Episode Details

If you missed last week’s special report, I urge you to take a look. Some of these are already starting to move, and fast …

And so to today’s piece. Tesla …

I am just back from a two-week trip to the States, and what a time I had.

I felt so privileged to be there at what feels like the dawn of a new golden age for this most amazing of countries.

The first week I spent in Palm Springs, California, visiting my mum, and the second in Naples, Florida. Quite the contrast. One was Meltdown Central, the other was in a state of jubilation. Everyone everywhere was talking about the USAID revelations.

I did not know Naples. What a stunning place. Hot, sunny, green, humid, beautiful (the architecture is lovely, even the newbuilds—that’s traditional measures for you), polite, safe, cultured, healthy, delicious food. Life seems to slow down as soon you arrive. What’s happening elsewhere no longer seems to matter. Were I to go there and settle, I think I would lose all ambition.

The problem with settling there, though, is price. It has the most expensive real estate in the US. One house was for sale for $295 million. Even Satoshi Nakamoto would wince at paying that.

“I told my kids, when they were growing up,” said Mike, who I was having dinner with, “this is not the real world. Naples is not reality. It’s something else. They needed to know that.”

I turned to his son—Matty Ice—the man who had brought me to Naples to talk tax, bitcoin, and other such things on the Runway Pod, an entrepreneur and family man in his early 30s. “Well, I’m not leaving. Why would I?”

It turns out lots of people come to Naples on a temporary basis, then decide to stay.

It’s not just Naples real estate that is expensive, by the way. The whole of the US has got super dear. I paid $18 for a pint of beer in Miami airport. I had dinner at a friend’s—he paid $60 for three steaks for the barbeque. I thought steak was cheap in the US. In a Palm Springs supermarket, I paid $4.99 for three organic onions. They saw me coming.

In general, I would say food is twice the price it is here in the UK. And that’s with a strong dollar. The country has got very expensive. Inflation is a big, big issue.

My eldest son works in recruitment—in the chemicals industry—and most of the time he is recruiting in the US. He says US workers get paid three times the money for doing the same job as a UK worker - in that industry at least,

But, whether it’s Naples, neighbouring Fort Myers, or Miami, Florida; or Los Angeles or Palm Springs, California, there is also a lot of money in America. You can see it everywhere. It is several standard deviations of wealth up from the UK. The wealth is visible in the houses—even the middle-class houses—in the cars, in the clothes, in the prices. We in the UK have been left behind. It was not always like this.

That wealth gap is only going to get bigger, as the UK continues to pursue high taxes, big regulation, mass migration, and zero growth, while the US goes in the other direction. The place is full of opportunity.

Go to the US. Move there if you can, especially if you are young. The US was already something special, but something really special is happening there: the Washington purges are cleaning the place up. You’ve read the news, you’ve been on X, you’ve seen what’s going on. You really don’t need me to t