The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Jan 12 04:25:27 PST 2003


[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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