but then things they think they lock can break as well. the institutions’ vandals rely on the institutions holding after they suborn them. they think they are locking but they may be placing us in a very fluid situation. i don’t say that with relish. it’s a very dangerous kind of fluidity.

it’s just that at a certain point they push in our stack too.

i guess i’m not trying to blame. i’m just saying it’s time for every stripe of decent person, even the kind who think of themselves as sensible moderates, to join hands on the proposition that billionaires are inconsistent with democracy, and taxes must be levied that prevent and undo them.

finance masters of the universe boasted and swung their BSDs and brought us the Great Financial Crisis. then Obama gave them a mulligan. tech masters of the universe boast and are on the verge of giving us bigger, crazier crises. i think what follows is an age of wrath. no telling who will burn.

every billionaire is a mad king in waiting.

the sad fact is the people who received CTC felt it go. while it’s true and well and good to say Dems wanted to extend it, on Biden’s watch people felt that pain and most of what the US electorate does is ignore the details but register discontent by voting against the incumbent.

yes. Biden genuinely tried to do some transformative things (which i never would have predicted in 2020), and despite sabotage managed some extraordinary things. unfortunately what he managed was not the kind of thing people could feel immediately, but inflation + COVID support wind-down they could.

i won’t argue with you about urgency or how deep a hole we are in. if you have a faster, better, way, i’m all ears.

( although, to be fair, once a wealth tax is imposed, the wealthy will work very hard to shift that ratio. )

no, not relitigate everything at once. just reform the court, and strip the court of any jurisdiction over that reform. the rest can be reworked in time, as a saner institution reconsiders things. (but i’m afraid now is no time for sanity. we can only hope the country tires of the funhouse in a few)

wealth tax would begin with tens of millions in wealth. people with less than say $50M wouldn’t pay a dime.

an act of a Congress can insist this court can’t “referee” its own restructuring. Congress can just say so—it can limit the jurisdiction of the Court. if the Court doesn’t like it, too bad. the other branches can insist on the law as Congress wrote it. eg www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release...

i’ve seen a bunch of Canadian posters viscerally and not very gently mad (correctly so!) over Trump’s musings on absorbing Canada.

great point! i was only addressing the personal loan/income side. i’d have to think harder about what kind of regime i’d want for business leverage. i agree that eliminating the tax favorability of highly leveraged arrangements like LBOs would be very desirable.

(i love Canada, lived a summer in Toronto, had many of the best times of my reckless youth there. i don’t claim i understand Canada, but i do admire and sometimes pine for it.)

( great approach! i’d skip the 75% requirement, and default to treating loans as taxable income + basis www.interfluidity.com/v2/9028.html )

any time, it only takes an act of Congress. our electoral system is crap, gerrymandered, stabilized for incumbents within a duopoly, biased towards small, now red states, etc. but shit (bad shit) will happen. decisive elections can follow. could have happened in 2021, but for Sinemanchin and Biden.

there’s no getting around Court reform. this “court” is a farce, and a weapon of plutocracy.

i think persuading is important work we have to do. i wish we hadn’t let the problem fester so badly that we have to remedy it in ways i agree people will perceive as unpleasantly confiscatory. but we’ve fucked up, and existing concentrations of wealth are inconsistent with democracy.

“tax positivity” as @jdcmedlock.bsky.social puts it, the idea that taxation, besides buying stuff, does important things — not as a “weapon”, but for example shaping a wealth distribution consistent with democracy — is an important idea to communicate and persuade people of.