A 737!

I was thinking about this earlier this month when I was doing my taxes. Not that my taxes are very complicated these days since I got rid of the rental property. But I was thinking about the whole "manage your own retirement/health care & etc." policy trend that has largely been pushed by very wealthy people.

Of course they're in favor of that, because now matter how confusing and baroquely complex financial or health care systems get, the rich can always pay someone to navigate for them.

A 737 has an actual navigator.

And IIRC, there's a bunch of research demonstrating that wealthy people can easily lose their sense of empathy

I was just listening to Michael Lewis's podcast and he discussed a study that showed that people in the most expensive cars were the most assholish drivers.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/science-rich-people-drive-jerks/312236/

But for SO MANY reasons, it's now obvious to most right-thinking people that people with grotesque amounts of wealth should be pillaged.

So we're not going to shoot them?

Before the hunting party even starts?

he discussed a study that showed that people in the most expensive cars were the most assholish drivers.

In terms of cost per mile, a London taxi is about the most expensive car in the world, so... yeah, that works out.

Obama's shittier book had a thing about what Senators miss when they get to fly on private jets.

I saw a sitting House member on a commercial flight twice.

I just finished Becoming. I really liked it until they were in the White House, and then it was dull, dull, dull.

Somebody lobbied him while boarding.

4: A good working definition of driving like an arsehole is accelerating too hard and driving too fast and consequently braking too hard. what's one of the biggest things you can buy more of in a car? Acceleration and speed. In a real sense, buying a more expensive car is buying potential arseholeship.

There's a large portion of the luxury vehicle market here that's about bigger and more bigger without making the engine that much bigger.

10: Yeah, just one orgy after another.

I'm on board with having a maximum wealth. $10 million? $20 million? We can be generous and index the cutoff to inflation.

Some people will complain that this'll make capitalism less efficient because less motivation to innovate yadda yadda. We just need to find useless high-status positional goods without externalities for the hyper-competitive to waste their energy on.

12.1 How is accelerating too fast assuming no one is in front of you and you're not endangering anyone else driving like an asshole? And if you're breaking too hard you're not a good driver.

This thread by Abigail Disney on the minimum wage compared to CEO pay was fantastic

16: agreed. Driving like an arsehole can be done in any vehicle. You can do it very well in a Transit van which doesn't exactly leap off the blocks with the speed of an Usain Bolt who has just been informed that there's a sale on at Games Workshop. (Usain Bolt is an fanatical tabletop wargamer. Prove me wrong.)

It's one of the joys of life if you have to have a car and why I bought a used Mini JCW (which was not very expensive).

And it's a shame Halford isn't around anymore to either appreciate my purchase or tell me I fucked up and should have bought something else.

I looked it up for other reasons a week ago. $1.38M in wealth is the cut-off for the top ten percent. It also marks the divider between the bottom 90% holding 30% of America's wealth and the top 10% holding 70% of the nation's wealth. Then I thought to myself, I have much less than $1.38 in wealth and I live a very pleasant life. I would not feel bad, forcing everyone with more to live at my lifestyle. It is all de-growth-y and shit, so they might have to find enjoyment in non-consumption but if I can do it, so can they.

Then I thought to myself, would I like to have 70% of the nation's wealth on hand to do useful things with? I realized that I would.

In my proposal, everything more than $1.5M (rounding up!) gets confiscated.

I further amused myself with schemes in which people could be deputized to find pockets of wealth over $1.5M, and by presenting information about these stashes to the IRS, could be awarded a portion of the hoarded/seized wealth. Seems motivating!

Then I thought further, about making Hoarding a crime. My thoughts wandered further afield and I began to consider a new kind of crime, Extinction, that the worst perpetrators of climate change could be charged with.

Hoarding bounty recipients get a percentage of the money but, lest they become Hoarders themselves, must spend it all within a year, Brewster's Millions style.

We're going to have some dope parties.

Well, they are still subject to the $1.5M cap.

https://media.giphy.com/media/jNdw5Qmy5MOpq/giphy.gif

9. Cattle class or business?

Confiscation isn't enough. You'll need reeducation also I think. Maybe some kind of arrangement towards getting in touch with a farm worker's life via a work program.

25: Too small to have first class.

I feel like the reeducation would happen by itself.

Then I thought further, about making Hoarding a crime. My thoughts wandered further afield and I began to consider a new kind of crime, Extinction, that the worst perpetrators of climate change could be charged with.

I'm on board.

Can't they use the existing reeducation centers?

It would have to be Attempted Extinction, because jesus fuck, humans are swarming, not extinct. But the crime itself would be extinction, whether they manage to follow through with it or not.

Well, we're causing a mass extinction of lots of other animals. Exacerbating that wave could be a crime. We could allow a more tenuous connection to harming endangered species.

No more encouraging the pandas to smoke.

33: But I'm increasing their quality of life!

Pandas need to take up vaping.

Since nobody will let them get married in a church, they've decided to stop fucking. That's why they are endangered.

God, they're such millenials.

9. I saw Elizabeth Warren on the DCA-BOS shuttle a few years ago. She was in the front section though.

I bet that trying to date while having the last name "Disnety" leads to a whole bunch of "Magic Kingdom" jokes.

30. I was thinking of Mao's Down to the Countryside Movement. My 26 was contemptuous.

Oh. Missed it. Sorry.

For whatever it's worth, I'd be happy with substantially higher capital gains taxes, estate taxes, carbon taxes, and a functioning IRS and powerful EPA. Making up new crimes and power fantasies about eliminating political enemies make me nervous. I understand 20 and 21 as venting rather than policy proposals.

I believe the actual policy proposal was pillaging as promulgated by heebie.

I'm with 42, I think we should have way higher taxes on rich people but only so that we can give money and services to poor people, not because the rich people themselves are bad. I dislike Bernie/AOC-style messaging where every social problem is the fault of some group of rich malefactors who get called out by name and booed at.

Not looking to be absolved or have the concepts be treated as venting.

I am completely in favor of confiscating all wealth over $1.5M/person (which would include people I'm close to). I would also give some thought to both hoarding and extinction as potential crimes. If by "eliminating political enemies", you mean charging people with crimes (even new crimes!) and running them through the criminal justice system, I see no problem. I mean, the crime of hoarding is easy to correct. And climate change perpetrators should be punished; my preference would be for them to feel the suffering they're causing, but being tried for a crime and punished that way would suffice.

45. No crime is easy to correct. This is because investigation and punishment are appalling cudgels, both nearly always botched. Laws work because there's consensus that they should be obeyed. Feel free to have the last word.

You're setting the bar pretty low if "unforgivable wealth" equates to "owns a medium sized house in a major city" though. You can have $1.5m in property assets no problem without being obscenely wealthy. All it means is that you have a two bedroom house in Islington.

You're setting the bar pretty low if "unforgivable wealth" equates to "owns a medium sized house in a major city" though. You can have $1.5m in property assets no problem without being obscenely wealthy. All it means is that you have a two bedroom house in Islington.

18/19: I appreciate the purchase. Also, no rate of acceleration is inappropriately high if there's nothing in front of you!

Are we confiscating above $1.5M in the US? My mom's care is about $85K per year, not including exciting medical disasters like ER visits for falls. 24 hour in home care is significantly more. The cost in their atate is much lower than the coasts. She has been in a memory care facility for about six years now, I think? She might live another 3. I thank the god I don't believe in that my parents had roughly $2M of assets when my father retired. Money was starting to look tight, even with that, but my grandmother's house in California and her savings just infused enough money that he is pretty sure he will have enough to last until his mid-90s (the age his father and grandfather died). I mean, if we are fantasizing, let's fix this monstrous sytem, but until then, I'm going to say $2M per person probably gives you a UMC retirement at 65 and a safety net for lengthy illness.

You're setting the bar pretty low if "unforgivable wealth" equates to "owns a medium sized house in a major city" though. You can have $1.5m in property assets no problem without being obscenely wealthy. All it means is that you have a two bedroom house in Islington.

I had the same thought and then quickly realized that if there was a wealth limit of $1.5M/person, you would see a rapid change in real estate prices in major cities (which, of course, means that it's politically impossible). You just wouldn't have $2M homes in that world.

Or, you'd see a case in which [famous entertainer] would form a partnership with [10 people with no assets] to buy a $10M house, in which they sign an agreement so that [famous entertainer] got full and exclusive rights to use the house and everybody else got $1M in paper assets.

There's also the question of how this interacts with foreign ownership (in two ways: first rich people seeking foreign citizenship in a tax haven, secondly when the real estate market in Seattle collapses you'll see even more people from China buying houses there, and you might see a bunch of people from Vancouver buying second homes in Seattle if the prices fall enough) .

You just wouldn't have $2M homes in that world.

Right. A lot of wealth held as property would be unmade, rather than confiscated.

50. There would be committees of people to decide who gets to live where. Sort of like HOAs, but now just fine because everyone means well. There might be a wait in some cases. Your past campaign contributions are a public record, btw. Seriously, proposals very much like these have already been tried.

Back to pillaging.

Don't precommit to only a few pitchforks, you may run low as the process unfolds.

Is someone hoarding them?!?

I believe the actual policy proposal was pillaging as promulgated by heebie

"It Takes a Pillage."

Pirates of the Caring Being.

It's been so long, I thought you'd never call.

Don't turn around.

That's my line.

It's Falco's line.

Bourgeoisie, always so clever with your references.

I mean, if we are fantasizing, let's fix this monstrous sytem, but until then, I'm going to say $2M per person probably gives you a UMC retirement at 65 and a safety net for lengthy illness.

Well, full-on single-payer for all health care, personal care, etc. is much more popular than wealth confiscation, so it seems hard to imagine the latter would ever come before the former.

I'm all for soaking the rich, and I agree that 'every billionaire is a policy failure' but I draw the line at exterminating the kulaks.

My family being in a similar state to 49 is why I also started with a higher number. These sort of things change you.

63 is of course correct.

Don't stand by the pipe. I'll need it later.

18: CTS-V Wagon or GTFO.

63 is a good point: telling that even someone coming up with a plan for massive wealth destruction / confiscation can't bring herself to imagine the NHS happening in her own country.

68: Of course I can imagine it happening; I just figured the question was "what's the number that means you have more money than you need to have a pretty good life?" and not "in your utopian society with healthcare, eldercare, and a UBI, how much money means etc etc?" For Boomers at retirement, financial advisors recommend having about $1M per person in assets. It's unachievable for lots of people, but I thought it was worth pointing out (after seeing suggestions that we confiscate anything over $1.5M as "too rich") that in the US, even that kind of money may well run out, and that at retirement, that kind of bank balance is enough to have a nice retirement, maybe own a small boat, take a trip or two a year, and weather most disasters that come with aging and failing health. Many folks with longterm chronic illness do get government assistance (Medicaid, social security, etc), so there's something of a floor on how bad running out of money can be, but when you run out, life gets harder.

In an era of fully automated gay space communism, I guess you could confiscate everything.

I think we should concentrate on those wealthy enough to have multi-person, live-in domestic help. The Butlerian Jihad.

18, 67: Did Halford flounce memorably or just sort of fade at the end of the record?

70 is outstanding.

71: Just faded away.

70: well played.

Interesting fact: current total net wealth in the US, including real estate, is around $300k per person. Roughly 40% of that is real estate (less for whites, more for Hispanics and blacks).

That's why fraudulent and deceptive home equity loans are a local custom.

Not "pillaging". Being required to contribute to the infrastructure of society at an appropriate level.

Blume!

76. Where "infrastructure of society" means "no-show jobs for our political supporters."

Do people still talk about that seriously in other places? Maybe in Lower Massachusetts. The cranky elderly here complain that the road crews don't work hard enough, but I think it would be impossible to have a no show job in this day and age. Government employees can't do things that I can do, like work from home, to avoid that appearance.

Cattle class or business?

Members of Congress go home multiple times a month in addition to their other travel, so they pretty much all have the miles to get upgraded to first class. Their travel allowance isn't enough to buy a lot of first class tickets, though of course most of them are personally wealthy.

It's really hard to get a first class seat out of Lincoln, Nebraska. So is getting a beer after you've gone through security. On the plus side, it's really easy to find baggage claim.

I think I'd put the personal wealth limit a little higher than $1.5 M (mostly because of retirement savings) but subject it to a wealth tax (and of course raise top income tax rates and eliminate the egregious loopholes).

Houses are really cheap. Retirement is what's expensive.

Retirement is a fictional construct.

Being too disabled to work on account of age-related issues is very real.

85: Definitely. Then I'm at the mercy of the state.

86: But how can I worry about that knowing that at this very moment there is bright green gum (apparently, could be silly putty, I suppose) stuck on the seat of my pants? I guess I have to be more careful choosing a seat on the bus.

The worst (?) thing is that the most likely scenario seems to me to be that someone put it on the seat there on purpose as some kind of sick joke.

Ohio humor is very broad.

Confiscatory taxes, including wealth and estate taxes, is low imagination. A. Disney would be a lot less wealthy if the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act was repealed. Patents on software and computer processes might be outlawed. (Algorithms are a lot like physical laws, and a physical law cannot be patented.) We might as well get rid of patents on genes, too.

John Quiggin talks about predistribution. See also Robert Lee Hale (1923). Or recent books by Dean Baker and Robert Reich.

81: Or out of Biloxi, Mississippi on a Sunday morning. Or at least it was in 1986, which is how I wound up in a smallish plane a few rows in front of Van Halen.

Did you get an autograph?

Were there yellow M&Ms?

When I worked at the flower store in high school, we had a standing order for flower delivery on Fridays to Van Halen's house.

From his former teacher.

I thought the problem was brown m&ms.

93: Eddie? Alex? Or did the whole band share a house?

I bet when it rained, that house was really slippery. I bet they shared groceries and then got mad when someone ate the last M&M and said, "Oh you ate one too?"

95: I am ashamed. I was too literal with canaries in coal mines.

Confiscatory taxes, including wealth and estate taxes, is low imagination. A. Disney would be a lot less wealthy if the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act was repealed

I guess it is low imagination not to consider changing the past.

There are definitely measures a society can take to prevent individuals and families from accumulating great wealth. It's another question what a society does that already has individuals and families that have acquired great wealth.

Thanks to the War on Coal, the miners don't go down to feed the canaries and they'll all be dead soon.

I think Eddie.

I guess it is low imagination not to consider changing the past.

I do not understand this. (Maybe I should not have used "was".) If Congress repealed the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act right now or anytime in the future, the value of Disney stock would immediately drop and members of the Disney family would be immediately less wealthly.

101: That makes sense. That was probably when he was married to Valerie Bertinelli.

102: Sorry, that was a stupid misunderstanding on my part. But maybe the larger point holds - it seems to me more direct action would be required if we really want to break up huge accumulations of wealth.

Randon Guest: "Oh wow, those are beautiful flowers. Where were they grown?"
Van Halen: "PANAMA!"

Yes! It was when he was married to Valerie Bertinelli.

She had such great hair.

Are you saying that's a wig she has now?

Random guest: Ugh this staircase is missing a few stairs. However will I get down?

79. There are still plenty of jobs like that in the MA bureaucracy. Technically they aren't "no-show" in that you are supposed to attend a meeting now and then, if you feel like it. Those are the white-collar, managerial version of no-show jobs. Blue-collar workers can't get no-show jobs as easily. On the other hand, we still have the law that all road work has to have a "detail" cop there to make sure all the donuts are eaten everything is going along safely. This is usually performed sitting in one's car. I find it hard to believe PA is any different, except in the details of the grifting.

Death to strikeovers!

In Pittsburgh, there is a cop at roadwork sites. I don't think it's grift because I've learned there is no road so very obviously closed some local won't try to drive down it while shouting at somebody trying to stop them.

There's someone at my institution with a no-show job who actually shows up for it. He just doesn't do anything.

And reader, that man is me.

That's not true. I'm very productive.

Or are we all the same age?

I always find this weird. I'm signing the kids up for YMCA sleepaway camp. Here's one of the questions:

Please select the category the best represents your total household gross income during the past 12 months:

a. Less than $5000
b. $5000-$9999
c. $9999-$14999
d. $15,000 - $24,999
e. $25,000 - $34,999
f. $35,000 - $49,999
g. Greater than $50,000

I mean, it's just awfully fine-tuning the shades of poverty. There are three categories for people with one parent earning at or less than minimum wage. And then lumping together a whole lot of ranges of wealth. Not that the fanciest people go to YMCA, but wouldn't you still want that data broken out?

There's also a tiered pricing scheme, which you select on the honor system. That question about the household income always primes me to pick the most expensive tier. Maybe those wily guys have done this deliberately.

Yep

There's probably some guy who is asking for another category because he makes $25,100 and does want to have to pay as much a s somebody making $34,999.

Not that the fanciest people go to YMCA, but wouldn't you still want that data broken out?

I think it's basically: if your income falls within the range of A-F, we can offer financial assistance on a sliding scale. If your income is above G, we don't care whether it's $51K or $510K, we can't offer assistance and you'll have to pay the full fee.

Not that the $510K per annum crowd send their kids to the Y, of course, but I think that's the idea? That is, they don't want a full and complete financial picture for every child who attends camp, they just want to know where their money should go?

My son used to attend a YMCA sleepaway camp in western NJ, which ran (still runs) a lot of fundraising campaigns to enable kids from lower-income NYC households to attend summer camp. I was impressed by how seriously they took this as part of their mission.

When we're discussing the Disney corporation, it is entirely appropriate to consider redistributing 50% of shareholders' wealth by snapping one's fingers, and/or redistributing wealth by traveling back in time.

Pass a one day estate tax of 100%, unfreeze Walt on that day, shoot him, get it all.

Now you're just being goofy.

"Your honor, I didn't say she was crazy."

91: I did! On a barf bag.

92: There were not.

Obviously. Else Doug would not be with us.

We'd updog, though.

89 is right on.