What Shakespeare had to say about need
Yesterday I wrote a post about Liz Warren’s desire to confiscate more of Jeff Bezos’ money. The title of the post was, “How much money does Jeff Bezos need, anyway?”
Afterwards, a line from Shakespeare kept coming to me: “Oh reason not the need.” I couldn’t recall in which play it appeared. Perhaps The Merchant of Venice? So it was time to look it up, and it’s King Lear.
Here’s the whole speech:
O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s: thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,–
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall–I will do such things,–
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I’ll weep
No, I’ll not weep:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
I could use more patience.
How much money does Elizabeth Warren need, anyway?
Elizabeth W., one of the unnatural hags indeed.
The late Rep. Martha Griffiths of Michigan once lost her temper in a committee hearing with a witness from some social service agency. The man kept saying ‘what is needed’. She said, “‘Needs’ is a phony standard invented by a paternalistic middle class. The real standard is what similar people earn, and how they are treated.”.
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Social Security / SSI benefit levels vary a great deal from person to person. On average, they are enough to give the elderly or disabled beneficiary a personal disposable income approaching the 40th percentile of the population as a whole. Public insurance programs might be profitably restructured. As we speak, they account for over half the revenue stream flowing to providers of medical services and long-term care services. Primary and secondary schooling in this country (and tertiary schooling, while we’re at it) suffer all kinds of quality issues. Such schooling is, however, free of charge. The nation’s corps of public defenders and legal aid lawyers also suffer quality issues; they are, however, available for the impecunious. The tax code is riddled with special favors for the well-connected, which in turn generates inefficiency and is also unfair. Addressing the troublesome aspects of the tax system and of programs of common provision do not require seizing any of Jeff Bezos pool of assets. Bezos assets can be subject to taxation as are everyone else’s: the liability arising from owning real property, the liability which arises from realized capital gains, the liability incurred by recipients of gifts from Bezos, and the liability incurred by those inheriting his property. These would be addeda to what Bezos owed in income taxes in a properly ordered system.
How much money does Elizabeth Warren need, anyway?
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When you say ‘need’ you have an implicit purpose in mind. In the case of Warren and her husband, it might be the rent on a two bedroom apartment in suburban Boston, maintenance and amortization on an automobile; premiums on renters’ insurance, car insurance, and MediGap plans; the deductibles on her medical plans and car insurance; the weekly grocery budget; and modest amounts for clothing purchases, laundry, phone service, internet service, ride-sharing services, and public transit. You have a cat, you have to add pet care charges (which aren’t onerous normally but can suffer spikes). As people lose mobility, charges for chore services are an issue.
Art Deco, what do you mean by 40th percentile of the population? I mean my SS is about 24K. Not a lot really.
Some of that speech sounds as bombastic as Trump
Will Shakespeare.
Guy could write.
Patience
A newish song with Yungblud is on my list of soon-to-sing karaoke
https://youtu.be/Vy2_5D71GM0?list=PLTkojyiYtIBb60IoCivsKlHUrsNDnGiZa
“I need a little bit of patience, cause we been going thru changes”
Quoth Will: “And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks!”
Brilliant, 4 centuries later.
I could use more patience.
That makes two of us.
In my younger days I had a tremendous amount of patience, determination, and focus. Patience isn’t always warranted or used well. I now have little, and in musing about that contrast I surmise that I used most of my patience up. That’s somewhere between an accurate and whimsical assessment.