E20: Robinhood wrap up, Insiders vs. Outsiders, California's failing report card & how to fix it

Evidence since 2021 shows that an insider vs. outsider / establishment vs. anti‑establishment cleavage has become a persistent, cross‑cutting theme in U.S. politics, alongside the traditional left–right divide, matching Sacks’s forecast.

1. Populism and anti‑elite rhetoric are now central to U.S. politics. Political science and reference works describe contemporary right‑wing populism (Trumpism) as built around anti‑elitist, anti‑Establishment appeals, explicitly framing politics as “the people” versus corrupt elites rather than just standard ideology. (en.wikipedia.org) Analyses of Trump’s rhetoric emphasize that his core narrative is a crisis caused by a corrupt political establishment and that he offers himself as a “high‑risk outsider candidate” to overthrow it. (en.wikipedia.org) This outsider‑vs‑establishment framing has remained central through and beyond the 2024 campaign, not just in 2016.

2. The idea that both parties are a single corrupt insider ‘uniparty’ has gone mainstream. The term uniparty—claiming that Democrats and Republicans operate as one insider cartel—has been widely used in the 2020s by nationally prominent figures like Steve Bannon, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and especially Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his 2024 independent presidential campaign, where he denounced the two parties as a “uniparty.” (en.wikipedia.org) This is exactly an “insiders vs. outsiders” frame: both major parties are cast as self‑dealing insiders, while various populist or independent figures claim to represent excluded outsiders.

3. Candidates across the spectrum deliberately brand themselves as ‘outsiders’ against party establishments. A 2025 Guardian profile of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El‑Sayed describes him running an explicitly populist, anti‑establishment campaign and repeatedly labels him “a true outsider,” noting that even one of his more moderate Democratic opponents is also styling herself as an outsider despite using establishment consultants. (theguardian.com) Commentary on other would‑be candidates (e.g., pieces floating Stephen A. Smith or other non‑politicians for the presidency) likewise centers on their appeal as political outsiders who can challenge an entrenched establishment and disillusioning party leadership. (newyorker.com) This shows the insider/outsider language has become a standard, recurring way of marketing and analyzing candidates.

4. Analysts explicitly describe new fault lines that map onto ‘insider vs. outsider’. Commentators and scholars have argued for years that U.S. politics is realigning from a simple liberal‑vs‑conservative split toward a divide between populists and establishment neoliberals or technocrats—an axis that cuts across both parties. (thefederalist.com) Research on populism notes that populist movements systematically dramatize an insider–outsider conflict—“the people” versus “corrupt elites” and other alleged outsiders—and that this pattern has become a core, global theme in 21st‑century democratic politics, including the United States. (populismstudies.org) This is substantively the same cleavage Sacks labeled “insider versus outsider.”

5. Left–right polarization remains very strong, but Sacks only predicted ‘not just’ left vs. right. Empirical work still finds that partisan and ideological polarization (Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative) has grown sharply and remains the primary organizing structure of mass attitudes. (arxiv.org) However, Sacks’s claim was more modest: that in the post‑Trump era it’s not just about left and right anymore and that insider vs. outsider would be a major recurring theme, not that it would replace left–right entirely. Given the entrenched prominence of populist anti‑establishment rhetoric, the spread of ‘uniparty’ and elite‑vs‑people narratives, and the routine branding of candidates in insider/outsider terms across both parties and among independents, that part of his prediction has clearly materialized.

Because the insider–outsider / establishment–anti‑establishment framing has, by 2025, become a pervasive and widely discussed lens for understanding U.S. politics—while Sacks did not require it to supplant left–right altogether—the prediction is best judged as right.

Available election data since early 2021 show no broad U.S. voter movement systematically ousting incumbents and replacing them with outsider, anti–special-interest candidates.

Across federal, state, and major local races in the November 2022 general election, 94% of incumbents won re‑election, with congressional incumbents (U.S. House and Senate) winning at about a 98% rate, slightly higher than in 2020. This indicates strong incumbent survival rather than a wave of voters “voting insiders out of office.” (inkl.com)

Analysts at the Public Affairs Council and Inside Elections explicitly argued in mid‑2022 that the U.S. was not experiencing a classic “throw the bums out” or anti‑incumbent election, despite low congressional job approval—again emphasizing that incumbents were generally safe. (pac.org)

The same pattern persisted in 2024: an analysis of the November 2024 general election found that about 95% of incumbents nationwide who ran for re‑election won, with congressional incumbents again in the mid‑90s–high‑90s success range, even amid strong public dissatisfaction with “political elites.” (govfacts.org) Detailed 2024 House results, such as in California and Texas, show seat after seat where the status line is “incumbent re‑elected,” with only a small number of losses or open‑seat turnovers—hardly a mass revolt against office‑holding insiders. (en.wikipedia.org)

There are localized examples of insurgent or outsider energy—e.g., hard‑right Freedom Caucus candidates in Wyoming winning enough primaries to control the state House, or multiple Texas state House incumbents losing 2024 primaries—but these are limited, state‑level skirmishes rather than a sustained, nationwide voter movement overthrowing entrenched incumbents at scale. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because incumbency re‑election rates remained extremely high and analysts explicitly characterize recent cycles as not anti‑incumbent, the prediction of a substantial, nationwide movement of voters “rising up” to vote insiders out and replace them with non‑beholden newcomers did not come true in the years after early 2021.

The prediction is about a long‑term "death spiral" in both New York and California’s economic and social conditions, contingent on politics not changing. After fewer than five years, available data give a mixed picture and do not clearly confirm collapse or sustained turnaround.(ppic.org)

Economically, both states remain very strong. California’s GDP reached about $4.1 trillion in 2024, making it one of the world’s largest economies, with high per‑capita output and solid growth since 2020. New York’s real GDP hit a record ~$1.8 trillion in 2024, and it has the highest GDP per person of any US state.(gov.ca.gov)

Demographically and socially, there is some evidence consistent with strain—both states saw significant pandemic‑era domestic outmigration and overall population decline from 2020–2022, and still have net losses of residents to other states. At the same time, immigration and natural increase have recently reversed total population decline: California and New York both returned to modest net growth by 2023–2024. Long‑range projections even suggest possible 25‑year population decline in New York, but such forecasts are uncertain and extend well beyond the period since the prediction was made.(dof.ca.gov)

Because terms like "death spiral" and "representing residents over special interests" are inherently subjective and long‑run, and because 2021–2025 evidence shows both serious challenges and continued economic strength rather than clear collapse, it is too early to classify this prediction as either right or wrong.

Jason’s prediction was that in the following years a “massive middle” of tech workers (especially developers) would leave the Bay Area/California for lower‑tax, lower‑cost places like Reno or Austin, significantly shrinking the Bay’s mid‑tier tech workforce.

What actually happened looks more mixed and much smaller in scale:

1. There was notable pandemic‑era out‑migration – but it was modest relative to the base.

   • California did see large net domestic outflows after 2020: over 400,000 more people left than arrived in 2021, and substantial net losses continued through 2023.(en.wikipedia.org)
   • These losses included higher‑income, college‑educated, often remote‑capable workers (a group that overlaps with tech). But the Public Policy Institute of California estimates that in 2023 the net outflow of college graduates and of higher‑income adults was only about 0.4% of each group’s in‑state population—small relative to the total stock.(ppic.org)
     This suggests some middle and upper‑tier tech workers did leave, but not at anything like “massive middle” scale.

2. Austin (and other hubs) gained tech workers, but the Bay’s losses were not huge and were partly temporary.

   • LinkedIn data for May 2020–April 2021 show Austin had the highest net inflow of tech workers of any major U.S. city, gaining about 217 tech workers per 10,000 existing tech workers, while the San Francisco Bay Area was the biggest net loser at about –80 per 10,000.(cmswire.com) That’s meaningful, but still under 1% of the base over that period.
   • Later LinkedIn/Microsoft analysis shows that by the 12 months ending July 2022, the Bay Area had flipped back to a net gain of tech workers, with about 1.12 tech workers moving in for every one leaving, after having been in net‑loss the year prior.(microsoft.com)
   • Reporting on where San Franciscans actually moved during the pandemic finds that most moves were local or to other parts of California; Austin and Denver were the only out‑of‑state destinations in the top 20, with nearby Alameda County the top destination, and Austin just one among many options.(axios.com)
     Austin therefore benefited from migration, but it did not absorb anything close to a “massive” share of the Bay’s mid‑tier developers.

3. Bay Area tech employment did fall after a pandemic hiring boom, but it mainly reverted to pre‑pandemic levels and the region still added tech talent overall.

   • According to data cited in regional coverage, Bay Area tech industry employment peaked at about 960,400 jobs in 2022 and declined to roughly 880,200 by late 2024, dropping below the peak but only slightly under the 2019 level of 885,700—an ~8% pullback from the top, not a collapse.(seattletimes.com)
   • Overall Bay Area employment in 2024 was still at about 98% of 2019 job levels, indicating a cyclical shock plus tech layoffs rather than a structural hollowing‑out of the mid‑tier workforce.(vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov)
   • At the same time, CBRE’s 2023 and 2025 “Scoring Tech Talent” work finds the San Francisco Bay Area remained the #1 tech‑talent market, with the largest tech‑talent labor pool in the U.S. and the highest concentration of software engineers. The Bay added about 75,000 tech‑talent jobs between 2017–2022 and another ~36,950 tech‑talent jobs between 2021–2024, even after accounting for layoffs.(cbre.com)
     These figures are hard to reconcile with the idea that the “massive middle” of developers has substantially left; the region still has by far the biggest and one of the fastest‑growing pools of tech talent.

4. Austin and similar hubs grew, but from a much smaller base and did not displace the Bay’s mid‑tier workforce.

   • Austin’s tech and STEM employment grew quickly; one recent analysis shows about 42% growth in STEM jobs per 1,000 positions from 2019 to 2024, and around 180,000 tech jobs (≈14% of its workforce).(statesman.com)
   • By comparison, the Bay Area still has on the order of 700,000–900,000 tech‑related jobs, roughly 1 in 4 jobs in the region, several times Austin’s total.(axios.com)
     Austin’s growth is real, but it does not represent a dramatic hollowing‑out of the Bay’s mid‑tier tech labor force.

5. Many early movers also returned or stayed within the region.
   News coverage in 2021–2023 documents tech workers who left the Bay Area at the height of remote work and then moved back as offices reopened and urban amenities recovered, and emphasizes that a substantial share of pandemic moves were to nearby counties rather than permanent out‑of‑state exits.(planetizen.com) This runs counter to the idea of a one‑way, sustained drain of mid‑level developers.

Putting this together:

• There was a measurable, pandemic‑era outflow of tech workers and higher‑income residents from California and from the Bay Area, and low‑tax hubs like Austin clearly attracted some of them.
• However, the scale of those moves, relative to the enormous Bay Area tech workforce, remained small (often on the order of fractions of a percent per year), and LinkedIn plus CBRE data show the Bay Area regaining tech inflows and adding tech talent overall by 2022–2024.
• Bay Area tech employment is somewhat below its 2022 peak, but roughly back to 2019 levels, and the region still dominates in absolute tech‑talent numbers and concentrations.

Because the evidence shows moderate, mostly temporary migration and cyclical job cuts rather than a lasting, “massive middle” exodus that significantly shrank the Bay Area’s mid‑tier tech workforce, Jason’s prediction, as normalized, did not come true.

By late 2025, California still has a large private‑sector middle class earning above $100,000, so the prediction that "pretty soon" only government workers would be making over $100,000 in the state has not come true.

Key facts:

• In 2024 the median California household income was about $100,000, meaning roughly half of all households earn more than $100k.(usafacts.org) That is far more households than could plausibly be accounted for by government employees alone.
• In 2023 there were over 1.7 million private‑sector businesses in California, providing about 15.5 million jobs (86% of all jobs); the entire public sector (state, local, and federal) accounted for only about 2.5 million jobs (14%).(ppic.org) State civil‑service employees are just ~220,000 workers—about 1.2% of all employed Californians.(calhr.ca.gov) Even if every government worker earned over $100,000 (which is not the case), they could not possibly be the "only" people with six‑figure incomes.
• Many of California’s highest‑paying industries—technology, professional and technical services, finance, and much of health care—are private‑sector. Average weekly earnings for California’s private‑sector workers are around $1,300–$1,400 (roughly $70k+ annually), and in major counties like Santa Clara, average weekly wages exceed $4,000 (over $200k annually).(usafacts.org) This implies millions of private‑sector workers earning well above $100k.
• Despite significant out‑migration (about 800,000 people leaving the state in 2022), IRS data show that the number of Californians making $1 million or more annually actually increased by about 66% from 2019 to 2021, and 116,000 new millionaires appeared over that period.(californiaglobe.com) That is inconsistent with a collapse of the private‑sector upper‑ and middle‑income population.

Given that (1) the time horizon implicit in "pretty soon" (stated in early 2021) has clearly passed by late 2025, and (2) data show that six‑figure earners in California are still overwhelmingly in the private sector, not concentrated mainly in government jobs, the prediction is best characterized as incorrect.

Episode 21 of All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg (“Media misalignment, subjects controlling narratives & more with bestie guestie Draymond Green”) is indeed the next episode after E20 and it does contain a “Mean tweets” segment. However, multiple official episode descriptions and show notes indicate that:

• The episode opens at 0:00 with “Discussing Sacks’ recent hit on Tucker Carlson.”
• The “Mean tweets” segment does not occur until 1:08:02, near the end of the episode.

This structure is documented in the show notes on Libsyn (the podcast’s own host), Apple Podcasts, and Storytel, all of which list the segment order and timestamps, including “1:08:02 Mean tweets.” (allinchamathjason.libsyn.com) A separate summary/transcript view of the YouTube upload also shows a standard intro and banter at the beginning, not mean-tweet reading. (glasp.co)

Chamath’s prediction was that episode 21 would start with the hosts reading mean tweets. While they did eventually read mean tweets in that episode, they did not open the show with them, so the prediction—as stated—did not come true.