Imagine a small town, Sticksville. About one hundred people live here. Most are self-sufficient middle-classers, but there is also a top and a bottom: the “1%” consists of a wealthy businessman, Mr Jones, who made his fortune trading with other towns both near and far; the “underclass” are about 20 young folk, un-skilled workers, elderly and disabled.
Mr Jones is no Scrooge McDuck. He is generous with his money and pays most of the cost of things like roads, healthcare and education for all the good people of Sticksville. He runs the library, the local swimming pool and the football club. If you have kids, he sends a bit of cash your way to help with the extra expenses. But he doesn’t stop there: for the underclass, he pays for housing as well and he even transfers a cash amount to each of them every month, to be spent at their discretion. That’s how come most inhabitants of Sticksville, regardless of their own income, have things like mobile phones and flat screen TVs. All told, Mr Jones spends more than 50% of his income on services which are for the good of other individuals or the community.
Every now and then, the underclass – and some of the middle class as well – meet in the town square. The bring banners and placards, and they all read the same type of things: “Mr Jones is a rich bastard” is written on one. “We want more money!” says another. Yet another demands “Better education now!”. It seems gratitude is hard to come by in Sticksville.
To most people this would all sound rather strange. After all, would you not expect people to be appreciative of Mr Jones’ efforts, rather than gang up upon him to demand he contribute even more? But, apart from Mr Jones being a voluntary benefactor rather than a tax slave, situations like these play out almost all over the world on a daily basis. As living standards increase immeasurably from generation to generation – a development made possible by the productive classes – demands for more cash for those less well-off continue unabated. What makes the story of Sticksville sound odd is that there is a human face to the charitable giving which makes all members of society so well of: Mr Jones is known and (you’d think) appreciated by his fellow Sticksvillers.
But when was the last time you heard a welfare recipient extend a heartfelt “thank you” to those who have the ability to produce the wealth from which welfare benefits are extracted? It’s rare indeed. The effect of the welfare state has been to alienate those who benefit from redistribution from those who fund it. Anonymous taxpayers pay for the benefits bonanza, but as they have no human face; as there is no interpersonal relation, benefactor and beneficiary are estranged from each other. A lack of appreciation is the result. It goes the other way as well: human suffering is difficult to relate to if you don’t see it up close. The welfare state absolves us from relating to other people’s problems – why, they are taken care of by the government! But there is a price: a lack of understanding accompanies the lack of appreciation.
The UK has a tax burden of 34.3%, the highest since 1970. 28% of all income tax is paid by the highest earning 1%; the top 10% pay more than 70%. And yet, people protest that the rich are greedy and selfish and must hand over even more. The Labour Party feeds of this malcontent when they claim to be “for the many not the few”, as if the two are mutually exclusive. Stretching all the way back to Marx’s theory of worker exploitation, the left has divided us into winners and losers and proclaimed that when someone loses it is precisely because someone else is winning. So, the rich are not enabling the poor to live good lives by redistributing (voluntarily or not) the income they have amassed from productive activity – on the contrary: their wealth is the reason for poverty in the first place.
It takes a big, faceless state bureaucracy to cut interpersonal ties so brutally and effectively as has been done in modern welfare states. And this alienation provides fertile ground for the left’s “them vs us” narrative. In fact, it is imperative. The welfare state sustains the left and the left sustains the welfare state. It is a tragic symbiosis, but its stranglehold on modern politics will be hard to break.