Political Memes

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:

1. The insane asylum with the portal to hell (Depending on if you consider Living Hell canon or not.)
2. The Lazarus pit in the city spewing chemicals into the water supply.
3. All the other chemicals likely in the water supply from a wide array of sources, including regular pollution and goofy shit.
4. The remnants of the evil warlock who was sealed under the city for centuries.
5. The massive mafia presence and general corruption.
6. 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.

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; ETA A new video popped up about the wellness industry that pushes mostly pure quackery, and has captured the HHS, so we're in a bit of a need of this kind of vig.); 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. ( 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.

Well. Part of batman mythos is that no amount of money is enough to save the city from itself.

I don't think this person ever read batman.

Gotham is so corrupt that it would make Russia blush. If you taxed Bruce Wayne at 99%, nothing would change except the cops would all suspiciously have new supercars.

Gotham is extremely corrupt, from the police departments being riddled with officers on any of the several mob payrolls. Same for the politicians. Feeding more tax dollars into that won't mean that money is going to the poor people who would benefit from it

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.

In Batman's defence, he doesn't decide the tax policies and I'm pretty sure he is already an avid philanthropist and political donator for anti-poverty policy.

♥️

3% wealth tax would be better still

Note that the tax exempt amount of $10 million is chosen such that 99% of people have less than that net wealth. It's supposed to guarantee a strong democratic support.

I.e. the 99-percent-quantile of net wealth is about $10 million in the US. (or at least it was in 2019 when i looked at the statistics)

See also Taylor Swift.

Pay some goddamn taxes.

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.

Superman instead of Batman but https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-07-13 is pretty much this

Lol .... but a fancy custom made billion dollar armored car, motorcycle, jet boat and jet aircraft is more sexy and looks more powerful.

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.

Reginald D Hunter's take on Batman is great.