There's a general theory out there that voters are selfish. But for all the ways in which that is sometimes true—there are also the times when it is weirdly not true. And not necessarily in a good way!
An example came earlier this week, when we learned that the people of California apparently voted down a ballot measure that would have imposed a one-time tax on billionaires.
The measure was written in such a way that the tax could not possibly touch the wealth of the vast majority of people in the state.
Nevertheless, millions of people who are hardly billionaires themselves voted against it.
One of these voters gave his reasons to the New York Times yesterday. He is a Democrat and otherwise supports Democratic measures. But the billionaire tax proposal struck him as just kind of mean.
"You’re picking a certain class of people and deciding that they need to pay an extra tax on top of, you know — we already pay a pretty high tax rate in California as it is," he reportedly told the Times.
I can't help but admire the impulse behind this statement. It reflects a basically kind-hearted attitude on the part of voters.
But I do have to ask how we are ever going to pay down our massive public debts and address inflation, unless we are at some point willing to raise taxes on the Americans who can best afford to pay it.
I think we know how: some future right-wing Congress will once again take resources away from the voters who can least afford to pay it—namely, low-income families—by slashing safety net programs, just as they did under Trump's big budget bill in 2025.
It is very strange that people seem to be more worried about billionaires having to pay a tax on their assets than they are about their own families and children's future access to social security and health insurance and other public benefits.
I am reminded of that passage in Robert Tressell's great novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, when one of the working class characters is very worried about what would happen to the fortune of the royal family if the socialists came to power.
What’s to become of the King, and the Royal Family, and all the Big Pots? he asks.
To which the socialist lecturer responds: "I am much more concerned about what is to become of ourselves [...] I think we should try to cultivate a little more respect of our own families and to concern ourselves a little less about 'Royal' Families."
He goes on: "I fail to see any reason why we should worry ourselves about those people; they’re all right—they have all they need, and as far as I am aware, nobody wishes to harm them and they are well able to look after themselves."
So too, I say the same of the billionaires. They clearly will be okay. They will still have more than any other member of the public, even after paying a 5% wealth tax. They can look after themselves.
We should be more worried about what happens to low-income and working class families, if we do not find a way to tax the wealthiest and thereby address some of our fiscal problems, than what will happen to the richest Americans.
Yet, voters go on voting against their self-interest, and out of mercy for the billionaires.
This is why Tressell entitled his novel the "Ragged Trousered Philanthropists"; he was rather perplexed that people who have the most to gain from social legislation prefer to vote time and again to instead hand over the proceeds of their own labor to the monarchy and the landed gentry.
Whence comes this extraordinary impulse of philanthropy from the working class toward the rich, which is so blatantly not reciprocated by the rich toward the working class?
I don't sneer at this perplexing form of philanthropy. As I say, it reflects something basically admirable and humane and altruistic in people.
I don't mock the people, then, whose hearts bleed for the billionaires. "Man needs help from every creature born," to quote Brecht (Hays trans.)
But I do find it rather bizarre.
I am with Tressell on this, then, (as on so much else) in thinking that perhaps people could stand to worry a little bit more about themselves and the fiscal sustainability of the public benefits programs that most affect their families and futures
—and a little bit less about the richest Americans, who will certainly be able to take good care of themselves, just as the British royal family can!
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