Taxes and Tariffs
I promise, this is about fashion
Rich people dress so boring now.
In the turn of the last century, you could really tell who was rich.
The robber barons and tycoons of the late 1800s/early 1900s would throw amazing parties, they would dress up, and they wanted to make sure the public saw them.
Amidst all the discussions of “quiet luxury” or “stealth wealth” or whatever… one crucial element is missing. Which are. Taxes.
Taxes actually explain a lot of why super rich people dress so dull. And, to celebrate the end of tax season, this is what the episode is about this month.
As ever I’m like PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE - this substack is not going to give away a lot of spoilers!
But I will say, much of the episode came from this live discussion I had the immense honor of doing with Ray Madoff.
It’s been really fun to turn these live events into podcasts! It’s a way to show how I make the sausage- you can see what the source material was.
Anyway, Ray Madoff wrote a brilliant and (truly readable book!) called The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made An American Aristocracy. If you want to cheat, she also wrote a really neato little summary of her argument for The Atlantic.
Essentially, the richest Americans are not paying any taxes. And by “rich,” I’m not talking about doctors or hedge fund managers. I am talking about the couple hundred Americans with unfathomable wealth.
This visualizer, while a bit outdated (lol the billionaires have all made more money), really helps to comprehend the kind of money we are talking about.
But this tax the rich stuff is really only half of the episode.
Another big gulf in what we pay are tariffs. Which mostly apply to clothing.
Also they mostly apply to cheap goods. Look, a polyester bra has a 16.9% tariff, a silk bra, only 2.7% - this is typical.
Also, tariffs are overtly sexist. It’s nuts. On average, theres a 3% difference in tariffs between men’s clothes and women’s clothes. For no good reason.
Again, more in the episode. But suffice to say, this system of American taxes and tariffs is messed up. And it impacts the ways that we all dress. And explains, in part, why the rich wear such boring clothes made of such nice materials.
One point made in the piece is maybe not super accurate, so I'm talking about it here. Tech workers started dressing in excessively casual ways at the office not because they were saying anything about "stealth wealth" (they were just normal-wealthy, at the time, at most, and only if they were very lucky), but because they were making a statement against traditional business norms. Tech was upsetting traditional business practices, and tech workers knew it. This (IMO) was also about arrogance, to an extent. They knew they could get away with being a little bit different, because tech skills were so valued.
I saw this in particular at a mutual funds company with a giant tech arm, where the tech workers were the only people allowed to wear jeans; everyone else had to wear suits.
(Source: me, I've spent multiple decades in the tech industry.)
Of course, the disparity of wealth in this country is a scary thing. But! I am so inspired by the decadent outfits from the wealthy wardrobe of generations passed…