nuance

Nuance? A Norwegian Tale

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Nuance was described in a past essay. The word comes from “nubes” the Latin word for cloud but then the French got involved and romanticized it into their own word for “shade” or “slight variation”, per Ai. My Ai goes on to add in the lovely English accent I selected: “Think of it as those little, delicate distinctions that can make a big difference.”

There is a beautiful illustration of nuance across the ocean in Norway. Norway has been ranked the happiest nation in the world for nine consecutive years, according to The World Happiness Report.* But happiness does not inoculate anyone from misunderstanding an idea because of a lack of knowledge about nuance. Norway recently raised their country’s Wealth Tax rate despite the argument that raising a tax on the wealthy would make the rich leave Norway for lower tax countries. After the new tax passed, many wealthy Norwegians left the country.

Showing true confirmation bias, many news outlets reported it as a “tax exodus” and determined The New Wealth Tax is too much of a burden for the rich. The new Wealth Tax is 1% to 1.1% depending on rich you are. Kind of high, right?

From: Money & Macro 28m 9-24-2026 Norway raised taxes on the wealthy and millionaires started leaving – the headlines missed the biggest part of the story “Norway’s decision to increase its wealth tax was followed by a noticeable wave of wealthy business owners moving abroad, (and) produced headlines that portrayed the policy as a failure. But the transcript argues that the amount of taxable wealth leaving was relatively small and that higher wealth-tax revenue more than offset the departures. Its analysis instead points toward Norway’s capital-gains exit-tax rules as a major reason entrepreneurs had an incentive to move when they did. The broader lesson presented is that modest wealth taxes and aggressive exit taxes can create very different economic incentives.”

For a good, sleepy read, look at “The High Cost of Wealth Taxes”, by Christine Enache for the Tax Foundation Europe, dated June 6, 2024. It makes the case that taxing rich people doesn’t generate any new revenue, is illegal, and only four countries in the world still use the tax. Norway and Switzerland are two of those countries and both are in the Top Ten of Happy Countries. Coincidence?

WTF. Taxing rich people is illegal?** Or is it taxing them more than once that is illegal? Why would it not generate revenue? Or does it just not generate enough?

The whole issue is one big, bag of nuance. But it appears a lot of that “nuance” is “chatter”, “fluff”, even misinformation meant to make sure governments know NOT to tax the rich any differently than other citizens.

If you are rich or hope to be you want low taxes or none at all. Why? There appears to be a rich mindset that says this: “just because I’ve figured out a way to make more money than you, don’t make me pay more for the privilege.” Nuance? Yes. The few rich people I know have a very nuanced view of the non-rich. It’s not just the poor. It is an ambivalent belief about how the rest of us are not smart enough and greedy enough to take what anyone will give us.

The actual impetus for Norway’s Tax Exodus wasn’t related to the new HIGHER 1% tax. It was related to a previous law that was about to take effect, about what wealth is and how it gets “counted.” Just like in America and other rich countries, the tax code used to tax us, the citizens, is riddled with holes where nuance used to be, or strangled by layers of nuance when a simple sentence may have been enough.*** Even better, all of this is understood by tax attorneys, and advisors whose sole purpose is to use nuance, create nuance, or eliminate nuance so their clients can make, keep, and do whatever they want with money.

Holy crap there isn’t enough space for this subject. Stop reading.

But remember nuance. The lack of seeing it, recognizing it, and understanding it is ruining our world’s discourse and civility. Nuance is the opposite of opinion and is always present. Think of it before you speak. To paraphrase Dr. Wright: “A conclusion (opinion) is the place where you got tired of thinking.”

*Google It.

**I have anew appreciation for Robin Hood.

***Damn lawyers. We’re almost to the point where “simple sentences” are extinct.

Nuance Revisited

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I often write about things and try to add an anecdote to illustrate what is being written. Sadly, my aging memory is like the rest of us seniors: remembering anecdotes takes time, and their memory comes at odd times and places. They most often return to me in my car during the 15-minute drive to the Fitness Center at Turning Stone Resort and Casino, when “all hands are on deck” making sure there is no deer in the road and I stay between the lines. Yes, I could take the time to make audio notes, but how many of us–at any age–are so smart early in the morning?

Last Tuesday, a perfect case of “Nuance” was retrieved from The Deep Files*. It is also an example of other essays about critical thinking, as well as the admonition to “do your own research”.  Hopefully, you’ve read enough essays to be aware of all these issues.

The Case of the Absent Nuance is also a story about click-bait, silo information, and “new versus old journalism”, but for now let’s only ponder Nuance.

The breathless headlines stated variations of this theme: “Thousands of dead voters Found on Voter Registration Rolls.” Wow. Maybe Trump was right about election integrity? There really is Election Fraud? Several versions of the story did not get the facts wrong and did not seem to be biased, but there was an odd emptiness to the story crying out for more information. “Dead voters”?

North Carolina is the state where all this “seemingly” unreasonable electoral action “allowed” 34,000 dead voters to remain registered to vote. I lived in NC, a Republican controlled state, and know if there IS election fraud in NC it is by Republicans. (Google it, and enjoy, it’s old school and kind of cute, in a way.) But the actual cases of fraud in NC did not involve more than hundreds of votes. Was the fraud even deeper than reported?

By now you may have guessed the story of dead voters is an empty, inconsequential issue probably written about for its “click bait” power. Imagine both Dem and Repub readers wondering which party was “frauding”** now.  Imagine the clickers, commenters, and criticizers of all stripes.***

Here is the nuance: in any given year approximately 100, 000 North Carolinians die. A lot of them are registered voters. How do dead registered voter names get removed from current voter registration rolls? And does it happen in a timely fashion? Think of your own death: who notifies any election commission in any state of your death? Imagine if you lived half your voting life in NC and half in New York, for example. After googling how many died in NC, I googled how is the NC Election Commission notified of a now-dead, registered NC voter? You should google your own state and see if its procedures are any better than the Rube Goldberg****system in NC.

Is it a fact that 34,000 deceased voters are still registered to vote in NC? Yes, it is. But is it good journalism to call them “voters”? So far, no version of the story has articulated a very important “nuance”: did any of the 34,000 cast a vote? If so, how did they get to the polling place?

Kidding. Having dead voters on your voting rolls is a nonissue until we all get implanted microchips to send an immediate signal to the pertinent Election Commission not to expect us next voting cycle. The Chip could also tell our credit card companies to stop waiting for payment and our life insurance companies to send checks to beneficiaries seconds after we pass away.

There is an urge to ask this: Does a bear shite in the woods?

If it’s related to this essay, research it and figure it out.

Honor Nuance!

*The inner-sanctum memory area in some Latin-named part of another Latin-named part of the brain. Retrieving memories in old age is like being in a large warehouse where you know where everything is but someone has turned off all the lights. Advice: be patient.

**New word. Like it?

***Not lost on me is the irony of me being one of “them”.

****A lost Art. Ai or google, please.

The Decline and Fall of Nuance

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Nuance is a great word. It sounds cool, is interesting to spell, fun to say, and it is still shiny from lack of use. Like keeping your new car smell by not driving. Ever. In fact, it’s doubtful you even know what nuance means, and you certainly don’t know where the word came from, do you.*

Nuance. The word comes from “nubes” the Latin word for cloud but then the French got involved and romanticized it into their own word for “shade” or “slight variation”, per Ai. My Ai goes on to add in the lovely English accent I selected: “Think of it as those little, delicate distinctions that can make a big difference.”

Imagine all your conversations so far today. Nuance ever come up? Not just the word but maybe “the little, delicate distinctions”?

It’s doubtful. America learns to read and write and stroke screens but thinking, especially about “little, delicate, distinctions” is an effort left for…who?  Modern dissemination of facts and news has to be condensed into the 3 second (or less) American attention span. Unless it is a kitten, gossip, crepe skin, or has boobs, we don’t linger long enough for nuance. Do we really need it, anyway, that stupid French word?

Aha. Since you’ve made it this far you have decided we do. And you are right. A recent puzzle indicates why: “try to draw a perfect square with three straight lines.” Much like 2 plus 2 equals four unless you’re adding apples and oranges and not caring about the total amount of fruits and want to know…crap. Two plus two always equals four if you add context, or nuance, the little delicate you-know-whats. Eg; If you have two apples and I have two apples, we have four apples between us. If I have two apples, and you have one orange and one pear, we have a great start on a fruit salad, but not four apples.

To draw the perfect square with three straight lines, some add “distinctions”, like using the edge of the paper as the fourth side. An arguably “out of the box” solution but the puzzle itself already supplies the distinctions.** As we review our journey into the Land of Nuance, we learn to ask what does “with three straight lines” mean? If you’re sensitive to nuance, a “meaning” spurts out of this puzzle and longs for you to see it.

So what? We have trouble with a puzzles. Or counting. Big deal. It is a big deal. There is not a problem we face as a country, that is not loaded with so much nuance it’s a wonder we don’t sink into the oceans. All our problems like Wars, the Economy, Immigration, politics, work…all nuance-rich and ready to be emphatically debated, discussed, and solved. Nuance flourishes in trees like low-hanging fruit, on the ground like exposed diamonds, and floats in the very air we breath.

But we ignore it. We stumble over the diamonds, let the fruit rot, and nuance floats off into  space, a twilight zone none of us ever go to.*** Then we try to solve world problems we don’t understand with nuance-deprived solutions that don’t work and we look back later, and wonder why. Finally, we engage in nuance-free discussions about who’s to blame.

If you’re thinking this sounds like a domestic dispute leading up to a divorce, it is. Nuance is missing from our personal lives, too.

Nuance is obsolete. Whose fault is that?

*Added “do you” to avoid the dreadful prepositional ending. Got lazy, sorry. I should have looked for a better sentence structure. It would have been shorter than this explanation.

**Do I need the quotation marks anymore?

***No. Ai says it’s okay, these days. Worrying about prepositional endings is “old fashioned and clunky.”