THOSE WHO EARN AND THOSE WHO YEARN

I’ve got a question. If Obama is a post-racial president and race doesn’t count anymore, why did he talk up redistribution during the campaign? Redistribution means one thing in this country; money is taken from whites and given to blacks. As I’ve said before, governments always redistribute, that’s their function. In any organization or any country the prosperous sections subsidize the poorer ones. Up to a point, that is. That point is not reached when the gap between rich and poor is eliminated. It comes long before that. The rich are not actually required to give of themselves until the poor have drawn even with them, but only to the point where their basic needs are being met and their survival seems assured. After that, well, 'charity begins at home.'

Why do organizations do this? If one section is healthy and strong, is it really necessary for it to support the weak sisters? Why not cut them loose and let them fend for themselves? Why did the United States insist on retaining the Confederate states in the Union when they wanted to secede and secession would have relieved the U.S. of the burden of subsidizing them in their position as the lowest-income section of the nation?

When families do this, the reason is obvious; there is a bond of sentiment between the family and its underachieving member. Nations are different. The North wasn’t sentimental about the South. Prestige would seem to have been its main motive for hanging on to the Rebs. Change that diminishes the size of an organization diminishes its prestige, even though it may actually increase its efficiency. So corporations hang on to money-losing subsidiaries, husbands and wives are reluctant to let their mates go, and subsidies continue, especially when it seems that the defector might team up with an enemy of the parent entity.

The above facts are cited in the interest of showing that we critics of redistribution aren’t so single-minded that we don’t recognize that it’s a natural process that has been around literally forever and has its place in the world. Wealth has to be shared certainly, but before it can be shared, it must be created. People who create it don’t have sharing it out as the first priority in their minds. That comes after they’ve had the use of the value they’ve created. When politicians talk about redistribution as the great goal towards which we all should be striving, they’re putting the cart before the horse.

All the same, I’ve been very glad to see re-distrib emerge as an issue in the election. Before this it never got mentioned much. I thought of it as the key question that divided the right from the left, and one where the right’s answers would always outweigh the left’s. I saw this a few years ago when a leading leftist, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, treated it as a hot potato when debating it with some conservatives. She had an entitlement program she was promoting, which would have transferred more billions to places like the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and she was asked wouldn’t that be a pretty big dose of redistribution?


She ducked hastily. That’s not the question, she said, what matters is whether the plan is fair or not. “Fair” of course is a weasel word that is subject to whatever interpretation anyone chooses to put on it. It could be debated indefinitely with no conclusion being reached. “Re’ on the other hand isn’t a nebulous concept, it can be measured in dollars and cents. Like Mrs. vanden Heuvel, its proponents would rather not get into this question; they prefer abstract concepts like “fairness,” “progress,” “hope” and the like. When they start hallucinating about these things they need to be brought back to earth and made to talk about reality, i.e., redistribution. They won’t win the argument.

It will be interesting to see how Obama goes about the difficult job of taking money from some people who don’t want to give it up and handing it over -- minus transfer charges accruing to him -- to people who will swear that no matter how much it is, it isn’t enough. We’re already seen how the givers may be expected to react. The gun owners have shown the way. They are laying in supplies hand over fist and hiding them from sight. They fear their property will be subject not to redistribution, but to confiscation, which comes to the same thing. So, like the people who prepared for Prohibition by laying in lifetime supplies of alcohol, they are getting the jump on the anticipated enforcement squads while yet there is time. A siege mentality prevails. As with a hurricane, people are battening down the hatches, plywooding the windows, barring the doors, loading up on emergency supplies and getting…ready.

Will it be the rich against the poor? In the New Deal days it was. Income taxes went to 90% on the top earners. Even so they emerged smiling and carefree. They had discovered tax shelters. Money could be protected by investing it in oil, in racehorses, in farms, in municipal bonds, in lots of things the government wanted to encourage. Racehorses? Sure, if there were a couple of Kentucky Senators helping to write the tax laws wherein provision was made for tax breaks to be given to activities popular in that state and deserving of favorable treatment by a right-minded government.

Redistribution won’t have a hayride this time either. I think the opposition to it found its voice in the late campaign when the word first gained currency and the issue was first joined. As I said above, I’ve waited for this and I enjoy the prospect of a national shootout which won’t be about an issue dressed up in euphemisms like “affirmative action” or “equal opportunity” or “freedom of choice” but one which is understood at once from its first mention. It’s all clearcut, in other words. A decision on it will be
made by the public. I know the kind of decision I expect. The whole program will be rejected by Congress, under heavy pressure. Oh, then it will come before the High Court, which may be an Obama court by then. In that case, man battle stations. Stand by for action.