Massive jobs revision, Kamala wealth tax, polls vs prediction markets, end of race-based admissions

00:00:00.000 | Do we have freeberg? Is he did he drop off for here? He's free

00:00:03.080 | birds back. Okay. Three, I just had to take a leak. I just I go

00:00:07.200 | outside my office and I come back. Oh, you like a nature pee?

00:00:09.960 | You're a nature guy. Me too. I love a great nature. I have this

00:00:12.920 | great office at home, which is like a building outside of my

00:00:15.680 | house. So I like to go in the garden. Take a breath of fresh

00:00:18.560 | air and just you don't sit down to pee. No, I'm serious. I'm not

00:00:25.440 | joking around you guys. So many jokes. I'm not going there.

00:00:28.720 | That's a soy estrogen boy joke. Is that no, we can cut this out.

00:00:31.680 | But my pediatrician said, H mom, I think it's really important

00:00:34.640 | to teach your boys to pee sitting down. And even free for

00:00:40.480 | you as you get older. Are you talking about good for that?

00:00:42.920 | It's good for the prostate. And there's like a materially

00:00:45.920 | different percentage in terms of prostate cancer rates when you

00:00:49.720 | pee sitting down because you expel all the pee that just kind

00:00:53.160 | of gets caught there. What a little the dribble swear to God

00:00:57.120 | bro. I swear to God. You're about to do it. Wait, wait,

00:00:59.640 | what about a shake? Nick, you can cut all of this. No, the

00:01:02.720 | shake. This is great. Sitting while you're needing aids and

00:01:05.600 | muscle relaxation, benefiting men with tight pelvic floor

00:01:09.160 | muscles, or symptoms of an enlarged prostate. Sitting to

00:01:13.160 | pee enhances stability. Falls minimizes messiness, especially

00:01:18.640 | for whenever sacks gets a new home. He puts urinals in that's

00:01:24.360 | how much of a man he is. How does your staff? How does your

00:01:27.600 | staff hold your body while you pee? Like do they hold you?

00:01:29.880 | History of the world. Mel Brooks. This study is like the

00:01:35.560 | vasectomy truck at the DNC. I mean, it's meant to emasculate

00:01:39.080 | men. That's the only interpretation of it. It's

00:01:41.840 | total nonsense. Rain man David. All right. The Labor Department

00:02:01.600 | has revised down the job growth numbers as a number of members

00:02:06.440 | of this panel predicted the BLS updated its non farm payroll

00:02:11.800 | stats downgrading actual job growth to around 30% versus what

00:02:15.400 | was originally reported. This means the US economy created

00:02:19.400 | around 818,000 fewer jobs over the 12 months leading up to

00:02:23.840 | March 2024. Number was originally reported as 2.9

00:02:27.600 | million new jobs created and it's more like 2.1. The Labor

00:02:31.520 | Department updates and revises its stats frequently it gives

00:02:34.240 | disclaimers but this is the largest and most significant

00:02:38.160 | revision since 2009 after the Great Recession and so the

00:02:43.680 | biggest downgrade came in the field not surprisingly of

00:02:47.600 | professional and business services with 358,000 jobs lost

00:02:53.000 | over the last year we see that in all the stats of different

00:02:56.200 | tech companies and businesses finance companies doing layoffs

00:02:59.680 | other fields that revise their numbers leisure hospitality

00:03:03.960 | manufacturing retail makes sense and a little bit in

00:03:06.920 | transportation. Here's a couple charts for you before we go and

00:03:09.960 | get some feedback. civilian unemployment rate seasonally

00:03:13.960 | adjusted. As you can see, since the great financial crisis, we

00:03:17.920 | went from 10% all the way down to well below four and that's

00:03:21.920 | where we sit today. USA Today chart here of gains and losses

00:03:26.920 | since 1980. Obviously that massive drop you see there of

00:03:30.800 | minus 9.3 million jobs was coded with the big quick rebound of

00:03:35.760 | 7.3. So overall, the country's in great shape. Saks your

00:03:41.440 | thoughts on the revision, you obviously made note of this when

00:03:44.960 | we went through the numbers.

00:03:46.040 | Well, yeah, I mean, I predicted this, this would happen. And I

00:03:51.160 | didn't know exactly how we would get the correction. But now it's

00:03:54.960 | come out. By the way, it's not just the this 818,000 jobs. If

00:04:00.000 | you look at the last 12 months out of all the restatements,

00:04:03.280 | it's been something like 1.2 million, I can share the chart

00:04:07.840 | on that. But this is quite remarkable. About a year ago, I

00:04:13.080 | tweeted really fairly casually that there was a hot jobs

00:04:17.240 | report. This is around June of 2023. That I didn't know where

00:04:23.840 | they're finding all these jobs. I mean, all I see is layoffs.

00:04:26.280 | That was my reaction based on not just what I was seeing in

00:04:30.400 | tech and all of us, you know, especially last year, we're

00:04:32.880 | seeing nothing but layoffs in tech. It was also feedback from

00:04:36.120 | real estate investors that I knew. I mean, all new real

00:04:40.400 | estate projects have basically stopped because the cost of

00:04:43.280 | borrowing was so high, and there was a credit crunch. So new

00:04:46.600 | construction projects had stopped reifies were very hard

00:04:49.160 | to get. It's just that everywhere I was looking in the

00:04:52.080 | economy, and the feedback I was getting from people, things

00:04:54.280 | looked pretty dismal. And yet the media was continuously

00:04:58.800 | putting out stories about hot jobs reports. And we've been

00:05:01.440 | getting this now for roughly a year. And then what happens is

00:05:05.800 | that there's a revision, and the revisions have always gone in

00:05:11.120 | one direction. They're always revision down. I mean, if the

00:05:13.920 | revisions were completely sort of neutral and arbitrary, you'd

00:05:18.960 | expect it to be like a coin flip, you know, you might have

00:05:21.360 | 10 revisions and five would be up and five be down, but they've

00:05:24.080 | all been down. Yeah. So what I saw was a pattern of revisions

00:05:28.440 | down. And now we've seen the biggest one. So it's not

00:05:33.600 | altogether surprising to me. And in hindsight, you know, when I

00:05:37.560 | tweeted that a year ago, I got this like hysterical reaction. I

00:05:41.680 | mean, like, it was one of these tweets that all of a sudden,

00:05:44.200 | everyone's like, quote, tweeting and telling me to stay in my

00:05:46.440 | lane. I'm a VC, and I don't know the numbers. And it was like, I

00:05:51.040 | hit some sort of nerve. And you know, whenever that happens,

00:05:54.480 | you're usually over the target in some way.

00:05:56.720 | Yeah. And it's generating, it's triggering people is what you're

00:05:59.640 | saying? Yeah.

00:06:00.080 | Yeah. So the question is, like, why were they so triggered? And

00:06:02.800 | I think the reason is that on some level, people were

00:06:06.200 | intuiting that the numbers didn't really make sense. It

00:06:08.320 | didn't really match up with what we're seeing in the economy. And

00:06:10.680 | now a year later, we have the proof of that.

00:06:12.720 | So Chamath, let me go to you next, because you you pointed

00:06:16.760 | out that these numbers seemed a little frugalsi fugazi. But we

00:06:21.680 | have 162 million people record employed in the country. This

00:06:25.440 | number, if it's 162, you take out 800 161. This is what the

00:06:30.560 | Fed was been trying to do to cool off inflation, right, we

00:06:33.400 | needed to see a little bit less employment. And that's part of

00:06:37.200 | it. So I guess the silver lining here is if we are revising these

00:06:41.720 | numbers down, that would give more of an indication that

00:06:44.880 | we've slowed the economy, correct?

00:06:46.760 | Yeah, I mean, I think the economy is a lot slower than

00:06:50.440 | what people thought, which, to your point, the silver lining is

00:06:54.760 | that it probably now tips the balance of action in September

00:07:00.360 | to a cut. And if it was 25 basis points, there's probably going

00:07:06.240 | to be a lot of folks lobbying the Fed to cut 50. And I think

00:07:13.560 | that they probably have enough numerical justification now to

00:07:18.000 | cut 50. I think the bigger problem, though, is if you don't

00:07:25.320 | have an accurate sense of where employment really is, and sacks

00:07:30.000 | did mention this, you will also then have an inaccurate sense of

00:07:33.640 | where GDP is. And I think the one to punch could be very

00:07:39.240 | problematic. I think what we're learning more than anything else

00:07:42.360 | is we have a very sophisticated economy. We have a very

00:07:45.400 | sophisticated capital market system. We have very

00:07:48.000 | sophisticated actors in those markets, all of us included, who

00:07:53.280 | can react to real time data and make the right decisions. The

00:07:56.800 | problem is we have bad data. And the bad data, I think, is

00:08:01.600 | something that is fixable. But we need to make an effort to do

00:08:04.920 | it because it's insane that the largest and most sophisticated

00:08:08.720 | economy in the world is this unpredictable. And I think

00:08:13.560 | that's like the big question that I have, which is how is it

00:08:16.160 | possible in 2024, that we haven't just made this a

00:08:18.400 | priority to fix this. And with all of the systems that exist,

00:08:22.040 | and all of the SAS tools that exist, and everything that's

00:08:24.520 | used to like hire and fire and pay people, we don't have an

00:08:28.280 | accurate sense of this number.

00:08:29.520 | And it could easily show ma that's a real head scratcher to

00:08:33.240 | me. This could easily be crowdsourced, or we could pull

00:08:36.400 | data from a lot of different places. Obviously, they pull

00:08:38.520 | some data from employment roles. But I remember you had a

00:08:41.520 | startup, I can't remember the name of it. But you had

00:08:44.800 | crowdsourced, people were going around and taking pictures of

00:08:47.640 | the price of tomatoes in different places, and then

00:08:50.360 | putting it into a database and organizing, I think, hedge funds

00:08:53.640 | and other folks. Yeah,

00:08:54.640 | yeah. So what that company did was it was an agent that you

00:08:57.200 | would download on your phone. And we would task you to go and

00:09:00.560 | collect certain kinds of information. And yeah, there

00:09:03.800 | was some socio economic data that was collected. A lot of it

00:09:07.200 | now is with three letter agencies, and the like. So

00:09:12.360 | without getting into details, that company's doing quite well,

00:09:15.000 | but it's just moved in a different direction. If you just

00:09:17.520 | created some kind of like a DARPA challenge, like equivalent

00:09:22.000 | to this, give it to strike, give it to gusto, give it to a

00:09:25.960 | handful of these smart companies to give a guesstimate and see

00:09:30.400 | who accurately predicts this number over the course of a year

00:09:34.440 | or two. That's more reliable, and frankly, more useful to the

00:09:38.160 | market than what the BLS is doing. My first job out of

00:09:41.120 | college, by the way, was not in tech, but it was in finance, I

00:09:44.960 | was a derivatives trader. And what was so incredible is I

00:09:47.960 | remember sitting at my desk in front of my terminal on the

00:09:51.040 | trading floor, when nonfarm payrolls would hit, and people

00:09:54.760 | would just go crazy. There would just be literally 10s or

00:09:58.480 | hundreds of billions of dollars that would start flying back and

00:10:01.320 | forth, based on what that number was. And now, to think about that

00:10:06.040 | much velocity in a totally random way, because those

00:10:10.760 | numbers aren't reliable, it seems just crazy.

00:10:12.600 | Okay, free bird. Here's a chart for you to comment on maybe we

00:10:16.280 | open the aperture here. Total employment and unemployment here

00:10:20.800 | in the United States, as you can see, you know, since the 80s,

00:10:24.200 | population has grown, and the number of people employed has

00:10:28.440 | continued to grow labor participation, it kind of peaked

00:10:31.560 | in the 90s in the Clinton era, and it's come down a bit since

00:10:34.680 | then. But overall, what do you think of the health of the

00:10:38.560 | economy, and employment?

00:10:40.720 | I mean, I think the Fed target is 4%, which is kind of where

00:10:45.520 | we're at, I think we're at 4.2, or 4.3 now. And so the Fed tries

00:10:49.480 | to balance inflation, unemployment and rates. That's

00:10:55.640 | kind of the three things that they're looking at. So they make

00:11:01.080 | adjustments to rates. Obviously, if you take rates too low, too

00:11:06.040 | fast, you have an increase in inflation. So they're targeting

00:11:08.760 | inflation is 2%, they're targeting unemployment 4%. So if

00:11:11.600 | you take rates too high, you can certainly reduce inflation, but

00:11:14.760 | then the economy can contract or slow down and job cuts start to

00:11:18.560 | come through. So now, with inflation kind of supposedly

00:11:23.520 | approaching 2%, and unemployment over 4%, the market, if you look

00:11:29.360 | at the trading markets, they are now estimating a 100% chance of

00:11:35.320 | a three quarter of a percent rate cut by the end of 2024. And

00:11:42.600 | a 70% chance of a one point rate cut by the end of 2024. So the

00:11:47.240 | question is, are they going to do three quarter point cuts by

00:11:50.040 | the end of the year? Are they going to do a 50 basis point cut

00:11:53.200 | and then a 25 or 50 and a 50? The next couple of weeks, we'll

00:11:56.960 | determine which direction and then obviously, Chairman Powell

00:12:00.480 | has his big speech happening on Friday.

00:12:02.920 | Fribourg, what are the what is the betting market say for

00:12:06.440 | specifically for September?

00:12:08.680 | 50 or 75% chance of a quarter point cut 20% chance of a 50

00:12:15.440 | basis point cut. And then 6% chance of no cut, which is kind

00:12:19.840 | of strange, because the the trading markets, this is

00:12:23.960 | obviously a prediction market, but the trading markets are

00:12:26.400 | showing effectively 100% chance of a three quarter point cut by

00:12:30.280 | the end of 24.

00:12:31.080 | And sacks, here's the dramatic Fed, we always talked about

00:12:36.640 | them kind of getting on this a little bit late. But you can see

00:12:40.640 | here, man, what a ramp up in 2022, where we were basically at

00:12:46.440 | a quarter point, and they just added a quarter point or 50

00:12:48.800 | bips, all the way up to 5.33. Where we've been flat inflation,

00:12:53.720 | obviously, we have the two handle now. So now we start the

00:12:56.640 | process of going down. And I think people generally believe

00:13:00.320 | 25 bips at a time will be their pattern coming down. You think

00:13:04.760 | that seems wise?

00:13:05.960 | Well, I think the Fed isn't sure that inflation is a solved

00:13:08.480 | problem. I mean, I think that Powell is a little bit reticent

00:13:11.120 | to start the rate cutting cycle, because he doesn't know for

00:13:14.120 | sure if inflation could tick back up. This first cut is in a

00:13:18.320 | way the most important one, because it signals a regime

00:13:21.640 | change that we're beginning the rate cut cycle. And what he

00:13:24.760 | doesn't want to do is cut any amount, and then be proven

00:13:27.920 | wrong, and we get a bad inflation report. And then all

00:13:30.720 | of a sudden, he has to raise it again. So he doesn't want to be

00:13:32.520 | caught in that position. But I do think that the economy is

00:13:36.800 | obviously showing significant weakness. Inflation is not

00:13:40.160 | completely solved, but it's down to 2.9%. At least it has a two

00:13:43.360 | handle on it now. And so yeah, I think the market is pricing in

00:13:48.000 | these rate cuts for a reason.

00:13:49.200 | So either mission accomplished, or we'll see if we have a soft

00:13:53.600 | landing, hard landing or something in between. Most

00:13:56.080 | people feel like it's going to be soft with a little bit of

00:13:58.480 | bumps. It seems

00:14:00.080 | to me in I mean, now that we know that the jobs picture was

00:14:04.360 | inflated by 1.2 million jobs over the last, call it roughly a

00:14:08.960 | year or 14 months. I think we know that this is not like a

00:14:12.600 | perfectly soft landing. I mean, I think that the economy is a

00:14:17.880 | little bit shaky, and it's being propped up by massive amounts of

00:14:20.920 | government spending, like we talked about, on a previous

00:14:23.480 | episode, we're running unsustainably high levels of

00:14:26.360 | deficit and debt, we're running what $2 trillion a year deficits

00:14:29.400 | right now. And what are we getting for that we're not

00:14:32.000 | getting a super robust economy, we're getting an economy that's

00:14:34.840 | narrowly staying out of recession. So it's a little bit

00:14:38.440 | of a scary picture, I think, that the economy is is so shaky,

00:14:43.720 | and we're spending so much money to prop it up. And we'll just

00:14:46.640 | have to see what happens.

00:14:47.880 | Yeah. And it doesn't seem like either of the incoming

00:14:51.480 | administrations really cares about spending. Seems like we're

00:14:55.160 | going to be in still big money spending mode, independent of

00:14:58.640 | who wins. We'll see how long that can last as a country. And

00:15:02.880 | then we talked a little bit about the Supreme Court decision

00:15:07.240 | last year, around affirmative action. And it turns out now MIT

00:15:15.320 | has released their data, it's getting a lot of buzz online.

00:15:17.840 | Here's a chart. Basically, what you can take from this chart,

00:15:21.200 | and this is people self identifying at MIT. And the buzz

00:15:26.520 | is that Asian Americans have gone from 41% to 47%. And those

00:15:31.840 | gains came on a percentage basis from a decline in the number of

00:15:38.760 | black and Latino students coming in. Here's the chart, as you can

00:15:43.120 | see. So people are wondering about, I guess, the fairness of

00:15:48.960 | this. And I guess you could have either one of two positions

00:15:53.240 | Chamath, Asian students were being penalized for a long time.

00:15:57.640 | Or now, I guess you could believe that Latin and black

00:16:01.400 | students are being impacted negatively about this. So I'm

00:16:05.280 | not sure what your take is. But it's obviously moving to more of

00:16:08.720 | a meritocracy, according to the people at MIT.

00:16:12.400 | It's not even clear how they were making decisions before, nor

00:16:17.080 | now. But you know, I tweeted about this yesterday, I think

00:16:22.040 | the thing that matters more than anything else, is to make sure

00:16:26.400 | that the people that they are letting in, are in love and

00:16:32.200 | obsessed with the things that MIT is supposed to be great at.

00:16:36.480 | So, if you are a great creative thinker, designer architect, you

00:16:43.320 | should be at RISD. I'm just I'm giving an example. If you are a

00:16:48.880 | great musician, you should be at Juilliard, you should not be

00:16:52.440 | going to MIT because you think it's a checkmark, you should be

00:16:55.080 | going there because you think that there are professors in

00:16:58.200 | organic chemistry in physics in these disciplines that are

00:17:04.240 | really important, who are experts in their fields that you

00:17:07.520 | can learn from and become an expert yourself. And I think the

00:17:11.160 | problem with all of this other stuff is, once you make it a

00:17:14.720 | credential, there are some folks that are only going to MIT

00:17:18.600 | because they could get in and because it's a great credential

00:17:23.160 | in their minds. And they shouldn't go there either. So I

00:17:28.000 | think the thing is, you have to get back to what matters, which

00:17:30.760 | is, there are all of these industries that have not

00:17:34.160 | progressed that much. And in order for those industries to

00:17:36.800 | advance, you need really talented young people who can

00:17:40.200 | learn and apprentice and then take over. And I think MIT is

00:17:43.360 | one of these rare places that focuses on this part of the

00:17:47.360 | physical world that hasn't had as much progress. And so I just

00:17:52.360 | want to make sure that the people that go there actually

00:17:54.360 | want to be there for that reason, gender, race, all that

00:17:57.280 | other stuff shouldn't matter.

00:17:58.760 | And that is what the Supreme Court decision did, you cannot

00:18:03.880 | take race into account. Harvard had some weird thing, Friedberg

00:18:08.720 | where personality was one of the vectors.

00:18:11.680 | And sorry, Harvard, I would say that no offense to everybody at

00:18:15.440 | Harvard, but like, Harvard is more of a pure credential. Like

00:18:18.720 | MIT, I buy more that you go there for certain kinds of

00:18:21.440 | specializations. Caltech, you go there for certain

00:18:24.080 | specializations. If you're really into wine, you go to UC

00:18:27.760 | Davis, my point is, these schools exist for reasons other

00:18:31.080 | than just as a collector coin that you put in your pocket. I'm

00:18:37.440 | not sure Harvard is really known for anything other than for

00:18:40.240 | being, quote, unquote, elite. But even that's questionable

00:18:43.440 | now. But in the technical areas, I really do think that that MIT

00:18:50.240 | was an important place where people would go to train. And I

00:18:53.360 | just want to make sure whoever they're letting in actually

00:18:55.360 | cares about the thing they're studying.

00:18:56.560 | Friedberg, what's your take on this? You know, moving back to a

00:19:00.080 | meritocracy and a colorblind application process? Not being

00:19:06.560 | able to use race in admissions?

00:19:08.160 | I don't think that someone's genetics should determine

00:19:16.200 | whether or not they go to a school. And I think that their

00:19:23.120 | socioeconomic background, experience set, values,

00:19:27.360 | successes, failures, are the things that they could have

00:19:33.440 | affected or that I think probably better define whether

00:19:37.120 | we want to take a moral stance on giving other people

00:19:40.960 | opportunities. So I think that that's a kind of good and

00:19:45.280 | reasonable place for us to end up.

00:19:46.600 | Sachs, any thoughts for you, from you on this?

00:19:49.640 | Well, I mean, I support the idea of colorblind meritocracy. I

00:19:53.480 | mean, I agree with Chamath and Friedberg that the traits that

00:19:57.240 | you're born with are not skills or qualifications. They're just

00:20:01.160 | the accidents of your birth. And what we should try to create

00:20:04.280 | is a society where those things don't matter. And everyone has

00:20:08.440 | the same ability and opportunities for advancement

00:20:11.400 | based on how hard they work and their skills and this concept of

00:20:16.200 | merit. And I think that's when core decision gets us closer

00:20:19.560 | to that. Remember that the reason why that Supreme Court

00:20:23.240 | decision happened or what the plaintiffs were arguing is that

00:20:26.840 | the previous regime on college campuses was unfairly

00:20:29.640 | discriminating against Asian Americans. Because whenever you

00:20:33.080 | try to engineer the classes to a certain proportion of the

00:20:37.480 | population, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. And

00:20:40.760 | the students who are losing were Asian Americans. And in many

00:20:45.640 | cases, these Asian Americans were first generation immigrants

00:20:50.200 | or they were coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. And

00:20:52.840 | yet their population was engineered to a smaller number

00:20:56.360 | than merit would otherwise suggest. And now you're seeing

00:20:58.760 | it in this new class at MIT, the percentage of Asian Americans

00:21:03.800 | has increased somewhat. So I think it's good. I mean, we're

00:21:07.080 | reducing a form of discrimination. That

00:21:10.440 | discrimination may have originally started for good

00:21:14.120 | reasons, to try and create a remedy against a different kind

00:21:18.600 | of historical discrimination. Nonetheless, it discriminated

00:21:21.800 | against talented Asian students. And I think now that that's

00:21:25.320 | been that's been fixed. What do you guys think about creating a

00:21:30.760 | leg up for people that came from a disadvantaged

00:21:35.800 | socioeconomic background? So put race aside. But you know, an

00:21:41.000 | individual that grew up in a difficult circumstance, that

00:21:44.520 | didn't have the privilege of going to a good school or having

00:21:47.320 | a good education, worked hard, tried, but didn't end up with

00:21:51.160 | the best test scores or didn't end up with the best GPA. Because

00:21:54.440 | of the conditions they were born into. Do you think it's

00:21:56.600 | appropriate to give those individuals a leg up in the

00:21:59.640 | application process, putting race aside, but just call it

00:22:03.080 | socioeconomic disadvantages?

00:22:04.440 | To some degree, I do. I mean, look, if you have a student who

00:22:09.000 | who gets a four, let's call it a 1450 on the SAT. But they've

00:22:12.360 | got tutors and classes. Yep. And they're growing up and they

00:22:15.320 | went to school and they went to school in Atherton, right?

00:22:17.800 | They're getting the best teachers, the best schools, the

00:22:19.480 | best environment. And then you take a kid who grew up in, I

00:22:22.040 | don't know, like a dangerous part of the inner city, where

00:22:25.240 | there's shootings happening, or a rural district with no

00:22:27.560 | education, Appalachian, Appalachia, both both are kind

00:22:30.280 | of equivalently disadvantaged or different differently, but

00:22:32.440 | both disadvantaged. Yep, right. They don't have access to the

00:22:35.320 | the best schools, best or best funded schools, best teachers.

00:22:39.000 | And let's say that person gets a 1400 on their SAT, which one

00:22:43.000 | is better? I mean, if certainly if they got a 1450, and you're

00:22:45.880 | comparing two equal scores, it's really clear that the

00:22:48.680 | disadvantaged student probably has more raw talent.

00:22:53.640 | Totally. I 100% agree. And I feel like I feel like we've used

00:22:57.720 | race as a heuristic for that conditional background. And

00:23:01.400 | that's what makes it hard because race is not necessarily

00:23:05.160 | it's certainly there's a correlation, but it's not

00:23:07.480 | necessarily indicative of the socio economic disadvantage

00:23:11.800 | that someone may have faced and had to overcome in order to

00:23:14.760 | perform and succeed at the level that they could have given

00:23:17.160 | their conditions. And so I certainly think that the

00:23:20.440 | incorporation of one's socio economic background should be a

00:23:25.800 | critical part of the application process. And it's certainly in

00:23:28.840 | the same in the job setting. Ultimately, I think I think what

00:23:31.960 | would be much more valuable than all of this is for companies to

00:23:35.720 | hire from a whole bunch of different schools than they do

00:23:40.040 | today. And to break the back of this elitist culture we have

00:23:46.360 | around certain schools, all of the things that you guys are

00:23:49.400 | talking about, to me, sound kind of crazy. And the reason is

00:23:56.280 | because you could go to Iowa State, or you could go to

00:24:01.000 | Harvard. And you could make a claim and I would buy it that in

00:24:05.800 | some random social science, maybe there's an advantage in

00:24:10.040 | the people that you meet. But there's not necessarily an

00:24:13.160 | advantage for studying physics at any of these two schools.

00:24:16.120 | It's not like one's teaching you that gravity goes up and the

00:24:18.520 | other teaches you that gravity goes down. So I think the bigger

00:24:22.920 | problem is that we don't value enough these fundamentally

00:24:29.400 | important skills that we need for humanity to evolve. And

00:24:32.280 | number two, we have fallen to this trap of saying that these

00:24:36.040 | schools, these highly credentialed schools that cost

00:24:38.920 | 60 and 70 and $80,000 a year, graduate the best kids. And I

00:24:44.200 | don't think that that's true either. So the thing that we

00:24:48.360 | could all do, because we're all hirers, we hire 1000s of people

00:24:52.440 | is we should be going to all kinds of different schools.

00:24:54.920 | Today, I just gave an offer to a guy that went to Virginia Tech.

00:24:57.960 | And this kid seems awesome. kick ass. And when we put out

00:25:04.840 | job postings for 8090, we veer towards the schools that are

00:25:09.960 | like hardcore technical places, where none of all of this random

00:25:14.760 | credentialed nonsense gets in the way. And so they're hungrier

00:25:18.200 | as a result, they're more earnest, and you can cut through

00:25:20.840 | the BS. The other thing I would say is that it's even more

00:25:24.440 | capable now of getting through the filter of these credentials

00:25:28.760 | and knowing the quality of a person, you can look at GitHub

00:25:31.320 | repos, if you're a developer, you can look at all of these

00:25:33.880 | things that allow you to understand. So I don't know, I

00:25:36.280 | disagree with your guys's thing of like, let's go figure out all

00:25:39.640 | these other things. How about we stop hiring and valuing? I

00:25:44.360 | think randomly non specific degrees, just because they come

00:25:48.040 | from a good school. Well, I think that would go a long way.

00:25:50.680 | Because we do still have a college application process,

00:25:53.080 | Chamath. So there are still going to be a set of criteria

00:25:56.360 | used to determine whether or not our kids end up getting into a

00:25:59.960 | specific school if we and they all kind of say, hey, it makes

00:26:03.400 | sense. But I'm saying if your son or daughter were to go and

00:26:06.520 | study computer science at North Carolina State, the biggest

00:26:09.880 | thing that that you could do is be okay with it. Another example

00:26:14.120 | of a school that does a great job of recruiting from

00:26:16.200 | nontraditional places. I would I not be okay with it? No, no,

00:26:19.480 | this is my point. I think it's a decision. I'm saying that I'm

00:26:22.280 | not saying that you are, but I'm saying that if you make it a

00:26:25.800 | big deal that North Carolina State is somehow worse than some

00:26:29.560 | other credentialed school, because our social cohort says

00:26:33.160 | that those other schools are better. We're part of the

00:26:35.320 | problem. Well, in my work cohort, North Carolina State's

00:26:37.880 | a great school, we hire a ton of people. So that's a great

00:26:41.720 | school, actually,

00:26:42.520 | to be honest, I think schools like that are better. I mean, I

00:26:45.320 | think probably Virginia Tech is better than Harvard. And the

00:26:48.440 | reason is because they're less infected with woke de ideology

00:26:53.320 | that now pervades these like top schools. So the students are

00:26:56.440 | more likely to learn something.

00:26:58.040 | Well, you should stop saying top. They're not top schools.

00:27:00.680 | They're not top schools anymore. They're not the smartest kids.

00:27:03.880 | They're not the hardest working kids. So we should stop saying

00:27:06.280 | top schools. These Ivy League schools are not the top schools.

00:27:09.000 | I agree with that.

00:27:09.880 | Yeah, there might be the most notable schools historically,

00:27:13.080 | but they're not necessarily the ones that are the biggest

00:27:15.720 | brands. And they're not new brands, they're old brands. And

00:27:18.440 | we've seen that these old brands depreciate over time. And people

00:27:23.320 | read way too much into them.

00:27:24.520 | I think the structural monopoly is that they then get and have

00:27:32.920 | the most capital, which they can then use to build facilities

00:27:37.160 | and support staff that can come and do core research. And so you

00:27:40.680 | then get all these research staff in particularly in

00:27:43.640 | technical fields in science and medical fields, and so on, that

00:27:47.880 | want to come and be on campus. And that then creates the

00:27:50.280 | network effect of undergrads getting a better education

00:27:54.280 | because they're getting exposed to the best talent in the kind

00:27:57.000 | of I don't necessarily think they don't actually think that

00:27:59.160 | benefits the undergrads. I mean, first of all, these campuses

00:28:02.600 | will tell us about your experience at Stanford, I think

00:28:04.440 | you're the only Ivy Leaguer here.

00:28:05.720 | You went to Berkeley, that's

00:28:08.840 | not in the Ivy League. The Ivy League is like an East Coast

00:28:12.760 | club, whereas Stanford was kind of the West Coast disruptor.

00:28:15.160 | I mean, I know when I worked when I went to Berkeley, I

00:28:18.920 | worked at Lawrence Berkeley labs, I got to be exposed to

00:28:21.160 | Nobel laureates, it was actually, like, I think,

00:28:25.240 | particularly my field, like I majored in astrophysics and

00:28:27.960 | physics, like, that was a great school to get exposure, and you

00:28:32.280 | actually had that opportunity. I think that's part of the

00:28:34.680 | challenge schools with really great graduate programs and

00:28:37.160 | research that goes on on campus, actually can give a better

00:28:42.200 | educational experience to the undergrads. It's almost like

00:28:44.680 | you're getting these internships and these fellowships, and

00:28:49.320 | these TAs and professors.

00:28:51.880 | Well, that's a different thing. I actually think what America

00:28:55.080 | needs is what I benefited from at the University of Waterloo,

00:28:58.600 | which is an active and vibrant co op program. Yeah. So yeah, I

00:29:02.920 | do really disagree with you. I don't think that there is a

00:29:05.240 | incredibly better way to teach thermodynamics. I think that's

00:29:09.560 | a bit of a joke. Okay. I think that that's it. That's why we

00:29:13.480 | tell ourselves talking about applied work tomorrow. So I'm

00:29:15.640 | talking about you go up to Lawrence Berkeley lab, and you

00:29:17.480 | work in an actual lab that does a lot of interesting research.

00:29:20.440 | Okay, so my point is, if we both agree that you're a great

00:29:22.600 | mental sciences, definitely. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm

00:29:25.320 | pointing out. So then like the universities in America that

00:29:27.960 | have these co op programs, I think are incredible

00:29:30.120 | institutions. Again, they're not the typical ones are places

00:29:32.600 | like Drexel and other places. But now you allow these kids to

00:29:37.880 | be in the trenches with people building things. And I just

00:29:40.760 | think that that's an incredible gift for them. But it's also an

00:29:44.440 | incredible opportunity for these organizations to understand the

00:29:48.440 | quality of the person beyond some credential. Well, I do

00:29:51.320 | think in a digital era, core education has commoditized. And

00:29:55.400 | I think most people can get most of the way there without

00:29:58.360 | necessarily paying 60 to $80,000 a year, and then being

00:30:01.720 | partnered in some way with that on the ground internship or

00:30:06.040 | integrated kind of program where you get actual hands on

00:30:08.200 | experience. So I don't know, like, I mean, the university

00:30:11.000 | model, maybe does not make sense for most fields. J. Cal,

00:30:15.080 | what do you think? Yeah, it's very interesting. The car did

00:30:17.480 | you go to school? I went to Fordham University at night. I

00:30:22.120 | got in three weeks before. Did you get an undergrad degree from

00:30:25.800 | Fordham? Yeah, Fordham. I was going to either I had taken the

00:30:29.960 | New York What was your degree in? What did psychology, I was

00:30:34.040 | going to go into the NYPD, I had was about to get accepted at

00:30:39.800 | 18 years old, 17 years old, 18 years old. And then I decided

00:30:43.160 | the last minute to go to Fordham at night had to work in

00:30:45.560 | order to pay for it. So it took me four and a half years, but I

00:30:48.440 | did like almost a full credit load at night. And then I was

00:30:50.920 | going to go into john jay for criminal justice, and get my

00:30:56.920 | forensic degree and then join the FBI. So I was in the process

00:30:59.880 | of applying to the FBI. And then the internet happened. I

00:31:02.520 | started a magazine about the internet, and I went in a

00:31:04.360 | totally different direction. But the co op stuff, I remember

00:31:07.800 | when we went to Waterloo, we did a speaking gig there years

00:31:10.920 | ago, too often. I was very taken with the students there. And

00:31:15.720 | like, they're like drive. And so I think that's the key piece.

00:31:20.120 | And what I did in venture capital, because I needed to

00:31:22.280 | have a team of about eight people screening all the

00:31:26.280 | companies we get in the applications. So I just made my

00:31:28.920 | own training program. And I hire a lot of people in Canada.

00:31:32.520 | To do it. And basically, they do five meetings a day, they

00:31:36.360 | write up coverage, I made an entire framework, and I'm doing

00:31:39.240 | professional development. Because I found a lot of the top

00:31:41.880 | people from these brand name schools were entitled, they

00:31:46.200 | didn't want to do 2535 meetings a week with founders. And I just

00:31:50.520 | found these other students from Waterloo and other colleges

00:31:54.120 | like that. And I've trained them in my framework for these are

00:31:57.720 | the 13 qualities we look for in investing in a startup. And

00:32:01.160 | these are the 25 red flags. And I've now got seven people, we

00:32:04.520 | did 110 120 meetings one week recently. And so it's just much

00:32:09.560 | better to train them ourselves and make your own training

00:32:11.960 | program, I believe. And so it's even like Malcolm, didn't

00:32:15.560 | Malcolm Gladwell write something which is roughly the equivalent

00:32:18.680 | of like, you're better off getting the top 10 student at a

00:32:24.200 | non IV versus like the 50th student at an IV or something. I

00:32:28.680 | don't know, there was like something like maybe, maybe it

00:32:30.680 | was like a chapter. And what was his reason? Because of

00:32:32.760 | motivation? Yeah, it's like, these kids are excellent. When

00:32:37.320 | they're when they're achieving, and they're excelling in things

00:32:40.440 | that are not subjective. You want to go get those kids? Yeah,

00:32:45.720 | you know,

00:32:46.200 | they've performed. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the one of the

00:32:49.640 | problems with the whole di policy, whether you want to do

00:32:54.760 | it based on race or socioeconomics, or whatever it is

00:32:58.520 | that you're doing is, it keeps happening at every layer of the

00:33:02.040 | stack. And at some point, you just need to say, look, we've

00:33:05.480 | made up for whatever came before. And now it just has to

00:33:09.160 | be about that person's performance, we need to stop

00:33:10.760 | putting our thumb in the scale, and just hire the best person.

00:33:13.480 | My view is you could probably do that after undergrad, like

00:33:16.360 | there's no need to keep artificially adjusting the

00:33:20.920 | weights of how you hire people after undergrad, but yet you

00:33:25.720 | have all these like programs that keep trying to make the

00:33:29.560 | decision based on something other than merit. And I think

00:33:32.520 | that that's the part that needs to stop.

00:33:34.600 | I mean, we had Coleman Hughes on and, you know, I think he had

00:33:37.480 | a very good perspective on it, which is like maybe starting

00:33:40.440 | with earlier education is where you could probably solve some

00:33:43.000 | of these problems a little bit more effectively.

00:33:45.080 | I will say, I feel like my experience in the workplace is

00:33:49.320 | that one's college or university is completely decoupled from

00:33:53.960 | one's performance or ability to succeed in the workplace in an

00:33:57.080 | meritocratic workplace. And when I say meritocratic, I mean,

00:34:00.040 | excluding nepotistic workplace settings, and excluding

00:34:04.360 | demographically biased workplace. And if you exclude

00:34:07.880 | those two, it honestly does not matter what school someone went

00:34:10.840 | to, they could be brilliant, they could be hardworking, they

00:34:13.400 | could be passionate, they could be a leader, the school doesn't

00:34:16.440 | matter. And in fact, perhaps the corollary is true, which is

00:34:20.360 | the people that went to the schools that determine success,

00:34:23.160 | generally have a very hard time succeeding in the workplace.

00:34:26.200 | Because anytime they face failure, it is a challenging

00:34:29.320 | circumstance for them that they are unable to overcome. And

00:34:32.360 | that's particularly true in entrepreneurship. That's been my

00:34:34.760 | experience, perhaps in the broader workplace setting, they

00:34:37.320 | could work well, where they're told all the time, if you do

00:34:40.120 | this, then you get that they do this, they get that they feel

00:34:42.920 | good, they succeed in that model. But in the in the real

00:34:45.720 | world, that's not the model. And I think that that's a like a

00:34:49.560 | really important fact that's colored my point of view on how

00:34:52.760 | the higher education system actually does perform with

00:34:55.720 | respect to improving the quality of our workforce in the US.

00:34:57.960 | Separate to that, I will say that in technical fields, the

00:35:01.800 | research environment on certain college campuses can be

00:35:05.160 | incredibly, to Chamath's point, opportunistic for getting

00:35:09.720 | exposure to hands on work that you might not otherwise get in

00:35:14.120 | technical field. So a lot of this comes down to motivation,

00:35:17.560 | you know, at a certain point, a person has to be motivated to

00:35:20.280 | put in a lot of hours and become excellent at whatever their

00:35:23.880 | chosen profession is. I think I talked about it previously, when

00:35:26.440 | we started talking about macroeconomics here, I took a

00:35:28.600 | macroeconomics course at MIT, on their website, or on YouTube,

00:35:32.760 | rather, right? There's incredible that this stuff is

00:35:35.080 | all out there. And anybody can take any of these courses for

00:35:37.720 | by like the basic, the base education has been commoditized.

00:35:42.040 | You know, it's the hands on experience that one gets, that

00:35:44.600 | makes a huge difference.

00:35:45.640 | MIT 1401 principles in microeconomics, supply and

00:35:50.360 | demand. I mean, it was like incredible. And you know, this

00:35:52.680 | is stuff I just didn't ever get exposed to. And I was able to do

00:35:55.720 | it for free. I listened to the course actually twice, and I

00:35:58.280 | took notes on and I really got a lot out of it. All right,

00:36:01.880 | listen, more stuff on the docket. Anybody else have final

00:36:04.440 | thoughts here? Before we go into the election stuff and

00:36:07.880 | taxes,

00:36:08.680 | let's all commit to hiring as many people as possible from

00:36:11.800 | nontraditional schools. Absolutely. I mean, that's what

00:36:13.960 | I do already. I mean, it's it's working. All right, decision

00:36:17.240 | 2024. Get ready for a bit of chaos here, folks. The DNC is

00:36:23.400 | underway as we tape. We tape on Thursdays. As you know, I think

00:36:27.080 | Kamala will give her acceptance speech tonight. DNC pulled out

00:36:32.040 | all of their all stars, Michelle Obama, Brock, Hillary, Bill,

00:36:35.480 | Clinton, Oprah, and Tim Walz spoke last night, most people

00:36:40.120 | felt he had a pretty strong showing. Our guy Nate silver,

00:36:43.480 | friend of the pod has the election as essentially neck and

00:36:49.080 | neck. We're in coin toss territory here. I think it's

00:36:52.600 | going to be come down to the debate. Some interest here on

00:36:54.920 | my besties thing. Here is the silver bulletin, his new

00:36:58.920 | publication. He's not at 538 anymore. Just Kamala at 47

00:37:04.200 | Trump at almost 45. And this all will come down to the swing

00:37:08.520 | states. I think as we all know, he's got a really great

00:37:11.160 | interactive chart over there. He's got Harris with clear

00:37:14.840 | leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and

00:37:17.480 | Virginia. Think those are about 68 electoral college votes,

00:37:21.640 | votes Trump with clear leads in Georgia and Florida, my Lord,

00:37:24.600 | Florida is 29 or 30 electoral college votes. That's a lot. The

00:37:29.160 | toss up states Nevada with the tipping and no tax there, but

00:37:34.120 | that's only six North Carolina is been flip flopping back and

00:37:39.640 | forth from Harris to Trump, those two are worth 24. So we

00:37:43.800 | swung from many paths to victory, basically a certain

00:37:47.240 | victory for Trump with versus Biden to now a toss up. This is

00:37:52.280 | an interesting chart here, sex, I want to get your take on which

00:37:56.120 | is the polling averages. I think you said last week or the week

00:37:59.480 | before that we would see the Harris bump reverse. And that's

00:38:03.000 | exactly what's happened. The month over month change is

00:38:05.720 | dramatic, as you see in this table. But the week over week

00:38:10.040 | change. So in the month change, you have democrats running the

00:38:14.200 | table in all the swing states. And then you look at the weekly

00:38:17.080 | change the opposite. In the last week, the republicans have not

00:38:21.880 | caught up but made significant gains all between a half a

00:38:25.960 | percentage point in a point with the exception of North

00:38:28.440 | Carolina, which as I stated earlier, is a toss up your

00:38:31.720 | thoughts on the on the election right now, sex, before we get

00:38:37.080 | into the issues just on the numbers here.

00:38:39.000 | Well, the election is gonna be on nail biter, and it's gonna

00:38:42.920 | really come down to a few 1000 votes or a few 10s of 1000s of

00:38:47.000 | votes in swing states. I think we've we've known that now for a

00:38:50.680 | while, I would say since Biden abdicated, and they did the hot

00:38:54.520 | swap. I think the most interesting poll numbers over

00:38:59.080 | the past week, is if you look at Polly market, that is has

00:39:03.560 | swung back to Trump being in the lead over the past week, as

00:39:06.920 | opposed to Harris last week, I think Harris was favored to win

00:39:10.440 | by quite a bit. And you have to ask the question, well, how does

00:39:13.560 | this happen during her own democratic convention, which is

00:39:17.240 | supposed to be, you know, nothing but a four day

00:39:19.800 | infomercial for the democrat candidate. Yes. It's a

00:39:23.160 | coronation. So she should be getting nothing but a bump. And

00:39:26.680 | instead, it seems to be the opposite. And I think the reason

00:39:29.560 | is, is because the more substance her campaign puts out

00:39:33.800 | the more policies, it reveals that where she does. First, they

00:39:38.360 | had her give that economic speech last Friday, on price

00:39:43.160 | gouging, and price controls. And we spent a lot of time last

00:39:46.760 | week talking about why price controls would be a disastrous

00:39:49.880 | economic policy. Subsequent to that, there were stories that

00:39:54.280 | came out about her campaign supporting these huge tax hikes

00:39:58.520 | that were in the original Biden Harris budget, including a 25%

00:40:03.720 | unrealized gains tax, which we can talk more about. Yeah, but I

00:40:06.840 | think just to boil it down, I think the more the public

00:40:10.120 | learns, the more we learn about what she would do as president,

00:40:13.480 | the worse she does. And they've now got to run out the clock for

00:40:17.480 | another, I don't know what 7080 days, in terms of running a

00:40:21.000 | campaign that substance free, that's just completely on vibes.

00:40:24.840 | That's about joy, without answering any questions without

00:40:27.800 | doing any press interviews. And I think we predicted some time

00:40:30.920 | ago that that just was not going to be sustainable, that at some

00:40:33.320 | point, they're gonna have to tell us what they think. And as

00:40:36.280 | they do that, the more they do that, I think the more her polls

00:40:39.480 | will correct. What do you think, Chamath, you trust these

00:40:42.360 | betting markets, because there's so much at stake at this

00:40:44.680 | election, right? I mean, people are pouring money into both

00:40:48.440 | campaigns. It's really contentious, people see it as

00:40:51.880 | existential on both sides. And then you have, you know, these

00:40:54.840 | prediction markets that, you know, have low 10s of millions

00:40:59.640 | or hundreds of millions of dollars being bet. Could these

00:41:03.080 | not be, you know, influenced you trust them, because we are

00:41:08.360 | seeing this is the first time these prediction markets have

00:41:11.640 | become a major discussion point, because their businesses,

00:41:14.680 | obviously. But people are really getting into them. And I

00:41:19.400 | wonder if they could be manipulated, or if you think you

00:41:23.400 | trust them, I guess is the way I'm asking you, because we've

00:41:26.120 | had this discussion a bit offline.

00:41:28.200 | I mean, I think these are really good businesses, but they

00:41:32.120 | are some combination of entertainment and gambling. I

00:41:36.520 | don't think that these things are as useful directional

00:41:41.400 | indicators, as they are just really interesting businesses

00:41:45.560 | that allow people to bet and wager on all kinds of random

00:41:49.080 | things. So I would not look to these sites for that

00:41:53.800 | necessarily. Okay. I think that people like Nate silver do a

00:41:58.280 | pretty reasonable job. In his specific case, I think he does a

00:42:02.040 | very good job of threading together and doing this meta

00:42:05.480 | analysis of polls. But I think we've learned that the that this

00:42:10.760 | polling is pretty brittle and not super reliable. So the the

00:42:16.680 | betting markets are exactly that they're just like it's like

00:42:18.840 | sports betting, but just wasn't a betting market. We talked

00:42:21.080 | about this two weeks ago, Shapiro was like 80% or

00:42:23.800 | something. So yeah, it's fairly obvious, free bird that maybe

00:42:27.640 | these betting markets are a little bit entertainment, but

00:42:30.360 | maybe directional incorrect, because they also did start to

00:42:32.360 | predict the hot swap. You know, so what do you think free bird

00:42:35.320 | about these betting markets? Well, I think markets you and we

00:42:37.800 | keep everyone keeps trying to reduce this down to some

00:42:40.520 | deterministic binary system, which is like it works or it

00:42:43.800 | doesn't. And the truth is, that the conditions of the world are

00:42:47.720 | changing all the time. The news is changing all the time, people

00:42:51.880 | are taking action all the time, there's a shift in current

00:42:54.520 | events all the time. As a result, the forecast is changing

00:42:59.000 | all the time. And so what a betting market or a poll does is

00:43:04.280 | provide a probabilistic forecast of the future, there is a

00:43:08.440 | probability of something happening. It is not trying to

00:43:11.480 | say I as a poll, or I as a market, am right 100% of the

00:43:16.360 | time, or not. It is saying here's the estimated distribution

00:43:20.440 | of outcomes in the future. So there is a 20% chance or an 80%

00:43:24.600 | chance of Shapiro 20% chance of him not being the case. Turns

00:43:28.840 | out that that 20% is where Harris ended up going based on

00:43:32.760 | some meeting she had in some room with some group of people

00:43:35.480 | that we aren't privy to. And that the market in that case was

00:43:38.600 | not privy to what Nate silver does. And I think people need to

00:43:42.600 | understand this a little bit. When you gather polling data,

00:43:46.440 | that poll has some predictive power, based on how the pollsters

00:43:51.640 | conduct their poll, who they call, how they screen candidates

00:43:54.760 | for the poll, etc, etc. So different polling companies, it

00:43:58.680 | turns out are better or worse at making that directional

00:44:02.840 | probability bet than others. And what Nate's models do, is

00:44:08.120 | they account for the historical performance of different

00:44:10.920 | pollsters, and weight them differently to create a

00:44:13.720 | basically a multi pole prediction. And so that's what

00:44:18.040 | his system is set up to do. And remember, he similarly doesn't

00:44:21.800 | give you one outcome, he gives you a distribution of outcomes,

00:44:25.240 | I think his simulation model has probably 1000 or 10,000

00:44:28.280 | simulations that come out of it. And those simulations, he

00:44:31.960 | says, Look, there's a 29% chance of this happening 70%. He's not

00:44:35.080 | trying to say, here's what's going to happen. He's trying to

00:44:37.080 | give everyone a point of view on the distribution of things

00:44:39.960 | happening in the future, just like weather forecasting is not

00:44:43.000 | perfectly predictable. It's very predictable for tomorrow, it's

00:44:45.640 | less predictable for three days from now. And it's very

00:44:47.880 | unpredictable 12 days from now. And that's how these polls also

00:44:51.000 | work out. And that's also how these massive mega models of

00:44:54.040 | polls and it's also how prediction markets work.

00:44:55.880 | And freeberg, people have a lot of emotion in these models when

00:44:59.960 | it comes to politics. Whereas if you were looking at gambling,

00:45:03.720 | or the odds of winning a poker hand, we all would be like, oh,

00:45:06.440 | you have a 30% chance of winning, or a 10%, or an 8%,

00:45:09.800 | you're going to hit two adders.

00:45:10.840 | There's emotions both way, J. Cal. So basically, when I read

00:45:14.280 | those polls, or I read the summary of the polls, I have a

00:45:18.760 | bias based on my interest in the outcome that says that thing is

00:45:22.520 | BS, that thing is right. Oh, look at this. And everyone

00:45:24.840 | points to this stuff for confirmation bias of their

00:45:27.560 | opinion. Yeah. And to denounce the other side. And so it all

00:45:31.480 | gets caught up as kind of a media angle when people use

00:45:34.120 | polling data. And and also fundamentally, when people kind

00:45:38.920 | of get involved in polls and create polls, there's also the

00:45:41.800 | risk of bias. And part of what Nate silver and others try and

00:45:44.520 | do is figure out does that bias come out in the polling

00:45:48.520 | performance historically, and that's how they kind of wait,

00:45:51.480 | whether or not this poll is going to be a better or worse

00:45:53.880 | indicator than other polls of the distribution of things that

00:45:56.440 | might happen in the future. In fact, if people were to lose,

00:45:59.960 | you know, a poker hand, that they, you know, were 60% to win

00:46:04.360 | or two thirds to win, you know, they would be like, okay, that

00:46:07.480 | makes sense. When Hillary Clinton lost to Trump the first

00:46:11.480 | time people lost their minds. And he was pretty clear, right?

00:46:14.200 | He was, I think, 6535. And people are like, wait, you said

00:46:17.560 | it's 65%. Yeah. Your thoughts on just the accuracy of polls

00:46:22.440 | generally, and then what you heard here in terms of the

00:46:24.520 | the betting markets? How do you look at these two things that

00:46:28.280 | are taking up a lot of space right now?

00:46:30.280 | Well, I would consider prediction markets to be an

00:46:32.600 | additional tool that we should consider side by side with

00:46:36.600 | polls. And they both have their pluses and minuses. The

00:46:39.800 | advantage of polls is that you're actually talking to real

00:46:44.920 | people as opposed to betters. However, they're very dependent

00:46:49.000 | on sampling and getting the sampling correct. I mean, most

00:46:53.000 | of these polls, talk to maybe 1000 respondents, these are

00:46:55.960 | people who are willing to pick up the phone from a unknown

00:46:58.280 | number, that right there is probably a huge source of bias,

00:47:00.840 | because I don't do that. And then based on that sample,

00:47:04.360 | they're going to predict how millions and millions of people

00:47:06.360 | are going to vote. Well, everything depends on the

00:47:09.800 | composition of that sample, which 1000 voters do you talk

00:47:12.520 | to? Do you weight them based on likelihood of voting or

00:47:16.200 | demographic characteristics, and so on. So the polls can be

00:47:20.520 | notoriously inaccurate. We've seen that many times. And

00:47:23.960 | that's why there's a margin of error. Sometimes the margin of

00:47:26.600 | error is even wrong. So in any event, it's a tool, but it's a

00:47:30.840 | tool that almost by definition is going to be wrong because of

00:47:33.640 | sampling problems. You look at prediction markets. And it's a

00:47:37.160 | totally different type of voting mechanism where betters are

00:47:40.280 | willing to put their money where their mouth is. And they've got

00:47:43.560 | real skin in the game. And they're able to make a

00:47:46.840 | prediction based on their willingness to lose money. Now

00:47:49.560 | there can be problems with that, too. Number one, the

00:47:51.880 | betting market can be very thin. Sometimes there's just not a

00:47:54.680 | lot of money that's trading hands. So I think with a lot of

00:47:57.160 | those VP picks, you can move the VP market by putting just a

00:48:01.080 | very small amount of money because the market wasn't very

00:48:03.720 | liquid. So you have to kind of look at how deep and liquid the

00:48:06.520 | prediction market is. And then I'd say second, the issue with

00:48:10.280 | prediction markets is they, and this could be an advantage, is

00:48:13.240 | they move a lot based on small things because people are just

00:48:17.560 | constantly updating their forecast. I would argue that

00:48:20.600 | maybe that's an advantage is that you could see the the trend

00:48:24.360 | more easily in a prediction market. So, for example,

00:48:29.240 | I have some numbers here, too, if you want to hear them $653

00:48:32.520 | million in political bets are currently being placed across

00:48:36.040 | the top 10 betting markets, and all of the markets on poly

00:48:39.400 | market, which includes things outside of politics are 320

00:48:42.360 | million. So they are the big fish in this, I think they're

00:48:46.600 | the leader, but it's still a very thin amount of money to

00:48:49.480 | your point, sex.

00:48:50.520 | Yeah, I would mostly use the betting markets as a measure of

00:48:54.920 | how sentiment is shifting. So for example, on election night,

00:48:59.880 | the betting market is going to converge to 100% in favor of one

00:49:02.840 | candidate or another, whereas the actual votes are not going

00:49:07.720 | to converge to 100%. You could have an election in say,

00:49:10.440 | Pennsylvania, where one candidate gets 50.1% of the

00:49:13.800 | vote, the other candidate gets 49.9, the betting market is

00:49:17.160 | going to converge to 100 zero, because it's predicting who's

00:49:20.440 | going to win. It's a binary yes or no, as opposed to where the

00:49:24.200 | actual vote totals come out. The polling is trying to

00:49:27.480 | approximate where the vote tolls are going to come out right

00:49:29.560 | with a huge margin of error. So the polls are just are never

00:49:33.960 | going to give you as Crispin, decisive an answer as the

00:49:37.320 | prediction markets, but the prediction markets can also be

00:49:40.120 | wrong, as we've seen, they're only as good as the people

00:49:43.160 | making the bets.

00:49:44.280 | Chamath, where do you put the third category here, which would

00:49:47.080 | be the oddsmakers in Vegas, because they're looking at

00:49:49.480 | everything. What do you think about the oddsmakers in Vegas?

00:49:52.440 | Would you give them any credence?

00:49:55.240 | I don't even know why any of this matters. Why are we

00:49:57.080 | talking about this?

00:49:57.720 | Well, I mean, because people are looking at the tea leaves.

00:50:00.120 | There are reasons it matters, you know, the these markets do

00:50:04.600 | have an impact on the voting public, because the media covers

00:50:09.160 | them, donors cover them, voter turnout is impacted by the

00:50:13.000 | polls. And then there's these, like, you know, various

00:50:16.520 | psychological phenomenon, like the underdog impacts or

00:50:22.360 | bandwagon. So you could have, if people perceive at one point,

00:50:27.800 | Trump is the underdog, maybe more people turn out. And then

00:50:30.920 | people who, you know, if Trump was winning versus Biden, so

00:50:34.840 | much, they might become complacent, and you get some sort

00:50:36.920 | of surprise there. So they do have actual impact on the

00:50:39.720 | voting public.

00:50:40.680 | I suspect, though, that I suspect that a lot of that is

00:50:43.400 | really at the edges. The I read an article recently that just

00:50:49.160 | talked about the enormity of the investment that both the

00:50:52.200 | democrats and the republicans are making to get to these

00:50:55.960 | critical areas in these five critical states. And if you live

00:51:00.520 | in one of these zip codes that really matter. I think that

00:51:05.400 | there's just no room for anything but what each side is

00:51:09.960 | saying, I don't think you're looking at a betting market or a

00:51:13.800 | poll or any of this stuff. And I think the reason why these

00:51:17.400 | places have become so critical is that they are very balanced,

00:51:21.240 | they are people that have a good way of making sense of the

00:51:26.440 | world. And they change their minds a lot, right? Because

00:51:30.520 | otherwise, they're, they're people that underwrite and

00:51:33.720 | reunderwrite their decisions. And to me, that's actually a

00:51:37.240 | really wonderful thing to know that there are these, call it

00:51:40.920 | million people in these zip codes in five states that are

00:51:44.760 | actually quite thoughtful. And I'm actually okay that in the

00:51:48.840 | end that those folks will decide, I would be much more

00:51:51.800 | worried if it was hyper partisan and set up in a way

00:51:55.240 | where none of these lies, whoever tells them are

00:52:00.520 | uncovered. The way that it's set up today, all of the crazy

00:52:05.880 | ideas get run to the ground, all of the lies get uncovered.

00:52:10.280 | And I think that that's a really healthy place. And I

00:52:14.840 | think it's a much better place. So I'm generally like, really

00:52:18.360 | glad that things look like, quote, unquote, a question mark,

00:52:22.120 | because I think it creates much more pressure for the

00:52:25.560 | candidates to be precise. And I think that that's very

00:52:28.760 | important. So I'd love to talk about some of these crazy

00:52:31.000 | policy things as well.

00:52:31.960 | Yeah, what are our policy sacks, I wanted to get your take on

00:52:35.000 | this. Trump's VP pick JD Vance is now the least popular VP pick

00:52:39.240 | in modern history. People said the same thing also about walls

00:52:41.960 | and that was a terrible pick. Here's your chart on JD. And

00:52:46.280 | here's the historical chart. john Edwards, and I remember

00:52:50.280 | him. He was plus two in net rating, Tim waltz, plus five,

00:52:53.720 | Mike Pence, plus five, Kamala when she was VP, plus three, but

00:52:57.320 | JD Vance is absolutely. He's below Sarah Palin, which I

00:53:02.280 | guess takes ever, what's your take on the VP picks and the

00:53:06.360 | impact they're having here, because it's a major topic of

00:53:08.920 | discussion.

00:53:09.400 | I think what history shows the VP pick doesn't matter that

00:53:13.880 | much people vote for what's happening at the top of the

00:53:15.720 | ticket. And I would argue the reason why JD has the poli does

00:53:19.560 | is because there's a couple of reasons. Number one is just

00:53:22.120 | media bias. And there was an interesting report showing that

00:53:25.480 | the media's coverage of the Harris campaign was 84%

00:53:28.360 | positive, whereas the coverage of the Trump campaign was 89%

00:53:31.640 | negative, that actually seems to understate the bias that I

00:53:33.640 | see out there. But look, this is the number one reason why JD

00:53:37.240 | has a negative rating is because the media is defining him, I

00:53:39.640 | would say. Furthermore, JD is out there talking about ideas,

00:53:44.440 | and I give him credit for that. But because he is an idea man,

00:53:48.680 | and he's also a writer, and he's said interesting things in

00:53:51.960 | the past, and also sometimes occasionally a sarcastic thing

00:53:54.760 | or two in the past, the media has been able to take those

00:53:57.480 | things out of context and harp on them relentlessly. On the

00:54:01.320 | other hand, you take someone like Tim waltz, and he's out

00:54:05.560 | there, he's not really talking about ideas. I mean, every time

00:54:08.040 | he goes up there and speaks, it's like a pep talk. I mean,

00:54:10.920 | if I wanted to hire a guy to give the halftime speech to my

00:54:15.160 | team, he'd be the guy, you know, if I wanted him out there,

00:54:18.840 | puffing up a team, we got to all give 110%. He's, he's the

00:54:23.480 | guy for that. But he's not really talking about ideas. He's

00:54:25.560 | not going on the Sunday shows, you look at JD. I mean, I've

00:54:29.160 | watched a couple of his campaign stops. I mean, the guy

00:54:31.640 | is really sharp. And when he goes on the Sunday show, they

00:54:35.560 | are pitching nothing but fastballs at him, and he's

00:54:38.040 | hitting it out of the park every time. And Harris and waltz

00:54:42.600 | are just not doing that. They're not even appearing on

00:54:44.280 | those shows. I don't think they could survive 20 minutes of

00:54:48.120 | harsh questioning the way that the media pitches at JD every

00:54:52.120 | time he goes on a campaign stop and takes questions or he goes

00:54:55.720 | on a Sunday show. I love the JD pick, you know, venture

00:54:59.160 | capital's business guy, well written, well spoken, you're

00:55:02.520 | picking up on something that I think is really important that I

00:55:05.160 | think has been under reported. It really is a tale of two

00:55:09.160 | different tickets. The Republican ticket, whether you

00:55:13.160 | like them or not, are very financially astute actors. And

00:55:21.240 | if you look at the Democratic ticket, they are under invested

00:55:25.800 | to not invested at all in anything that would normally

00:55:29.000 | resemble the United States economy. And I find that a very

00:55:33.800 | odd distinction, meaning the way that I would think people would

00:55:41.880 | want to see their candidates is folks who have a very

00:55:44.920 | sophisticated understanding of the parts that they're going to

00:55:49.400 | govern. And in this case, if you're going to sit atop the

00:55:51.720 | economy, one would hope that you're invested in the economy

00:55:54.280 | in some way so that you know how it works. And it's a little

00:55:57.640 | surprising to me that nobody's really questions how how

00:55:59.960 | under invested the Democratic ticket is. And it's almost as if

00:56:04.520 | the the Republican ticket for their financial sophistication

00:56:08.440 | is looked down upon to unpack what you're saying here. There

00:56:11.800 | was a report. Tim Walz has no financial holdings. He has no

00:56:17.160 | stocks, no bonds, no mutual funds, no real estate, nothing,

00:56:20.680 | no cryptocurrency. This is what you're referring to. Yes, ma.

00:56:23.480 | Yeah, the level of like, literally owning nothing. And I

00:56:27.800 | guess, Freiburg to your I'll let you take it from there.

00:56:30.440 | So I think it's actually a step a little bit deeper than that.

00:56:37.160 | Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz have only ever worked for

00:56:43.720 | government. Trump and Vance have worked in private industry.

00:56:50.120 | It's not just their perspective being colored by the the lack

00:56:55.240 | of participation in the private economy, but the lack of

00:56:58.360 | employment in the private economy. They've never worked

00:57:01.400 | for a private business. They've never been employees of a

00:57:04.600 | private business. They've never built a private business. I'm

00:57:07.320 | not trying to be disparaging. But I do think I'm just trying

00:57:09.800 | to underline the point here, Chamath, which is the voters

00:57:12.840 | choice is, do you want candidates that are not

00:57:17.080 | typically government operatives? Or do you want

00:57:20.200 | candidates that have spent their whole career as government

00:57:22.840 | operatives? And that is effectively what the voters are

00:57:25.320 | going to be voting for. And they're going to make a

00:57:27.160 | decision, they may want to have someone that's going to lead the

00:57:30.520 | biggest government in history, because they've spent their

00:57:33.160 | whole careers in government. Or they're going to say, you know

00:57:35.640 | what, the biggest government in history needs to be

00:57:38.120 | significantly altered. And we want to bring someone in from

00:57:40.280 | the outside that's worked in private industry. And that is

00:57:42.680 | the voters choice. That's one way to view the voters choice

00:57:45.320 | here. That's an interesting framing. And another framing

00:57:47.800 | might be free bird. I love that. Hey, it's an interesting

00:57:50.760 | framing. Here's another framing. I don't you're a young person.

00:57:55.480 | I can't own a home. They're too expensive. I don't have any

00:57:59.400 | equity. I'm getting ground down. I own a I owe a bunch of

00:58:02.600 | student loans. Tim walls feels more like the experience I'm

00:58:07.240 | having as a millennial where I can't afford a home where I

00:58:10.520 | don't have equity, where I'm constantly trying to pay off my

00:58:13.320 | bills. And the finance what we'll say is like, hey, this

00:58:16.760 | guy's not very financially astute. He doesn't because he's

00:58:19.560 | never it's because he's never maybe maybe it's because he's

00:58:23.960 | never had a private sector job. Well, he's been a teacher,

00:58:26.760 | right? So maybe people say, you know what, I feel I identify

00:58:30.280 | more with Tim Walz. And I think that's actually what might be

00:58:32.680 | happening here. public school teacher, right? Yeah. But yeah,

00:58:35.720 | which is a noble thing to be. And I think there's probably a

00:58:38.840 | large percentage of the country who feels like they're not part

00:58:42.200 | of the equity economy. They don't own a home. They don't

00:58:45.800 | own equities. And they have been shut out from this. And all

00:58:48.840 | these rich people like Trump and JD Vance and venture

00:58:51.560 | capitalists are running the table on them. And I think that

00:58:54.760 | might be why we're seeing even if the four of us disagree with

00:58:58.040 | it, we might be seeing someone like Tim was actually being a

00:59:01.320 | feature. It might be a feature to their to their

00:59:04.200 | And I think that there's a perception of experience in

00:59:08.920 | government that is deemed to make a government leader more

00:59:13.960 | appropriately suited to be a government leader, because of

00:59:16.600 | one politician. Yeah, well, not even a politician just career

00:59:20.040 | experience. So they're being employed by or working within

00:59:23.880 | the government within a government, local, state or

00:59:26.040 | federal. And remember, school has started her career at the

00:59:29.240 | DA's office in Alameda County before moving over to San

00:59:31.640 | Francisco DA's office. And then she was DA of San Francisco,

00:59:35.160 | and then Attorney General and so on and so forth.

00:59:37.880 | sex, what do you think of this framing? You have two

00:59:40.200 | candidates who are career civil servants, who have dedicated

00:59:43.880 | their life to that, but who in one case has doesn't own his

00:59:47.640 | home doesn't own any equities. In the other case, Kamala does

00:59:50.360 | have a bunch of equity and some private wealth versus the

00:59:54.200 | capitalists. It looks like this actually is an interesting

00:59:56.840 | framing socialism versus capitalism. What's your thought

00:59:59.400 | on that? Well, I think just because someone has served in

01:00:02.360 | government doesn't mean that they truly even understand what

01:00:05.400 | the problems are, or that they're even the master of

01:00:07.800 | government. I mean, you saw this over the past week, we

01:00:10.040 | talked about the 818,000 jobs that didn't exist. They asked

01:00:14.120 | Gina Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce about this. And she

01:00:16.360 | just said, That's a Trump lie. And they said, No, actually,

01:00:19.400 | it's a Bureau of Labor Statistics report that like is

01:00:22.760 | under US Secretary of Commerce. So I'm not familiar with that.

01:00:25.720 | So you have people running the government who don't even know

01:00:27.960 | what their own departments are doing. Now, I think it's just a

01:00:30.840 | function of the fact that government is so big and out of

01:00:32.680 | control, that no one even understands what it does. I

01:00:35.640 | think it's more important to have someone who at least has

01:00:38.600 | some experience in the private sector, who truly understands

01:00:41.480 | how jobs are created, how wealth is created, what causes

01:00:44.840 | inflation. Okay, we've talked about this before. Yeah, what

01:00:47.960 | causes inflation is the printing of too much money. It's

01:00:50.600 | government spending too much. Yeah, shocking. It is not

01:00:54.680 | corporate greed, because corporate greed is a constant.

01:00:57.000 | It's not price gouging and how the free market incentivizes the

01:01:01.560 | creation of improved productivity, which over time

01:01:05.720 | translates into improved prosperity for the society

01:01:09.560 | within which that is taking place. That is so critical. And

01:01:12.680 | we saw that happen even in China, in the last 30 years,

01:01:16.520 | when the government allowed entrepreneurship to flourish in

01:01:19.720 | certain parts of the country. As a result, there were

01:01:22.200 | significant productivity gains. And they brought a billion

01:01:25.240 | people out of poverty. They created a middle class. I mean,

01:01:28.280 | they never had never had a middle class. I think it's

01:01:31.160 | important to not color this as because you worked in

01:01:34.760 | government, you can't be invested or you can't own a home

01:01:37.800 | where you can't actually have built the nest egg, right?

01:01:39.960 | Because that's also not true. And we have, there's some

01:01:42.440 | extreme examples of people who've been Pelosi essentially,

01:01:45.560 | yeah, career civil servants, essentially, and it built

01:01:48.360 | multi $100 million portfolio, we can, we can question in

01:01:52.840 | specifically, in the case of all house representatives,

01:01:56.440 | whether they're getting access to a kind of information

01:01:59.320 | that other people don't get access to, but taking that off

01:02:01.640 | the table, I think that there are people in all kinds of

01:02:05.640 | jobs, who are able to save and invest, and then acquire

01:02:13.400 | things that they believe will give them security for

01:02:15.480 | themselves and their children in the future. And I don't

01:02:18.840 | think that it is because of a kind of job that you do. I

01:02:21.800 | think it's a kind of mindset that you have. And I think

01:02:24.600 | it's very important to make sure that whoever we pick,

01:02:28.200 | we understand the mindset. I really believe that like, you

01:02:33.960 | know, there are a couple things that are really critical to

01:02:39.080 | thinking about the future, and wanting to make the future

01:02:42.040 | better. I think one obvious one is when you have kids, when

01:02:45.160 | you have kids, you're making sacrifices every day, you know,

01:02:48.040 | you're you're forgoing things today, because whether it's

01:02:50.760 | saving for college, saving for school, saving for a class,

01:02:53.960 | saving for a sports thing that you want your kids to go to

01:02:56.760 | musical, whatever it is, you're always finding ways of

01:03:00.680 | thinking about what is better for in the future for that

01:03:03.800 | other person, not me. And the second is, I think being an

01:03:08.600 | investor actually makes you care about the future in a

01:03:12.440 | really productive way. Because you're foregoing often cases,

01:03:16.760 | when we all invest, we're foregoing short term gains on

01:03:20.280 | the hope that we can help shape a much longer term outcome in

01:03:23.960 | the future, that makes all of that worthwhile. And so I like

01:03:28.760 | it when I can see people that have those things at play, and

01:03:32.760 | that they even in whatever small way they can are

01:03:35.640 | manifesting that. And I always have a question mark, like, how

01:03:40.120 | is it possible that at no point you have tried to be invested

01:03:44.440 | in your own and your children's future that way? It's just the

01:03:47.480 | it's just a question mark for me. Yeah, 58% of Americans own

01:03:50.440 | equities. And that includes like retirement accounts. So

01:03:53.400 | it's not like they're actively day trading. And so you know

01:03:56.520 | that that does actually sacks paint an interesting picture

01:04:00.040 | where maybe the Democratic Party now which they referred to

01:04:03.080 | themselves Bernie and Elizabeth Warren as a socialist, as

01:04:05.880 | socialist Democrats, maybe this is like part of their feature is

01:04:09.400 | to appeal to that large swath of people who don't own their

01:04:12.600 | homes, who don't have kids. And you know, to JD's point about

01:04:16.920 | cat ladies, and to, you know, who don't own homes, don't have

01:04:21.320 | kids and don't have equities. What are your thoughts on that

01:04:23.080 | sex? Is that maybe how these parties are starting to shape up

01:04:26.840 | in the modern era? Yeah, actually, I think I think that's

01:04:29.720 | right. I mean, I think that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie

01:04:32.520 | Sanders are now the thought leaders and really the beating

01:04:35.400 | heart of the Democrat Party. I think what's happened is the

01:04:38.200 | Republican Party has moved to right wing populism. And the

01:04:41.080 | Democrats in response to that have concluded that they need to

01:04:45.160 | basically move to left wing populism in order to compete

01:04:47.560 | with that. So both parties are becoming fairly populist. Now,

01:04:52.040 | what is what is left wing populism mean? It basically

01:04:54.520 | means soak the rich, right? It's a strong element of class

01:04:57.640 | warfare to it. We're going to make the rich pay for

01:05:00.040 | everything and the rich are the problem. It's this fundamental

01:05:02.760 | unfairness of the economy that's causing all these problems.

01:05:05.960 | And I think you've heard that over and over again at the DNC.

01:05:09.000 | I mean, just the clips that I've seen, this has been a

01:05:11.720 | recurring theme is the hatred towards, you know, billionaires

01:05:15.880 | and, and tax the rich is a recurring theme. And that's

01:05:19.560 | actually a great jump off point here. Because the big news in

01:05:23.160 | our circles this weekend on social media was and some of the

01:05:27.080 | group chats is that Harris has reportedly backed some of

01:05:31.240 | Biden's really out there tax plans, which include a proposed

01:05:35.480 | 25% wealth tax on people with over $100 million in assets.

01:05:40.600 | Important to note that this would be very hard to pass,

01:05:43.320 | because getting these tax increases, you'd have to get

01:05:45.640 | through Congress, etc. But let's just talk about what the

01:05:47.960 | proposal is, because it's out there. In Biden's 2025 tax plan,

01:05:52.920 | which the campaign has said to semi for, which is a niche

01:05:57.320 | publication, like a newsletter company, that and I'll just give

01:06:01.320 | the quote in a little notice portion of its Friday analysis

01:06:04.200 | of Harris's new economic plans, the Committee for a responsible

01:06:07.800 | federal budget wrote that her campaign said it endorsed the

01:06:12.360 | suite of revenue options included in President Joe's

01:06:15.160 | recent budget. And that's the FRB report said, quote, the

01:06:19.800 | campaign has communicated to us that Vice President Harris

01:06:23.400 | continues to support all of the revenue raising provisions in

01:06:27.000 | the President's 2025 budget. So there is continuity confirmed

01:06:31.320 | between Harris and Biden's plans. I'll just explain as

01:06:36.440 | simply as I can what this extreme plan says, and then I'll

01:06:40.040 | get Chamath your take on it. Biden's proposed 2025 tax plan

01:06:44.360 | includes the following 25% unrealized cap gain tax on those

01:06:48.200 | with over 100 million assets 28% corporate tax rate right now

01:06:52.440 | it's 21. Trump had proposed a 15% rate and quadrupling the

01:06:56.920 | stock buyback tax to 4%. That's when a company buys their own

01:07:01.880 | shares as opposed to putting it to work in the market. The

01:07:04.680 | stock buyback tax was created as Biden's inflation Reduction

01:07:07.800 | Act of 2022. It's just 1% if you want to buy back your shares

01:07:11.240 | like Apple and some other companies do. But let's unpack

01:07:14.760 | the 25% unrealized cap gains because that seems to be, you

01:07:19.240 | know, the most, let's say, I don't want to say triggering,

01:07:23.080 | but the one that's triggered the most number of people,

01:07:25.480 | there's 5000 people who fit into that category. What do you

01:07:28.280 | think Chamath of this proposal? Fair, unfair, crazy,

01:07:33.400 | social, anti American? It's less about fair or unfair, but

01:07:38.360 | I think that we are in the part of the cycle, where enough

01:07:44.280 | people don't feel the positive aspects of capitalism that they

01:07:48.600 | want to push back against it. I just put a little image in here,

01:07:53.560 | Nick, if you want to just throw it up in the chat. But when you

01:07:57.480 | look from 1913, on to today, the reality is we've had many

01:08:03.640 | different forms of political philosophy that have governed

01:08:06.360 | the country. And what you can see is that tax rates have

01:08:10.600 | varied wildly at the federal level. And I think it's because

01:08:16.440 | that at certain times, there was the political will to go to

01:08:20.840 | extremes. And this may be a moment where we are going to

01:08:25.400 | explore the extremes that we had in the 40s and the 50s. And I

01:08:31.800 | think the reality is that if that does happen, you're going

01:08:36.120 | to see people behave in ways that weren't possible in the

01:08:39.160 | 40s and 50s. In the 40s and 50s, everybody was more

01:08:42.040 | geopolitically constrained. I don't think that that's the case

01:08:45.720 | anymore. And the way that people start companies where they

01:08:48.520 | start companies, the flexibility of citizenship have changed

01:08:52.520 | really dramatically. So if it's the will of the people that they

01:08:56.600 | want to explore these mechanisms, I think other people

01:09:00.040 | will react in kind and, you know, the dye will be cast. So

01:09:04.680 | you know, I don't have much you're referring to removing

01:09:08.600 | I think you're implying people might be able to move to other

01:09:12.760 | places and create companies there. Is that what I'm reading?

01:09:15.560 | Let's put it this way. We have, we have a small microcosm of

01:09:18.360 | this going on within the 50 states, which is, if you said

01:09:21.960 | California was the United States, and Texas and Florida

01:09:27.080 | were, I'll make up two different countries, Malta, and Dubai,

01:09:33.960 | well, what happens when taxation goes beyond the pale? And what

01:09:39.960 | happens when budget deficits and spending go beyond the pale?

01:09:42.760 | And when the government plays too large of a hand in the

01:09:46.440 | economy, people leave with their feet, companies leave. So we

01:09:50.680 | don't need to guess what's going to happen. Because if it can

01:09:53.720 | happen between California and Texas, it probably stands to

01:09:57.800 | reason it can happen between the United States and the UAE as

01:10:00.760 | an example. Yeah. You already have a bunch of hedge fund

01:10:04.840 | manors moving over there, right? Shama, I have people are

01:10:07.640 | starting to buy apartments. And there's, there's, there's golden

01:10:11.400 | visas in some great countries, Portugal has a golden visa. The

01:10:15.240 | UAE has a golden visa, Italy has a golden visa. The UK had this

01:10:20.840 | great program, what was called non doms for a long time. So the

01:10:25.640 | the point is that all of these took advantage of countries that

01:10:29.960 | went to extremes, and they lost citizens as a result. And I

01:10:34.600 | suspect that if what the US voting population wants to do is

01:10:39.000 | explore that extreme, these policies will get enacted, and

01:10:43.080 | then people will act in kind. The only thing that I would just

01:10:45.880 | again, reinforces, unlike when taxes went to 90% in the 40s and

01:10:50.120 | 50s, people are much, much more mobile than they were then. And

01:10:54.840 | that was during World War Two in the post war era. Freeberg,

01:10:58.200 | your thoughts on this proposal specifically, which impacts a

01:11:02.120 | very small number of people, although maybe a high percentage

01:11:04.760 | here. Yeah. So so just just to give a little more detail to it,

01:11:08.040 | Jake out, please. And you can actually see it. I think if you

01:11:10.680 | want to pull up the page, 8283 in the document, so the wealth

01:11:16.280 | tax is 25% of your unrealized capital gains, if your net worth

01:11:21.240 | is above 100 million. And the first time this happens, you can

01:11:24.760 | split up the payments over nine years, you have nine years to

01:11:27.480 | kind of pay down the assets or sell the assets or borrow the

01:11:30.920 | money you need to make those tax payments. After that, you can

01:11:34.600 | actually make those payments over five years, those payments

01:11:37.160 | are ultimately treated as pre payments on taxes that will be

01:11:40.040 | due when you realize the capital gains. Every year you have to

01:11:43.400 | report to the IRS, separated by asset class, the cost basis and

01:11:48.120 | the estimated value of every asset you have, you then have to

01:11:51.560 | determine your tax that you owe because of the difference from

01:11:54.440 | last year, you start out with tradable assets of stocks, those

01:11:58.520 | are just valued at the end of year. illiquid assets like

01:12:02.440 | private companies, or real estate, you don't have to get a

01:12:06.440 | valuation, if there's a financing event, or some other

01:12:09.560 | sort of major revaluation, you have to use that value. And if

01:12:14.120 | there isn't, the number goes up every year by some nominal rate

01:12:17.800 | that will be set by the Treasury. So the Treasury is

01:12:19.960 | basically going to tell you what they think the value of your

01:12:23.000 | company has gone up on an annual basis. And that's the

01:12:26.600 | determination of valuation, you can file an appeal. So for all

01:12:29.640 | the entrepreneurs and startup people listening, there's a

01:12:32.520 | process that they're proposing, that is basically the government

01:12:35.560 | saying if you didn't get a new financing round done, the price

01:12:38.200 | goes up. And if you disagree with the price going up, you go

01:12:40.920 | back and you appeal it.

01:12:41.960 | Let's pause there for a second, Freiburg, because this is super

01:12:45.000 | important, I think, to the audience here. Somebody has a

01:12:47.880 | startup company, it becomes worth $10 billion, it has 100

01:12:51.480 | million in revenue, it's doing well, it's losing money for nine

01:12:55.240 | valuation comes in founder owns 25%. co founders on 25%. Each,

01:12:59.800 | they own two or $3 billion in stock. Now you've got an illiquid

01:13:03.720 | founder, who owns $3 billion in stock, companies not going

01:13:08.040 | public, there's no secondary market, what would happen to

01:13:10.920 | that founder would.

01:13:12.120 | So they've addressed this. And that's the final provision. And

01:13:15.080 | what they said is that if a taxpayer is treated as what

01:13:19.720 | they're calling illiquid, meaning that their tradable

01:13:23.640 | assets, the stocks that they own, or the cash that they have

01:13:27.080 | is less than 20% of their total wealth, then they may elect to

01:13:34.280 | include only the unrealized gain in their tradable assets to

01:13:38.680 | determine their tax liability. However, if you do this, you

01:13:42.600 | will actually have a deferral charge, which means you'll

01:13:45.080 | ultimately pay a higher tax on the capital gains on your

01:13:48.440 | illiquid asset when you do have a have a realized capital gain

01:13:51.320 | on it. So they're trying to cover the fact that people might

01:13:54.040 | have all their assets tied up in real estate, or all their

01:13:56.760 | assets tied up in private company stock. And again, I feel

01:13:59.960 | like we're we're kind of shouting into an abyss here,

01:14:01.960 | because this is only going to affect such a small number of

01:14:04.040 | people. But they've really tried to write this in a way that

01:14:07.560 | ultimately covers the kind of pushback that you're

01:14:09.560 | highlighting. I'll say one other piece of pushback that's been

01:14:12.680 | received and tested in the Supreme Court. A lot of people

01:14:16.280 | have said that the 16th amendment prohibits this

01:14:21.720 | taxation, a ruling from the Supreme Court was published

01:14:25.000 | June of this year. And in that particular case, there was a

01:14:29.480 | repatriation tax for folks that left the country, it's the more

01:14:33.880 | versus United States tax case. And when people left the

01:14:37.240 | country, the government under the Tax and Jobs Act, which was

01:14:40.760 | passed under the Trump administration, the government

01:14:43.080 | had a right to go after people's assets and tax them on

01:14:45.480 | their unrealized gains, even after they give up their US

01:14:48.200 | citizenry. This was challenged to the Supreme Court. And there

01:14:50.920 | was a number of amicus briefs filed on this case that said the

01:14:54.680 | government does not have the authority and Congress doesn't

01:14:56.920 | have the authority to actually tax on unrealized capital gains.

01:15:01.640 | And at the end of the day, the Supreme Court agreed to hear

01:15:04.200 | the case. And they did not overturn on the position that

01:15:07.640 | the government actually did not overstep their authority to be

01:15:11.720 | able to tax unrealized capital gains. So there is some Supreme

01:15:15.000 | Court case precedents here that indicates that this will not get

01:15:18.120 | thrown out on an unconstitutional ground basis. So

01:15:21.400 | there is a lot of conversation that this might actually become

01:15:24.120 | a real case. I'll pause there. And I actually have a theory I

01:15:26.760 | want to talk about in a minute. But it's a little bit of an

01:15:29.480 | extension from this point. But that is this summer, a seizure

01:15:33.640 | of assets in your mind? Is it constitutional in your mind? Two

01:15:38.520 | questions there?

01:15:39.160 | It's certainly a confiscation. I mean, basically, this, this tax

01:15:43.560 | is directed at centimillionaires and billionaires to basically

01:15:47.080 | take 25% of what they have. I mean, that's basically what this

01:15:50.040 | is about. There's a good reason why realization is one of the

01:15:54.440 | core concepts of our tax code. What real realization gives you

01:15:58.680 | two really important things. Number one, you have a sale

01:16:01.320 | price, right, your realization means that you sell the asset.

01:16:04.920 | So we know exactly how much you made. Number two, you have the

01:16:08.200 | liquidity to pay the tax bill because you've just sold the

01:16:11.160 | asset. The problem with an unrealized gains tax is both

01:16:14.440 | those issues. Number one, we don't know what the assets

01:16:17.480 | really worth. You know, it's easier to, to put a value on a

01:16:21.480 | publicly traded asset, but a private asset, it's very hard to

01:16:24.840 | know exactly how much it's worth the valuations bouncing around

01:16:27.880 | all the time. What this bill would do is create, I guess, a

01:16:30.680 | whole new process and bureaucracy to try and put a

01:16:33.160 | value on that. But it's going to be really complicated to

01:16:36.360 | comply with all of us are going to need to hire a whole new

01:16:39.560 | legion of lawyers and accountants. So I mean, you're

01:16:43.000 | talking about a whole new, essentially tax bureaucracy

01:16:46.520 | that's going to spring up around this concept on the

01:16:48.760 | liquidity part, you're being taxed a huge amount without

01:16:53.960 | having the cash to pay the tax bill. And you know, yes,

01:16:57.560 | they've tried to mitigate that by creating this installment

01:16:59.880 | plan, but you're still going to need to go out and sell large

01:17:03.080 | chunks of your company. Every time you get an up round in

01:17:05.720 | order to pay the tax bill. And that means that you're losing

01:17:09.080 | ownership of your your company, all these assets are going to

01:17:11.960 | be dumped on the market. And you're basically starving the

01:17:15.800 | market of capital, actually, right? Because all these people

01:17:18.600 | who, who are owners of their company are gonna have to go

01:17:21.160 | out and sell a big chunk of them.

01:17:23.160 | This is going to put so much cold water on the entrepreneurial

01:17:26.520 | market, it's going to make people just have less liquidity

01:17:29.560 | to invest in things. I think this is going to be disastrous

01:17:32.840 | because a lot of people to retire early, because they just

01:17:35.320 | don't want to deal with all this.

01:17:36.840 | Well, Friedberg, what's your theory? Okay, I've got a theory.

01:17:39.720 | Oh, theory. Here we go. Good.

01:17:41.000 | I was trying to figure out why we seem to be like embracing

01:17:45.720 | socialist principles. Why I keep seeing more of this stuff

01:17:50.920 | become mainstream and almost become normalized. And I was

01:17:54.840 | looking at the total GDP of the United States is $25 trillion.

01:18:00.760 | The federal budget for next year is proposed to be 7.2

01:18:05.000 | trillion. And state and local budgets combined is about 4

01:18:09.240 | trillion. So if you look at government spending, it's about

01:18:12.760 | half of GDP now, state, local and federal, which roughly

01:18:16.760 | equates to about half of people in the United States are

01:18:20.360 | employed directly by government, or indirectly, because

01:18:25.640 | the government is the primary revenue source of their

01:18:27.880 | business. And I think that that's why this, this set of

01:18:32.760 | policies and I'm not talking about the tax on the cent of

01:18:35.320 | millionaires, as much as a simple disregard for the fact

01:18:41.480 | that the United States, over time, the prosperity that we've

01:18:45.080 | realized has been driven by a free market economy by

01:18:48.600 | enterprising individuals going out and saying there are people

01:18:51.560 | that are asking for things, I'm going to figure out a way to

01:18:54.040 | build those things and make it for them and sell it to them,

01:18:56.600 | people will pay for it, they will work hard to do it. And the

01:18:59.640 | incentive structure in a free market has enabled productivity

01:19:03.000 | improvements and enabled ultimately prosperity. But

01:19:05.880 | we've reached a tipping point. And the tipping point is when

01:19:08.840 | half or more of the population begins to be employed by the

01:19:12.040 | government, at which point that concept is lost. Because now it

01:19:16.520 | is the government that is the employer, not one's own

01:19:19.560 | individual liberties and ability to go out and be

01:19:21.320 | enterprising. And so I think that the budget of government

01:19:25.160 | tipping to 50% of GDP is the reason why these policies

01:19:29.160 | become mainstream. That's my theory. And so it's a

01:19:31.880 | relationship of government spending as a percent of total

01:19:35.240 | GDP, which translates into employment. You guys are

01:19:38.760 | reasonable, scary, but reasonable.

01:19:41.080 | Well, you know, who said something similar back when Mitt

01:19:43.720 | Romney ran for president, he was caught on tape saying

01:19:47.000 | something to the effect that 47% of Americans were net

01:19:52.920 | government recipients. And if that number ever got to 51%,

01:19:56.440 | then basically, the free market system would be finished

01:20:00.600 | because it'd be more we are more than makers, tipping more

01:20:03.800 | takers than makers. And he was forced to apologize for that.

01:20:06.600 | But there is a fundamental logic to it.

01:20:09.000 | I wouldn't use the term taker sacks, because there are

01:20:11.560 | hardworking people that work for the government. And so

01:20:15.480 | it's not necessarily about just taking a free check, or

01:20:18.280 | there's certainly an aspect of that to some degree. But it

01:20:21.880 | is about the government becoming the primary supporter

01:20:26.360 | of individuals in this country through employment, or

01:20:29.480 | through subsidies, or through checks, or through through

01:20:31.560 | what have you.

01:20:32.120 | Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's totally fair. I'm

01:20:35.400 | not disparaging the efforts of legitimate government workers,

01:20:39.560 | because you do need a government, or private company

01:20:42.360 | workers that just happened to have the government as their

01:20:44.600 | only customer. Right. But the point the point is that when

01:20:48.520 | you become a government employee, you have a vested

01:20:51.400 | interest in government, you should have a vested interest

01:20:53.480 | in the private sector as well, because that's what generates

01:20:55.560 | the tax revenue to fund the government. But as a practical

01:20:58.840 | matter, government workers vote massively in a block for the

01:21:03.240 | Democrat Party. And in many ways, the Democrat Party is the

01:21:06.040 | party of government workers. You look in California, for

01:21:08.840 | example, the various government workers unions are the most

01:21:13.080 | powerful players in California politics.

01:21:14.840 | What's the political affiliation of like, has there ever been

01:21:17.720 | surveys done of employees at the federal level and what their

01:21:21.000 | political affiliations are?

01:21:22.520 | Oh, yeah, vastly, vastly more Democrat. I mean, look, the

01:21:26.600 | Democrats are the party of government. Absolutely.

01:21:28.280 | I'm surprised by that, because I would think that within the

01:21:31.960 | ranks of the military,

01:21:33.480 | you look at the enlisted military, there's a lot of

01:21:36.520 | Republicans in there, a lot of military families, especially

01:21:39.800 | Republican, but you look at just government workers,

01:21:42.680 | vastly more Democrat. I think there's other things happening

01:21:46.840 | as well. I mean, look, American capitalism requires a robust

01:21:51.960 | middle class. And in many ways, I think globalization has

01:21:55.880 | hollowed out the middle class. There used to be a large middle

01:21:59.160 | class in this country of blue collar workers who worked with

01:22:02.920 | their hands. They were not knowledge workers. And they

01:22:05.240 | worked in factories and they did kind of blue collar work, and

01:22:08.120 | they could still make a middle class living. And I think that

01:22:11.880 | over the last 20 to 30 years, as a result of globalization,

01:22:15.640 | millions and millions of those jobs went away and millions of

01:22:18.760 | factories shut down. So the middle class of America, that's

01:22:22.680 | not, you know, again, that's not knowledge workers, were really

01:22:25.960 | pressured by basically throwing open American markets to

01:22:28.760 | foreign goods. Now, you could argue that that lowered prices

01:22:32.200 | and that created consumer surplus and the benefits of

01:22:35.320 | trade. Do you support the Trump tariffs as a solution? They're

01:22:38.200 | sacks because those are fundamentally going to be

01:22:40.120 | inflationary, which is going to make the cost go up for everyone.

01:22:43.000 | Well, I don't know, but I'm just I'm just pointing out that

01:22:45.240 | there was a real price in terms of having this free trade that

01:22:50.040 | led to huge trade deficits, which is this vast American

01:22:53.800 | middle class of people who worked with their hands got put

01:22:56.520 | out of work. And I think that removes a huge incentive for

01:23:01.640 | people to be invested in to have a vested interest in the free

01:23:06.040 | market system.

01:23:06.680 | tax. Let me ask you one more question. Do you think that the

01:23:09.720 | Biden administration's bills, the inflation Reduction Act and

01:23:13.960 | the CHIPS Act, both of which were meant to revitalize that

01:23:18.760 | middle class kind of industrial economy through government

01:23:22.280 | funding of developing new facilities in the US to onshore

01:23:25.720 | manufacturing? Is that not a good, reasonable solution to

01:23:29.480 | that problem?

01:23:30.360 | Well, those are two very different bills. I mean, the

01:23:32.760 | Inflation Reduction Act, just the name itself should tell you

01:23:35.560 | that it doesn't.

01:23:36.280 | The Inflation Maximization Act.

01:23:39.480 | Yeah, look who benefited from that our friends who are energy

01:23:43.560 | investors, who you know who I'm talking about?

01:23:45.960 | He said that this bill was the biggest bonanza that they've

01:24:02.680 | ever seen. He said these guys were running around like, you

01:24:08.760 | know, it was like the Beverly Hillbillies where they struck a

01:24:11.000 | gusher. And they're running around with fans trying to

01:24:13.480 | collect the oil. That's what he basically said this was. But it

01:24:16.200 | was a bunch of energy investors at Stanford, and the manna was

01:24:20.760 | coming down from heaven. And they're just going to collect

01:24:23.240 | as much of it. That was a huge boondoggle and payoff for these

01:24:26.440 | green energy investors. That's who it went to. It did not

01:24:29.000 | benefit the middle class at all.

01:24:30.600 | What about the CHIPS Act?

01:24:31.480 | The CHIPS Act is more complicated because it does create

01:24:35.960 | incentives for manufacturing in America. And moreover, there is

01:24:39.400 | a national security element to it, because we need these

01:24:42.600 | advanced chips, we can't be totally dependent on chipmakers

01:24:46.600 | who are in foreign places within 100 miles of the Chinese

01:24:50.680 | mainland, right? So that one's a little more complicated.

01:24:54.040 | Meanwhile, Intel is imploding, you know, they can't

01:24:56.520 | manufacture.

01:24:57.320 | So well, just to finish the thought, I mean, the the issue

01:25:00.040 | with the CHIPS Act is that there's a lot of good reasons to

01:25:02.840 | believe that even if we incentivize this, we're still

01:25:06.200 | hopelessly behind. And the chip fabs that we're building are

01:25:09.880 | just, they're still years behind what they have in Taiwan.

01:25:12.520 | For example, so it's not clear it's going to work is my point.

01:25:15.560 | But but I think the motivations make a lot more sense.

01:25:18.440 | All right, everybody. This has been another amazing episode of

01:25:22.760 | the all in podcast socialism is garbage, and it turns into

01:25:27.560 | communism.

01:25:28.280 | Now I'm exacerbated. I mean, if Kamala doesn't get out there

01:25:33.320 | and start doing some interviews and explaining herself, I'm out.

01:25:36.440 | I mean, I'm

01:25:41.400 | making news right now. I'm just frustrated. I'm literally going

01:25:46.920 | to smash this laptop and with my right when Jay Cal was about to

01:25:51.320 | become a centimeter. She shut the door.

01:25:53.480 | I mean, it may have already happened. Anyway.

01:25:57.640 | I mean, that's so funny. Yeah, Uber rally to what's the what's

01:26:03.400 | the price now? 80 bucks.

01:26:05.240 | You're going to get a much different answer to generate we

01:26:09.240 | need someone to generate a meme. Take out $40 a share.

01:26:13.000 | $80 a share.

01:26:16.280 | No, I mean, I just we need to get a lot on this program here.

01:26:22.040 | Face the music. Let's go. You want to run for president? Come

01:26:24.360 | on all in and let's talk about it. If she's not going to answer

01:26:26.840 | basic questions is disqualifying for me who's trying to get her

01:26:29.960 | is anyone trying to sit on it? I mean, but I mean, we'd love to

01:26:34.040 | have her on. We'd love to have JD on we'd love to have waltz on

01:26:37.000 | let's go let's have some real conversations about this stuff.

01:26:39.560 | By the way, can I just make one final point that I realize

01:26:41.720 | gains tax is best case scenario what the CBO estimated is that

01:26:46.520 | would raise about 400 billion a year for all these tax hikes.

01:26:50.200 | That's only 20% of the deficit we're running right now. We

01:26:54.520 | don't get anywhere close to closing the deficit with all

01:26:57.800 | these tax hikes. What that means is you have to cut spending.

01:27:00.840 | Moreover, she's got a bunch of new programs to increase that

01:27:03.320 | deficit. And we know that that 400 billion number is an

01:27:07.320 | optimistic scenario because like Jamal was saying, the rich

01:27:10.040 | people are going to flee, they're going to try and move

01:27:12.840 | their wealth into structures or places where it's hard to tell.

01:27:16.440 | I think it's actually more than that. I think what will happen

01:27:19.080 | is funds, governments, etc. For the right entrepreneurs with the

01:27:23.240 | right assets will help you pay the exit tax so that you can

01:27:27.320 | just leave the United States. And that's going to be an

01:27:29.640 | investment class that's going to emerge in my opinion, which

01:27:32.520 | is these organizations that will pool capital, sovereign

01:27:35.640 | wealth funds specifically. And when an entrepreneur shows up

01:27:38.440 | and they have, you know, 50, 100, a billion dollar tax bill

01:27:43.720 | to expatriate from the United States, they will pay it for

01:27:46.760 | you. And the reason is they'll bring the jobs and they'll bring

01:27:49.560 | the know how. And they'll bring the future capital investment

01:27:52.520 | into that country. It's a very easy investment to underwrite

01:27:56.840 | actually. So I would, I would just pay a lot of close

01:28:00.600 | attention to the fact that capital flows are very fungible

01:28:04.520 | in 2024. And they'll only become more fungible over time.

01:28:07.400 | Buenos Aires. Anyway, it's beautiful, beautiful.

01:28:09.320 | This happened. By the way, this happened in France. I mean,

01:28:11.560 | they literally did this. They tried it a lot of French

01:28:16.200 | citizens, all of a sudden became citizens.

01:28:17.960 | I think it's important, though, you have to now go to the

01:28:22.600 | logic. If this is what people want, I think it's important for

01:28:25.240 | people to see the impact of it. And then for them to have to

01:28:28.280 | change their mind or stay with what they're doing, because it's

01:28:30.440 | working. Yeah, it's not going to work right, Jake out in

01:28:33.560 | France and Norway. This was tried there. Every time wealth

01:28:36.280 | taxes get tried. What happens is the wealth fleas and you never

01:28:40.520 | raise as much as you think you're going to. And then what

01:28:42.520 | happens is in order to raise that money, they have to apply

01:28:45.240 | it to more people. Elizabeth Warren already wants to apply it

01:28:48.200 | to Americans with a net worth of 50 million, not 100 million.

01:28:51.160 | So this whole idea that, well, this won't affect me because

01:28:53.480 | I'm not one of those rich people. The IRS was created and

01:28:56.360 | they when they created the income tax, it was originally

01:28:58.680 | only supposed to apply to less than the top 1%.

01:29:01.160 | Okay, I got to go. Love you guys. So everybody, thanks for

01:29:04.520 | coming to the all in podcast episode 193. We'll see you next

01:29:07.720 | time. Bye bye. Take care.

01:29:09.320 | Let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sachs. And it said

01:29:18.920 | we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with

01:29:21.880 | it. Love you. I'm going all in! Let your winners ride. Let your winners ride. Let your winners ride. Besties are gone. My dog taking a notice in your driveway. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just useless. It's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

01:29:49.880 | And now the plugs the all in summit is taking place in Los Angeles, September 8, 9 and 10. You can apply for tickets summit.allinpodcast.co

01:30:19.640 | And you can subscribe to this show on YouTube. Yes, watch all the videos. Our YouTube channel has passed 500,000 subscribers. Shout out to Donnie from Queens. Follow the show x.com slash the all in pod, tick tock the all in pod, Instagram, the all in pod, LinkedIn, search for all in podcast and to follow Chamath. He's x.com slash Chamath. Sign up for his weekly email. What I read this week at Chamath.substack.com and sign up for a developer account at

01:30:47.000 | console.grok.com and see what all the excitement is about. Follow sacks at x.com slash David Sachs and sign up for glue at glue.ai. Follow Friedberg x.com slash Friedberg and Ohalo is hiring click on the careers page at Ohalo genetics.com. I am the world's greatest moderator Jason calacanis if you are a founder and you want to come to my accelerators and my programs founder dot university lunch dot close slash apply to apply for funding from your boy J Cal for your startup and check out

01:31:16.520 | Athena wow.com. This is the company I am most excited about at the moment Athena wow.com to get a virtual assistant for about $3,000 a month. I have two of them. Thanks for tuning in to the world's number one podcast. You can help by telling just two friends. That's all I ask forward this podcast to two friends and say this is the world's greatest podcast. You got to check it out. It'll make you smarter and make you laugh laugh while learning. We'll see you all next time. Bye bye

Massive jobs revision, Kamala wealth tax, polls vs prediction markets, end of race-based admissions

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