permit
Explanation
The Joke
A woman holding a document with a downward-trending graph tells a man: "Sorry, you've used up all of your shithead permits for this fiscal quarter. You have to either stop being a shithead or pay for additional permits." The caption reads: "The cap and trade system really improved our marriage."
The Humor
The comic applies the economic concept of cap and trade -- a market-based approach to controlling pollution by setting a limit on total emissions and allowing companies to buy and sell emission allowances -- to marital disputes. Instead of capping carbon emissions, this couple has capped the number of times one partner is allowed to be a jerk. The graph on the document showing a downward trend suggests the system is working: bad behavior is declining over time, just as cap and trade is designed to reduce pollution. The joke works because it takes a dry policy mechanism and transplants it into the most personal of contexts, suggesting that sometimes the best way to handle interpersonal conflict is to treat it as an economic externality that needs to be priced and regulated.
References
Cap and trade is an emissions trading system first implemented at scale in the United States under the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. The concept has since been applied to carbon emissions in various jurisdictions, including the European Union Emissions Trading System. The comic imagines a domesticated version of this policy instrument.