoping that she would be able to do by sending her daughter to an underperforming school and thinking that her education and her resources and her efforts could change that school.

Our systems are just very --

SMERCONISH: Danielle, what would you say to Nikole Hannah-Jones, who is obviously now wrestling with the result of this, thinking that she put her own cause ahead of her own child's best interest? You would say what?

BELTON: I would say to her that she had the best intentions. You know, she wanted to be -- she wanted to revolutionize something that is almost impossible for one person to do alone. Even my mother, she did this with other mothers, she did this with school officials, she did this with administrators. She was -- she essentially worked as a community organizer in order to transform the school that I attended. One person can't beat a system that is designed for students to fail.

SMERCONISH: I get that it's a complicated dynamic. I wish in her essay there had been more conversation about accountability, unions, protection for teachers, those who are ill equipped, who are inadequate, they need to go. We can agree on that, right?

BELTON: No, completely. I mean, it's always been an issue where you have teachers that are poor performers within schools that are kind of ensconced in the system. And there should be avenues to get those teachers out and get better and higher performing teachers in. But we have to look at the totality of the system.

The entire system is tremendously flawed and it starts at the top and goes all the way down to the bottom. But this is not the reality for every public school in this country. This is a very unique problem in the city of New York. You know, I went to schools in St. Louis, Missouri, in the county, and many of them were quite good. And they were accredited, they had fantastic teachers.

But even at those schools, you would occasionally run into teachers that were just there pretty much because it was a nice stable check. And so it's important to be able to differentiate and know the difference and push out those teachers who are low performing.

[09:10:07]

SMERCONISH: It's an important conversation. Danielle Belton, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your thoughts.

And to everybody at home, hit me up on social media. I'll read some throughout the course of the program. This comes from the world of, let's see it, X. This is an example of suicidal empathy, child sacrifice edition Parents who can afford it should send their kids to the best schools possible.

I happen to agree with you. It'll be interesting to see which way the results turn out on the poll question today. I'll answer the poll question. What would I do? I'd send, and we did send our kids to the very best schools that we were able. There's something noble on the part of Nikole Hannah-Jones in wanting to, you know, take one for the team, so to speak here, because this has been her mantra. But you can tell if you read that lengthy piece, she's wrestling with the, you know, the personal cost to her daughter.

It's not easy and I've made my views clear. I think that the poor kids who are back in that elementary school where Najya attended and the middle school where Najya attended need to have the same level of choice, vouchers, whatever opportunity might exist to exercise the frame, the same portability and latitude to get out as Nikole Hannah- Jones did or Danielle Belton's parents exercised.

I want to know what you think. Go to the website. Yes, it's a unique poll question today, isn't it? Check this out. Here it is.

Should parents -- back to school time. It's perfect timing. Should parents who can afford a better school send their child to a struggling one to help improve it?

Up ahead, technology was supposed to save us time. Instead, it has given us more messages, more tasks and more decisions. Could the secret to getting more done be doing less? And in a big win for President Trump, the Supreme Court said yesterday states can now conduct sweeping reviews of voter rolls with a citizenship data collection tool. I've got thoughts on what this means 38 days before the midterm election.

Plus, who are the real rich in America? Who really runs the American economy? Is it the big tech, big banks, big oil or maybe not? University of Chicago economist Eric Zwick, co-author of the "Everywhere Millionaire," joins me. And don't forget to register for my newsletter when you're voting on the poll question at smerconish.com, you'll get the work of prized illustrators like Jack Ohman.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:16:40]

SMERCONISH: How many tabs do you have open right now? And I don't just mean on your computer. I mean in your life, e-mails, texts, meetings, errands, subscriptions, and a constant stream of notifications demanding a decision. Technology was supposed to give us more time. Instead, every new convenience seems to create another task, another message, another thing to manage.

Most productivity advice tells us how to fit more into our day. Jim VandeHei makes a different argument in a new book that he's just co- authored, "Simplify: Do 50 percent More with 50 percent Less." His premise is simple. The answer is to do too much with less.

I spoke with Jim about why the tools designed to make life easier have left so many of us overwhelmed and what we can do to stop getting back and to get back some of that time. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMERCONISH: Jim, the book is great. I love "Simplify." You didn't ask me for a blur, but if you had, I think I'd have said Marie Kondo had me clean out my closet. Now Jim VandeHei wants to use the same principles on the rest of my life.

JIM VANDEHEI, CO-AUTHOR, "SIMPLIFY": I love it. I think it's true, right? The whole idea is decluttering. In our case, we're trying to help you declutter every part of your life, every part of your work. And the magic of it all is if you do it, if you just have a system that forces you to look at the different parts of your life, get rid of the stuff you shouldn't be doing, don't want to be doing, you can bring 25 to 30 percent of your life back and do the things you actually want to do that you want to amplify.

SMERCONISH: It seems so counterintuitive that this world of technology, of the Internet, of artificial intelligence, makes us waste so much time. You'd think that it would make our lives easier, but that's the situation -- our parents didn't have these problems.

VANDEHEI: No, I mean, we have two problems, right? We have the fact that we're all distracted and frazzled because we're getting so many e-mails, so many texts, so many alerts on our phone. And now you have artificial intelligence, which maybe over time will make us more efficient. In the short term, it's just creating more work. Now everybody can send an e-mail, everybody can do a presentation, everybody can do a product design.

So we're all getting hit with more, more, more. And I firmly believe, and I've seen it in my life, I've seen it at Axios, if you don't have a system that forces you to look at everything you do, why you do it, what can you get rid of? You're just going to keep doing the things you shouldn't be doing, don't want to be doing the things that don't add value, the things that don't make you feel good about yourself. And the minute you get rid of those things, you just feel, ah, feel this, like, weight drop. But then you also feel this clarity of mind because you're doing the things that you're good at that you should be doing that you want to do.

SMERCONISH: So something tangible that came from "Simplify for me," I went on an unsubscribe bonanza. So much email that comes to me, maybe because of a purchase that I made a long time ago, that I've just never taken the time to get rid of all of it. And I've got to say that one step has improved my productivity on a daily basis. Give me something else from this book that I can do.

VANDEHEI: I love that because, like, anybody watching this might say, well, like, is that really going to change your life, cleaning up your e-mail? But that's just one thing. And look at the psychological effect it had. Imagine doing that across 10 or 20 parts of your life.

One of the things -- one of the most useful chapters in the book is taking any individual no matter where you're at work, whether you just started out of college or whether you're running a company and just do a simple exercise of what are the three things you need to do that you're uniquely good at to crush your job and make sure that your boss agrees? What are the three things you do that you think are dumb, don't want to do, shouldn't be done. And I guarantee you you'll be shocked how many of those things your boss says, yes, let's not do that, or you're right, someone else could do that better. And then what are the three things you do that could be automated that you could just turn over to AI or to some technology?

[09:20:25]

You do that, you remove all the stuff that's a drag during the day and you're doing the stuff that you want. You could apply the same thing, e-mail like you did. You could do it for even the things that you have to order around your house that maybe you run to the store to do every two months. Well, you do it every two months. Imagine you put that on auto order from Amazon.

Never had to think about it. That's hours of your day and stress about what deodorant, what toothpaste.

SMERCONISH: Yes, well. And I love the discussion about clothing and the reminder of, you know, Obama, President Obama stepping out one time on that. What was it? Tan. Reagan wore brown.

Obama I think wore tan. And you make a point that some people simplify by Steve Jobs, you know, wearing the same uniform every day.

VANDEHEI: Yes. Again, in the reason when you talk to those people we did for the book, Dr. Rachel Maddow does it. We talk about Barack Obama in the book. The idea is they're trying to take away a decision point and like me, like I'll get stressed out, do I want this shirt, that pants, like not even I'm -- clearly, not even fashionable and I'm wasting time on it. But the idea is, is to combat what we call cognitive fatigue.

Like the science is not disputable. Every decision that you make makes you worse at making other decisions that you want to be making. Our brains just aren't made to make endless decisions. So the more that you could take off your plate, the better decisions you're going to make on the things that actually matter.

SMERCONISH: So just, just one note if I may. I worry that your hell yes standard with regard to --

VANDEHEI: Yes.

SMERCONISH: -- social commitments and invitations is at odds with my desire to see us mingling. Can you square the two?

VANDEHEI: Yes. I mean the hell yes is like Mike Allen, my -- one of the co-authors, co-founders, thought about this idea, you know, something you should do if you're jazzed about it when you hear it. If you're like, maybe I'll do that or I guess I'll have to do that, that's usually a good sign that, hey, could you maybe not do it? I agree with you. We're not arguing you should spend less time with people. In fact, I would argue get rid of all that stuff you shouldn't be doing so you can spend more time with the people that you actually care about. Because that is where you're going to get the most meaning in life. That's where you're going to feel the best about yourself. Probably where you're going to get the best ROI in life on time spent is doing things with people you love or like in situations that bring you joy.

SMERCONISH: The book is called "Simplify: Do 50 percent More with 50 percent Less." Nicely done. Thank you, Jim.

VANDEHEI: Appreciate it. Have a good one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMERCONISH: Still to come, more of your social media reaction. And yesterday on Friday, the Supreme Court let the government resume using a database to check voters' citizenship. I agree that only citizens should vote, obviously. But what if the government's own records can't reliably tell us who is a citizen?

And from car dealers and contractors to restaurant and franchise owners, more on how these Main street entrepreneurs are quietly building fortunes across the country and what their success reveals about economic mobility and the American dream.

I want to remind you, go to my website at smerconish.com answer today's poll questions, should parents who can afford a better school send their child to a struggling one to help improve it? Be sure to register for my newsletter at smerconish.com when you're voting, you'll get the work of illustrators like Eric Allie.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:28:10]

SMERCONISH: Two weeks ago, I sat here and I made what I thought was a simple point about the president's executive order on elections. The order assumes the federal government can tell who is a citizen and who isn't. My point was that it can't.

This country has never had a complete, reliable list of its citizens. There is no list. Yesterday, the Supreme Court weighed in, and I want to walk you through what happened because the story is confusing.

First, some housekeeping. There are two separate court fights going on, and it's easy to conflate them. The first is the one that I talked about before, the post office case. Under a new postal rule, a state that wants to mail ballots would first have to upload every voter's name and address into a federal portal. If you're not in the system, your ballot gets bounced back.

A federal judge in Boston blocked that. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court refused to lift her order, with only Justices Alito and Thomas dissenting. So for this election, the post office will not be deciding who gets a ballot. The second case is the one the court decided yesterday. It's about a database. The database is called SAVE, and it's run by the Department of Homeland Security. For years, SAVE had a narrow purpose, checking whether non-citizens were eligible for government benefits. It couldn't even look up someone born in the United States. Last year, the administration changed that.

It connected SAVE to the Social Security Administration's master file, which holds records on more than 300 million people. Now a state election official can upload a spreadsheet of voters, potentially millions at a time, and get back an answer for each one, citizen, not a citizen or unable to confirm.

In June, a federal judge in Washington shut that down. She ruled that the government had violated federal privacy law. And she wrote that the states were, quote, "actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information."

[09:30:00]

Yesterday, 39 days before the midterms, the Supreme Court put her ruling on hold. The government can use the database again while the case plays out. Why? Well, the majority said that a 1996 immigration law gives Homeland Security the power to get citizenship information from other agencies including Social Security.

In other words, the government is probably allowed to do this. The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the court had never before interpreted these laws, and that the majority focused on the government's harms while ignoring the harm to lawful voters.

Now, here's what I want you to notice. The court answered the question, is the government allowed to do this? It did not answer the question, does it work?

And that's still my concern, because the Social Security file is not a list of citizens. It's a list of Social Security numbers. It was built to pay benefits, not to decide who can vote.

And here's the problem in plain terms. Say that you came to this country, got a Social Security card, years later became a citizen. Social Security may still have you down as a non-citizen. Nothing updates that record automatically, and you're not required to report the change unless you apply for benefits. That's not my characterization. That's the government's own records, which say citizenship information, quote, "might not be current."

Homeland Security's own privacy review warned that the system, quote, "may produce inaccurate results." In fact, the very woman whose case gave the challengers the right to sue fit that description. She's a naturalized citizen, registered to vote in Louisiana. Social Security's records didn't show her citizenship, so she would have had to prove it.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that in its opinion yesterday. And as we've seen how this performs in Travis County, Texas, a quarter of the people flagged as non-citizens had already proven they were citizens. In Saint Louis County, Missouri, at least 81 percent of the system's responses were wrong, and the government has never told us its overall error rate.

So, what happens now? Well, to be fair, probably less than you might fear at least this November. Federal law bars states from mass purges of their voter rolls in the 90 days before a federal election. States aren't required to use the save program, and many won't. Even Justice Jackson, in her dissent, said that the short term impact will likely be minimal, but minimal isn't zero.

States can still check voters one at a time, and the court said so. When SAVE flags you the government's instructions say election officials must contact you and ask for proof of citizenship. So, that means that some citizens in some states are going to get a letter in the next few weeks asking them to prove what they already are. Some won't have the paperwork handy, some won't respond in time.

And there's something else I worry about. In a close race, a number like the database flagged 4,000 possible non-citizens that can become an argument for challenging the result even if most of those flags are wrong. Which brings me back to the post office.

For this November, that plan is on hold but the lawsuit continues. And Justice Kavanaugh's main objection was timing that there wasn't enough time before the election. If the idea comes back, the states will need a list of who gets a ballot and the only tool the government has built for that kind of check is the one the court just cleared.

So, let me repeat what I said before. I'm not against verifying citizenship. Only citizens should vote. And according to Reuters, U.S. states may have mistakenly registered 30,000 non-citizens to vote since the year 2000.

These self-declared non-citizens were added to voter rolls because of software glitches and clerical errors and yesterday's ruling won't fix that. They didn't create a list of citizens. They let the government keep using records that its own documents say are unreliable weeks before an election.

The court said the government may check. It didn't say the government knows the answer. There is still no reliable list of citizens.

Here's some social media reaction to today's program thus far.

Sasquatch Seeker. Oh, OK. Voter fraud is nothing new. Dead people have been voting in Chicago since the 20s. This move is about evening the playing field. If a person does not have a Social Security number, they should not be allowed --

No, no. The standard is not, do you have a Social Security number? The standard is, are you a citizen? And I disagree with you. It's a solution in search of a problem.

Does stuff happen? It does. Does bad stuff sometimes happen on Election Day? It does. It's the nature of our system.

We're creating a pop up Starbucks to quote David Litt, a great summation of this in a book that he wrote a couple of years ago, and then we expect it to function with non-paid or low paid workers without any incident.

[09:35:10]

There's always going to be incident but statistically speaking it's inconsequential. I'm not defending any of it, but it's inconsequential. If you want to solve the problem, then go ahead and build a citizenship list. But the very people who are behind this sort of slap -- this slapdash method of putting it together will be the first who will oppose that.

Another social media reaction. What do we have?

There are no bad schools. There are only bad teachers, bad students and bad parents. Good students and good parents deserve school choice.

Richard, I made that point. My takeaway from the Nikole Hannah-Jones piece is that ultimately, she exercised what she was able to do, which was stuck through the elementary process and the middle school process, and then said to her daughter, pick your school. You pick it and we'll go with it.

Now she abandons the model of, we're going to stay in a minority school, and she goes to a school that was largely comprised of white and Asian. But those poor families left behind at elementary school and in middle school in this comparison, they didn't have the choice. They couldn't -- they didn't have vouchers. They didn't have the ability to take their dollars and exercise what would be in their best interest.

So, that's observation number one. Observation number two is bad teachers need to be fired. And observation number three is that teachers need to be involved. Danielle Belton, who was my guest in the A block of the program, her mother was totally hands on and it made a difference in her education. That's it in a nutshell, at least according to me.

Make sure you're voting on today's poll question at Smerconish.com which relates to that story. Should parents who can afford a better school send their child to a struggling one to help improve it?

And still to come, on today's program, it's been 30 years since the book "The Millionaire Next Door" came out. Do you remember that? You remember that the person with the real money was your unassuming neighbor, not the one with the flashy car?

We'll, new data and a new book, the coauthor of "The Everywhere Millionaire" or multimillionaire reveals who's got the real transformational wealth in America today. Make sure you're signing up for my newsletter at Smerconish.com when you're voting on the poll question. You'll get the work of illustrators like Rob Rogers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:41:52]

SMERCONISH: Who spends $60 million on a wedding? In 2023, Bob and Paula Brockway of Coral Gables, Florida, flew guests to Paris by private jet for their daughter's five-day wedding celebration. There was a party at the Palace of Versailles, fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, Adam Levine performing the couple's first dance.

So, how did the family make its money? Not through Silicon Valley, not on Wall Street, car dealerships. That surprise opens a new book called "The Everywhere Millionaire." Economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick spent roughly a decade building a data set covering 8 million people who started businesses since the year 2000.

Their research identifies a class they call the stealthy wealthy. The authors estimate that about 3 million private business owners fit this profile. Their average net worth about $25 million. And according to the book, they collectively hold more than 13 times the wealth of the Forbes 400. They often run businesses that hide in plain sight, car dealerships, restaurant chains, medical practices, construction companies, and local franchises.

Zidar and Zwick say these owners typically built their fortunes the old fashioned way, years of hard work growing a business. And the vast majority, about 70 to 75 percent, are self-made or first generation wealth builders with roughly 25 to 30 percent coming from multi- generational family businesses.

Money and property can pass from one generation to the next, but can the knowledge and the judgment required to run a successful business be inherited just as easily? I spoke with coauthor Eric Zwick, professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, on my SiriusXM program.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: You and I are having this conversation against a backdrop of a lot of concern about artificial intelligence. The magnificent seven seem to be driving the stock market. Everybody who's listening to us or will watch this interview certainly is aware of the Forbes 400. But "The Everywhere Millionaire" says if you're solely focused on those earners, you're missing a bigger story. Fair?

ERIC ZWICK, CO-AUTHOR "THE EVERYWHERE MILLIONAIRE": Absolutely. The mental map of American wealth, we call them everywhere millionaires because we want to get that map of the country in people's heads, and if you put the Forbes 400 where they live, those people on the map, it's very coastal. It's increasingly tech focused with the tech billionaires and so on.

But the actual map of wealth in America is far more abundant and closer to home for most Americans than people realize. So there's a car dealer or an HVAC empire, a franchise owner in every congressional district. Collectively, this group, the everywhere millionaires, they hold more than 10 times the wealth of the Forbes 400 combined. So in some sense, they're really the real rich in America.

SMERCONISH: I underscored that in the book, the Main Street millionaires have more than 13 times the wealth of the Forbes 400. Professor, define rich as you're using that word. And most importantly, define Main Street millionaire.

[09:45:00]

ZWICK: So our concept of Main Street millionaire is somebody who has a net worth of at least $5 million, who owns a private business. So, there are about 3 million people that we estimate in 2022 have about that level of wealth and that structure. As you move further up the wealth, so on average within this broad class, their net worth is 25 million. You move further up to sort of the decamillionaires or somebody with $50 million in net worth or 100 millionaires, the more likely they are to be a private business owner, the more likely they are to resemble this Main Street millionaire class.

And so the same story holds. And then there are, you know, tens of thousands of people with hundreds of millions of dollars running these mundane businesses all across the country.

SMERCONISH: Is the American dream alive and well?

ZWICK: We think the American dream is much more alive than people think. So I think people run around -- it's really hot in the conventional narrative. American dream is dead. You just got to become an influencer or start an app, or you have to be born rich. That's the only chance you have.

We think there are paths to real wealth that are far wider than the standard stories of say going to an ivy league school and then going to get a job in a big company. Suggest or that you have to be rich to rise to the top. It turns out that people with sort of average test scores are more likely to build highly successful businesses than earning a comparable fortune as a salaried worker.

So as a path from the bottom to the top, those paths are very much open. They're much wider than people realize. And I think that's a -- that's a lesson that we draw from the big data and then we draw from the stories that we tell too.

SMERCONISH: There's such a pressure to get into the so-called elite schools. You took a look at the elite schools and whether they are generating the Main Street millionaires that you write about. What's the answer to that question?

ZWICK: That entrepreneurial path is much more common and seems to be much more super powered than the Ivy League school. Another way of thinking about it is you don't happen to have that top test score. You know, there are a lot of chances and opportunities available. Most folks that start these successful businesses do not come from the top of the SAT distribution. That's just not what the data look like.

SMERCONISH: Professor Zwick, you say the best way to be rich is to be born rich. However, I learned, pardon, from you a Scottish proverb which I love. The father buys, the son builds, the grandchild sells, and his son begs. Explain.

ZWICK: Yes. So it's unfortunately the case that when you think about what gets inherited, what's easy to inherit, cash in the bank maybe is easy to inherit. Maybe a house or a plot of land is easy to inherit.

A business not so easy to inherit because you got to know what you're doing. You got to know how to run it. One way to summarize it in a statistic is if you're a kid born in the top one percent, 40 percent of those kids will fall out of the top one percent. So, there's no guarantee that being born rich is going to allow you to stay there.

SMERCONISH: I'll leave you with a final thought, and thank you for being so gracious with your time. It's a book that parents ought to read and ask their children to read. But I think -- I think so often we're inclined to push toward the education, oh, go get the highest degree possible and so forth, and not stop to think about the power of being an entrepreneur and opening a business and aspiring to be one of these everywhere millionaires.

Thank you for writing it. Thank you for being here to discuss it. I thought it was terrific.

ZWICK: Thanks for having me, Michael. It's a -- it's a pleasure to be here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SMERCONISH: Checking in on social media reaction.

And? They figured it out. They work hard and they don't waste money.

Mary JaneThomas, I thought -- one more passage indulge me from the book. I love the Scottish proverb, but I also -- I also like this. You probably know a Main Street millionaire, even if you don't realize it. They're coaching your child's soccer team, sitting next to you at a community fundraiser, chatting with you at a neighborhood barbecue. They might be the dentist who expanded his office to a regional network of practices. The commercial HVAC contractor whose trucks you see around town, or the owner of that local restaurant chain that keeps opening new locations. They're hiding in plain sight as ordinary people who run businesses woven into the fabric of everyday life.

I think we have such a tendency to ignore the fact that these are the people on main streets all across the country, red states and blue states. It's not just Silicon Valley and Wall Street. And they've got a combined, you heard the statistic, a combined value of 13 times the Forbes 400 list. That's the heart, the lifeblood of the economy in this country.

You still have time to vote on today's poll question. Head to Smerconish.com right now and answer this. Should parents who can afford a better school send their child to a struggling one to help improve it?

[09:50:03] Register for my newsletter while you're there. You know why? Among other reasons, you're going to get the exclusive editorial cartoons from the likes of Steve Breen. Check that out.

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SMERCONISH: OK, there's the result of the poll question so far. Pretty decisive, eh? Should parents who can afford a better school send their child to a struggling one to help improve it? Decisively, 89 percent of it's now 27,000 people say, no, they shouldn't.

I like the total of votes as well, because I was a little nervous about this poll question. It requires knowledge of this instance. It's not some hypothetical. We're talking about the Nikole Hannah-Jones case, which got a lot of buzz in some quarters. So yes, if you haven't voted, you can keep voting on today's poll question.

Social media reaction. What do we have to today's program?

[09:55:00]

From Facebook. This liberal used her child as a guinea pig, pretty harsh, in furtherance of her broken ideology and her child suffered. This is all you need to know about liberals and liberalism.

Now I feel compelled to defend her but I can't. I mean, I can't defend the decision she made. I said at the outset of the program, she walk the walk and talk the talk. It was not just theoretical for her. She really tried to put it into action but it didn't work out because her daughter's education suffered as a result.

She had choice. I said this earlier she had choice and was able to ultimately for high school move her child. It's a shame that those poor families trapped in those underperforming elementary and middle schools couldn't do likewise. They ought to have the right to do so.

The bad teachers need to get fired. The good teachers need to be rewarded. And parents need to fulfill their responsibility and not leave everything on the shoulders of educators. There it is. Bing, bang, boom in terms of how to fix this problem.

If you missed any of today's show, you can always listen anywhere you get your podcasts. We thank you for watching and we'll see you next week.

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