WealthDistribution

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Notes

Reddit Notes

Will-to-Oligarch

Pence Tax

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been mocked for saying the quiet part out loud about taxing the rich, during a campaign stop.

“I don't really buy into the rich need to pay their fair share,” he told an audience of potential Republican primary voters.

Mr Pence appeared alongside Iowa Republican Representative Randy Feenstra at the Wells Visitor Center and Ice Cream Parlor in Le Mars, Iowa, on Wednesday when he was asked by an attendee about billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos avoiding taxes while ordinary people are “stuck footing the bill”.

“There’s no question that the tax code today creates a lot of different carve-outs for people who can shelter funds, keep dollars away,” Mr Pence said, according to the Kansas Reflector. “I’m somebody that, I don’t really buy into ‘the rich need to pay their fair share.’ When you look at the statistics of where we actually get our funding from the government, the top 10 per cent of earners in this country pay about 90 per cent of the money that goes into the federal treasury.”

In 2021, ProPublica reported that the 25 richest Americans paid an income tax rate of 3.4 per cent between 2014 and 2018. Mr Pence is arguing that when it comes to net taxes, the wealthy pay more.

A study by the centre-right Tax Foundation think tank indicated in 2018 that the richest one per cent paid more than 40 per cent of total federal income taxes.

Mr Pence said any Republican president should make the tax cuts passed during the Trump presidency permanent as they’re set to expire in 2025.

“I’m not one of those people that buy into the Democrats’ message about fair share, because I guarantee you that Americans at the top of the income level carry the overwhelming burden for government costs in this country,” Mr Pence told attendees.

Communicating with Oligarchs

There are those who focus on reaching the Mike Pences of the world by reason. Who believe that appealing to his better nature will work.

There are others who believe that there are some Mike Pences who cannot be reached. Mike Pences whose control of government and the economy enables them to self-deal while harming the masses, and that they will continue to do so regardless of data or reason.

History has many cases of society leaping forward after the latter group has lost their patience and acted directly. So while one may, as I do, lament the happening of these things; the reality, that these things are an important part of the long cycle of advancement, is well established.

How long should a dataist continue to try to communicate? When does the balance shift and the most benevolent course is direct action?

Dataists want to use metrics to make decisions. An example of a possible measure in this case is when surplus deaths are greater from not acting than they would be from acting. Using a metric, such as this, can remove the moral question of when it is right to limit self-dealing by other means.

Restoring the Servant Class

Yes, Chef

One of the TikTokers that joined the cottage cheese craze — albeit rather begrudgingly — is professional chef and recipe developer Meredith Hayden, who runs Wishbone Kitchen. But Meredith’s claim to fame had little to do with dairy: She went viral last year after documenting her 17-hour day in the Hamptons as a private chef for designer Joseph Altuzarra. I mention her because she is a perfect segue into Howard Chua-Eoan’s column about how the super-rich will privatize us all.

Howard — a longtime foodie — has witnessed many a restaurant chef join the dark side. You hear the rumors, he writes: “So-and-so has been snagged by a billionaire. You see an occasional post on social media clueing you in to said chef’s new lifestyle: no more endless nights bent over bookkeeping, no more customers who think orange wine is made with citrus, no more no-shows, no Yelp.”

One such chef was Liam Nichols, who used to spend his days and nights sweating over the stove in the kitchen of Momofuku Ko in New York City. That is, until one day, he went *poof* into the night, appearing only again on social media, posting pictures of a saccharine version of himself, frolicking on Caribbean beaches and suntanning on sailboats. Did he win the Powerball?? Howard wondered. No, not exactly: Liam was now the personal chef for billionaire Richard Branson, who casually owns a 74-acre oasis in the British Virgin Islands.

“The market for privatized services is growing because there are a lot more deep pockets everywhere,” Howard explains, arguing that there’s a price tag for everything — even a private Beyoncé concert. But while Queen Bey is happy to collect $24 million for an hourlong set, she’s also willing to spend that money on the 14 private chefs who are traveling with her on the Renaissance World Tour. “Members of the new servant class can benefit tremendously from bidding by the rich for the best in class,” Howard says. Boatloads of talented individuals — nannies, chauffeurs, butlers, veterinarians, nurses and tailors — are being snatched up onto the superyachts and hot spots of the wealthy. And if their clients demand a giant bowl of cottage cheese for dinner, that’s what they’re going to get.”

Codicil: Door Dash

Ask a Mike Pence this question: Does Door Dash represent a wasteful use of money? Is it economically inefficient for one low income person to pay another low income person to perform services?

I think that most of them will say "Hell yes, fucking avocado toasters."

But ask the same person about Branson's private servant corps, they'd see it as economically stimulating.

Economies are closed loops. Why should a labor class person not pay another labor class person to do things? That's how you grow the economy. It is easy to argue that paying McDonald's for food is wasteful, but paying a Dasher to transport 10 loads of McDonalds in a single car makes more sense than 10 people taking their cars separately. The "McDonald's" part of the equation is a separate question. If we have an efficient economy for transacting Dasher service, having a single Dasher do 10 things would increase the efficiency of the system overall.

And I think the counterpoint would be, untilmately, that Branson should have people performing services for him, and the labor class should have to do those menial tasks for themselves, in their free time, after they work for 8 hours a day. Not just that it is OK for those things to happen, but that it is **wrong** to have a labor class that spends their money on such services.

There is something broken in there. I haven't worked it all out yet, but there's a problem. If economies bootstrap via specialization of labor, and paying for efficientizing the creation of flat screens is good, then paying for efficientizing the acquisition of McDonald's must also be good.

And if efficientizing the acquisition of McDonald's is bad because it results in a net increase in acquisition of McDonald's, then we should be putting friction on the acquisition of McDonald's independent of DoorDash. Dashing isn't the economic bad in that picture, McDonald's is.

"They're Happy This Way"

75,000

Extract

Now, new research from a Nobel Prize-winning economist and fellow researchers provides a fresh answer. Money does appear to boost happiness — at least for most people — up to earnings of $500,000, according to the new paper published in this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

That contradicts earlier research from one of the economists involved in the new study, Daniel Kahneman, who in 2010 published an influential study with fellow Nobel Prize-winner Angus Deaton. The 2010 study found that money could only boost happiness up to a point — about $75,000 in annual earnings. Beyond that figure, the researchers concluded, money had little impact.

That notion that happiness tops out at $75,000 became so popular that Dan Price, the founder of credit card processor Gravity Payments, decided in 2015 to boost the minimum salaries of his employees to $70,000 — cutting his own salary to do so. The move brought him praise as an innovator and business leader in the process. (Price later stepped down after allegations of a pattern of abusing women.)

Yet new findings suggest that, for most people, happiness does improve with higher earnings — up to $500,000 a year. The research could have real-world implications for tax policies or compensation strategies, co-author Matthew Killingsworth of the University of Pennsylvania said in a statement about the latest findings.

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