Dumb and Dumber: Guns N’ Losers.

Alec and Elon and everything in-between.

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Happy Friday!

In my latest roundup, billionaires win, common sense loses.

— A judge says you can’t call two people who were shot to death in Wisconsin “victims,” because that’s a loaded word, and jurors might prejudge a case before deliberations. However, you can call them “rioters,” “looters” or “arsonists,” if the evidence suggests it’s true. Because those words aren’t loaded.

— The TSA says you have to wear a mask at the airport or face fines starting at $500, yet Forbes reports the agency has only issued $2,350 in fines for just 10 passengers. Out of 5,000 complaints. That works out to (running calculator) $235 per person, less than the minimum fine, and 10 in 5,000 complaints is (10 divided by 5,000 times 100)… 0.2%.

Here are more lowlights I wish to highlight.

DUMB — WHERE DID ALL THE COVID MONEY GO?

In news that will surprise no one, Bloomberg reports that the IMF is demanding an accounting of the $118 billion it gave in emergency Covid relief to 87 countries because it appears — wait for it — an “alarmingly high” amount of those funds disappeared!

The International Monetary Fund knew some of the money would be gobbled up by corruption in its rush to save lives, but it looks like the thievery reached DEFCON 1 levels, above the normal 10% to 25% graft.

In some cases, countries were given money without even agreeing to provide receipts.

Best example of throwing cash at someone you know will misuse it: “The IMF had cited governance concerns in North Macedonia in the months leading up to the Covid outbreak,” writes Bloomberg’s Sheridan Prasso. “Yet its loan of $192 million did not require an audit, according to Transparency International, which called that ‘alarming.’”

I call it predictable.

A man in North Macedonia receives a Covid-19 vaccine/Xinhua News Agency

DUMBER — PATERNITY LEAVE IS FOR “LOSERS”

We live in an era where young professionals want more work–life balance. If you don’t like it, good luck hiring quality talent.

Joe Lonsdale doesn’t like it. The venture capitalist who co-founded Palantir weighed in on paternity leave after podcaster Joe Rogan criticized U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for taking two months off to be with his newborn twins.

“Wow. Great for fathers to spend time with their kids and support moms, but any man in an important position who takes 6 months of leave for a newborn is a loser,” tweeted Lonsdale, a father himself. “In the old days men had babies and worked harder to provide for their future - that’s the correct masculine response.”

Wait, so the correct feminine response is to stay at home?

What year is this?

Look, I agree with those who think it’s ridiculous that Buttigieg took so many weeks off during a crisis in the supply chain. I mean, what does that guy do, anyway? I believe that when you’re a member of the President’s cabinet, and there’s a national catastrophe, you have to make some sacrifices in your personal life. It’s not like you’re a sales manager at IBM with a new baby at home.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

But criticizing all new fathers as “losers” for maximizing paternity leave doesn’t make one masculine. It makes one a loser.

There was immediate internet blowback, and Lonsdale clarified his tweet in 3, 2, 1…

If you can find a job that gives you six months off for paternity leave, that’s not losing, that’s winning.

DUMBERER — DUMBO TICKET PRICES

The Greediest Place on Earth is raising ticket prices again.

Disneyland and the Disney California Adventure Park are capitalizing on high demand by jacking up the price of single-day tickets on popular days. Tickets in December will cost as much as $159 a pop to go to one park.

The Los Angeles Times says the price of parking is also rising, jumping 20%, turning the Pluto Lot into the Screwto Lot.

You’ll be paying more for less, as some rides remain closed.

That’s pretty Mickey Mouse.

DUMBERERER — THE IN-N-OUT STAND-OFF

In-N-Out is California’s most famous burger chain. It serves food, not mandates.

The company has refused to make employees demand that customers show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test in order to be served indoors. That’s landed it in trouble with some Bay Area public health authorities. Two stores were shut down after repeated warnings, and two more have been warned or fined.

“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government," says In-N-Out's Chief Legal and Business Officer Arnie Wensinger, according to the local NBC affiliate.

In-N-Out is being punished even as Covid rates in California continue to go down.

The In-N-Out in Pleasant Hill, CA, shut down by health authorities. Photo by Justin Sullivan.

Meantime, large venues with mandatory mask rules are ignoring them without consequences.

I’ve been inside Dodger Stadium and SoFi Stadium in the last month. I was told I needed proof of vaccination to go to the Rams game, but nobody asked for it. At both stadiums, I saw everybody wearing masks to get in, but once they passed the entrance, 99% of the masks came off.

I saw the same thing on TV at Oracle Park in San Francisco as the Dodgers battled the Giants in the playoffs. The game took place down the street from Fisherman’s Wharf, where one of the In-N-Outs was shut down.

Why are health officials going double-double animal style after restaurants while ignoring large venues that allow tens of thousands of people to flaunt the rules?

That’s what incompetence is all about. (Sing it with me!)

Gee, could money be a factor? Maybe it’s easier to make an example of the burger folks who put Bible verses on their drink cups than go after far more valuable sporting venues.

Both of the closed In-N-Outs have since reopened for take-out and drive-through services only.

Oh, and even with people flinging off their masks inside sports stadiums in California, Covid rates are still going down.

DUMBERERERER — THE “RUST” SHOOTING

The shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a film set was a preventable tragedy. It cost a young woman her life, and it’ll cost the industry a lot of money.

The film’s producers — including actor Alec Baldwin — could be on the hook if investigators find criminal negligence. Hutchins’ husband will undoubtedly sue. Insurance costs will go up for movies using real guns as props, and there will be new training and safety protocols.

Vigil for Halyna Hutchins. Photo by Myung J. Chun/Getty Images.

Hollywood may also have to make better replica guns and add more gunfire effects in post production, because the days of firing live weapons may be over. (It’s something I wrote about yesterday.)

What seems dumbest of all, though, is that a person who was handed a weapon did not check it himself. That’s gun safety 101.

DUMBEST — AMERICA’S BILLIONAIRE TAX PROBLEM

Elon Musk, busy dealing with a broken toilet on his spacecraft and adding an estimated $36 billion this week to his net worth (on paper), got a wedgie over the possibility that he’d have to pay taxes on some of those “paper” gains.

He tweeted, “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”

Well, Elon, they already come for me. I actually pay federal income taxes. In 2018, you reportedly paid nothing.

Musk went on to say that even if the U.S. government taxed billionaires at 100%, it wouldn’t make a dent in the national debt, and he has better plans for his money anyhow. "My plan is to use the money to get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness."

And just like that, Congress caved! Elon is again Tony Stark, destroying all enemies.

“I’d never thought I’d see ‘unrealized capital gains’ trending on social media,” says Robert Frank, who covers wealth for CNBC. Robert points out that we’ve never taxed unrealized gains before. It’s not real until you cash it in, right? It seems unfair to liquidate assets just to cover taxes on your unrealized gains, right?

The idea is not completely unheard of. We pay property taxes based on the assessed value of our homes, not on the original purchase price. We haven’t realized that gain in equity, though we can borrow against it (and hold that thought!).

One reason the billionaire tax died may be due to government overreach. Robert says the proposal included a one-time provision so eye-popping that the world’s two richest men, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, worth a combined half trillion dollars (on paper), would have to pony up $115 billion in cold hard cash to the IRS in the first year of the new tax. "That’s crazy,” Robert says. ”If Tesla stock goes down 30%, we then send [Musk] a $5 billion refund check the following year?”

So the billionaires won; the tax on unrealized gains is dead. Instead, it's America's millionaires who will have to pay more. The top tax rate is rising markedly for those people, because millionaires actually collect salaries and report income.

But this is the craziest part. I hope you’re sitting down.

Billionaires like Musk and Bezos don’t collect salaries to speak of. Instead, they subsidize their lifestyles and various rocket investments by borrowing money from banks, using their stock as collateral. This is not income. It’s a loan. It’s like tapping into that home equity line of credit I mentioned above, only a lot bigger.

“That’s a couple billion dollars a year in free income they’re not paying tax on,” says Robert. But wait! There’s more! ”They can actually write off the interest that they’re paying on that loan, so it’s like tax-subsidized income.”

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Sorry, I’m hyperventilating. Gimme a sec.

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Okay.

(Sigh)This is why they are billionaires and we are not.

So how do we tax that real-but-unrealized wealth? Robert suggests one way may be to treat the super duper humongous loans as income, or at least as a dividend, and tax it that way.

If it all seems kinda dumb, it is. But dumbest of all this week was Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia who killed the tax.

Robert Frank says Sen. Manchin didn’t say, “We’ve never done this before, it’s not fair.” Instead, Manchin said he didn’t like the tax because it singled out one group of people. It was discriminatory.

Robert points out that we already have a tax code with brackets. The more you make, the higher your rate. “It doesn’t mean that we’re discriminating against you, it just means that’s our progressive system,” he says, so Manchin’s reasoning “was a very tortured logic.”

Meantime, Elon’s fortune continues to go to the moon! On paper.

A WONDERFUL SURPRISE: KIDS THESE DAYS

I like to end with a pleasant surprise, and I found something delightful.

Gen Z is not as vapid as a viral TikTok video. In fact, these kids give me hope.

Bank of America surveyed 18- to 24-year-olds and found that 70% of them socked away some money in savings during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg.

Even more impressive, one in four put funds into a retirement account! One in four also invested in the market! (Maybe the same one in four?)

Undoubtedly Bitcoin, meme stocks and the Robinhood app have gotten the next generation interested in investing, which is both good and bad, since not enough is being done to teach kids in school about the stock market.

Most promising, though, is that after all the craziness these young adults have been through — 9/11, the Great Recession, Covid — two-thirds of those surveyed are optimistic about their financial future.

“This generation is self-motivated, adopting financial behaviors that set them up for a positive future,” says BofA’s Christine Channels. She adds that Gen Z is more likely to talk about finance and admit “what they do or do not know.”

If only we were all that self-aware.

All right, have at it. What do you agree with, and where am I way off base? Leave a comment or email jane@janewells.com.