Macy's, the department store, reports that expensive clothing has increased its sale by 12.4%
but they can barely give away low-end clothing. Walmart is losing shoppers and reports little
details but boy do they tell you a lot. They're not able to sell gallons of milk the way they used
to because people are buying more half gallons of milk. That's where they are in the United States.
Ralph Lauren, a high-end brand, is doing well. Kohl's and Ross stores, not at all. They can't
sell branded they only sell store name clothing. Costco and other big companies are holding the
price, they report, of their rotisserie chickens, because people come in to get those for their
dinner meals. They dare not raise the price because then people will go elsewhere for their
rotisserie chicken. So they hold the price, advertise that, and then jack up the price of
everything else that people buy in the store once they've come for their rotisserie chicken. Wow.
The last update I have time for in this first half is about Elon Musk, the billionaire. You know him.
On Twitter he wrote recently, and I quote: "Use of the word 'billionaire' as a pejorative is morally
wrong and dumb." D-u-m-b. That's from Elon Musk. Morally wrong to put a limit on how much wealth
you can accumulate. I have no idea what morality he's talking about other than it's obviously the
morality of a billionaire, since it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. But let's compare that
to the morality we can see around us. Morality dictated that we have a minimum wage
in the United States. The same morality would apply to having a maximum one, mightn't it?
Wealth placed in one person's hand means that it's denied to another person. The whole point
of the critique of private property is that collective property can be shared. We can all
enjoy the public park. We cannot if it's given to a private person. We have an inheritance tax
in this country, sometimes called an estate tax. We've had it for many many decades. You
know why? Because we don't believe that you ought to give your children limitless amounts of money
because then we're not all starting on an equal footing, are we? Then our efforts are not
the same because it's not our skill or capacity that shapes our future, it's what we got from
daddy and mommy. Wow. So the morality of an inheritance tax certainly makes the morality
of criticizing a billionaire, as a concept, perfectly moral and consistent with the morality
of our tax system. Indeed, we have a peculiarity of billionaires weaseling out of the taxes. We tax
property in every American city and town: land, buildings, cars. We don't tax stocks and bonds,
which is the property of the billionaires by and large. So yeah, billionaires have
been weaseling out and calling efforts to change that morally wrong. Don't be fooled.