Gotta appreciate Biden going hard on collecting taxes and strengthening unions.

Tax the crap out of PJs.

Nice! Tax the shit outta these fools

Added bonus: More data for Lemmy to make private jet memes

Yes, it is 100% that the actions of wealthy people represent the lion's share of the climate impact of the human race.

No, it's not because they fly jets around all the time. While that certainly doesn't help, switching to all-electric transportation and green sources of electrical energy would, just on its own, represent roughly a FIFTY PER CENT reduction in CO2 emissions. This is a good overview. That's a big task to just throw around as a hypothetical, of course, but there are proportional benefits to be had by making proportional levels of effort on partial measures. That and other big savings could be accomplished if the world as a whole prioritized it, but "the world"'s decisions are made by people who prioritize yachts and blowjobs from Estonian teenagers far above switching to greener energy sources, which is why we're all going to be fucked about a generation from now.

All billionaires switching out their private jets for greyhound buses overnight would do fuck-all for climate change. Flying on a private jet emits somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 times as much per person as flying on a commercial airliner. I.e. if there are more than 5 regular people for each billionaire, then they're not what's killing the planet. Aviation in general emits a ton of CO2, yes. Changing regulations would do more to fix the problem than curbing private jets, and certainly more than posting memes about private jets.

And, of course, it's suspicious that this concern about private jets in the media and memes came about all of a sudden, and all in reference to one particular type of billionaire-induced emissions and in fact one particular billionaire, right after she started expressing one particular type of political view. If there's one thing the propaganda industry likes to do, it's to take a genuine problem (emissions) and identify it as something caused by one person who's solidly on the "other side" in very public, consistently-messaged, and meme-able fashion. It kills two birds with one stone: It shifts blame to that person to tarnish their reputation and impugn and distract from the good things they're trying to say, and it shifts blame away from the people actually causing the problem.

I thought to myself, am I being unfair? Have I entered into some sort of bizarre the-shills-are-everywhere paranoia, such that even a story about the IRS that happens to highlight one particular aspect of their increased tax scrutiny with nothing whatsoever to do with climate change or Taylor Swift, sends me into a frenzy of propagandaspotting?

Yeah, maybe that's a fair point. I should look over the article and see if maybe it's just a story about the IRS and nothing about the suddenly-all-media-likes-to-talk about talking point which is all of a sudden a big deal, and just delete my whole painstakingly-typed comment.

I looked at the article. "Taylor" is the sixth word and "Swift" is the seventh.

Ah, I remember those days fondly. Leave when you wanted to. Go where you wanted to. You can make better time in a Gulfstream than a commercial when you get at high altitude. Ride in your living room....