> January 12, 2003
> The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest
> By DAVID BROOKS
>
>
> ASHVILLE - Why don't people vote their own self-interest? Every few years
> the Republicans propose a tax cut, and every few years the Democrats pull
> out their income distribution charts to show that much of the benefits of
> the Republican plan go to the richest 1 percent of Americans or
> thereabouts. And yet every few years a Republican plan wends its way
> through the legislative process and, with some trims and amendments,
> passes.
>
> The Democrats couldn't even persuade people to oppose the repeal of the
> estate tax, which is explicitly for the mega-upper class. Al Gore, who ran
> a populist campaign, couldn't even win the votes of white males who didn't
> go to college, whose incomes have stagnated over the past decades and who
> were the explicit targets of his campaign. Why don't more Americans want
> to distribute more wealth down to people like themselves?
>
> Well, as the academics would say, it's overdetermined. There are several
> reasons.
>
> People vote their aspirations.
>
> The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time
> magazine survey that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of
> earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1
> percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right away you
> have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan
> that favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them.
>
> It's not hard to see why they think this way. Americans live in a culture
> of abundance. They have always had a sense that great opportunities lie
> just over the horizon, in the next valley, with the next job or the next
> big thing. None of us is really poor; we're just pre-rich.
>
> Americans read magazines for people more affluent than they are (W, Cigar
> Aficionado, The New Yorker, Robb Report, Town and Country) because they
> think that someday they could be that guy with the tastefully appointed
> horse farm. Democratic politicians proposing to take from the rich are
> just bashing the dreams of our imminent selves.
>
> Income resentment is not a strong emotion in much of America.
>
> If you earn $125,000 a year and live in Manhattan, certainly, you are
> surrounded by things you cannot afford. You have to walk by those
> buildings on Central Park West with the 2,500-square-foot apartments that
> are empty three-quarters of the year because their evil owners are mostly
> living at their other houses in L.A.
>
> But if you are a middle-class person in most of America, you are not
> brought into incessant contact with things you can't afford. There aren't
> Lexus dealerships on every corner. There are no snooty restaurants with
> water sommeliers to help you sort though the bottled eau selections. You
> can afford most of the things at Wal-Mart or Kohl's and the occasional
> meal at the Macaroni Grill. Moreover, it would be socially unacceptable
> for you to pull up to church in a Jaguar or to hire a caterer for your
> dinner party anyway. So you are not plagued by a nagging feeling of doing
> without.
>
> Many Americans admire the rich.
>
> They don't see society as a conflict zone between the rich and poor. It's
> taboo to say in a democratic culture, but do you think a nation that
> watches Katie Couric in the morning, Tom Hanks in the evening and Michael
> Jordan on weekends harbors deep animosity toward the affluent?
>
> On the contrary. I'm writing this from Nashville, where one of the richest
> families, the Frists, is hugely admired for its entrepreneurial skill and
> community service. People don't want to tax the Frists - they want to
> elect them to the Senate. And they did.
>
> Nor are Americans suffering from false consciousness. You go to a town
> where the factories have closed and people who once earned $14 an hour now
> work for $8 an hour. They've taken their hits. But odds are you will find
> their faith in hard work and self-reliance undiminished, and their
> suspicion of Washington unchanged.
>
> Americans resent social inequality more than income inequality.
>
> As the sociologist Jennifer Lopez has observed: "Don't be fooled by the
> rocks that I got, I'm just, I'm just Jenny from the block." As long as
> rich people "stay real," in Ms. Lopez's formulation, they are admired.
> Meanwhile, middle-class journalists and academics who seem to look down on
> megachurches, suburbia and hunters are resented. If Americans see the tax
> debate as being waged between the economic elite, led by President Bush,
> and the cultural elite, led by Barbra Streisand, they are going to side
> with Mr. Bush, who could come to any suburban barbershop and fit right in.
>
> Most Americans do not have Marxian categories in their heads.
>
> This is the most important reason Americans resist wealth redistribution,
> the reason that subsumes all others. Americans do not see society as a
> layer cake, with the rich on top, the middle class beneath them and the
> working class and underclass at the bottom. They see society as a high
> school cafeteria, with their community at one table and other communities
> at other tables. They are pretty sure that their community is the nicest,
> and filled with the best people, and they have a vague pity for all those
> poor souls who live in New York City or California and have a lot of money
> but no true neighbors and no free time.
>
> All of this adds up to a terrain incredibly inhospitable to class-based
> politics. Every few years a group of millionaire Democratic presidential
> aspirants pretends to be the people's warriors against the overclass. They
> look inauthentic, combative rather than unifying. Worst of all, their
> basic message is not optimistic.
>
> They haven't learned what Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt and even Bill
> Clinton knew: that you can run against rich people, but only those who
> have betrayed the ideal of fair competition. You have to be more hopeful
> and growth-oriented than your opponent, and you cannot imply that we are a
> nation tragically and permanently divided by income. In the gospel of
> America, there are no permanent conflicts.
>
>
> David Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, is author of ``Bobos
> in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There.''
>
>
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