(politics, fina)

[elainegrey]

"Not feeling one hundred percent, Charles" -- Robert Green (Alec Baldwin) in The Edge

At least i haven't fallen into a bear trap. Not sure, maybe sinus infection? Ugh. In other trivial complaints, i've been trying to use the voice command + reminder feature on my watch to remind me to take the tea out of the tea pot before it becomes over tannic. It keeps failing. It worked perfectly the first time i tried. Ever since, it interprets the number of minutes in the future as the hour. I'm going to assume the general sense of negativity is all from that.

I work for an organization that has an endowment. When the pandemic hit, the organization rapidly went into financial tourniquet status. I paid for a few conferences out of my own pocket. In the past month we all got a bonus (a set dollar amount for everyone, which is honestly a cheap way to make up for no cost of living increase for those on the lower pay grades -- every percent increase matters). I felt guilty about it, recalled the conference fees, and then just considered it a repayment. The amount finally showed up and Christine wondered at the discrepancy between the amount
and the announced amount, which is rather clear when round numbers are involved. Christine doesn't see my pay stubs. Me, "Taxes." Christine, "Oh." Me, "That's why people complain." And we both rolled our eyes and went on.

Hearing Jeff Bezos claimed a $4000 child tax credit angers me. I know it was whomever was hired to do the taxes, some bright numbers person who delights in the game of getting the best deal for their clients and earning a significant paycheck.

I know that there are lots of people who choose to live lightly and off investments -- including my grandmother and my father. It's how companies have pushed the risk and cost of managing a pension off onto the people the pension was for, and it supports both the liberation of being to change jobs when it suits but also removes the responsibility from companies that chew up people body and/or soul -- i'm looking at you Facebook for your contracted out content moderators and you Amazon for your contracted out drivers and warehouse workers -- from compensating them for the future earnings they give up due to the damage done working. I'm OK with redistributing.

Comments

[amaebi]

/me offers to pat your hand.

[dewline]

...yeah...

[oracne]

That whole Politico report just stoked my lifelong rage at economic disparity.

[amaebi]

I wish I got the impression that wide swaths of people were reading it.

[elainegrey]

I haven't had to read the report to be mad. I assume though that the anti-tax people are unmoved.

I assume it's technically straight forward to deal with unrealized gains at the Bezos level while allowing retirees to defer taxes on the gains: simply continuing to treat the 401k/403b/IRA plans as now?

I don't know if there's a chance to get corporate taxes increased even with Dem-only reconciliation at hand, much less attack individual tax shelters like this.

[amaebi]

As a technical matter, it isn't particularly difficult to write tax legislation that should handle this.

As a pragmatic political possibility-- well, I wish more people seemed to be reading and talking about the article, which usefully incorporates not only data and methodology but socioeconomic context, because I think it might should motivate political pressure. Myself, I dislike being angry. It makes me literally sick. Fortunately, I mostly amn't angry, but that's a fruit of practice.* So I don't particularly want people to be angry. I do believe people who say that only anger motivates "people," though, and I guess I feel that if that's what it takes....

* Not true currently. As I commented on Susan Campbell's blog:
"After(ish) Trump and still in the pandemic, living in a universe with a currently human-generated curvature that deprives me (among many worse off) of traction and leverage to pry at that dismal drain of a trajectory is getting me down. So I'm trying to live through that, though maintaining volition and non-static momentum is difficult.

"Working on converting our small former horse property to an organic mini-farm, but being called on both in advance and in emergency to help my noble son to hockey stuff, and doing my (thankfully small) part of getting set to live work weeks in a pied-a-terre convenient for my husband's work and my sons hockey.

"And so depressed and angry and sad."

[elainegrey]

Anger experienced is rare for me, which is probably due to a childhood of never letting myself feel fear or anger. It's novel, and it's not particularly motivating.

(Thanks for sharing the details: i hope the mini-farm is coping in your weekly absences.)

[amaebi]

How are you feeling today?

[elainegrey]

I appreciate you asking!

I've slept in so that has been a plus.

But, perhaps TMI, i made my tea too strong, despite getting a reminder to unsteep, and i threw up. I blame the tea, although the -- sinus infection? -- might have something to do with the tender stomach.

I'm also taking the day off (vacation use or loose) and am thinking about baking a cake for this weekend.

[amaebi]

Yuck! I'm so sorry!

I never take a sinus infection as a triviality. It may be for you: you know and I don't. But when I was getting them it was because I was overextending myself for a long time and was getting Infection of the Everything-- the sinus infection tended to be late-stage. And rest was the only thing that licked it, but licked it fast.

[sistawendy]

i've been trying to use the voice command + reminder feature on my watch to remind me to take the tea out of the tea pot before it becomes over tannic.

I think that's what the Brits call "stewing" your tea.

[elainegrey]

Indeed.

In the opposite direction, i do remember a British faculty member's French wife noting he made tea weak as damsel's piss. Which is ... an image.