A quote from our pal Coyote:
In Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom tells the story of a question he used to ask his classes vis a vis income inequality. He would ask something like "Would you vote for a law that reduced income inequality but at the same time reduced total wealth, such that the poor might get a larger slice of a smaller pie, and might even be worse off on an absolute basis afterwards." Apparently, he would get solid majorities for "yes" and in fact I have been in classes where this same question was asked and at least 40% said "yes." This is a situation a bit similar to the one above, but without it being personal. In other words, no one has explicitly hosed you, they have just done better.
I hope you can see the parallel. Large numbers of people are willing to pay (or equivalently make less money) to reduce the earnings of people who are wealthy and/or successful. They are even more willing to do so if they think that they have been treated unfairly. Which is why you see so many politicians and media outlets working so hard right now to convince the middle class that current income distribution patterns are somehow "unfair." Politicians are pandering to this base human emotion, the desire to spitefully bring someone else down (in the case of income equality laws, someone the person has likely never even met or transacted with) even if it makes oneself worse off.
I can understand why Pete Best might harbor a grudge against the Beatles. But why do so many Americans harbor a grudge against people they have never met, just because they make more money?
Last I heard, Envy was a deadly sin. Whole piece here.
Comment from The Barrister: Coyote gets right to the point. America is not about making money. It's about having free choices to do what you want, and, as Bird Dog said yesterday, being adult enough to live with the consequences of one's choices. If you want to pursue wealth, great. If you want to pursue other things, great. All I ever wanted to pursue was a bit of modest comfort, work, friends, a relationship with God, and a happy family, and I feel blessed to have found those things. I love to make money (doesn't everybody?), but it has never been my main objective. However, I do hate being held up as an object of angry envy by pandering politicians just because my life plan worked. I had a basic life plan, and I just followed it. It was not rocket science. To maintain my plan, I will need to keep working - if I live - until I am 75 or more. No problem. I am happy to do that, as was my Dad, my Grandpa, and my great-grandpa, who died at 86 in the fields with his hands on the plow on his farm in CT just up the road from here. That farm was lost, to the family's perpetual resentment, to cover estate taxes and is now covered with absurd mini-mansions on 1/2 acre lots and has a street called Azalea Drive. Great Grandpa would be rolling in his grave if he saw that on the land that is soaked with generations of family sweat. And, if he ever saw an azalea (which I doubt, up here in those days), I am sure that he would have considered it a vulgar display. Even today, where I live, the wealthy happily drive rusty old cars, Yankee-style.
