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AI Data Centers Are the Tax Nobody Voted For
You will never buy anything from an AI data center, yet the bidding to build them is showing up in the price of everything you do buy. In December 2025 the Raspberry Pi, a small computer that held its price for a decade, went from $120 to $305 in four months, and the company said the memory factories were sold out to the AI buildout. This page lists every source behind the video's claims and credits every piece of footage, image, sound and music in it.
Figures are dated in the video and below. Prices, backlogs and auction results were current when the video was locked in August 2026 and will move; several of these series change monthly.
Chapters
- 0:00The $35 computer that now costs $305
- 0:46Outbid by the largest machines ever built
- 1:41Part 1 · The shopping list
- 4:20Part 2 · The wait
- 7:59The visible discount, and who counts it
- 9:16Part 3 · The receipts
- 13:06Part 4 · The other side
- 16:01Part 5 · The answer
- 17:32No vote, nothing to repeal
Sources (48)
Grouped by the part of the story they support. Estimates from analysts, vendors, advocacy groups and trade tallies are attributed as such in the video, and the causes of the console price rises are mixed (memory, tariffs, strategy), which the video says. The other side gets its own section: the shortages predate AI, the tax money is real, and the factories are coming.
The buildout
- Company 2026 capital-expenditure guidance (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta), CreditSights tally via Tom's Hardware, "Big Tech's AI spending plans reach $725 billion"
- Meta Platforms, first-quarter 2026 earnings call, April 29, 2026 (CFO Susan Li on higher component pricing), transcript via The Motley Fool
- U.S. Census Bureau, Value of Construction Put in Place (data centers and offices); Bloomberg, June 1, 2026; Wolf Street, "AI Data Center Construction Spending Goes Exponential," August 3, 2026
- Jason Furman (Harvard), estimate of data-center investment's share of first-half 2025 GDP growth, via Fortune, October 7, 2025
- Advisor Perspectives, "AI Spending Boom: Massive, Not Unprecedented," October 9, 2025 (railroad and telecom investment booms compared)
- TIME, reporting from the Stargate campus, Abilene, Texas, June 24, 2026; Texas Tribune, on Texas Commission on Environmental Quality air-permit filings, July 9, 2026; Epoch AI, Frontier Data Centers Hub entry for Stargate Abilene
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, for the U.S. Department of Energy, December 2024
- International Energy Agency, Energy and AI, April 2025
The equipment wait
- Wood Mackenzie, "Supply shortages and an inflexible market give rise to high power transformer lead times"
- POWER Magazine, "The Transformer Crisis: An Industry on the Brink"; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index, power and distribution transformer manufacturing
- National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Addressing the Critical Shortage of Power Transformers to Ensure Reliability of the U.S. Grid, report to the President, June 2024 (CISA)
- GE Vernova investor materials, first and second quarters of 2026, and CEO Scott Strazik's remarks to analysts, via Utility Dive, Power Engineering, Microgrid Media and Turbomachinery Magazine
- POWER Magazine, "Mitsubishi Will Double Gas Turbine Production as Demand Grows"
- VAWN, electrical equipment lead-time and pricing tallies (switchgear) (aggregator data)
- Eaton, "Eaton Reports Record First Quarter 2026 Results" and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026
- Cleveland-Cliffs, sole U.S. producer of grain-oriented electrical steel: the Defense Production Act determination on grid infrastructure and electrical core steel, April 20, 2026 (as summarized by Pillsbury); the Defense Logistics Agency's $400 million supply contract, July 2026, via Steel Market Update
Memory, copper and people
- Raspberry Pi, "More memory-driven price rises" and the company's price announcements of December 1, 2025, February 2, 2026 and April 1, 2026
- J.P. Morgan Global Research, "The DRAM memory shortage from AI"
- IDC, "Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis and the Potential Impact on the Smartphone and PC Markets in 2026"
- Tom's Hardware, RAM Price Index 2026
- Tom's Hardware, SSD price tracking 2026, with retail price trackers (cheapestssd.com, storagediskprices.com)
- GameSpot, "PS5, Xbox, and Switch 2: here's how their prices have changed since launch"; Microsoft's Xbox price statement for August 1, 2026, via Variety and TechPowerUp; Nintendo, "Price Revision for Nintendo Switch 2 System" (Shuntaro Furukawa's remarks)
- Tom's Guide, on Lenovo and Dell price rises; SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung, interview of July 10, 2026, via Bloomberg and Tom's Hardware
- BHP Insights, "Why AI tools and data centres are driving copper demand," January 2025; Wood Mackenzie via Tom's Hardware, on copper and the data-center buildout
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Electricians
- Industry workforce tallies: iRecruit data center construction labor market report; Associated Builders and Contractors, 2026 construction workforce shortage release (trade tallies, which differ)
- Insurance Journal, via Bloomberg, on data-center electrician wages, July 8, 2026
- Brad Smith, Microsoft, "Winning the AI race," Microsoft On the Issues, May 8, 2025, and later interview remarks via Staffing Industry Analysts
The power bill
- PJM Interconnection, Base Residual Auction reports for 2025/2026 through 2028/2029, and PJM Inside Lines announcements, including July 14, 2026
- Avalon Energy Services, "PJM 2028/2029 Base Residual Auction Clears at Price Cap," July 2026 (the uncapped clearing prices)
- Monitoring Analytics, PJM's independent market monitor, capacity-auction and state-of-the-market reports, as reported by Utility Dive
- Inside Climate News, on PJM's demand forecast and the capacity auction, July 20, 2025
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Today in Energy, residential electricity prices; Short-Term Energy Outlook; Electric Power Monthly
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index
- Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, "The Effects of Load Growth on Electricity Prices in the United States: A Literature Review," June 2026
- New York Independent System Operator, load data for New York City (approximate peak)
The tax breaks
- Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC), review of data center incentives, with coverage by Virginia Business, WRIC and Cardinal News (June 19, 2026)
- The Commonwealth Institute, "Virginia's Data Center Tax Debate: What Changed and Why It Matters," July 2026; Holland & Knight, "Virginia Preserves Data Center Tax Incentive, Adds New Electricity Consumption Tax," August 2026
- Good Jobs First, "Data Center Subsidies Surge as States Lose Billions," 2026, compiling state fiscal disclosures from Georgia, Ohio and Indiana; Stateline (Kevin Hardy), "Many states don't report losses from data center tax breaks, study says," April 15, 2026
- Office of the Governor of Ohio, "Governor DeWine Announces Pause of Data Center Tax Exemption"; Kohrman Jackson & Krantz, "Ohio Halts Data Center Tax Incentive Amid Growing Debate," May 28, 2026
The other side
- POWER Magazine, "Transformers in 2026: Shortage, Scramble, or Self-Inflicted Crisis?"
- Loudoun County, Virginia, "Data Centers in Loudoun County" and county budget documents, FY2016 to FY2026
- Hitachi Energy, "Hitachi Energy breaks ground on the nation's largest facility for the production of large power transformers in South Boston, Virginia," June 2026; Utility Dive on Hitachi Energy's factory expansions
- Siemens Energy's North Carolina transformer investments, via Manufacturing Dive (2024) and WFAE, February 3, 2026
- Schneider Electric, "Schneider Electric Plans to Invest Over $700 million in the U.S.," March 25, 2025
- Dark fiber estimates: The Seattle Times, January 13, 2002; Forbes, "Is The AI Boom Headed For Its 'Dark Fiber' Moment?" March 24, 2025; Bruce Kushnick's analysis of FCC filings (2007 data); 7GC, "AI Capex and the Telecom Bubble" (estimates vary, as the video says)
Map data
- U.S. states outline, "Blank US Map (states only)," Heitordp, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- World map, "BlankMap-World.svg," Wikimedia Commons, public domain
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Credits
- Archival photographsFarm auction, Nebraska, Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress, public domain.
- Aerial imageryGoogle Earth: the Stargate campus, Abilene, Texas; Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works, Pennsylvania; Data Center Alley, Loudoun County, Virginia; Hitachi Energy, South Boston, Virginia; and Weirton, West Virginia. Imagery Landsat / Copernicus, Airbus, Vexcel Imaging US, Inc.; data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, IBCAO, U.S. Geological Survey, PGC/NASA, LDEO-Columbia, NSF.
- Stock footageStoryblocks, under licence: data-center, construction, power-plant, transformer, steel-mill, copper, electrician, computer-hardware, console, retail and aircraft-carrier footage.
- LogosGE Vernova, Siemens Energy, Mitsubishi Power, Samsung, SK hynix and Micron marks, via Wikimedia Commons, shown to identify the companies; trademarks of their owners.
- MusicYouTube Audio Library: "Panoramic Arrival," "Faultlines," "Heartbeat Of The Wind" and "Kiss The Heavens," Asher Fulero; "EBB," Density & Time; "Down The Rabbit Hole," The Grey Room / Density & Time. One further track from Pixabay.
- SoundTitle and end-card stings, tuesdaynight; tick, soundshelfstudio; paper slide, oxidvideos; whoosh, impact and cash register, Dragon Studio; riser, u1pruylktlg; gavel, IntrepidMedia; typing, sarthakraj_308; substation hum and server-room ambience, freesound_community; click and pop (Pixabay). Stamp, marker and camera-shutter sounds, Freesound (44189, 6789, 6305). Page turns, a jet flyby and a mechanical clunk, YouTube Audio Library.