[A conservative explains]
New York Times January 12, 2003
The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest
By DAVID BROOKS
N ASHVILLE Why don't people vote their own self-interest? Every few
years the Republicans propose a tax cut, and every few years the
Democrats pull out their income distribution charts to show that much
of the benefits of the Republican plan go to the richest 1 percent of
Americans or thereabouts. And yet every few years a Republican plan
wends its way through the legislative process and, with some trims and
amendments, passes.
The Democrats couldn't even persuade people to oppose the repeal of
the estate tax, which is explicitly for the mega-upper class. Al Gore,
who ran a populist campaign, couldn't even win the votes of white
males who didn't go to college, whose incomes have stagnated over the
past decades and who were the explicit targets of his campaign. Why
don't more Americans want to distribute more wealth down to people
like themselves?
Well, as the academics would say, it's overdetermined. There are
several reasons.
People vote their aspirations.
The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time
magazine survey that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of
earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1
percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right away
you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore
savaged a plan that favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct
shot at them.
It's not hard to see why they think this way. Americans live in a
culture of abundance. They have always had a sense that great
opportunities lie just over the horizon, in the next valley, with the
next job or the next big thing. None of us is really poor; we're just
pre-rich.
Americans read magazines for people more affluent than they are (W,
Cigar Aficionado, The New Yorker, Robb Report, Town and Country)
because they think that someday they could be that guy with the
tastefully appointed horse farm. Democratic politicians proposing to
take from the rich are just bashing the dreams of our imminent selves.
Income resentment is not a strong emotion in much of America.
If you earn $125,000 a year and live in Manhattan, certainly, you are
surrounded by things you cannot afford. You have to walk by those
buildings on Central Park West with the 2,500-square-foot apartments
that are empty three-quarters of the year because their evil owners
are mostly living at their other houses in L.A.
But if you are a middle-class person in most of America, you are not
brought into incessant contact with things you can't afford. There
aren't Lexus dealerships on every corner. There are no snooty
restaurants with water sommeliers to help you sort though the bottled
eau selections. You can afford most of the things at Wal-Mart or
Kohl's and the occasional meal at the Macaroni Grill. Moreover, it
would be socially unacceptable for you to pull up to church in a
Jaguar or to hire a caterer for your dinner party anyway. So you are
not plagued by a nagging feeling of doing without.
Many Americans admire the rich.
They don't see society as a conflict zone between the rich and poor.
It's taboo to say in a democratic culture, but do you think a nation
that watches Katie Couric in the morning, Tom Hanks in the evening and
Michael Jordan on weekends harbors deep animosity toward the affluent?
On the contrary. I'm writing this from Nashville, where one of the
richest families, the Frists, is hugely admired for its
entrepreneurial skill and community service. People don't want to tax
the Frists they want to elect them to the Senate. And they did.
Nor are Americans suffering from false consciousness. You go to a town
where the factories have closed and people who once earned $14 an hour
now work for $8 an hour. They've taken their hits. But odds are you
will find their faith in hard work and self-reliance undiminished, and
their suspicion of Washington unchanged.
Americans resent social inequality more than income inequality.
As the sociologist Jennifer Lopez has observed: "Don't be fooled by
the rocks that I got, I'm just, I'm just Jenny from the block." As
long as rich people "stay real," in Ms. Lopez's formulation, they are
admired. Meanwhile, middle-class journalists and academics who seem to
look down on megachurches, suburbia and hunters are resented. If
Americans see the tax debate as being waged between the economic
elite, led by President Bush, and the cultural elite, led by Barbra
Streisand, they are going to side with Mr. Bush, who could come to any
suburban barbershop and fit right in.
Most Americans do not have Marxian categories in their heads.
This is the most important reason Americans resist wealth
redistribution, the reason that subsumes all others. Americans do not
see society as a layer cake, with the rich on top, the middle class
beneath them and the working class and underclass at the bottom. They
see society as a high school cafeteria, with their community at one
table and other communities at other tables. They are pretty sure that
their community is the nicest, and filled with the best people, and
they have a vague pity for all those poor souls who live in New York
City or California and have a lot of money but no true neighbors and
no free time.
All of this adds up to a terrain incredibly inhospitable to
class-based politics. Every few years a group of millionaire
Democratic presidential aspirants pretends to be the people's warriors
against the overclass. They look inauthentic, combative rather than
unifying. Worst of all, their basic message is not optimistic.
They haven't learned what Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt and even Bill
Clinton knew: that you can run against rich people, but only those who
have betrayed the ideal of fair competition. You have to be more
hopeful and growth-oriented than your opponent, and you cannot imply
that we are a nation tragically and permanently divided by income. In
the gospel of America, there are no permanent conflicts.
David Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, is author of
``Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There.''
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