iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 5h

This is why Musk doesn't mind that that Twitter revenue is down 59% (or Ellison w/ CBS). He's more than making up for that loss via Twitter's political effects--ingratiating to Trump, fomenting racist panics, etc--which help SpaceX and xAI get favorable public contracts and regulatory treatment

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 5h

These different incentives from standalone media owners vs. "common owners" like Benioff is the subject of one of my working papers www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/07aux...

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 5h

Piece came out at USAToday Why? Because USAToday owners (Gannett) only own media companies, so they have an incentive to attract an audience & advertisers Tech elites like Bezos, Ellisons, Musk, & Benioff use their media firm to cozy to Trump, not to make profit www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

usatoday.com

DEI initiatives didn't cost companies. Just the opposite. | Opinion

Firms that kept DEI, whether due to executive decisions or shareholder pressure, performed as well in the stock market as those that rolled it back.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 5h

Quick story. My op-ed on how corporations that kept their DEI programs performed just as well financially was accepted & factchecked at TIME Magazine. Just needed "pro forma review by the legal department." Suddenly the piece is spiked Why? Benioff owns TIME and wants to ingratiate himself to Trump

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 6h

Calling my shot: we will see less than half as many pundit-consultant pieces about this Latino realignment as we saw in the other direction 2021-2025, because a Latino blue shift doesn’t fit the Dems-Too-Woke narrative

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 7h

He used his IRA account to buy private paypal shares below their value at like $0.001 per share, staying under the $2000 annual contribution limit AND making his taxable income less than the $110k IRA restriction. You, a regular person, cannot do this

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 7h

Peter Thiel is about to turn 59 and a half this year, so he’ll be able to withdraw his more than $5 billion in capital gains tax free because he legally gamed the Roth IRA system. Superrich just have different rules. Propublica’s 2021 report: www.propublica.org/article/lord...

propublica.org

Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into a $5 Billion Tax-Free Piggy Bank

Roth IRAs were intended to help average working Americans save, but IRS records show Thiel and other ultrawealthy investors have used them to amass vast untaxed fortunes.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 11h

More graphs with the new estimates from Bruenig

Median net worth by age and generation (1989-2025)
Five-year centered averages of single-age medians, in 2025 dollars.
Net worth is shown on a logarithmic scale.
- Silent |
Baby Boomers
Generation X
Millennials
— Generation Z
$500,000
$50,000
$5,000
20
25
Source: Survey of Consumer Finances.
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
75
80
reople's
Policy Project

Wealth share by generation and age (1989-2025)
Each generation's total net worth is shown as a share of national household wealth.
Each point represents one survey year.
• Silent|
- Baby Boomers
Generation X
Millennials
• Generation Z
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
20
30
40
50
60
Generation midpoint age
70
80
90
Source: Survey of Consumer Finances.
Series begin when the generation's midpoint age reaches 18.
People's
Policy Project

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Lyta 🐅 Dangerous Fictions is OUT 🐅 Gold @lytagold.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

horror story in five words challenge: “Ross Douthat YA fantasy novel”

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

If you’re not holding up other funding to extract a massive funding cut to DHS, you’re just talking

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Read Schumer’s statement about ICE shooting a New Yorker with a small kid in the car and I keep coming back to this analogy

Senate Democrats' DHS
"Reforms" Shaping Up To Be Another Kneeling Kente Cloth
Moment
"Body cams" vague demands of "accountability," but no attempt to cut DHS's obscene budget is a recipe for status quo maintenance.
ADAM JOHNSON
JAN 28, 2026
6d Listen
100
24
Share

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Miranda Yaver @mirandayaver.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I think we need to have the following debate: Which movie more hilariously mischaracterizes academia: Just In Time For Christmas or The Love Hypothesis. There are definitely arguments for both. @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social if you haven't seen this, you're in for a treat.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

oh institutions are compromised, corroded, and collapsing, you say? bsky.app/profile/tomp...

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Rich coming from the Andressen-Horowitz's a16z, whose funded startups are literally almost all stuff like “social media bots that seem real” and “tiktok for online gambling” These are the people telling us society is too corrupt and immoral ("we're all looking for the guy who did this.gif")

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I have bigger mobility concerns on the CA prop than the Norway case, but not as big as the punditry or billionaire discourse Also a countervailing mechanism is that the CA prop could increase probability of other state wealth taxation, which would reduce mobility. Overall concerned but not too bad

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Rare original version with a breakbeat Put down the blunt // I'm broke and I'm mad as hell // in the middle of the month! // It's 12 o'clock on the dot // get off the mfing mic you can't rock! // www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q_z...

youtube.com

Slum Village - Hoc N Pucky (Original - Full)

YouTube video by Ever Rodriguez

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

You’d think the business community and even SCOTUS, which seems to only protect the Fed from Trump and nothing else, would care about politically motivated institutional intimidation of a Fed governor. Don’t they want an independent central bank?

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This administration’s top priority in fighting corruption is to target…Lisa Cook. Maybe Hannah Arendt said it at some point—authoritarianism isn’t without irony.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Yes totally, global < national < state < local in residential sorting effects. The CA referendum was designed as one-time and backward looking on residence for this reason, so mobility will be either taste-based/ideological or about signals future wealth taxation

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Rightwing billionaire takeovers of most traditional and social media, NYT standing alone as a monopoly in the American liberal economy…the media situation is so dark

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I turned on CNN a handful of times over the past couple days. Literally 9 out of 10 of the segments was them criticizing Abdul El-Sayed.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

A real welfare state and universal health care require broad taxation, including the middle class. But high end wealth taxation is the kind of tax that protects democracy and the rule of law, and prevents aristocratic dynasties. It keeps us human.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The above are Astead’s words, I just didn’t have space for quotation marks in the character limits lol

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The authenticity that has helped Angie Nixon win over some critics works downstream from her policy positions. She’s free to be herself because she’s unencumbered by donor or party deference. Clyburn by contrast defended a way of establishment politics that was fundamentally unresponsive to voters.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Can’t hate, this is a great piece from Astead Herndon www.vox.com/politics/505...

But importantly, Clyburn's policy positions - and those of the larger Congressional Black Caucus — are increasingly out of step with public opinion. Voters, including Black ones, want corporate money out of politics. And like much of the Democratic base, Black voters have also shifted left on Israel and are skeptical of things like Big Tech. Meanwhile, CBC members like Jasmine Crockett are awash in crypto-industry money — from the likes of Marc Andreessen and the Winklevoss twins. At the CBC's recent legislative conference, one of the "top sponsors" was Palantir Technologies - the data firm with major ICE contracts - even as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus canceled its financial relationship with the group.
Black Democrats have never lived in a world where corporate cash was this unpopular, anti-Israel sentiment was this high, and their relationship with Big Tech was so under scrutiny. And in talking to Clyburn, I felt that distance.
RELATED:
• America, Actually: The Boomer politicians who won't retire
• America, Actually: Angie Nixon's playbook to be Florida's next senator
The upstart
Contrast that to Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Florida.
After Nixon won her primary — a 12-point victory (56-44) against a candidate who outraised her roughly 17 to 1 — all the focus went to why she couldn't win the general election. She became a DSA member this year, making it easy for Republicans to tag her as a socialist (she says she's not). There was her pro-Palestinian advocacy. Her lack of fundraising. And Democratic commentators used that to write her off on primary night, before the candidate had any chance to introduce herself to the general public.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

A think tank that gives Democrats advice about winning elections? I’ve never heard of such a thing

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

*economist voice* we are the first to study what general election voters want www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/u...

"There really isn't anyone in the ecosystem that is focused on what needs to happen in order for Democrats to win in November of 2028," Ms. Hinojosa said. "No one is pulling together that research so that the D.N.C. and the Democratic Party apparatus, donors, other people and the candidates themselves understand what general election voters care about."

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 06/10/2026

The government *still* isn’t tracking how often immigration agents detain U.S. citizens. We are. 500+ Americans have been handcuffed, held at gunpoint or held against their will in Trump’s second term. Our tally is almost certainly an undercount. THREAD (content warning: violence) ⬇️

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Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

The music of Seinfeld, divorced from the show itself, is nothing short of disgusting. Imagine if the show didn’t exist but the music somehow did. Hearing it, your face would twist in angry revulsion

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James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The GOP cut funding to the IRS because *audits work* and they fundamentally don't believe rich people should have to play by the rules.

Line chart titled "Revenue per audit," subtitled "In-person audits, 2010-2014." It plots average revenue and average cost per audit by taxpayer income percentile, poorer to richer, from the 0–5th percentile to the top 0.1%. Source: Boning et al. 2023, "A Welfare Analysis of Tax Audits Across the Income Distribution."

Across the bottom half of the income distribution, revenue and cost track closely, both around $3,000–$6,000 per audit. Above the median, revenue pulls ahead of cost: about $10,000 vs. $5,000 near the 90th percentile, and about $17,000 vs. $8,000 at the 95th–99th. At the top, revenue jumps to about $31,000 for the 99–99.9th percentile and about $90,000 for the top 0.1%.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DJ Marie Kimishima has some of the best vinyl sets out there on the internet. Another banger out yesterday, with a couple tracks I hadn't ever heard before. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r_u...

youtube.com

Marie Kimishima 君嶋麻里江 / Soul, Funk & Rare Groove Vinyl Mix Vol.2【JAM RSB GALLERY 溝の口】

YouTube video by JAM from RIVERSIDE BASE

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Nick Carnes @carnes.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's finally publication day for this decade-in-the-making book. @noamlupu.bsky.social and I explain why working-class jobs make up 70% of the average democracy's labor force, but only 2% of the average democracy's national lawmakers had working-class jobs when they got into politics.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Brazilian economist Claudio Ferraz today: The big question for political scientists, economists, and psychologists is—why do corruption accusations affect left-wing candidates much more than right-wing ones?

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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I'm just gonna bookmark this for future reference when Dem pundits complain about how the party has trouble communicating its message to voters. The reason you keep running into trouble with your branding isn't campus radicals. The reason is that your opponents purchased all the media outlets.

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Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

#ELB: “How Trump Can—and Cannot—Still Mess With the Midterms” electionlawblog.org/2026/how-trump-…

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Reading the article, he doesn't just mean democracy is bad. He keeps saying, basically, that the rule of law should only be applied to commoners.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A goal of this administration being achieved: “American pre-tax corporate earnings have grown by $1.2trn, or 30%. … And yet taxes on corporate profits have collapsed.” www.economist.com/finance-and-... h/t @talsmith.bsky.social