Socialists and other leftwingers support taxation of the income and wealth of the well-off. They say that they want to promote “equality” and “social justice,” but in fact they are motivated by envy. They want what others have. They can’t stand the thought of other people’s having more money than they do.
Here is what Rob Larson, an economics professor at Tacoma Community College, says about certain very expensive apartments: “Besides the return of in-city mansions for the affluent and their cars, New York and London have also seen the growth of ‘poor doors.’ These are entrances to new luxury buildings, erected with a city requirement to include some affordable housing units for regular working people, in addition to ‘market rate’ units that sell for seven figures and up. The Guardian describes a luxury London development where the main door opens to luxury marble tiling and plush doors, and a sign on the wall alerts residents to the fact that the concierge is available. Round the back, the entrance to the affordable homes is a cream corridor, decorated only with grey mailboxes and a poster warning tenants that they are on CCTV and will be prosecuted if they cause any damage.
To me, this is an amazing passage. In Larson’s example, some “regular working people” are housed in some of the most luxurious apartments in the world. But Larson still objects because these people don’t get to use the fancier entrances made for the superrich who pay market rates. As you read Larson, you can feel his seething hatred for the rich: he would like to pull them down, just because they are able to afford things others cannot. He offers no evidence that the working people in the apartments are dissatisfied. If I had to guess, I would imagine them to be happy to be getting the windfall that results from the government’s interference with the free market on their behalf; but whether I am right does not in the present context matter. The point is simply to expose Larson’s emotion for what it is. As an analogy, consider someone who resents first-class air travel, not because he finds coach class uncomfortable, but just because others travel under better conditions than he does. And the case that envy and hatred are involved in Larson’s example is stronger than for the air travel case. Except for the entrance, the working people are getting the luxury goods—but this is not enough for Larson.
A much more prominent economist than Larson illustrates the same attitude. Thomas Piketty’s central idea is that inequality is the supreme social sin and must be radically curtailed. He doesn’t deny that capitalism results in economic growth and an enhanced standard of living, but the income and wealth of the rich have grown far faster than those of the poor. You might ask why this matters, even granting his dubious statistics: Don’t people care about how well they are doing, much more than they resent the rich, if in fact they resent them at all?
To ask questions like this is, for Piketty, to look at society from the wrong perspective. For him, equality trumps prosperity. If another of his proposals, “greening” the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions, is adopted, most people will need to live with a lower amount of material goods. But, projecting his own egalitarian commitments onto others, he thinks people will be willing to make the sacrifice so long as the rich have to pay their “fair” share of the costs. “The considerable adjustment in lifestyles to deal with global warming will only be acceptable if a fair distribution of the effort is guaranteed. If the rich continue to pollute the planet with their SUVs and their yachts registered in Malta … then why should the poor accept the carbon tax, which is likely to be inevitable?”
Why do the egalitarians promote soaking the rich? As Walter Williams points out, “The strategy for want-to-be tyrants is to demonize people whose power they want to usurp. That’s the typical way tyrants gain power. They give the masses someone to hate. In 18th-century France, it was Maximilien Robespierre’s promoting hatred of the aristocracy that led to his acquiring dictatorial power. In the 20th century, the communists gained power by promoting public hatred of the czars and capitalists. In Germany, Adolf Hitler gained power by promoting hatred of Jews and Bolsheviks. I’m not equating America’s progressives and liberals with Robespierre, Josef Stalin, and Hitler. I am saying that promoting jealousy, fear, and hate is an effective strategy for leftist politicians and their followers to control and micromanage businesses. It’s not about the amount of money top executives earn. If it were, politicians and leftists would be promoting jealousy, fear, and hatred toward multi-multimillionaire Hollywood actors, celebrities, and sports stars.”
There is another reason the left promotes envy. As Friedrich Hayek says, by taking advantage of the envy people have for the rich, the government can get the masses to accept a heavy tax burden: “Not only is the revenue derived from the high rates levied on large incomes, particularly in the highest brackets, so small compared with the total revenue as to make hardly any difference to the burden borne by the rest; but for a long time . . . it was not the poorest who benefited from it but entirely the better-off working class and the lower strata of the middle class who provided the largest number of voters.
It would probably be true, on the other hand, to say that the illusion that by means of progressive taxation the burden can be shifted substantially onto the shoulders of the wealthy has been the chief reason why taxation has increased as fast as it has done and that, under the influence of this illusion, the masses have come to accept a much heavier load than they would have done otherwise. The only major result of the policy has been the severe limitation of the incomes that could be earned by the most successful and thereby gratification of the envy of the less well off.”
The politics of envy has in some cases led to bloody violence, when members of a minority group do better economically than those in the majority. The great authority on economic development Lord Peter Bauer says, “Envy of productive minority groups has been widespread and has often led to brutal outrages that slake popular passion at the expense of morality and economic progress. . . In Malaysia, for instance, Chinese economic performance has for many years been far superior to that of Malays in spite of long-standing discrimination against them. In recent years, indeed, attempts to combat by political means the results of their superior economic performance have become the cornerstone of official economic policy.”
Like Hayek, Bauer argues that the pursuit of equality leads necessarily to the growth of the state. Not equality, but the tyranny of the government over the rest of us, arises from following the siren song of egalitarian justice.
Bauer places great stress on the contemporary importance of this point. “In an open society, attempts to eliminate, or even substantially to reduce, income differences extend coercive power, that is, inequality of power between rulers and ruled. This also implies politicization of economic life. . . Extensive politicization of life enhances the prizes of political power and thus the stakes in the fight for them. This in turn exacerbates political tension, at least until opposition is forcibly suppressed or effectively demoralized. The politicization of life, often pursued in the name of equality, has in many countries brought about a situation in which the question of who controls the government has become a matter of overriding importance, even a matter of life and death to millions.”
Let’s do everything we can to end confiscatory policies based on the politics of envy and instead defend the free market, following the teachings of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.
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