Posts from policy

The Case For EVs

The Gotham Gal and I own five EVs and have been driving electric-powered cars since 2014. I don’t drive gas-powered cars and haven’t for a few years now. We have purchased two Chevy Bolts, two Tesla Model Ss, and one Rivian truck.

I love the instant acceleration you get from an EV, I enjoy driving mostly with just one foot due to the fact that EVs accelerate and brake using the accelerator pedal, I like that I can charge my car every night at home (using solar panels on our roofs) and don’t have to go to the gas station anymore, and I like that the maintenance costs and hassle are much lower with an EV. There is certainly an environmental benefit from driving EVs, but in my view, EVs are also better cars (and trucks).

But EVs remain expensive and “risky” for most folks and only 9% of global car sales are electric and that percentage is smaller in the US (more like 5%).

So how do we change that?

With gas prices sky-high, policymakers are looking to do something about the cost of driving. They are talking about short-term solutions like gas tax holidays that will do little to reduce the price of gas. I believe they should spend that money on longer-term solutions that will accelerate the conversion to EVs and reduce our reliance on the fossil fuel industry.

So what would those things be? Here is a list:

1/ A government-backed loan program (like student loans) that makes buying an EV less expensive to the average car and truck purchaser.

2/ An incentive program for merchants (think Starbucks or 7-Eleven, but it could be any merchant) to install and offer fast-charging stations.

3/ Subsidies to build battery manufacturing facilities (80% of EV battery manufacturing is in China).

4/ Policies to produce more cathode materials (which are roughly half of the cost of an EV battery).

Most automobile manufacturers are making EVs now. They understand EVs are the future. But there remain real impediments to consumer adoption of EVs. We need policies that work to reduce those impediments and speed the adoption of EVs and we need them now.

#climate crisis#economics#policy

The Gillibrand Lummis Bill

New York Senator Gillibrand and Wyoming Senator Lummis have teamed up to propose a bi-partisan bill that would shift much of the regulatory oversight of crypto assets from the SEC to the CFTC, acknowledging that these tokens are much more like commodities than securities.

The details of the bill will be made public today and then there will be a lot of feedback from elected officials, regulators, and industry. It is not certain that this bill will become law and if it does, it is not certain that it will look anything like the initial bill.

But even so, I am very encouraged by this development. Crypto tokens are a foundational element of web3, a technology architecture that allows for decentralized applications which lessen the control of big tech monopolies on our lives and our data, and that allows for users to own their data and a share of the networks that the applications are built on. Constraining these user tokens as securities is not only incorrect but also would inhibit much of their utility and therefore the potential for web3 to remake the technology industry as is so desperately needed.

So I applaud the work of Senators Gillibrand and Lummis and their staffs. They are making an important statement with this bill and I believe that this is a big step in the right direction.

#crypto#policy#Politics#Web3

New Leadership At Tech:NYC

Six years ago this month Julie Samuels got together with a group of technology leaders in NYC and we decided to form an industry group for the growing tech sector in NYC. I agreed to co-chair the organization and have been in the chair role since then. We called it Tech:NYC and I first wrote about it here at AVC in March of 2016.

Last year, after more than five years at the helm, Julie decided it was time to pass the baton to a new leader and she and I and a group of board members spent the fall talking to lots of people and we found a fantastic new leader named Jason Clark. Jason starts as the Executive Director of Tech:NYC next week.

Jason takes over an organization of 800+ member companies, from the largest names in tech to the three-person startup you have yet to hear of. Tech:NYC has succeeded in getting tech “at the table” in Albany and City Hall and helping to make the tech sector more civic-minded and more integrated into the city and state. Julie and her team have done a tremendous job of taking an idea and making it a reality and I am incredibly grateful for her leadership.

The tech sector finds itself at an interesting moment in NYC. It is quickly becoming the largest employer in NYC and is bringing much-needed innovation to the city, state, and world. We have new leaders in Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul who are eager to work closely with the tech sector to do new things and move the region forward. But with great success comes great responsibility and the tech sector needs to employ a broader and more diverse group of NYers, it needs to be more civic-minded, it needs to be more philanthropic, and it needs to think beyond Manhattan out to the five boroughs and on to New York State and the NY Metropolitan region.

And Jason is the perfect leader to take Tech:NYC in those directions. Jason is a born and bred NYer, from southern Queens, a product of the NYC public schools, a lawyer who has started a law firm and worked in the Attorney General’s office in Harlem, and a former candidate for public office for the City Council seat in his home neighborhood in southeast Queens. Jason has the relationships, the lived experiences, and the mindset to lead NYC’s tech sector in the directions it must go as it becomes the leading industry and employer in the city and state.

I welcome Jason to Tech:NYC and look forward to working closely with him and the city and state leaders to step up to the opportunity that is in front of us. It is an exciting time.

Also, Jason is already on the hunt for a strong policy director with lots of tech experience. If you would like to fill that role or know someone great, please visit this job spec with instructions on how to get into the process.

#NYC#policy#Politics

IRAs and Wealth Creation

A couple of years ago, I wrote about buying crypto in an IRA. I went and did that with an old unused IRA that was sitting in cash and I have 8x’d the value of that IRA in the last 18 months. While my family is fortunate that we don’t have to rely on our IRAs to generate wealth like this, many folks do.

Tens of millions of people in the US rely on IRAs to save money tax-free for their retirement. There is $13 Trillion invested in IRAs and only 30,000 of those accounts have more than $5mm in them. IRAs are the retirement accounts for main street, not wall street.

And yet, the House Ways and Means Committee is now suggesting eliminating the ability of these IRA holders to invest their IRAs in the highest returning assets available; VC funds, private equity, and private companies (page 689, section 138312). I am sure they are proposing this to prevent wealthy people like me from using the tax shield of the IRA to invest in private businesses. But there are better ways to do that than a blanket prohibition.

A blanket prohibition will hurt main street, not wall street. We already limit what folks who aren’t wealthy can invest in by virtue of a multitude of regulations. It upsets me to no end that this paternalistic approach keeps the wealthy making lots of money and everyone else on the sidelines. I have railed about this set of issues here at AVC since I started blogging almost twenty years ago now.

What we should do instead is limit the tax advantages of an IRA to a set amount of money, something like single-digit millions. That will limit their attractiveness as a tax shield for millionaires but maintain them as a wealth generator for everyone else.

Please tell your elected officials in Washington that Section 138312 of the Reconciliation Bill must go. It hurts main street, not wall street, and is bad policy.

#policy#Politics

Crypto and the Infrastructure Bill

I mentioned the infrastructure bill here last week. I continue to be impressed by the way Senators and the White House are working across the aisle to get a very big piece of legislation across the finish line. It is not done, but it sure looks like it will get done.

As I mentioned in the post last week, there is language in the initial draft of the bill requiring crypto “brokers” to report gains and losses to the IRS. The Treasury expects this provision to produce upwards of $30bn in new tax revenues over the next ten years.

I personally have no issue with crypto gains and losses being treated the same as stock gains and losses and we have been doing that at USV for quite a while now. But I do have concerns that the way “brokers” are defined in the context of crypto is very different than how it is defined in the traditional financial sector. The language in the initial draft is overly broad, infringing on privacy, and technically unworkable. Crypto industry participants like miners, wallets, smart contracts, and other kinds of hardware and software cannot carry the same obligations as “brokers” like Coinbase and Square Cash.

But here is the good news. The crypto sector has come together to get the language changed in a way that I have never seen before. Everyone in crypto is working together, staying on message, working all of the avenues, and creating the appropriate amount of pressure on the process. And while we do not yet have the language we need, we are getting there and I am hopeful that we will land in a good place.

It is also the case that when a government decides that a sector is an important producer of revenues, that is a sign that it has arrived. Many out there think these new regulations are bad for crypto but I think they are a bullish sign. Crypto is here to stay and is a mainstream industry now.

For these reasons, I think this is a watershed moment for crypto in the US. The industry has come together like never before and is acting in concert, professionally and productively. It is on message and effective. And the government is getting in business with the crypto sector to finance it’s own needs. That sounds like a win to me.

#blockchain#crypto#policy#Politics#Uncategorized

The Lost Art Of Compromise

I am heartened to see both sides of the political aisle in the US came together yesterday to agree to move forward on a $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill.

There are parts of the bill that I don’t like (asking blockchain smart contracts to send 1099s to the IRS seems nuts to me) and parts that were taken out that I think are critical (like building a nationwide EV charging network).

But perfect is the enemy of the good. We have not had a functioning legislative branch at the federal level in the US in a long time. I am hopeful that a bipartisan victory on infrastructure will pave the way towards other bipartisan efforts and the right and left will start talking to each other, respecting each other, and governing again.

I have spent my adult career making deals with people. I have learned that you can never get exactly what you want when you make deals. You must compromise so that both sides can feel that they won. And when you do that, there are many times when both sides do win. If you choose to sit on the sidelines, you almost always lose.

I am happy to see that our elected officials in Washington have decided to get back into the game again.

#Current Affairs#policy#Politics

Stablecoins vs CBDCs

I have written about stablecoins in the past. I think they are a very important part of the crypto asset landscape. Two of the top ten crypto assets by market cap are stablecoins, Tether ($62bn) and USDC ($27bn). You don’t buy these assets to generate gains because they are price stabilized. You hold them like cash, to be able to move in and out of trades, purchase things, etc.

Countries around the world are looking at stablecoins and thinking “we should issue these assets via our central banks.” That is called a “central bank digital currency” or CBDC for short. China is the farthest along on a CBDC but many other countries around the world are thinking about CBDCs or building them.

Yesterday, SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce suggested that stablecoins are preferable to CBDCs.

Hester focused on the privacy concerns around CBDCs, and I agree with her that I would rather hold USDC than a Fed issued digital dollar.

But there is another more important reason to want stablecoins to win over CBDCs – competition.

When you have competition, you get innovation, new features, composability, and a host of other important benefits. When you have a monopoly, like the US Government or any government, pushing out the alternatives and forcing us to use their digital dollar, you lose all the value of competition. And that would be a terrible thing.

I am all for central banks issuing digital currencies. But they should compete for our usage with market-based stablecoins. Then we get the best of both worlds. I hope policymakers in the US and around the world understand the importance of competition and allow stablecoins to co-exist with CBDCs.

#crypto#policy

Taxing Airbnb Stays In NYS and NYC

I guess the theme of this week is taxes. But today’s post is about something completely different. A Company wants to collect and remit taxes to NYS and NYC and lawmakers don’t want the money. I’ve written about this sad tale before but the story continues.

Back in February, NYS Governor Cuomo put a provision into the NYS budget that would allow/require Airbnb to collect NYS and NYC applicable taxes when Airbnb hosts collect revenues from their tenants.

If NYS and NYC were able to fully collect taxes on these Airbnb stays, it is estimated that a total of $130mm would be generated in new revenues; $75mm to NYC, $45mm to NYS, and about $10mm to various other counties in NYS.

Given that the NYS State Legislature wants to raise around $7bn in new tax revenues in this budget session, you would think tapping into this source of tax revenues would be a slam dunk.

But no. NYS legislators who are friends to the hotel industry and sworn enemies of Airbnb have pushed for the removal of this provision and it is likely to be out of the final budget.

It is time for everyone to grow up, recognize that Airbnb is never going away, treat them like the important service provider (to hosts and guests) that they are, and tax this process appropriately. I encourage NYS legislators to do that in this current session. The budget issues are too important to play silly politics anymore.

#NYC#policy#Politics

Capital Gains, Carried Interest, and Ordinary Income

Most of our family’s income comes in the form of capital gains. And most of that comes in the form of carried interest on capital gains. Carried interest means the share of the profits that the managers of VC funds get (and PE funds and Hedge funds too).

For many years, there have been attempts to tax carried interest as ordinary income and those efforts have been fought tenaciously and successfully by the VC, PE, and Hedge Fund industries.

As far back as 2007, before USV had paid any carried interest to me, I wrote on this blog that I did not believe that carried interest deserved capital gains treatment and that, in my view, it was a fee and should be taxed as ordinary income.

I re-asserted that view in 2010, just as USV started to pay carry to me and my partners. My partner Albert also stated his views on the topic that same year.

But after thinking long and hard about this topic over the years, I have come to a slightly different and simpler perspective, one that I wrote about on labor day last year.

I think it would be better policy to lower the income tax rate and raise the capital gains rate to something like 20% so that all income is taxed equally no matter how it is achieved and so they the net impact on revenues is neutral.

https://avc.com/2020/09/honoring-labor/

If we taxed all income at the same rate, regardless of how it was earned, then we would not need to worry about the carried interest loophole and all other loopholes. We would have a simpler and fairer tax code.

I have read that Yellen and Biden are thinking of making some changes to the tax code to increase capital gains rates. I am fine with that. But I think they ought to lower rates on ordinary income at the same time. Get everyone on the same rate. That’s the winning move in my view.

#policy#Politics

Stockton's Basic Income Experiment

I have been interested in the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) since first hearing about it from my partner Albert years ago. I’ve mentioned it on and off here at AVC a bunch since then.

NYC will get its own UBI experiment if front-runner Andrew Yang is elected Mayor. Yang proposes to spend $1bn a year (out of an almost $90bn annual budget) providing $2k a year to 500k of NYC’s neediest citizens.

The theory of UBI is that giving people direct cash payments is more efficient and more effective than providing services to them via third parties. For example, if giving someone $2k a year keeps them in their apartment, the cost of operating homeless shelters and other housing for the homeless goes down. There are many more examples.

Skeptics of UBI point to the welfare system of the “Great Society” and other efforts to suggest that it won’t work and can’t work. They believe it will lead to idleness, drug use, gambling, and other societal ills.

So I read with interest of an experiment the city of Stockton CA did where they gave 125 randomly selected individuals making less than $46k a year a monthly stipend of $500.

The results are interesting. Researchers at the University of Tennessee and University of Pennsylvania concluded that this sample group saw many benefits including helping people get better jobs, better living situations, and better self worth. There was no evidence of increased drug use, gambling, joblessness, or any of the other concerns expressed by opponents of UBI.

I look forward to more experiments with UBI. One of the reasons that Andrew Yang’s candidacy for Mayor of NYC interests me is the opportunity to do a much larger experiment in a city that has a massive social infrastructure and lots of diversity. If UBI works in NYC, that will be very telling.

#NYC#policy