E53: Wealth tax, dealing with inflation as a capital allocator, big tech earnings, Facebook's rebrand, paternity leave & more

No federal billionaire wealth tax or general federal wealth tax on net worth has been enacted in the U.S. since the 2021 proposals discussed in the episode (e.g., Sen. Ron Wyden’s “billionaire income tax” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2021), which remained proposed bills and never became law. (forbes.com)

Because no such wealth tax has been passed, it has not been litigated up to the Supreme Court, so the Court has never actually had the chance to either strike it down or uphold it. The most relevant recent case, Moore v. United States (2024), involved a tax on certain unrealized foreign earnings; the Court upheld that tax and explicitly noted in a footnote that it was not deciding the constitutionality of “taxes on holdings, wealth, or net worth,” i.e., a true wealth tax. (en.wikipedia.org)

Since the condition of Chamath’s prediction (“if this wealth tax were passed and then challenged”) has never occurred, and the Court has deliberately avoided ruling on the core wealth-tax question, we cannot determine whether his forecast about the conservative Court striking such a tax would have been correct. Hence the outcome is best classified as ambiguous rather than right, wrong, or merely “too early.”

Chamath’s statement was explicitly conditional: “if you go into the midterms with nothing done … this is going to be a bloodbath.” In reality, Democrats did not enter the 2022 midterms with “nothing done.” By November 2022 they had enacted several major laws, including:

• American Rescue Plan Act (COVID‑19 stimulus), signed March 11, 2021 (en.wikipedia.org)
• Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law), signed November 15, 2021 (afdc.energy.gov)
• Inflation Reduction Act (major climate, health, and tax package), signed August 16, 2022 (en.wikipedia.org)
• CHIPS and Science Act (semiconductor and research funding), signed August 9, 2022 (nsf.gov)

The 2022 midterm results were also not a “bloodbath” by historical standards. Republicans gained only 9 House seats to take a narrow 222–213 majority, while Democrats gained one Senate seat and retained control of the Senate; analysis widely noted that Democrats outperformed typical midterm losses and the expected “red wave” did not occur. (en.wikipedia.org)

Because the real-world outcome occurred under conditions different from the scenario Chamath specified (Democrats had, in fact, passed significant legislation), his conditional prediction was never actually tested. We cannot know from the evidence whether, had Democrats gone in with “nothing done,” there would have been a political “bloodbath.” Therefore, the accuracy of this prediction is ambiguous, not clearly right or wrong.

Democrats did in fact unify to pass at least one substantial Biden agenda spending bill before the 2022 midterm elections (held on November 8, 2022).

Two major examples:

1. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) – a roughly $1.2 trillion infrastructure package with about $550 billion in new spending for transportation, broadband, energy, and other infrastructure – was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden on November 15, 2021, after the House agreed to the Senate’s version on November 5, 2021.(en.wikipedia.org) This was a core part of Biden’s economic agenda.

2. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) – a major budget reconciliation bill focused on climate, health care, and deficit reduction – was passed by the Senate on August 7, 2022 and by the House on August 12, 2022, and signed into law on August 16, 2022, all well before the November 2022 midterms, with every Democrat in both chambers voting for it and all Republicans voting against.(en.wikipedia.org) It has been widely described as a landmark Democratic legislative achievement that emerged from intra‑party negotiations over the earlier Build Back Better framework.

Given that at least one—and in practice, multiple—large spending bills central to Biden’s agenda were enacted prior to the 2022 midterms, and that Democrats ultimately unified to pass them despite earlier internal conflicts, Friedberg’s prediction is right.

Friedberg’s prediction had two parts: (1) the ~$1.2T infrastructure bill would pass, and (2) an additional ~$1.75T social spending bill would also be enacted.

1. Infrastructure bill: The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law), with about $1.2 trillion in total spending, passed Congress and was signed into law by President Biden on November 15, 2021. (en.wikipedia.org)
   → This part of the prediction was correct.

2. $1.75T social spending bill: The separate social-spending package—commonly referred to as the Build Back Better Act—was structured around roughly $1.75 trillion in spending and passed the House on November 19, 2021, but it never passed the Senate. Senator Joe Manchin ultimately rejected the bill, and it was never enacted into law. (en.wikipedia.org)

   Later negotiations produced the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which adopted some climate, healthcare, and tax provisions from Build Back Better but excluded most of the social safety-net programs and was far smaller in new spending (hundreds of billions, not $1.75T). (en.wikipedia.org)
   → So the specific “roughly $1.75 trillion social spending bill” Friedberg referred to was not enacted.

Because the prediction was conjunctive—both the $1.2T infrastructure bill and a ~$1.75T social spending bill needed to be enacted—and only the first occurred, the overall prediction is wrong.

Data after the October 30, 2021 episode show that U.S. inflation did in fact remain elevated for several years rather than quickly reverting to pre‑2021 norms.

After running about ~1.5–2% in the late 2010s, U.S. CPI inflation rose sharply in 2021 and then stayed high: annual CPI inflation was about 4.7% in 2021, 8.0% in 2022, and 4.1% in 2023, only easing to just under 3% in 2024 and roughly the mid‑2% range in 2025—still slightly above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target and above most pre‑pandemic years.(officialdata.org) Monthly CPI data confirm that 12‑month inflation stayed well above 4% through most of 2022 and above 3% for much of 2023–2024 before moderating.(officialdata.org)

Contemporaneously, Fed officials had described 2021 price pressures as “transitory” before later acknowledging this was a misjudgment, as elevated inflation persisted.(reuters.com) By late 2024, major economic commentary characterized the post‑2021 period as an era of persistent high inflation entering its fifth year, explicitly contrasting it with the earlier “temporary” narrative.(investopedia.com) This multi‑year persistence above both the Fed’s 2% goal and pre‑2020 norms aligns with Chamath’s concern that inflation was “here and ... persistent,” and contradicts the view that it would be merely transitory. Therefore, the prediction is best judged as right.

Chamath’s claim had two main parts:

1. An inflationary cycle would become distortive and harmful.

   • U.S. inflation did spike sharply: CPI inflation peaked around 9.1% year‑over‑year in June 2022, the highest since the early 1980s, clearly eroding real wages and purchasing power. (cnbc.com)
   • The Federal Reserve then raised the federal funds rate from near 0% in early 2022 to 5.25–5.50% by July 2023, an unusually rapid tightening to counter that inflation. (forbes.com)
   • This combination of high inflation followed by aggressive rate hikes unquestionably created distortions and short‑term pain (real wages fell in 2022, borrowing costs for households, firms and the federal government jumped), so this part of the prediction has some support.

2. Rising interest rates would make servicing U.S. federal debt very difficult and “really hurt” the U.S. economy.

   • Net interest costs on the federal debt rose sharply as rates went up. CBO and related analyses project net interest outlays nearly doubling, reaching roughly $870–$900 billion in FY 2024, and becoming one of the largest line items in the budget, surpassing defense and rivaling Medicare. (epicforamerica.org)
   • Credit‑rating agencies have explicitly cited higher interest costs and rising debt as a growing problem: S&P (2011) and Fitch (2023) had already downgraded U.S. sovereign debt, and in May 2025 Moody’s also cut the U.S. from Aaa to Aa1, pointing to the increasing burden of financing deficits and rolling over debt at higher rates. (cnbc.com)
   • However, despite these pressures, the macro outcomes have not matched a picture of an economy “really hurt” in a systemic sense. Real GDP still grew 1.9% in 2022, 2.5% in 2023, and 2.8% in 2024, and unemployment has stayed around 4%–4.2% through 2024–2025, historically low by past‑cycle standards. Many mainstream analyses describe this as a near‑“soft landing” in which inflation came down without a deep recession. (apps.bea.gov)
   • Inflation itself has largely been brought back toward target: annual CPI/PCE inflation fell from the 2022 peak to roughly 2.4–2.7% in 2024–2025, and the Fed began cutting rates modestly in late 2024/2025 after holding them high, reflecting regained confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%. (usinflationcalculator.com)
   • Crucially, there has been no actual debt‑servicing crisis: the U.S. continues to roll over its debt and service interest, albeit at a growing fiscal cost, and remains the issuer of the global reserve currency. Rating agencies and budget analysts stress long‑term sustainability risks, but not an imminent inability to “print enough money to pay for the debt.” (barrons.com)

Because:

• The mechanical part of the prediction (high inflation → high rates → much higher interest costs and fiscal strain) has largely materialized, but
• The stronger qualitative claim that this would “really hurt” the U.S. economy and make servicing the debt effectively unmanageable has not clearly come true—growth has remained positive, unemployment low, and no debt‑service crisis has occurred—

…the overall assessment is ambiguous. Some aspects are validated (inflation spike, aggressive hikes, growing interest burden and ratings downgrades), but the core, catastrophic implication for the broader U.S. economy and debt service is not clearly borne out by 2025, nor clearly falsified, and depends heavily on subjective judgment about what counts as being “really hurt.”

What was predicted

Friedberg said (paraphrased):

1. The U.S. would not experience hyperinflation.
2. If the Fed did not raise interest rates, then inflation the next year (2022) could be higher than the then‑current ~5.1%.

What happened

1. No hyperinflation in the U.S.
   Economists’ standard definition of hyperinflation (following Cagan) is monthly inflation above 50%, which corresponds to annual rates in the tens of thousands of percent.(en.wikipedia.org)
   In 2022, U.S. CPI inflation peaked at about 9.1% year‑over‑year in June, with average annual inflation around 8.0%, far below hyperinflation territory and with monthly changes on the order of 1% or less.(usinflationcalculator.com) So the “no hyperinflation” part is clearly correct.

2. Conditional statement about 2022 inflation and Fed rate hikes
   Friedberg’s second point was explicitly conditional: if the Fed did not raise rates, inflation could be higher than ~5.1% the next year. In reality, the Federal Reserve did raise interest rates starting in March 2022 and continued hiking throughout the year.(cnbc.com) Because the condition (“Fed doesn’t raise rates”) was not met, this is a counterfactual scenario and cannot be directly judged true or false. Notably, even with hikes, 2022 inflation averaged about 8%, which is above 5.1%, but that does not contradict what he said (he did not claim that raising rates would keep inflation below 5.1%, only that not raising could allow it to go higher).

Assessment

• The falsifiable portion of the prediction (“we’re not going to have hyperinflation”) was correct.
• The rest was an explicitly conditional warning about what could happen if the Fed failed to hike, and the condition did not occur, so it can’t be meaningfully scored as right or wrong.

Given that the clear, testable claim was accurate and the conditional part is non‑falsifiable in hindsight, the overall prediction is best classified as "right."

After the Oct 30, 2021 episode, prices for exactly the kinds of items Friedberg mentioned rose sharply. The American Farm Bureau’s 2021 Thanksgiving survey found the average cost of a classic dinner for 10 was $53.31, up about 14% from 2020 and described as the most expensive Thanksgiving yet; its 2022 survey then showed another jump to $64.05, about 20% higher than 2021. (boozman.senate.gov)

Gasoline followed a similar pattern: by early October 2021, the national average price for a gallon of gas had climbed to about $3.22, the highest since 2014, and AAA and local reports noted that 2021 gas prices were the highest in seven years and were expected to remain elevated well into 2022. (cnbc.com)

Opinion data from late 2021 and early 2022 show these price spikes translated into broad public unhappiness. A Gallup survey conducted in January 2022 reported that roughly half of Americans said recent price increases were causing at least moderate financial hardship (with similar figures already visible in November 2021), and Gallup found mentions of inflation as the nation’s most important problem rising to their highest level since the mid‑1980s. (news.gallup.com) Around the same period, Gallup-based reporting showed only about 17–23% of Americans satisfied with the state or direction of the country, with about half saying they were very dissatisfied, in coverage that explicitly connected this sour mood to high inflation, gas prices and supply issues. (townhall.com) In the following months, additional polls found more than half of households reporting financial hardship from inflation and about 80% of voters somewhat or very dissatisfied with the economy, reinforcing that persistent price increases had become a central source of discontent. (cbsnews.com)

Because consumer prices for holiday food and gasoline did rise substantially over the ensuing months and were accompanied by widespread financial hardship and low satisfaction with the economy and the country’s direction, Friedberg’s prediction that these price increases would lead to 'a lot of unhappiness out there' in the United States was borne out.

Chamath’s prediction is largely accurate. First, after October 2021, US consumer prices continued to rise sharply, with CPI inflation climbing from about 6–7% at the end of 2021 to a 40‑year high of 9.1% in June 2022, and remaining elevated through late 2022, confirming his view that prices would keep rising rather than proving transitory. (bls.gov) Multiple analyses from the Dallas Fed, Brookings and others find that this bout of high inflation disproportionately burdened low‑income and lower‑middle‑income households, who spend more of their budgets on necessities like food, energy and rent, and reported significantly higher inflation stress than higher‑income households, matching his claim that the middle and lower‑middle class would be hurt most. (dallasfed.org) Second, several prominent asset bubbles from the 2020–21 era did deflate or get repriced: speculative growth and innovation stocks such as Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF fell about 80% from their early‑2021 peak by the end of 2022, fintech‑focused ARKF dropped about 65% in 2022, and the crypto market, which had peaked around November 2021, lost more than $2 trillion in value by late 2022 as bitcoin and other major coins plunged 60% or more, consistent with his expectation that asset bubbles would deflate or be rerated. (investors.com) Third, the conditional part of his forecast also materialized: the Federal Reserve finished tapering its asset purchases and then began raising interest rates in March 2022, ultimately hiking the federal funds rate at every meeting from March through December 2022 (well beyond the 2–3 hikes he posited within 12–18 months), and in the same period US equities suffered an ugly downturn, with the S&P 500 falling about 25% peak‑to‑trough in 2022 and ending the year down roughly 19%, while the tech‑heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped about 33%, a classic bear market. (forbes.com) Taken together, inflation, its regressive impact, the deflation of speculative asset bubbles, and the Fed‑driven 2022 bear market all played out in line with the scenario Chamath described, so the prediction is best judged as right, even though the exact magnitudes and timelines were not specified in detail.

The prediction was that the boom in assets like SaaS, Nasdaq, S&P, and crypto could continue for at least five years from late October 2021 without a major reversal. In reality, a broad and sharp reversal happened within about a year:

• S&P 500: After a record close on January 3, 2022, the S&P 500 fell more than 20%, officially entering a bear market and ultimately declining about 25% peak‑to‑trough in 2022—the worst year since 2008.(cnbc.com)
• Nasdaq (growth/tech): The Nasdaq Composite entered a bear market from November 2021 to December 2022, with a decline of about 33% over 2022.(nasdaq.com)
• SaaS / cloud software: The BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index (a common SaaS/cloud benchmark) fell 60.2% from its high in November 2021 to its low in June 2022.(wisdomtree.com)
• Crypto (Bitcoin as proxy): From October 2021 to November 30, 2022, Bitcoin’s closing price dropped about 60.8%, with lows in the mid‑$15k–$17k range.(statmuse.com)

A decline of 20%+ is the standard definition of a bear market and is widely regarded as a major reversal. Since multiple cited asset classes experienced 30–60% drawdowns within roughly a year of the October 2021 podcast, the condition of “no major reversal for at least five years” clearly failed.

Therefore, the prediction is wrong.

The prediction is essentially timeless: “no competitor will ever be able to catch up” to Google’s vertically integrated infrastructure and moat in search and related services. That makes it impossible to definitively mark as right or wrong as of 30 Nov 2025, since “ever” extends indefinitely into the future.

What we can say so far:

• Google still holds a dominant share of global search (roughly 90% on desktop/mobile combined in recent years), far ahead of Bing and others, indicating its infrastructure and ecosystem advantages remain very strong.
• Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI models into Bing and the rise of AI assistants (e.g., ChatGPT, other LLM-based tools) have created new kinds of competition, but these have not displaced Google’s core search dominance or obviously “matched” its full stack of infrastructure, data, ad network, and distribution.

However, because the claim is that no one will ever catch up, we cannot, even in 2025, conclusively declare the statement correct or incorrect. We can only note that, to date, the observable evidence is consistent with the prediction, but does not settle it forever; therefore the appropriate status is inconclusive (too early).

The prediction’s timeframe is 10–20 years from the podcast date (Oct 30, 2021), i.e., roughly 2031–2041. As of today (Nov 30, 2025), we are only ~4 years into that window, so it is too early to definitively judge.

Directionally, some evidence aligns with Jason’s view:

• Major tech companies are indeed in a race around AR / mixed reality:
  • Meta has invested tens of billions of dollars in AR/VR and explicitly frames its long‑term goal as AR glasses, with VR headsets (Quest line) as current products on the path to that vision.
  • Apple launched Vision Pro (a mixed‑reality headset) in 2024 and is widely reported to be working on more lightweight AR glasses as a longer‑term target.
  • Google, Microsoft, and others continue AR work (Google with AR services and experiments after discontinuing Glass; Microsoft with HoloLens for enterprise) and are positioning AR as a key future platform.
• VR currently functions as an intermediate / stepping‑stone platform in many public roadmaps, not clearly the dominant, final consumer computing platform. However, VR still has a substantial ecosystem (gaming, enterprise training, social) and could evolve.

Because we are nowhere near the 2031–2041 horizon and platform dominance can still change, the correct status is that the claim cannot yet be fully confirmed or falsified.

Jason’s prediction bundled two claims: (1) Apple would skip VR and go straight to AR, and (2) Google would also go directly to AR rather than VR as its primary immersive platform strategy.

Apple part – directionally right in emphasis, but not a clean "skip" of VR

• Apple’s first head-worn platform, Vision Pro, was announced in June 2023 and released in 2024 as a mixed‑reality headset. Apple markets it as a “spatial computer” that blends digital content with the real world via full‑color passthrough, and carefully avoids calling it a VR headset, even though it can run fully immersive virtual environments. (en.wikipedia.org)
• For years, Tim Cook has repeatedly said AR is “larger” and more important than VR and that Apple is “high on AR in the long run,” signaling a deliberate strategic tilt toward AR rather than classic VR. (macrumors.com)
• Apple also built ARKit and made iPhone/iPad an enormous AR platform well before shipping any headset. (en.wikipedia.org)
  So Apple did not launch a conventional, VR‑branded platform like Meta Quest; its ecosystem is framed around AR/spatial computing, even though Vision Pro technically spans both AR and VR. This makes Jason’s spirit of “Apple will prioritize AR over VR” broadly accurate, but the claim that it simply “skipped VR” is debatable because Vision Pro does support VR‑style use.

Google part – largely wrong

• Google had already done VR (Cardboard, Daydream), which it discontinued in 2019, so it did not “go directly” to AR. (en.wikipedia.org)
• After working on the Iris AR glasses, Google canceled that hardware in 2023 and pivoted to Android XR, an extended‑reality OS meant for headsets and glasses. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Android XR is explicitly an XR (AR/VR/MR) platform. Its launch device is Samsung’s Galaxy XR/Project Moohan, a standalone mixed‑reality headset with VR‑style capabilities and controllers, positioned as a competitor to Apple Vision Pro. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Google is also pitching Android XR as a software platform for third‑party VR and MR headsets, including a proposed tie‑up with Meta’s Quest line. (reuters.com)

Overall, Apple’s behavior roughly matches the AR‑first intent, but Google’s current primary immersive strategy is a general XR platform serving both AR and VR, not “going directly to AR.” Because the prediction was conjunctive, and the Google half clearly did not come true, the combined prediction is best scored as wrong.

Evidence after the October 2021 episode shows that play‑to‑earn (P2E) and metaverse‑style crypto games did become full‑time jobs for at least some people, who spent workday‑length hours in those virtual environments.

• Reporting on Axie Infinity in 2021–22 describes it explicitly turning into a full‑time job for many players in the Philippines and other developing countries, with earnings meeting or exceeding local wages and helping keep parts of local economies afloat.(english.elpais.com) One Fortune/Decrypt summary notes Axie’s play‑to‑earn model "helped transform Axie Infinity into a full‑time job for hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines and elsewhere."(fortune.com)
• A Coindesk piece on Axie Infinity documents the emergence of the “Metaverse Filipino Worker” concept and profiles a worker who quits an overseas meat‑packing job in Japan after realizing he can earn more in three months by playing Axie, renting out NFTs, and trading crypto from home—treating this metaverse activity as his primary occupation.(coindesk.com) A derivative write‑up highlights another Filipino player earning about 10,000 PHP per week from playing Axie "around the clock," describing this as his full‑time job, and explicitly framing the metaverse as a new workplace reachable with only a smartphone and internet connection.(creationsforu.com) Playing “around the clock” for a living is consistent with the 8–10‑hours‑per‑day work pattern Chamath described.
• Reuters coverage of the broader P2E boom shows people not only playing but also running guilds and other metaverse‑native businesses full time. In Thailand, Thitadilaka builds GuildFi—a network of 3,000 Axie players—and ends up running the guild as his full‑time job after it raises substantial venture funding. In the Philippines, ex‑teacher Teriz Pia quits her preschool job to manage a play‑to‑earn gaming guild with hundreds of players, earning as much as $20,000 per month from P2E and related crypto activities.(investing.com)

Although many of these P2E economies later proved volatile and unsustainable at scale, the prediction only claimed that play‑to‑earn DeFi/metaverse games would evolve into full‑time jobs for some people who then spend a typical workday inside a metaverse environment—not that this would be universal or permanent. By 2021–2022 there is clear, documented evidence of exactly that phenomenon in multiple countries. Therefore, the prediction is best classified as right.