this California wealth tax thing is just incredible. so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time). polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it). there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate. supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right? well as it turns out, they did. a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative. proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave. just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues. but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion. so when you add it all up you get: + $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated) - $69b in present value of lost future income taxes = - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time. and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes. [1]: nber.org/system/files/workin…

These poor, innocent students just want educational reform, right?

Interesting

You’re 25x more likely to be a millionaire than be homeless in the US

Intra-female violence

That is why you need to give your agent access to @ElevenLabs to create a voice note

An easy way to add polish + remove the vibe coded feel (aka purple web 3 gradients etc.) from your work: 1. Sound effects from @dwhitedesign's cuelume-site.pages.dev/ 2. Animations from @Jakubantalik's Transitions.dev 3. UI from @shadcn's ui.shadcn.com/

He missed the opportunity to upload a photo of his couch meme 😆

This is the best thing that has ever happened with my tax dollars. More of this, please.

America builds while Brussels abdicates. We should demand accountability from our political leaders for the sorry state of growth in pretty much every important indigenous sector in the EU. We are being let down nationally and regionally by leaders that have no strategic vision for technology and risk.

Ireland’s PISA maths score has already slipped from 504 in 2015 to 492 in 2022, with fewer students at the top end. The proposed Leaving Cert rewrite answers that slide by cutting proofs, complex numbers and examined statistics, then handing 40% of the grade to a one-day “investigating” event marked on communication and visuals🧐 making excellence harder to measure and easier to game. SF ran the same experiment when it pulled algebra out of middle school so nobody gets ahead. AP maths enrolment fell about 15%, racial gaps stayed, families with money bought the missing course privately. After a decade they are putting algebra back. Ireland is importing a failed ceiling-lowering strategy and calling it equity.

Spuddie or Muse 🫪

UNDISCLOSED PAID MEDIA: The salaries of reporters, Harry Booth and Billy Perrigo, were paid by Doomsday cultist Dustin Moskovitz's foundation Coefficient Giving via the Tarbell Fellowship. effort.news/tarbell

Deeply concerned about Claude taking over the world and killing us all.. look how “well” it visualized a podcast studio with an LED wall😆😆 We’re so close to AGI.

I reread this every year. I cry like a baby every year. Todd Beamer died a father, husband, and hero. Todd: Hello… Operator… listen to me. I can’t speak very loud. This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco. Our plane has been hijacked. Lisa: I understand. Can they see you? Todd: No. There are three that we know of. They have knives — razor knives, like box cutters. Someone announced from the cockpit there was a bomb. It sounded fake. Lisa: Your name?Todd: Todd Beamer. United Flight 93.Todd: They killed one passenger in first class. They forced most of us back. Fourteen of us here. Five flight attendants. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor. Lisa: Are you okay? Todd: We’re going down… wait. No. We’re leveling off. We changed directions. We’re flying east again. Todd: A guy named Jeremy called his wife. She told him two planes hit the World Trade Center. Lisa, is that true? Lisa: I have to tell you the truth. It’s very bad. Both towers are gone. A third plane hit the Pentagon. Our country is under attack. I’m afraid your plane may be part of their plan. Todd: Oh God. Lisa, will you do something for me? Call my wife and my kids. Promise me you’ll call. Lisa: I promise. Todd: Our home number is… You have the same name as my wife. Lisa. We’ve been married ten years. She’s pregnant with our third child. Tell her I love her. I’ll always love her. We have two boys — David, he’s 3, and Andrew, he’s 1. Tell them their daddy loves them and he is so proud of them. The baby is due January 12th. I saw an ultrasound. We still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy. Lisa: I’ll tell them. I promise, Todd.(Lisa patches in the FBI.) Agent: Todd, your plane is on a course for Washington. Best guess is the White House or the Capitol. Todd: I understand. I’ll be back. Todd: Everyone knows this isn’t a normal hijacking. We have decided we will not be pawns in their plot. Lisa: What are you going to do? Todd: Four of us are going to rush the one with the bomb. Then the cockpit. A stewardess is getting boiling water. We’ll take them out. Todd: Would you pray with me?They pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Todd: God help me. Jesus help me.Are you guys ready? Let’s Roll.

Never forget 🇺🇸

worth the water imo.

Wow…Roland Fryer and @BillAckman have created a $1 million prize for academic truth-telling, the Carob Trust Prize for Academic Courage. “The prize awards $1 million each to as many as five social scientists a year who have demonstrated intellectual independence, published findings that were attacked rather than answered, and been validated by the evidence—despite the professional cost. The selection criteria are designed to distinguish courage from contrarianism: Nominees must show a sustained commitment to following logic and evidence regardless of pressure, a willingness to ask questions others avoid, and work that has shifted academic debate, public discourse or policy—often despite being misread, mischaracterized or vilified at the time of publication.”