![]() ![]() But you don’t, in fact, see countries descending into tax-and-spend death spirals - and no, that’s not what ails Europe. All advanced nations have had substantial welfare states since the 1940s - welfare states that, inevitably, have stronger support among their poorer citizens. But if you worry that low-income voters will run wild, that they’ll greedily grab everything and tax job creators into oblivion, history says that you’re wrong. Lower-income voters are much more supportive than the wealthy toward policies that benefit people like them, and they generally support higher taxes at the top. Still, is there anything to fears that economic populism will lead to economic disaster? Not really. Never mind the new Gilded Age that tax cuts and financial deregulation have created they’re reading books with titles like “A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic,” asserting that the big problem we have is runaway redistribution. Many on the right - and I’m not just talking about people listening to Rush Limbaugh I’m talking about members of the political elite - live, at least part of the time, in an alternative universe in which America has spent the past few decades marching rapidly down the road to serfdom. In fact, the very success of the conservative agenda only intensifies this fear. No matter how well conservatives do in elections, no matter how thoroughly free-market ideology dominates discourse, there is always an undercurrent of fear that the great unwashed will vote in left-wingers who will tax the rich, hand out largess to the poor, and destroy the economy. Indeed, these are all basically the same thing.įor the political right has always been uncomfortable with democracy. This may sound like the 47 percent of Americans who Mitt Romney said would vote against him because they don’t pay income taxes and, therefore, don’t take responsibility for themselves, or the 60 percent that Representative Paul Ryan argued pose a danger because they are “takers,” getting more from the government than they pay in. Leung is worried about the 50 percent of Hong Kong’s population that, he believes, would vote for bad policies because they don’t make enough money. Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies” - policies, presumably, that would make the rich less rich and provide more aid to those with lower incomes. So we should be grateful to Leung Chun-ying, the Beijing-backed leader of Hong Kong, for blurting out the real reason pro-democracy demonstrators can’t get what they want: With open voting, “You would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month. It’s always good when leaders tell the truth, especially if that wasn’t their intention.
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