Oh you're saying we should tax wealth, and we should not tax work.

For a second I thought you were saying "taxing wealth does not work" like a tribal. Few word sometimes do trick.

Not only that, most fully realized versions of the character channel both the vigilante AND playboy personas to fight crime, using Wayne Enterprises to create welfare programs and jobs so Gothamites need not resort to crime to put food on the table.

There’s a scene where Batman pacifies a room of Black Mask goons without lifting a FINGER - he hacks the projector screen simply shows them a Wayne Foundation advertisement for better, safer jobs. One by one, every man simply drops their weapons and walks out the door as their crime boss irately yells at them to come back.

Gothman has syphillis?

That's worse. You see how that's worse, right?

The entire premise of this accursed property is "structural change is definitionally impossible and evil-natured people cannot be helped so let's see how Batman brutally maims victims of this system to defeat the villain-of-the-day". This is such a profoundly repulsive ideology to me. It's not about the in-universe justifications, it's about the horrible, awful, despicable themes of the stories that glorify hyper-individualism and completely discredit democracy, civic institutions, and community.

The in-universe explanations were just tacked on to those core reactionary ideals. The writers didn't stumble on a cursed city, they invented a cursed city to justify their need for vigilantism and violence to be the only rational answers to society's ills.

Yeah, it's pretty clear Gotham was full of corruption from top to bottom, which pushed him into becoming Batman. Philanthropy would just fuel the corrupt politicians into funneling money to the crime bosses, and taking a cut. Probably if he started a soup kitchen and was on the ground getting people out of poverty, he would achieve improvement, but when the police, courts, and politicians are on the crime bosses payrolls, funding those institutions more will not solve Gotham's problems

presumably better overseen than the government ones

That's a particularly post-Reagan presumption, and is the product of the kind of deregulation that the Reagan administration spearheaded. In fact, government programs are especially good at fulfilling their roles, since the Pournelle motivation of survival of the department is actually a weaker diversion than the motivation of profit.

We've seen plenty of examples, how California regions that had public power fared better during the Enron crisis in the aughts or how Medicare was stronger and yielded a higher rate of positive outcomes before it was privatized by the George W. Bush administration. A similar thing happened in UK in which the NHS got privatized and reshaped for efficiency over redundancy, creating long lines and more poor outcomes.

Wayne has exactly the same kinds of right-wing biases that Andrew Carnegie did, and Bill Gates does, preferring to make decisions based on his own anecdotal experiences than based on data sets. Sure, he saved a kid from crime, and in the meantime more kids suffer from food precarity, from family precarity, from housing precarity than are getting pushed drugs and bullied by gangs. In fact, the gangsters are coming from the precarious environments of the first group.

Batman is ultimately a fantasy of personal responsibility, that we should each be strong enough to bootstrap our fortunes, even though actual data shows most don't, especially when there are extenuating factors like not being a non-disabled white dude with at least middle-class backing by family. Batman is glad to let everyone else that doesn't fit into that category suffer.

Granted DC can write what they want, which is why Batman can have a code vs. killing while still smashing the faces of half of Gotham. IRL bare-knuckle fisticuffs will actually kill, and Batman doesn't pull punches.

Rubber Bullets. Honest. -- Batman, The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller, 1986

Where does Wayne's money come from?

How many hours does Wayne's day have that he can do millions or billions of dollars worth of actual work while still playing dress-up at night?

Or does his money come from short-changing and underpaying his employees, while hiking the prices for his customers? Or does it come from using speculation and investment to make sure he gets rich off other people being underpaid and overcharged?

How can he be a philanthropist when all his money comes from fleecing other people?

it was like that since the O`Neil days if not earlier.

So why isn’t Batman beating up corrupt politicians and judges instead of crippling poor people who have no other opportunity to make money than to work for a villain?

It's cursed because comic writers couldn't come up with a better way to explain why the city can't be fixed by the world's smartest billionaire.

This ^^

True. That is indeed very interesting. Although not limited to comic books. You can spot a similar pattern in movies too. Somehow, in America, the films to become the most popular (or most successful) mostly featured themes portraying powerful people in a positive light, directly or indirectly. While in Europe this trend never really took root.

In a classic, underdeveloped autocracy, the answer would surely be blatant censorship and prosecution of authors portraying different views. However, the American mechanisms for accomplishing the same goals are considerably more complex and intricate. That is, assuming there was or still is such a mechanism, as I'm not sure we can say that definitely. Perhaps it was all just a natural process of people preferring the easier, more convenient narratives?

2. The Lazarus pit in the city spewing chemicals into the water supply.
3. All the other chemicals likely in the water supply from a wide array of sources, including regular pollution and goofy shit.

Fixing contaminants to the water supply is absolutely something proper taxes should be able to solve.

I mean two of those are pretty clearly regulation issues. Maybe if the city's Regulatory Agencies weren't so strapped for cash they'd be more able to address pollution and water safety issues. Also you can always build a new Asylum elsewhere but apparently they don't have the funds for that I guess? It's amazing have Bruce Wayne doesn't use his philanthropy to build one, almost like he likes them being crazy so he has someone to beat up.

In that case, Dr. Strange or whoever should be sealing the hell-mouths. Batman face-punching the victims of all these effects is not helping.

I grew up during the smog-alert era of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, exerting myself, walking home uphill from school (yes, the had to walk in snow from school story except in my case, it was smog and it was true). No number of batmen or tough-on-crime judges were going to fix that, and heck even the limited smog regulations on cars we have today do enough. (Though switching to unleaded gasoline certainly helped generations after mine by lessening the damage). Only public transit and tighter regs on cars is going to help that.

Don't justify Batman's fists by saying there are extenuating pollution circumstances. The rogues gallery are the results of what comes down to poor urban planning and a superfluous layer of white-collar crime. If Batman was going after Pfizer and the Sacklers or Du Pont Chemical and PFOA manufacturers or all the private equity firms, then he'd be a hero. Otherwise, he's a crazy rich dude who beats up on poor people and has writers who won't think the problem through.

I think the US has just outgrown the Batman fantasy. I'd hope so, at least.

“Decent people shouldn’t live here. They’d be happier someplace else”

Also in the DC universe, the equivalent of Lockeed-Martin is Wayne Enterprises. There's stories where Bruce is conflicted in making weapons, but nonetheless, his fortune is built on the military industrial complex.

If the income tax graduations are steep enough then the billionaire class will optimize to minimize taxes by reducing their own income in favor of reinvesting in their business and employees. In theory. In reality I'm sure they'd find some way to squirrel it away while their employees apply for and get denied food stamps.

Underfunding the government through tax cuts makes corruption more likely. The richer the rich are, the easier it is to manipulate the government for them. Why do you think so much money goes to Lockheed Martin? Who gets government contracts isn’t chosen at random, there are moneyed interests involved.

You're assuming we'd stop at Bruce Wayne.

The same people willing go after Batman are willing to go after Lockheed-Martin and every politician they paid for.

I think pretty much every study even made has shown taxing the rich and investing in the public reduce crime rates and poverty. It's the reason the USA had a massive middle class before Reagan and has experienced massive wealth disparity today: differences in tax policy and public investment.