Add TeslaTakedown post

Author: dltj

assets/images/2025/2025-03-08-protest-sign-in-action.jpg

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+---
+title: 'My Economic Wake-Up Call Protest Sign: A #TeslaTakedown Story'
+modified: 
+category: Personal
+categories:
+- Personal
+tags:
+- politics
+summary: "For #TeslaTakedown, I crafted a sign on economic disparity. Using a “cosmic distance ladder,” I aimed to show that while 1,000 passersby might collectively hold $100M, Musk's net worth of $350B highlights our shared realities versus billionaire influence."
+mastodon: "For today's #TeslaTakedown protest, I wanted a sign comparing the economic disparity between the typical protestor and Elon Musk. This sign probably didn't get the point across, but here is what I was thinking. Using a “cosmic distance ladder” analogy, I wanted to show the vast wealth divide: while 1,000 passersby might collectively possess $100M, Musk alone holds $350B. This is our shared economic realities over the billionaires running the country."
+---
+
+{{ image(width="600", localsrc="2025/2025-03-08-protest-sign.png", alt="Protest poster in red, white, and blue. It says “Our fellow Americans” with arrows pointing left, down, and right. Underneath it says: “How much do you have in common with Elon Musk?”", caption="My protest sign for the #TeslaTakedown today.") }} 
+
+I made a sign for today's #TeslaTakedown, and I should have listened to my family. 
+They suggested that the initial version, without the "How much do you have in common with Elon Musk?" at the bottom, was too confusing. 
+Adding that sentence improved understanding, but now there was too much to read in a protest sign for cars whizzing past. 
+My point was that me and the person driving by giving me a middle finger have far more in common than what either of us have with Elon Musk (and Donald Trump). 
+
+## Ladder rungs of economic prosperity
+
+My son is taking a gen-ed psychology class in his first year of college, and he was describing a class exercise demonstrating the difficulty people have with probabilities and proportions. 
+That got me thinking about the "cosmic distance ladder". 
+The {{ robustlink(href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder", versionurl="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cosmic_distance_ladder&oldid=1278862804", versiondate="2025-03-08", title="Cosmic distance ladder | Wikipedia", anchor="cosmic distance ladder") }}cosmic distance ladder is a series of methods astronomers use to determine the distances to celestial objects, acting as a tool to map the universe. 
+It's called a ladder because each step relies on the previous one, starting with measurements to nearby galaxies and progressing to farther objects.
+
+Let's suppose the median net worth of an American—the point at which half the people in the country have more and half the people in the country have less—is $100,000. 
+So, standing there in the middle of the protest, the 10 people around me have a total net worth of $1,000,000—a million dollars. 
+And the 100 people or so between and the street corner? That is ten million dollars. 
+And the 1,000 people walking and driving by the #TeslaTakedown protest? That's a hundred million dollars.
+
+The capacity of a {{ robustlink(href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Park_(Columbus,_Ohio)", versionurl="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Huntington_Park_(Columbus,_Ohio)&oldid=1277033361", versiondate="2025-03-08", title="Huntington Park (Columbus, Ohio) | Wikipedia", anchor="triple-A minor league baseball stadium") }} is about 10,000 people; the median net worth of that crowd is a billion dollars. 
+The capacity of {{ robustlink(href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Stadium", versionurl="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ohio_Stadium&oldid=1278375605", versiondate="2025-03-08", title="Ohio Stadium | Wikipedia", anchor="Ohio Stadium") }}, where the Ohio State University football team plays, is 100,000, and the net worth is ten billion dollars.
+It is only at this point that reach Donald Trump's net worth. 
+The {{ robustlink(href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/franklincountyohio/PST045223", versionurl="https://archive.ph/c24e9", versiondate="2025-03-08", title="QuickFacts: Franklin County, Ohio | United States Census Bureau", anchor="population of Franklin County, Ohio") }}—the seat of the state capitol—is just over 1,000,000 people, and the total median net worth is $100,000,000. 
+Elon Musk's net worth is about $350,000,000—so three Franklin-county's-worth of people. 
+
+So when I said that the person throwing the middle finger at me has more in common with me than Musk, that's what I meant.
+
+The actual {{ robustlink(href="https://www.investopedia.com/average-americans-net-worth-8713595", versionurl="https://web.archive.org/web/20250309015746/https://www.investopedia.com/average-americans-net-worth-8713595", versiondate="2025-03-08", title="Here's the Average American's Net Worth at Every Income Level. How Does Yours Compare? | Investopedia", anchor="median net worth of an American household") }} is just short of $200,000, so we are not that far off with this economic prosperity ladder (assuming two earners per household). 
+And the really perverse part? 
+Remember that the median is the point at which half the population is above that amount and half the population is below. 
+{{ robustlink(href="https://sciencenotes.org/median-vs-average-know-the-difference-between-them/", versionurl="https://web.archive.org/web/20250309015138/https://sciencenotes.org/median-vs-average-know-the-difference-between-them/", versiondate="2025-03-08", title="Median vs Average – Know the Difference Between Them | Science Notes", anchor="Don't confuse that with the average") }}...that'll be the sum of everyone's net worth divided by the number of people in the country. 
+That number is just over $1,000,000 per household. 
+The highest highs have skewed the average that much.
+
+Now, at the risk of reducing a person's value to a dollar amount, _that_ is what I was trying to say in my sign. 
+Wealth is a tool, not an identity; a person's kindness, resilience, and hope for a better world hold real value...and I saw a lot of kindness, resilience, and hope at the protest today. 
+Yet, despite the immense kindness and resilience I was in the middle of, it's disheartening how wealthy people are overriding the collective interests of the country.
+
+And _that_ is far too much to put on a sign.
+
+
+## About making the protest sign
+
+I'm adding my notes here about creating the protest sign, because clearly I'll need to make a different one for next week. 
+The base of the sign is an old campaign yard sign—about 26 inches by 16 inches. 
+Using a graphics program, I made an image at those dimensions. 
+My plan was to print it out as a set of tiles on letter-sized paper and then tape them together. 
+Unfortunately, the MacOS printer driver doesn't do this (...anymore? I thought it did at one point). 
+Fortunately, a free web service called [Rasterbator](https://rasterbator.net/) will make a PDF of tile pages for me. 
+I uploaded the sign, selected US-Letter paper in landscape orientation, then selected an output size of "2.45 sheets wide".
+That will output 6 sheets for a final size of 24.98" x 15.38"...pretty close!
+This is what it looked like in the end.
+
+{{ image(width="600", localsrc="2025/2025-03-08-protest-sign-in-action.jpg", alt="Protester in front of a Tesla building holds a sign reading, “Our Fellow Americans: How much do you have in common with Elon Musk?” The person is dressed warmly in a blue jacket, sunglasses, and a beanie. The Tesla logo is visible on the building behind them, with bare tree branches framing the side.", caption="My protest sign at the #TeslaTakedown.") }}