Riffing on Robert Nozick’s popular essay, Julian Sanchez asks “Why do intellectuals support government solutions?“ Sanchez declines the argument that progressives are more ethical than others or that their support of government solutions rests on superior philosophical arguments. He writes:
It seems equally possible, however, that a post hoc desire to justify the choice of such a career might play a biasing role. A person without extravagant material tastes can live quite comfortably as an academic or writer, and the work itself is highly interesting and intrinsically appealing. But intellectual jobs of this sort tend not to leave one with the resources to devote large amounts of money to charitable causes without significantly curtailing consumption of minor luxuries: meals out, shows, electronics, vacation travel, enrichment classes for the kids, and so on.
…
In this scenario, after all, the intellectual who could make millions for charity as a financier or high-powered attorney, but prefers to take his compensation in the form of leisure time and interesting work, is not obviously morally better than the actual financier or attorney who uses his monetary compensation to purchase material pleasures. Both are declining to sacrifice personal satisfaction in order to help others—one has just chosen a form of compensation that can’t be taxed and redistributed easily.
Twitter is huge with the intellectuals. It provides both status and entertainment. Citations, pingbacks, hat tips, and requests for reprint are currency in which intellectuals like to deal. It also goes untaxed. Progressive intellectuals who operate in other realms earn a monetary income which is taxed, but most of their status – which cash can serve as a proxy for – comes without a W-2 or a 1099. Therefore they’ll focus on the rich paying their “fair share” while underweighting their own “prestige income”.
Reihan Salam jumps in:
Julian’s post reminds me of Tyler Cowen’s concept of “threshold earners,” which we’ve discussed on a few different occasions. And it evokes one of my favorite ideas, namely that our ideological debates flow at least in part from a positional competition over whether society will have greater regard to those who have a preference for nonpecuniary goods (which are harder to tax and redistribute) or for those who have a preference for pecuniary goods (which are relatively easy to tax and redistribute). One of my big frustrations with how we talk about social problems is that we fixate on tractable things that we can easily measure, like income and wealth, while discounting intractable things that are extremely hard to measure, like the robustness and breadth of one’s social network.
It is impossible to tax these things, yet they provide an immense amount of utility for the people who earn them. To rehash what I wrote above, since the government is the entity which levies and collects tax, progressive intellectuals who don’t have to come into full body contact with this arm of the government don’t carry quite the same distaste as does someone whose income comes in taxable monetary form. Theirs is a relatively low effective tax rate because “money is nothing” to them in a very fundamental way.
Matt Yglesias previously wrote on a similar topic and it has stuck in my mind:
The CEO of Darden Restaurants earns over six million dollars a year. But I seriously doubt that there are any tenure-track professors at NYU saying to themselves that they’re desperately eager to change places with Clarence Otis, Jr and move to Orlando to supervise chain restaurants. Certainly for me, it’s not even a close choice. I would much, much, much rather draw a comfortable salary and a subsidized apartment in Manhattan doing interesting work than make “top one percent” money as the CEO of a medium-sized business enterprise in central Florida. And unless I’ve completely misjudged the audience of my blog, I bet most of you would agree with my preferences in this regard.
And:
That’s not to say we need to “soak the professors” rather than “soak the rich.” Taxing the consumption of high-rollers and redistributing it to the less fortunate is a great idea. But a lot of the political dialogue I see online seems to consist of a slightly strange form of class resentment in which intellectuals, nonprofit workers, or public servants express bitterness about the high incomes of businesspeople whose lives they don’t actually envy.
As Cowen wrote in the essay linked above, and as I’ve mentioned at this blog as well, the entire debate over income inequality is farcical in one way: many more people today are embracing a leisurely lifestyle. They opt for a lifestyle which will probably provide them with a low income. They are OK with scraping by; they aren’t scraping because they are forced to scrape by; they are scraping by because they want to earn just enough money to pay their bills and enjoy their free time from work. They’ve spent a lot of time carving out their niche and they’ve also dropped the social pressure to achieve much beyond it. For hipsters and intellectuals – and the OWS crowd – this is their utopia, and it has become more acceptable. “Slumming it” is a status-marker. But along with wearing that marker is a bit of the intellectual-activist spirit wherein they pretend that The Man has forced them to do it and where they lament the success of the rich as if they’d actually want to spend the effort and kiss the asses it would take to become rich. They wouldn’t, and I don’t blame them.
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Good points by you, Salam and Yglesias.
Fascinating post. really well done.
Property is taxed in dollars. Investments are taxed in dollars. Real estate is also taxed in dollars.
Having to pay dollars in taxation for things we own that are not piles of dollars requires having to earn dollars. Perhaps we ought to consider taxing degrees, number of Twitter followers, professional awards, etc.
Mayhaps then these folks will begin to understand the outrage felt by those who pursue income rather than leisure or popularity based lifestyles.
People like that don’t pursue high-reward careers because they don’t have what it takes to succeed in that world. Yglesias is just spewing sour grapes here: “The CEO of Darden Restaurants earns over six million dollars a year. But I seriously doubt that there are any tenure-track professors at NYU saying to themselves that they’re desperately eager to change places with Clarence Otis, Jr and move to Orlando to supervise chain restaurants. Certainly for me, it’s not even a close choice.”
Bullshit Matty, you just couldn’t succeed as the CEO of anything.
Since he can’t be one of the winners, he lobbies for the government to punish the winners while hiding behind a cloak of noble altruism. People like Matt pretend it’s all about raising taxes to help poor black kids; in reality it’s just to stick a thumb in the eye of the (type of) guys who gave him wedgies in high school gym class.
Great post. This is an interesting subject with a lot to dig into.
I think there’s some false modesty here on Yglesias’s part. Successful journalists, and successful “creative class” professionals in general (musicians, designers etc.), tend to downplay how hard they actually work, since the idea that they’re following their passion unlike all those ordinary boring suits is part of the mythology that gives them their high status.
Journalism isn’t surgery or manual labor, but it’s not a coffee shop slack job either. In terms of hours worked, an establishment pundit like Yglesias or Salam is probably in the same bracket as any other prestigious white-collar professional. Just because they get their rewards in the form of status rather than cash doesn’t mean they aren’t working hard.
Academia is even worse. Professors with tenure are basically idle aristocrats, but the typical non-tenured TA or adjunct works 60 to 80 hour weeks grading and lecturing in exchange for what amounts to minimum wage. Humanities academia is a pyramid scheme with “follow your passion” as the carrot and poverty as the stick.
And that’s the elephant in the room here. The SWPL lifestyle might be a fair trade-off for people who make it to the top tier at an early age (tenure-track academics, establishment journalists like Yglesias and Salam), but the lower ranks (alt-weekly freelancers, nonprofit drones, state college adjuncts) are the victims of a bait and switch scam. How dare you ask for a living wage — you should be happy just to be here, getting to do this fascinating work!
Which is why I don’t think this is correct:
For hipsters and intellectuals – and the OWS crowd – this is their utopia, and it has become more acceptable. “Slumming it” is a status-marker. But along with wearing that marker is a bit of the intellectual-activist spirit wherein they pretend that The Man has forced them to do it and where they lament the success of the rich as if they’d actually want to spend the effort and kiss the asses it would take to become rich. They wouldn’t, and I don’t blame them.
No, the envy is real. The average SWPL doesn’t get paid much — not that there’s anything wrong with that, from the perspective of value-creating economic realism — and the romance of being young and broke goes away once you’re more than a few years out of undergrad. Journalism and academia are places where a 30-year-old elite college graduate can expect a mid-five-figure payout for a 70-hour workweek — and there’s plenty of ass-kissing involved. Is it any wonder they’re envious of their classmates who majored in econ?
“Successful journalists, and successful “creative class” professionals in general (musicians, designers etc.), tend to downplay how hard they actually work”
never let them see you sweat.
see, even swpl fags follow game concepts in their lives.
GLP,
Wow, great point! As someone who owns a business, I have a secret confession. Many of my employees have a much better lifestyle than I do. They have more personal time, freedom, have fewer responsibilities and worries, and take far less financial risk than I do. Yet, to the one, they will piss and moan about how the “fat cats” or “1%” are causing all of their problems, especially financial ones. It is nauseating. Many of these people live their lives around maximizing their pleasure only to wake up when they are 65 and realize that they don’t own a pot to piss in. Of course they want a progressive income tax and estate taxes. They are the ones with expensive lifestyles that need to be financed.
I don’t spend money because I work all the time. I can afford to take vacations but rarely have the time so I have learned to savor what time I do have. Because I get so much intrinsic value out of what I do, I do not need to constantly over stimulate my brain to feel alive. It has been said that if you want something done in a hurry give the task to a busy man. Most of my employees have much more spare time but seem to never do anything with it other than play. Even reading books, learning, or charity cuts into their god given right to idleness.
Worse, people who live off the fat of the land are the ones who are most resentful of other people’s success. Ambitious people don’t mind other ambitious people. Lazy people look to other lazy people the same way smokers view other smokers. They mutually support each other reinforcing their own slovenly behavior. The easiest way to do this is complain about rich people and how if it was not for their “boss”, “the Koch Brothers”, “the rich” and so on, their lives would be pure paradise or they could quite working altogether and spend 100% of their time avoiding unpleasant or arduous jobs.
@Heartiste:
Yep.
An old classmate of mine is a SWPL-famous indie rock musician (if you listen to NPR or read Pitchfork, you’ve heard of him.) On stage he affects a mumbling, awkward slacker presence, but behind the scenes he’s a canny operator with the strongest work ethic of anyone I’ve ever met. If he had gone into law or finance instead of music, he’d be doing just fine.
But then he wouldn’t have every 19-year-old hipster chick from Bushwick to Silverlake wanting to jump his bones.
You can take tax time.
Its called requiring pro bono, or community service, or whatever name you want to put on it.
You can require (force) people to give up their time. The left float it out all the time for requiring students to do volunteer work (forced volunteer work, got to love newspeak).
There are requirements of professionals to do it. You can take away people’s leisure. If you can force someone to buy insurance you can force them to pay time too.
I propose a twitter tax at $1 per tweet. Think of all the money we could raise.
@Heartiste
This is actually a great test of whether or not someone is a value creator or a value transferee, to use Half Sigma’s lingo.
Value CREATORS dominate and sow self-doubt in other value creators by understating how hard they work and making them think they can achieve superior results with token effort. “Never let them see you sweat,” indeed.
Value TRANSFEREES dominate other value transferees by grandstanding about how haaard they werrrk since they have no outputs to point to and must use smooth talk to convince people and politicians to give them money and justify their lifestyle. “I work hard and play hard,” they declare. Preserve that tiny drop of sweat in amber and show it to anyone and everyone who can help you.
There are certainly alpha value creators (fighter pilots, orthopedic surgeons, hipster musicians), but in general, value transferees are more likely to be alpha.
Charlestalleyrand,
Agreed! Compulsory community service is the counterweight to progressive income tax. You can either pay money or time, but everybody must contribute. In most cultures this is done by men through a draft. But here, nothing is required of the working class. The only question is how many goodies they can avail themselves with. My solution would be to require ne’er do wells to empty bed pans in State hospitals or guard prisons or the border. Instead of sitting around in public parks and trashing them, the OWSers should be picking up trash and raking leaves there instead, for free, so the rest of us can enjoy them too.
well i dont reslly work
but i have richparents
i basically do nothing all day
that is why i support a progessive income tax
it is unfair that i was born into a good situation.
Are you reading Anti-Racist. Your words inspire action. All your words which we record and study. Red was spilled in your name Sir. Well done.
“People like that don’t pursue high-reward careers because they don’t have what it takes to succeed in that world.”
Usually what’s needed to be in the 1% (or most especially the 0.1%) is to be a psychopath with no morals.
Let’s imagine Matt Y.’s uncle dies and he inherits a small restaurant chain, maybe 10 restaurants with $1mm of after tax earnings. Does he a) sell the chain and cash the check or b) hire somebody else to put into effect his exciting restaurant ideas or c) decide to quit journalism for a few years and see if he can’t be the next big restaurant mogul. I’m guesing it would actually be c). If this were a more exciting industry – maybe something in the media or technology – I’m sure it would be c). You can’t read all of his Exciting New Ideas to Make Parking Better without thinking that he wouldn’t like to be the guy in charge of actually running something.
“Usually what’s needed to be in the 1% (or most especially the 0.1%) is to be a psychopath with no morals.”
ok, you know this isn’t true.
what’s needed to be in the 1% is drive, work ethic, smarts, and persistence.
Anti-Racist you saw white boy chuck about koreans. Where do this kind of people of yellow color fit in promoting Justice. They aint casper white but they are very uppity to Real Men Of Dark Color.
think a_peraspera has it right when he says, “People like that don’t pursue high-reward careers because they don’t have what it takes to succeed in that world. Yglesias is just spewing sour grapes here .“ It would be much easier for me to believe that the CEO of Darden Restaurants could do Matt Yglesias’ job then that Yglesias could become the CEO of Darden. Or any company really.
Overall though, I just don’t think there are enough hipsters and slackers to make much of a difference. Sure, they seem to dominate in towns like Austin or Portland, but I imagine most hipsters age out of that lifestyle. They get married, start thinking about getting a regular job, have kids, then HAVE to get a regular job, and before you know it, by their 30’s they are middle class suburbanites, everything they despised in their 20’s.
Oh, great idea for a twitter tax Scott! A tax on something that just wastes time would be a boon to the US economy.
Then why is there such unbelievably immense competition for the top jobs? There are nothing but roadblocks to the top. Damn sure no one is offering me money to trade leisure for labor.