August 23 2024
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Sit to pee
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BLS revises job numbers down ~30%
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818000 down - March 2023 - Mar/Apr 2023
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2.9M → 2.1M
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Largest revision since 2009 (GFC)
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Professional and business services down
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Sacks called it
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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
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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
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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
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Harris backs Biden’s tax plans
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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%?)
- 25% wealth tax on people over $100M in assets
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Enough people don’t feel the positive effects of capitalism so want to push back against it
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History of Federal Tax rates
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In the 40s and 50s tax rates were higher but those people didn’t have many options at the time of moving out, etc
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Realization is important in the tax code
- You have a price
- You have liquidity to pay the tax
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Whole new tax bureaucracy is going to be created
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US GDP is $25T
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Federal Budget proposed is $7.2T
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State + Local is about $4.2T
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So government budget is half of GDP
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That’s why socialism is becoming more acceptable
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Mitt Romney said way back when that ~47% of Americans are government recipients - got hammered for it
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If the balance is 51% - then it becomes socialist
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Government workers vote overwhelmingly for Democrats
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CA unions almost always vote Democrat
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American capitalism required a middle class
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But globalization has hollowed out this middle class
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Factory workers lost their jobs
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Inflation Reduction Act was a huge bonanza for energy investors
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$400B is best case what unrealized gains tax would raise (CBO estimate) - thats like 20% of interest spending - so how will it help?
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Investment class will emerge to help entrepreneur exit the US
- Other countries will pay that tax
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This happened in France - French citizens left
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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
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