I do not begrudge the billionaires their space toys. You can afford your own private NASA? That's fantastic! A real testament to this modern world we live in. BUT . . .
. . . Each and every one of those billionaires owes a major debt to the societies that enabled their acquisition of wealth. PAY YOUR FUCKING TAXES!
We really do need tax reform that makes the wealthy pay more. I know some would like confiscatory tax rates, but just getting Jeff Bezos to actually pay the same tax rate as one of his housekeepers would really make a difference.
Libertarians are the worst because they’re really just Republicans, but they’re pretentious about it.
The single most annoying thing about how fanboys/girls defend billionaires is the idea that any check on them somehow prevents them from rising up to their god-given potential, the attainment of which somehow “helps” the rest of us (underpants gnomes, anyone?). It’s ridiculous. As Roy points out, guys like Bezos, Zuck, and Musk could sell everything, move to Montana, and do nothing for the rest of their lives and they’d still get richer. That kind of money continues to self-propagate without any real effort.
That sentence -"History is littered homina homina blah blah etc. <belch>" is the worst sentence ever written. That's quite an accomplishment!
Those wacky Podhoretzes! Norm, Midge, John and Ruthie have made serious money over the years writing, exclusively, pissy bilge. That's quite an accomplishment too if you think about it! Especially when you consider about 14 people actually read them. Three of whom, like Roy, are hate reading them.
Just excellent. It's embarrassing what these tongue-bathers are willing to do to billionaires in public (has Larry Kudlow checked in yet?). They usually bring up Steve Jobs for their "innovation" routine, and never the little-known Wall St. and private equity parasites like John Paulson, David Tepper, Mets owner Steven Cohen, etc. etc. whose only innovation is in rigging the great capitalist casino and getting bailed out by the rest of us.
But they do know their audience. Forgive me if I've mentioned this before, but a 2000 Time magazine poll showed that 19% of Americans think they are in the richest 1% and a further 20% expect to be someday. That's almost 40% of Americans who don't even know what the facts are, and who are generally clueless as to even how much a billion dollars really is. Anyone in "middle class circumstances" would be delighted to make a million bucks a year. Someone who makes a billion in one year makes a million every two hours. Jeff Bezos "made" $75 billion in 2020, or about $38 million per "working" hour. Musta done a whole lot of innovatin'.
"Meritocracy" is not reality. It's a phony justification for stealing. The suggestion that our space tourist billionaires are going to accomplish anything that will help humanity more than it hurts humanity is based on faith, and I'll think about developing that faith when they start demonstrating they're capable of it. Even just some small steps would help.
And yet, every time I make this point, the weirdo inequality stans explain that the space race gave us Tang, so stop saying it's pointless. A) we already have Tang, so thanks. B) it may or may not be pointless, but it's a very low priority. Apparently a firm grasp on reality doesn't include understanding why oxygen is important. If they want to leave their mark, there's so many ways they could do it without acting out NewsRadio scripts to the tune of billions of dollars and more environmental degradation.
And just guessing here, but McArdle is almost certainly one of those people who makes fun of government grants to fund pure research.
The future, think about it: sex tourism in space. "Sure you've gotten an handy-j from a sex-trafficked teenager from a third world country, but have you ever done it... in space."
McArdle ("Jane Galt"!) and Poddy are such romantics at heart, it makes me want to cry. The purpose of these projects is to enable multibillionaires to make STILL MORE money than they are already making, because that is the only motivation they are capable of experiencing. They have reservations booked already up through at least the next year for other billionaires who want to be photographed being weightless for four minutes, at hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop. The thing we've been witnessing is what is called a product launch, same as a new perfume or watch or "cruise to nowhere". It will not contribute in any way to the colonization of space (I doubt humanity will survive enough centuries to get to the point where they can send crews to the next solar system) or the advancement of science. It will just make them a little richer or give them a new tax loss to report if it flops.
Innovation! They seem to think that Bezos et al are the first, people in space. Or did they piggy back on the billions (trillions?) of government money spent on NASA?
When I was a kid, I thought living in a Robert Heinlein novel would be cool (kid buys a used spacesuit from Nasa, gets abducted by aliens and saves Earth by giving a speech). This is not what I imagined The Man Who Sold The Moon would be like.
I do not begrudge the billionaires their space toys. You can afford your own private NASA? That's fantastic! A real testament to this modern world we live in. BUT . . .
. . . Each and every one of those billionaires owes a major debt to the societies that enabled their acquisition of wealth. PAY YOUR FUCKING TAXES!
We really do need tax reform that makes the wealthy pay more. I know some would like confiscatory tax rates, but just getting Jeff Bezos to actually pay the same tax rate as one of his housekeepers would really make a difference.
Libertarians are the worst because they’re really just Republicans, but they’re pretentious about it.
The single most annoying thing about how fanboys/girls defend billionaires is the idea that any check on them somehow prevents them from rising up to their god-given potential, the attainment of which somehow “helps” the rest of us (underpants gnomes, anyone?). It’s ridiculous. As Roy points out, guys like Bezos, Zuck, and Musk could sell everything, move to Montana, and do nothing for the rest of their lives and they’d still get richer. That kind of money continues to self-propagate without any real effort.
"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." Jay Gould, 1891
Sometimes a rocket is just a rocket.
I wish the rockets had kept going, and going, etc.
That sentence -"History is littered homina homina blah blah etc. <belch>" is the worst sentence ever written. That's quite an accomplishment!
Those wacky Podhoretzes! Norm, Midge, John and Ruthie have made serious money over the years writing, exclusively, pissy bilge. That's quite an accomplishment too if you think about it! Especially when you consider about 14 people actually read them. Three of whom, like Roy, are hate reading them.
McArdle is proof America is not a meritocracy.
Just excellent. It's embarrassing what these tongue-bathers are willing to do to billionaires in public (has Larry Kudlow checked in yet?). They usually bring up Steve Jobs for their "innovation" routine, and never the little-known Wall St. and private equity parasites like John Paulson, David Tepper, Mets owner Steven Cohen, etc. etc. whose only innovation is in rigging the great capitalist casino and getting bailed out by the rest of us.
But they do know their audience. Forgive me if I've mentioned this before, but a 2000 Time magazine poll showed that 19% of Americans think they are in the richest 1% and a further 20% expect to be someday. That's almost 40% of Americans who don't even know what the facts are, and who are generally clueless as to even how much a billion dollars really is. Anyone in "middle class circumstances" would be delighted to make a million bucks a year. Someone who makes a billion in one year makes a million every two hours. Jeff Bezos "made" $75 billion in 2020, or about $38 million per "working" hour. Musta done a whole lot of innovatin'.
"Meritocracy" is not reality. It's a phony justification for stealing. The suggestion that our space tourist billionaires are going to accomplish anything that will help humanity more than it hurts humanity is based on faith, and I'll think about developing that faith when they start demonstrating they're capable of it. Even just some small steps would help.
And yet, every time I make this point, the weirdo inequality stans explain that the space race gave us Tang, so stop saying it's pointless. A) we already have Tang, so thanks. B) it may or may not be pointless, but it's a very low priority. Apparently a firm grasp on reality doesn't include understanding why oxygen is important. If they want to leave their mark, there's so many ways they could do it without acting out NewsRadio scripts to the tune of billions of dollars and more environmental degradation.
And just guessing here, but McArdle is almost certainly one of those people who makes fun of government grants to fund pure research.
[bitter fucking sarcasm on]
The future, think about it: sex tourism in space. "Sure you've gotten an handy-j from a sex-trafficked teenager from a third world country, but have you ever done it... in space."
[bitter fucking sarcasm off]
"Fortunately for the gazillionaires, the spectacle will be so vivid they can see it from space!"
A guillotine high enough to reach the clouds! There's a project that might have some corollary advancements in engineering!
McArdle ("Jane Galt"!) and Poddy are such romantics at heart, it makes me want to cry. The purpose of these projects is to enable multibillionaires to make STILL MORE money than they are already making, because that is the only motivation they are capable of experiencing. They have reservations booked already up through at least the next year for other billionaires who want to be photographed being weightless for four minutes, at hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop. The thing we've been witnessing is what is called a product launch, same as a new perfume or watch or "cruise to nowhere". It will not contribute in any way to the colonization of space (I doubt humanity will survive enough centuries to get to the point where they can send crews to the next solar system) or the advancement of science. It will just make them a little richer or give them a new tax loss to report if it flops.
Innovation! They seem to think that Bezos et al are the first, people in space. Or did they piggy back on the billions (trillions?) of government money spent on NASA?
Oh, does she mean the 737 MAX?
When I was a kid, I thought living in a Robert Heinlein novel would be cool (kid buys a used spacesuit from Nasa, gets abducted by aliens and saves Earth by giving a speech). This is not what I imagined The Man Who Sold The Moon would be like.