While I agree with the post, what is missing from the discussion is the absolute need for tax simplification. Raising taxes on an over complex tax code is always a fool's errand. I continue to reference TR Reid's fine book, "A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System." there is an absolute need to eliminate all tax preferences and increase the personal deduction in return. We need a Value Added Tax in return for lower corporate income taxes (which are always gamed and can never keep up with clever accountants and tax lawyers). This would lead to an elimination of off shore tax havens.
In my case, the government knows all of my income through various income reporting forms and under any reasonable tax system, I should simply be able to signoff on my tax return in five minutes without having to us Turbo Tax every filing season.
Tax simplification can relieve taxpayer headaches and raise more revenue at the same time. Occam's Razor at work!!!!
Come on Noah. This is frankly starting to get absurd. Redistributing along racial lines? Taxing unrealized gains? Next step socialism, and finally, put the market-dominant white/asian/jewish soon-to-be-minorities against the wall, shoot them, and take their wealth. Especially considering the New Left has aligned with the Jihadists.
Both parties in the USA have absolutely lost it.
Given that I don't see the Republicans ever really running this nation again. Everyone should denounce the absurdity of the Democratic party as much as possible.
Man, I'm so done with property rights being under attack in the West due to notions of social justice. Frankly, It's why I am moving to Switzerland. Good property rights equals a good nation. You don't mess with these ideas because 200 years ago someone was wronged somewhere.
A few comments: 1) estate taxes play havoc on small and mid-sized businesses as one generation builds on the equity from the other; 2) the Biden "equity" is a bad idea. It would foster more distrust of the tax collection system than currently. Being treated equally and fairly is the only reasonable basis; and 3) I get concerned when the talk is about raising taxes and cutting spending. While, in principle, I support it, politicians will always find ways out of raising taxes and compromising out of the spend side. Among the vehicles they use are accounting gimmicks, double counting and time-bound cuts. Remember, one Congress can bind another.
I gotta tell you I look at the historical taxes vs spending as % of GDP and one of those lines looks way more out of historical ordinary than the other - and it’s not the tax take. If we want as a society to decide that we have been wrong for 200+ years and we need the government to play a far larger role in the economy starting with healthcare sure let’s have that discussion. But let’s not lazily limp into it with a “fair share” type arguments. The amount of $ we spend on the last few years of life vs getting our young people ready for life is just absurd. Maybe start there.
Noah- a great follow-up post would be how and where cutting spending would be effective. Also, any other proposed taxes meaningful taxes? Personally I like the idea of uncapping the income limit on social security taxes.
Biden is proposing a spending plan, not a deficit reduction plan or a tax plan.
I think any analysis should start from scratch, and also acknowledge the US is spending nearly 3 percent of GDP more than it was in 2019 and had a couple of blowout years where unfunded handouts of 10 percent of GDP were dispensed - the 2020 blowout was perhaps necessary. 2021 was unnecessary and inflationary. The idea that we need to spend even more on “high priority” items is nuts. There should be no net spending increases for at least a decade.
Now is time to pay the piper. The economy is doing well, and spending cuts and tax hikes will help solve the sticky inflation problem.
I think a fundamental problem is that neither the parties nor the voters (nor, apparently, the pundits) realize we’ve been reckless and irresponsible and are now entering a long period of austerity. The Republicans like tax cuts (or tax cut extensions/renewals). The Dems love to spend and only use tax hikes as the barest fig leaf for new spending. The way budget reconciliation works has led to the raiding of social security and Medicare to fund new spending elsewhere (Medicare drug “savings” are used to justify much higher outlays in the IRA, for example).
Talk of cutting old age entitlements without capping or cutting new spending elwewhere achieves nothing. Once pols are used to running $2 trillion deficits, they will run $2 trillion deficits. If they cut $200 billion from Medicare they will (in time) just spend that $200 billion buying votes in some other program.
As an exercise, I’d love to see each party come up with a plan to balance non-social security/non-medicare spending in 5 years and keep it balanced for a succeeding ten years. Parties could choose whatever mix of spending cuts or tax hikes they like. This exercise would at least inform people as the scale of what we are facing- big spending cuts AND big tax hikes…..on everyone.
Meanwhile, we should ensure that any old age benefit cuts or tax hikes/“savings” in social security and Medicare should only be used to make those programs more solvent. If the main budget is balanced at full employment the old age problem becomes manageable and we can come up with bipartisan solutions. Without a framework for overall austerity, any old age savings we try first will simply be spent.
It was the Reagan/O’Neil social security tax hikes (plus, what turned out to be unwise defense cuts) that led to the ephemeral budget surpluses in Clinton years. Congress ended up spending that social security windfall during the Bush and Bush/Pelosi years. They can’t resist running deficits. Obama used Medicare cuts and new Medicare investment taxes to spend even more on Obamacare. Biden used Medicare “savings” to justify spending more in the IRA.
When pols talk about “reforming” social security and Medicare they are mostly salivating about what they will be able to spend that money on.
It is long past time to move to an austerity mindset. This will actually reduce inflation and reduce real interest rates (1 percent growth with 0 percent real rates is better than 2.5 percent growth with 2.5 percent real rates when government debt is >100 percent of GDP).
We’ll need all the tax hike and spending cut ideas people can come up with. We also need to pressure pols into fiscal austerity and laugh at them when they propose new spending from here partially “covered” by some poll-tested tax ideas rather than treating their vote-buying ideas as a good faith effort.
If the media and the pundits turn against tax and spend, it would be a start (they’ve long been against tax cuts, or at least unfunded ones).
How about, instead of looking where we're going, we spend some time looking at where we're come from. In my lifetime, the federal government has gone from being a place in Washington DC to being omnipresent. Of course, it costs a lot of money to butt into everyone's life. Here's a thought; STOP!
In the name of 'social justice' we now have incredible numbers of homeless people living in tent cities, we have rampant drug abuse, we have antisemitism at the highest level that anyone remembers, and we have social malaise as people recognize that the way we're doing it is wrong, but they can't figure out what is right. Hell, they can't even figure out what gender they are!
They say, when you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, when you can print money, every problem looks financial. We are rich enough. More money in more programs won't solve squat. The federal government is not the solution, it is the problem.
Estate taxes are not good, but cap gains on deemed dispositions upon death play the same role and should replace them.
Levying interest on prior unrealized gains is just first-rate bonkers, exacerbating the problems that should be mitigated with deemed disposition implementation.
Cap gains upon death creates a problem with intergenerational assets like small businesses, shared residences and recreational properties. Provisions should be made to:
1) Avoid cap gains taxing inflation. This is especially a problem with intergenerational real estate, where tax-eviction can occur.
2) Allow deemed disposition to occur over a period of years (e.g. 5) rather than upon death. This helps reduce shock tax-eviction, better integrates with progressive tax rates, and largely benefits the middle class with smaller values of inheritances while the truly wealthy still bear the full front of progressive taxes.
3) A low-end cut-off. Again, this helps remove a lot of middle class gains but doesn't exempt the rich.
However the idea of levying 'interest' on past gains is nuts. It's bad enough that cap gains is taxing inflation.
A perspective from a recently retired professional.
I no longer have a solo medical practice having sold it to Private Equity and paid (in NYS) an effective tax rate of over 30%.
I've greatly benefitted from frugality and the recent stock market performance. Market performance cuts both ways and just as easily can be a negative.
Besides SS there is no other source of income for me. So raising my taxes after planning retirement is disruptive and raises the fairness issue. I am well off, but in no way is this dynasty wealth.
As with many things, the 0.01-0.5%ers will find a way to avoid taxes.
Let's see an analysis of your plan eliminating the most egregious tax loopholes and enforcing the tax code on the tax side
This is among the worst analysis of Biden's tax plan I have seen yet. It is MOSTLY bad with minimal bright spots.
1) The tax proposal is based in EQUITY. The quest for equity has left over 100,000,000 people dead; killed by the very governments tasked to protect and to promote their welfare. The rivers of blood spilt on the alter of equity would fill the Amazon River; a river that runs very deep, wide and fast. There is no greater evil than equity.
2) The taxation of unrealized capital gains (basically a wealth tax) of 25% would destroy almost every company in existence. It would not only destroy the startup economy (the driver of future growth) it would also destroy existing companies as everyone that invests in future and current enterprises would eventually be to broke to invest in anything.
3) The idea of charging interest on realized capital gains as well as a 45% capital gains tax is ludicrous. Can you impinge, if after holding stocks in a retirement account for 30 years (with most of the value growth in value) getting taxed 45% when you sell it and then getting charge 5% interest year over year on that growth. So you sell your stocks for $50,000, pay $17,500 in taxes and $40,000 in interest. So now, you have a tax liability of $7,500 and have to sell more of your retirement simply to pay the government.
4) I do agree changes to the step-up in basis could use some work and having the growth in value carry over generations could very well be a step in the right direction. However, it has to be acknowledged that dynastic wealth in the US is not a very big contributor to wealth inequality. 70% of inherited wealth in gone in 2 generations and over 98% is cone in 3.
5) This paragraph shows how singly minded you are in this analysis:
"In general, capital gains taxes are a decently good way to tax an economy. On the fairness side, they affect rich people a lot more. Rich people own a disproportionate share of assets in the first place, even relative to their income; this is why wealth inequality is much higher than income inequality. This means capital gains taxes will hit rich people a lot harder than everyone else."
You have a warped sense of "fairness" looking only at "equity" and not "reciprocity". You fail to mention that rich people currently pay a disproportionate amount of taxes. Currently the bottom 50% pay almost no federal taxes (less than $400/year) while the top 1% pay about 50% of taxes.
To you, what is the "fair-share" the rich should be paying?
Good discussion on how to spend someone else’s money to finance your interests. In addition to the Swiss comment below- No capital gains tax is levied on private financial returns in Switzerland. Strange that there was no mention of a VAT tax. No mention of a flat tax. No mention of the US already having a very heavy progressive income tax. No mention on how these taxes will impact cultural /social grudges . The discussion is lacking. For me, tax Noah and his ilk. I’ll go hide behind the bush as the one time politician Huey Long said.
I thought I was angry about some of this til I read the comments, lol, there is a lot to piss people off here, and for good reason. I have tons to say but I will contain myself to one, raising capital gains taxes will hurt those like me who depend on stocks for retirement. Most people with stock accounts are hardly billionaires. In California they are already taking 33% of what you make every year in cap gains.
This would raise it to 58%. Are you kidding me? no way, this is enough to not make me vote for Biden.
Second, Noah if you see this I would like to see you write an in depth article(s) on what is going wrong with our health care system. I suspect it has more to do with monopolies, middle men, and venture capitalists than anything. I was supportive of single payer til I got medicare, and medicare sucks. They don't pay the Dr.'s anything so the Dr.'s don't want to help you any more than they have to. No surprise I guess.
Getting rid of stepped up basis is the only part that makes sense.
Adding interest to prior years makes no sense. It should be the opposite. Your capital gain should be reduced by the amount of inflation your capital was depreciated in its purchasing power. This is the reason it’s logical to have a capital gain tax rate below income tax rate.
Taxes should just be flat 15-20% on income over median income. Treat all income equal.
So, when I inherit some things, even if it's not a huge amount, there has to be a team of accountants and experts to value the artwork, real estate, small business assets (tangible and intangible) to see exactly how much unrealized capital gains there are? And I have to find grandpa's receipt for the dogs-playing-poker painting to figure out how much he paid for it?
If the tax is only on easily valued stocks and bonds, that seems like a recipe for tax-avoidance strategies.
Right now, taxes are paid on large inheritances in total (not just the unrealized gains), so this proposed step-up basis provision only affects smallish estates.
Taxes on unrealized gains is just a wealth tax. It's a form of virtue signalling and would be a headache to implement. Even an interest rate that accrues over time against unrealized gains would mess with incentives and pricing in illiquid markets.
Any discussion on taxing unrealized gains must also include what happens when unrealized losses occur. Additionally, would this require people to appraise all of their holdings every year? For example, real estate and art. In general, it is just a dumb idea and would require more work than people realize and provide a lot of wiggle room for avoidance.
Considerations must be made regarding illiquidity for unrealized and estate taxes. Most politicians are only thinking about stocks and bonds. Noah mentions this with Venture Capital in particular. Haters will hate, but VC is responsible for a disproportionate amount of current GDP relative to cost. It is a competitive advantage and strategic imperative not to screw this up. Especially now that we might potentially be entering a period of global instability. How would it impact round pricing dynamics as a company seeks more capital from seed onward? Would everything be priced on SAFE notes until exit?
While I agree with the post, what is missing from the discussion is the absolute need for tax simplification. Raising taxes on an over complex tax code is always a fool's errand. I continue to reference TR Reid's fine book, "A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System." there is an absolute need to eliminate all tax preferences and increase the personal deduction in return. We need a Value Added Tax in return for lower corporate income taxes (which are always gamed and can never keep up with clever accountants and tax lawyers). This would lead to an elimination of off shore tax havens.
In my case, the government knows all of my income through various income reporting forms and under any reasonable tax system, I should simply be able to signoff on my tax return in five minutes without having to us Turbo Tax every filing season.
Tax simplification can relieve taxpayer headaches and raise more revenue at the same time. Occam's Razor at work!!!!
Come on Noah. This is frankly starting to get absurd. Redistributing along racial lines? Taxing unrealized gains? Next step socialism, and finally, put the market-dominant white/asian/jewish soon-to-be-minorities against the wall, shoot them, and take their wealth. Especially considering the New Left has aligned with the Jihadists.
Both parties in the USA have absolutely lost it.
Given that I don't see the Republicans ever really running this nation again. Everyone should denounce the absurdity of the Democratic party as much as possible.
Man, I'm so done with property rights being under attack in the West due to notions of social justice. Frankly, It's why I am moving to Switzerland. Good property rights equals a good nation. You don't mess with these ideas because 200 years ago someone was wronged somewhere.
A few comments: 1) estate taxes play havoc on small and mid-sized businesses as one generation builds on the equity from the other; 2) the Biden "equity" is a bad idea. It would foster more distrust of the tax collection system than currently. Being treated equally and fairly is the only reasonable basis; and 3) I get concerned when the talk is about raising taxes and cutting spending. While, in principle, I support it, politicians will always find ways out of raising taxes and compromising out of the spend side. Among the vehicles they use are accounting gimmicks, double counting and time-bound cuts. Remember, one Congress can bind another.
I gotta tell you I look at the historical taxes vs spending as % of GDP and one of those lines looks way more out of historical ordinary than the other - and it’s not the tax take. If we want as a society to decide that we have been wrong for 200+ years and we need the government to play a far larger role in the economy starting with healthcare sure let’s have that discussion. But let’s not lazily limp into it with a “fair share” type arguments. The amount of $ we spend on the last few years of life vs getting our young people ready for life is just absurd. Maybe start there.
Noah- a great follow-up post would be how and where cutting spending would be effective. Also, any other proposed taxes meaningful taxes? Personally I like the idea of uncapping the income limit on social security taxes.
Biden is proposing a spending plan, not a deficit reduction plan or a tax plan.
I think any analysis should start from scratch, and also acknowledge the US is spending nearly 3 percent of GDP more than it was in 2019 and had a couple of blowout years where unfunded handouts of 10 percent of GDP were dispensed - the 2020 blowout was perhaps necessary. 2021 was unnecessary and inflationary. The idea that we need to spend even more on “high priority” items is nuts. There should be no net spending increases for at least a decade.
Now is time to pay the piper. The economy is doing well, and spending cuts and tax hikes will help solve the sticky inflation problem.
I think a fundamental problem is that neither the parties nor the voters (nor, apparently, the pundits) realize we’ve been reckless and irresponsible and are now entering a long period of austerity. The Republicans like tax cuts (or tax cut extensions/renewals). The Dems love to spend and only use tax hikes as the barest fig leaf for new spending. The way budget reconciliation works has led to the raiding of social security and Medicare to fund new spending elsewhere (Medicare drug “savings” are used to justify much higher outlays in the IRA, for example).
Talk of cutting old age entitlements without capping or cutting new spending elwewhere achieves nothing. Once pols are used to running $2 trillion deficits, they will run $2 trillion deficits. If they cut $200 billion from Medicare they will (in time) just spend that $200 billion buying votes in some other program.
As an exercise, I’d love to see each party come up with a plan to balance non-social security/non-medicare spending in 5 years and keep it balanced for a succeeding ten years. Parties could choose whatever mix of spending cuts or tax hikes they like. This exercise would at least inform people as the scale of what we are facing- big spending cuts AND big tax hikes…..on everyone.
Meanwhile, we should ensure that any old age benefit cuts or tax hikes/“savings” in social security and Medicare should only be used to make those programs more solvent. If the main budget is balanced at full employment the old age problem becomes manageable and we can come up with bipartisan solutions. Without a framework for overall austerity, any old age savings we try first will simply be spent.
It was the Reagan/O’Neil social security tax hikes (plus, what turned out to be unwise defense cuts) that led to the ephemeral budget surpluses in Clinton years. Congress ended up spending that social security windfall during the Bush and Bush/Pelosi years. They can’t resist running deficits. Obama used Medicare cuts and new Medicare investment taxes to spend even more on Obamacare. Biden used Medicare “savings” to justify spending more in the IRA.
When pols talk about “reforming” social security and Medicare they are mostly salivating about what they will be able to spend that money on.
It is long past time to move to an austerity mindset. This will actually reduce inflation and reduce real interest rates (1 percent growth with 0 percent real rates is better than 2.5 percent growth with 2.5 percent real rates when government debt is >100 percent of GDP).
We’ll need all the tax hike and spending cut ideas people can come up with. We also need to pressure pols into fiscal austerity and laugh at them when they propose new spending from here partially “covered” by some poll-tested tax ideas rather than treating their vote-buying ideas as a good faith effort.
If the media and the pundits turn against tax and spend, it would be a start (they’ve long been against tax cuts, or at least unfunded ones).
How about, instead of looking where we're going, we spend some time looking at where we're come from. In my lifetime, the federal government has gone from being a place in Washington DC to being omnipresent. Of course, it costs a lot of money to butt into everyone's life. Here's a thought; STOP!
In the name of 'social justice' we now have incredible numbers of homeless people living in tent cities, we have rampant drug abuse, we have antisemitism at the highest level that anyone remembers, and we have social malaise as people recognize that the way we're doing it is wrong, but they can't figure out what is right. Hell, they can't even figure out what gender they are!
They say, when you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, when you can print money, every problem looks financial. We are rich enough. More money in more programs won't solve squat. The federal government is not the solution, it is the problem.
Capital gains should be indexed for inflation, regardless of what capital gains tax rate is chosen.
Estate taxes are not good, but cap gains on deemed dispositions upon death play the same role and should replace them.
Levying interest on prior unrealized gains is just first-rate bonkers, exacerbating the problems that should be mitigated with deemed disposition implementation.
Cap gains upon death creates a problem with intergenerational assets like small businesses, shared residences and recreational properties. Provisions should be made to:
1) Avoid cap gains taxing inflation. This is especially a problem with intergenerational real estate, where tax-eviction can occur.
2) Allow deemed disposition to occur over a period of years (e.g. 5) rather than upon death. This helps reduce shock tax-eviction, better integrates with progressive tax rates, and largely benefits the middle class with smaller values of inheritances while the truly wealthy still bear the full front of progressive taxes.
3) A low-end cut-off. Again, this helps remove a lot of middle class gains but doesn't exempt the rich.
However the idea of levying 'interest' on past gains is nuts. It's bad enough that cap gains is taxing inflation.
A perspective from a recently retired professional.
I no longer have a solo medical practice having sold it to Private Equity and paid (in NYS) an effective tax rate of over 30%.
I've greatly benefitted from frugality and the recent stock market performance. Market performance cuts both ways and just as easily can be a negative.
Besides SS there is no other source of income for me. So raising my taxes after planning retirement is disruptive and raises the fairness issue. I am well off, but in no way is this dynasty wealth.
As with many things, the 0.01-0.5%ers will find a way to avoid taxes.
Let's see an analysis of your plan eliminating the most egregious tax loopholes and enforcing the tax code on the tax side
This is among the worst analysis of Biden's tax plan I have seen yet. It is MOSTLY bad with minimal bright spots.
1) The tax proposal is based in EQUITY. The quest for equity has left over 100,000,000 people dead; killed by the very governments tasked to protect and to promote their welfare. The rivers of blood spilt on the alter of equity would fill the Amazon River; a river that runs very deep, wide and fast. There is no greater evil than equity.
2) The taxation of unrealized capital gains (basically a wealth tax) of 25% would destroy almost every company in existence. It would not only destroy the startup economy (the driver of future growth) it would also destroy existing companies as everyone that invests in future and current enterprises would eventually be to broke to invest in anything.
3) The idea of charging interest on realized capital gains as well as a 45% capital gains tax is ludicrous. Can you impinge, if after holding stocks in a retirement account for 30 years (with most of the value growth in value) getting taxed 45% when you sell it and then getting charge 5% interest year over year on that growth. So you sell your stocks for $50,000, pay $17,500 in taxes and $40,000 in interest. So now, you have a tax liability of $7,500 and have to sell more of your retirement simply to pay the government.
4) I do agree changes to the step-up in basis could use some work and having the growth in value carry over generations could very well be a step in the right direction. However, it has to be acknowledged that dynastic wealth in the US is not a very big contributor to wealth inequality. 70% of inherited wealth in gone in 2 generations and over 98% is cone in 3.
5) This paragraph shows how singly minded you are in this analysis:
"In general, capital gains taxes are a decently good way to tax an economy. On the fairness side, they affect rich people a lot more. Rich people own a disproportionate share of assets in the first place, even relative to their income; this is why wealth inequality is much higher than income inequality. This means capital gains taxes will hit rich people a lot harder than everyone else."
You have a warped sense of "fairness" looking only at "equity" and not "reciprocity". You fail to mention that rich people currently pay a disproportionate amount of taxes. Currently the bottom 50% pay almost no federal taxes (less than $400/year) while the top 1% pay about 50% of taxes.
To you, what is the "fair-share" the rich should be paying?
Good discussion on how to spend someone else’s money to finance your interests. In addition to the Swiss comment below- No capital gains tax is levied on private financial returns in Switzerland. Strange that there was no mention of a VAT tax. No mention of a flat tax. No mention of the US already having a very heavy progressive income tax. No mention on how these taxes will impact cultural /social grudges . The discussion is lacking. For me, tax Noah and his ilk. I’ll go hide behind the bush as the one time politician Huey Long said.
I thought I was angry about some of this til I read the comments, lol, there is a lot to piss people off here, and for good reason. I have tons to say but I will contain myself to one, raising capital gains taxes will hurt those like me who depend on stocks for retirement. Most people with stock accounts are hardly billionaires. In California they are already taking 33% of what you make every year in cap gains.
This would raise it to 58%. Are you kidding me? no way, this is enough to not make me vote for Biden.
Second, Noah if you see this I would like to see you write an in depth article(s) on what is going wrong with our health care system. I suspect it has more to do with monopolies, middle men, and venture capitalists than anything. I was supportive of single payer til I got medicare, and medicare sucks. They don't pay the Dr.'s anything so the Dr.'s don't want to help you any more than they have to. No surprise I guess.
Getting rid of stepped up basis is the only part that makes sense.
Adding interest to prior years makes no sense. It should be the opposite. Your capital gain should be reduced by the amount of inflation your capital was depreciated in its purchasing power. This is the reason it’s logical to have a capital gain tax rate below income tax rate.
Taxes should just be flat 15-20% on income over median income. Treat all income equal.
So, when I inherit some things, even if it's not a huge amount, there has to be a team of accountants and experts to value the artwork, real estate, small business assets (tangible and intangible) to see exactly how much unrealized capital gains there are? And I have to find grandpa's receipt for the dogs-playing-poker painting to figure out how much he paid for it?
If the tax is only on easily valued stocks and bonds, that seems like a recipe for tax-avoidance strategies.
Right now, taxes are paid on large inheritances in total (not just the unrealized gains), so this proposed step-up basis provision only affects smallish estates.
A few points:
Taxes on unrealized gains is just a wealth tax. It's a form of virtue signalling and would be a headache to implement. Even an interest rate that accrues over time against unrealized gains would mess with incentives and pricing in illiquid markets.
Any discussion on taxing unrealized gains must also include what happens when unrealized losses occur. Additionally, would this require people to appraise all of their holdings every year? For example, real estate and art. In general, it is just a dumb idea and would require more work than people realize and provide a lot of wiggle room for avoidance.
Considerations must be made regarding illiquidity for unrealized and estate taxes. Most politicians are only thinking about stocks and bonds. Noah mentions this with Venture Capital in particular. Haters will hate, but VC is responsible for a disproportionate amount of current GDP relative to cost. It is a competitive advantage and strategic imperative not to screw this up. Especially now that we might potentially be entering a period of global instability. How would it impact round pricing dynamics as a company seeks more capital from seed onward? Would everything be priced on SAFE notes until exit?