Ray Dalio on how the pandemic is impacting the economy | Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone, welcome to our daily homeroom live stream. Uh, this is a way that we're trying to keep everyone in touch during school closures. It's a place for us to answer any questions you have, talk about how we can just navigate this crisis together. We have a really exciting guest today, Ray Dalio. I'll give them a more formal introduction in a little bit.

But before we get into the meat of that conversation with Ray, I'll just remind everyone Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. Uh, we exist because of philanthropic donations from folks like yourself. Uh, and I want to give a special shout-out to several corporations who've stepped up in the last few weeks to make sure, you know, Khan Academy is running at a deficit even before this crisis, and our deficit has grown through the crisis.

A special shout-out to Bank of America, to Novartis, to Fastly, to Google.org, and AT&T for helping us respond to this crisis. But we still need more support, so if you're in a position to do so, please think about making a donation to Khan Academy. But with that, I'd like to introduce our guest that I'm super excited about. Ray Dalio has been something of a hero of mine back in for my previous career when I used to be a hedge fund analyst.

For those of y'all who don't know Ray, Ray is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, which is the largest hedge fund in the world. So I think we're gonna have a really interesting conversation about finance, the economy that we're in, and a lot of the work that Ray and his wife Barbara are doing around philanthropy to try to help address issues around education and other things.

So if anyone has questions, feel free to come on Facebook and YouTube on the message boards. We have team members looking at questions. Ask questions about the economy, ask questions about hedge funds, ask questions about education. Ray's going to, and myself, hopefully be able to address a lot of them.

So Ray, thank you so much for joining! It's always great to be with you. And Ray, maybe a good place to start, and you know, full disclosure, Ray and Barbara have been longtime supporters of Khan Academy and philanthropy in a lot of different dimensions. So thank you for that. Uh, but you know when you say the largest hedge fund in the world, I think a lot of people have heard of the word hedge fund, but then they say, "What is a hedge fund?" So what do you do? How is that different than other types of investment vehicles?

Well, um, you know, most investment vehicles go up or down with the markets. Like the stock market goes up, they make money, stock market goes down, they lose money. Some go into bonds and so on. A hedge fund doesn't have a bias. So you can make money if it goes down; you can make money if it goes up. It just depends on whether you can make money. So we can invest in all the markets in the world, and we can do it in a way where if they went down, or we went up, you have opportunities to, um, make money. The only thing that limits us is our own abilities.

Yeah, you know, with our example, the explanation I always used to give to folks when I was an analyst at a hedge fund is that hedge funds have more flexibility to make more different types of investments. Now there's a huge variety of them, of different strategies, but to your point, they don't necessarily just track the market type of thing.

Yes, and ours is, um, it's an extension of my own personal passion, which is, um, to understand how the world works, um, economically, every country. So we're in just about every country, just about every market, and so we have to see the world and try to piece it all together.

So that's my passion, and maybe that's a good place to start at a very high level because even before the COVID crisis started, this was many months ago, you have been a very vocal speaker and writer about wealth inequality. When you speak, people are listening because obviously you understand the economy; you manage a lot of assets. What's your view on this issue of wealth inequality?

Well, I think it comes down to values. You know, I was born in 1949, and in 1945, we began a new world order. What I mean is, we created a new monetary system. The United States won the war, and we began an American era. At that time, there was clear, it was clear what an American dream was.

And so, I grew up in a household where I've got two parents. My dad was a jazz musician, lower middle-class family, and I was—But the notion of equal opportunity, uh, through good education, I went to a public school. And the, um, that notion of what was fair, equal opportunity on a broad-based basis, was what the American dream was.

I’m not sure that everybody would know what the American dream is or make it a statement that way, but in any case, uh, it's become lost or it certainly doesn't exist in that when we take education, for example, I looked at the conditions of the different top quintile, top 20 percent, next 20 percent. I found that the top 40 percent of the population spends on average five times as much money on their kids' education as the bottom 60 percent.

And so, through intimate contact and so on, we can see that there is not just a wealth gap; there's an opportunity gap and a productivity gap. That's a problem, and it's a problem in terms of its outcomes, the wealth difference, but it's also a structural problem in that all the people can't have an equal shot at being productive.

And when you see some of the conditions kids, um, who are living in neighborhoods of poverty and go to school to get food because they don't have enough at home, and the services—something's wrong. So I wrote a piece that's on LinkedIn, which is, um, why and how capitalism needs to be reformed because I believe that if you don't have a situation where people have opportunity, you're not only tapping, failing to tap all the potential that exists, which is uneconomic, but you're also threatening the existence of the system.

And I think that's coming to home very clearly with this downturn in the economy, in the virus. To be clear, you know, I'm looking at some of your, your blog, you wrote why and how capitalism needs to be reformed. You know, the data is very clear that’s not under debate that inequality has gotten worse over the last several decades. You have charts like, you know, you look at per capita GDP, and for the bottom 60 percent of earners, it's grown much slower than per capita GDP for the top 40 percent.

It's growing much faster, and that leads to what you just talked about—people at the upper quartiles are able to spend more on their children's education, so that kind of becomes a self-perpetuating thing. What do you think this has been the case? What are the structural elements that have caused this? And in your opinion, what needs to change?

Yeah, great question because I don't think it's anybody's evilness, at least not many people's evilness; it is structural. So for example, uh, the profit-making system, um, is a system in which, uh, it's a very effective resource allocation because if what you are putting out is worth more than what it cost you to make it, um, you grow and you get capital that's invested in it, and it grows that way.

But it's not effective in a number of ways. Um, it—the profit-making system, for example, is not effective in creating educational resources. Well, um, and so that large gap becomes a self-reinforcing gap, particularly in this age when there's a change in the economic rewards for production workers, the average worker.

Uh, that there's a whole hollowing out there, and so, uh, profit margins increase. And then, as you point out, it becomes self-perpetuating because those who earn more money take care of their kids differently. So it creates an opportunity gap; they spend money on different things, and so resources of the country go into those things.

Then, naturally, in a desire to spend produce most cost-effectively, they go internationally and find the most cost-effective ways of operating, which has narrowed the wealth gap between countries but widened it within countries. And then also, we have monetary policy with the Federal Reserve that buys financial assets.

Um, in other words, the central bank—the way it has been operating, uh, when you hit zero interest rates, is to print money and then buy financial assets, which helps those who own financial assets more than those who don't. So the profit-making system and the capitalist system in which you can invest in profitable enterprises is good generally speaking as a resource allocation but far from perfect.

So we just have to see those outcomes, and you would say—are we producing a broad-based opportunity? And so, um, it can't do everything. So think about, let's say, a school system—a budget for a school system. It's budget-based; in other words, um, they don't have capital. But yet think about the economic impact simply of educating children well.

So the point is that it's by and large a pretty good system, but it's not delivering the results that I think we want. And so my concern is that if it's not engineered correctly to achieve that, it can become less productive. So from an engineering point of view, you have to engineer it to increase the size of the pie, which means to increase people's productivity because you only get to consume what is produced.

So to raise living standards, you have to increase productivity, and at the same time, so you have to increase the size of the pie; you also have to divide the pie well. And it's going to require a better engineering system, and that was going to have to be done, I think, in a bipartisan way. I'm really worried about the battle between the sides, um, causing more problems because history has shown that this is a period very much like the 1930s.

And when you have wealth, uh, problems and wealth gaps and difficult times, there tends to be a fight over how to divide the pie. And so I'm hearing, just to paraphrase what you said, several levers that might have maybe gotten us here. And once again, it's not anyone's negative intent; it's just the reality.

Technology has made knowledge work maybe more productive and has maybe commoditized some labor-type of work, and then you add globalization there that also puts wage pressure, at least domestically, especially in rich countries, if some of that work can go, uh, other places. And then that can be self-perpetuating. The people who have more are able to invest more in their children and have more opportunities.

What do you think is the solution then— the Federal Reserve, as they buy financial assets, helps people who have financial assets, which they needed to do. This—the policies that we're now seeing now are more targeted, um, than they were before. And that goes to a question from Twitter. Ken asks, "I want to understand where the Fed printed money or government stimulus is going to."

And you just explained the Fed printed money is going to— is going to go buy financial assets, traditionally treasury bonds, but other things when it gets more aggressive. I want to understand how the new money is flowing into the system. So I guess you could go over that a little bit, but what do you think are going to be the main implications of this kind of aggressive action of where the money is flowing in, either from fiscal or monetary policy?

Well, um, thank you for that question, is it Fred? Thank you, Fred. Ken, thank you, Ken. Yeah, what we had before was that—what I described—that the Federal Reserve would buy bonds, and then it would go in the financial system because the seller of bonds would get the cash, and they were an investor, so they would buy more investments, and it wouldn't trickle down in the same way.

What we have now is exactly what happened in the Great Depression. Um, April 9th of this year was exactly like March 5th, 1933. And in March 5th, 1933, the newly elected President Roosevelt got on a fireside chat and explained that they were going to produce a lot more money by central banks.

And they were going to devalue the dollar, and they were going to, uh, enter into a lot of, uh, programs. So these programs—but I should explain, the central government has the right to tax and spend and determine how they do that, but it doesn't have the right to print money. The Federal Reserve, the central bank, has the right to print money, but they don't have the right to determine how it's spent.

So in coming together, the Federal Reserve and the government—the central government—target programs, and so they're now targeted at individuals, which—so the government central government is targeting individuals, companies, and so on, in a number of ways, and the Federal Reserve is buying the debt so that they do that.

So they're producing money, new money, and credit, and that'll have implications for the value of money and credit, but it's much more targeted. So we now see those programs targeted—of course, they're complex—but they really are targeted more for individuals and small businesses, although there are big businesses targeted as well.

So that's the nature of the dynamic that money and credit, like in the Great Depression, will reverse deflation. I could explain it; I don't—I worry that sometimes I answer the questions too long, but there are economic holes. You know, um, you can think about it as a hole in income and a hole in balance sheets, and if you don't fill those holes, then there will be less spending and there'll be asset sales. So that produces a deflationary depression.

So the actions that are now being taken are meant to fill those holes for Americans. Others outside the country will not have that benefit, but they're targeted to fill those holes. And it won't be inflationary because it's negating deflationary. But we're entering a whole new period of time, which I hope we can talk about.

Yeah, and let's talk about that a little bit. From YouTube, Rochen Santi asks, "So just confirmed that the economic— is it confirmed the economy will go into recession after this coronavirus?"

I'm more worried about the recession than the virus because I'm afraid of jobs being lost. What's your view there of what's likely to happen as we go out of the coronavirus? Or maybe this will slightly happen over the next 18 months where it still might be out there.

I think of the virus like being a tsunami that's come, and then when it goes away, and let's say it was to go away forever, um, there's still terrible damage. And the terrible damage is to incomes and to balance sheets.

Um, you know, every individual, every company, and every government has a certain amount of revenue and a certain amount of expenses, and then they have a savings, a certain amount of balance sheet. Those have been severely damaged, so the loss of income and bringing it down relative to expenses is necessitating cutbacks.

And then the balance sheet means great losses. Think about companies like Disney, by way of example— you think, where was Disney? Well, Disney will have that hit. Many, many companies, many individuals, many small businesses—that financial damage is a great, great damage.

This will be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate will approach 20 percent. The downturn in the economy will be the largest since the Great Depression, and the financial consequences, the financial wreckage of this will be of that magnitude.

The good thing is that the government is acting quickly to, um, to fill those holes in. However, it's not being felt by everybody in the same way. You know, um, we think of the economy—there's the, you know, the rich and the poor, and you know, and it's going up and down. I think we think that when the uh it returns, it's just going to come back to what it was.

There's going to be a restructuring of that. Um, there's going to be a restructure—people will think, policymakers will think, "Who's going to pay what bills, and what should it be going forward?" So there'll be a reallocation of resources. Tax rates are going to change.

And also, um, thoughts of spending to, I think, to establish more of an acceptable bottom because it's so disproportionately felt, uh, by those who don't have savings or don't have conditions.

We can see just even, um, groups that are, uh, have social contact—the poor live closer together, and so in many, many different ways that will be rethought about.

And what do you think is the limit of a government action? As you mentioned, the government can borrow money in the form of treasuries to spend on programs. The interest rate can stay down if the Fed keeps buying those treasuries with printed money.

And just in the last few weeks, they've issued, you know, two trillion dollars of programs. How many trillions can the government spend to try to do this before you start seeing things like inflation pick up?

Uh, you have a situation where, um, we're testing the limits of our monetary, um, a monetary policy— the capacity to print money. This is very much like the war years. So in the Great Depression, there was this kind of spending and these kinds of deficits, and then when we went into the war, those increased a lot, and the Federal Reserve, um, in one fashion or another, uh, monetized that particular debt.

The real question is whether, um, we can use that money productively or whether it's wasted. If it's productive, and also most importantly, if our society is cohesive, um, I think that we can, uh, get through this in a managed way, much like a war.

However, what really worries me is the fragmentation, the anger, um, or the carelessness of one extreme or another to mess up the continued, um, improvement of the pie. I think there's an opportunity here, um, to restructure the system to be in a better way, but it really requires, I think, a cohesiveness, a bipartisanship— a respect and understanding and empathy for the various sides involved so that that's done intelligently, and the country is brought together, uh, rather than fighting.

Because history has shown, like in the Great Depression, if you're going to go from country to country, the reactions were very different. In fact, in Europe and Japan, uh, four countries that were democracies, uh, the internal fighting was so bad that the parliaments—their congresses—chose to have autocratic systems. Special rights and Hitler came to power in 1933 because the internal fighting was so great.

And there could be a move toward more autocratic and confrontational types of policies, and because this is a world problem, this is not just a U.S. problem. Uh, this is a world problem, and there's competitions going on in the world, you know—there's a China as a rising power, um, and then there's a lot of the part of the world that won't have the support that the United States has because we're blessed to have the world central bank.

We can produce dollars, and dollars are a reserve currency. That means they can be spent all around the world, and they're accepted. Very few currencies, um, are like that. No currencies like the U.S. dollar.

So in a lot of parts of the world, they're not going to be able to fill those holes that the Federal Reserve can fill. So we're going to see a change, I think, in the world order, and it's going to be—there'll be anger, and there could be fighting. So how that's handled, I think, is the most important thing.

And that's related to this question from YouTube. Pairper asks, "Are you seeing any geopolitical risks or limitations of what the government can do?" I mean, you're touching on this. I mean, how do you think that'll evolve and what advice, you know, how do we navigate? You mentioned there's polarization in this country; there might be polarization globally. What can people do proactively to get to the better outcome?

Well, first, uh, I'd like to draw your attention to a series that I'm writing on LinkedIn, which is called "The Changing World Order." And what it is, is it looks at history going back the last 500 years because the same things happen over and over again for almost the identical reasons.

And one could see where we are now, as I say, very similar to the 1935-1945 period or other cycles. And so, um, what happens is when you have a great empire—the world's leading empire—and it becomes more vulnerable, if it becomes financially overextended, if the education isn't the same, um, if varying rivals rise to strengthen it, um, that's a time that it becomes challenged by the—in other words, it can be perceived as a time of, of weakness.

And history has shown that. Um, it's also a time of economic difficulty and that leaders tend to be more populist, more nationalist, more confrontational. And so that is why there's a tendency of conflicts—geopolitical conflicts, world conflicts—that follow depression periods.

And so it's something that we have to be aware of. There are tensions, um, with Iran, tensions with China, tensions there. And if it's perceived as a time of vulnerability, um, it can produce, uh, conflict. History has shown that to be the case over and over again.

So in that piece, we go back 500 years, and you see the patterns, and it's something to be scared about. Now, the second part of that question is, "What do we do about it?" The question is, we—you know, we’re common people. Um, we each have whatever influence we have.

The most important thing is the behavior of the people who have their hands on the level, uh, levers of power, and so they will make those decisions. Um, and so I guess we affect them, and we, um, we have a right to, to some extent, to choose them.

And we also hopefully, uh, don't make it so polarized that we're in this battle together. And so countries dealing with each other, just like the individuals or the political factions—those of the left and those of the right within the country—hopefully realize that the path of doing it peacefully and productively is so much better than the path of conflict because if—maybe that's the thing to pass around because if there's conflict, that conflict creates its own problems, its own economic problems, its own social problems, and—and that creates the worst economic output.

So which really comes down to how we are with each other.

Yeah, no, and, and speaking about that, from YouTube, Andres Penaranda asks, "Please walk us through the restarting process of the economy and maybe even how that might relate to the geopolitics." But especially the economic—would it be possible to come back suddenly from a 20% unemployment rate while after the 2008 recovery was quite more slow?

And what you're suggesting is this might be a deeper, uh, recession or even depression than 2008.

Yeah, I think it's, I think it's important to understand that there's a productive economy, and so if there were no financial pieces, no balance sheets and income statements, there's—you know—just imagine there was no savings and no financial assets. There's—that's kind of one part of the economy, and it works with the other part of the economy, which is the financial part of the economy—assets.

You know, you lend somebody money, they have to pay you back, and so on, and they're both operating together. So if we didn't have the financial part of the economy and didn't have to have a debt restructuring, um, you'd almost imagine, okay, um, you can go on, and where could the economy produce? Well, it could produce at whatever level, uh, it's capable of.

And so if it was not impaired by the, uh, uh, uh, virus, um, you know, why not go do the other things? But when we have money and we have credit, we have accounting, and so we have companies with debts. You know, like I live in the state of Connecticut, in the state of Illinois, and so on— they have their own financials, and so the financial consequences of that means that certain people are going to need payments.

And when they go financially broke, then that's going to have— that's going to be the impediment. So the impediment to growth is largely the financial impediment to growth. And that is why that's so important to be dealt with.

Um, I don't—you know, we could all, um, hear what we hear about the virus. Um, you know, there's a—and there's a wide range of possibilities. It's certainly the case in past pandemics that the possibility of it, um, coming and going and not being easy to deal with economically could persist for a while.

And the com—those economic consequences are very important. So we're going to come out of it with a restructuring. One day, it'll be gone, and we will have a restructured economy. Then, um, who will pay what taxes? Who will have what wealth?

Um, and how the resources will be distributed, I think will be, uh, restructured. And how that's done will be important to make sure that it's a productive way. And that restructuring is historical.

So as I say, 1930 to '45, we had a depression, and '33, they printed a lot of money, and then we went into a war, and then we had a giant restructuring. And 1945, we began again. And so, and then we were off and had a period of prosperity, and that's normally the case.

Man's capacity to adapt and invent is tremendous; that's the greatest force. So while we go through these restructurings, I think that at the same time, there's this tremendous capacity to adapt and, uh, restructure and get on to doing it again. So I'm confident we'll get it behind us, but I think it's probably going to take a few years.

And on that, just to break down some of what you said, you know, the financial world—when you talk about restructuring, this is a company has some debt, has to make interest payments, it might have to renew that debt after some period. And then if, for example, if you're an airline and you're bringing in no revenue, there’s no way to pay that debt—that's the type of restructuring you're talking about.

And then separately, and then separately, there's a re—I guess you could say the real economy, irrespective of how people finance things, and—and that's where you're saying that that might, uh [Music]. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, no, go ahead.

No, no, I'm just trying to paraphrase, make sure—first responding, it'll also be a restructuring of who pays the bills. So, yeah, there'll be the corporate restructuring, and somebody will have an opportunity to, let's say, buy that airline cheaply.

The debtors—we may not fly as much, and so I don't know, there'll be less planes, and it'll all be adapted to in that system. And then at the same time, excuse me, and then at the same time, um, we're in a position where, um, they're going to have to be, uh, changes in taxes, um, and changes in restructuring wealth and those kinds of changes.

They may affect, um, how states are going to get it; they may affect how we spend money on education; they may affect how we're spending money on health care. We're going to have to spend—we're going to learn to save more, um, because a lot of entities realize that they didn't have a cushion. So there'll be more savings and less spending, and it'll be reconstructed as to how we do, you know, taxes and spending and all of that too.

And what I'm hearing from you is you're definitely not seeing kind of an immediate bounce back. If tomorrow the coronavirus just disappeared, it's not like that everything would just get rosy overnight. There might be just, you know, the people who've lost their jobs, they might not be hired immediately; they have less purchasing power.

So what I'm hearing from you is it could be several years for it to get back to normal.

Well, this could be—this will go on, uh, a while because of those economic consequences. And then also consider that it's going to be worse in countries that don't have reserve currency central banks. Most of the world—and also, we're going to make an adjustment for self-sufficiency.

You know, we were on a path to greater self-sufficiency because of the rivalry, and it could be conflict, uh, with China and others in terms of, um, we're a highly globalized economy becoming much more of a self-sufficiency economy.

And even individuals are becoming more self-sufficient. And that meant that the efficiencies that we had by, wherever it's most cost-effective to produce it and ship it easily around the world, um, that paradigm is shifting. So, we're going from an interconnected world to a world that is going to be much more independent, and that will make for less efficiencies and supply lines, for example.

Um, and so that'll have an effect— all of those are like sand in the gears.

And what's your sense, given that this could be a protracted recession or depression, the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1930s? Uh, I—we're—you’re a student of the market or what's your sense of the last few weeks? The market seems to be getting more and more optimistic.

Well, I think it's very much like March 1933. So let me recap. Uh, there was a bubble. Uh, the '20s, uh, were the roaring '20s, and people borrowed money to bet on it continuing. That was very much like the time we were in. People were borrowing money; companies were buying money to buy back stocks and so on.

And then, there was, um, the bubble burst. And so from '29 until 1932, '30, and then the beginning of '33, '1932, we had the dive. Roosevelt was elected; uh, he was more of a, um, populist of the left to redistribute. And in March—March 5th, 1933, he announced a program that's very much the same as the program that we announced, Americans announced—the President, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve on April 9th.

And that bottom represented the exact bottom in the stock market, the exact bottom in the economy because it produced a wave of money that hit. And so while we went from the low in the economy in 1938 into the beginning of '33, there was a pickup in the economic activity that carried, um, further along.

So the depression reaching its, um, economic activity, it took about 10 years for the economy to get back, a little less than ten years. And it really took going into the war to get back where it was.

So I think it'll be somewhat similar that what happens is there was the big printing of money, and we call that reflation. And with that reflation, that is what's supporting, um, assets like this. So you see both stocks and, um, gold go up.

However, we're in a period of time where there's massive differences. You know, you talk about the stock market as a whole, but the differences between the winners and the losers, um, is enormous. And so when looking at stocks or looking at any asset, we have to take appreciate the differences that exist be there.

And also, um, there's not much leeway in interest rates. So, um, you know, the—what best way to get stocks to go up is to get interest rates to go down. So I think we're in an environment in which, um, you're not going to see the return to normalcy.

But you're seeing this weight of money, uh, force create the bottom right around the same time—the same way as April 9th was March 5th, 1933. You're seeing that weight of money come in and have that effect. And then it will—I don't think it's going to take it to where anything where it was because conditions are much worse: balance sheets, income statements.

And then, there's going to be the value of money question, you know. Um, gold and other assets, um, and storeholds of wealth will enter into the picture. So I think it's similar. The, um, and that differentiation is going to be very important to know where to invest and where not to invest.

So it's not so much that you're doubting the market, uh, that the market is, as you said, there's this weight of money flowing in and it has to go someplace. And that might be, maybe forming something of a bottom. Or do you think that the market as a whole is being overly optimistic, uh, given some of the more pessimistic scenarios that might happen?

Well, if we take the market as a whole, what we have is the Federal Reserve and the federal government, I believe, saying we will do whatever it takes. And so, if you saw that amount of money—you know, we've seen—we're going to see another 2 trillion. I think you'll see whatever amount of money it takes, and that means, um, so we're on that kind of a path.

The question will increasingly also be what is the value of money and whether it's a storehold of wealth. And so that becomes the next risk to worry about.

So that's why I keep referring to storeholds of wealth and stocks at the same time as there's that, uh, reflation going on because if you go down again and the unemployment rate goes up again and so on, the money's gonna—the money and credit are just gonna keep coming.

I could—we could talk for hours. I know we've—I just looked at the time and I realized I've gone, uh, ten minutes over. So thanks for staying with us. I do want to get a chance to talk to you a little bit about, uh, some of the amazing work that you and Barbara are doing on philanthropy.

Uh, tell us a little bit about this program that y'all have just announced, I guess even before the crisis, y'all were doing some pretty impressive things in Connecticut, uh, but especially around device access most recently.

Well, Barbara, I guess you're referring to, um, uh, the last—yeah. Barbara worked in the, um, poor school districts, uh, for the last, uh, 10 years helping them, and we we decided that we would go, um, we’d give 100 million dollars to the state of Connecticut if the state of Connecticut would match it to get, uh, disengaged and disconnected, uh, high school students—students who wouldn't make it through high school or stop working—and to get them through high school and into jobs.

And so we put that in place, and then we just, um, put in about 60,000 computers, uh, for those students because those poor students don't have computers and they can't do online learning. And so that's one of the things that we've done.

We've done a number of other things—food programs, supports of, in other ways—but I think that's what you're, uh, speaking of. And that's why we're excited to partner with you and Khan Academy to get them the great education that they otherwise would not have.

So, um, and it was great. I really want to shout out to Dell because, you know, there was a shortage—there's a shortage of computers— and how they were responsive and how they priced those computers at cost and, uh, and provided those 60,000. And then we put in about 25 million dollars to do that.

Uh, we were able to, uh, we were able to get them and provide them education. But it just highlights the differences in the conditions between, um, you know, the different populations and basic things like education or computers. So, yeah, we're thrilled to do that.

You know, hopefully, uh, together with, uh, with what the wonderful work you're doing.

No, thank you. I'm talking to a lot of folks these days, and Khan Academy, as much as we hope it can help a lot of folks, you need that device access, you need that internet access. So the work that you are doing in Connecticut is incredible, and we're hoping it can set an example for many other groups around the country or the world.

So Ray, thank you so much; I hope you can join this. I mean, we have so many questions that I didn't get to. I probably got to five percent of the questions that people are asking. I personally would also like to go much deeper on some of these economic questions to make sure I understand it a little bit better, but thank you so much for joining today, and I hope we can do this again sometime soon.

It was a delight anytime you want, look forward to it. Thanks, Ray!

So, uh, thanks everyone for joining today. This was a great conversation. Thanks for all of your questions. I think we will be able to convince Ray to join again and get to more of these questions. But once again, thanks for joining; this is a really fun way for all of us to stay in touch during this time, this time of social distancing.

I will remind you, if you are in a position to do so, please think about donating to Khan Academy, and we look forward to seeing you in future live streams. Tomorrow, we're going to have four-star General Stanley McChrystal on, and we're going to talk a lot of questions about motivation and staying focused and a little bit about maybe some of the geopolitics of what we might be going into.

So, uh, thanks for joining. Thank you, Ray, and I will see everyone tomorrow.