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Nearly 30-Year-Old Capital Gains Tax Exemption Rules Blamed For US Housing Shortage

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

With median home prices exceeding $1 million in many U.S. housing markets, some real estate professionals are drawing attention to a 28-year-old capital gains tax law, citing it as one factor contributing to the nationwide housing shortage.
The expansive penthouse terrace of a 4-bedroom, 4.5 bath, 3,619 SF condo in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, listed at $11.9 million. Courtesy of Nest Seekers International, NYC

A recent report from Realtor.com shows that California is home to 8 of the 10 most expensive housing markets in the United States. San Jose tops the list with a median sales price of $2.02 million, followed by Anaheim and San Francisco at $1.45 million and $1.32 million, respectively.

Ken DeLeon, founder of DeLeon Realty in Palo Alto, told The Epoch Times that some communities in the San Francisco Bay Area have experienced skyrocketing home prices, which have jumped 667 percent on average since 1997—the year the Taxpayer Relief Act was signed into law, allowing married homeowners to exclude up to $500,000 in capital gains from the sale of their primary residence, and $250,000 for single homeowners.

“This outdated capital gains law has resulted in an artificially-created housing shortage,” DeLeon said. “A lot of older people who have lived in their homes for 30 years or more want to sell, but the value of those homes has tripled or quadrupled now. Some of these sellers could now be facing capital gains taxes of over $1 million.”

According to a HUD report, the median cost of a single-family home in 1997 was $143,000, compared with $414,000 in April 2025, as reported by the National Association of Realtors.

With the combined federal and state capital gains tax rate now at 37.1 percent in California, potential sellers seeking to avoid elevated tax exposure are choosing instead to remain in their current properties.

As a result, DeLeon said inventory levels have reached historic lows and sellers are stuck in a tax trap.

“We’ve seen more than 57 percent drop in inventory in the Silicon Valley, which means a lot of single people and young families are also stuck in expensive rentals,” he said.

With properties typically listed at $2 million to $5 million in the region, primarily it’s employees from high-paying tech companies such as Apple, Google, Adobe, and Oracle who can afford them, DeLeon said.

“People do want to buy, but listings are scarce. And the housing shortage is driving prices even higher,” he said.

DeLeon contends that the economic ripple effects of the almost three-decade-old tax formula is causing not only fewer home sales, but less revenue from transfer taxes, reset property taxes, and local economic activity.

California is not alone in facing this capital gains crisis. Bianca D’Alessio, a broker with Nest Seekers International in New York City, is seeing a similar situation with her clients, particularly owners of brownstones in the borough of Brooklyn.

“We have older people who may have bought their home 30 years ago for less than…

Stock Market Performance As Summer Arrives

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.cm,

Breakout! Next Stop, Previous Highs

Last week, we discussed the successful test of the 200-DMA.

“Most notably, this past week was the successful test of the 200-DMA. The pullback to that previous broken resistance level and subsequent bounce highly suggests that the April correction is complete and that market control returns to the Bulls. As such, there is very little resistance between current levels and all-time highs. However, as noted last week, with the markets still overbought on a momentum basis, further consolidation will be unsurprising before an advance to new highs occurs. With the MACD sell signal triggered and money flows declining, another test of the 200-DMA next week would be unsurprising.”

Despite a weakening unemployment report, a spat between President Trump and Elon Musk, a resurgence in the Ukraine/Russia conflict, and remaining tariff uncertainty between China, Europe, and the U.S., the markets continued their bullish ways this past week. Notably, the market broke out of the ongoing consolidation process that has been in place since May 12th. The good news is that bullish breakouts confirm bullish momentum and suggest markets will trade higher into the next resistance level. That next resistance level is at 6100, the previous topping process before the March and April decline.

The market remains overbought short-term, but it is not uncommon for markets to stay overbought longer than most expect. While we patiently await a pullback to increase portfolio exposure, that could be a while longer before it occurs.

Critically, we are not looking for LOWER prices to add exposure. I am okay with paying higher prices. However, we are searching for a better risk/reward opportunity to add exposure. As such, a consolidation period that allows relative strength or momentum to cool off somewhat will provide a better buying opportunity than under current conditions. We already have sufficient exposure to the market to gain performance when markets rise, but deploying capital at these levels is more “risky” than I prefer.

While the probabilities are increasing that the market will potentially rally from here to 6100, there is an equal risk of disappointment. In other words, the risk/reward equals one, which is not a compelling “bet” for deploying capital. However, with some patience and the willingness to sacrifice some short-term performance, we will get an opportunity where the risk/reward proposition improves markedly. Those opportunities happen with regularity, just not when most expect them.

Let’s explore the seasonal stock market performance in June and the summer, and where the best opportunities may be found.

June Stock Market Performance

After a powerful May, what does June’s stock market performance tend to look like? Historical data for the S&P 500 (since 1950) shows that June is typically a seasonally weak month—a key piece of the adage “Sell in May and go away.” That adage is a centuries-old market maxim rooted in the observation that stock market returns tend to be weaker during the summer months (May through October) compared to the “seasonally strong months” of November through April.

Since 1950, the S&P 500’s average returns from May through October have been considerably lower (about 1–2% total gain) than those…

Restoring American Maritime Dominance: A National Imperative

Authored by Andy Thaxton via RealClearWire,

As a career Naval intelligence officer, I spent years observing China’s maritime ascent. Briefing after briefing warned of China’s increasingly aggressive intentions of seapower, and yet, all that analytical churn has had negligible impact on U.S. naval posture. Now, watching from the sidelines, I remain alarmed by the widening gap between the naval and shipbuilding capabilities of the United States and the People’s Republic of China. What once was a slow, methodical buildup by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has accelerated into a rapidly growing strategic threat to U.S. maritime supremacy—both commercially and militarily. Without exaggeration, the United States is facing an urgent national security crisis.

While the U.S. rested on the laurels of its past naval dominance, China has systematically executed a comprehensive, state-directed maritime strategy that is now reshaping the global balance of naval power.

If the U.S. fails to respond with urgency and scale, we risk ceding control of the seas—and with it, the geopolitical influence that flows from maritime power.

The data is staggering. According to the April 2025 Report to Congress on Chinese Naval Modernization, China’s navy currently operates over 370 battle force ships, a number projected to grow to 435 by 2030. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is struggling to maintain around 290 ships, with ambitions—still largely unfunded—of reaching 316 by 2053. Equally alarming, China’s shipyards possess more than 230 times the shipbuilding capacity of the U.S. According to a recent report by The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), China “built more commercial vessels by tonnage in 2024 than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has built since the end of World War II.” You might want to read that sentence again.

But the disparity is not merely in tonnage or hulls. China’s state-supported shipbuilding industry benefits from over 150 shipyards, including eight major naval production sites capable of building large warships, aircraft carriers, and amphibious assault ships in parallel. In stark contrast, the U.S. Navy is dependent on just seven private shipyards, several of which are overburdened, outdated, and struggling with workforce shortages. Further, the Congressional Report on U.S. Navy Force Structure indicated that nearly every major U.S. shipbuilding program is behind schedule and over budget.

Meanwhile, China’s maritime ambitions have expanded beyond the Indo-Pacific. As documented in the December 2024 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, China’s global maritime reach now spans 10,000 miles beyond Taiwan, including permanent naval bases in Djibouti and increasing influence in ports across Pakistan, Cambodia, and Equatorial Guinea. The foundation of this expansion is China’s merchant fleet—the world’s largest—which can be rapidly converted to military use in a real-world shooting war. Again, by contrast, the U.S. merchant fleet has dwindled to fewer than 180 international trading ships, severely limiting sealift capacity in a contested environment.

Taken together, this paints a picture of a maritime balance that is tipping rapidly and dangerously toward Beijing. Initiatives such as President Trump’s Executive Order on Restoring Maritime Dominance and the reintroduction of the SHIPS Act signal a growing recognition of the problem,…

Data Center Construction Boom Faces Local Resistance In 28 States

Authored by John Haughley via The Epoch Times,

The need for data centers to drive 21st century cloud computing and win the AI race with China is a matter of such national urgency that Energy Secretary Chris Wright describes it as America’s “next Manhattan Project.”

But assessing how many data centers—a ubiquitous yet vague term for “server farms,” supercomputer networks, bitcoin and crypto “mines”—exist right now in the United States is, in itself, a foray into quixotic cloudy computing.

There were a “reported” 5,426 data centers in the United States in March, according to Statista.

Meanwhile, Denmark-based Data Center Map ApS counts 3,761 listed data centers in the United States. Data Centers.com, a global technology marketplace headquartered in Colorado, maintains there are 2,483 of the centers now operating nationwide.

These and other estimates confirm the consensus that the United States has five to 10 times the number of functioning data centers as any other country in the world, including China.  In fact, approximately half the planet’s data centers are in the United States, according to a ranking by Visual Capitalist.

And yet, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said during the April 30 Hill & Valley Forum, an annual gathering of congressional lawmakers and Silicon Valley venture capitalists, the need to build out the nation’s electric grid to power more data centers is “one of two existential threats we face as a country;” the other beingIran’s development of a nuclear weapon. If that need is not met, the nation will “lose the AI race with China.”

The projected energy demand for data centers will triple by 2028, the Department of Energy estimated last year. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation forecast the same number a year earlier.

These “load growth” assessments, coming after years of relative stagnation in electricity usage, were issued after the late-2022 advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That shockwave rattled utilities, regional transmission operators, and state public utility commissions, sending them scrambling to scale-up electrical grids to accommodate this projected growth in data centers.

The result was a data center building spree. CBRE, a Texas-based commercial real estate services company, in late 2024 projected that more than 4,750 data center projects would break ground in the United States in 2025, “nearly as many … as already exist” nationwide.

New buildings to house data centers constitute “the fastest-growing segment of nonresidential construction planning,” according to a September 2024 Dodge Construction Network analysis.

However, there is no single-source registry documenting how many proposed data centers are now being reviewed before local planning boards.

That vagary was the genesis of Data Center Watch, a research firm tracking the trend and opposition to it, said founder Robert McKenzie, a former Columbia University adjunct professor of international and public affairs.

Much of the media coverage of data centers was “very specific, anecdotal” local news and social media reports, McKenzie told The Epoch Times.

“We hadn’t seen anybody pull together all the data. So we thought, ‘What would happen if you looked across the whole country?’ We weren’t sure what we were going…

These Are The U.S. States With The Most Drug Use

Drug abuse has long been a serious issue in the United States, with the so-called “War on Drugs” dating back to 1971 under President Nixon.

Despite decades of efforts to fight addiction, the problem remains widespread and deadly. More than 80,670 Americans died from drug overdoses in the 12 months ending November 2024. As new threats like fentanyl spread—enough was seized last year for 380 million lethal doses—it’s more urgent than ever for policymakers to act.

But where is the crisis worst? A new report from WalletHub ranks all 50 states and the District of Columbia across key metrics like drug use, overdoses, and access to treatment.

Chip Lupo, an analyst at WalletHub, explains: “Drug problems can start from multiple sources, like taking illegal substances with friends or getting hooked on a prescription that was originally given for a legitimate medical issue. As states fight drug addiction, they need to consider all angles and make sure they are not just addressing things from a law enforcement perspective but also providing the resources necessary to help people with addictions get clean.”

WalletHub’s analysts compared states using 20 metrics organized into three main categories: drug use and addiction, law enforcement, and drug health issues and rehab. These metrics included measures like the percentage of adults and teens who reported using illicit drugs, overdose death rates, opioid prescriptions, and availability of treatment facilities. 

New Mexico tops the list with the biggest drug problem in America. The state has the highest percentage of teens using drugs, the most teens reporting marijuana use before age 13, and the third-highest rate of adult illicit drug use. New Mexico also struggles with high overdose deaths and ranks near the bottom in offering help to those with addiction.

West Virginia ranks second, with the highest overdose death rate in the country and one of the top college campus drug arrest rates. A lack of addiction treatment resources means many residents have nowhere to turn for help.

Nevada comes in third. Nearly 30% of students there report being offered or sold drugs at school. Nevada also ranks high for teens trying marijuana early and has too few treatment facilities to meet the need.

Other high-ranking states include Alaska, the District of Columbia, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Colorado. Each faces unique challenges, from high rates of opioid prescriptions to limited treatment options.

The report also highlights troubling data on teen drug use. New Mexico, Arizona, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Alaska have the highest percentages of teenagers who admit using drugs in the past month. Meanwhile, states like Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas report much lower teen drug use.

Students being offered drugs at school is a big concern, too. California, Nevada, Georgia, New Jersey, and Hawaii top the list for that category, while states like Connecticut and South Dakota report much lower numbers.

The crisis shows no sign of ending on its own. Experts recommend a mix of strategies to combat addiction, including making rehab more accessible and expanding education on the risks of…

Wood Pellets: America’s Underrated Power Play

Authored by Darrell Smith, Executive Director of the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association via RealClearEnergy,

In an energy conversation dominated by buzzwords and breakthroughs, it’s easy to overlook the quiet, proven solutions that are already delivering results. Exhibit A: wood pellets.

These compact cylinders aren’t flashy or trend on social media. For the uninitiated, they are carriers of renewable carbon and energy, sourced from responsibly managed forests; a real, scalable, domestic resource that delivers energy security, climate value, and rural jobs while sustaining and growing forests. Wood pellets are emerging as one of the smartest plays in America’s energy and climate portfolio.

The Math Works

Let’s be clear: climate solutions need to scale. We need terawatts of clean power, gigatons of carbon removal, and a replacement for fossil carbon in sectors where options are limited. Think steel mills, cargo ships, aviation fuel, and cement plants — industries that can’t rely on solar panels and wind turbines.

Enter forest biomass. Every year, America’s 360 million acres of privately-owned forests grow more wood than we harvest. Driven by strong markets for wood products, these forests are powerful carbon sinks that have been growing since the 1950s when regenerative forestry practices became the norm.

Responsible forest management, the kind that thins out fuel for wildfires, not only keeps forests healthy but also supplies feedstock for wood pellets. These pellets burn clean, emit fewer particulates than coal, are carbon-neutral, and have the potential to be carbon-negative when sourced sustainably. In other words, we’re turning forest byproducts into a strategic asset instead of a forest fire risk and ensuring more investment into our nation’s forests.

Valued at $1.75 billion, the U.S. led the world last year in wood pellet exports — heating homes and decarbonizing power grids from Cambridge to Copenhagen. That’s not just a climate win. It’s a geopolitical and economic one. Furthermore, there are ample opportunities to increase use domestically.

 The Digital Surge: Data Centers Meet Biomass

Data centers are growing at breakneck pace. From streaming to AI, every click and query demands energy. These facilities already consume nearly 3% of global electricity, and that figure is climbing fast. In the U.S. alone, data center energy demand is expected to double by 2030.

While tech companies make pledges to run on “100% renewable,” achieving this goal is challenging. Intermittent renewables like wind and solar can’t always deliver the 24/7 baseload power data centers require. Wind and power are not the silver bullet many had hoped, because expensive batteries must be manufactured and installed to account for their lack of reliability. Meanwhile, wood pellets offer a firm, dispatchable, renewable fuel that can complement the grid and provide the consistent power backbone data infrastructure needs, without the carbon price tag of fossil fuels.

Speed is also a challenge. AI infrastructure is being developed on start-up timelines, but the grids meant to supply power are often hampered by multi-year planning cycles and limited capacity. Utilizing the existing biomass fleet or retrofitting coal-fired power stations to run on sustainable biomass bypasses these time-intensive and costly…

‘Very Disrespectful’: Trump ‘Assumes’ Musk Relationship Is Over

Update (1720ET): Here’s the latest in the Trump-Musk feud. 

Trump told NBC News that there would be “serious consequences” if Musk turns around and backs Democratic candidates to run against Republicans who support the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ (no doubt a loaded question from NBC). 
“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told the outlet. “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that.” 
When asked if he had a desire to repair the relationship, Trump said “No,” and he “would assume” it’s over between the two. 
“I’m too busy doing other things,” Trump said, adding “I have no intention of speaking to him.”
Trump was also frank, accusing Musk of being ‘very disrespectful,’ saying

“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the President.” 

Musk, meanwhile, was a mix of de-escalation and pushing his ‘America Party’ – described as his “vision to dismantle the establishment. 

While continuing to express concern over US debt levels. 

Alarming https://t.co/sU8imDEK2P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 7, 2025

Solving the deficit will require divine intervention
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 7, 2025

Cool
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 7, 2025
*  *  *

We’re running low on hats but more are on the way!
Click hat… add to cart… check out… receive awesome hat…

It was a turbulent week in American politics as the Trump–Musk feud erupted over the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ – shattering their alliance with little indication of reconciliation in the near term, though both men appear to have simmered down. 
(ABC News: Brianna Morris-Grant; Reuters: Nathan Howard; Reuters: Kent Nishimura)

Speaking to reporters Friday evening, Trump weighed in on Musk, saying: “I just wish him well.” 

.@POTUS on @elonmusk: “I just wish him well.” pic.twitter.com/2PuFiq5dPe
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 6, 2025

That said, he also reiterated a threat to ‘look at everything’ in regards to Musk’s government contracts.  

🚨 President Trump on canceling Elon Musk’s contracts:
“We’ll take a look at everything. He’s got a lot of money. He gets a lot of subsidy, so we’ll take a look at that only if it’s fair for him and for the country. I would certainly think about it yeah but it has to be fair.” pic.twitter.com/KPBtVJB8PY
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) June 7, 2025
Vice President JD Vance weighed in on “This Past Weekend w/Theo Von”

“I’m always going to be loyal to the president and I hope that eventually Elon kind of comes back into the fold,” said Vance, adding “Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear, but I hope it is.”

JD Vance on the Elon – Trump feud:
President Trump took a bullet for this country. He is doing more than anyone to bring the American Dream back & this bill is a big part of the agenda he promised. War between them isn’t good for America pic.twitter.com/QZH550Oc8Z
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 7, 2025
Vance also gave credit to DOGE for rooting out waste, fraud and abuse (which the BBB does nothing about):

🚨 JD Vance says DOGE found that for “every dollar we were spending on humanitarian assistance, $0.12 was actually…

The Ongoing Fight Against US Child Labor

Child labor law violations in the United States rose in recent years in a manner the Department of Labor has called “alarming”.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, in the fiscal year of 2024, there were more than 4,000 of these infractions recorded, down from a recent peak of almost 5,800 in FY 2023.

According to the most recent DOL report on the topic, the general increase might have been in connection with more effective enforcement and awareness.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The peak was at least in part connected to a high-profile case of child labor uncovered at a meat production plant cleaning company, which has now been found to have employed more than 100 minors in hazardous, overnight cleaning operations in Nebraska and Minnesota.

The case that opened the eyes of many for the harsh realities of present-day child labor ended in February 2023 when Packers Sanitation Services Inc. paid $1.5 million in civil penalties on top of taking mandated steps to strengthen compliance within the company. Meat packing is an industry that has been notorious for employing children in hazardous conditions in the United States, with 145 compliance actions taken in the fiscal years 2023 and 2024 combined. A much bigger general violator of child labor laws is the hospitality industry at more than 1,100 compliance actions over the two given years. Other industries with many infractions were janitorial services and retail, where like in hospitality children run the risk of working inapproriate hours.

Human trafficking is another aspect that is sadly intertwined with child labor and in the fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the DOL notified the Department of Health and Human Services in relation to the suspected human trafficking of 43 workers they suspected were minors as well as making 11 other referrals. A recent survey found that around 60 percent of youths affected by child labor trafficking were form other countries, while around 40 percent were from the United States. The research found that victims commonly knew their trafficker and that in 40 percent of cases they were a family member. This could lead in some cases to the problem being overlooked, the report found. It also advocated for providing official and appropriate vocational opportunities for minors as well as safe housing for all young people in the country to make them less vulnerable to laboral exploitation.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/06/2025 – 23:00…

D-Day: The Great Crusade And The Men Who Made It Work

Authored by Daniel Oliver via American Greatness,

Seventy-one years ago next month, a young man went with his parents and siblings to Europe on a Cunard liner, the MV Britannic.

On the liner with them was a middle-aged couple going to France to visit, for the first time, their son’s grave in Normandy, France.

The beaches of Normandy are where thousands of soldiers, including their son, landed and died on D-Day: June 6, 1944.

The young man, then aged fifteen, had, at best and generously, little understanding of what that couple was doing. Oh yes, he remembered the war from his earliest childhood: he remembered blackouts in New York City, remembered his mother putting the heavy blue paper that cotton came in those days over the windows of their apartment so the “Jerries” (Germans) wouldn’t see any light, remembered hearing planes fly overhead, wondering whether they were “ours” or “theirs,” and remembered his father going at night to stand on the roofs of buildings to be a spotter of German aircraft.

And he remembered hearing the church bells ring when the war in Europe ended—but he was only six then, so his memory was, and is… sketchy.

Seventeen years later, when he was serving in the army in Germany, the horror of war intruded into his faint memory—and almost entirely literary understanding—of armed conflict.

He was a linguist, trained to understand Russian, and particularly Russian military language and jargon. In the unit he was serving with, the best duty, but only for the best linguists, was “plane duty”: the soldiers flew along the East German border most of an afternoon and night, listening to whatever they could pick up, and then had several days off! Our young man was selected for plane duty but was scrubbed from it, permanently, because he was going home for a few weeks of leave.

One night after he returned from leave, the plane crashed. All on board were killed. The official explanation was engine failure, but all the soldiers on the base “knew” it had been shot down by the East Germans (probably the pilot had strayed over the border) and that the U.S. government (the Kennedy administration) had decided not to make a cause célèbre out of it.

Our then-young man remembers seeing the married men’s wives (some of them no more than about eighteen years old) come to the base and collect their husbands’ belongings. That’s when the horror of war hit home.

No movie, not even Saving Private Ryan, could produce the effect of seeing those young girls collecting, grasping at the scanty memorabilia that remained from their very short married lives.

Twenty-seven years later, on a Sunday afternoon, our young man, by then middle-aged, took his children to Coleville-sur-Mer, which is where the Normandy American Cemetery is located. It was officially dedicated on July 19, 1956. Before 1956, the remains of American soldiers who died during the Normandy campaign were temporarily interred at various sites, including the original cemetery established at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer shortly after…