Commenter Tony Jay said something recently that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. It was in comments under Anne Laurie’s overnight “Excellent Reads” post, which highlighted an Adam Serwer column with the title “Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to Be Racist.”
Sewer’s essay recounted how Musk flipped out when the makers of Dungeons & Dragons acknowledged in a book that some of the game’s original materials contained racist and sexist stereotypes.
The acknowledgement enraged Musk, who threatened to buy the company to impose his own “vision” on it. Because it’s Musk, that’s no idle threat. Recall that a similar snit-fit goaded Musk into shelling out $44B for Twitter and converting it into a Nazi bar. Anyhoo, here’s what TJ said:
Musk: “How much is Hasbro?”
If anyone has a problem understanding the existential threat enormous, unrestrained wealth poses to representative democracy, this quote sums it up quite nicely.
Something out there one vindictive racist choad doesn’t like? They’ll just buy it and break it. Hasbro. Twitter. Elections. The entire country. Doesn’t matter. Their money gives them that power.
So if democracy is to survive, we either take away their money through taxation, or we take away their power through legislation. Otherwise they’ll just break everything that’s not them.
That final paragraph is so true it should be committed to needlepoint.
***
I know people who are fairly wealthy. They have enough money to own more than one house and travel wherever they want and in the style to which they are accustomed. They have enough money that they don’t worry about paying the bills or economic downturns. They don’t have to fret about their children’s prospects because there’s plenty of money to go around.
Some of the wealthy people I know are selfish and thoughtless assholes, and others are kind and generous. The distribution of these qualities among the wealthy people I know seems roughly equivalent to the patterns I see among middle class and lower income folks.
I think the super rich are in a class by themselves. In this society, having hundreds of millions or billions of dollars confers super-powers that seem to turn people into amoral monsters at a higher than average rate. And worse, it gives those monsters the means to act on every depraved impulse that pops into their heads.
A familiar example of what it costs when monsters are allowed to rampage: a recent New Yorker article notes that the Musk-driven (and Trump-enabled) dismantling of USAID has already cost an estimated 600,000 lives, two-thirds of them children.
Think of that — a guy who dismantled an agency and indirectly killed 400,000 kids isn’t rocking in a corner, catatonic with self-loathing and wracked by existential guilt. He’s furious that a game maker made the absolutely anodyne observation that 1970s-era game materials contained racist and sexist stereotypes.
***
The Epstein scandal also highlights the cost of what Bluesky poster Ed Burmila called the crisis of elite impunity, which extends beyond the super rich but swirls around them like moths to a flame.
The crisis of elite impunity that is ruining our society cannot be more clearly or convincingly demonstrated than with the fact that all of these people wrote all this stuff into an email and hit Send.
Some of these people are lawyers; the rest are intimately (phrasing) familiar with courtrooms and lawyers in their professional lives. They didn’t put this stuff in writing because they’re naive or ignorant; they did it because they have no fear of consequences. None at all.
If the files ever come out, I have no difficulty imagining they will contain some names that surprise us and some that don’t. The point is, a class of people believe they move among their fellow citizens as men among ants, and most humans don’t feel the least bit guilty for stepping on a few insects.
Of course, it’s not just vast wealth that turns people into monsters capable of murder and abuse at scale. Ideological mass movements have been the driving factor in the slaughter of millions. So has religion.
But right here, right now, unimaginably huge piles of cash concentrated in the hands of too few has conferred too much power on that relatively small and elite group. Theoretically at least, that’s something we can collectively address, and we must.
Open thread.
worn
First?
Also, too: Muck Fusk
HinTN
I agree with this, MS Cracker, but your formulation as theoretical is accurate. I don’t see the path to the correction but I’d welcome it.
Dave
@worn: He really is a perfect example of how extreme wealth isn’t actually good for even the wealthy let alone society at large.
Being fairly wealthy (well off) is probably associated with a lot of positives but extremely wealthy in anything but the most simplified understanding of thriving seems toxic to me.
eclare
I love the photo today! When I lived in ATL there was a kangaroo zoo/safari type place in North Georgia that I visited. Trivia for you: the kangaroo is the second fastest land mammal.
Other MJS
This is a perfect name for the problem and needs to be promoted. This is a qualitatively different problem than inequity. Thanks, BC!
Tim C.
The worst part of this trend is how many people, out of their own despair, laziness, or idiot ideology take the attitude of either “It’s always been this way!” or “The other side is just as bad!” No… no it hasn’t always been this way. Case in point: Nixon. There really was a time when open defiance of the law was too much for even Republicans to bear. Hell, even in the guilded age, you had to follow a basic public-facing propriety at the top levels. You had to keep your depravity on the down low most of the time.
This is worse.
ue
deleted
Rachel Bakes
Will work on memorializing that paragraph in embroidery thread for you Betty Cracker.
bbleh
Theoretically at least, that’s something we can collectively address …
Certainly it’s happened before — eg the Progressive era — but it requires a wide consensus because money confers power (eg by effectively buying enough legislators to block any action). I think some of the necessary ingredients are already there, notably the sense that “they’re ripping us off,” which is common on both sides of the political spectrum. And with enough dry brush around some “spark” (eg the Epstein files?) can start a big fire.
Off the top of my head I’d say the biggest obstacle right now is a core of self-satisfied Poujadiste types, who are perfectly happy with the rabble being kept down because it means they’re on top, plus an equally large population of wannabes, who are convinced they could and should be millionaires if only those Others and their Librul friends weren’t keeping them down. I don’t think the former could ever be convinced — they’re the type who left for England rather than live in an independent US — but I think enough economic oppression and a decent spark could turn the latter against the plutocracy. (I just hope it doesn’t require a major depression, cuz that entails a LOT of misery for a LOT of people.)
Josie
Porqué no los dos?
RevRick
@Dave: Studies showed that after about $75,000 in income, happiness and life satisfaction plateaued.
What Elon Musk reveals is yet again confirmation of Lord Acton’s axiom: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Hungry Joe
It’s politically impossible, and even if it weren’t I can’t imagine how it could actually be done, but if I were magic-wand powerful I’d impose a wealth cap of, say, $8-$10 million. Maybe raise it some once funds had been re-distributed and we all had enough to live safe, healthy, decent lives. I can’t imagine how anyone can justify having more than that when others have so little.
moonbat
The sad, bad, worse part of this, to me anyway, isn’t just that these sociopaths aren’t content to have more money than you could reasonable spend in a thousand lifetimes, but how insanely threatened they feel when any of the ‘little people’ who aren’t ridiculously wealthy get a small leg up.
Biden was enabling unions to negotiate better deals so folks could make a living wage. He was expanding health care coverage so you didn’t have to indenture yourself to one company for their insurance plan. He was stopping all the predatory fees, penalties and charges that are death by a thousand cuts to people living from paycheck to paycheck. All that was a bridge too far for these nutjobs. They went for him hammer and tongs.
Because it’s not enough that they are rich beyond the dreams of avarice. YOU have to be pitifully poor too or it doesn’t mean anything to them.
Ksmiami05
There’s no need for people to have more than 2 billion. Tax it all. Send it back into the commons
Paul in KY
@eclare: I think pronghorn antelopes are a bit faster. They can do 60 mph.
Used to be a cheetah in N. America. Was a bit larger than the African version. Died out before man ever got here.
Aziz, light!
Plutocracy is taking over the world.
What we need here is Eisenhower’s top marginal rate.
And leaders who are not corrupt or fascist.
Good luck, future America.
Paul in KY
@Hungry Joe: Let’s just go back to Income Tax Rates of 1955.
Bill Arnold
Power without empathy or compassion for all results in objectively evil [1] acts.
Mr. Musk has literally been arguing against empathy ( recently “Suicidal empathy is killing Western Civilization.”).
[1] kindness vs cruelty is a decent good/evil scale.
fancycwabs
If Bill Clinton had any political instincts left at all he would issue a statement right now saying he has not had sexual relations with that man, Donald Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@eclare:
I went to that kangaroo sanctuary a couple of times! Loved it — what a fascinating place. It’s where I learned that different ages/growth stages of joeys are given different designations. A joey old enough to go out exploring a bit on his own but still young enough to return to the pouch for milk and sleeping is known as a “Joey-at-Foot.” I like that term 🦘
Nettoyeur
@RevRick: I think that figure is now too low for the US. More like 120-140K. This is why a growing number of Americans—notably 40% of women aged 15-44—dream of moving to another country where education, medical care, rent, and food cost less. Lots of interest in Latin America, Portugal, Italy, France, parts of E. Europe and Asia.
Dorothy A. Winsor
It always seems wrong to me that unearned income is taxed less than what I earn by working.
fancycwabs
If Bill Clinton had any political instincts left at all he would issue a statement right now saying he has not had sexual relations with that man, Donald Trump.
(Did the first time I posted this get sent to modland? If so, I apoligize for the repost)
Ohio Mom
@RevRick: That must be an old number. I think right now, it needs to be more than $75,000.
But I agree with the basic principle, that there is a level after which more money doesn’t make you necessarily happier.
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY: The rich, as one really rich guy of my (former) acquaintance calmly and smugly assured me, spent just as much time evading the top taxation rate in the 1950s as they do these days. But it would certainly be a step in the right direction for society.
However, since this is also the same guy who defended Trump’s multiple bankruptcies as some kind of evidence of being a SuperJeenius BiznessMan, it raises the question: If you’re so rich, how come you’re not smart?
brendancalling
As I see it, those files will not come out in our lifetime. Not with the Senate in GOP hands, and certainly not with the topic of those files wielding a veto pen.
My solution–“Exterminate all the brutes”–is unworkable.
Steve LaBonne
I’ve said it before, mentally healthy people simply don’t desire far more money than they could spend in many lifetimes. I could have a lot of fun being “ordinarily” wealthy, though really I have everything I actually want. But super-wealth is only of use as a source of power over others and only people who want that power chase it.
Hildebrand
If Trump doesn’t get elected, does Musk go full Nazi? Seems that Trump made depravity palatable to enough white people in this country that it was the proverbial barn door opening.
Steve LaBonne
@fancycwabs: Satan, on the other hand…
Caveatimperator
I’m not even sure which direction the causation lies.
Does making hundreds of millions turn you into an amoral monster, or does anyone who isn’t an amoral monster decide that they don’t need to earn hundreds of millions?
Most of the current crop of famous billionaires grew up rich, but not necessarily as rich as they are now. Zuckerberg’s father was a dentist, and he went to Exeter before Harvard.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Paul in KY:
Maybe not quite that far but 40+ years of Reaganomics/neolib crapola and it’s associated fucking with the tax code needs massive change back in that 1955 direction.
pajaro
I’m a little rusty on some of my history, but didn’t the Progressive movement in the late 19th Century arise because of the felt need to limit the power of the captains of industry, the Vanderbilts and folks like them? We got antitrust laws and a Constitutional Amendment allowing an income tax, right?
This time, I think we are going to need to expand the size of the Supreme Court as our main technical fix, so we can revisit atrocities like Citizen’s United. The power to go back to previous tax rates is obviously still there. It’s not going to be easy, but we can do this, if we get control of Congress and the White House.
Caveatimperator
@Steve LaBonne:
If you gave me ten million dollars, I’d probably buy a really nice house. After that, what?
And ten million is pocket change for some of these billionaires.
Matt McIrvin
@Hungry Joe: I think you could cap wealth even lower than that, somewhere below a million, if there were support structures and public goods to ensure that everyone had access to good health care, education and retirement income. Security in these things is the reason that people accumulate more than that without being pathologically greedy.
Bill Arnold
For those who are curious about Musk’s fixation on the evils of empathy,
Parasitic Ideas and Suicidal Empathy Are Killing the West (January 5, 2025, Dr. Gad Saad, articulate bigot)
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne:
That is cute!
Matt McIrvin
@Caveatimperator: Ten million is into the realm of fuck-you money: buy a decent if not opulent house, and quit your job now and live indefinitely and very comfortably off the returns for the rest of your life. It’s definitely well above my personal threshold for Enough.
Unless, of course, you want more luxury than that, in which case you can blow it overnight.
Elon Musk is set to become a trillionaire. A trillion is 100,000 times as much as that.
Archon
We are in another gilded age and it usually takes economic disaster, revolution, or war to get out of it.
Steve LaBonne
@Archon: Climate change probably guarantees that all three will happen.
ExPatExDem
I read a good, pithy description recently about the difference between the rich and the mega rich:
What’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars.
There shouldn’t be people who have enough money by themselves to distort national economies and political systems in a fit of pique.
Matt McIrvin
@Caveatimperator: The trust-fund babies I’ve known were all very weird people. It seems to do something to you mentally to know you’ll always have enough privilege to pretty much do anything you want and lord it over other people even if you don’t lift a finger.
People who worry constantly about the moral hazard of welfare guaranteeing that you and your children won’t starve, don’t seem to have a problem with this.
geg6
Amen, Betty. Amen.
Other MJS
To the “taxation is theft” slogan, I respond that it’s impossible to “deserve” that much wealth. Musk did not work 100,000x harder than the rest of us.
Among other causes, there have been a series of seismic techs developments in that last few decades in which the person lucky enough to do the key thing at the right time* wins super-big. Then wealth-attracts-wealth takes over. And having that much wealth seems to be a potent moral toxin.
*A perfect example: when IBM asked Bill Gates if he had an OS for their PC, he said yes and then went and bought DOS from someone else.
Steve LaBonne
@Caveatimperator: I would keep an million or two to guarantee that we could afford good long term care for either or both of us, and give the rest away, some to family, most to good causes. I’m 70 and my wife will turn 72 next month, we would have no interest in radically changing our lives.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The idea that Musk could control Roll Playing Games by buying Habro is also absurd – DnD has a lot of competition, and everyone I know who role plays uses a better system than DnD (me; I do Traveller and Fantasy Hero) .
The whole reason Hasbro owns DnD is the game is it almost died in the 90s because the game’s target demographic is young teens, and it just doesn’t work when the players are adults. It’s hard to describe but DnD has this weird sort of Disney vib to it, to keep the game parent friendly, and that’s just bizarre in game about being a murder hobo. For example the antagonists in the official game material are always carefully dehumanized by the developers, and almost never has personalities or motives, much-less names.
That’s a bit problematic in a role playing game.
Steve LaBonne
@Other MJS: Billionaires are some combination of heirs and lottery winners. The cod Calvinist ideology that surrounds them is squid ink.
Another Scott
You and Tony Jay are exactly right.
I put the starting point for this round of the MotUs going nuts at the early deification of Bill Gates, say around April 1984.
Oooh! He’s so smart and so rich! He’s so smart that he Dropped out of Harvard!! They couldn’t contain his greatness!!11 And he’s so rich and smart!!11 We better listen to him!!11ONE
Demanding that people buy your BASIC interpreter, and creating per-processor license agreements, and paying people with “free money” stock options and evading taxes, aren’t some sign of General Genius that means you know about how to run school systems or fight disease or anything else at all. It just isn’t.
Yeah, tax them more. Much more. And crack down on their “foundations” that are starting to act like quasi-governmental organizations that will never go away. E.g. Looking at the Gates Foundation financials I see that they had more money at the end of 2024 than at the start.
Their grants and expenses totaled $8.495B and ended the year with $77.516B or they spent around 11%. And ended up with $2B+ more than at the end of 2023. They’re not acting like they’re ever going to go away…
Grr…
Oh, and Bill seems to be in the Epstein Files more than previously known. Shock, shocking.
Grrr…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Pybrac
People don’t become monsters because they get billions of dollars; they get billions of dollars because they’re monsters. The kindest thing you can say is that wealth accumulation on that scale is a hoarding disorder that should be in the DSM and requires intervention. But as a practical matter, it’s not possible to accumulate that much money without being a sociopath, and it’s not possible for a sociopath to have that much money without being an existential threat to life itself.
Dave
@Caveatimperator: Fairly confident it’s both. With different ratios for everyone and the occasional person that avoids the pitfalls.
Kosh III
We need what’s called a Transaction tax. That’s a sales tax for stocks, bonds etc. Anytime there is a transaction, a 1% tax. If it’s traded 1000 times hourly, tax it 1000 times hourly.
Plus a so-called “flat tax” rate but with some progression. Plus a way to keep the poorest from being over-taxed. NO LOOPHOLES.
100% Inheritance tax. Make the kids pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Hungry Joe
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah — with an infrastructure/safety net that included free & greatly expanded public transportation, a basic minimum income,* etc., a $1million cap might work out well for everyone. But I’m magic-wand willing for some high achievers and super-talented folks to have more, as long as it’s not too much more, and there’s still enough for everyone else.
*Sure, some people will take the basic income and free services and spend their lives doing/contributing nothing. So what? Those people are consuming social services now; a new, generous system would distribute stuff more efficiently. And they’d be a tiny (and embarrassed) percent of the population.
UncleEbeneezer
@Tim C.: No, the worst part is so many of the people who demand accountability, taxing the rich etc., pivot to undermining any chance of doing so by electing Dems (even the ones we don’t care for) every four years. None of this can happen without substantial Dem majorities and a Dem President (and SCOTUS). Period.
artem1s
@Paul in KY:
we need to reinstate monopoly laws too.
TONYG
Yes. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of billionaires. Many (maybe most) of them inherited most of their wealth. Some of them “created” most of their wealth through smart (or just lucky) business decisions. Both varieties are unlikely to be healthy psychologically. The ones who inherited their money have been entitled since they were small children, and they’ve never had a reason to care about anyone else. The ones who “created” their wealth have spent their adult lives grabbing for every nickel they can, and their money is the only thing that they’ve allowed themselves to care about. Either way: crazy people.
WereBear
That is the real meaning of law… then order.
Republicans get it terribly mixed up,
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Hasbro and Mattel have bought up so much of the US toy and game industry, they’re like the Coke and Pepsi at this point. But tabletop gaming is this weird little niche subculture where a lot of little players can still thrive by making an interesting product.
prostratedragon
Maybe there’s nothing to it, but …
The kind of thing that would be blackmailable, if someone knew about it.
Another Scott
@pajaro: I think your right that the SCOTUS has to be a very early objective.
Fight for 15!!
I glanced at Biden’s SCOTUS commission report. There were some good arguments in it, but of course they didn’t have any OMG We Must Fix This Now or We’re DOOMED!!11 recommendations. That wasn’t their charge. Someone needs to take that and build on it and get the public thinking about the need for changes. Getting too far ahead of the public on this will ultimately weaken and set-back the effort.
It might be that there have to be congressional hearings and trials and convictions before the scales start falling from enough eyes that, yes, the Democrats are Right and we need to make big changes to start to protect our governmental system from the liars and the bad-faith power grabbers on the other side. Normies have to listen to us (or listen to us more!) before we can start to make lasting big systemic changes.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WereBear
@prostratedragon: Yes.
To quote The Big Heat, a favorite film noir:
Matt McIrvin
@TONYG: Every so often (in the trust-fund-baby category) you get a Pritzker type who seems to have his head screwed on straight and leverages his power for good, but the sheer wealth still makes me suspicious.
JML
No, Hasbro owns D&D because the people who created it were poor business people, the next set of people who took control of it were poor business people, until it was bought up by Wizards of the Coast, whose founder was a pretty good business person (while also being a gamer) and kept them from going out of business. He then sold Wizards to Hasbro and cashed out, who wanted the company for Magic: the Gathering and the D&D IP. That’s the short version of how Hasbro got D&D. It didn’t nearly die in the 90’s because of who their market was or supposedly was, but because they had made many terrible business decisions due to incompetence and nepotism.
The biggest issue with the wealthy and super wealthy is at a certain point so many of them stop believing that anyone should be able to tell them no. It’s not even about the actual cash. It’s not the possible loss of revenue the business owner is concerned with when employee start to unionize, it’s the fact that they can no longer rule over their “empire” like a king. So many of them stop thinking that rules of any sort should apply to them.
This is Musk and Trump to a tee. It’s not even about the money any longer. it’s all about no one being able to tell them what to do and them being able to order around everyone else. Megalomania is a real disease with the rich.
Gvg
@Dorothy A. Winsor: yes. It seems to me that making it taxed differently causes all kinds of manipulation so that as much as possible is classified as the lower taxed kind of income. This is non productive activity from a societal view. It encourages tax cheating. It also encourages more investment and less work which is not always best in all situations.
A lot of our bubbles in my decades seem to me to be caused by too few investment opportunities worth spending on and too much money looking for a place to put the money. Some of that is caused by IMO poorly thought out tax and corporate laws that do not reward investment for future growth long term, only the next few quarters, and only for the stockholders. I sort of emotionally think unearned income should be taxed at a higher rate than honest work, but then I have realized it would just reverse who the bad trends affected, but still be unbalanced. I think equal taxing is the only way that can work long term.
MT
I suspect the causality runs in the opposite direction — being an amoral monster is a precondition for becoming a billionaire
Bugboy
This week, hearing some senator talk about how awful it is that people have health insurance, but don’t file claims, it occurred to me that rich people don’t really understand what insurance is, because they don’t need insurance.
Just like paying taxes: it’s something “other people do”.
JustRuss
@Other MJS: And the reason they asked Bill Gates was because his mother knew IBM’s CEO.
Tony Jay
“We have Embroidery-Americans, and we’re polling narrow but stable leads with the Craft-Americans and Wool-Based Pastime-American demographics. But we’re underwater with Macramé-Americans since those dark-money Tik-Tok ads hit. It was the small hands. Cut right through. I’m afraid we’ve lost hemp-majority communities for a generation. Bastards.”
Steve LaBonne
@Bugboy: Also Trump with his bullshit about just giving people money to buy health care. He doesn’t have the foggiest notion of what things actually cost.
Other MJS
Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’
Matt McIrvin
@MT: If you have a hundred million dollars already and you insist on working full-time just to accumulate more wealth, it probably means you’re attracted to money as an end in itself to “keep score” in society rather than using it FOR anything. Which means something is broken in your mind.
WaterGirl
@Pybrac: Welcome!
terraformer
The first, and most necessary step to this reality is the hardest: removing money from elections, with clear oversight and vicious teeth when broken.
Unless and until money is removed from the equation, nothing will change.
Other MJS
@MT:
SF writer David Brin suggested reversing Lord Acton’s maxim to “power attracts the corrupt”.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I’m put in mind of the quote from Joseph Heller, in response to Kurt Vonnegurt’s comment that their host at a party, a hedge fund manager, made more money on one day than Catch-22 had made from the day it hit the bookstores.
As Vonnegurt reported in his obituary of Heller:
Many people see their money as a means to an end. Some see their money as a means to guard against their past pain, or to ensure the people they love don’t have to suffer from the pain of poverty. Some see their money as a means to enable pleasures, like a slow boat, a fast car, a comfortable house.
Those sort of people aren’t the sort who become billionaires.
Or to quote John Scalzi:
(source)
I think billionaires are wired differently in their brains than people who think like that.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: This reminds me of hearing about honest to God toxic beef between the online knitting and crocheting communities about 20 years ago.
prostratedragon
@WereBear: I’ve suspected things like this are part of what’s hiding in the network of which Epstein and 🤡 are a part. Aside from the very existence of an organized network, this is almost all that could explain the level of panic.
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne: An MRI like he just had is up in the 5 figures, $20k or more.
Kelly
John Rodgers of 27% fame.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
One of those eternally relevant maxims.
“Never pick a fight with people who poke holes through things for fun.”
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: But some of the things they did to evade those sky-high top tax rates were socially constructive. They’d build libraries and universities or plow profits back into their organizations for long-term purposes rather than just sitting on it or using it to manipulate the government. That was the point.
The policies of the time also genuinely flattened out the wealth-income distribution, so there was objectively something going on. US society’s Gini coefficient really was less lopsided in the 1950s than it is today, so it’s not as if these things are futile.
WereBear
@MT: What I learned from the Martha Stewart Saga is that if money is what you want more than anything, and you are willing to do anything…
You’ve got a shot.
That is how they think. Because they don’t understand the Lotto, either. Martha Stewart started early and leveraged all her advantages. But Hustle Culture told everyone:
You, too, can be a Brand.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: True. Very true.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: And they want the Fifties back!
Okay. Death penalty for traitors, too.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin:
Quoted here just to see it one more time. You’ve described why several western and northern EU countries (and some Central and South American and Asian) countries score well on the various “happiness” indexes.
Oh, and much, much, much lower gun ownership, which translates into police forces that actually serve the populace rather than being pants-wetting afraid of every granny at a traffic stop.
Scamp Dog
@Kosh III: Alright, the “flat tax” nonsense is something that sets me off. The tax computation is trivially easy, assuming you are capable of comparing numbers to figure out what row of the tax table to use, and then doing multiplication, addition and subtraction.
All those forms you (or more likely your preparer) fill out are to prevent you from bullshitting about your income, expenses, deductions and credits. The IRS didn’t require SSNs for dependents until 1986 or so, and the story goes that the number of dependents being claimed dropped from 77 million to 70 million because of that requirement.
The flat tax nonsense is pushed by people who are offended by the idea that they face a higher tax rate than the undeserving peons below them, facilitated by journalists who are probably selected for innumeracy.
BobbyK
Take away their money through taxation? HAH! The only group that wants to do this are the Democratic Socialists and whenever one runs for office pretty much the entire Democratic establishment lines up against them.
BTW, if you label yourself a “moderate” or “centrist” your default position is to NOT tax at fair levels.
Suburban Mom
@Steve LaBonne: Indeed. People in the middle of a heart attack make lousy competitive shoppers and are not in a great position to negotiate. Anyone urgently in need of healthcare will be easy for providers to exploit.
Matt McIrvin
@Chief Oshkosh: I completely neglected to mention housing, which is the other big one obviously.
OGliberal
@Pybrac: “But as a practical matter, it’s not possible to accumulate that much money without being a sociopath, and it’s not possible for a sociopath to have that much money without being an existential threat to life itself.”
Truer words have never been said.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
FRED has a chart for that. (Doesn’t cover the 1950s, though.)
GINI Index for the United States (FRED chart, covers 1963 through 2023)
The best was just before Reagan took over, climbing ever since (i.e. getting worse), with small dips in 2009/10 and 2020/21.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin: The one trust fund baby I know is truly weird in many ways, but in the opposite direction. Super-good person. The guy (and his wife and his mom) spend almost all of their time and money setting up food distribution entities in food deserts of a mid-sized city in a very red state. The guy is an absolute hoot to hang out with, but he’s a bit nuts.
The exception that proves the rule, I guess.
Citizen Dave
A site I’m on has cheetah at 65 mph; pronghorn at 62 mph; Doncaster gazelle at 50 mph; quarter-horse at 44 mph. Kangaroo not listed at all, but another site says they can go 43 mph
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Confiscatory levels of taxation and the destruction of this class of oligarchs is the only way forward.
Steve LaBonne
@Suburban Mom: It’s really way more than that. The cost of, say, an extended period of cancer treatment is multiple millions of dollars. Only very rich people can pay cash for that.
PaulWartenberg
I’d argue a major problem with the uber-rich is that they were damaged psyches to begin with: the greed that drove them to become millionaires pushed them to be greedier to become billionaires, and then that greed turned to paranoia over the 99.9 percent of the rest of the population they view as threats.
The vast wealth they each possess now gives them power to lash out in fear and hate, with an eagerness to spend whatever they can (as cheap as possible) to surround themselves with like-minded haters in their social (and political) circles.
We need a new amendment that guarantees whenever someone goes over 1 billion dollars in net value, they will be taken each day to the public square and punched square in the face as a reminder those mofos can bleed.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I have a piece written a dozen years ago by a long-departed commenter here that seems good for this discussion, especially the last paragraph:
Rocks
Taxation versus legislation? Porque no los dos? (Why not both?)
Bugboy
@Steve LaBonne: That’s the subject the senator was addressing, backfilling Trump’s idiot plan in the process.
They are all Megan R. Kelly now.
FDRLincoln
Can you imagine the sheer amount of GOOD that Musk and people like him could do if they wanted to?
You could log onto GoFundMe and send everyone on there $50,000. You’d never notice the money gone but you’d change a lot of lives for the good.
You could send large checks to every homeless shelter and foodbank in the country every month.
You could dedicate huge funds to eradicating a nasty disease somewhere, follow Jimmy Carter’s example.
You could do SO MUCH GOOD without hurting your standard of living at all.
Instead, they decide to kill 600,000 people.
TONYG
@Matt McIrvin: That’s right. In theory a very wealthy kid could grow up to be a good human being, if the parents raised him or her the right way. But in many of these very rich families the rot goes back for generation — parents, grandparents, great-grandparents — all assholes.
eclare
@Citizen Dave:
Huh. I know the park said second fastest, oh well. Thanks for the info!
Melancholy Jaques
@FDRLincoln:
Recently, somebody in social media world, I forget who, pointed out that today’s oligarchs aren’t like the Gilded Age rich because they aren’t building libraries, endowing orchestras or museums, or other similar projects.
Matt McIrvin
@FDRLincoln: At one point one of them, I think it was Jeff Bezos, mentioned that he was starting his own space program in part because beyond some level of wealth it was hard to think of anything good to do with this money. His lack of imagination was staggering. I assume he’d been stewing in the kind of ideology that says that just giving it away to people would be destructive, because, I mean, that might not be the optimal thing to do but to me it’s an obvious thing that would help the world. And there are so many causes that need cash.
Frank Wilhoit
The problem is not elite unaccountability. It is unaccountability, full stop. Musk can’t hurt me. But Reagan told my neighbor to kill me — as soon as he was perfectly sure he could get away with it. That day has not yet come, but it comes closer, and that is how I will die. Musk is a myth.
eclare
@Melancholy Jaques:
The sense of Noblesse Oblige is gone.
Bugboy
@TONYG: These people don’t raise their kids themselves, which is a big part of the problem.
I often use the allegory of the Disney child actor: when you are told incessantly you are a princess, in order to get you to perform your role, it goes to your head. Which is why child actors and even teenage entertainers frequently have trouble adjusting to adulthood.
rikyrah
THEE ENTIRE PHUCK
Zoe Tillman
@ZoeTillman
NEW: DOJ has been in settlement talks with Michael Flynn — Trump’s first national security adviser seeking $50M for his prosecution by ex-special counsel Robert Mueller — and Stefan Passantino, a Trump I White House lawyer who accused the House Jan. 6 committee of privacy violations, court records show
bit.ly/4hWdolc
x.com/ZoeTillman/status/1989338116453282007?s=20
Matt McIrvin
@Frank Wilhoit: Frank, I recognize those kinds of thoughts you’re having and I find that when I have them, it’s time to back off from online politics a bit and touch grass, as the kids say.
prostratedragon
Institutional impunity:
Jamelle Bouie:
Suburban Mom
@Steve LaBonne: I think we’re describing different aspects of what makes this a terrible idea. Normal people don’t have enough money to cover major medical problems, as you noted. Even if the government gives you some money to cover those expenses, as Trump suggests, you’ll still be at a major disadvantage relative to medical providers, especially during a health crisis. It is just a terrible unworkable idea.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: There are trust funds and there are TRUST FUNDS. The people who have something that will pay for an education and ensure that you will never be homeless, etc., don’t seem that bad. That’s just making sure your family is okay. Nice if you can do it. The other kind, the one’s that mean that you will never need to work and can indulge your every whim can get pernicious pretty quickly.
NutmegAgain
I can’t think of Musk without thinking that this is a guy whose brain was built by South African apartheid. Add all that money to the fundamentally entitled and racist baseline personality, and presto, a man who thinks and acts like he can and should rule over every one who is not a straight, white man. Of course there is free will, right? So it is also his choice to embody the worst aspects of people.
FDRLincoln
@Melancholy Jaques: As evil as they were, and as horribly exploitive of the working class as they were, people like Carnegie and Vanderbilt and Rockefeller did feel *some* need to contribute something back to society.
Our current set of oligarchs are worse.
Most of them have proven that they can’t be trusted. They should be taxed out of existence. The moderate, sober, sensible solution is to tax them out of existence. The other choice is the guillotine.
Matt McIrvin
@prostratedragon: Re-segregation and the destruction of the universities as thought centers independent of the whims of reactionary zillionaires, those are the main things going on here.
Like I said yesterday, the one thing Republicans don’t actually seem to be able to do is make us love them, and the lashing out at educational and cultural institutions is part of their revenge for that. They think these institutions are what’s making us not love them. They’re not going to get rid of the demand for contrary ideas but they can do huge damage.
FDRLincoln
@Matt McIrvin: EXACTLY. I can think of a lot of good things to do with the bazillions of dollars that Bezos has. He doesn’t need to start his own space program. Fund every food bank and homeless shelter and woman’s shelter in the country forever. That’s a start.
Clean water for every village in Africa. Vaccination programs. Eliminate disease. End famine. Maybe you can’t solve every problem in the world but people like Bezos could make a big dent in those problems while still enjoying a standard of living better than 99.999999% of humans who have ever lived.
Steve LaBonne
@FDRLincoln: His ex-wife seems to have no problem finding things to do with half of his fortune.
WereBear
They are raised in a world of their parents, around to pose for photo ops, but spend most of their time with employees.
It’s not as bad as Game of Thrones, but it leads down similar roads. It’s not the real world, but they don’t figure that out, ever, if they have enough money, and surround themselves with people they control…
And then, there’s the almost reflexive narcissism because some of these people do care about each other. They just aren’t very good at it.
Steve LaBonne
@FDRLincoln: That’s what really kills me. Those guys were absolutely vile, yet they look like saints compared to the current lot. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.
JWR
Uh oh! Preznit Dimwit gettin’ mad! (From NBC)
FDRLincoln
@Steve LaBonne: Agreed. Our current ruling elite has all of the greed and evilness of the Gilded Age without even small tiniest fragment of conscience that people like Carnegie sometimes showed. Those guys were all evil bastards and ours are EVEN WORSE! It is hard to grasp sometimes
I’m not even sure it was a glimmer of conscience for the robber barons, but more like an awareness they had to give something back on some level just to avoid an uprising. Our elites aren’t even that smart. All stick, no carrot.
Soprano2
Skipped the comments to post a link to this podcast – Filthy Rich
I cannot recommend this podcast enough if you want to truly get a glimpse into how these people think, and how they see the rest of the world. It’s chilling how much they are in their own world untouched by the things that concern regular people very day.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Soprano2: ahhh, thank you for that link. I will listen later.
Matt McIrvin
@FDRLincoln: I think they DO have a conscience, it’s just all upside down. Elon Musk clearly wants to throw his wealth around to force the public to act the way he wants and reform society for what he thinks is the better. He didn’t have to come in with DOGE and ruin a bunch of aid and welfare agencies–some of that was self-dealing, eliminating anyone who could compete with or regulate his businesses, but a lot of it wasn’t. He thinks he’s public-minded and doing good.
Paul in KY
@fancycwabs: Great! Now I have that in my mind…
Paul in KY
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Boy is it ever! Not an accident either.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: Would raise Capital Gains Tax too, of course. That would kill them!
Paul in KY
@Hildebrand: Fuhrer Musk ain’t gonna get it done, though. Would need to be some other ‘front man’.
Paul in KY
@Caveatimperator: Party!
Shalimar
@Another Scott: Once I knew years ago that Gates and Epstein were friends, it is not possible to be in the emails more than I expected. Gates is the epitome of someone who doesn’t have enough charisma to seduce 15-year-olds on his own, even with endless money.
OGliberal
@JWR: I love that he and his people think this is owning the lib. If Bill Clinton was getting naked massages from Epstein’s underage “employees”, I want him in jail, too. And Larry Summers? JP Morgan? Go for it, dude.
Redshift
@JWR: A while back I had the theory that one reason Epstein is sticking where other scandals didn’t is that Trump’s superpower (in addition to shamelessness) is making people pay attention to him. But it’s not making people pay attention to something else, which is what he keeps trying to do with Epstein.
Shalimar
@OGliberal: I don’t even care if Larry Summers did anything illegal. If anyone deserves prison time just for being a pompous asshole, it is Larry Summers.
Paul in KY
@artem1s: Yes we do! Good point.
Socolofi
@Matt McIrvin: Jeff Bezos doesn’t believe in charity.
Like every company I know of a certain size, and lots that are itty bitty, tend to do things with United Way. Amazon explicitly did not. His reasoning, which he has shared openly, is:
1. Amazon pays its employees a bunch of money, and they’re free to do what they want with their money
2. Amazon’s responsibility is to its shareholders, customers, and employees, and not charities
3. (his own view) Charity doesn’t work.
The first 2 are corporate cop-outs. But the third one is the lynchpin. He views charity as giving money to people, and he doesn’t believe that it helps. So he’s like, “ooh, space.”
Melancholy Jaques
They are just as bad or even worse than the people portrayed on Succession. The character Tom Wambsgans put it best.
Omnes Omnibus
@FDRLincoln: You could do all that and still go to space if you wanted to.
rusty
Fixing the Supreme court has got to be a significant part of the solution. Yes, we have a taxation system that allows for amassing obscene wealth. But SCOTUS has been issuing a series of decisions that are better interpreted as property rights cases. Citizens United is fundamentally a property rights case, taking away a restriction on the use of property (money). Same thing with the cases around bribery of public officials. These cases are about removing restrictions on the use of property. These cases and others benefit those with the most property. We need a court that is willing to circumscribe wealth as a mechanism to power, and we have a court heading in the exact opposite direction.
cmorenc
While the elite impunity problem is most problematic at the national scale with the likes of Musk and Trump, the same dynamic plays out in far smaller ways in small-towns where running in the right social circles and hiring the lawyer with the best courthouse connections with the DA and local judges can get you out of traffic tickets not because of the lawyer’s legal skills, but because of their social connections.
eclare
@Socolofi:
His house in Beverly Hills cost $165M. I can’t even imagine.
Socolofi
@Shalimar: Maybe not 15-year-olds, but he seduced plenty of ~21-year-olds. They were interns when he was one of the few super-rich tech founders in the 90s. Money has a way of increasing charisma, turns out.
That said there were also enough questionable things that they stopped letting him be alone with female interns, at least according to folks in the know on the MS Old Timers group.
eclare
@Melancholy Jaques:
I never understood the appeal of that show, although a lot of people liked it.
WereBear
@Another Scott: That’s when the divorce happened. It’s a hunch, but I knew.
The foundation was his wife’s idea.
OGliberal
@Matt McIrvin: Just re-located to Nashville recently and Elon is building one of his holes here…his version of “doing good”. Bypassed the metro government – which would have told him to eff off – by planning to have his hole run under state roads – so the metro government can’t claim oversight – and fund it “privately”…and I’m sure “private” will, at some point, mean TN taxpayers. The infrastructure here is for shite and the city has grown way too fast to keep up, especially in a state where most people don’t want to pay for nice things. But don’t think the Elon solution to get people from downtown to the airport is going to help much, especially since his holes amount to a single lane tunnel with cars…cars that fit 3-4 people and are driven by another, paid person. And the rock under the city is much harder than what’s under Las Vegas. Plus, even with traffic, downtown to the airport is just not far and does not take that long.
Maybe build a better commuter rail system for all those folks who live in the suburbs and have to spend an hour or more driving 12-15 miles? Maybe a light rail or, heaven forbid, a subway? Nah…Tesla Tunnel!
Luckily, I live just South of downtown and walk to work but most of the people I work with have a painful drive in and out…and they don’t often have to go to the airport. And the bachelorette parties can’t all fit in a Tesla.
Eyeroller
@fancycwabs: You jest, but among the recent email release was some correspondence between Jeffrey and his brother which speculated whether Putin had the pictures of Trump giving Bill Clinton a BJ. We assume they were joking with each other but???
anotherlurker
@FDRLincoln: If it ever gets to the tumbrel and guillotine phase, I will take up knitting and elbow my way to a front row seat.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Alot of them are like that. They are richer than sin, but end up in a situation where they meet the Aga Khan or someone like that (owns a religion, floats on sea of oil) and then they feel puny again. If they just had some levity about that, we’d all be better off.
Matt McIrvin
@Socolofi: This is a difference from old-school, Reagan-era sentiment which was that private charity and specifically religious charity was the right way to provide social services. Having trouble? Get right with God and ask your church. The government is just eroding the church by providing competing services, causing anomie, immorality etc.
But I guess the Ayn Rand-style “selfishness is a virtue and charity itself is a moral evil” variant was always there too.
jefft452
Ah! Ca Ira, Ca Ira, Ca Ira
OGliberal
@Socolofi: But we need to get to Mars! Because that’s so much easier and cheaper than trying not to fuck up this planet any more than it already is. It’s like bazillionaire prepper fantasies – they want to make sure they have a safe place to go when this world eventually descends into the chaos they are hell-bent on creating.
Eyeroller
@fancycwabs:You jest, but apparently among the emails just released was some correspondence between Jeffrey and his brother Mark in which they “joked” about whether Putin has the photos of Trump blowing “Bubba.”
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: With Musk, there is literally no one else who can make him feel poor, because he’s the richest. But he can still get enraged that there’s some aspect of thought or behavior in the world that he doesn’t control.
Sure Lurkalot
@Miss Bianca:
The tax code was such that the evasion was investing in your business or a public good like a hydroelectric plant, funding employee pensions, etc. Now that a company’s purpose is defined as increasing shareholder value with no concern for any other stakeholders, I say 90% tax, no deductions or exemptions. They’ve fed at the trough long enough.
eclare
@OGliberal:
I remember reading about that tunnel and thinking what a dumbass idea.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: And Bob gets his nephew Bill a job at the paper mill. That is an aspect of human interaction that we wi’ll have little success in changing.
cmorenc
@Paul in KY:
Except that the tax code c.1955 was so full of loopholes that very few wealthy high-income folks actually paid anywhere near the portion of their income that the marginal top rates would suggest.
Dave
@Matt McIrvin: He however doesn’t have the direct control over the peons lives that some of these dudes have.
Nor can he command the respect of people who are accomplished but not obsessed with wealth and status.
Hell he definitely can’t command the respect of say online gamers and that kills him.
Karen Gail
Just back from grocery shopping; large frozen turkeys $.39 per pound, the catch? The smallest turkey in case was 17 pounds. I passed, I live alone with large dog but that would mean that we ate turkey for a month. I have trouble eating breast meat so it would have to be either turned into casseroles or fed to dog. No 10 pound paper bags of potatoes, all small plastic bags which means some bags have rotting potatoes in them. Smell test usually works, so think got good bags only know after opening. Now only non chemical ladened laundry detergent is Mrs Meyers; not thrilled about lemon verbena scent but out of detergent. And not going to drive 45 minutes to see if next store has anything different.
Paul in KY
@BobbyK: I think you can be ‘moderate’ or whatever and want Capital Gains Tax to be higher.
Matt McIrvin
@anotherlurker: If we get to the tumbrel and guillotine stage I expect to be dead. Those things never stay contained, they end up whacking a lot of people other than the obvious bad actors. The right seems to be really good at redirecting populist frustration for their own purposes–people are somehow always gonna retaliate against “corporatist Democrats” and the educated professional class, atheist college professors etc. before they get to most of the billionaires.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: Yeah, but those “loopholes” tended to involve doing things that kept overall wealth inequality down and benefited society. That was the point.
PatD
@UncleEbeneezer: it’s the job of the party, its politicians, and its voters to make sure the tent is as big as possible and that any weaknesses are shored up. No one was complaining about voters in 2020 because the party was united. Not the case in 2024. It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure we’re united and not just the responsibility of one small group.
HopefullyNotCassandra
@Dorothy A. Winsor: once a Republican said that out loud and his name was Ronald Reagan.
Sure Lurkalot
@Pybrac:
I couldn’t agree more. Note the proliferation of eugenicist and anti-empathy ideology among many of our tech billionaires. For a long read about some of the twisted philosophies they’ve adopted, here’s a decent primer (truthdig.com/articles/the-acronym-behind-our-wildest-ai-dreams-and-nightmares/).
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Karen Gail:
HopefullyNotCassandra
@fancycwabs: it was funny both times, I assure you.
@pajaro: we need to amend our Constitution. Corporations are not people. Money is not speech. The ERA would be great too.
Kelly
@Omnes Omnibus: My road construction Dad got me great summer road construction jobs when I was at university. My brother followed in his footsteps for a lifetime construction career.
Gin & Tonic
Well, at least Warren Buffett appears to be charitable. I got an e-mail from him yesterday, wanting to give me 3.5 million Euros. Not sure why Euros as opposed to dollars, but still.
eclare
@Karen Gail:
Could you cook the turkey but then take it off the bone and freeze? Dole it out a little at a time?
Deputinize America
@Karen Gail:
The dog wonders why you have so much hate in your heart for passing on that purchase.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mr. Bemused Senior: We do Thanksgiving at my brother’s house. My parents always provide the Turkey. They bought it yesterday. Twenty-four pounds. There will be around 15 people there, so I don’t think much will be left. My mom usually take some of the leftover bird home for one dinner of leftovers. My brother’s family love turkey and enjoy the rest. My dad and I don’t care for it at all and just eat a little dark meat. I advocate for a goose each year. Both for gastronomic reasons and because fuck those birds they’re mean. I get shouted down every time.
patrick II
@Other MJS:
‘power attracts the corrupt’ is exactly true, and as our politicians feel less bound by laws or rules, the lawless opportunities that exists in our high level politics will attract more of those who wish to be lawless and therefore creates a downward spiral of more power and fewer laws with the power to do anything about it attracting more of those who wish to be powerful and live outside of the weakened laws.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: He’s talking about some kind of venture that will be talked about 1000 years from now! Just being a kind hearted mensch who made millions of people’s lives better is sooooo boring.
Paul in KY
@eclare: That spirit was due, in part, to some of the most choady in the Middle Ages being dragged from their horses and ripped limb from limb. Just doesn’t happen anymore…
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Shalimar:
Larry Summers needs to be kidnapped by Kang and Kodos and anally probed with a butt plug in the shape of Alan Greenspan.
Summers still loathes working people and still, always, serves billionaires.
And this latest shows that those of us who disagreed with that bastard on matters of substance can now add morality and ethics to that list.
Melancholy Jaques
@eclare:
All taste is taste.
Old Man Shadow
It’s all corrupt.
The whole system is rotten.
Financiers, investors, banks, politicians, lawyers, judges… all of it.
Trump needs focus because he’s a threat to America and decency, but fuck… we can’t get Trump or get rid of Trump and pretend that the rest of it doesn’t exist… probably still exists… we can’t go back to normal without a thorough scouring. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it should mean we take their money away and we put many of them in jail. We break up huge banks that engage in criminal conduct and put watchdogs over them.
We build a society that doesn’t see seventeen year old kids go in and out of homeless shelters and sell themselves for medical care. I mean, that right fucking there… that alone should piss off Old Testament God enough to just obliterate us off the map with fire and brimstone…
There is no fucking “normal” if it includes what has happened and what is happening now
Well, maybe not OT God considering his supposed rules included selling girls into slavery, but a good, just God.
Paul in KY
@Socolofi: The majestic equality of the Law bans the rich and poor alike from sleeping in parks and under bridges…
Amazon employees are free to not make their mortgage payments or buy food for their families and give their money to the homeless…
Paul in KY
@OGliberal: Nashville has awful traffic. I’m glad you are close enough to where you need to go that you don’t waste hours of your day sitting in that godawful traffic.
Omnes Omnibus
Question: Since we are probably not going to change human nature nor fundamentally change society, do we still think it’s worth trying some of the smaller thing or should we just pray for the meteor?
Paul in KY
@OGliberal: It would be so depressing to be stuck on Mars! Always wearing a pressure suit. The scenery so dead and lifeless… Sun so small in the sky. Yick!
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Putin or Bone Saw guy and a few others are richer, just because they have access to all the wealth of a nation state. What you said is in the main true though. He’s richer than 99.9999999 % of people on Earth.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Omnes Omnibus: I vote for incremental improvement and damage mitigation. But that’s just me.
Sister Golden Bear
@eclare: More kangaroo trivia, they’re adept at firing Stinger missiles at attack helicopters in military simulators.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: The rates, with fewerer loopholes!
Paul in KY
@Kelly: My Uncle helped to get me my first civilian job after I left the USAF.
Paul in KY
@Deputinize America: That poor dog…
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: We did a goose a couple of years ago. Quite expensive (got it at Krogers). Harder to cook also. Agree they are mean mofos.
NotoriousJRT
Thanks for this. The notion of impunity has really been knocking around my brain recently. That and the massive problems resulting from concentration of wealth.
Tim C.
@UncleEbeneezer: I accept your read on it as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mr. Bemused Senior: So would I.
eclare
@Paul in KY:
Interesting. A shame that that threat does not exist anymore.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Change what we can. No meteor.
gene108
@Another Scott:
I have worked in the accounting departments of several nonprofits. Many have endowments, where they draw on the interest to provide money for services. The endowments can be restricted for specific purposes the organization has.
Some nonprofits issue loans, where repayment is waived if certain objectives are met. To the entity making the loan this is an asset.
The $77 billion on the balance sheet is an asset of the total of investments, loans receivable the foundation has.
This isn’t abnormal. The amount is larger than anywhere I worked, but per the notes of the financial statements it works the same way. Equity investments to fund operations, and loans to support smaller organizations instead of grants.
Also, nonprofits have to make more at the end of the year than they spent, otherwise they cease operations. The big difference between nonprofits and for profit entities is there are no owners in a nonprofit. The “net income” of a nonprofit goes back to fund the mission of the organization. They do not pay excess profits as dividends, or in the case of smaller businesses draw the profit out go on vacation.
Allen Henderson
A friend of mine recently said that being a billionaire is like being hit on the head with a hammer every single day. Everyone around you is fully incentivized to tell you exactly what you want to hear and to reinforce your beliefs, no matter how crazy.
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear:
Bizarre!
eclare
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I agree with you. No meteor.
Expletive Deleted
Nature/nuture, I suspect its a bit of both. People who single-mindedly pursue wealth at the expense of everything else are doubtless more likely to achieve it. But also wealth at that level turns into a self-sustaning organism, everything in its orbit is bent to its service. Musk is the most egregious example, and seems to be a truly horrible person since forever, but also at that level of wealth no one is getting close to you that isn’t feeding off of the same system and reinforcing it. Not unless you make a real effort to make that happen.
There’s a documentary called The One Percent (made in 2006, before Occupy popularized that phrase) made by one of the Johnson & Johnson heirs. As a doc its actually fairly mid, but at the same time its just chilling – the disconnect of these people, and the instinctive reflex they have to protect the system they benefit from is depressing, and that’s before you get to the “wealth management” ecosystem surrounding the whole thing.
There’s a bit where they talk about how prospective romantic partners basically get interviewed once things get serious enough, not by the parents but by like, the family lawyer. It’s like the British royal family aka “The Firm”, the actual individuals matter less than you think eventually.
Karen Gail
@Deputinize America: He doesn’t know, besides I share my evening meals with him. We still have chicken and rice in frig that I made for food to share and the idea of a turkey that would overfill my roaster is not something I wanted to deal with.
Karen Gail
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I have done that, but still all the cheap turkeys were larger than would fit in my Nesco safely. I have discovered that the store bought turkeys don’t have the flavor my home raised did and too much of the meat seems to “disagree” with me.
Karen Gail
@Omnes Omnibus: I raised geese one year; bought 24 goslings since learned raising meat birds some disappear. I lost good sized turkeys to fox and coyotes so figured loss due to wildlife and accidents. Nope, didn’t lose a one; they chased everything away and were down right nasty to deal with. I ended up catching them with fishing net and beheading them while still trapped in net.
The next year talked the “mighty hunters” in family into going after geese and I did the cooking. Extra birds were cooked, deboned and frozen.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The first I ever heard of Summers, he was going on about how women were underrepresented in the “hard” sciences because of lesser innate aptitude. It didn’t really get better from there. Brad DeLong always seemed to respect him as an economic authority but I think he’s soured on the guy too.
Karen Gail
If I ever came into large amount of money I would buy a farm and restore the land and spread the money around since my very well to do grandparents believed that money should be spread around and used for good of others. But then that set of grandparents had the same mindset as those who built museums, universities and hospitals.
JML
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think anyone in the DC intelligentsia (so carefully preserved in their own ivory tower echo chambers of what “proper” politics should be and who should be allowed in the club) understands just how much Larry Summers is despised by rank & file democrats.
I can’t think of a single Democrat I know (and I know a metric fuck ton after working as a political consultant for so many years) who wants to be associated with Larry effin’ Summers. Fetterman and Cuomo have higher approval ratings. People would welcome Sinema & Manchin back before backing Larry Summers.
OGliberal
@Paul in KY: 20 minute stroll. A bit tough in the depths of Summer and in January/February but, overall, not bad and good exercise…some not insignificant hills in my path. And a big chunk of it is on the greenway along the river so don’t have to deal with cars/crossing streets for much of the walk. I can watch the traffic from my office and apartment windows – it is ugly.
becca
I hate money. Money makes you funny, as the saying goes. Or Cyndi Lauper singing “money changes everything”. An embarrassment of riches, filthy stinking rich, make a pile, etc.
Money is the root of all evil, a rich man getting to Heaven as likely as a camel passing through the eye of a needle.Don’t need a bible to believe that.
For the love or want or need of money, we scar the earth and poison land and waters. We war and steal to satisfy insatiable greed.
rikyrah
@prostratedragon:
Jamelle Bouie:
he is not wrong.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
Musk killed hundreds of thousands of people with the shutdown of USAID.
Period.
He killed them
artem1s
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Gravenstone
@Omnes Omnibus: Climate change will take care of it all, in the longer run. The pain of the intervening years will be unfortunate, but we’ll all pay for the greed of the worst.
satby
This is a great post Betty, much appreciated!
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: Summers is a very sound economist technically, which is how he got into the Obama administration no doubt. Thing is, in mainstream econ, social and moral concerns can be taken as exogenous🤓. Not everyone goes to the tfouble of endogenizing them.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Yes, he and everyone associated with it. Estimates are that it will be over 13 million in the next five years.
villiageidiocy
Devastation at NASA Goddard started during the furlough, not being covered by the Bezos-owned Washington Post (who also owns Blue Origin).
NASA Warned to Halt Goddard Closures; But Building 11 Is Next
Furloughed Workers Recalled To Clear Buildings at Goddard
Tell your science and astronomy loving friends!
Note that these articles are published in the Greenbelt News Review, a local, free newspaper. They have a partnership with the UMD journalism school and have in the past few years been publishing some very good articles which cover central Maryland politics as well as hyperlocal stuff. They do accept donations!
cain
the idea of buying wizard of the coast because of this crap is so ridiculously dumb. Role playing gamers can switch to whatever they want. I used to play AD&D and then switched to GURPS. There are a lot of role playing systems out there. The monsters and everything else are all derived by human culture. You can create another one that has even more DEI in it. Fuck Elon.
Come at us bro, we will grow even more powerful.
The thing is, as these companies or whatever gets taken over, we start moving to more community oriented, de-centralized systems that are harder to take over. Mastodon continues to thrive and grow as an example.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@JML:
Tell that hatred of Larry Fucking Summers to the brainiacs at the Center for American Progress:
prospect.org/2025/11/14/epstein-confidant-larry-summers-guiding-democrats-project-2029/
Because they clearly think that a mysogynist creep who hates working people is to be elevated and opinions deeply considered.
cain
I’m curious to know what Elon’s reaction would be to all those Disney movies whose content was derived by the Grimm Brothers. If Disney also admitted the same thing what would Elon do?
villiageidiocy
@JML: I don’t think anyone in the DC intelligentsia understands how much Larry Summers is despised by female scientists who are old enough to remember his tenure at Harvard.
Not that they would care (the “intelligentisia”, that is).
satby
@Matt McIrvin: The Pritzkers made all their kids work at some kind of regular job.
HarryBee
@PaulWartenberg:
I can’t tell you how much this delights me. I often have idle thoughts of the French Revolution and know this: no private army, no gates or walls, nothing will stop the mob when they’ve finally reached the limit. The mofos won’t be able to hide in New Zealand, private islands, submarine redoubts or Mars.
Another Scott
@gene108: Thanks for the info from the trenches.
But that’s my point. These foundations should be forced to go out of business after some period of time (I would advocate for less than 25 years, but we can debate the period). Someone figuring out how to twist the system, with the help of protections in human-written copyright and patent laws, to generate huge profits, should not be determining where those huge profits are spent for decades and decades and decades.
The velocity of money is too low. The peak was in 1997; right now it’s a lot lower than it used to be (e.g. compare with 1960-1990).
FWIW.
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
TerryC
I worked with some trust fund babies and, even though they were all on the right side, boy howdy did they NOT like to spend their own money.
Bill Arnold
@HarryBee:
If the very very very very rich think a bit about the limits of their personal security, they will realize how vulnerable they are to (hypothetical!) people committed to the discontinuation of their existence.
no body no name
@Bill Arnold:
This came up a few years ago. Rather than give up their money their solution was bomb collars on their security and AI death bots.
We dance around this but inequality has hit such a point that democratic political solutions and activism can’t get us out of our problems. We are at the point where it’s Theil’s libertopia vs French Revolution. We need to admit that.
Gloria DryGarden
@Scamp Dog: I was so hoping someone had a response to kosh lll. I don’t like the flat tax idea either progressive makes more sense to me.
Also, taxing 1% on every investment interaction, could be better aimed at the big money investors. I think it would hamper small investors and people just getting started, or trying to arrange a backup fund for health/ college/ retirement options.
PS my email is still not cleared up. (yahoo put limits on storage with a month’s notice; I hadn’t yet created a regular habit of deleting email, but I’m slowly making progress.)
Gloria DryGarden
@FDRLincoln: beautiful.
@PaulWartenberg: I agree a lot of the Uber rich, esp the power hungry and exploitive one’s, have some wounds in their psyche. Maybe they’re taught to be cruel and disregard the needs of other humans, because they themselves were disregarded.
I think court ordered therapy.. with therapist recommendation on how to recirculate all that money back into society.
Im thinking of Mackenzie Scott, giving away money to philanthropy. And there are others, who put their money into community and societal improvements, food, shelters, domestic violence, helping children, health. Every rich person is not a monster.
Eyeroller
@Paul in KY: Nepotism literally means “nephewism” and comes from Catholic popes and bishops, who were at least theoretically celibate so did not have sons, getting cushy jobs for their nephews.
So it’s a very old practice.
jefft452
@PaulWartenberg: Nothing wrong with them that making them about 9 inches shorter wouldn’t fix
2liberal
@eclare:
a kangaroo is a marsupial, not a mammal. /pendantry
…checks wikipedia and finds: Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia.
Matt McIrvin
@2liberal: Yes, they’re hairy and they lactate, just like bears, cows and humans.
They’re not placental mammals. They are more closely related to opossums.
sab
@Gloria DryGarden: It can be done. When I finally maxed out my e-mail limit by ignoring it I had 50,000 e-mails to clean out. It took a few weeks but I did it! Now I keep up and clean them out almost daily.
The spam filter is my bff.
Kayla Rudbek
@prostratedragon: and the kind of thing that the villains do in SF, fantasy, thrillers, horror…
Kayla Rudbek
@Gvg: inflation is too much money chasing too few goods/services, after all…
Kayla Rudbek
@Other MJS: I’m dreading the day when AI starts prosecuting patent applications; I have seen crazy enough work from the US and European patent offices without any AI involved (and bad responses by patent attorneys too) that I think AI will make everything completely garbage and the judges and lawyers are going to have to lead the revolution against AI.
Kayla Rudbek
@Tony Jay:
@Matt McIrvin: the real fight is “wool versus acrylic” and the various permutations of that
Kayla Rudbek
@Tony Jay: as they say, “we knit/crochet so that we don’t kill people”
Kayla Rudbek
@PaulWartenberg: even my ancient Roman ancestors had the slave whispering in the Emperor’s ear during his triumphs “remember, man, that thou art mortal” and these greedy robber barons don’t even have that, they think that they can live forever because they have money.
”if life was a thing that money could buy, the rich they would live and the poor they would die” is actually true now
Kayla Rudbek
@cain: that’s precisely why the AI companies are going after Disney! They think that Disney is girly and woke and weak, and that because copyright and trademark law has a lot of women in the field, that copyright and copyright law is girly and weak.
Ramona
@prostratedragon: This is indeed horrifying and that it has taken 35 years to be revealed just magnifies the horror.
BellyCat
Way late to the party, but this was a superb post, BC.
(I, too, was moved by Tony Jay’s comment, overlooking entirely the fact that he drilled right to the heart of the topic in less than 5,000 words. Sad!)
BellyCat
Please to subscribe me to your newsletter. (and Nominated!)
Chris T.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I would say it is ab initio and prima facie wrong. The difficulty is convincing those with the moneypower to agree.
Stephen
@Gvg: Apso-bloody-lutely. A sure sign that the rich are not being taxed enough are investment bubbles in stupid stuff. The reason they chase them, is because there’s not enough demand for normal goods & services, and the reason for that is because the poors aren’t paid enough.
Paul in KY
@Karen Gail: You are a badass!
Paul in KY
@Eyeroller: Thanks for that info. He did help me.
Paul in KY
@2liberal: They are not placental mammals :-)