On Aug 10, 2026, at 6:43 PM, Kit-Victoria Wells [email protected] wrote:

Dear Guy Tapioca:

IMO (as the kids say) people fail to acknowledge several facts when they decry democratic socialism (sometimes out of malice, sometimes out of ignorance).

Every democratic socialist country on the planet is a free society. In fact at the moment, they're ****freer than the U.S. They don’t imprison their undocumented immigrants indefinitely and without due process. They aren’t trying to erase people based on their sexual and gender orientation. They don’t allow members of their government to financially enrich themselves while in office. They don’t allow politicians to drive tax dollars towards political supporters. People go to jail for that shit in democratic socialist countries.

Every democratic socialist country on the planet is also a capitalist country. Wealth generation via the private sector very much exists in these countries. The only difference between democratic socialism and democratic capitalism is how the citizens are taxed, where their tax dollars are applied, and what role the government plays in overseeing commerce. As it turns out, America’s addiction to a low-tax system has made 95% of the country significantly less free. It’s resulted in a minuscule number of Americans having wildly outsized political influence. They fund legislation with the sole objective of making themselves richer and more powerful. They’re not even trying to hide the fact that they’re buying elections. Again, IMO, if you think the winners in this American rat race are ever going to consent to modifications to a system that has allowed them to become some of the richest and most powerful people in human history, without being forced to … Not a chance. No way. Not going to happen.

The constant conflation of socialism (of the democratic variety) and communism (which has never been of the democratic variety) creates a huge hurdle to clear. Most Americans think “communism” when they hear "socialism” and think “authoritarianism” when they hear “communism”. To conflate communism and socialism is to willfully ignore that virtually all of western Europe, and much of central Europe, as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have healthy economies and happy (literally, scientifically proven to be happy), free living citizens. Fearing communism is fair, given that virtually every self-described communist country to exist on the planet imposed authoritarianism on their citizens, abolished the multi-party system, closed their borders, limited citizen movement, and punished dissenters. But democratic socialism is not communism. It’s not even a path to communism. Anyone who believes that democratic socialism in the United States will result in either communism or authoritarianism is completely bonkers. The risk of modern America becoming communist is zero to nil. And as for an authoritarian government, if anything, a win for democratic socialism will actually circumvent that.

Sidebar: China changed the face of communism, economically speaking, and to a lesser extent, authoritarianism as well. They underwent a huge economic and technological leap that required them to welcome global capitalism into their system, thereby replacing a government-owned-and-operated economic system with a hybrid communist-capitalist one. In so doing they were able to drag 500 million people out of extreme poverty in just thirty years. (Nobody ever talks about how this has got to be one of humankind’s most extraordinary accomplishments.) They are now the second largest economy on the planet. The authoritarians of the Chinese government have some deeply corrupt ideas about how a society should be run, but I don’t think anyone can say that they haven’t maximized their economy to benefit the vast majority of their citizens. The U.S. can’t even come close to making this statement. I’m only somewhat kidding when I say that if it ever came to Trump, Putin, and Xi carving up the world, I’m going to China.

I hope democratic socialism does get a foothold in U.S. politics for a million reasons, not least of which is that it’s a fairer and more humane political ideology. Bringing those values into the U.S. political arena would be a good thing. The titans of industry are still going to be able to build their empires and make their money. They’re just not going to get the free pass to crush the principles that actually make America great; among them, that all people have natural rights, that we are all equal under the law, and that power comes from the consent of the governed.

I’m just sayin’.

Kit Wells(she/her)

“We don’t choose the light because we want to win. We choose it because it is the light.” ~ Qui-Gon Jinn

On Aug 4, 2026, at 12:54 PM, Guy Tapioca [email protected] wrote:

Folks:

From a recent report from the Federal Reserve:  About 33% of U.S. privately owned wealth is owned by about 1% of U.S households while the bottom 50% of households own less than 3% of this wealth.

Total household wealth is about $180 trillion so, in round numbers, the top 1% is worth about $60 trillion and the bottom 50% is worth about $5.4 trillion.  As there are about 135 million households in the U.S. this means that the average net worth of members of the “50% cohort” is about $80,000.

But this number is misleading. My trusty Google search tells me that about 13 million people (about 20% of the 50% cohort) have a negative net worth.

A negative net worth means, among other things, that whatever assets these households may have (almost always minimal) are exceeded by their liabilities - among which are, usually, some combination of credit card debts, student loans, auto loans and medical debts arising from uninsured or partially insured medical care.

If you are single and your job pays $24 per hour that’s an annual gross of about $40,000. After the standard deduction of $16,100 your federal and California state tax bills are about $7,500. You now have about $32,500 spendable (assuming you have no contributory retirement plan in which you are participating) to pay medical insurance premiums/copays, other insurance (renters, auto), car loan payments, gas/oil/auto repairs, rent, food, clothing, gifts, travel expenses, dues and subscriptions, etc. etc.

If you are an average three member household (parents, one young child) with two incomes totaling $80,000 the family spendable goes up (so long as both parents are working) but not by as much as you might think.  Now there is the cost of childcare for the third family member; federal and state tax costs rise; food, insurance premiums, clothing and so on are now “charged” to three lives, not one. All these “add on” charges to the second income won’t zero out the benefit to the family of a second worker but will, by my rough calculation, add +/- 30% to the spendable of the single earner.  This is not a trivial amount but a far cry from the 100% that would, in theory, be available if the second earner’s income came without additional costs.

In brief, all this illustrates the reasons why so many of our fellow citizens have what accountants call structural deficits.  Expenses in excess of income, and no light at the end of the tunnel. Well, there is one “light.”  It’s called personal bankruptcy, of which there were, according to the website U.S. Courts, 581,570 for the 12 months ending June 30, 2026; 519,486 same period 2025 and 403,000 same period 2024.