"John Pederson, 33, couldn’t work. The former Outback Steakhouse line cook was recovering from a car crash and running out of money. Kalshi, the prediction market, promised a quick way to fix that. He took out a variable-interest loan and started betting.

At first, it worked. Pederson turned about $2,000 into close to $8,000 by betting on daily snowfall totals in Detroit, where he lives. He parlayed that into $41,000 by trading on sports, using a strategy he developed with the help of AI, according to a Wall Street Journal review of his account records.

Then he placed his most audacious bet yet: All $41,000 that a celebrity would say a particular word on TV. He lost it all.
Pederson isn’t alone in walking away empty-handed from the bet-on-anything markets, which cover sports, celebrities, news and more.

Kalshi and its competitor Polymarket advertise themselves as life-changing tools for regular people—implying everyone has a fair chance to score. “I was about to be unable to pay my rent, but I got two years of rent through Kalshi’s predictions,” gushed one woman in a Kalshi ad on TikTok.

But for most users the reality is nothing like that.

Instead, casual traders are bleeding cash while a small number of sophisticated pros—including trading firms with access to vast streams of data—eat their lunch, according to a Journal analysis of platform data and interviews with traders.

On Polymarket, the Journal found, 67% of profits go to just 0.1% of accounts. That means less than 2,000 accounts netted a total of nearly half a billion dollars. The Journal analyzed 1.6 million Polymarket accounts that have traded since November 2022. There are at least 2.3 million total accounts on the site."

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/polymarket-kalshi-betting-profits-prediction-markets-eb23ac11

#Polymarket #Kalshi #PredictionMarkets #RichGetRicher

RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/116285092335401397

Monetizing the government.

#economics
#richGetRicher

RE: https://aus.social/@mojo/116226909359896424

Hmmm: “Just 10 of the country's wealthiest electorates account for a third of the national expenditure on the CGT discount, according to the analysis of tax data by the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS). And that comes at a cost of about $23.5 billion per year to the taxpayer.

"It’s clear this tax break funnels billions into the wealthiest parts of our cities and country at the expense of those doing it tough," the group's CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie said.”

#AusPol #CGT #CapitalGainsTax #inequality #richGetRicher #tax #ACOSS

Hospital Ship for Greenland?

Rump recently said he would send a hospital ship to Greenland. This is, of course, an attempt at bribing Greenlanders that falls flat on its face. You see, Greenlanders already have free health care. If Rump sends a hospital ship, it only means that Greenlanders have two free methods of getting care for what ails them.

Perhaps Rump would be better off looking at home if he wants to offer free health care. Many, many, many people in the US would love to have this free health care Rump is offering. Why not offer it to his own citizens? This might pull up his tanking poll numbers.

Rump understands bribes. After all he has accepted a golden jet already for the presidency. And a made up peace prize from FIFA. And is currently accepting moneys to go toward rebuilding the White House. He is probably surprised that Greenlanders are still rejecting his overtures.

But of course Rump tries to give free health care to those who already have it. The rich get richer is his mantra and what his time in office is all about. This may seem like a waste to any normal human but to Rump it is just a redundancy that guarantees Greenlanders free health care.

I don’t understand how this hasn’t caused a flurry of protests in the US as he offers foreigners free health care but pulls back health care to his own citizens. Some Americans are waking up (again the tanking poll numbers) but it is so very slow.

Also, I have doubts on the use of hospital ships. I wouldn’t trust surgery on them in anything even approaching rough seas. “Oops! The surgeon cut in the wrong spot and then because of sea sickness, puked in the gash!” Yes I would have nightmares about having surgery on a ship.

It’s not just that. Getting a swab or a needle or taking a blood sample might be similarly dangerous During a storm, a hospital ship might be entirely useless. And I wonder if it would be trapped in the ice off of Greenland’s frozen shores in the winter. A hospital ship that can only operate in the spring, summer and fall doesn’t sound too great to me. Don’t get sick in the winter!

A tale of two pairs of boots shows how the rich get richer in ways poor people simply can't

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/boots-theory-why-rich-get-richer-ex1