Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists and the End of the Trump War: A Case Study of Joe Biden’s Budget Proposal for a Tax on Capital Gains
What potential national disaster—one that threatens to destroy the United States—keeps you awake at night? The clock is closer to midnight on saving the Earth, as record heat and storms show us, and for some it might be the climate crisis. Others are distressed by the precarious state of our democracy. Still other citizens are haunted by issues of crime, immigration, race relations, or income inequality.
But if you are billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, apocalypse looms in another form: a proposed tax on unrealized capital gains that affects households worth more than $100 million.
I’ll explain in a second why the cofounders of Silicon Valley’s preeminent VC firm insist that their opposition to this idea isn’t totally self-interested, and why their analysis on how it would destroy the country is alarmist twaddle. But it’s significant that in the tone-deaf 90-minute podcast they released this week, they cite this part of Joe Biden’s budget proposal as the “final straw” that led them to support Donald Trump for president. The policy take on Biden’s policies is not a clinical analysis of the issues that separate the two candidates, it’s a window to explain why certain Silicon Valley liberals are leaning towards Trump. (That list also includes Chamath Palihapitiya, a 2020 Biden donor who recently cohosted a huge fundraiser for the former president.)
When they know it means alienating some friends, employees, and even Horowitz’s liberal mother, they decided to talk about why they changed sides on their show. The long time partners seem to try and be honest with their feelings for Biden. They don’t know what they’re thinking when they think they’re a version of the two soulless plutocrats in Trading Places.
The two men say they are not looking at human rights or foreign policy when making their choice. Since they are experts in startups—and that’s their business—they insist that the agenda of what’s called “little tech” will determine who they support. This term has become a sudden buzzword among the Trump-ites in the Valley. It refers to an effort to become a giant company by innovative companies but that might not happen because of the power of the firms in the field. J.D. Vance, Trump’s VP pick and a former VC himself, has championed this cause. The government is the biggest threat to little tech, reckons the duo.
The problem with the argument is that no one has said anything to the founders. There are around 500 vacancies at the Y Combinator startup incubator. And while the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank made 2023 a down year for investment, VCs still managed to invest $170 billion in over 15,000 deals. The $7.2 billion fund was raised this April. The crisis is not where it is.
Why Did Andreessen and Horowitz Go Trump? What Will We Do About It? A Commentary on the Case of Judah Curbs
Andreessen and Horowitz do enumerate several points of disagreement with Biden that affected their decision to go Trump. They are horrified that the administration is taking action in the area of theBlockchain, an area in which Andreessen-Horowitz has significant investments. He calls the regulation lawless and immoral. Strike two against Biden is the provisions in his executive order that attempt to rein in negative effects of huge artificial intelligence foundation models. The final straw was the budget proposal that would tax capital gains at 25 percent, affecting only citizens worth over $100 million. Biden’s goal is to prevent some (non)-taxpayers from working it so their investments are never realized, allowing them to endlessly monetize their earnings by borrowing against them.
It is true across the globe, but especially in America, where real power is controlling the flow of resources. Property. Money. Information. If you command the levers of production—who gets what, when, and how—you dictate what the future holds, and who gets a say in it. You can decide the future of the United States. Silicon Valley executives and investors went public with their support for Donald Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, this week, on the verge of another presidential election.
He jokes that he is a socialist but not in a crazy, conspiratorial way. He believes that the best way forward is for us to let go of the capitalist past and join a collective future. He wants people to understand that the old ways of bureaucratic governance no longer serve us. On his series, #Poli- Side-Eye,lemons unpacks complex issues.
“I think the danger in looking backward and saying, ‘Oh, there’s this point in which we had this thing, but now we don’t have it,’ is that it makes you reactionary to me. It cuts off your imagination because you’re not thinking about what could be,” he says. You’re focused on recovering something from the past. You are not going to get that back. Better futures are possible, but not if we’re willing to fail.
His name is Judah Curbs. The best way to understand the economy is through production—what we are producing, what we are circulating, how is what we are producing getting to people. Essentially, what do we buy? I think it’s simpler to understand the incentives and motives of the wealthy if you look at politics through that lens.
Source: The Inevitability of Big Tech Backing Trump
What Did Trump Do When he Was Elect in 2016? The Tax Cuts History of Success and the Phenomenology of His Legacy
When he was elected in 2016 what did Trump do? He had only a single major policy platform, which was tax cuts, which was a significant benefit to corporations and wealthy people who had wealth in the stock market. The tax cuts are set to end in 2025 so you see some of the support for him now.