All In Podcast Episode 193 Recap and Notes August 23 2024

August 23 2024

• Sit to pee

• BLS revises job numbers down ~30%

  • 818000 down - March 2023 - Mar/Apr 2023

  • 2.9M → 2.1M

  • Largest revision since 2009 (GFC)

  • Professional and business services down

  • Sacks called it

    
    
    
    
    
    

    
    

• MIT publishes admissions data post affirmative action end

  • Racial composition has changed from previously
  • Tier 2 schools’s students might be better than Tier 1 schools’s because they are not corrupted by woke DEI nonsense, are less entitled and work harder

• Election

  • Kamala doing better in the polls (Silver Bulletin shows her kinda in the lead)
  • But Polymarket has Trump ahead
  • Polling vs Prediction Markets is interesting

• Comparison of tickets

  • Private vs Public
  • JD Vance is historically the most unpopular VP pick
  • Media coverage of Harris is 84% +ve and Trump is 89% -ve
  • Walz and Harris have only ever worked for the government
  • Vance and Trump have worked in private business
  • Gina Raimundo caught being unaware of BLS - reacted with shock to jobs report
  • These government employees have no clue how to create value in society
  • Need to care about the future
    • Having kids makes you care about the future
    • Being an investor makes you care about the future
    • Maybe home ownership also helps?
  • Democrats have Bernie and Warren have as their heart
  • Republicans have become right wing populist
  • Democrats are left wing populist
    • Soak the rich, hate the billionaires

• Harris backs Biden’s tax plans

  • Proposals

    • 25% wealth tax on people over $100M in assets
      • Including unrealized gains
    • 28% corporate tax rate (up from 21%)
      • Trump had proposed 15%
    • 4% stock buyback tax (currently ~1%?)

  • Enough people don’t feel the positive effects of capitalism so want to push back against it

  • History of Federal Tax rates

    
    
    

    
    

  • In the 40s and 50s tax rates were higher but those people didn’t have many options at the time of moving out, etc

  • Realization is important in the tax code

    • You have a price
    • You have liquidity to pay the tax

  • Whole new tax bureaucracy is going to be created

  • US GDP is $25T

  • Federal Budget proposed is $7.2T

  • State + Local is about $4.2T

  • So government budget is half of GDP

  • That’s why socialism is becoming more acceptable

  • Mitt Romney said way back when that ~47% of Americans are government recipients - got hammered for it

  • If the balance is 51% - then it becomes socialist

  • Government workers vote overwhelmingly for Democrats

    
    
    

    
    

  • CA unions almost always vote Democrat

  • American capitalism required a middle class

  • But globalization has hollowed out this middle class

  • Factory workers lost their jobs

  • Inflation Reduction Act was a huge bonanza for energy investors

  • $400B is best case what unrealized gains tax would raise (CBO estimate) - thats like 20% of interest spending - so how will it help?

  • Investment class will emerge to help entrepreneur exit the US

    • Other countries will pay that tax

  • This happened in France - French citizens left

  • This will not stop at rich people - when many of them leave and government doesn’t raise as much as it thinks, they will come for everyone else