Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Sitka, Alaska Public Library

June 20, 2026May 28, 2026 by philg

What do the taxpayers of Sitka, Alaska get at their local public libary? Here’s a report from a May 2026 visit.

(Alaska has no state income, estate, or sales tax, but residents of Sitka pay property tax and also a sales tax of 6 percent (summer) or 5 percent (winter).)

It’s a beautiful waterfront building with awesome free WiFI:

A bulletin board with community announcements greets visitors:

(The Juneteeth celebration will likely resemble a Ibram Xolani Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers) book club because we didn’t see a single African American local or visitor during our day in Sitka. Even the Labrador Retriever who protected us from brown bears on the Totem Trail was yellow rather than Black (the Lab’s owner appeared to be white).)

Featured books by the front door:

A featured book in the kids’ section:

(So far the locals don’t seem to have followed the leader into wearing hijab.)

Here’s a book that was flagged as new in the kids’ section. It says “Inspired by the childhood of Dolores Huerta”. Ms. Huerta was recently featured in the New York Times, e.g., with “‘We’re Just Seen as Sex Objects’: Dolores Huerta’s Years in the U.F.W.” (“The co-founder of the United Farm Workers talked about her relationship with Cesar Chavez, and the night he raped her.”) and “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years”.

The library loans out gear and games:

The teen section reminds kids in Alaska that climate change will ruin their lives unless they follow the lead of Indian-born environmental journalist Meera Subramanian and become climate activists. (Thought experiment: Suppose that both Phoenix, Arizona and Sitka, Alaska became 10 degrees warmer. Would that make real estate in Sitka more valuable or less valuable?)

The book could perhaps use an update. Climate Change Alarmists now demand cheap oil and complain about gas prices being, in nominal dollars, nearly as high as they were in 2022, but the book praises those who obstructed the Dakota Access Pipeline. The book celebrates Tonopah-style concentrated solar power, apparently disagreeing with Popular Mechanics that “The $1 Billion Solar Plant Is an Obsolete, Expensive Flop” (2020). See also “Solar plant on I-15 near its end, shutting off in 2026, officials say” (2025) regarding the Ivanpah dream.

Teens are also reminded that “the perfect family” does not include any white people:

Circling back to the adult section, some books that the librarians chose to feature:

The book on “How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City” is interesting. The New York Times tells us that Black New Yorkers haven’t been replaced by Asians and the Latinx. It is just that New York City now has fewer Black residents and more Asian/Latinx immigrant residents (e.g., see “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City” (2023)). The book explains that the non-replacement of Blacks by Latinx has “saved” cities.

If you’re in Sitka, don’t forget that Rainbow Storytime (pre-K through 5th grade), from the above poster of Pride events, is happening today at 10:30 am Alaska time. Storytime raises a question. The library is funded by taxpayers and, therefore, we have to assume that the majority of taxpayers support whatever the library does. Outside of San Francisco or Massachusetts, though, how many of us have heard a parent say “I am taking my child to the Rainbow Storytime at the library now”?

Speaking of Massachusetts, it seems that the Boston Public Library is hosting 19 drag queen story hours this month. Here are a couple of examples tagged for children of various ages:

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Maskachusetts starts work on an exit tax

June 19, 2026June 19, 2026 by philg

It’s Juneteenth and Black Americans are celebrating the end of slavery.

(Except, of course, for the millions of Black Americans who are immigrants and who have no relationship to the roughly 400,000 African slaves who were imported to British North America/the U.S. And also not Black Americans in service jobs who have to work today while whites who work for the government, nonprofits (also government!), and Big Tech are relaxing with pay.)

A friend is also celebrating freedom this week because he finally unloaded his old house in Maskachusetts. He moved to Florida a year ago, but the market for high-end houses in MA is slow and he had some work to do on the place. It might have been inadvertently smart to sell the house in a tax year after he was completely gone. The new Massachusetts Millionaire’s Tax applies only to MA-source income. So he will owe tax only on the capital gain in 2026 and that should be under $1 million after the $500,000 exclusion for a married couple. Note that the “gain” is entirely fictitious and disappears once you adjust his purchase price for 19 years of official CPI. It would actually be a significant loss in real terms if adjusted for CPI as previously calculated, i.e., before the “owners’ equivalent rent” scam (see also “Summers: Inflation Reached 18% In 2022 Using The Government’s Previous Formula” (Forbes)). If he’d sold in the year that he moved, the rest of his income would have pushed the total well over $1 million and he’d be paying tax (on a loss in real dollars!) at the 9% rate rather than 5%.

Is my friend free, free at last from Maskachusetts state taxes? Not quite. Selling real estate is considered “Massachusetts source income” and, therefore, MA state income tax is owed. So many rich people are bailing out on paying for whatever Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu have dreamed up that the state is fearful it won’t get its pound of flesh from those who’d fled. There is a new law that requires the withholding of likely capital gains tax at the time of the sale. It applies only if the seller is a nonresident, i.e., has moved to tax-free New Hampshire or tax-free Florida.

Starting November 1, 2025, a withholding agent is required to file a Form NRW for every real estate transaction when the gross sales price is $1,000,000 or more. If the seller (aka, Transferor) is a nonresident or a business with no continuing Massachusetts presence, the withholding agent may also be required to withhold tax.

The withholding rules on sales or exchanges of real estate generally require a withholding agent to withhold an amount reasonably equivalent to the personal income tax or corporate excise, as applicable, that will be due on the net gain from a non-resident’s sale or exchange of Massachusetts real property. Non-resident sellers (or other transferors of property) include individuals and business corporations with no continuing Massachusetts business presence.

(The new regulation drives up costs to both buyers and sellers, incidentally. The lawyers on both sides now have to be paid to review the forms relating to this new law (grew from 2 pages in 2025 to 3 pages in 2026). A lawyer on one side has to be paid about $300 to file the form with the DOR.)

I wonder if this could be the foot in the door for a more general state exit tax, e.g., something like the federal exit tax on people who renounce U.S. citizenship. Someone fleeing NY, MA, or CA would have to pay tax on all unrealized capital gains at the time of the move to a different state.

Here’s a Harvard Journal on Legislation article, “NO MIGRATION WITHOUT TAXATION: STATE EXIT TAXES”:

The author starts from the proposition that it was living in, e.g., Massachusetts, that enabled a person to make money. Only because the taxpayer lived in Boston was he/she/ze/they able to buy stock in ASML (Dutch) and Novo Nordisk (Danish) and, therefore, he/she/ze/they should have to pay capital gains tax on these stocks before fleeing to Florida.

If a taxing jurisdiction provides benefits to a taxpayer that allow the taxpayer to generate income, that jurisdiction should have the ability to impose tax on the resulting income … The problem arises with taxpayer mobility. If a taxing jurisdiction has a strict realization requirement, all the income that accrued within that jurisdiction could migrate to another jurisdiction along with the taxpayer before the realization event occurs. The taxing jurisdiction that provided the benefits that facilitated the income would lose the ability to tax it. The resulting tax revenue would inure to a different taxing jurisdiction that did not deserve it, or more commonly, would be eliminated through simple tax planning strategies.

The benefit theory’s fundamental premise is that individuals generate their income and wealth because the government provides economic, physical, and legal infrastructure; protection of property; and other facets of an “orderly, civilized society.”

(Obama’s “You didn’t build that”; why isn’t the fair tax rate 100% then?)

A state exit tax may not be entirely tax neutral, but it moves the overall tax regime toward neutrality. A state’s existing personal income tax regime without an exit tax creates a strong incentive to migrate out of the state before realizing income or gain, as discussed in Section IV.B. Imposing a tax on the gain that accrued while the taxpayer resided in the state removes that tax incentive to migrating out of the state, thus making the migration decision more tax neutral. With an exit tax that deems an exit to constitute a realization event, the detriment to migration is essentially just one of timing. The taxpayer can stay in the state and pay tax when there is a true realization event or leave the state and pay tax now. As discussed above, however, this assertion relies on an unavoidable realization event if the taxpayer remains in the state.

(This would certainly discourage people from moving. If they stay in a high-tax state they can avoid paying tax on unrealized capital gains for decades or perhaps forever (steps up at death). If they migrate, on the other hand, they must immediately pay tax on unrealized gains.)

The article seems to have been written in 2021, i.e., before the Mamdani Caliphate was established. However, the author has some specific guidance for how Ayatollah Mamdani could get cash from those who flee only as far as the Hamptons or Westchester County:

Although this Article’s focus is state exit taxes, there are localities that could similarly benefit from an exit tax regime. Interstate migration is quite easy, while intrastate migration is even easier, which leaves many localities such as New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle particularly vulnerable. The options are fewer for localities, even those with the power to impose an income tax, and many localities’ best option is piggybacking on a state exit tax. Localities could attempt to impose their own freestanding exit taxes, or creative exit tax alternatives that impose property tax or some other tax and grant credits in future years for the additional tax paid only if the taxpayer still resides in the state. These standalone options, however, are difficult to administer and susceptible to challenge.

The glorious conclusion:

States cannot prevent people from moving, but states can prevent the tax base from moving with them.

Where is the law professor who wants to save Maskachusetts, California, and New York while starving Florida of its daily fresh supply of rich people? Is he/she/ze/they in Cambridge, along with the journal’s publisher? In Brooklyn, perhaps? Maybe in San Francisco at Kamala Harris’s old law school? Remarkably, at the time he wrote the article, Professor Andrew Appleby was a professor at Stetson University College of Law, which is in Gulfport, Florida (Tampa metro area). He’s now moved to University of Tennessee, i.e., to another tax-free state that prospers when rich-but-mismanaged states in the Northeast raise tax rates. So.. the taxpayers of Tennessee are paying this guy to promote the idea that New York should impose a crippling tax on anyone who is thinking of moving to Tennessee and start paying property and sales taxes in TN.

Separately, consider that the modern economy has a winner-take-all aspect for companies (Apple and NVIDIA,), individuals (Jeff Bezos and any woman who manages to get him into Family Court), and geographical areas (Silicon Valley, San Francisco’s Cerebral Valley (the LLM companies), and NYC for finance). If the geographical areas that have won 90% of the income are able to prevent people from moving away via exit taxation then the places that currently get a few scraps won’t get anything at all. Although politicians and residents of the “winner places” love to talk about their passion for reducing inequality, I have a feeling that they’ll try to scoop up that last 10% with an exit tax, just as the Tennessee-taxpayer-supported professor suggests.

Loosely related, anyone who can afford $1,000/day for hotels, food, etc. could have visited our national parks today for free in 2025 (sign in our Olympic National Park hotel; of course, the promised daily housekeeping never occurred!):

Not so in 2026 because the Hater in Chief substituted Flag Day and Independence Day weekend for MLK, Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

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COVID-19 killed most of America’s old people and now Social Security is insolvent

June 18, 2026June 19, 2026 by philg

Social Security’s impending insolvency is in the news lately. The system that provided Ida May Fuller with benefits that were 1000X what she paid in tax was apparently not sustainable (even Charles Ponzi couldn’t keep a scheme like that going forever!).

We were previously informed that 1 million healthy over-65 Americans had been killed by COVID-19. These people had at least 5-10 years to live, during which time they’d be receiving monthly Social Security payments. I wondered about this back in 2021 with Wave of death among the elderly bankrupts Social Security and quoted CNBC:

The Social Security trust fund most Americans rely on for their retirement will run out of money in 12 years, one year sooner than expected, according to an annual government report.

Social Security payments would be cut, or young people further enslaved to taxation, in 2033, in other words (2021+12). Apparently, some of those killed by COVID-19 have risen from the grave and are collecting benefits once again because the “trust fund runs out” date has moved up from 2033 to 2032 (source):

It is confusing because the above official source implies that full benefits are paid until 2034. The media, on the other hand, is reporting Social Security payments would be cut, or young people further enslaved to taxation, in 2032.

What do progressives think about this? A Maskachusetts friend who previously loved whatever Democrat thought leaders, such as AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Bernie Sanders were dishing out, objected on Facebook to losing his monthly checks:

I have been reading about the concept of “means testing” for social security recipients. This means taking it away from successful people. Well, I am okay with the government taking away my social security if the government will simply return to me all the money I paid in over the last 50 years.

One of his financially savvy friends pointed out that “Every single adult worker” would be better off if they could have kept their Social Security taxes and invested it in the S&P 500. My response:

Social Security calculates and publishes internal rates of return periodically. These are in real dollars (adjusted for inflation). Very low earners who are married can get an 8% real return, comparable to the past 50 years of the S&P 500. Median earners get less than 2% (single man), 2.5% (single woman), or 4% (one-earner married couple). Someone at the income limit gets only about 0.6% real return (single man), 1% (single woman), 0.85% (two-earner couple), or 2.3% (one-earner married couple). So you could consider Social Security to be part of the U.S.’s transferist welfare state. It transfers money from high earners to low earners. It also transfers money from men to women and from those who weren’t successful in the marriage market to those who were successful. … So maybe [our mutual friend] will feel better about Social Security if he stops thinking about it as something designed to benefit him and instead as something designed to help him transfer money to low-income Americans and women

(note that the SSA doesn’t calculate or publish an IRR for nonbinary Americans)

What do readers think is going to happen? Benefits get preserved for anyone already claiming them, but drastically cut for anyone who hasn’t gone on Social Security yet? Benefits get cut for everyone? Social Security tax extended to infinite levels of earned income instead of being capped? Society Security tax extended to “unearned income” such as dividends and interest? (if the money isn’t “earned” then fairness dictates that the government should take 100 percent of it) Elon’s unearned $1 trillion gets confiscated and that plugs the hole? Robots get taxed as if they were human workers and 12.4% of the cost of buying and operating a robot must be given to Social Security?

A lot of my friends are between 62 and 67 (“full retirement age” for their cohort). Would they be better off getting on Social Security before they hit 67 or 70 (max benefit age) so as to be part of the “we don’t want to take anything away from these Boomers who are already relying on it” class?

(We can also look at Medicare, the federal government’s most expensive program (even larger than our off-the-charts enormous military!). Most proposals to cheat everyone who previously paid into it say that most or all of the stealing will be done from those under 55, e.g., by making them wait until 67 rather than 65 to receive any benefits.)

Ozempic/GLP-1 drugs are yet another way for Boomers to steal from those of working age

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How can the U.S. benefit from the proposed Iran peace deal?

June 17, 2026June 17, 2026 by philg

We’re informed that a peace deal with Iran is coming any day now. Some of the terms seem worse than what Carthage had to give when they surrendered to Rome. For example, “Trump’s $300 billion problem on the Iran agreement”:

In an interview with CBS News Monday morning, Vice President JD Vance seemed to tacitly confirm the premise that Iran could be given “access” to a reconstruction fund worth as much as $300 billion.

Ever since that interview, the administration has strained to clarify things. It has emphasized that this money wouldn’t come from US taxpayers. Instead, it would be money from other Gulf countries that would only be available if Iran complies with a peace deal.

Vance said late Monday on Fox News that “we would invite other countries — not us, but other countries — to invest in” Iran. He echoed that Tuesday, telling Megyn Kelly that the US wouldn’t let the United Arab Emirates, for example, “invest in Iran, unless the Iranians change their behavior.”

When the Obama administration and other countries cut a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, it included giving Iran access to billions of dollars. In that case, it wasn’t money from other countries, but instead Iran’s own assets that had been frozen in foreign banks under sanctions. Estimates generally placed the dollar figure around $50 billion.

The Islamic Republic of Iran still officially hates the U.S., right? They’ve been chanting “Death to America” for 47 years. To the extent that they have money and sovereignty, therefore, won’t they use that money to build weapons factories? To the extent that they have electric power, won’t they use that power to run the factories 24/7?

One purported benefit is oil can flow through the Strait of Hormuz without interference from the Iranian Navy that, we’re informed, no longer exists. But if the U.S. is an oil exporter, how do we benefit from the ability of competitors in the Persian Gulf to export through the Strait?

Maybe Donald Trump is doing this for immediate political gain? The price of gasoline will go down a little and, therefore, Democrats who were previously climate alarmists and wanted higher gasoline prices to discourage consumption will stop their recent complaints about the higher gasoline prices that they previously advocated? This explanation seems implausible because surrendering to an enemy, even if you call it “winning”, doesn’t usually make a politician more popular. Wouldn’t Trump enjoy more popular support, at least among Republicans, with round-the-clock bombing of Iran’s oil industry (thus denying the ayatollahs the money they need to build weapons factories) and electricity plants (thus denying the regime the grid-scale electric power that it needs to run its weapons factories)?

Separately, if the goal is to keep the non-existent Iranian Navy out of the Strait, couldn’t we use robot submersibles to make the waters unfriendly to those whom we don’t like? Here’s an example from Anduril that can endure for 10 days:

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Seattle Trip Report (minus Seattle per se), Part III

June 17, 2026June 14, 2026 by philg

If you want to delight a modern child, take him/her/zir/them to the “Six Seven” restaurant next to the Norwegian cruise pier:

We sailed away from Seattle on May 22, 2026 under the kind of weather that makes summer tourists say “I’d love to live here.” Note Mount Rainier (14,410′ high) in the background:

The weather was even better for our return on June 1, 2026:

We returned and picked up a minivan at a downtown Hertz office, which turned out to save about 30 percent compared to renting at the airport due to reduced taxes. What happens when Yokohama and Chrysler engineers intersect with graduates of the U.S. education system?

(The door placard says that the tires should be at 36 psi.)

Let’s see how many readers recognize this engineering textbook regarding appropriate tire pressure:

At first I thought it was only because the tires were soft, so I took it into the Texaco station next to the Flamingo and had the tires pumped up to fifty pounds each – which alarmed the attendant, until I explained that these were “experimental” tires.

But fifty pounds each didn’t help the cornering, so I swent back a few hours later and told him I wanted to try seventy five. He shook his head nervously. “Not me,” he said, handing me the air hgose. “Here. They’re your tires. You do it.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You think they can’t take seventy-five?”

He nodded, moving away as I stooped to deal with the left front. “You’re damn right,” he said. “Those tires want twenty eight in the front and thirty two in the rear. Hell, fifty’s dangerous, but seventy five is crazy. They’ll explode!”

I shook my head and kept filling the left front. “I told you,” I said, “Sandoz laboratories designed these tires. They’re special. I could load them up to a hundred.

We made it to Boeing’s Future of Flight Museum and factory tour in Everett, Washington. This is the facility created to build the 747 and it has also manufactured the 767, 777, and 787 (the latter now made exclusively in South Carolina, free of the union labor strikes that have characterized operations in Washington State).

At the museum we learned that engineering and precision manufacturing is beyond the capability of modern white males:

As with Intel, diversity is the key to profits, though an all-female team would also yield spectacular business success:

The museum features “the first female African-American astronaut in space”, a person who had nothing to do with Boeing or its products:

No photos are allowed on the factory tour!

We departed Boeing and inched our way through mid-day traffic jams to the LeMay Car Museum in Tacoma, which will be covered in a separate post. We came back to Seattle a week later via Bainbridge Island.

The state agency that runs the ferry system promotes, in their Bainbridge Island terminal, the following:

Juneteenth (we saw exactly zero Black people on Bainbridge Island)
a Pride event with “drag performances” and an “expanded kids area”
a film about a Bainbridge Island resident who flowered into womanhood at age 61

The state agency officially practices “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, which would be illegal under Florida state law:

The ferry system’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive dream is to convert all of these ferries into floating Teslas, but the original budget of $4 billion isn’t going to come close to covering it in our Jones Act world where U.S. shipyards must build everything (NPR). So far they’ve got… 1 hybrid, the Wenatchee, and we were on it.

It was a perfect, albeit windy/choppy day:

We then drove past marijuana store billboards to get to the Museum of Flight (separate post). (Every town in Washington State, no matter how small, seemed to have at least one marijuana store. These were deemed “essential” by Covidcrats and stayed open while (non-essential) schools were closed for 18 months. #Science)

We met local friends for dinner at Din Tai Fung near Sea-Tac, served by a masked non-Asian waiter, and then roamed the Westfield mall, which is simultaneously rich in Islamic immigrants, masked white people, and Pride (sign below from Nordstrom):

I can’t figure out what people who live in Seattle have in common. Seattle is supposedly home to about 30,000 Somalis. Most of our Uber drivers were from Eritrea (10 percent of Eritrean migrants to the U.S. have chosen this cloudy/rainy city). Only about half of Eritreans are Muslim, and AI says that the majority of Seattle Eritreans are Coptic Christians. Maybe they at least share a language with the Somalis? No. In fact, Eritreans may not share a language with Eritreans: “Eritrea has nine national languages which are Tigrinya, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Saho.” (Wikipedia) The religion of white people in Seattle proper seems to be hatred of Donald Trump and Israel and celebration of 2SLGBTQQIA+. Maybe the Islamic immigrants can get on board with the former, but will they join in practicing Rainbow Flagism?

(If we broaden the geographical area a little, we get to “Bellingham man” Rahmanullah Lakanwal. He was a successful Islamic Afghan in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with two wives and a variety of children. Using the same thought process as that used by people who adopt 100 cats (see Is U.S. immigration policy a form of animal hoarding?) we brought him to live in Bellingham, Washington, just north of seattle. He had to unload one of his wives, never got a job, and eventually killed some National Guardsmen in D.C. At all times he and his wife and five children were supported by U.S. taxpayers. Why does a Christian immigrant from Eritrea want to pay taxes to support a Muslim immigrant from Afghanistan such as Rahmanullah Lakanwal? What would the taxpayer and the recipient of the free house, free food, free health care, Obamaphone, etc. have in common that would make the relationship sensible?)

Like all of our other trips around Seattle, getting to the airport at mid-day on a Wednesday involved fighting through epic traffic.

The only thing missing was Elon Musk talking about human population collapse.

A family of Scientists chose to mask 2/3 members while designating 1/3 to pick up germs in the airport and on the flight that can later be transmitted in a shared hotel room to the other two.

Delta failed to get with the Pride program and was still promoting AANHPI Month (May!) on its seatback TVs.

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Nobel-grade do-gooding (microfinance) considered harmful

June 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by philg

In the spirit of “Go To Statement Considered Harmful” by Edsger Dijkstra, renowned sourpuss…

“Hundreds of Billions in Loans Didn’t Make a Dent in Global Poverty” (Wall Street Journal):

Microfinance, loans issued in communities not served by traditional banks, would help poor people in developing countries start businesses and work their way toward prosperity. That was the goal of Muhammad Yunus, a U.S.-trained economist, who pioneered the practice in Bangladesh during the 1970s.

“In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums,” Yunus told his audience in Oslo in 2006 when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

Led by the adage of “doing good while doing well,” microfinance lenders have since advanced hundreds of billions of dollars to poor people in countries from Albania to Zimbabwe. Prominent voices including Hillary Clinton and Natalie Portman told inspiring tales of women entrepreneurs lifting the fortunes of their communities. Along with easing poverty, microfinance aimed to expand access to education and end gender inequality.

That was the dream, including for yours truly (I kicked in some money circa 2000 to a web-based microfinance portal). What has been the reality?

Academic studies, including randomized controlled trials, have found that microfinance doesn’t improve the economic conditions of most borrowers. Economists found excessive microfinance lending has set off repayment crises for borrowers in half a dozen countries, including Bosnia, India and Cambodia.

High interest rates, which can top 100% in some Latin American countries, and pressure tactics by loan officers have been tied to suicides, homelessness and children pulled from school to work. Rather than using the loans to invest in small businesses, many borrowers spend the money on medical expenses and other necessities.

Does failure to achieve stated goals have an effect on nonprofit organizations? No.

The hardening evidence of microfinance’s failure to alleviate poverty should have led to a rethinking of its use as a development tool, said Rafe Meager, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who has studied the academic research on microfinance.

“There still hasn’t been this kind of reckoning in a serious way,” Meager said.

The average microfinance borrower in Cambodia owes more than $3,900, nearly three times the median annual per capita income. Average debt per borrower is more than $6,000 when including small loans from microfinance lenders that are now commercial banks also providing other financial services.

Microfinance’s breakneck expansion in Cambodia in the early 2010s coincided with a government push to formalize land ownership. Contrary to Yunus’s vision that debts shouldn’t be collateralized, most of Cambodian microfinance loans greater than $3,000 are secured by a borrower’s land, which is the main hard asset for most poor families.

What happens when we throw AI into this mixture? Some people were already poor because their skill levels were too low to compete in a globalized economy. Do they get a boost in value for a while, at least, because the Optimus-style robots won’t be ready until well after the AI brains are perfected? Or do already-poor people in poor countries become further devalued by AI because they’re being partly paid for the use of their brains? Or, on the third hand, do they get a boost in income because they’ll use AI to become much more productive?

Separately, now that Elon is well on his way to a second $trillion, why isn’t he loaning Bosnians, Indians, and Cambodians however much money they want?

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SpaceX is worth $63/share according to the most expert experts

June 15, 2026June 15, 2026 by philg

How’s SpaceX doing on its second trading day? The most expert experts on stocks in the United States work at Morningstar. They value the company at $63/share and say that if everything went perfect, it could be worth $154. From last week:

We value SpaceX SPCX at $63 per share, a 53% discount to the upcoming IPO’s offering price. Our valuation is the result of mathematics more than skepticism. With such a wide range of possible outcomes for the company’s financial future, we created forecasts and valuations for three scenarios and probability-weighted them.

Even at $63 per share, we give SpaceX a lot of benefit of the doubt in two of the three scenarios, in which we assume the company can achieve a rapidly reusable Starship rocket enabling multiple launches per week and successfully commercialize data centers in space. Neither of these engineering problems has been solved, and we don’t expect them to be until at least 2028.

In our most optimistic “moonshot” scenario, the company would be worth $1.97 trillion, or $154 a share. That’s 14% above the offering price and a level the shares might even reach in the short term after their public launch, given widespread investor enthusiasm about SpaceX, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and the IPO. However, we assign this scenario, in which both Starship is reusable and scaled orbital data centers are highly successful, a 7% chance of happening, which is one reason our final fair value estimate of $63 is much lower than $154.

We could try to figure out how accurate Morningstar was with Tesla when Tesla was the same size ($19 billion/year in revenue) as SpaceX is now. That takes us back to 2018. Tesla stock was at $20/share vs. $400 now (adjusted for 15:1 in splits, but not for Bidenflation). ChatGPT:

Morningstar was not recommending Tesla as a buy in 2018. In ordinary buy/hold/sell language, their view was closer to sell/avoid for much of the year, or at least don’t buy at the market price. … Morningstar’s 2018 stance was “don’t buy”; in buy/hold/sell terms, it was closer to “sell” than “hold,” especially around the August 2018 $420 buyout episode.

(Keep in mind that $420 pre-splits was a $28/share offer in terms of today’s shares.)

Democrats such as Bernie Sanders who are envious that Elon Musk is a trillionaire now have a Science-based way to catch up. They say that expert advice should be followed without question, e.g., if an expert-crafted response to a virus killing Americans at a median age of 82 is to close schools for 8-year-olds for 18 months. A leveraged bet that SpaceX stock will fall to the Morningstar-estimated value could make at least $billions if not $trillions in profit.

Loosely related…

Elon Musk is a trillionaire and still hasn’t paid his Reparations.
— Rev. Ray Cistman ✊🏾🙏🏾 (@RevRayCistman) June 14, 2026

The people who created 40 Trillion in debt are angry that Elon Musk created 1 Trillion in wealth.
— Andrew Wilkow (@WilkowMajority) June 14, 2026

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Sonos, eight years after the IPO

June 15, 2026June 13, 2026 by philg

Readers are likely aware of my fondness for whole-house audio and, since 2005, Sonos, a company that has roots in Santa Barbara, CA and Boston, MA. The company went public at $15 per share almost exactly eight years ago. How’s the stock done? If you don’t adjust for inflation, it’s right at its original IPO price (down from the first-day bump, though). Adjusted at official CPI, though, someone who got IPO shares is down 25 percent. Adjusted for South Florida real estate costs, the investor is down about 50 percent.

Given that state governors ordered peasants to stay home for 2-3 years in a lot of high-income states, how do we account for a home audio company having done this badly? Sony has doubled, in nominal dollars, over the same period. Consumers don’t care about multi-room audio because they always have their AirPods in and the sound thus follows them?

Did Sonos fail to jump on the social justice bandwagon or ignore Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money? Certainly not!

Sonos in June 2020:

In celebration of global Pride the Internet radio service introduced a limited-edition station, initiated by a group of LGBTQ+ employees.

Dmitri Siegel, VP Global Brand, extended his support becoming Pride@’s official executive sponsor. “I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be an ally in the Pride@ group,” he said. “As a straight white male, it’s common to feel intimidated or uncomfortable engaging on LGBTQ+ issues because you feel like you are going to say the wrong thing or be offensive in some way. Being a part of Pride@ has given me the opportunity to do my work—listen and learn. Getting over insecurity and discomfort unlocks all these amazing people and a whole aspect of the human experience that I would otherwise miss out on.”

The article references a corporate tweet:

Announcing Full Spectrum on Sonos Radio. Music from LGBTQ+ artists, allies, and icons; personal liner notes recorded by Sonos employees; and interviews with beloved LGBTQ+ artists including Brandi Carlile, Laura Jane Grace, and more. Read today's blog post to learn more.
— Sonos (@Sonos) June 15, 2020

The station was still up and running a year ago:

How about this month? The radio web site features state-sponsored NPR and Democratic Party-affiliated MSNBC, but I didn’t see anything about Pride.

Sonos Radio has an Instagram account. No Pride station is mentioned. (The “Full Spectrum; Celebrate Child” station is still available in the app, however.)

Sonos has an X account(!), but hasn’t posted anything for Pride 2026. Nor did they post anything regarding Pride on their (rather thin) Facebook account. Their careers page assures today’s young people that working life can be a continuous Pride celebration:

It looks as though the company has abandoned its commitment to proselytizing for Rainbow Flagism to consumers, reminding consumers that Black history is more important than other kinds of history, etc. In other words, Sonos has abandoned its principles and still can’t make money, the worst of all possible worlds for a corporation.

I still love the product, even if their lightweight powered speakers can’t overcome the laws of physics (see below regarding the latest Sonos S2 gear versus their old amps driving heavier passive (ancient) speakers). They also have great support compared to most companies. I’m wondering what they could make that would be profitable in an Apple-takes-all world.

Emperor Sonos S2 has no clothes?

Full post, including comments

Seattle Trip Report (minus Seattle per se), Part II

June 14, 2026June 14, 2026 by philg

Next stop on the Seattle Trip was the Asian Art Museum, $18 for admission or $0 if you have organized your life as an economist would predict: “This program provides free admission for up to five people. In-person verification of SNAP, EBT, or WIC card is required.”

One of my favorite exhibits: a local Scientist wearing a protective anti-COVID mask over a full beard. Six years after coronapanic, he/she/ze/they couldn’t find a job with less exposure to the potentially-infected public?

(We saw quite a few indoor and outdoor maskers, but it was rare to find one with as lush a beard underneath the mask.)

Next stop: the Seattle Japanese Garden.

The surrounding arboretum has a gift shop explaining how to garden while Black:

We saw Islamic immigrants in hijabs and burqas, various Asians, and a lot of white people in the Arboretum, but none of the Black girls featured in the book that was for sale.

Next stop: the Ice Box Arcade, which answers the question “How do you keep the local progressives from vandalizing a $15,000 Harry Potter pinball machine, tainted by J.K. Rowling’s stubborn Science-denying insistence that there is a difference between men and women?”

Answer: tell them that the quarters placed into the machine will go to support a Rainbow Flagism nonprofit organization. The collection, which is wonderfully well-maintained, includes a rare James Bond retro machine from Stern:

The standard James Bond modern Stern series is Sean Connery-only. This retro machine is enhanced with Roger Moore and “Daniel Craig says he goes to gay bars to avoid fights at straight venues” (Guardian; if you live with a woman see if you can make “I need to go to the bathhouse every three nights because our water pressure at home isn’t good enough” work?).

Contrary to what you might have read, Seattle progressives most definitely did not set up a 16′-high statute of Lenin on a street corner (you can enjoy some Halal food at Sinbad Express while visiting).

Back to our hotel neighborhood, the pub requires that you pass the sacred Rainbow Flag (but not trans-enhanced?) before entering (this was taken in May, not June/Pride):