Mike Solana of Pirate Wires joins us to discuss the billionaires planning to fight and flee in the face of California's proposed wealth tax, and also the alleged 'Gay Tech Mafia.' Plus, Chalametghazi.
I live in West Michigan where the VanAndel and DeVoss families loom large with alot of influence. Their billions undoubtedly help gentrify Grand Rapids into a more glittery place. That said, I'd prefer losing out on their philanthropy (and influence) by wealth taxing them into leaving Michigan. Their personal politics and influence operation make Michigan a worse place.
All the blue states should force all the billionaires to flee for red states. It would only be a matter of time for the red states to hate the billionaires as well. I think you have to separate the billionaires from their companies. It is far harder for the company to relocate. Zuck can move, but can Meta? Same for Cook and Apple.
I’m a fan of the show but this was a weird episode. Far more scrutiny was devoted to a dumb clickbait article than the important question of inequality (which this dumb tax idea, despite its stupidity, is ultimately meant to address), while a Peter Thiel acolyte comes along for the ride and the centrists on this show don’t ask him what should be done about insane inequality driven by Silicon Valley economic practices that funnel money to the very top. Or ask him to clarify what he thinks of Thiel’s extreme views. Not um.. very serious…
It's funny that everyone agreed that the Miata is either a gay car, or a woman's car. The Miata is probably the most commonly owned and loved car in the car enthusiast community (a pretty straight-guy-coded space), and definitely the most common car you see at track days for amateur racing.
My conspiracy theory about Timothée C (based purely on my imagination and no actual evidence) is that Gwyneth and others who have worked with him found him insufferable. The new comments about ballet and opera are a nice vehicle for people to have a chance to express.
He reminds me of various kids my kids knew k-12 who thought they were beyond God's gift, also based on poor evidence, and whose parents fueled their narcissism and bad manners. I appreciate that many actors are like that, but most of them do a better job of not saying it so bluntly and publicly.
Even if the main point of what he said might be relatable to those who don't love opera and ballet, he could have expressed it more politely. His actual point seemed to be gratitude that he is an actor. Instead, he just insulted and diminished colleagues in related art fields.
This was a great episode. As someone who goes ballet 4-5 times a year, anyone taking offence to what Chamelet said has bad opinions and I don't want to be friends with them... I used to work in a political office where a state executive branch officeholder was gay. Their Chief of Staff was gay. The most senior adviser was gay. They replaced a straight adviser who left with another gay adviser. During my time there, one adviser was fired for being a sex creep and one adviser was fired for misconduct - they were both straight... Seems to be a LOT of loser white / straight people thinking anyone who is a woman or gay or black etc is only successful because of that - I think as centrists we need to mercilessly call them out for being losers who think they'd be more successful if only they were gay or black.
Opera is available at some big movie theaters. They screen one on Saturdays sometimes. I don’t know how well attended they are but at least well attended that they keep doing them.
I've found it weird they haven't mentioned what has been going on at Washington Post (I think Megan's take on TRUMP-Kennedy Centre boycotts is actually displacement from subscribers fleeing WaPo) - today Megan finally brought it up, but it made it even weirder by saying Bezos does not tell her what to write, when when know he HAS told OpEd writers they cannot write views that don't align with him.
I'm curious to hear more about how Josh sees the "my career is above market forces" attitude in journalism. Even though for-profit news is a dying business model, I've found I prefer working for for-profit newsrooms over nonprofits, where there's a sense of entitlement, and often you pander to donors.
Bringing up the Citrini memo to compare to markets’ reaction to the Iran war seems… odd. This is a war, not a memo. Kim, there’s people that are dying. Also, “he does need to keep killing those leaders until they have a good one.” That’s not a serious suggestion.
If your net worth is $1M or less, you’re probably paying 5% or more of your wealth in taxes every single year between income, property, and sales taxes. The difference is that you can’t move to another state to completely eliminate it. The billionaire wealth tax is still dumb, but let’s be real about how the system works
Did Mike Solana just reference "counterspell" from D&D and no one needed a clarification?
I was thinking magic actually
I knew I liked you. :)
This was a fun one!
I live in West Michigan where the VanAndel and DeVoss families loom large with alot of influence. Their billions undoubtedly help gentrify Grand Rapids into a more glittery place. That said, I'd prefer losing out on their philanthropy (and influence) by wealth taxing them into leaving Michigan. Their personal politics and influence operation make Michigan a worse place.
All the blue states should force all the billionaires to flee for red states. It would only be a matter of time for the red states to hate the billionaires as well. I think you have to separate the billionaires from their companies. It is far harder for the company to relocate. Zuck can move, but can Meta? Same for Cook and Apple.
I’m a fan of the show but this was a weird episode. Far more scrutiny was devoted to a dumb clickbait article than the important question of inequality (which this dumb tax idea, despite its stupidity, is ultimately meant to address), while a Peter Thiel acolyte comes along for the ride and the centrists on this show don’t ask him what should be done about insane inequality driven by Silicon Valley economic practices that funnel money to the very top. Or ask him to clarify what he thinks of Thiel’s extreme views. Not um.. very serious…
It's funny that everyone agreed that the Miata is either a gay car, or a woman's car. The Miata is probably the most commonly owned and loved car in the car enthusiast community (a pretty straight-guy-coded space), and definitely the most common car you see at track days for amateur racing.
My conspiracy theory about Timothée C (based purely on my imagination and no actual evidence) is that Gwyneth and others who have worked with him found him insufferable. The new comments about ballet and opera are a nice vehicle for people to have a chance to express.
He reminds me of various kids my kids knew k-12 who thought they were beyond God's gift, also based on poor evidence, and whose parents fueled their narcissism and bad manners. I appreciate that many actors are like that, but most of them do a better job of not saying it so bluntly and publicly.
Even if the main point of what he said might be relatable to those who don't love opera and ballet, he could have expressed it more politely. His actual point seemed to be gratitude that he is an actor. Instead, he just insulted and diminished colleagues in related art fields.
This was a great episode. As someone who goes ballet 4-5 times a year, anyone taking offence to what Chamelet said has bad opinions and I don't want to be friends with them... I used to work in a political office where a state executive branch officeholder was gay. Their Chief of Staff was gay. The most senior adviser was gay. They replaced a straight adviser who left with another gay adviser. During my time there, one adviser was fired for being a sex creep and one adviser was fired for misconduct - they were both straight... Seems to be a LOT of loser white / straight people thinking anyone who is a woman or gay or black etc is only successful because of that - I think as centrists we need to mercilessly call them out for being losers who think they'd be more successful if only they were gay or black.
Opera is available at some big movie theaters. They screen one on Saturdays sometimes. I don’t know how well attended they are but at least well attended that they keep doing them.
I've found it weird they haven't mentioned what has been going on at Washington Post (I think Megan's take on TRUMP-Kennedy Centre boycotts is actually displacement from subscribers fleeing WaPo) - today Megan finally brought it up, but it made it even weirder by saying Bezos does not tell her what to write, when when know he HAS told OpEd writers they cannot write views that don't align with him.
I'm curious to hear more about how Josh sees the "my career is above market forces" attitude in journalism. Even though for-profit news is a dying business model, I've found I prefer working for for-profit newsrooms over nonprofits, where there's a sense of entitlement, and often you pander to donors.
Bringing up the Citrini memo to compare to markets’ reaction to the Iran war seems… odd. This is a war, not a memo. Kim, there’s people that are dying. Also, “he does need to keep killing those leaders until they have a good one.” That’s not a serious suggestion.
If your net worth is $1M or less, you’re probably paying 5% or more of your wealth in taxes every single year between income, property, and sales taxes. The difference is that you can’t move to another state to completely eliminate it. The billionaire wealth tax is still dumb, but let’s be real about how the system works
Is Ben doing an Andy-Kaufman-style game on us? Because his views on Iran are seriously scary.
Read this before they got to this part of the pod and very curious to see what he has to say beyond what he said last week...