I believe this is due to a surge in imports in response to looming tariffs - supply chains are trying to stockpile before they hit. I am skeptical that this stockpiling is significantly displacing real investment.
The way that the figures are calculated views imports as a negative factor to GDP (because NET exports is an input to the model). Please correct me if I am wrong.
Companies with actual profits can, and do, simply buy back their own stock. Inflating market expectation of future cashflows is not the only way to realize asset appreciation.
No, he clearly said that a "second home for humanity" is of dubious (but potentially nonzero) value.
Rather, the main benefit would lie in the technological advances made in order to enable such a Mars mission in the first place (similar to advances during Apollo).
As of 1/1/2025 the residential average rate paid for the municipal utility of Santa Clara, CA is $0.175/kWh vs a residential average of $0.425/kWh for PG&E
PG&E has an 11% margin on those rates because they keep burning the state down and having to pay for it. Municipal utilities don't have to worry about that.
The only thing that could be seriously considered a downside is that Santa Clara, CA is now absolutely jam-packed with data centers that have low employment per sqft.
No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
> It’s too late. It was too late 18 months ago. Nvidia is over 30x bigger. Qualcomm is 2x, AMD is 2x.
AMD came back from odds much longer than this. At its nadir, AMD's market cap was about a billion. A billion! Jensen's jacket collection is worth more than that.
Anyway, it's not looking good for Intel but it's certainly not "too late".
Because it drives inequality. We're proposing a policy that explicitly benefits large owners of capital over small ones.
Inequality is a natural outcome of capitalism, and critically it will get worse without limit unless there is significant policy intervention (ref. Capital in the Twenty-First Century). Existing progressive income taxes are not sufficient, even in Europe where they are far more aggressive. So from a policy perspective, this is exactly the opposite of what is desired.
1) that something that takes in 500m in its useful lifetime should not be subject to a lower tax rate than something that takes in only 100k in its useful lifetime (in fact it should be subject to a higher tax rate, in line with income tax policy);
2) something that takes in 500m should not automatically be entitled to a longer useful lifetime than something that takes in 100k.
Unfortunately both things are true for this proposal. #1 can be ameliorated by offering an income tax credit, but #2 is fundamental.
Small owners of IP get to enjoy less value from their creations due to weaker IP protections. That's backward.
Moreover the amount of tax paid as a fraction of total value realized is actually lower for the large owner of IP because the total tax payment is dominated by the final years, but the total revenue is determined by the number of years. In the example above, we had:
$5,100 / $40,000 = 12.75% tax for the small author, and
$671,088,620 / $12,500,000,000 = 5.37% tax for Dreamworks.
The ratios would be even worse if the small author could've just barely justified the 9th year. Pretty much unconscionable.
The fact that we're collecting tax from IP is not interesting. We have progressive income tax for this purpose.
This clearly benefits wealthy owners of IP (disney, movie studios, game publishers, etc) over small-time artists (self-published authors, small bands, etc) since the period of time that IP protection remains an economic choice is strongly tied to the value of the IP.
E.g., if you write a book and realize $5,000 in sales per year, then 10 * 2^x=5000 where x is 8.97, so you only enjoy 8 years of revenues ($40,000) and you've paid Σ(1->8) 10 * 2^x = $5,100 for the privilege, for a net $34,900 or 6.98x the yearly royalty value.
If Dreamworks sees $500M a year in Minions merchandising, then 10 * 2^x=500,000,000 where x = 25.56 and so Dreamworks realizes 25 years of revenues ($12,500,000,000) and pays Σ(1->25) 10 * 2^x = $671,088,620 for the privilege, for a net $11,828,911,380 or 23.66x the yearly royalty value.
https://youtu.be/9FUik3QotBQ?si=27AcY47wLNov0Vzw