“The legitimacy of altering social institutions to achieve greater equality of material condition is, though often assumed, rarely argued for. Writers note that in a given country the wealthiest n percent of the population holds more than that percentage of the wealth, and the poorest n percent holds less; that to get to the wealth of the top n percent from the poorest, one must look at the bottom p percent (where p is vastly greater than n), and so forth. They proceed immediately to discuss how this might be altered.”
– Robert Nozick, noting how the presumption of equality of wealth as a just default position is widely held and rarely challenged head-on.
Anarchy, State and Utopia, page 232. The book’s second section, in which Nozick demolishes egalitarian ideas about equality and what he calls the “patterned” approach to justice in holdings, is in my view the best bit of the book, and enduringly influential on many classical liberals, libertarians, etc, to this day. The book was published in 1974, and Nozick was a Harvard academic at the time. (Proof that the 1970s was in some ways a fertile time for good ideas, and Harvard was in better shape than today.)
It is not unlawful in any Western country to join either a monastery or a secular commune – people who sincerely want to live in an egalitarian community can do so, right now.
So the true motivation for egalitarian “Social Justice” politics is not a desire to live in an egalitarian community – it is the desire to drag down successful people.
The above is not my own observation, but that of Antony Flew – who, sadly, is no longer with us. I remember him well from the Freedom Association meetings in the New Cumberland Club long ago.
None of the above should be taken as a defence of wealth gained by the “Cantillon Effect”, i.e. by Credit Money expansion, I am not an apologist for such corruption – on the contrary I have repeatedly denounced it.
“Look at the big house. Look at the little house. It’s not fair.”
Sometimes it’s talent, or reward for effort, instead of a house. But it’s the essence of every leftist philosophy and the promise behind every new tyranny on offer.
@Paul Marks
So the true motivation for egalitarian “Social Justice” politics is not a desire to live in an egalitarian community – it is the desire to drag down successful people.
I don’t think that is true. Politicians need rich people to survive. No, the purpose of the “social justice” politics is to inflame anger among the bulk of voters to convince them to give money and power to politicians and civil servants. Ironically in doing so that money and power is used by the government to support those super rich people by giving them government privileges. This makes the wealth gap larger, and allows the cycle to start again.
To some degree people at the bottom are right to be resentful of people at the top, because many of rich got rich by being in bed with politicians. Of course that isn’t universally true, in fact as a general rule the very richest got their by creating massive new product spaces. But there are a lot of people who are very rich because of their government patronage.
One thing I have been thinking a lot about is how much of politics is really there to make us angry and to make us more engaged with politics and politicians. The one thing a politician doesn’t want is to be ignored. Better to be hated than that. When it truth I think all of us should be much LESS engaged with politics. The reality is that our vote and our internet rants do not change the world, but using our time a wisely can definitely change OUR world. (Must be the start of January or something….)
Politics is the art of finding a scapegoat and corruption is the art of hiding the culprit.
That guy’s a better cricketer than me, NOT FAIR!
That guy’s a better writer than me, NOT FAIR!
That guy’s a better carpenter than me, NOT FAIR!
I don’t think there is a widespread presumption of equality of wealth.
There’s quite a widespread assumption that wealth should be redistributed to a certain extent by government to alleviate poverty and to ensure that everyone has access to housing, health care and education.
A truly equal society would be Hell on Earth. Part of what it means to be human is to have aspirations and to be willing to work hard to better your situation. You are never going to see any benefit from hard work if the fruits of your labour are just going to be shared out between the rest of the population.
Fraser Orr – most egalitarians are motivated by the desire to drag people down, those egalitarian (Social Justice supporters) who are motivated by a sincere desire to live in an egalitarian community can do so right now – either a religious or secular egalitarian community (as both exist).
What you describe as enflaming people – is what I describe as the desire to drag people down. Demagogues in Ancient Greek cities often did this – denounced the rich in order to get the poor on their side, then, if successful, the Demagogue would become a Tyrant – most Tyrants really did give a lot of the property they stole to their supporters, but (you are correct) they kept some for themselves. If they kept too much for themselves then their own supporters (“the masses”) would, understandably, feel betrayed – and turn on the Demagogue they had supported in their rise to power as a Tyrant.
“Cancel debts and redistribute land” was the standard cry of a Demagogue aiming to be a Tyrant – but that does not mean they did not keep their promises (they normally did – indeed that, their keeping their promises, was the main part of the problem).
What this did to economic life – well, of course, the cancelling of debts meant that people would not lend out gold or silver money to business enterprises (as they knew the debt could be cancelled – they would not get the gold or silver money back) making economic development very difficult, and the redistribution of land meant that long term improvement of farming did not happen – did not happen in city states where there was this redistribution of land.
As Edmund Burke said of Irish history (contrasting it with English history) – it was grim story of “confiscations and counter confiscations” depending on who was in power – preventing the long term improvement of farming.
As for people who become rich by corruption – as I have pointed out many times, the primary form of corruption is Credit Money.
Those people who denounce corruption but support Credit Money – contradict their own position.
If money is not a commodity that people choose to value before-and-apart-from its use as money, then the very basis of the economy is corrupt.
Those people who say they want an honest economy, but want fiat (order – whim – edict) money, are really saying they want a cat that barks.
Looking at it from the other end, here is George Bernard Shaw, quoted by David Friedman in The Machinery of Freedom:
So it’s not just a desire to drag people down, but a joy taken in forcing people to do things.
Deep Lurker: the trouble with your quote is that, out of context, we do not know whether it was meant to be sarcastic.
Having said that, it IS in agreement with the Marxist motto*:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
The logical implication of which is: some people need to be flogged, so that they provide according to their ability.
* Just found out from the Fount of All Knowledge that Marx advanced the idea in 1875 (Critique of the Gotha Programme).
I am inclined to think that the Winter of Discontent would not have happened, if James Callaghan had been a true Marxist.
I read ASU and was confused by “why is our starting point a mythical libertarian anarchy?”
Then I looked things up and realized he was replying to Rothbard, and it made a lot more sense. (The initial state, that is – Nozick’s arguments are clear and cogent.)
I still can’t understand how people can be Anarcho-Capitalists in Rothbard’s sense, precisely because Nozick’s “you’re stuck with at least minarchy, sorry” is so compelling and unavoidable, structurally.
(Myself, I’m a Hayekian, so it’s not my dog in the fight either way.)
@pete
I don’t think there is a widespread presumption of equality of wealth.
I think that is only half the truth. There is also a widespread belief that wealth was accumulated illegitimately or by exploiting other people. And that belief is not entirely unjustified, there are many people who acquire wealth illegitimately and who exploit other people, but there are many wealthy people of whom that is not true. Generally speaking, the illegitimate and exploiters are in bed to some degree with the government, in my experience, because it takes the power of government to exploit people or gain illegitimately. In a free market people get to choose, government acquired wealth is done by force.
There’s quite a widespread assumption that wealth should be redistributed to a certain extent by government to alleviate poverty and to ensure that everyone has access to housing, health care and education.
Yes and it is a foolish belief since the government is shockingly bad at all those things. Were it not for the massive wealth the free market brings there would not be the resources to fund shockingly inefficient government programs to do a shitty job at these goals. The US government has spent hundreds of trillions of dollars on these things and the county has a massive underclass of poor people, and a school system that, in many places, verges on child abuse, and a medicaid system that provides dreadful care while screwing over doctors.
There is a solution to this: allow the free market to generate wealth, then encourage charity for the less fortunate. Persuade people to help instead of threatening jail if they don’t. The moment “charity” turns into “entitlements” is that moment when the poor turn into a subservient underclass, serfs to political leaders. It is the moment when being poor becomes a viable alternative to stretching to make yourself better.
Traditionally there were two sources of the idea that wealth was not legitimate.
The Labour Theory of Value – often associated with David Ricardo (although Adam Smith, in his old age, had also pushed this FALSE theory), and Ricardo’s theory on LAND – which led to the ideas of Henry George.
The American economist Frank Fetter spent his life showing that both these theories were nonsense.
Paul Marks
Traditionally there were two sources of the idea that wealth was not legitimate.
Yes, I’ve heard these ideas a few times before, and we can definitely discuss and debate them. However, I think the source of wealth for many of the illegitimately wealthy is more to do with government corruption and back handed dealings and selling “access” and favors, along with a legal structure that STRONGLY favors large corporations over small, providing them huge amounts of shielding from competition.
To give a very small but recent example — Hunter Biden is a reasonably wealthy person. How is it possible that someone who has spent his life in self destructive activities, who is venal to the core and, to be honest from when I have heard him speak, kind of stupid. How did he get so rich? It isn’t because his paintings are so good.
There are a lot of rich people who worked the same angles as him.
However, there are also lots of Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, and Michael Dells, or Sam Waltons who saw opportunities and through genius and risk and skill (and probably a fair bit of luck) made a lot of money by making all of us more richer in the process. To put these people in the same category is ridiculous.
Fraser Orr.
I have already stated the main source of corrupt wealth – what is known as the “Cantillon Effect” (named after Richard Cantillon – an Irish economist of some three centuries ago).
Credit Money (or “fiat”, whim-command-edict, money) is the major source of corrupt wealth. Other sources certainly exist – but they are relatively small by comparison.
One great difficulty is that in an economy whose basic foundation is rotten (which is dominated by Credit Money) even people who have the best of intentions, get caught up in the corrupt system.
If the money itself is corrupt (which it is) the economy will be corrupt – no matter how hard people in that economy try NOT to be corrupt.
Build on a bad foundation – and what you build has a structural weakness.
If people are NOT lending out Real Savings (the actual sacrifice of consumption) if they are lending out “money” that did not even exist before it was lent out – then everything is corrupted.
Sometimes people ask “why is the publishing trade so corrupt – why do publishers insist on “Woke” content and judge books like this, NOT on how many copies of the book would sell?”
The answer is the same as why everything else is corrupted – because the money itself (the source of finance for the publishing companies – and for all other corporations) is corrupted.
The left noticed this years ago – and reasoned (correctly) that if they could get control of the money-power (of creating “money” from nothing – with, in the end, the backing of government when the banks and other financial Ponzi schemes inevitably run into trouble) they would gain control of everything else – and they were correct.
As for “the shareholders, the shareholders” – most shares are “managed” by entities such as BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard (and other such institutions) and they have shares in each-other – so, to a large extent, the economy (like government) is a “blob”.
Even advertising companies are now organised by professional bodies with a leftist agenda – have a look at the advertisements and you will see that selling-the-product is NOT the first concern of the advertisements.
They are indeed “selling you something” – but what they are “selling” is certain political and cultural doctrines.
It is much the same with films, television shows and everything else.
It was not hard to transform the economy into this parody of a free enterprise system – once the “money power” (finance) was taken – so most (NOT all – but most) of the economy followed.
@Paul Marks
creating “money” from nothing
FWIW, it is not “money from nothing” (which makes me think “are the chicks also free”)… In fact the money comes from a tax on wealth. If you double the amount of money in circulation you halve the worth of the money before the printing happened.
If you double the money in circulation and then give that money dollar for dollar to the current owners of dollars then nothing has changed except some entries in a bookkeeping system. However, if you double the money in circulation and give it to the current dollar owners unevenly it is a tax on some and a gift to others. For example, if a bank is to incompetent to run their affairs well and are about to go bankrupt, if the government prints money to bail them out it is a tax on the competent to support the incompetent. It helps a lot to be friends with a senator to be on the plus side of the deal.
The same goes if you run up lots of college debt, can’t pay it off and the government prints money to bail you out. It is a tax on the prudent college graduate to support the imprudent. Here you need to be part of a big voting block to be on the plus side of the deal.
You are right, fake money is one huge source of illegitimate wealth.
I thought that Joe Rogan’s interview of Marc Andreeson was a great source of information about this very issue. He put it mostly in terms of A.I. development and government pressures, but I think the principles carry through.
It’s interesting (to me) that counterfeiting, through the development of old English law and then American law, was one of the original few forms of treason against your country, but that our Framers consciously decided to change that in the Constitution – to remove counterfeiting from treasonous acts.
Can I see, within that conscious decision, a shadow of a penumbra of an individual right to counteract wrongful governmental theft by creating your own dollars just as does government?
😉
Isaac Newton (yes that Isaac Newton, perhaps one of the smartest men to ever live, and a candidate for the weirdest too), was master of the Royal Mint and personally investigated counterfeiters (he dressed up in disguise and went down to the pub to spy on people), and successfully prosecuted a couple of dozen people of coin clipping and other such forgeries. The punishment for treason was hanging, drawing and quartering, and although I don’t think the full extremis of that punishment was ever brought about at Newton’s hand, for sure many were slowly, publicly hanged and then disemboweled post mortem.
FWIW, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Despite the strong laws against private counterfeiting and debasement, the government regularly debased the coin both by reducing its value and its purity. But when the King does it, I guess we don’t get to argue. And for today’s debasers? It is so much easier to press a key on the keyboard than it is to mess with metalurgical alloy mixes or make new, smaller dies.
I’m not going to advocate a similar bloody fate for our latter day coin clippers, but I think they should at least have the decency to slink off into obscurity and poverty, after a few ignominious years at his Majesty’s pleasure.
There is nothing wrong with Fiat money. The logic is quite straightforward. Prior to the industrial revolution, wealth was land, and as land is of a more or less fixed quantity, it is reasonable to represent it with gold, also of a more or less fixed quantity. After the industrial revolution however, wealth is ingenuity and energy, and consequently limited by only those two factors. An expandable money supply is required to represent that
The arguments against fiat currency come down to saying that the government cannot be trusted not to fuck up the economy. This suggests to me that the problem lies with the form of government, not the fiat currency.
@Roué le Jour
There is nothing wrong with Fiat money.
I have mixed feelings on your comment. In one respect you are right as an economy grows perhaps the money supply that represents that economy should grow too. So a few questions:
1. When that money supply grows who should get the extra money? Should it go to the government as it does now? Or should it go to the people who caused the growth?
2, Why should the money supply grow at all? Why not just keep it the same and allow everyone who holds that currency to get the benefit of its increased value? There are arguments for and against deflation, but I think that those who argue in favor of inflation often do so not because they think it is good, but because it advantages them.
3. How much should the money supply grow? Who gets to decide?
The problem then is if you allow the money supply to grow you put an extremely dangerous tool in the hands of very untrustworthy people, and that is never a good thing.
So, from my perspective I think there are two approaches I am comfortable with:
1. Keep the money supply fixed and lets us all watch our savings grow in value.
2. Alternatively set the money supply to grow at a fixed annual rate — say 4%. Make that number irrevocably fixed. Is it always going to be the right number? No. But the danger or inflation being a bit high or deflation being a bit low is miniscule in comparison to the danger of giving government officials the ability to create money out of thing air (or, to put it differently tax everyone’s wealth, and steal from your grandkids.)
If you take the second approach, the question of who gets the money still remains. My preference? Cancel all taxes, levies and duties, and use that money to fund the government. And of course — make sure they can’t change that 4% number.
Fraser,
Thanks for a considered response, always appreciated. I claim no originality here, these are just things I’ve read which seems correct to me.
1. The government gets the increased money to set against tax. (No laughing at the back.)
2. If you don’t increase the money supply in a growing economy you will get deflation. Everyone agrees this is v. bad. Employers will have to reduce salaries every year to correct for increasing purchasing power and mortgages become a nightmare. The only time I have heard this discussed people were muttering about negative interest rates. So, no, not really.
Presumably if we tried really, really hard we could hold inflation to around 0%. As much as I would like two and a half new pence to buy me the same bar of chocolate that a tanner bought me back in the fifties, modest inflation has its benefits. Employers can reduce the cost of unsatisfactory employees without actually cutting their salary. Mortgages become more bearable. The target of 2% has been mentioned by the government and I don’t think that is unreasonable.
Generally I think we should be looking at fixing the government rather than trying to ameliorate its wickedness. If we hadn’t given the vote to every monkey that can hold a pencil in its grubby paw and limited the mandate to taxpaying males we would never have to worry about socialist governments screwing things up because there wouldn’t be a serious socialist party in the first place.
Why males? As widows, my great-great-grandmother and my great-grandmother ran their own business and paid business and income taxes, as did my great-great-grandmother’s maiden sisters.
jgh,
Because modern day women overwhelmingly vote for socialism. It is a well known statistic that if women were to be disenfranchised, Britain’s Labour party and the US democrats would disappear overnight.
Universal suffrage works tolerably well as long as voters and taxpayers are the same people. As taxpayers become a smaller and smaller part of the demos, they are being out voted by people living at their expense.
To give another example, if people got fed up with the pantomime of British democracy and decided not to legitimize it by taking part, then Britain would have a Labour government courtesy of the state employees. Is that how you think democracy should work?
Roue le Jour.
Women used to be more likely to vote Conservative than men – so it is not biology.
On the point of the disconnect between tax paying and voting – within living memory in local government only rate payers (local tax payers) could vote (and there was also a “business vote” for people who did not live in an area but owned a business that paid tax in an area). In national politics the disconnect is much older in the United Kingdom.
The Income Tax brought in the 1840s (not “the Napoleonic Wars” as the history books often claim – that income tax was abolished, the modern one is the one brought in the 1840s) was supposed to be temporary – and it was almost (almost – but no cigar) abolished by 1874 – but then it started going up again.
In 1867 Disraeli gave the vote to many people who did not pay the income tax – whilst that was NOT the issue that led to his victory in the elections of 1874 (on the contrary both Gladstone and Disraeli promised to abolish income tax in that election) one does get the feeling (I put it no stronger than that) that the fact that most voters (especially after the expansion of the franchise in the 1880s) did not pay the income tax (or the inheritance tax that was introduced in the 1890s) was a factor in the minds of the rulers. “We can increase this tax and most people will not care – because they do not directly pay the tax, and will not realise that all taxes are passed on”.
Of course taxes that start with “the rich” never end with “the rich” – eventually, both in Britain and the United States, most people were drawn into the net, especially by “National Insurance” – a tax by another name. And “employer contributions” really come out of the wages of employees – although government tries to cover up this fact.
The fact that all taxes are passed on to the general community (that no tax “just hits the rich”) is shown graphically by the tragic case of Ireland in the 1840s.
In 1838 the Poor Law Tax was introduced in Ireland (basically on a whim of Lord Russell – an English aristocrat who was very much into “reforms”) – and it was massively increased in the late 1840s (Russell was Prime Minister by this time), and areas of Ireland that were NOT dependent on the potato were forced to bailout areas of Ireland that were dependent on the potato – and all this was justified on the basis that “only the land owners pay the tax”.
In reality the tax burden utterly crushed Ireland – with about a quarter of the Irish population either dying or having to flee the country. It was not just one part of the Irish economy that was hit – the tax smashed the Irish economy in general.
By the way – there was also a system of state schools in Ireland (after 1831), on the basis of the whims of two English aristocrats, Lord Russell and Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby). Russell was a Whig (falsely described as a supporter of laissez faire, by ignorant history writers), and Stanley-Derby was a Tory – one that needed no instruction on statism from Disraeli as he (Lord Stanley – later the Earl of Derby) already thought that the state was the source of all good, and the answer to every problem.
They thought a system of state schools would be a good idea – and that the taxpayers should pay for it.
The taxpayers had no choice in the matter.
No Rour le Jour – gradually falling prices are NOT bad.
Nor does “everyone agree” that gradually falling princes are bad, or that employers would have to cut wages every year (which they did NOT do in the late 19th century when prices were gradually falling) – the words “everyone agrees that…” remind of J.S. Mill when he was about to suggest some new function for local government.
“everyone agrees that councils should…”.
He knew very well that many people did NOT agree – but he just assumed us out of existence by writing “everyone agrees that…”
He did the same trick with the Labour Theory of Value – writing that everyone agreed with it, when he knew very well that many economists (including English ones – such as Samuel Bailey and Richard Whatley) did NOT agree.
bobby b – as you know, one of the reasons the Convention was called in Philadelphia was to prevent fiat money, the “not worth a Continental” fiat money coming back at some future time. If the Federal Government had a secure source of revenue (rather than have to go “cap in hand” to the States) it was held that this would help prevent fiat money coming back.
The wording of the Constitution itself was careful to state (Article One, Section Eight) that the Congress had the power to “coin money” (not to print it – or to create it by book keeping tricks – banker FRAUD, but legalised fraud), and that only gold or silver coin would be legal tender in any State (Article One, Section Ten).
It is true that Roger Sherman held that the wording was not tight enough – but he was held to be paranoid (although this crude word was not used). Sadly history has proved Roger Sherman to be correct – the wording was not tight enough. The corrupt twisting of the words of the Constitution, by JUDGES as well as politicians, was just what he feared would, eventually, happen.
When writing a legal document paranoia is the correct frame of mind – “how is some corrupt swine going to try and twist these words?” is what one should be thinking at all times.
Paul,
I think deflation is a question of degree. I should have been more precise, if the economy was to deflate at the rate it currently inflates, and did that indefinitely, then employers would have no choice but to cut wages.
I’m quite sure everyone at the treasury thinks deflation is a bad thing.
Fraser Orr.
When bankers blow Credit Bubbles these bubbles always, eventually, burst. In fancy language – the “broad money falls back down towards the monetary base”.
Then governments have a choice – let the banks collapse, or bail them out. No surprise that Lord Russell choose option number two (Sir Robert Peel’s Banking Act was “suspended” when the ink was barely dry – so the “private” Bank of England, backed by the government, could bail out the banks – so much for “laissez faire” Russell).
However, the fraud (and it is fraud) that the Bank of England and other Central Banks represent was limited whilst they still kept to a “gold standard” – although that is a very different thing from gold-as-money (that word “standard” allows in a lot of legalised fraud) – it is only when all links with a commodity (it does not have to be gold – it could be silver or some other commodity) are broken that the fraud becomes without limit – and the printing press (or these days the computer screen) can create endless money to fund endless corruption – till society becomes so twisted and distorted that it eventually gives way.
The last link between the Western monetary and financial system and sanity was broken in the 1990s (as recently as that) when the last link between the Swiss Franc and gold was broken (by the new Swiss Constitution).
It is interesting to note how the Swiss voters were tricked – for example the voters thought that “we celebrate our diversity” meant the diversity of German, French, Italian and Neo Latin, speaking historic Swiss communities – but, in reality, the “educated” establishment elite (even back in the 1990s) had something rather different in mind.
Rour le Jour.
You seem rather keen on women and non taxpayers not having the vote – yet you write “there is nothing wrong with fiat money” – as if you were ignorant of what the very word “fiat” (whim-command-edict) means – and the economic corruption that it represents.
Fiat money is, by its very nature, corrupt and corrupting – and “keeping the price level stable” was the insane folly of the late 1920s (when Benjamin Strong of the New York Fed created more and more credit money to prevent prices gradually falling – with the full support of the clown Irving Fisher) – the crash of 1929 was the inevitable result of increasing the money supply to “keep the price level stable” rather than allow prices to gradually drop over time, as people found ways to produce goods and services more economically. If you want to prevent a “bust” you must prevent the Credit Money “boom” that creates it – it is the Credit Money “boom” that creates the “bust” (NOT, contra Keynes, “animal spirits”).
By your own rules Sir you yourself should not have the vote – on the grounds that someone who can write (and mean) “there is nothing wrong with fiat money” is not fit for the vote.
So be careful of denying the vote to others (such as women or the poor) – when the same argument could be used to deprive YOU of the franchise.
Rour le Jour – I did NOT see your last comment till now, and it does change the position. So I apologise for the harshness of my previous comment.
If prices are going down because people are finding better ways to produce goods and services – then there is no need to cut wages (none) – indeed this is how living standards improve, the pay buys more goods and services over time.
But if prices are going down because a Credit Money bubble has burst – then YES you are correct, employers will have to cut wages.
This was true with the bust of every banker Credit Bubble Fraud from 1819 to 1921 – in each case, wage rates had to be cut in order to prevent mass unemployment.
1929 was the first time in American peace time history that government intervened to PREVENT the reduction of wage rates in response to a Credit Money bust – President Herbert “the Forgotten Progressive” Hoover personally demanded of industrialists that they NOT cut wage rates.
The result was Mass Unemployment – year after year, with the labour market not being allowed to clear.
Even then, in the 1930s, the “demand fallacy” gripped both Democrats and Republicans – and both fell over themselves to say how pro “labor” (i.e. pro union) they were. Union power comes from government – as W.H. Hutt explained in “The Strike Threat System”.
It was only with World War II that the labour market was allowed to clear – and by the nasty trick of pretending that official prices were real prices and that (therefore) real wages were not going down.
Of course the real prices in World War II were the “black market” prices – so real wages were going down, thus the mass unemployment ended.
Certainly true in Britain and France. In Britain women were more reliably conservative voters until the 1980s and I think it was similar in France until around the same time.
Liberals like Asquith opposed women’s suffrage on the grounds he feared it would give the Tories an advantage. And in France one of the major reasons women didn’t get the vote until 1944 was because radical and republican parties feared female voters, being more regular churchgoers would vote for Catholic and monarchist parties.
You kind of see this in old British comedy films about the unions like I’m Alright Jack (1959) and Carry On at your Convenience (1971). The women do a lot in both to put an end to the strikes and are implied to be more conservative (not just politically) than the men.
Whether women becoming more left-wing than men is because of feminism, more women going into the workplace, declining birth rates, secularism, etc etc I’m not quite sure.
I’m not sure they are actually more left-wing than most men, but they do tend to vote for left-wing parties more than most men perhaps. I think it comes down to “niceness”. Women, generally, want to be seen to be nice. Note, not necessarily to be nice but to be seen to be nice. This is also increasingly true of men. Men used to split into men who were genuinely good people or those who didn’t really care either how they were perceived or how they actually were. Lots of men today want to be seen as being nice but behave more like the worst stereotypical traits of women.
Is this because of our increasingly politicized society? In workplaces today action often counts less than words. Certainly in my experience upper-management often doesn’t remember who got some annoying task done but they do remember who set up the recycling policy, or who advocated for going for B Corp certification.
Fraser Orr wrote:
‘There is also a widespread belief that wealth was accumulated illegitimately or by exploiting other people.’
and he is right, of course, but as we have discussed here before, this belief is strongly attached to some cultures and not others.
If an American, for example, sees someone driving a bright red Ferrari, the most-likely reaction will be ‘Wow! Nice car! I wonder what he does that he can afford that?’
In the UK, the most likely reaction would be ‘Tosser! Must be a drug dealer or in some really dodgy line in the City!’
In Germany, it’s a thing to order a nice car, a BMW or a Mercedes, but with the model designation badges removed, so the neighbours can’t see that you got a 7-series and are so getting above yourself.
China and much of the Far East has the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome. And so forth.
Some cultures celebrate success, and some look down upon it, and yet I don’t see much correlation between the different beliefs and the relative success of the places where they are prevalent. So it’s a conundrum to me 😧.
llater,
llamas
And yet Henry Mayhew wrote in volume one of “London Labour and the London Poor”: ‘I shall consider the whole of the metropolitan poor under three separate phases, according as they will work, they can’t work, and they won’t work’.
Even at this level of poverty those that will work might be prepared to help support those that can’t work (I have found the poorest are often the kindest), but I suspect they would feel aggrieved at helping support those that won’t work. In which case the argument for greater equality stumbles.
Pete: I don’t think there is a widespread presumption of equality of wealth. There’s quite a widespread assumption that wealth should be redistributed to a certain extent by government to alleviate poverty and to ensure that everyone has access to housing, health care and education.
Then how to explain why millions of people are happy to vote for redistribution of wealth, can be whipped up over complaints about “the rich” or “1%”, etc? It’s prevalent in the culture. (Yes some of us such as @Paul Marks and me vent about central bank funny money making inequalities wider than otherwise, but I doubt most of those who go on about inequality make such fine distinctions.)
As for the second part of your sentence, it is not necessary to see the transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor as redistribution as such: a fast-growing economy with low, flat taxes could finance a safety net of services for the poor quite sufficiently. And anyway the question is begged as to what is the legitimate function of government and whether the needs of group X or Y justify the coercive removal of property from other people.
The reality of the modern welfare state is that the middle classes have, ironically, done disproportionately well out of regulation and high public spending: consider how a large chunk of those in white collar jobs work for the State, etc.