Security costs worth it for the rich

Reasonable taxes might pacify the public, but private security is much cheaper for CEOs.

Private security costs are “rising” among tech CEOs, at least if the headline writers at the San Francisco Chronicle can be believed. Unfortunately we have to take it on faith because nothing in their new article about this actually demonstrates rising costs — only that the costs are high. And in fact, since half the figures they report are from 2023, we can only assume that either security costs have stayed the same or that their article is outdated.

In any case, it’s clear that in the wake of the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, someone at the San Francisco Chronicle wants us to think that private security costs have become burdensome for the rich. But I don’t think that’s actually the case.

All the evidence we have of motive so far suggests that the assassin was driven by “ill will toward corporate America.” Let us suppose, then, that these killings become far more likely as popular opposition to big business grows. Let’s also make the political assumption that popular opposition to big business grows when leftist policies aren’t enacted. These two (I think modest) assumptions thus present the rich with a tradeoff: put up with the higher tax rates that left politics entail for the sake of pacifying the population? Or just hire private security to defend against civil unrest for the sake of paying lower taxes?