Category Archives: Economics

Equality of Poverty and Misery is More Desirable than a Range of Prosperity and Happiness

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Quote of the Day

I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown. And if — the ones that leave, like, bye.

Katie Wilson
Seattle Mayor
May 1, 2026

That comment and laugh, combined with the applause and cheers from the crowd is going to increase the number of wealthy people leaving the state by a significant margin. Barb and I are far short of a million dollar/year income, and it pisses me off.

See also: Seattle mayor’s ‘bye’ to millionaires who leave state over taxes is no laughing matter to some in tech

It is also interesting that she goes on to say that Seattle has the ability to create an even more “progressive tax” than Washington state and King County. And that it’s not good for the Seattle business environment to have a higher cost of doing business that neighboring Bellevue (where we live) and she encourages Bellevue to increase taxes to match Seattle. She appears oblivious Bellevue is a much nicer town than Seattle. Here is a comparison by Copilot:

Crime Rates

Bellevue consistently reports much lower crime than Seattle across all major categories.

  • Violent Crime: Seattle 32.3 vs. Bellevue 9.6 (index; lower is safer).
  • Property Crime: Seattle 76.9 vs. Bellevue 45.6.
  • Crime Index (Numbeo): Bellevue 28.31 vs. Seattle 55.36.
  • Safety Walking at Night: Bellevue “High” (65.91) vs. Seattle “Low” (38.44).

Takeaway: Bellevue’s crime levels are less than half of Seattle’s in most categories, making it one of the safest cities in the region.

School Quality

Bellevue is widely regarded as having one of the best public school systems in Washington, while Seattle’s school quality varies heavily by neighborhood.

  • Bellevue School District is ranked #1 in Washington.
  • Seattle’s school quality is variable, with strong pockets but inconsistent performance across the city.

Takeaway: If school quality is a priority, Bellevue is the clear winner.

Other Quality‑of‑Life Measures

Cost of Living & Housing

  • Bellevue is 10–20% more expensive for rent and has a median home price around $1.3M–$1.6M, compared to Seattle’s $850K–$900K.
  • Bellevue homes tend to be newer, with larger lots and more modern construction. Seattle offers more historic homes and diverse neighborhoods.

Stability & Growth

  • Bellevue’s housing market is more stable and predictable, with stronger appreciation since COVID.
  • Seattle’s market shows higher volatility but strong recovery cycles.

And queried about companies which have left Seattle for Bellevue:

multiple major companies have been shifting workers and office space from Seattle to Bellevue, driven by concerns about safety, taxes, and business climate, while Bellevue’s cleaner environment, stronger schools, and rapid office development have made it increasingly attractive.

Why Businesses Are Moving: Key Drivers

1. Safety, Cleanliness, and Worker Experience

A recurring theme in reporting is that downtown Seattle’s rising crime and disorder have pushed companies to look east.

  • The Wall Street Journal highlighted that companies are choosing Bellevue because of its cleaner streets, lower crime, and better schools.
  • Executives explicitly cite safety as a deciding factor: “Clean and safe is everything and Seattle is not that.”

This aligns with the broader trend of companies wanting environments where employees feel secure returning to the office.

2. Tax and Regulatory Environment

Seattle’s business climate has become more contentious:

  • Amazon began shifting thousands of jobs to Bellevue after Seattle attempted a $275-per-employee head tax in 2018.
  • Analysts describe Seattle’s environment as “hostile to business”, citing high taxation, B&O tax burdens, and new service taxes.

Bellevue, by contrast, is perceived as more predictable and business‑friendly.

3. Office Space and Development Boom

Bellevue has been aggressively building modern office space:

  • Since 2021, Bellevue added ~3.9M sq. ft. of office space vs. Seattle’s ~2.6M sq. ft.
  • Vacancy in Seattle’s top-tier office space is near 34.6%, signaling a struggling downtown.
  • Bellevue’s office rents have surpassed Seattle’s ($64/sq ft vs. $51), showing companies are willing to pay more for the Bellevue environment.

This is a strong market signal: demand is shifting east.

Which Companies Are Moving or Expanding in Bellevue?

Amazon

  • Grew from “almost nothing” to 14,000 employees in Bellevue, with plans for 25,000.
  • Shift accelerated after political clashes with Seattle’s City Council.

Snowflake

  • Moved 700+ employees into a new 326,000 sq. ft. Bellevue office instead of relocating to downtown Seattle.

TikTok, OpenAI, Robinhood

  • All have taken significant Bellevue office space in recent years.

Other Tech Firms

  • Multiple reports describe a broader “tech exodus” from Seattle to Bellevue, driven by quality‑of‑life and business‑climate concerns.

Summary Table: Business Environment Comparison

FactorBellevueSeattle
Crime & SafetyLower crime; cleaner streetsHigher crime; downtown safety concerns
Business ClimatePredictable, business‑friendlyHigher taxes; regulatory friction
Office DevelopmentRapid growth; modern buildingsSlower growth; high vacancy
Corporate MigrationAmazon, TikTok, OpenAI expandingLosing square footage and headcount
Schools & Talent AppealHighly rated schools attract familiesMore variable school quality

Bottom Line

Bellevue has become the preferred hub for Big Tech expansion, while Seattle faces headwinds from safety issues, taxation, and downtown decline. Companies aren’t abandoning Seattle entirely, but the center of gravity has clearly shifted east.

Her solution to retain business is for Bellevue to become more like Seattle rather than Seattle to become more like the successful Bellevue. Since Wilson is an admitted socialist, this should not be a surprise. To socialists, near equality of poverty and misery is more desirable than a range of prosperity and happiness.

Worth at Least Two Carriers

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Just as I predicted yesterday…. MSM will falsely claim the Secretary of the Navy was fired because of Battleships.

And the NYTimes is actually worse than I thought. Let me explain….

The mainstream media will make this about the ships because the defense “experts” never want more hulls. They want money flowing into consulting fees, AI “solutions,” and think tank white papers. Steel produces nothing for the Beltway class. A flight deck you can launch F-35s off of does not generate PowerPoints.

But the NYTimes is running an even more sinister play.

Throughout the Biden administration, and later during DOGE’s audit work, I translated every major spending bill into a unit every American can actually visualize: one nuclear aircraft carrier.

Nuclear supercarrier cost: $15 billion.

Biden’s BEAD rural broadband program, which connected zero homes to the internet: $42.5 billion, or roughly three carriers.

Pete Buttigieg’s infrastructure package: $1.1 trillion, or seventy three carriers.

Total DOGE savings to date: $215 billion, or fourteen carriers.

Known Somali-linked fraud in Minnesota, per federal prosecutors: $18 billion, or one carrier plus an Arleigh Burke destroyer.

Why do I keep doing this?

Because for the past two decades the NYTimes has run the same story on loop: the military is the reason for America’s skyrocketing national debt.

That is a psyop. It conditions Americans to believe that steel and sailors, not social programs and grift, are what is bankrupting the country.

Human beings are not wired to understand $15 billion. The mind goes blank at that scale. But every American, left or right, understands the sheer weight and menace of a nuclear aircraft carrier. It is the most visible, most photogenic instrument of state power on earth.

John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad
Posted on X, April 24, 2026

As мαтту 🇺🇸 @OtherMatty said, in response to this post:

This post is worth at least 2 carriers.

No One Needs to be Earning that Much

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Here’s an idea.

Tax the rich.

Anyone earning over 180k per year should get taxed at 100%

No one needs to be earning that much. Redistribute the wealth.

Dr. Rita Ded 🏳️‍🌈🇻🇪🇮🇱🇺🇦🇵🇸 @DrRitaDed
Posted on X, April 17, 2026

This post actually inspired the QOTD for yesterday.

At first, I thought it was serious post. As I started writing up my comments, I looked a little deeper. Her bio says:

Dr. with a PhD in gender studies, global climate crisis advocate. Trans Rights are human rights. R word.

Why am I not surprised… Wait a minute. Here are some more posts:

School is coming back, this semester I am teaching the kids about their gender identity and how they don’t need to be bullied into accepting binary lies.

If you have any ideas for activities, please let me know. It’s for years 2-5.

…

White people make me sick. You’re all so damn racist.

…

Why is MAGA so mad at a gay couple having a baby?

The baby needs to be taught not to be so bigoted and just accept the world has changed.

Okay. That settles it. It is a parody account. You got me. Poe’s Law strikes again.

The Most Progressive Income-Tax System in the Developed World

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This is the most repeated claim in American tax politics and one of the least supported by actual data. The top 1% of earners take in 22% of total income and pay 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earn about half the nation’s income and pay 72% of its taxes. The bottom half of earners, collectively, pay roughly 3% of the tax revenue. The United States, in fact, has the most progressive income-tax system in the developed world.

Veronique de Rugy
April 16, 2026
Contributor: Debunking five myths of the American tax system

And since the U.S. current debt is over $39 trillion dollars, the future is not looking good.

I want my underground bunker in Idaho to be complete.

The Laws of Economics Always Win

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When we studied what happened to delivery drivers’ earnings after Seattle’s payment rule took effect, we found that despite base pay per delivery roughly doubling, their total monthly earnings barely changed. That’s because competition among drivers for delivery tasks intensified while customers made fewer orders and tipped less on each order in the aftermath. Those effects combined washed out almost all of the intended gains.

Andrew Garin
Associate Professor of Economics, Carnegie Mellon University

Brian K. Kovak
Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

Yuan An
Ph.D. Student in Economics, Carnegie Mellon University

Seattle tried to guarantee higher pay for delivery drivers – here’s why it didn’t work as intended

The “laws” of economics are not as certain as the laws of physics where things are measured, and results accurately predicted out to many decimal points. But on certain topics you can count on being right out to +/- 10%. One of the things which is almost certain is the government “help” isn’t. Government can shuffle money around and make winners and losers. But in doing that they take their own share leaving less money for the people actually doing the work.

You can fight the laws of economics, but the law always wins.

Another Data Point Against Socialists

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We have a great place for agriculture. We have the right climate and soils, but our cost of doing business is so much higher. The problem is Olympia. They just don’t understand agriculture — how we have to compete against other states and other countries.

Vander Kooy
March 17, 2026
What’s the matter with Washington? | Capital Press

I can not tell you how many people in the last couple of months have told me they have to leave Washington State. Today someone told me he and his wife were looking for a new place to live. The currently living in Lewiston Idaho. His wife found a nice home in Clarkston, Washington just across the river from Idaho where he has his own business. He pointed out to his wife what the business tax rate in Washington and that was enough to kill the Clarkston house without going into all the gun issues.

Washington State Democrats are full blown socialists, and some even wear that badge with pride. Socialism always kills businesses, they take your guns, and sometimes then murder their citizens, too. Don’t give socialists your support or your tax dollars. Move out of socialist states.

Socialism is Bad

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If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

Walter E. Williams
May 1, 2015
American Contempt for Liberty

And you know what that leads to, right? Among other things a much lower productivity and standard of living for everyone without an “in” with the political leadership.

I was recently in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (see below) and will share pictures in a later blog post.

Krugman Test

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One shouldn’t exaggerate the economic fallout from this war. But it isn’t occurring in isolation: There are many stresses on our economy, and this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back — a straw that becomes heavier the longer the war goes on. Furthermore, if Trump is this erratic now, what will he do as the midterms get even closer?

Paul Krugman
March 04, 2026
Reality Sets In on Trump’s New War – Paul Krugman

My general rule of thumb is if Krugman makes a prediction, then bet against whatever he said. Let this post be a marker to test my rule of thumb. I’ll add a post to go live in six months to see how his prediction turned out.

Bitcoin, Bullets, Beans, and Bonfires

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Bitcoin goes off with the electricity. I still have bullets and beans.

MTHead
February 5, 2026
Comment to Loss of Faith

And if the greenback value goes to zero you will still have tinder for starting a bonfire.

Bad News About Bitcoin

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The headlines tell you almost all you need to know:

It briefly hit a low of $60,506.99:

To offer Bitcoin holders a bit of hope, I will point out the CNN article claims there have been crashes of equal magnitude before and the crypto currency recovered within a year. However, the reasons for the crash were different then.

Loss of Faith

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The market is currently navigating a ‘crisis of faith’.

Shiliang Tang
Managing partner of Monarq Asset Management.
February 4, 2026
Bitcoin falls below $72,000 as market faces a ‘crisis of faith’

I have been publicly skeptical about Bitcoin for a while now:

And, as I mentioned in several of those posts, it is a faith-based asset without the backing of a government which accepts it for payment of taxes. The government backing of an issued currency ensures a non-zero value as long as the government exists (since they will honor as payment of taxes). Bitcoin could go to zero in the span of days or weeks. Right now, you could be watching it slide into oblivion.

If this is its end, the economic ripples will be “interesting.”

It’s Too Much to Expect People to be Responsible

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In every clip I’ve seen of Noem today, she’s saying something she can’t know or that is a lie. She also undercuts 2A to say carrying ammo is a problem on its face. I know it’s too much to expect people to be responsible, but this is opposite of a grown-up doing the job.

Mary Katherine Ham @mkhammer
Posted on X, January 24, 2026

It is way beyond having hope of most people to be responsible. Things are more chaotic than I think I have ever seen them. Emotions are running very high. Most people cannot even determine what is reality. Part of the problem is the media lies, selective reporting, and deliberate distortion. Part of it is that many people don’t even believe in the existence of an objective reality. And part of it is that reality is a really tough problem. We are left with people blinded by emotion, without knowledge of how to determine a reality they don’t even believe exists, with deliberate lies as the basis to make decisions on how to interact with the rest of the world.

The dollar is worth less than 1/5000th of an ounce of gold and will buy less than 1/100th of an ounce of silver. The nation debt is nearly $40 trillion.

I just want my underground bunker in Idaho to be finished and stocked before things go really sour.

The Warmth Comes from the Fire of Gunpowder and/or Ovens

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We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.

Zohran Mamdani
New York City Mayor
January 1, 2026
Bishop Barron rips Mamdani’s ‘warmth of collectivism’ remark: ‘For God’s sake’ | Fox News
Conservatives sound alarm over Zohran Mamdani’s ‘collectivism’ comment | Fox News

Spell checker wanted to correct Mamdani to “Madman”. I wonder if it there is some significance to that.

If you want an economic argument as to why Mamdani’s plans are a really, really, bad idea read The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents-The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2): Hayek, F. A., Caldwell, Bruce, Caldwell, Bruce, Caldwell, Bruce: 9780226320557: Amazon.com: Books

If you want to read the detailed results of a real-world test case of this political philosophy read The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Complete 3 Volumes Collection (Volume 1, 2, 3): Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn: Amazon.com: Books.

I don’t want to read any more about it. I want my underground bunker in Idaho*.

If you follow the X post above, you will find the following means and many more:

The difference between the two:

Ricardo Gomes sums it up for me:

* The night of January 1st, 2026 was the first time I spend the night in my underground bunker in Idaho. It’s not really ready, but for this time of year, it is better than the camping trailer. While it will not be completed, I expect that within a month Barb and I would be comfortable here should the need occur. It is not a minute too soon.

Gold to hit $10,000 by the End of 2029

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The price of gold is rapidly approaching the S&P 500 stock price index. If the S&P 500 reaches 10,000 by the end of 2029, as we expect, gold should trade at $10,000 if our trend analysis is correct.

Ed Yardeni
December 16, 2025
Forget the bond vigilantes. It’s the gold vigilantes you need to worry about.

See also Long-time strategist Ed Yardeni sets surprise 2026 gold price target and Gold price could hit $10,000 by 2029 end, says Ed Yardeni – CNBC TV18.

Be aware, of course, another way to think of this is that dollars are dropping in value at this rate.

Prepare appropriately.

Arizona Goldback

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In a recent Christmas gift order for my grandchildren, I received a free Arizona Goldback:

As you can see on the scan above, it contains 1/2000th of an ounce of gold.

The scan does not do the color or finish justice. It is gold in color with a very shiny face and matte back. The back is the reverse impression of the face. It is 2.55″ wide and just under 4.4″ long.

Very interesting. This is way to create hard currency in small denominations.

My Definition of Social Justice

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But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you – and why?

Walter E. Williams
1988
All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View

That works for me.

I now have a new book in my queue.

Socialist Fever

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Our country has prospered by providing individuals with the opportunity to get ahead and to enjoy the fruits of their success. Consequently, we have out-performed and out-grown every developed country on earth.

We must not allow today’s socialist fever to wreck the American dream.

Liz Peek
November 14, 2025
It’s not just the 1 percent — socialists are coming for your money, too 

See also: Margret Thatcher.

Rolling the Economic Dice

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The only way to get us out of the debt crisis and prevent America from going bankrupt is AI and robotics.

Elon Musk
November 27, 2025
Elon Musk Warns ‘The Only Way to Get Us Out of the Debt Crisis’ and ‘Prevent America from Going Bankrupt is AI and Robotics’

This is to go with yesterday’s QOTD.

I do not know if Elon is correct or not. I suspect Elon knows that he doesn’t know that AI and robotics will actually work. I find the assertion plausible. But there will never be a proof. It may be that AI and robotics will do the job, but going down that path means we will not fully commit to any of the other paths, hence that the assertion of it being the only way cannot be tested.

I also find the assertion that is no way out plausible. We just don’t know. And don’t know how to figure it out prior to just trying it. The problem is that not only is our economic system a very complicated issue with many non-linear feedback loops, but it is also not repeatable.

Because of this no one on the planet can successfully defend a claim that an accurate model exists. Furthermore, I posit that no one will ever be able to accurately model the economy. I make this claim because the existence of an accurate model will itself be the addition of still another variable that the model must take into account. This addition of another variable disrupts the model.

Think of it this way, if people know the future, they will change their behavior to take advantage of that knowledge, which changes the future yet again. And it is not just one person who changes their behavior. It will be billions of people, millions of organizations, and thousands (including national, state, and local of the entire world) of governments. Each of these feedback channels, on their own, can cause the model to predict a different outcome. Each tweak of the model will require more tweaks once the output is known and feedback comes in. Only if the feedback has a lower amplitude for each tweak will the model reach equilibrium. And this is just for the design of the model. Running the model has the same type of problem. And the designers of the model have to do this for all practical situations.

In classical control system design this is described as the loop gain being less than one. This is requited to have a stable system*. To make the problem readily solvable the system model is generally limited to something no more complicated than linear differential equations. With the massive number of feedback channels in our economy, nearly all of which are nonlinear, you will have an incalculable number of opportunities in the N-dimensional space (with an extremely large N) for there to exist unstable situations. I assert such a model will not be possible in my lifetime and perhaps not ever.

We are going to have to take aim in a particular direction and roll the dice to find out if we chose a direction that has a solution.

* This is a necessary condition. It is not a sufficient condition. There also are requirements on the phase/time-delay of the feedback, but that is beyond to scope of this discussion.

Is the World Turning to Gold?

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While it is a matter of entrepreneurial judgment and not economic theory to affirm gold’s superiority as the ultimate “store of value” and potentially even as the preferred replacement for fiat monies (though silver has often been a strong competitor to gold for the latter role), I must agree with Lagarde’s assessment of the empirical facts concerning reserve asset competition, not with Powell’s dismissive attitude about gold—when the chips are down and the world is forced to turn to an unconditionally trustworthy reserve of purchasing power, the world will turn to gold. What soaring gold prices might indicate is that the world is now turning to gold.

Vincent Cook
November 28, 2025
Central Bankers Disagree About Gold | Mises Institute

The prices are certainly rising. This is just this year:

I see the stumbling of Bitcoin. I see Trump and Elon fail to get the U.S. deficit under control. I see the mounting U.S. debt becoming a huge, unstoppable monster. I wonder if the price of gold reflects a lack of confidence in the U.S. dollar. I think of the Zimbabwe dollar (I have trillions of them). Our country is not Zimbabwe, Argentina, or Venezuela so if someday we do have runaway inflation, it almost for certain will not be on the scale of those countries. But if it does happen, it could happen very rapidly. These events frequently have high emotional content. It is like someone shouted fire in a large room with not enough exits. A lot of people get trampled who would have survived had everyone remained calm.

And, of course, gold may not be the thing that saves people in a stampede. Maybe it will be guns and ammo to defend against the looters searching for food or even, as in the movie Doctor Zhivago, stealing the lumber from your home to burn for warmth.

If you do decide to buy gold, please remember my advice.

Perceptions of Other Countries

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French-American here — spent 20 yrs in France, 13 in the US. Let me speak to this.

I think the only reason Europoors tolerate their miserable existence is because they tell themselves lies about what the rest of the world is like. They eat gruel in their AC-less social housing while the most awesome party in history is being thrown just next door.

If you hang out in France, you’ll routinely hear them say things like: “in the US, people die in front of hospitals” (they literally believe this to be the case) or “our social system is the envy of the world.”

Their image of the US is completely delusional, and they are often shocked to discover that when they visit here. Their Marxist media brainwashed them into thinking America is some Dickensian horror, with Monopoly-style fat capitalists running around with their top hats and monocles, exploiting dirt poor workers.

…

Now, how do Americans perceive the French (and Europeans at large)?

Well, the tragic reality is that they really, truly don’t think of them. They may cross their minds once a month, at most. Why would they think of that irrelevant backwater of a continent?

The few times they do come to mind, it is, at best, as a quaint vacation spot. A nice place to sip espresso and spend their American dollars — which go such a long way in these third world countries! The closest comparison is how Europeans think of Thailand or Cambodia.

That’s at best. At worst, they think they’re a lazy, entitled, smug, snobbish, rude people with a bright future behind them, who confuse regulation for progress, don’t realize their economies were left in the dust a very long time ago, simply stopped innovating because they’ve lost the will, ability, or both, and who would rather brag about their 60%(!!) public spending to GDP ratio than fix their communist shit hole of a system.

Nice wine though.

Flo Crivello @Altimor
Posted on X, November 26, 2025

I am reminding of something told to me by a person raised in China:

… the schools in China taught that in the U.S. there was lots of food but only the rich could afford it. And rather than let the poor people have food for an affordable price the rich would dump the excess food in the ocean. The fact that food is so plentiful and cheap that poor people in this country are obese apparently didn’t make it through the censors.

I am also reminded of something the president of a small company (about $25 million a year in the mid 1980s) told a small group of us once. Paraphrasing some, “People in other countries have no idea what it is like to live in the most powerful country in the world. Someone in a country that is number five or seven, might be able to come close to imagining what it is like living in a number two or three country. But even the number two country doesn’t know what it is like living in the number one country. And living in the number one country, we have no idea what it is living like in even the number two country.”

I didn’t really understand that then. I understand a little bit now. I have no reason to believe it is wrong.