House of Eratosthenes

Americans break into two roughly evenly matched camps on the question of whether the government should enact heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth in the U.S. Forty-seven percent believe the government should redistribute wealth in this way, while 49% disagree, similar to views Gallup found four years ago.

Notice the question that accompanies the graph: “Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?” The sway that is involved is actually very slight, but since the ramifications involved are so significant I wish there was a better idea of how many people are deciding this based on economic climate of the moment. In other words, how many say “No it should not, as a matter of principle” versus how many say “Ordinarily it might be a swell idea, this just isn’t a good time for that.”

Maybe they should conduct another poll in which they ask “Do you think it’s any of the government’s [expletive deleted] business?” In our modern culture, I notice people are rather slow to say “I have a right to my property” but they’re great for saying “it’s nobody else’s [expletive deleted] business.” Privacy over property; take my spare change but leave me my weed.

Well anyway, it’s good to see the right side is winning out. If it can happen with gas approaching five dollars a gallon, it can happen anytime. Question for the “Yes, should” types: You do realize this country doesn’t have a wealth tax, right?

Hat tip to Ed Morrissey, who adds:

Redistributionist policies will always appeal to those who see themselves as outsiders to economic success. One might expect that the terrible economy of the last three years would have boosted the popularity of Barack Obama’s populist agenda, but it seems the opposite has occurred. Americans know that job creation comes from private investors taking risks with their wealth in order to create even more wealth, and not from government confiscation of wealth to create new bureaucracies that create nothing but red tape. We have spent the last two years watching what happens when government takes wealth out of the economy, and the results — chronically high unemployment, bad housing markets, and a falling dollar that brings high fuel and food prices — are no longer dim reminders of the 1970s, but our current environment.

You have to realize that the “yes” respondents probably include large percentages of a certain group, namely, “recent immigrants from foreign countries” or even “children of same.”

Pretty much every country that sends some bigger-than-negligible percentage of our annual foreign immigration – legal and otherwise – is considerably more socialist than we are. In those countries – Mexico, Cuba, China, Phillipines, Vietnam, various Middle Eastern countries, various Central and South American countries – it is a given that the government can tax different levels of income at different rates, and “soak the rich” whenever it suits them. In some of those, said government can simply confiscate all existing assets as well…at will. It seems lost on them that this isn’t a model for wealth creation.

Unsurprisingly, then, there isn’t a lot of private wealth being created (or held) in those nations except by a handful of elites who themselves are running things and setting policy. The trouble comes in when you’ve got people pouring over our borders after growing up in such an environment and getting used to it as “the norm.” Then they come here and expect things are going to be run the same way as back home.

For many such individuals, the handful of “rich” individuals back home were the same ones who really *were* stealing and looting and keeping everyone else down. So naturally they come to America,then look at titans of industry, innovators, and so on – who’ve been justly rewarded by our capitalist system – and assume they’re the same robber barons whose boot was on their neck back home.

Our side needs to be doing more to show them that here, government and business have an adversarial relationship as often as a cooperative one. This isn’t China or Mexico, where the two are one and the same. (Or in Mexico’s case, the “rich” are often the heads of violent, ruthless drug cartels.)

On a side note, it’s interesting that the graph shows there was a pretty good gulf (and a favorably-tilted one at that) on this question back in 1999. I’m wondering what happened in the ensuing decade to change that perception. Maybe all those years of Clinton’s class-warfare rhetoric took their toll. I don’t know.

Now we’re coming full circle. Again, why? Morgan asks some excellent questions and as usual, the poll is way too simplistic and doesn’t do anything to explore underlying attitudes, much less root causes.

It’s like asking, “Is the country currently headed the wrong direction or the right one?” What the hell does that mean? I can think of plenty of positive trends and plenty of negative ones at any given point in time. My response is going to hinge entirely on which one I happen to have in mind at the moment.
- cylarz | 06/03/2011 @ 20:51
It looks like the “soak the rich” mentality peaked in 2007. Why?

That’s about the time the Democrats were taking control of Congress. Causation, effect, or connectionless correlation?
- cylarz | 06/03/2011 @ 21:03

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“Soak the Rich” Losing PopularityFriday, June 3rd, 2011

“Soak the Rich” Losing Popularity
Friday, June 3rd, 2011