The Tax Nerd Who Bet His Life Savings Against DOGE | Hacker News Reader

The Tax Nerd Who Bet His Life Savings Against DOGE

wsj.com

31 pointsigonvalue18 comments

Story here: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/conservative-economist-sco...

Archive.is gives server error on the wsj url.

TLDR: Musk fans bet that DOGE would cut government spending so the guy bet against them. He ended up betting around $342K (his liquid assets, not what most of us would call life savings) and hedged some of it later. Eventual result was he gained $128K.

that doesnt seem like super great returns

It ain't much, but it's honest work.

~40% in a few months is epic

I think it’s the framing. ‘Bet’ makes us think about doubling up.

This guy made a very calculated low risk wager for pretty great near-term rewards. He outperformed most hedge funds over the same period.

If he had gone all in on ‘black’ twice at a Vegas roulette wheel it’d be a more impressive total, but that’s gambling.

if you think of it like a bond it’s pretty fantastic. coupon rate 3.5% and you got it at a giant discount to par even though it’s actually (according to this guy’s beliefs which proved correct) nearly certain to be repaid.

I mean that was kind of obvious, but I wouldn't know how to bet against that. Defense wasn't going to get cut. Cutting social security and friends is incredibly unlikely. Debt interest is impossible to cut. DOGE believed in cutting outside of that, and that's practically impossible.

PS: After reading the article, is assertion is a bit stronger then that, but still very likely. Good bet.

That article's even better: the bet was a bipartisan one!

> The WSJ report noted that Cole sought advice from other fiscal policy wonks, including Brookings Institution fellow Jessica Riedl, who said the outcome of the bet “should have been completely obvious to anyone who knows anything about the government, the budget and public administration.”

Anyone with any sort of intellectual honesty, or reads any kind of responsible news source would know that despite a solidly controlled GOP government, "fiscal responsibility" is just a slogan for the GOP. They're big government and big deficit spenders through and through.

I mean, that's the GOP

For all the sloganeering, Democratic administrations have better fiscal responsibility about deficit spending

It's amazing how Reagan-era propaganda still sticks despite all evidence

Still gambling.

So?

The effects of gambling aren’t good. Been to a casino? They’re sad places. It should be illegal the same way heroin and fentanyl is. Lots of ppl use opiates, and most don’t end up ruining their lives and that of their families. But there’s quite a few who do, and those folks end up on the street, families break up, and you get a lot of petty crime, squalor, and health problems that your community ends up paying for one way or another. All to make some asshole getting paid from addicting people rich.

Literally any place you put your money is gambling. Its impossible not to gamble if you have money.

There's a difference between buying groceries for your family and losing that same amount of money on a hand of poker.

Not to be obtuse, but for what definition of putting money, and what definition of gambling? I think it's reasonable to distinguish between, say, holding Berkshire Hathaway and day trading. And I'm not sure that you can lump the two together into a definition of gambling that doesn't end up being too broad to be useful.

I was expecting the article to end with “he won tens of millions and never has to work again”, but gambling your life savings on a sketchy betting site for a potential 35% return is idiotic.

The “gambled his life savings” framing in the article is very hyperbolic.

He gambled $300K from his extra savings outside his retirement accounts, and he hedged significantly to reduce downside risk.

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