How touching it is to watch arithmetic dress itself up as moral philosophy and demand to be taken seriously. One sees the numbers marching in a neat little line, hats polished, chests out, and then—at the crucial moment—one discovers they have been introduced to the wrong concept entirely. “Earnings,” in this small theatrical performance, has been confused with “net worth,” and net worth has been treated as though it were a pay packet kept in a desk drawer, waiting to be counted by anyone with indignation and a calculator. Unrealised capital gain is not earnings. It is not income. It is not a wage. It is not a cheque. It is not even cash. It is a measurement—often volatile, often reversible—of what someone else might pay, one day, for an asset that has not been sold. It is a number written in pencil on the margin of a market that changes its mind as frequently as the crowd changes its heroes. To call it “earnings” is like calling a flattering rumour “a marriage proposal.” You may enjoy the thought, but you cannot spend it, and it becomes very expensive the moment you try. And that is the point the righteous always skip because it ruins the mood. If you demand tax on “wealth” defined as unsold asset values, you do not merely demand that someone “pay their fair share.” You demand liquidation. You demand forced selling. You demand that a person convert ownership into cash on your timetable, regardless of market conditions, regardless of whether the asset can be sold without collapsing its value, regardless of whether the very act of selling destroys the thing you claim is being “hoarded.” It is a curious kind of justice that requires the dismantling of productive assets simply to prove it exists. Now, the little quip—“If he’s worth 700 billion and paid 10 billion, that’s only 1.43%”—is the sort of line people repeat when they would like to sound clever without enduring the inconvenience of being correct. “Worth” is not “earned this year.” “Worth” is not “taxable income.” “Worth” is not “cash in a vault.” It is a valuation of holdings, and holdings are not a salary; they are exposure to risk, to fluctuation, to collapse, to dilution, to lawsuits, to bad quarters, to the grand comedy of the market deciding you are yesterday’s miracle. And here’s where the sermon becomes a bar-room rant in a cheap suit. The vampire imagery, the foaming talk of “bloodsucking billionaires,” the sweaty certainty that the world’s complexity can be solved by yelling “percentage” at it—this is what people do when they cannot distinguish between resentment and analysis. It’s not a revolution; it’s a tantrum with punctuation. You can practically smell the stale beer of it: Yeah, yeah, eat the rich, because that’s easier than learning how money actually works. Let us be vulgar for a moment, since vulgarity is the only language certain moralists understand. If someone holds a vast amount of wealth in shares, taxing “unrealised gains” means they must sell shares to pay the tax. Selling shares can depress the price. Depress the price enough and you don’t merely collect tax—you vaporise value. Then the same people will howl that the rich “lost” money to avoid paying, as if destroying a portion of one’s wealth is a clever loophole rather than a bleeding wound. It is like insisting a man pay rent on a house he has not sold, and then mocking him for cutting down the house to afford your invoice. The sweetest part is the pose of egalitarian modesty: “Billionaires shouldn’t have to pay more tax than we do, they should pay the same percentage.” Splendid. A slogan so tidy it could be printed on a tote bag and carried straight past the point. The “same percentage” of what? Income? Realised gains? Consumption? Wages? Dividends? You cannot have “the same percentage” of a category you have not defined, and you certainly cannot define it as “whatever number makes the rich look worst in a tweet.”

I hate being trans

الاعب البرازيلي. حبيبته

This is one of the slides I use in my economics lectures.

The most complex piece I’ve done to date. 19 hours and 40 layers of work. For an anonymous client on Discord ❤️ Dedicated to Charlie.

happy pride month

The world really would be a better place if I was gone, huh? I'm sorry to the trans community. This is happening to you because I exist. I won't anymore in 4 months and 10 days, so just hold out a little longer...