Unfortunately Bruce is really poor. Everything he uses day-to-day belongs to a foundation on the Caymans, whose owners are not known. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Cannot tax that guy.
Here is a short list of shit going on in Gotham at any given time, not including the wide array of psychopaths and supervillains doing shit at any given time:
- The insane asylum with the portal to hell (Depending on if you consider Living Hell canon or not.)
- The Lazarus pit in the city spewing chemicals into the water supply.
- All the other chemicals likely in the water supply from a wide array of sources, including regular pollution and goofy shit.
- The remnants of the evil warlock who was sealed under the city for centuries.
- The massive mafia presence and general corruption.
- The Illuminati that uses zombie soldiers.
That is not shit proper taxation is going to resolve. You can’t protected bike lane away the zombie controlling Illuminati.
In that case, Dr. Strange or whoever should be sealing the hell-mouths. Batman face-punching the victims of all these effects is not helping.
I grew up during the smog-alert era of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, exerting myself, walking home uphill from school (yes, the had to walk in snow from school story except in my case, it was smog and it was true). No number of batmen or tough-on-crime judges were going to fix that, and heck even the limited smog regulations on cars we have today do enough. (Though switching to unleaded gasoline certainly helped generations after mine by lessening the damage). Only public transit and tighter regs on cars is going to help that.
Don’t justify Batman’s fists by saying there are extenuating pollution circumstances. The rogues gallery are the results of what comes down to poor urban planning and a superfluous layer of white-collar crime. If Batman was going after Pfizer and the Sacklers or Du Pont Chemical and PFOA manufacturers or all the private equity firms, then he’d be a hero. Otherwise, he’s a crazy rich dude who beats up on poor people and has writers who won’t think the problem through.
I think the US has just outgrown the Batman fantasy. I’d hope so, at least.
- The Lazarus pit in the city spewing chemicals into the water supply.
- All the other chemicals likely in the water supply from a wide array of sources, including regular pollution and goofy shit.
Fixing contaminants to the water supply is absolutely something proper taxes should be able to solve.
Key word, Should. If taxes actually went where people say it does, it might. And even then, it’d also take a lot of funding outside of just taxes, not to mention someone to actually start doing stuff about with all that funding. Also note on that list is rampant corruption and criminal syndicates mingling with the government.
I think you underestimate the power of actual taxes, say if we taxed billionaires and corporations.
Or you may be arguing, as Marx did in Das Kapital that democracy and self-government are incompatible with capitalism. With some qualifications, I’d agree.
I am absolutely arguing that. The rich in actual mid-to-south New York and elsewhere aren’t actually taxed, why would the rich in Gotham be?
If taxes actually went into a big pile of money we set on fire, they would still solve the pollution problem. The pollution solution is to internalize its external cost.
I mean two of those are pretty clearly regulation issues. Maybe if the city’s Regulatory Agencies weren’t so strapped for cash they’d be more able to address pollution and water safety issues. Also you can always build a new Asylum elsewhere but apparently they don’t have the funds for that I guess? It’s amazing have Bruce Wayne doesn’t use his philanthropy to build one, almost like he likes them being crazy so he has someone to beat up.
I mean two of those are pretty clearly regulation issues. Maybe if the city’s Regulatory Agencies weren’t so strapped for cash they’d be more able to address pollution and water safety issues.
See point 5.
It’s amazing have Bruce Wayne doesn’t use his philanthropy to build one, almost like he likes them being crazy so he has someone to beat up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Enterprises#Wayne_Foundation
Your link did not address what I said so I’m not sure why you sent it to me. As for the fifth point no I don’t think that addresses it.
A massive mafia presence (which is true for every city in the US, only the mafia lobbies the state reps) is something that can also be managed better with a more robust public works project by the government. We don’t even have to beat them up, just seize their assets when they’re caught doing crime.
Sadly, actual solutions to real world problems are not as exciting as a flying man who punches things.
“Decent people shouldn’t live here. They’d be happier someplace else”
He could literally call up a couple folks he knows who have absurd, godly super powers to shut all of that down, or pick up the entire chunk of landmass those problems are stuck in and hurl them into the sun.
Meanwhile, setting up huge social programs to raise the quality of life for every Gotham resident which would decentivize crime and the wacky crime lords wearing funny outfits and other gimmicks would suddenly find the city less profitable and harder to hire thugs.
It would take a lot of time and resources, it would be challenging, but eventually it would make a difference enough to help the quality of life for millions of residents. More lives would be saved than a single incident involving a giant bomb being used to threaten a bank or some shit.
He could literally call up a couple folks he knows who have absurd, godly super powers to shut all of that down, or pick up the entire chunk of landmass those problems are stuck in and hurl them into the sun.
May as well ask why Mr. Fantastic doesn’t cure cancer, or other super geniuses don’t ensure no one ever goes hungry again. We both know the answer: Because the comic would end. Thinking about this shit too hard causes it all to fall apart. The ol’ Superman was a transitional energy source idea. Beyond that, if we’re applying the lens of “Just tax him properly” we can’t also apply the lens of “Just call Superman to eye laser the joker dummy.” Gotta pick a lane here.
Meanwhile, setting up huge social programs to raise the quality of life for every Gotham resident which would decentivize crime and the wacky crime lords wearing funny outfits and other gimmicks would suddenly find the city less profitable and harder to hire thugs.
Wayne has. Foundations in both parents names. Hires ex-cons on the regular. Wacky super criminals aren’t typically interested in profitability, Joker isn’t looking to make millions and retire. He’s criminally insane.
I don’t understand what people don’t get about Batman villains being legitimately insane. You can’t just give Two-Face affordable housing and access to a food bank and expect him to become a model citizen
You can give quality, comprehensive health care, including mental health. You can actually aim for rehabilitative services rather than retribution.
Again, this is fictional writing. Twoface would just kill them in a way that would get batman mad. I’m sure we all know what happened to the last psychiatrist who tried to help the joker…
What bugs me is this is a controversial opinion about Batman. That there’s still objection to the notion that Batman is fulfilling his own violent jollies in the color of seeking justice, rather than using his massive fortunes to serve good.
I think my most controversial Batman opinion is that his code vs. killing is bunk. Even if he just punches goons, he does so enough that goons would die often enough to give Batman a substantial body count. I’m sure his press crew and legal team are occupied continuously with the task of cleaning up his messes.
In fact, there’s not enough dramatic crime (like bank heists, contrast domestic violence or check-cashing fraud, which not even regular police care much about) to support a superhero career¹
Curiously, Batman could make a career going after elite deviance / white collar crime, going after the Sacklers for pushing opioids and starting the current opioid crisis, going after companies that lobby governments to deregulate so they can pollute or push false products (e.g. cars as opposed to public transit); Or the DeVos family who use MLMs and PMCs to make their millions; Or the private equity companies like Bain Capital and Blackrock who get rich by creating massive bankruptcy sinkholes leveraging the brand reputations of aging companies and foreclosing commodities for their own personal gain. If Wayne wanted to go after the very sorts of things he, his company and his parents did / do to amass their fortunes, he could prevent a lot of cost, destruction and loss of life by orders of magnitude more than all the petty crime put together.
Funny DC doesn’t want to do that, though. Maybe Detective Comics is just state and law enforcement propaganda and they like it that way.
- ( ¹ ) Batman is not just a mountain of a man and master martial artist, but also has the academic capacity of several doctorates, assuming he – and not a secret task force of backup investigators – does all his detective-work and implements all his backup plans. Personally, I like the idea of Batman as a sophisticated justice and detective agency.
It’s a controversial opinion because it’s ill-informed. Bruce Wayne does give the majority of his money to charity. Even Superman, the goodest person on earth, looks up to him. But no amount of funding food banks or building low-income housing is going to uncurse the cursed land that Gotham is built on
ill informed
And this is where I ask if I even give you the time of day. I don’t think you understand the failures of modern charity in contrast to, say, the general fund of an actually-democratic society.
In fact, Oakland, California IRL is doing a lot of the things that Gotham should be doing including food banks and low-income housing projects, but also extending the list of 911 responders to provide alternatives to a police force that is eager to escalate to violence and can’t handle mental health crises, kids programs, school breakfast and lunch programs. You know, the kinds of things that an actual society might do.
Unless you’re arguing there’s a literal magical curse on the city of Gotham, in which case no amount of face-punching thugs is going to help either, and DC’s writing is proving as consistent as ever.
I posted below in more depth regarding the serious failure of the Batman paradigm, and would argue the fantasy is as much utopianism as Starship Troopers.
Unless you’re arguing there’s a literal magical curse on the city of Gotham, in which case no amount of face-punching thugs is going to help either, and DC’s writing is proving as consistent as ever.
There literally is lmfao
Did this guy forget that we’re talking about comics?
It’s so on the nose, it almost feels like bait.
Yeah I recall half the issue being that Gotham is so corrupt, any money is going to be wasted, which is why the Wayne family has to have its own charities to accomplish anythign at all.
Atleast in reality, a lot of the time corruption happens is because people don’t get paid enough to have the luxury of principles/integrity.
So it’s a case of self fulfilling prophecy
I agree with you in the realm of reality. But I think thats why they tried to bring the idea that “some people just want to watch the world burn” to the forefront with Joker. If he wanted to redistribute the wealth to have a better society he wouldn’t burn it all, or he’d use it to counter anti social program rhetoric or something. Try to make some kind of change, but he doesn’t want change, he wants the wealth gap. The bigger the gap, the more desperate the people who he can manipulate into causing more crime and chaos.
Some people just want to watch the world burn is good cause not to deal with such people. The mafia / crime syndicate in an effort to get to Batman hired Joker as a Guy of Gisborne to Batman’s Robin Hood, only they got more than they bargained for.
Considering our billionaires hired Trump to keep their taxes low and are now dealing with a tanking economy, this seems to be the kind of play that tracks IRL. Especially since now Trump is lame duck and Miller, Vought and Thiel/Vance (Mandate, Marbro Man and Lifepod might be their villain names) are now vying for power while Trump is still alive.
Heck, this would make a great comic book.
Clarence totes needed that lux RV
Fair point, but that’s also why every branch of government also needs to be beholden to another which did not sign them in the first place.
The fact that they are assigned for life is a glaring potential for abuse.
For that you need to first receive the income and book the capital gains. If you ever filed your taxes you would know. A 3% wealth tax on non cash assets would be more effective and productive. There are provisions where if you take out a home loan, you can deduct its interest from your salary or income to reduce your tax liability. Billionaires (or even the middle class) do that often. This builds assets as well as allows for a lower tax liability.
We are assuming that somehow if Wayn pays large sums of wealth to the government, the government wouldn’t just be their usual wasteful, corrupt, self serving self with said money. You get every current billionaire in the USA to pay a fair tax. Where do you think the money goes? Funding for food stamps or Lockeed-Martin?
If the income tax graduations are steep enough then the billionaire class will optimize to minimize taxes by reducing their own income in favor of reinvesting in their business and employees. In theory. In reality I’m sure they’d find some way to squirrel it away while their employees apply for and get denied food stamps.
Also in the DC universe, the equivalent of Lockeed-Martin is Wayne Enterprises. There’s stories where Bruce is conflicted in making weapons, but nonetheless, his fortune is built on the military industrial complex.
So Bruce Wayne is somehow worse than freaking Tony Stark?
Then again Stark is an inventor and comics-level genius who lacks a secret identity, so pivoting to another industry was way easier for him. Bruce Wayne probably can’t change his company too much without losing a ton of pull and drawing unwanted attention to himself, plus losing access to the gadgets he relies on.
Didn’t Stark divest from weapons manufacturing to researching clean energy instead, after he got hit by that one bomb of his?
I haven’t read the comics, just what I remember from the movies
Yeah, that’s why I said worse than Stark. He pivoted away from supporting the Military-Industrial Complex when he realized it was hurting people, whereas Batman hasn’t.
It’s just odd since Batman is supposed to have ironclad ethics, whereas Iron Man is famously a hypocritical ass (though much less so in the MCU than in the comics, from what I’ve heard).
Meanwhile, the DoD is like: “Hey, anyone else kinda wondering why these bombs, ammunition boxes, and rifles are all kinds bat-shaped. Wayne enterprises is weird”
You’re assuming we’d stop at Bruce Wayne.
The same people willing go after Batman are willing to go after Lockheed-Martin and every politician they paid for.
Underfunding the government through tax cuts makes corruption more likely. The richer the rich are, the easier it is to manipulate the government for them. Why do you think so much money goes to Lockheed Martin? Who gets government contracts isn’t chosen at random, there are moneyed interests involved.
I think pretty much every study even made has shown taxing the rich and investing in the public reduce crime rates and poverty. It’s the reason the USA had a massive middle class before Reagan and has experienced massive wealth disparity today: differences in tax policy and public investment.
Yes, but that’s not really the point. The point is that “taxing the rich” and “investing in the public” aren’t necessarily the same thing. Just cause the government is collecting money doesn’t mean it’s spending it responsibly. Especially in the (literally) comically-corrupt world of Gotham.
I have absolute faith that any government willing to tax the oligarchs is also willing to spend it responsibly.
For example, China is a shithole dystopian nightmare but even they provide food, education, and housing to the most vulnerable.
In the Batman Year 1 comic the thing that makes the police believe there really is a ‘Bat-Man’ is when he attacks a fancy dinner party and warns Gotham’s movers and shakers that justice is coming for them, too.
Yeah, it’s pretty clear Gotham was full of corruption from top to bottom, which pushed him into becoming Batman. Philanthropy would just fuel the corrupt politicians into funneling money to the crime bosses, and taking a cut. Probably if he started a soup kitchen and was on the ground getting people out of poverty, he would achieve improvement, but when the police, courts, and politicians are on the crime bosses payrolls, funding those institutions more will not solve Gotham’s problems
I vaguely remember some stories, he does do the whole non-profit thing, too. It’s still a little bit too pro-billionaire but yeah, in their setting it’s quite likely the government is too corrupt.
Also he fucking funds other superheroes, so it’s a little hard to say what actually works in that crazy universe. I can’t imagine superheroing to be profitable.
In some of the Silver Age comics, Superman has a vast fortune from old Spanish treasure ships he can find deep undersea. Yet no one ever calls Supes on being a skinflint.
[jk]
Im gonna say that this is why Batman Forever is my favorite Batman movie. There is this scene where the badguys rip a bank vault out of the wall, and by the end of the scene batman uses an explosive to have fly back into place. My point is, Batman needs to take place in a pulpy hyper reality, or he goes from a Doc Savage in a cool costume to a mentally insane Billionaire karate chopping poor people because as punishment.
Also, in that movie, they took pains to portray him as a “Good” ceo.
I just think this is an issue of tone and presentation.
Absolutely this. Ever since Nolan, we’ve been getting grimmer, darker, more “realistic” reboots of the character as directors try to figure out what Batman would look like in the real world. Burton and Schumacher asked the much funner question of, “What kind of crazy nonsense world worships a vigilante in a furry suit?”
that is why i love the gothic tone of Tim Burton, it is a Hallucinogenic reality with grotesque characters
See also Taylor Swift.
Pay some goddamn taxes.
I haven’t even read Batman, but I’ve seen this same thread pop up enough times to know that:
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Gotham is literally cursed
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Gotham is extremely corrupt. Tax money wouldn’t go where it needs to
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Bruce Wayne bankrolls tons of social programs
It’s cursed because comic writers couldn’t come up with a better way to explain why the city can’t be fixed by the world’s smartest billionaire.
The city can’t be fixed because then there wouldn’t be any more stories for them to write.
Sure, but “cursed” is lazy and raises a lot of questions.
It’s a comic book, I didn’t know what makes curses “lazy”. Also the much more important factor is the deep corruption.
I say it was a process of elimination.
In a world in which heroes like Superman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and Doctor Fate exist, your city has to be freaking cursed to keep getting all those cases of mental illness and corruption, keeping the city from really ever improving.
Organizations like the League of Assassins and the Court of Owls alone wouldn’t cut it. Detective heroes would unravel their plans. Tech heroes would root their data out. Magical heroes would counter their spells, fast and strong heroes would weed out the thugs, henchmen, and mercenaries.
Eventually, it would get more under control, like Metropolis, Star City, Central City, or Keystone City.
They would need something so ingrained in the city that nobody can really ever remove it to get to the high levels of madness and crime you get in Gotham.So at some point, a writer had to give up, throw their hands up in the air, and go “then… then… it’s freaking cursed!”
And then you watch the God/King of Cities talk with the avatar Gotham (Stormwatch #3), and it’s a freaking gargoyle talking about “the madness in me”, while Paris and Metropolis are just human-like women.
This ^^
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It only works when that money goes to the right place. With all the corruption in Gotham, that money probably goes straight into the politicians bank accounts.
This lame-o argument again? If leftists spend as much time engaging in actual politics instead of smugposting online we would have a saner system.
I too expect to find legitimate political discourse on c/politicalmemes!
and what have you done besides complain about “libtards” dying their hair for the past 30 years?
Please do not put words in my mouth
But… Are they wrong? Have you run for a public office, volunteered for a political cause, or done anything besides talk?
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Reginald D Hunter’s take on Batman is great.
Superman instead of Batman but https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-07-13 is pretty much this
isn’t a big part of the whole setup that this would not help much? like Gotham is just too corrupt, whenever programs are set up to invest in the public, they’re mostly just stolen from.
Wayne is a philanthropist who gives a ton of money back through his own programs, right? presumably better overseen than the government ones.
I don’t know how much money of Wayne’s is actually used for philanthropy, but he can’t just give the city all his wealth because it’s too corrupt for it to be used well, right?
So why isn’t Batman beating up corrupt politicians and judges instead of crippling poor people who have no other opportunity to make money than to work for a villain?
it was like that since the O`Neil days if not earlier.
Where does Wayne’s money come from?
How many hours does Wayne’s day have that he can do millions or billions of dollars worth of actual work while still playing dress-up at night?
Or does his money come from short-changing and underpaying his employees, while hiking the prices for his customers? Or does it come from using speculation and investment to make sure he gets rich off other people being underpaid and overcharged?
How can he be a philanthropist when all his money comes from fleecing other people?
Wayne Enterprises is essentially Lockheed-Martin, so yes, short changing his customers (that is, the US Government) figures largely into his business model. So does promoting military adventurism and forever wars.
And that also means assuring that kids in the slums don’t have access to opportunities other than the military.
presumably better overseen than the government ones
That’s a particularly post-Reagan presumption, and is the product of the kind of deregulation that the Reagan administration spearheaded. In fact, government programs are especially good at fulfilling their roles, since the Pournelle motivation of survival of the department is actually a weaker diversion than the motivation of profit.
We’ve seen plenty of examples, how California regions that had public power fared better during the Enron crisis in the aughts or how Medicare was stronger and yielded a higher rate of positive outcomes before it was privatized by the George W. Bush administration. A similar thing happened in UK in which the NHS got privatized and reshaped for efficiency over redundancy, creating long lines and more poor outcomes.
Wayne has exactly the same kinds of right-wing biases that Andrew Carnegie did, and Bill Gates does, preferring to make decisions based on his own anecdotal experiences than based on data sets. Sure, he saved a kid from crime, and in the meantime more kids suffer from food precarity, from family precarity, from housing precarity than are getting pushed drugs and bullied by gangs. In fact, the gangsters are coming from the precarious environments of the first group.
Batman is ultimately a fantasy of personal responsibility, that we should each be strong enough to bootstrap our fortunes, even though actual data shows most don’t, especially when there are extenuating factors like not being a non-disabled white dude with at least middle-class backing by family. Batman is glad to let everyone else that doesn’t fit into that category suffer.
Granted DC can write what they want, which is why Batman can have a code vs. killing while still smashing the faces of half of Gotham. IRL bare-knuckle fisticuffs will actually kill, and Batman doesn’t pull punches.
Rubber Bullets. Honest. – Batman, The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller, 1986
Batman was created as the reverse of Superman: light vs darkness, superpowers vs a human being, just a journalist vs a billionaire, …
That’s why were Superman is an ideal of everything that’s good in humanity, Batman is the vision of the humanity not as a hero but as a vigilante.
whenever programs are set up to invest in the public, they’re mostly just stolen from.
I’m reminded of the time Walgreens reported they were raising prices and closing stores because of rampant crime, but later admitted they made it the fuck up.
