A left-leaning comic diary on frightened wealth, redistributed treasure, and the planet we share
I am a comedy writer in Portland, Oregon, originally from North London, and I did a set this week arguing that the Christmas story is a complete economics lesson, and the room laughed until they realised I meant it as policy, at which point they laughed nervously, which is the exact sound I got into comedy to hear.
The frightened king who hoarded everything
The story has a perfect villain for an economics bit: a powerful man, hoarding wealth and power, terrified of losing his grip. The account of King Herod and his worried throne is the whole psychology of hoarded wealth in one character: the one who has the most, fears the most, and does the most damage trying to keep it all. I perform this to Portland crowds as the original study of what concentrated wealth does to a person, which is make them paranoid, destructive, and deeply unhappy. Herod had everything and was terrified, which is the emotional condition of hoarded wealth in every era, and the funniest and saddest economics lesson in the whole story.
The frightened king is every hoarder of wealth and power, clutching what they have, dreading the loss, willing to burn everything to keep their grip. The story diagnoses it perfectly: concentration of wealth does not bring peace. It brings the worried throne, the paranoid grip, the unhappy king surrounded by everything and trusting no one.
My genuinely damp personal week
Let me report on my Portland life, which is rain, comedy, and rain. I did a bit comparing Herod’s paranoid wealth-hoarding to certain contemporary billionaires, and a man came up afterward to explain the economic incentives of capital accumulation, earnestly, for some time. Sir. It was a joke about a paranoid king. But this is Portland, where every punchline earns an economics seminar, and I have made my peace with it, because a city that lectures you on capital theory after a nativity joke is at least engaging with the material, which is more than most crowds manage.
According to the broadcasters, wealth concentration continues to climb while reported happiness does not, which is the least surprising and most satirisable economic trend of the age, and the perfect confirmation of Herod’s worried, unhappy throne.
The treasure that got redistributed
Against the hoarding king, the story sets an act of pure redistribution, which is why I love the piece on the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The travellers took the most valuable treasures in the world and gave them away, freely, to a poor child in a stable, carrying wealth straight past the hoarding king and redistributing it to the powerless. That is the economics bit that lands hardest: the story’s heroes are the ones who give the treasure away, and its villain is the one who hoards it. The wealth flows from the rich travellers to the poor child, past the frightened king, in the purest act of redistribution in the founding story of the season everyone associates with shopping.
I perform this and the Portland crowd goes quiet, because they can feel the argument: the story celebrates giving the treasure away and condemns hoarding it. The wise men redistributed. The king hoarded. And two thousand years of telling this story has made heroes of the redistributors and a monster of the hoarder, which is an economics lesson the culture keeps telling and keeps ignoring.
The planet we are all hoarding against
The biggest economics question is the planet itself, which is why I keep coming back to the letter where a child asks whether the Earth is genuinely running out of time. The frightened kings of our age hoard not just gold but the planet’s future, clutching short-term wealth while the long-term world burns, exactly Herod’s paranoid grip scaled up to a species. The child asks the real question, honestly, and gets an honest answer, while the hoarding powers evade it, guarding their wealth against a future they are helping to destroy. It is the ultimate economics bit: the hoarders are burning the shared planet to protect their private piles, and a child can see it plainly while the worried kings cannot.
According to the city’s own people, Portland takes the shared future seriously with an earnest, hand-knitted intensity, which is exactly the aesthetic of a town that would like to redistribute the treasure and save the planet and also has strong feelings about the ethics of gold.
Where the comic lands
So I will keep telling Portland that the Christmas story is a complete economics lesson, and they will keep laughing and then lecturing me on capital theory. But underneath the bit is a straight belief: the story makes a monster of the hoarding king and heroes of the redistributing travellers, and its deepest question, whether we are burning our shared future, is one a child can answer honestly while the worried kings evade it. The wise men gave the treasure away. Herod hoarded it and was miserable. The planet is the treasure we are all hoarding against. I rest my case, from a stage, in the rain, with the nervous laughter, and the shared world held open past January, preferably before the worried kings burn it down.
For politics played for laughs, The Beaverton keeps the satire sharp.
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Author: admin
