The Deserving Rich

Liberals and other whiners are bothered by the decreasing social mobility in the US. Statistics show that the US does poorly on measures of social mobility compared to Europe or our own recent past. Michael Barone knows the reason, and it's not any of those silly things like a strongly regressive tax policy or the various anti-labor policies of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush decades. He quotes with approval one John Parker:

"America," concludes Parker, "is becoming a stratified society based on education: a meritocracy."

And adds:

Meritocracy may mean less mobility, but that is bearable if, as [David f&%#@!g] Brooks says, "America is becoming more virtuous."

The rich are rich because they deserve to be. I don't want to try to argue with that. (Brad DeLong is less standoffish: He lays some heavy Econospeak on it.) I'm not rich nor especially meritorious, and who could doubt that we wouldn't all be poorer if Paris Hilton were.

Instead, I want to examine the policy implications of assuming that the rich constitute a natural genetic aristocracy. If that be so, clearly we are doing all these ambitious, brainy people a huge disservice by letting them coast on inherited wealth. Few things are more sapping of ambition than the knowledge that your needs will be generously provided for whether you lift a finger or no. More tragic, though, is the loss to the nation. What nation can afford to waste the cream of its youth on frivolity and dissipation?

The cure is simple but not quite pain free. Abolish inherited wealth, or at least most of it. Let the government take everything but say a million bucks. The natural genetic aristocracy will hardly be hindered by that - their superior brains and ambition, unburdened of the oppression of unearned income, will spur them to ever greater heights - lifting the nation with them.

And if Mr. Barone's theory is bullshit, it ought to be clear in a generation or two.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more