This subject: wealth and income inequality are the biggest moral crisis, and I’d also say it’s the spiritual crisis in America today, all around the world. This gap between the rich and everybody else is reaching critical proportions. And I think one of the biggest crises is the young people today’s young unemployed become tomorrow’s unemployable, they lose valuable jobs training skills.

So I’m going to show — as a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just show you some pictures about how rapidly this inequality as well as opportunity inequality is growing.

So what’s happening in America today is savers are losers. You know, most parents say to their kids, go to school and save money and work hard. But in 1970 when I graduated from school, $1 million at 15% interest earned me $150,000 a year. Now you could live in $150,000 a year back then.

But in 2016, do this thing called quantitative easing, Bernanke called it Greenspan Put, it’s $1 million at negative 5 basis points, it’s going to cost you $1 million to save $1 million. That is how deteriorated our financial systems have become. And this is one of the causes between the gap — between the rich and the poor.

The other thing is that fewer and fewer families are receiving middle-class incomes, it’s going down. Every time we shop at Walmart, we ship dollars and jobs over to China and Pakistan and all the other countries. That’s capitalism.

Another thing that’s happening when people’s incomes go down, they become dependent. Now the US government tells us that poverty has been beaten in America. But maybe poverty has been beaten but what has increased is the entitlement mentality.

The attitude that the government and other people should take care of me, and this is a moral crisis as well as spiritual crisis. I learned in Sunday school: give and you shall receive. And too many people today think they should receive.

This is other crisis here: social security. Being Japanese, the Japanese called it ‘ah, social security’. I’m a racist, I know. But anyway I’ve met so many people my age, there is about 75 million baby boomers on the top of the baby boom chain, we expect the government to take care of us. That’s a lot of highly educated people. That is a crisis.

So in 2002, I published this book Rich Dad’s Prophecy. 14 years later, prediction was that 2016 there’d be a global financial crash. We’re in 2016 and here we are in 2016. You can see it coming.

In the first 10 years of this century we have had three major crashes: in 2000 with the dot-com crash, followed by the 2006 real estate subprime crash and then 2008 the banking crash. The question is: is this next? This is the giant crash of 1929.

Every time I listen to those guys on CNBC, I call it bubble vision. They keep talking about the giant crash of 1929. I tell you what? Nothing compared to this one coming. So that’s why, I write and I speak and I’m very concerned about our futures, our well-being and the state of the economy.

So I am going to talk today about why the rich are getting richer. Commercial message — my next book coming out. But I have to explain — I’ll explain some of the tricks of the trade why guys like me get richer and everybody else is not. And this is quite interesting.

This is one of the reasons the rich are getting richer. This is the Bush tax cuts, the biggest tax cuts goes to the top one-tenth of a percent. Thank you, George. I appreciate that. They have no morals, those guys.

But anyway I’m the author of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad. Can I see a show of hands: how many have read Rich Dad Poor Dad? Oh good, somebody have. Who has not yet read the book here? Good, there are some customers out there. Happy to see that.

As I say to the pub press, I am the best-selling author, not the best writing author. Anyway, those who have read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, it’s a true story of my two dads, and the story begins when I was nine years old, growing up in a little town, a sugar plantation town called Hilo Hawaii and I raised my hand in the fourth grade and I went to a very rich basically all white school.

And I said, ‘Mrs. Jerrell, when will I learn about money?’ And she says, ‘Money? Don’t you know the love of money is the root of all evil?’ Not to me but she says, ‘You’re here to get a job.’

I said, ‘I don’t want a job. I just want to get rich.’

So she said, ‘Go ask your dad.’

So that’s where Rich Dad, Poor Dad started. And my poor dad was ahead of education for Hawaii, very smart man, PhD, went to Stanford University of Chicago, Northwestern. I went home and I asked dad and said, ‘Hey, Dad, when will we learn about money?’

And he said, ‘Never.’

I said, ‘Why not?’

‘The government doesn’t allow us to teach you that.’

I said, ‘That’s kind of interesting.’

So he said, ‘If you want to get rich, go talk to your best friend’s father, and he’s an entrepreneur and someday he will be a very rich man.’

So that’s how the story of Rich Dad, Poor Dad starts. When I was nine years old across, I went to my rich dad’s office, being an entrepreneur and he started teaching his son and me about why the rich get richer and that’s how my financial education began.

So I wrote this book with him in 1997. So far it’s sold about 41 million copies in 50 languages throughout the world.

So little bit about my background. I don’t do it for the applause, some cash but anyway. Anyway, just Hilo Hawaii to New York City, I didn’t do well in school, I was a straight C minus student but having the old man as the head of education wasn’t easy, you know.

So anyway, I got two congressional nominations, one to US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, one to US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. So I took New York because we’re the highest-paid graduates in the world.

And this is me at Kings Point here and our starting salaries for most of were about $100,000 a year back in 1965. So that was pretty good back then, not much today, it was pretty good back then.

And then when I graduated I got a job, it’s the third officer on Standard Oil tanker sailing the world. It was great job except for one thing. The Vietnam War was still on and my moral conscience kind of got to me and I said, maybe I should go fight a war.

So I joined the Marine Corps, and I took a cut in pay from about 6,000 a month down to 200 a month as a Marine lieutenant. And it was a great decision. I went to flight school in Florida, Pensacola and I was right up the street here at Camp Pendleton and straight to Vietnam.

It was really a great experience, love the Marine Corps, love the guys I worked with and it’s a band of brothers, very spiritual organization.

And when I came back, that’s when my business career started. It was my first business, the surfer wallet business and all this and everybody thinks, ‘Yeah, when you start getting successful, life is easy.

Well, no, success is expensive.’ I started selling these wallets and ultimately it took off and I spent more time raising capital to buy more inventory, so I could sell more. But it was a great learning experience. I learned to make a lot of money selling wallets.

But anyway my life changed when I met this man here Dr. R Buckminster Fuller. This here’s what Fuller is noted for, he’s considered a futurist and a friendly genius. This is a geodesic dome with the Montreal World’s Fair in 1967.

In 1967 I hitchhiked from New York City all the way to Montreal to go see the dome and it was a mind-blowing experience. I never thought I would ever meet the great genius. You know, John Denver calls him the planet’s friendly genius.

So anyway, but in 1981 I had a chance to study with him up in Kirkwood, California, near Lake Tahoe for five days and I made the mistake of sitting down next, while he sat down next to me really. And it was called the future of business seminar, and he sits down next to me, and says, ‘Robert, what is your life’s purpose? What is your mission in life?’

I said, ‘Oh, to get rich.’

Wrong answer! He chewed me out. He said, ‘Robert, it’s a waste of a good mind.’ He says, ‘Why don’t you do something to change the world?’

I said, ‘Change the world, I just want to get rich.’

And finally I got it, as he says, ‘I’m not here to work for me, I’m here to work for everybody else.’ And it was a very pretty cathartic event, once I realized how greedy I was. Then I studied with him for three years and every time he kept asking the same question that he asked himself: what can I do, I’m just a little guy. What can I do? I’m just a little guy. He was tiny too.

So I ask all of you: what can you do? We’re just little people many ways. So I studied with him for three times: ’81, ‘82 and ‘83 and then he passed away on July 1, 1983. He left this book behind, it’s called the Grunch of Giants which stands for Gross Universal Cash Heist, GR-UN-C-H. It’s how the ultra-rich rip us off.

Now fuller is a friendly genius, he never wrote finance books, or economic books. He is a math, science, art, designs, he’s a architect. I read Grunch of Giants and I understood it because it’s exactly what my rich dad was telling me. The rich are ripping us off.

So at that point, I said, ‘Huh, what can I do? I’m just a little guy.’ And I decided that time I would take on GRUNCH and for those who wonder who GRUNCH is, you may just notice that those crashes we just had, we got bailed out, the rich got bailed out.

Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, when the president Paulsen stand up there and they say this was a mistake, we have to save the economy, that’s a lie. I hesitate to tell you that, it’s a lie. They bailed out the rich. It is part of the business plan, goes on all the time.

So ladies and gentlemen, I said, in 1983, I got to do something about this and what kind of little guy do is take on the biggest banks, the Federal Reserve bank which is not a bank, not federal, no reserves, not American, you get the hint. And I could take on Wall Street, I could take on government but I can also take on the school system.

See, ladies and gentlemen, those crashes, these bailouts are not accidents and neither is an accident that there is no financial education in school.

But my research found since 1983 it’s premeditated, just as prior to the Civil War it was illegal to educate a slave, we’re not allowed to learn about money in school. And when I found that out, I said okay it’s time for me to get on with my life and start teaching.

So I started — I became much like my rich dad and my poor dad, I started teaching. And it was not too far from here, my wife and I were homeless in San Diego, doing our best to teach because we can’t go inside the school system and nobody wants to listen. Anyway that’s how it started and so I’m going to tell you what financial education really is.

I’ll start by telling what is not. Financial education isn’t saving money and investing for the long-term in the stock market and getting out of debt, exactly the opposite of that. So my financial education began with the game of Monopoly.

We all know the formula: four greenhouse and one red hotel. So when I was nine years old till I was about 20, rich dad and I and the son played monopoly. And that’s how I learned to become a rich man.

So the reason that works is this is the cone of learning, it was created by a man named Professor Edgar Dale and in 1969 he came up with the Cone of Learning and he said this is how human beings are designed to learn.

Notice the worst way to learn is by rating and the second worst way is lecture. Let’s take the boring teachers, that’s why I was never at school. And then what you guys are doing here is you’re looking at pictures, watching movies, it’s why TED Talks works.

But also the second best way is called simulation. Simulation is where you get to make your mistakes, you’ve got to make your mistakes after mistakes, you would just make mistakes. So human beings learn by making mistakes, except in school we make mistakes we’re considered stupid. In business you make a mistake you’re fired and make a mistake in business you’re in failure.

So a person has got the final place to make mistakes, and scientists like Edison it was a laboratory. So the reason I learned a lot was I made mistakes playing Monopoly, that’s how I learned so much. And today I play Monopoly on real life. My wife and I over 10,000 units, several hotels, golf courses and oil wells. But that’s the game.

And once you learn in your brain by playing games, simulation is the way you learn. So you practice, practice, practice, practice. You make mistake after mistake after mistake like a golfer makes a mistake after mistake after mistake, then they turn pro. But the reason a lot of people are not rich, they think mistakes make you stupid. It’s criminal;

a baby cannot learn to walk unless they fall down, can’t learn to ride a bicycle until you fall off the bicycle. So that’s where our school system is letting us down.

So I love the military because they taught us to make mistake after mistake after mistake. Every day we flew, we practiced emergency procedures and every day I killed my engine to fly my aircraft without an engine. And this here is me doing the real thing. I went down three times in Vietnam. And if not for practicing crashing I wouldn’t be here today. All five of my crew came home alive.

So what I did was after Bucky kind of chewed me out, this is: what can I do? I’m just a little guy, my wife and I created this board game called cash flow. But this is the key to cash flow game here. This is called a financial statement. Add a financial statement to Monopoly, you have cash flow. This is financial literacy — how do you understand numbers?

So the beauty of the cash flow game is today we have thousands and thousands of cash flow clubs all over the world, people teaching people without having to go to school and get rid of student loan debt. Now you have to go to school to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer but you don’t have to go to school to be a rich.

So all over the world today I ask — Dr. Fuller ask, I start empowering people to learn all over the world today every day in different languages, people are teaching people the same lessons my rich dad taught me.

And this here’s a financial statement. Income expense, assets, liability — the beauty of this here is this: this is your report card when you leave school. Your banker — my bank never asks me my grade point average or what school I went to. My bank wants to see my financial statement.

And the reason most people can’t get loans is they don’t have a financial statement. They don’t even know what it is when they leave school, even college graduates. The reason I can borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, I have a strong financial statement, it’s financial literacy.

And this here is very simple. It’s income expense, asset, liabilities. Poor dad always says ‘go to school and get a high-paying job’. The problem of education is they teach you to be employees. Rich dad taught me to be an entrepreneur, acquiring assets, four greenhouses, one red hotel.

Assets are very simple: you can plant an apple seed and the apple seed grows into a tree, harvest the apples. You sell the apples, you reinvest your profits and you keep building an orchard. That’s how you get rich.

Or a friend of mine when he was in high school, his grandma gave him some chickens, those chickens laid eggs, he sold the eggs and reinvested it. And when he was 45, I think he sold his business, he was selling 10 million eggs a day to Costco and Walmart. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build assets. It’s buy a couple of chickens, okay. It’s kind of funny, you know, really.

So the power of words — financial literacy begins with words, because words affect your brain. As my poor dad always said ‘I can’t afford it.’ You know, in Sunday school I learned the word becomes flesh. Every time you say you can’t afford it and say I’m poor, I’m a loser, I can’t do something, I’m helpless, the government should take care of me. Disgusting!

Rich dad taught me how can I afford it. So when I had no money, my wife and I just kept thinking: how can I afford it? And pretty soon your mind opens up and that’s when intelligence comes in. Most important words and money are basic, there’s only four: assets, liabilities, cash flow, that’s it.

That’s where financial literacy says income — assets, liabilities and cash flow. You understand those four words basically, then you can build your vocabulary. Money has a language but it’s not pot in school. It’s taught job security versus be an entrepreneur. You know, look for job security, instead of go for financial freedom.

If somebody should take care of you and said I’m going to take care of other people, as an entrepreneur I have thousands of employees. That’s what — that’s my job, it’s to create other jobs, get them a safe life.

So number one is assets, number two is liabilities, cash flow. These liabilities — the reason the poor and middle-class are poor is because they think their house is an asset. If you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad I said several things.

Savers are losers, and your house is not an asset. This came out in 1997. In 2007 the subprime market crashed and tens of millions of people throughout the world found out their house was a liability.

Look, if you use the wrong word to describe the wrong issue you will always be stupid and broke. So don’t call a liability an asset and that’s why so many people are broke. They are using the wrong words. The words become flesh. Financial literacy. Change your words, change your life. Never say ‘can’t afford it’. Ask yourself: how can I afford it?

Work to acquire assets, not liabilities. That, ladies and gentlemen we have thousands of cash flow clubs around the world. People are teaching people. You don’t have to go to school to learn to be rich.

So the thing is as Bucky Fuller challenged me: What can I do? I’m just a little guy. I stopped making wallets and I started making sense. My wife and I created this casual board game, it’s played throughout the world today.

Everyday tens of thousands of people are teaching themselves. That’s how you change the world. But you change your words, your change your life.

So the best news is words are free. It doesn’t take millions of dollars to change the world. Just change the words.

Thank you very much.

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