Thoughts from an Observationist
Big Subjects
Wealth
It has become fashionable in some parts of our society to vilify wealth and the wealthy. It seems we can think of all kinds of reasons why the wealthy shouldn’t be wealthy, probably all of them also explaining why that person isn’t you or me. Reasons like they were born with it, they cheated to get it, or now that they’ve got it they’re mean to everybody, and so on.
If we’re honest about it, I think it’s fair to say that many/most negative feelings about somebody else’s wealth would contain at least a trace of envy. Maybe a lot of envy. They have it and we don’t. But if we are envious, wouldn’t that imply that we consider wealth as something to be desired? Desirable at least along the lines of “I think I would know how to act if I won the lottery.”
And yet, there’s something more fashionable about talking down the wealthy than just envy. And that fashionable idea is to do something about this wealth inequality. The idea is wealth redistribution, taking from the wealthy and redistributing it to the poor. There are a number of political proposals to do just that in the U.S., too many to detail here. They are all based in some way on “fairness.” This means that someone (the government) would decide how much of a rich person’s wealth should be taken away, and how much of that should be redistributed, and to whom. A dozen countries had a wealth tax in 1990, by the way, and only three still do (from Brookings.edu).
The thing that is worrisome, is if my neighbor is smarter than me, or works harder than me and becomes wealthier than me, we need some other authority to come in and modify that disparity. In which case, two undesirable things happen: my neighbor is punished for achieving at a high level, and I am rewarded for achieving less. May I suggest that politicians not pursue Robin Hood policies as punishments, accompanied by dialog that says wealth accumulation is bad? And that they not be further incited by a constituency fueled by envy?
But if we think about it, wealthier people have always been taxed at a higher rate. This seems reasonable, as does periodic adjustments to these ratios, as the nation’s fiscal environment changes over time. I suspect most wealthy people are willing to go the extra mile, as long as they don’t have to carry a target on their backs that periodically becomes too heavy with arrows. Your thoughts?
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