Freeloading and Irony

What comes to mind when you hear the name Elon Musk?  Entrepreneur?  Tesla automobiles?  SpaceX rockets?  

After Time Magazine named him “person of the year,” the South African billionaire was called a rather interesting name by a well-known US Senator.

Elizabeth Warren, a democrat from Massachusetts, called him a “freeloader.”  Actually, it was a little more disparaging than that.

“Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” said Warren.

This likely caught Musk by surprise, who responded that Warren should note that “I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.”

Musk later revealed his tax bill will amount to some 11 billion dollars.

$11,000,000,000?  It does make one wonder how that might be considered “freeloading” off other taxpayers.

But it’s in your perspective.  If you were to poll a majority of Americans and ask if they think “the rich are paying their fair share” of the tax burden, you’d likely get a majority who say they are not.

In part, this would be driven by the narrative we hear from the media and from politicians seeking votes.  It would also be driven by shear envy of those with more money.

But it’s also a perspective that’s not really grounded in reality.  I would wager most Americans have not seen details of who pays what share of the federal tax burden.

Here’s a breakdown, courtesy of the IRS and The Heritage Foundation:

• The top 1% of income earners pays approx. 40% of all federal taxes.
• The top 5% pays about 60% of the bill.
• The top 50% pays 97% of the tab.
• The bottom 50% pays only 3%.

That is a staggering amount paid by the upper class.  You could argue that because they have more money than middle and lower income households they should be expected to pay a bigger percentage.  But I don’t think it’s reasonable to say they don’t pay “their fair share.”  Or to accuse them of not paying anything.  Or of “freeloading.”

The irony of Warren’s statement was not lost on Musk, who pointed out that her salary is paid entirely by taxpayers. 

To make it worse, Warren responded to Musk’s comments by running social media ads targeting his “freeloading” and simultaneously asking for donations to herself and her political causes.

To say it’s ironic is quite an understatement.  And probably generous.

Before you get taken in by statements and soundbites meant to invoke an emotional reaction,  what if you instead stopped and looked into it first?  It may look different once you do.

Telling Stories

A story is a powerful thing.  It can captivate, inspire and produce action like nothing else.  Story is everywhere.  It’s in the books we read and the movies we watch.  It’s in the way we view our lives and the lives of others.  It’s in history as well as the present.  Story is everywhere and it is powerful.

Story is also a big part of how we communicate with each other. It’s so integrated into our daily routine you may not even notice.  Take news reporting for one example.  The media does not just give you unbiased information, much as they would like to claim otherwise.  They tell a story.  The way reporters and company ownership see the world shapes how they talk about it.  It helps determine what they choose to tell you and what they choose to leave out. 

This shouldn’t be hard to understand or accept.  We all have a way that we see the world, which shapes our beliefs and attitudes.  We all have stories we believe and want to tell others to convince them to believe.

When it comes to how culture, Hollywood and the media try to influence us by the story they want to tell, we often refer to it as a “narrative.”  An example of a narrative these groups attempt to create is that conservatives, en masse, do not care for the poor.  Because conservatives tend to disagree with government redistribution, in the minds of the media, that means they care little for the poor.  And in their reporting, they will ignore the personal charity conservatives practice, their support of and volunteering with private organizations, and focus instead on their opposition to government programs in order to tell their narrative.

Another narrative can be seen in the way the media covered the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. It was obvious from the outset there was a story they wanted to tell.  But even a modest attempt at understanding the events of that fateful evening and the legal case against Rittenhouse would have produced the knowledge that what you were hearing in the news and from many pundits was not very accurate.

But it wasn’t until the trial began and the details more widely known that most people – myself included – realized how different the reality and the narrative really were.

For example, we learned that the people Rittenhouse was accused of shooting were all white males.  While he had crossed a state line to get to Kenosha, it was about a 30-minute drive from his home, and it was the town where he worked.  His father also lived there.  The weapon he used that night was not his own and he did not bring it with him.  Further, the entire incident was captured on video.  And it seemed to back up Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim.

These were all things that ran counter to the description of events we were led to believe.  But often our desire to tell the story causes us to assume things and to look past things that don’t line up with that story.

The portrayal of the trial in many ways mirrored that of the 2020 riots in the city.  In the country’s emotional unrest, many rushed to judgment in the shooting of Jacob Blake, assuming something that did not happen.

In that instance, police were called to arrest a man who was wanted for felony sexual assault, on the property of the woman he had allegedly assaulted.  Blake, armed with a knife and resisting arrest, was eventually shot by police, after deploying a taser did not subdue him.  Fortunately, he survived.

But that was not the story the media and other groups told.

After Rittenhouse had been found not guilty, a tweet from Representative Sean Patrick Maloney sums up both narratives well, I think.

“It’s disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest against the unjust killing of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, and take the lives of two people and injure another – and face absolutely no consequences.”

Maloney chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  One would rightly think he knows the facts of the incident involving Blake.  His office later corrected the tweet, since Blake had not died, nor was he unarmed.

Perhaps Maloney simply reacted out of anger without fully thinking through what he was saying.  I think we’re all guilty of that sometimes.  But I also think it shows the narrative he has chosen to believe, and to tell the American people.  One that he is by no means alone in.

If we want to become a better people, we must be willing to look at the truth – even if what we want to believe is not affirmed by the truth.  We must be willing to get our feelings under control long enough to make rational decisions.  And we must be brave enough to stick to the truth, even if it makes others upset.

While it can rightly be argued Rittenhouse did not make a good decision by being where he was that night with a weapon, the case was also made that he acted in self-defense.  That is what a jury of his peers decided after due process was followed.  And they reached that decision after the facts of the case had been presented.  Facts that did not fit the story that some wanted to tell.