10 Comments
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Laura's avatar

What amazing writing. Thank you.

We all know what's coming. All of us except for the cult.

S. S. Shupe's avatar

I think it's unlikely the Door Dash grandma had $11,000 in "no tax on tips" savings. Assuming her average income tax rate was 20%, in order to get an $11,000 reduction in tax she'd need to have made $55,000 in tips. Assuming she worked 300 days per year (which seems like a lot), if she made on average 20 deliveries a day (which also seems like a lot), she'd have needed an average tip of $9.16 (seems high too) to get to $11,000 tax savings. And since it came out after the fact that she's not just an average grandma, but a Republican operative of sorts, I'm inclined to think the $11,000 figure is completely made up. What are the odds?

That said, your writing is consistently spot on and true. Keep up the excellent, important work. Such clear analysis is badly needed.

Mike Brock's avatar

Yeah. This was an editing mistake by me. She had $11,000 in tips reported. About $1,000 in estimated savings. I have updated the piece.

Lloyd C. Kilmer's avatar

Wow I really like the scientific basis. The sociological application is accurate. So when will people pick up their pitchforks and storm the Bastille???!

Jennifer Anderson's avatar

Fifty years of a move towards crony capitalism and wealth hording has come home to roost. The trickle never came and the people are thirsty.

Bombay Troubadour's avatar

the inability of the comfortable to perceive the desperation of the uncomfortable as a real condition rather than a solvable management problem — is not apocryphal. It is a recurring feature of the final act of every arrangement that has pushed too far for too long.

End stage capitalism. Hunger Games meets ‘1984’.

Celia Abbott's avatar

Yes. Unfortunately the upper class - who rarely evolve from the lower class- does not comprehend what nitmal living is.

I always say, take one of them, give them my Social Security and my coach to live in, let them shop, pay bills and cook, take care of the house. I doubt they could do it.

The Mongoose's avatar

Phase change. What a brilliant framing, it's like an actualized metaphor. Dude, this is why I subscribe to you.

Noel Keith's avatar

It’s a clever metaphor and you’ve written it beautifully but perhaps our culture heats and cools more like a wax than water. After all, water- both in its freezing expansion and its incompressibility as a liquid - is a rarity among common liquid compounds.

The Mongoose's avatar

I'll be linking to this piece and riffing on the same idea from a different point of view. You said it in the title, and then jumped to a whole different phase change. I'm a boilerman ... under pressure. Bum bum bu da dump bump.