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"I am not really an extremist, but these are extreme times we're living in. I basically don't think anyone should be allowed to accumulate more than $50 million. There should just be a cap, and everything beyond that goes to the abortion fund."
-We are for sure going to miss Awl pal Maureen "Moe" Tkacik, who is heading down to DC for a new gig with the Washington City Paper.
Is Moe's pussy making the move to DC as well or is that staying in NYC?
She'll forget about it for a couple of weeks and then have an unpleasant surprise.
Moe will never find a home.
I really love Moe for the Herculean effort she exerted to cover Wall Street and financial industry dickishness when she was at Gawker.
Income Caps!
I worry about Moe.
From afar and as a complete stranger.
I'm Italian, I can't help it.
BUT…she's a great writer and I hope she kicks ass.
That's $100M per couple, right? Okay, I can live with that.
"I grew up watching McLaughlin Group on Saturday nights, and basically all those calcified old fuckers are still around"
=<3<3<3<3
I was reading this quote to my abortion mill-employed wife last night when I realized I had no idea how to pronounce "Tkacik". Anyone know? "Kah-sik"? "Tukakik"? "Core-ie?"
t'KAH-sik, as I recall.
Google gives "TASS-ik" as the highest-frequency result. If you speak English, anyway.
Origin = possibly Slovak or Polish (maybe?). Given the tendency of Slavic languages to pyalatyalize yevery cyonsyonyant, I'd gloss the original as something like "Chass-ik".
Though, hell, the original could be /txasik/, with a velar fricative (x in IPA) right after the t. You don't really know with these weirdo consonant clusters until you "go to the tape", as it were (the original language.)
And DC just got exponentially more awesome. Hooray for Moe!
I can't wait until she runs into Ana Marie Cox and tries to dissolve her with her pugent bile at some DCtastic function.
If it means more content from Tkacik I'm all for it.
Love Moe, but I am bemused by what appears to be her thought that rich people just "accumulate" money (like there are people with a Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of gold coins?)
Hint: nobody with that much in assets has them liquid, in their mattress. Rich people invest in shit. Investing is good.
> Hint
The liquidity thing inflects MT's point how, exactly? Literal swimming pool, family office, whatevs. We did used to have a pretty rocking estate tax to protect us from accelerating consolidation of power.
Also, tv used to be more than Survivor: Everybody Off My Lawn.
Senior moment there. Where was I?
Well but my point is that the idea that rich people's money is just "accumulating" belies the reality of high-end wealth – which is to say, even when their money is just sitting around, it is being invested in things, creating capital for publicly traded companies. And that's assuming that they only do conservative investment. A more ambitious rich dude might start funding start-ups, angel-ing around with their sacks of money, which they would get a nice RoI on!
In short: acting like there's no value to wealth over a certain point, or like there's nothing that one dude with 50 million dollars can do that 50 thousand dudes with a thousand dollars can't, is incorrect.
(That said: Sure! Estate tax 'em! Tax hedge funds again! Etc. etc. etc.! But taxes are different from wealth caps.)
Point taken. I lean toward ambivalence about investment, though — do I *want* somebody else arbitrarily controlling my circulatory system? Not usually.
I love Moe. Hopefully, DC doesn't, as it is wont to do, drain her soul like some metropolitan space zombie.
I agree with Moe, but only if the cap is taken down from $50 million to a more reasonable $50, because, Hey, $50! Looks like I'm finished!
Moe, when you get to DC can I buy you a drink?