A Tale of Two Cities
23rd February 2015
Steve Sailer looks at the oddity that it’s okay to dislike foreigners but only if they are rich.
Americans traditionally aspired to live in freestanding houses surrounded by lawns, houses whose size and worth were readily apparent to both the neighbors and the taxman: visual synecdoches for those Jeffersonian ideals.
In the older parts of the world, however, prudent patriarchs built opaque structures that presented only a blank wall and a door directly onto the street, leaving the poverty or luxury behind them a secret known only to those allowed in.
Part of the rise of shell companies as nominal owners of New York City luxury apartments is a not wholly unreasonable response to the fact that on December 8, 1980, practically everybody in America knew that John Lennon lived in The Dakota. But on December 9, 1980, he didn’t.
Let that be a lesson to us all.
February 24th, 2015 at 10:31
Now that I think about it, I do dislike Georg Soros more than I dislike any poor folks that cross the border trying to build a better life.