Get money, spend money, dolla dolla bill y’all

Amanda Marcotte is way more insightful than I’ll ever be:

I’m continually amazed at how much politics is driven by the notion that a lot of rich and powerful people seem to have that wealth is kind of pointless unless you can lord it over everyone else. And how middle class people slavishly follow that line of thinking. That your foie gras somehow tastes less exquisite if the family down the hill has enough sandwiches for everyone. Wealth is all relative, and if gaping inequalities are moderated, apparently it stings the hides of many a Republican voter, even if they actually are as comfortable and secure as ever before.

From that viewpoint, some of the more insane deregulation schemes and crazy economic maneuvers that have led us into the economic situation we’re in now make a lot more sense. Yes, economic collapse means the direct loss of a lot of money for a lot of rich people, so in that sense, this free market ideology makes no sense at all. But the chaos can be used, in theory at least, to really lay waste to the American middle class, open up gaping inequalities in wealth, and make the rich seem even richer even if they end up with the same or even a little less absolute cash in their pockets. (Though of course, the second part is to ram through economic “reforms” that funnel more wealth up the chain.) So there’s that thought. It at least explains the fondness for the “but the poor have old, crappy TVs, so they’re not poor!” argument. There’s a subtext there of begrudging people even their small, modest pleasures. If we can all watch the same TV shows—or get vaccinated—that makes those $10,000 TV just a little less hi-def and shiny, I suppose.

This is sort of really fvcked up.  Marcotte is describing a sort of relative deprivation where the wealthy feel entitled to significant status benefits above everyone else, and when they feel those status benefits are abridged, they work to reestablish a situation where their relative status benefits are maintained.  Its kind of perverse, and something that – at least among modern industrialized nations – seems to be uniquely American.  Perverse in that frankly, these people aren’t contented unless others are suffering; and unique, because I think this may be a product of the United States not having the sort of semi-permanent hereditary landed aristocracy which you see in Europe.  The European aristocrats of today not only feel secure in their status as wealthy and privileged, but they also have inherited a sense of solidarity stemming from the old noblesse oblige. 

Now this isn’t to say that rich Europeans aren’t above using public policy to make themselves richer (see: Margaret Thatcher), but having that sense of solidarity, and feeling that ones own fate is tied to the fates of others, probably helps to moderate any such attempt to garner further benefits.  Since there really isn’t a strong sense of solidarity amongst regular people in the United States, I doubt that we’ll see anything similar spring up among our “betters.”  To be a bit more specific, the wealthy in this country – because their fortune has been mostly tied to the performance of industry and markets, rather than the people themselves – have a tenuous (at best) sense of obligation to everyone else.

It’s worth saying that in Europe, aristocrats wised up to not screwing the people too much because of the ever present threat of revolution.  And here in the United States, the reforms of the progressive era and later, the New Deal, were to some degree a product of fear on part of the capitalist and governing classes.  Better to share a bit of the pie with the masses, than to lose the whole oven.  The kind of rapacious greed which Marcotte is describing could probably be mitigated if we had mass protests and greater public outcry against income inequality.