Class warfare has broken out in my town, Aspen.

“We’ve met the enemy, and he is us.” — Pogo

On one side are the people who are in the top 1 percent of wealth in the world, who’ve been dubbed the 1 percenters. “Ah, yes,” say the Aspenites, “take their money and shoot ’em”

Wait, hold your fire!

You see, the 1 percenters worldwide are people who make more than $34,000. The average income of people in Aspen is double that. Therefore, the average Aspenite is easily a 1 percenter.

So don’t declare war on them because, well, they are us. And the first rule of war is that we’re the good guys.

The bad guys are a subset of the 1 percenters — the ones who are not just in the top 1 percent but are in the top 0.1 percent.

If this were France, circa 1789, we’d say the bad guys are the “creme de la creme” and the good guys are the “creme sans la creme.”

In the fog of war, it’s easy to misplace a decimal point or a creme. For the sake of clarity, we’ll refer to the 1 percenters as the “merely rich” and to the 0.1 percent as the “really rich.”

“Cry havoc and let slip the Labradoodles of war.” — Shakespeare

Human nature being what it is, Continue reading →

Private clubs are typically considered a bad thing in Aspen. They smack of exclusivity, to borrow a phrase from the class-warfare zone.

But some local business types want to take the exclusivity out of smack. In hipster language, they wanna make some smack by openin’ private joints for gettin’ smacked.

In English, this means they want to make money by opening private clubs where a person can get high on marijuana.

People are talkin’ smack about this, you see. They’re grievin’ that gettin’ smacked has been legalized in Colorado but there isn’t anywhere to do it. Talk it, yes. Do it, no.

Well, except the house where you live. But who wants to stink up their house like that?

Speakin’ of gettin’ smacked in the house, Continue reading →

Katmandu bustles, to put it politely.

Dilapidated cars, motor scooters, trucks, rickshaws, bicycles, dogs, cats and farm animals jostle with thousands of people to fill — and I mean fill — dusty, winding, potholed streets from building to opposite building.

Not from sidewalk to sidewalk, because there are no sidewalks. And not from gutter to gutter, because there are no gutters, either.

The direction of traffic is whichever the traffic chooses at any given time, and it changes from moment to moment. Everyone and everything go every way all at once. You have to watch all directions simultaneously, else you get run over. The cacophony assaults you.

One evening in Katmandu, Continue reading →

Is it right to subsidize businesses with taxpayer money so that they can pay their employees less?

I know the Aspen “affordable housing” program is a sacred cow. But let’s talk about this cow for a change, rather than just worship it.

Let’s stipulate at the outset that the people who are suckling at the teat of this cow are not poor. The income cutoff for subsidized rental housing is $143,000 (and $213,000 for a couple). For subsidized owner housing, it’s $184,000 (and $191,000 for a couple).

But leave aside for a moment the questionable morality of taxing not just the wealthy but also the middle and lower class in order to subsidize the upper-middle class — where some of the subsidized are actually making more than the subsidizers.

And ignore that there are a billion people on this planet making less than $500 a year who need subsidies a lot more than a person who chooses to make $184,000 a year in Aspen.

And let’s not dwell on the fact that this cow is notoriously corrupted with individuals who lie about their eligibility to ride it.

And we’ll put aside the fact that the elites of government and media who are tasked with keeping this cow in its pasture are suckling at the teat of the cow themselves.

Finally, let’s save for another day the cost, inefficiency, cronyism and empire-building of the government agency that feeds taxpayer money to this cow. (Not to mention the inside track enjoyed by its staff — guess who learns first when another teat of the cow becomes available?)

Leave all that aside. My biggest problem with the cow is that Continue reading →