Here’s the Real Problem for America’s Middle Class: Robert Kiyosaki (Transcript)

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Witnessing Zimbabwe’s Economic Collapse

JAN JEKIELEK: Before we jump into dealing with our fraught economy, how to actually build wealth as a young person today, all these types of questions. You also told me that you were actually in Zimbabwe. Tell me about that.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah, Zimbabwe, because I was a student of money. I’m a politically incorrect hunter. So I was out in Zimbabwe, I think, in 2000, 2002, and I was there for the collapse of Zimbabwe because they printed too much money. Remember they had like $25 trillion bill couldn’t buy you an egg. They kept printing money. I went, “Holy mackerel.”

And Zimbabwe collapsed. America is doing the same thing. We’re now $38 trillion in debt and climbing because of the Federal Reserve bank, which is Marxist. So I’m in Zimbabwe watching this. I thought I was back in Vietnam again. I was already back from Vietnam. I’m in a truck. I’m a hunter.

And when the economy collapsed in Zimbabwe, they called them war vets. These young black guys come up with AK-47. I went—and put the gun right here. They took everything. They took the farm, they took it all. They called it reparations.

So I just went back this year, 2025, to teach my cash flow game. And the Zimbabwe Economic Council asked me to teach money to Zimbabwe through the cash flow game. You know, and it was such an honor to go back there. So I’m writing a new book called I Kept My Promise. I said, “I’ll return, I’ll come back and I’ll teach.”

But I’ve seen too much. Zimbabwe was such a wake up call. Quang Tri was such a wake up call. Eighteen, going to military school, reading this book and then holding up a coin at 18, going, “Why is our money, why is our silver coins, why are they copper now?” And they were stealing our wealth via our money. And that’s what happens when central banks take over.

The $38 Trillion Debt Problem

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, I think we’re not quite there yet. Not this sort of hyperinflation. I remember seeing that. It was just something, it was kind of unimaginable, the level at which it was growing, even as, you know, when a lot younger, I saw that as being hugely problematic. But, you know, how do we deal with $38 trillion in debt?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Can’t. So that’s why, you know, one of the questions we’re talking about before this program started, that’s why I own gold mines and I own silver coins, because they can’t print gold and they can’t print silver and I own a lot of Bitcoin, Ethereum. I want to get away from my government as much as I can. I hate to say this, but the US government’s corrupt. And you know, my friend here is Donald Trump.

And we’ve wrote two books together and then he became president. We’re supposed to write the third book. He goes, “Hey, Robert, I can’t write the third book. I’m going to run for president.” I said, “Good luck.” You know, just amazing that he keeps going.

But we got together to teach money, teach financial education, but our school systems stop us. So it’s in academics. Exactly. You know, what Marx believed was the intellectuals should run the world. People like my poor dad, PhDs, they think they’re superior to all of us just because they went to school and got a PhD. They think they’re smarter than you and me.

What Schools Don’t Teach About Money

JAN JEKIELEK: You know, as we were preparing for this interview, one of my producers mentioned to me that she first heard about you when her father told her, “I’m the poor dad, actually, and you should learn how to, you know, you should learn the rich dad principles.” But things have changed since you wrote that book.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Gotten worse.

JAN JEKIELEK: Yeah, so where are we at today? What is the situation for young people or for their parents or grandparents who want to, you know, help them basically be successful today?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, the question I start with is what does school teach you about money? Why not? It’s because our school system’s Marxist. They’re like my poor dad. They’re good people, they just don’t know. And their whole value system is, you know, “I’m a straight A student, I got my PhD or I’m a doctor, I’m an accountant, I’m an attorney, I’m smart.” But they don’t know anything about money.

And one of the things that this guy talked about here was income tax. He said, Marx said taxes, taxes are essential for the spread of communism. Now think about this. America was founded as a tax free nation. 1773 was a thing called the Boston Tea Party. America was founded as a tax revolt against Mother England.

And so 1913, I think—my mind, old man—now when the Fed came in, the next thing was formed was a 16th amendment which allowed taxes to come back into America. So what’s happening? As you can see it, the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and wider and wider.

And every time you print money, fake money, you know, fiat money, I get richer. Rich get richer. Poor and middle class get poorer because inflation sends my price. I have oil wells because you can’t print oil. So I have oil wells. The price of oil goes up, the price of chickens go up, food goes up, real estate goes up.

But when mom and pop, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class, go to the supermarket, they go, “What? I can’t afford to eat anymore.”

So I think what Marx wanted was his gap between rich and poor. In fact, that was his plan as he studied Marx. He says he wanted equality. He says the way you destroy anybody is you pull the poor up, but you pull the rich down. And that’s what Marx was trying to do.

And so I see all that going on right now. And today I’ve never seen such homelessness spreading all across the world, but also America. I’ve seen homelessness in Africa and things like this. But anywhere in Phoenix, Arizona, right now we have whole zones full of homeless people because they can’t afford real estate. Their dollar doesn’t pay it much.

So that’s why I started when I saw in Vietnam when the North Vietnamese punched through the line again, this is my squadron here and very proud to be US Marine and gunship pilot. And they kept coming. And then they were running like this with their AKs this way. And a few years later, I’m in Zimbabwe, okay? The same thing going. It’s repeating, it’s just repeating.

Marx’s Vision: Controlling the Means of Production

JAN JEKIELEK: And just to clarify with the, you know, Marx’s intention, the way I understand it, what you said was very interesting, right? What I understand it is he was trying—he wanted to increase that division right, between the rich and the poor so there would be struggle. Did I get that right?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: He wanted to bring the poor up and the rich down. You know, his thing was—take away the means of—he wanted to control the means of production. That’s what he wanted. And he says the abolition of private property is what Marx wanted. And this guy, what his name? I forget his name. “Someday you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.”

JAN JEKIELEK: But the situation that you described is one where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. So they’re separating from each other, not coming together. Can you clarify that?

Learning to Sell and Use Debt

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, when you print money, I get richer because I own real estate, I own oil wells, I own cattle. Food gets up in price. But the poor middle class have to pay for it. So my apartment houses go up, but the poor middle class go homeless. And that’s the seeds of communism, that’s the seed of revolt. You know, that was the Russian revolution, Lenin and Stalin. It’s happening all again.

And the way this was so stupid that only an intellectual from a US university or a school would believe this crap. Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. You know what’s a good idea? But the only way they could enforce this was by force. So you look at what happened in China. They had to use force to get the people to comply with this stupid man’s ideologues ideas. In Russia they use force to get them to comply. So that’s the Falun Gong and all this stuff. They suppress people because Marx wanted everybody to be equal. Pull the rich down, pull the poor up.

And people actually believed that idea. But his primary idea was intellectuals should tell the world how to live. Those are called academics, the liberal left.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: And to achieve that revolution, he wanted to destabilize society.

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, you just destabilize it by taking the currency. You make the currency fake. And that’s what happened when the Federal Reserve bank came in 1913. I think at the same time the 16th amendment was passed, which was taxes. And America was founded as a tax-free nation. You know, 1773, it wasn’t founded in 1776, it was founded in 1773, the Boston Tea Party.

And now everybody says, “Well, you have to pay your taxes. You have to pay your taxes.” I’m a capitalist, I pay zero taxes legally. I fight like a dog. I refuse to play that game. Because what those taxes are used for is to create wars. You know, that’s how we finance our wars. It’s tragic what’s happening. It’s absolutely tragic. And I fought in war. I didn’t like doing it. But I realized.

Marx was like my poor dad, head of the labor union. And my poor dad put Mark says, “Workers of the world unite.” So I go home to my high school, my poor dad is head of the teachers union. “Workers of the world unite.” That sounds familiar. Today that NEA National Education Association, the National Extortion Association is the most powerful labor union in America and they control our government. Because this is what talks here. We’ve got to fight back.

So that’s why when I heard that the Epoch Times you guys were coming to interview me, I said, “What an honor.” Because I’ve been in the same battle you’ve been battling. I fight these guys here. And that’s why I wrote this book here. And that’s why my friend here, Donald Trump and I fight together for financial education.

Financial Advice for Young People Today

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: So what is the best financial advice right now, given our current reality for the typical young person who, you know, many of whom are wondering what their future is going to look like, they’re wondering, could I even afford a house? Could I even, how do I get into getting assets like Robert Kiyosaki has suggested in his books. If they’re familiar with Rich Dad Poor Dad, where do we start with providing that advice and education?

JAN JEKIELEK: May I give you a long answer to a short question?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Please.

JAN JEKIELEK: In 1974, I was getting out of the Marine Corps and they passed, government passed a thing called ERISA, Employee Retirement Income Security Act. I said, “What’s that mean?” Well, I entered the government says income security, you know, it’s fake. It started the 401(k) and the IRA.

That shift in 1974 was that workers shifted from a defined benefit pension plan, a DB pension plan to define C DC pension plan. So defined benefit was like if I work for today I work for the Ford Motor Company, I’d have a defined benefit plan. My retirement was guaranteed. The 401(k) or ERISA put in place a defined contribution pension plan. That means if there was nothing there, you have no retirement.

So my tariff, I just feel horrible. My generation of boomers, they’re going to have a rug pulled out from underneath of them because when this market comes down, which it is coming down now, they have no retirement because everything is put in 401(k)s, ETFs, IRAs, all that crap bonds. You know, when my financial plan friends say bonds are safe, that is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. You know bonds aren’t safe. China and Japan are dumping U.S. bonds right now.

What about gold? What about silver? What about oil? What about cattle? What about some, what about real estate? Do you know what I mean? So I don’t, so, because I read this book here, 1965, I was 18 years old, I said, “Oh, I better start thinking differently.” But my rich dad, which is why I wrote this book here, agreed wholeheartedly with this book. He says, “Your poor dad, Marxist, good man. He says, we should give people money, we should take care of them.” Well, that’s honorable. But why not teach him? That’s why I wrote this book here. Why not teach people to fish versus how to steal fish? And that’s what the liberal left is doing. They’re stealing our wealth, fear our money.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: So where does that leave the typical young person today?

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, get financial educate. I don’t plug my own stuff. I have a board game called Cash Flow.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, this is why I’ve come here to you. We need good advice for all of us. I need it, frankly, not just the young people. So how do we educate ourselves? You mentioned one thing very clearly, that you want to have tangible assets that appreciate.

The Power of Financial Education Through Games

JAN JEKIELEK: I think you can’t print. Yeah. So the Cash Flow board game, the reason I created the casual board game when I was 10 years old, my, my poor dad kept asking, “Hey, dad, dad, dad, what am I going to learn about money?” He says, “We don’t teach school about money.” Then I realized, you know anything about money? I said, “Well, how do I get rich?” He says, “Well, if you stay in school, get your PhD.”

I said, “Dad, you have a PhD. We’re poor.” I mean, most PhDs are poor.

He says, “Well, then you better talk to your best friend’s father.” That was rich dad. And rich dad was a man who had never finished school. He dropped out of school at 13. So I went to see my rich dad and I said, “Would you teach me about money?” He says, “Get out of here, get out of here. You’re wasting my time.” I said, “I’ll do anything.” He says, “That you work for me for free.”

So I had to work at rich dad owned hotels. So I had to go there, pick up cigarette butts and all that and work for free. And I sit down and he said, “Okay, I’ll teach you about money.” He break out the Monopoly game. And we played Monopoly, you know, four green houses, red hotel. Guess what? I own green houses and red hotels today. I was 10 years old. It was in my brain. I said, “That’s like, that’s how I get rich.” Now, I’m not saying you have to buy real estate.

So I created the Cash Flow board game because the power of a game is better than a teacher. A game includes four intelligence. Mental, physical. Got to move stuff around. Emotional and spiritual. When you lose in a game, but losing is good because you want to fight back. So there’s four intelligences in a game. Mental, emotional, EQ physical, or spirit and spiritual. Like if you go to a golf course. Can I learn how to play golf? Yeah, but you can’t use golf clubs.

That’s what schools are like.

Can you imagine this? You’ve hit the ball 500 yards and it’s a hole in one. You’ve hit a hole in one every single time. That’s academics. That’s PhDs. I sat there, you guys live in La La Land. And those La La Land guys are Marxists. They’re exactly as Marx said, it’s intellectual, should run the world.

Starting From Nothing: The Path to Wealth

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Let’s say you’re a young person today. You’ve just finished, let’s say, high school. You’re considering maybe the trades because they’re becoming fashionable again. You know, there’s this whole big thing against trades for a while. You’re considering university. And you don’t have a lot of money. Your parents are, you know, poor dad style. Right? For whatever reason, maybe just down and out, maybe, maybe they tried. What’s your next step?

JAN JEKIELEK: I’ll just tell what my, my rich dad told me. I’m kind of at the Marine Corps. Like I said, you know, I’m a pilot. And so my friends were all enjoying the airlines, and so my portrait was so happy. “Go, go fly for United. Fly for American.”

And then get your PhD.

I said, “That’s it, dad.” He goes, “Yeah.” I went to my rich dad and he says, “How do I get rich?” He says, “Be an entrepreneur.” I’m like, “So how long did it take you to become a pilot?” I said, “Two years.” “Same thing. You need the skills of an entrepreneur.” So I said, “What’s that?” He said, “Skill number one of an entrepreneur. You have to sell.”

And in my family, I went, “Oh, my God.” Because my poor dad’s family, they hated salesmen. They hated salesmen. “No, I don’t want to sell.” Please, to my rich dad, “Please. I can’t sell. My mom and dad hate salesmen. You know, they think they’re crooks, they’re liars.” That’s common, all this.

He asked me for my advice. “You have to learn how to sell.” “No, no.” You know, I’m about 27 years old. “No, I agree with that.” He says, “Robert, how’s your sex life?” I said, “Zero.” He says, “Because you can’t sell.”

I said, “Okay, I’ll do. I’ll learn how to sell.” So then I next job was to go find a job that paid me to learn how to sell. And so I got down to interviewing with two companies, finally IBM and Xerox. And so the only thing I asked him about wasn’t the pay. I said, “Tell me about your sales school.”

So today you can get that same similar seamless training in network marketing. You go to a network marketing company like Amway or something like this, they have to train you to sell and they’ll coach you. You know, if you fail, they’ll coach you. They’ll fail to coach you.

So I had to learn how to sell. And then the, so that was number one. Second was after I was selling. Rich dad says, “So what’s the next thing?” He says, “You have to learn how to use debt.”

And in my poor dad’s family, you know.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Debt is dangerous. Rich Texas, “You just came back from Vietnam. The US dollar is debt. Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard.” This is 1974. “So in ’71, the dollar is now debt.” He says, “You’ve got to learn how to use debt.” As I said before, the more debt they print, the rich get richer, poor middle class get poorer. So this gap between everybody is so wide today.

“How do I learn how to use debt?” He says, “Take a class on real estate.”

My First Real Estate Deal

So I searching around and I found one. “How to make money millions in real estate with nothing down.” You know, he’s hypersonist TV time before YouTube. And so I signed up on his nothing down course. It was really good. This guy was a real, real estate investor. And for three days he taught me how to, you know, how to use debt and all those debt financing. And I said, “Okay, I did the three. Now what do I have to do?”

This was the best advice. He says, “Most guys will leave this course and do nothing.” He says, “Your job is in the next hundred days is to look at a hundred deals.”

What he says, “You got to get to real world.” So I’m now like, I come out of this course for the next day. I go to realtor after realtor after realtor. I said, “I want to look at some property I want to buy for nothing down.” They all threw me out. But I kept asking, I kept asking, kept asking, “How do I find a piece of real estate I can get? I have no money.”

And finally there’s one guy still remember, he goes, “I have a deal for you.” So I said, “Really?” But it took, I didn’t, I didn’t go a hundred times, but I was willing to. Most people quit. So this guy says, “I got a deal for you. It’s on Maui.” I went, “Wow, Maui is the richest place on, you know, the most expensive island in Hawaii.”

So I flew over to Maui and sure enough, it was a beachfront condo on the beach in Maui. It was $18,000. This is 1974. I broke out my credit card and I put the down payment on this was a hundred percent debt. And I made $25 a month. After all expenses, debt and all this, I was free.

Finding Deals and Doing the Work

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: But I had to find that deal. Most people are so f*ing lazy, they go to a financial planner, “what you got,” they just take what they sell. So to this day, you can ask my assistants, all I’m doing is looking at deals. It’s called deal flow. Look at this deal, this deal, this deal, this deal, and it becomes a habit, if you know what I mean.

So you can train yourself to have the skills and the mindset of a rich person, but you have to do the work.

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, I think that’s the key here. You’re pointing out something incredibly important. You have to do the work.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Amen.

And I’ve heard that from a lot of young women. They go, “can’t find men today.” They’re all, they want to be TikTok dancers or they play video games in the basement. And they said, “we can’t find men.” So they can’t afford to have kids, buy apartments or rent and all this.

The Communist Lie About Fixed Resources

JAN JEKIELEK: Let me run an idea by you, okay? I have a theory that there’s a few things, if you teach a very young kid, right, that will really help them in life. And it’s something. Here’s one example. I’m just going to use one example because this relates to the Communist Manifesto, right?

So my background is in biology. I was actually an evolutionary biologist in training, right? And one of the things we never learned, okay, I literally never learned this until my 40s, okay, is where does prosperity come from, okay?

And I think one of the biggest lies that is in the sort of the communist approach to the world is that the pie is fixed. You have a pie, it’s a fixed pie. And the rich people take it from the poor people, right? That, I mean, because that’s kind of how it works in nature, right?

As a biologist, you kind of learn, well, there’s limited resources and someone gets the resource, someone doesn’t get the resource. But with human beings, the pie expands as you get prosperity, right? And you have Adam Smith, he has, you know, division of labor is the cause. There’s innovation, there’s all these different approaches.

But I never learned this right, and I think it’s very easy to convince someone of this, of the communist approach, if they don’t understand that prosperity is a thing, right? It expands the pie. I’m curious what you think about that.

Creating Your Own Prosperity

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, that’s Malthusian economics, allocation of scarce resources. And the reality is we’re given a brain, you know, this year and this year use it. Look at Elon Musk, he’s a South African, comes to America, becomes the richest man in the world. He didn’t ask for a handout. He got government grants and all this. But you can create your prosperity by creating.

So I wrote this book here. It was turned down by every publisher because they said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

So I published it anyway. It sold 48 million copies so far. Number one book in finance today now, 48 million. I make a buck a book, so it’s a few bucks there. This didn’t exist till I wrote it, came out of here. It’s a true story.

It’s the same as Donald Trump. He was born a rich man. I wasn’t. But we’re good friends because we think alike. So, you know, have you seen the picture that Trump’s putting a ballroom onto the White House? There’s a picture, there’s a cartoon, there’s a White House with a Trump tower attached to it. You know, if you let him do it, he’d probably do it. He comes out of your hand, you create it, you create your prosperity.

Finding Your Path to Financial Heaven

JAN JEKIELEK: For someone that does have some wealth, you know, however it’s distributed right now, it could be anywhere from all of it’s in cash and fiat as you described it, all the way to, it’s all in gold right now. What do you reckon? What would you recommend people should do in this current financial reality in terms of their allocation of that wealth?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, my rich dad said that was really interesting. He said there’s a million ways to financial heaven. In other words, find the way that works for you. There’s a billion ways to financial hell, and most people are going to financial hell. So rather than being told what to do, like go to a financial planner or get a job and all this stuff, I had to find out what I was interested in.

And I like real estate. I really do love real estate. I own probably 1,500 rental properties. I own commercial. I love real estate. Life is what you imagine. Imagination.

So there’s a billion ways of financial heaven. I love real estate. I don’t like stocks. I don’t like bonds. I don’t like paper. I like something I can see, touch and feel. Like I love cars. I own, I love pens, I have watches. I’m a see, touch and feel guy. So I stay with what I like and what I’m interested in.

I just love real estate and it provides a service. People have a place to sleep. Unfortunately, people are going homeless. Thomas Jefferson warned us America about this. He said if a central bank takes over, people wind up homeless in the lands their fathers built. And today Jefferson’s prophecy is coming true. Homelessness is exploding because every time you print money, two things go up, taxes and inflation.

Love What You Do

JAN JEKIELEK: I love this idea, right? You have to find the thing you love because that’s the thing that you can put all your heart into.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: What you love, just legal, ethical and moral.

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, hopefully what you love is all those things. Well, so this has been a fascinating conversation for me. Perhaps a final thought as we finish.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, what I love is this is a piece of real estate I’ll take. If I own this, I take care of it. If you don’t love it, you don’t take care of it. So I don’t like stocks, I don’t own any IBM or Xerox or General Motors or Apple. I like real estate. I like oil, I like cattle. I like food. So that’s what I invest in.

I just really love real estate and I love debt. There’s a guy like Dave Ramsey, he’s always saying, “live debt free.” Well, Dave’s a friend of mine, but most people should follow Dave’s advice because they don’t think about money. So if you’re going to be like me, you have to learn how to use debt.

And that’s where real estate courses come in. They teach you debt to equity ratios and all this too. You can have too much debt or not enough debt and all this stuff. So a lot of times I’ll take a property, I’ll improve its value, I’ll borrow out the equity, add more debt to it, and it drives people crazy. They go, “it’s 100% debt.” I said yes, but it cash flows.

So the asset is, because now debt holds its place. That cash I bought, the equity I borrow out, I buy another piece and that’s my plan. There’s a million ways to heaven and a billion ways to hell. Find what you like, you like.

JAN JEKIELEK: And you have to, and you have to love doing that. I think if you’re going to go the debt route, it’s kind of bit dangerous if you don’t love it.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: And smart, you have to want to study it. Because I’ve lost a lot of money in my time, I made a lot of mistakes, but I’m still playing Monopoly. I’m still a 10 year old boy.

JAN JEKIELEK: Going.

Still Playing the Game

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: And if you ever go to Hawaii, Rich Dad started, I asked him, he had no money either and he said, “someday I’ll own that hotel.” You go to Waikiki beach today, that’s the Hyatt Regency. Rich dad doesn’t own the hotel, he owns the land.

You understand? He knew his game. So it’s just a game. If you like stocks, it’s a game. It’s all it is. It’s fun. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. But every time you lose you get smarter.

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, Robert Kiyosaki, it’s such a pleasure to have had you on.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Thank you very much. Really an honor. I just, I have tremendous respect for what you guys are doing. We’re in the same battle. We’re fighting communism. I fight with financial education.

JAN JEKIELEK: Well, thank you so very much.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Thank you.

JAN JEKIELEK: Thank you all for joining Robert Kiyosaki and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

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