Drunken Space-Giraffes Are As Good As You

[from 7/28/10]

I was going to talk about the Afghan War Diary, but the book was too long and too repetitive, like most diaries, so I decided to go with the next best thing.

Let’s talk about death & taxes!

I’m being taxed more than ever lately, as I enjoy the occasional commercially brewed beverage. If, by occasional, you mean nightly. If, by nightly, you mean morningly.

Whatever you mean, I’m not going to complain. In fact, I’m glad to pay to keep the ship of the state afloat. And how better to float Washington State than on beer? I can enjoy the poetry of it as much as the next guy.

At the same time, I worry we’re overlooking other good revenue sources. We’re not taxing enough. We’re especially not taxing the dead enough. We should tax them at least till they howl.

Also, supposedly sometime in September, Democrats in Washington D.C. will get around to deciding whether to drop Bush’s tax cuts. You remember Bush’s tax cuts, right? Those were the tax cuts we got in order to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yes, I said support! The theory was that taxing rich people undermines the economy so much that you end up getting less money in taxes from everybody else. But if you hardly tax the rich at all, the economy gets souped up, there’s a middle class to tax, and you can buy all the tanks you need.

That theory didn’t work. It was the economy that tanked.

OK then, let’s try something else. Here’s my idea: Every time there’s a war, anywhere in the world, rich people everywhere get richer. Don’t ask me how. It just happens. I’m a mathematician, not some brainiac.

So we should do this: Whenever anyone dies in a war on either side, no matter what war or where, whether civilians or not, we increases the taxes on rich people by just a tad. Ideally worldwide, but it won’t hurt to start unilaterally in America, since we start most of the really long wars anyway.

We’ll exempt, say, farmers who actually get rich growing food, if we can find any.

By a tad, I’m thinking, it would be enough to ratchet up the taxes on income by a measly 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent per dead person on people making more than 10 million US per year. That’s only $10 per year per dead for someone on the margin. I’m thinking that little bit is all it would take, because it will add up fast.

The idea is, for the stinking rich, war is great, because it generates investment opportunities that they can leverage into more wealth. So they need a disincentive in order to cut back. It’s like cigarette taxes. Don’t think of how much the taxes hurt, think of the lives you could save.

Questions for extra credit. You want extra credit, yes, you know you want it.

1. It’s been said rich people should keep their money because what they do with it improves the economy. The hidden assumption is that what poor people would do with money, if they had any, wouldn’t improve the economy. Whose economy are we talking about, anyway? Present your answer in the form of a question, for all the good it will do.

2.  Fact A: Some people don’t like us to tax the absurdly rich, because they dream of being absurdly rich themselves. Fact B: Some people think the Barefoot Bandit is cool, because they dream of being equally huge jerks. Create a diorama relating these facts. If your Dad won’t help you make the diorama, you may instead write a 500 word essay on how much he sucks.

3. Ayn Rand says that if her heirs don’t deserve her money, because they didn’t earn it, well, neither do you. Prove that is not a valid argument. Hint: Substitute “drunken space-giraffes” for “her heirs.” Should drunken space-giraffes have inherited Ayn Rand’s wealth? Did they?