we need to tax the middle class much more to finance universal social benefits (though much of that will just replace expenditures like private insurance premiums), without provoking inflation. 1/
we need to tax the very wealthy because wealth that confers political influence or leads to lifestyles detached from our political community, people who have no use or interest in our commonweal, is dangerous and should not exist. 2/
with respect to neither of these purposes is the formal accounting debt or deficit very useful or informative. 3/
it is simultaneously true that we need to tax a whole lot more and conventional fiscal math is a red herring. /fin
unconditional love conditioned as a practical matter on continuing and continual interaction is potentially the most powerful force in politics.
dear all of you.
i don’t like it when any of you die.
please take that under advisement.
thank you.
billionaires are the sad victims of an inadequate tax code, which has allowed them to become surrounded by an isolating bubble of sycophants, severed from participation in community and ordinary fellowship. we owe potential victims of this condition prevention, and those already suffering remedy.
@laprice ass — artificial super sycophancy
sycophancy as a service.
[new draft post] Constant real wages can hide a lot of pain https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/12/28/constant-real-wages-can-hide-a-lot-of-pain/index.html
if you want to get shit done, rather than a “strong man”, instead of autocracy, have you considered a democratically elected unicameral legislature which directly appoints and can remove the executive?
the fraction of communication we experience — across all media, excluding what is explicitly fiction — that is in one form or another a lie is extraordinary.
since AI is going to solve all the medical miracles now, we can dispense with the exorbitant patent rents, right?
so much of civilization is keeping one’s vexations to oneself.
nowadays if you’re naughty he just farts into it because natural gas is cleaner.
you can never find scissors. not when you need them. never. so you end up buying another pair. until you move. then they all appear, come out of the woodwork, hundreds of them, snapping at you.
“There is no point in criticizing something if some law of nature means that it must be so. But there is, despite claims otherwise, no law of nature which says we have to be bastards to each other or to the species we share this world with.” @ianwelsh https://www.ianwelsh.net/we-dont-have-to-live-in-hell/
love it when a university i attended 20 years ago writes to let me know they've been hacked and they've leaked my social.
we’ve been gaslighted into believing that gaslighting is a thing.
i like to think i could have made a failure of myself no matter what my race or gender — or nationality or religion or sexual preference — had been.
A great piece that explains succinctly why Congressionally defined independent agencies, far from undermining executive accountability, are prerequisite to it. by @jbouie https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/opinion/trump-presidential-power-miller-vought.html
The relevant unit of housing is not the unit. It's the district or neighborhood. Housing in contemporary society is not to about glorified tents, just to keep the rain off. Homes are the literal structure of society. Their most important characteristics are in relationship to other elements.
how is AI slop affecting / likely to affect geolocation of photos?