billionaires keep ruining my day

they bribe justices now, don't they?

Thank you for reading Hmm … That’s Interesting, a reader-supported publication! If you enjoy the newsletter, please consider becoming a subscribing member.

---

I want to write about lighter subjects. How not enough of you are watching the brilliance that is The Other Two, how Kim Kardashian crossed herself a picket line, how MUNA’s Tiny Desk Concert is about to become my whole personality for a week. I want to tell you that I read the most recent Ali Hazelwood romance and found it delightful, that I have heard you all and yes, I will be reading The Fourth Wing. That maybe we can stop it with the espresso martinis, it's been long enough. I would like to talk about how summer is a little time capsule to childhood.

But I can't, because I keep getting distracted by billionaires' shenanigans (derogatory). 

I would love nothing more than to solely pay attention to silly things. One's personal life is serious enough. But no. The ultra wealthy among us are constantly stretching the borders of their sandboxes, making all of our lives worse, and we are simply allowing them to go freely, boldly, in the direction of their increasingly febrile dreams.

Why do we do this? Is it because, against all evidence to the contrary, people still believe—and this makes me physically ill, by the way—that they have a realistic chance, if they work hard enough, of joining this billionaire class? Despite income inequality continuously rising over the last 30 years? (Yes, that is a link to the United States' Gini coefficient, lest anyone forget I majored in econ for two years before deciding math was simply Not For Me.) Despite the average household debt currently sitting pretty at around $100,000? 

I understand better than most the power that a deep sense of delusion can wield over a person, but there comes a point where you have to look around and recalibrate. The bootstraps narrative, which never held water in the first place, does not function when there are a few hundred people paying judges and legislators alike to control boot and strap supply.