Hate has no home here*

*Except if you’re a billionaire

The #3 trending story on Apple News today is an economically illiterate polemic by a Style “reporter” for the Washington Post.

One of the things that has been lost in the digitization of discourse even among legitimate news organizations such as the WaPo is the distinction between opinion (which used to be labeled as such and run in the editorial pages) and news (which ran in what used to be called the news hole, acknowledging that the main mission of the mainstream media has always been to make money by selling ads). However, as a 20th Century journalism school grad, I retain the quaint notions that opinion is different than news and readers ought to be so advised.

One might argue that a Style reporter is ill qualified to write about economics and tax policy. However, lack of credentials has never been a barrier to economic bloviation. Jared Bernstein, a prominent progressive advisor and pundit on the subject is classically trained in…um, music. (I had to fact check this twice because he talks such a good game, but it’s true.)

The article in question essentially argues that billionaires are the one class of humanity that are it is politically correct to hate. It is all the fashion these days, all the rage (pun intended), so maybe a Style reporter is the appropriate assignment for the billionaire beat.

After all, class envy is an ancient hobby. Oceans of blood have been shed to act out hatred of the rich, which is among the most violent of emotions. In modern times, the French and Russian Revolutions are the classic examples.

Yet the rich are always with us, nervous as they may be by inevitably being vastly outnumbered by a ratio of about 100 to 1, by their less prosperous contemporaries. My view is much less emotional than the rage of the age. Perhaps Hemingway said it best. When F. Scott Fitzgerald gushed that “The rich are different then you and me”, Hemingway retorted: “Yes, they have more money.”

Easy come, easy go, as the saying goes. Paper billionaires can find themselves actual paupers . Even our beloved President once envied a homeless person who, having a net worth of zero, was temporarily millions richer than the Donald, who was seriously underwater on personally guaranteed loans.

The WaPo piece cites many examples of hated billionaires, but somehow neglects the one who pays the reporter: Jeff Bezos.

Now there’s a perfect example of the truth of the old saw that money can’t buy you happiness. He has gotten himself in Anthony Wiener world with immodest selfies. To paraphrase Mick Jagger, he can’t give it away on Long Island City, having been run out of town on a rail of billionaire hate by a torch bearing crowd of Amazonophobes. (Foreshadow: more on the Mick below).

You might think that the multi billion dollar largesse of philanthropy at the scale of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would absolve these heinous villains of their mortal economic sins. Alas, no. The reporter rejects this penance as they have arrogated unto themselves the power to spend their own money as they see fit, rather than trust their betters in government to spend the money according to their infinite wisdom. The unmitigated hubris of the billionaire to think that since they were smart enough to make those billions, they might be better at solving problems philanthropically than say the average Chicago Alderman (if one can be found who can save the world on work release) cancels such paltry alms.

You might also wonder if there isn’t at least a cooler circle of hell for self made billionaires such as the reporter’s employer Bezos, Gates, Bloomberg, Dell, Jobs (already no doubt barbecuing in Hades’ hellfire).

Alas, the article makes no such distinction. Had space permitted the author might have cited the appropriate verse from the Book of Obama: “You didn’t build that”, a doctrine which begs the question of if fortunes in the billions somehow spontaneously arise from the virtues of the folk, why aren’t we all billionaires? Good thing we’re not or there wouldn’t be anyone left to cast the first stone of billionaire hate, and thus the proletariat would be impoverished of spirit, deprived of the untold psychic income of unbridled righteous indignation at the injustice of rewarding achievement in a meritocracy, a free market economy that is the envy of the world, which has to debate building walls to keep people out, and which places no restraints on those who choose not to participate and consequently emigrate.

The article has numerous half truths and outright falsehoods.

For example, it states the first income tax was levied early in the 20th Century. That’s about 50 years off (income was first taxed to finance the Civil War).

It also states that marginal rates have been as high as Senators Warren and Sanders and the representative currently known as #AOC have proposed, 70% at the top bracket. While technically more than true (there was a 90% rate at one nadir in tax policy), that is horribly misleading, as the effective tax rate paid by even billionaires has remained constant in the twenty oercentage range since the modern incarnation of the IRS regardless of the marginal rate. That’s because generally rate cuts travel in a bodyguard of deduction eliminations, while rate increases are escorted into the socialist paradise by a host of lobbyists who carve out exemptions for special interests on both sides of the aisle, rendering the whole exercise a farcical kabuki theater Tom Wolfe could have skewered in the world’s most boring novel, Bonfire of the Vanity Taxes.

However, there is no free lunch. The higher the marginal rate the more the incentive to distort rational economic activity with tax avoidance strategies like the infamous oil depletion allowance.

Rate increases never generate the promised revenue. Did you ever wonder why so many British rock stars live in the States? You can thank the UK’s confiscatory rates.

I will make two predictions:

First, the biggest beneficiary of any rate increases will be the usual suspects: the beat lawyers and accountants billionaires can by. The time and money spent on unproductive tax strategies is the unavoidable cost of tax law written in billionaire blood.

Second, this article will not make the Top 10 Apple News list. Truth doesn’t trend.

So it goes. Every generation or so we have to repeat the follies of the past. Those of us who have been around for a few generations have seen this movie before. We know how it ends.

Full disclosure: Contrary to my wife’s apparent misapprehension, I am not a billionaire, although my love for her makes me willing to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to be a more capable provider, commensurate with her impeccable taste in everything but men. The preceding sentence is my feeble attempt at humour. Apologies in advance to all thise offended.