Elon Musk is a living and breathing argument for a 90% top tax bracket

let THAT sink in

I wasn’t intending to write anything today, but then this item came to my attention and I fell into an eat the rich rage.

Elon Musk says his dog is now Twitter's CEO

Reminded of the pledge during an impromptu live BBC interview on Tuesday, Musk said: "I did stand down. I keep telling you I'm not the CEO of Twitter, my dog is the CEO of Twitter."

now, I’m not here to complain that Elon is wrecking twitter. he bought it, he owns it, it’s his, and he has every right to fuck it six ways to hell if that’s what turns him on.

I’m here to question whether we as a society should allow any one person to aquire so much weath they they get to live a life free of consequences.

a screen shot because twitter no longer allows substack to embed tweets. thanks, Elon!

Elon Musk has amassed enough wealth that he can do whatever the fuck he wants, every day, for the rest of his life. who’s going to stop him? if he’s fined millions of dollars for violating regulations, so what? that’s pocket change for Elon.

that’s why everything is a joke to Elon. he doesn’t care. he doesn’t have to. Elon is the living embodiment of because fuck you, that’s why.

and so if a reporter dares question him why he hasn’t named a CEO, he can just claim his dog is CEO.

Elon thumbs his nose at people who expect him to act like a mature adult, because what are the consequences if he doesn’t?

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We used to tax the shit out the the weathly. it’s how we financed all the highways we built in the 1950s and all the moon rockets we launched in the 1960s. it’s how we built our great middle class.

but taxing the shit out of the wealthy also had a side benefit: it kept potential Elon Musks from becoming Elon Musk. the system prevented anyone from amassing because fuck you, that’s why amounts of wealth.

look, I’m not saying that we should tax the wealthy out of existence. as my tweet notes, even with a 90% top tax margin, we still had rich people, and they still had plenty of money left over to spend on rich people bullshit.

I’m just saying that there has to be limits on wealth. for the good of society.

and listen: this isn’t socialism. it’s regulated capitalism.

because in the end, if you can afford to spend billions of dollars on a thing, and smash that thing all to fuck and then giggle childishly as the shattered fragments fall to the ground, you can damned well afford to pay your fair share of taxes.

let that sink in.

folks, a word on a different subject before I let you go: we’re doing some quarterly fundraising at my other venture, The Smirking Chimp. I’m leery of even mentioning it because if you’re one of the people paying to support my own writing here, you’re already doing god’s work and you’re already doing more than enough to help out. but if you’ve got five dollars that you absolutely wouldn’t miss and you do feel like supporting the Chimp, well, that just makes you twice the hero. the donation link is here, or you can go straight to paypal if you need no further convincing. and if you don’t care to donate, that’s totally cool, too, and we will not speak of this again. in fact, we never had this conversation. thanks for listening and that’s it from me for now.