The Politics of Envy

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 good—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?

Read the full article at LewRockwell.com.