Two Cheers for Slopulism

 I snorted at those ultra-wealthy tech executives in Silicon Valley who developed a sudden interest in right-wing politics as soon as California's Democratic government started flirting with the idea of a "billionaire tax." 

I rolled my eyes at news that Ken Griffin is currently in the midst of a knives-out political fight with Mayor Mamdani of New York over his proposed "pied-à-terre" tax, which would send Griffin a bill for his $238 million penthouse. 

What is wrong with these absurd rich guys? How do they not understand the concept of "enough"? Why are they so obscenely unwilling to pay their fair share? 

Then I saw an article this morning about Rhode Island's new "Taylor Swift" tax on second homes in the state. 

My family has a second home in Rhode Island. 

And suddenly this tax seemed utterly unfair, punitive, extortionate. A total misunderstanding of our family's situation! A one-size-fits-all approach that is nothing but a rank injustice as applied to us. Downright expropriation! 

I had to slap myself on both cheeks before it came back to me that this is exactly the sort of policy I ought to support. So powerful is the magnetic pull of self-interest. 

So powerful indeed that it is sometimes said—particularly in the domain of vulgar Marxism—that it is literally impossible to overcome it. In the end—it is said—everyone wants policies that advantage themselves, and devil take the rest. 

But that is going too far. I think the true situation is more like the one Vachel Lindsay described in his great poem "Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket."

It's true, he wrote, that we can't entirely escape our human nature. We will remain self-interested. But it is possible by an act of will to overcome one's selfishness in one's political choices. One can "vote against [one's] human nature," as Lindsay put it. 

And so it is possible for me, much as it pains me—to swallow my initial reaction and support this "Taylor Swift" tax. It is probably good policy in a country facing chronic housing shortages. 

Of course, there are some economics commentators—like Noah Smith—who insist that there are good reasons to oppose things like the California "billionaire tax" even if you support the general proposition of taxing the rich.  

He says that local left-wing politics have been hijacked by what he calls "slopulism," in which demagogic elected officials promote policies that sound progressive but would actually lead to negative unintended consequences. 

He may be right. It's entirely possible that the "Taylor Swift" tax would have some massive downside that I'm not seeing. 

But I am all too aware, at the same time, that if I emphasized those arguments, it would be for reasons having nothing to do with their intellectual merits. It would be because my own self-interest had gotten involved. 

As Stephen Spender wrote about the Oxbridge-educated English poets who improbably embraced Soviet-style Communism in the 'Thirties—it wasn't because they were so naive as to think the communists never told a lie. 

The real reason, he wrote, was that "the lies which they suspected in their own hearts were nearer to them than the lies told by the communists." 

They were aware, after all, of the outrageous contrast between their own privilege and the misery of the world's unemployed workers during the depression. They knew that this disparity had no moral basis or justification. 

And "[i]n the midst of a conflict in which one side analyses the causes of palpable wrongs which the other side pretends do not exist, it is easy [...] to be persuaded that scruples which deter one from taking an active part [...] are really the expression of secret allegiance to the side to which, by birth and interest, one belongs," Spender adds. 

Likewise, I am sure indeed that there are a whole lot of young leftists in major cities who are tempted to embrace trendy ideas merely because they purport to soak the rich, regardless of their actual consequences—to engage in "slopulism," in short. 

But I am even more aware of my own inner secret temptation in the opposite direction—and the no less distorting effect it can have on my political reasoning. 

The lies in my own heart are closer to me than the lies told by the "slopulists." 

Ultimately, it is unjust that some people would have second homes and other people have nowhere even to rest their heads. Pretending this is morally okay or economically rational would be a lie of far greater magnitude than anything the "slopulists" can invent. 

And so, I say, let us vote for the "Taylor Swift" tax.

I say, with Lindsay:

Come, let us vote against our human nature,

Crying to God in all the polling places

To heal our everlasting sinfulness

And make us sages with transfigured faces.