Rich and Strange Aeons

I adopted it when first joining DW; it was the best intersection of stuff I wanted. I wasn't thrilled by it but at the time I figured DW was just a backup for my LJ and didn't to spend hours on styles.

I wonder how "anonymous" and "details results visible" will interact.

Note, not a wealth tax, though one could use one to approximate this, but a cap, an attitude that "enough is enough for one person, we're not acknowledging ownership of any more". You can imagine a hard cap, a progressive wealth tax that strongly discourages further accumulation, or some other mechanism, whatever makes you most comfortable.

Numbers for context:

Average American worker income of about $40,000. (Mean per capita is $46,000, median is rather less, workers have some advantage.)

Lifetime earnings of such a worker: $2 million over 50 years, ignoring taxes or living expenses.

One estimate for total US wealth: $60 trillion. Which leads to about $200,000 per capita.

Income of hard-working and highly-skilled people who provide services on a direct basis, like doctors and lawyers: around $200,000 I think? $400,000, 10x average, is probably a good approximation.

GDP of the US: about $14 trillion

Federal budget: about $3 trillion

Income you can get from having lots of money: 1% over inflation if you play it safe, up to 7% with diversification and risk. I'll tend to use 1-3%.

[Poll #1775671]

$40 billion: I seem to recall when Bill Gates having $10 billion was freakish and unique. Now this is the working megabillionaire level: Gates, Buffett, Soros, Walton. Actually Wal-Mart has produced multiple kids who *inherited* $20 billion. The average worker has to work 1 million years to get this level. You can probably get $1 billion a year in fairly safe interest. You can own and run a small town of 10,000-70,000 servants.

$400 million: If you had 100x the average income, and worked for 100 years, you'd get this. Safest interest is twice the average lifetime earnings. You can have 100 full-time servants, or a handful of high-end lawyers and doctors who exist to attend to your every fart. Note this is only 1% of the megabillionaire level, who can spin this off as interest. This is my upper bound for a cap; it still feels obscene, but if one grants a need for high end incentives, I can't see more than this being useful. Nor see this cap as hurting society.

$4 million: 20x the average wealth. One could argue that having a lifetime's earnings to play with all at once, and the ability to earn average income without working, is reward enough, and wanting more is filthy greed. Probably low enough to be noticeable in effect though, changing urban property value and distribution.

What languages other than English do you know, or want to learn, and why? I don't expect answers as long as what I type below.

For me, I used to know enough Latin to barely pass the Catullus/Horace Advanced Placement Exam, plus a big of Greek, but have forgotten nearly all. This was due to my parents, especially my mother, trying to replicate their own classics training and interests. She never did really teach me how to read and pronounce French words, which might have been more useful.

I've been desultorily self-studying Spanish and Japanese for embarrassingly long. Spanish, starting back in California, as I figured it was an obvious second language in the US, especially with Spanish radio stations. Now, the facts that I have friends in Chile, and Latin American seems to be up-and-coming in social democracy and economic growth, help too. Japanese, because of all that anime, though less because I specifically wanted to understand the anime, and more because I thought "you have to listen to a language a lot to really learn it, and my enthusiasm for foreign (or any) movies is generally low, but I'm voluntarily watching 6 hours of subbed anime a week..." Also, trying a non-Indo-European language was appealing. F*ck grammatical gender.

If I wanted more, Chinese, French, and German would probably be the next tier, in no particular order. Population and economic strength, utility for possible Canadian or French immigration, Germany's economic strength, plus the strong cultural weights of all three. Absent any actual migratory need, Chinese and French would probably make the most sense, leveraging my kanji and Latin/Spanish knowledge.

Sign language has a bit of interest, for being weird in making use of space.

Not a language, but I've taught myself Morse code, largely so I might have a post-stroke communication channel.