Here is a remarkable finding from a recent Gallup poll. Americans were asked to rate a series of issues before the final session of this Congress as "Very important," "Somewhat important" or "Not too/Not at all important."
"Passing legislation that would keep the estate tax from increasing significantly next year" was rated as very important by 56 percent of respondents.
"Extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed" was rated as very important by 48 percent.
It doesn't help that Gallup has phrased the question in a misleading way. I'm guessing that a more accurate question — "passing legislation that would abolish the estate tax, preventing it from returning to normal levels as promised" — would get a somewhat different response. But still this is insane.
Right now there are 14.2 million Americans looking for work and less than 3 million total job openings. So we've got more than 10 million people for whom there are no jobs — for whom there exist no jobs. But their plight is, according to Gallup, less of a priority than the possibility that the estate tax might be reinstated as promised, restoring an average 20 percent effective tax rate on the heirs of the very wealthiest dead Americans.
The unemployment rate is 9.6 percent.
The estate tax affects 0.24 percent of American estates.
There is a pretty good chance, at any time, that any given American might suddenly find himself or herself among that 9.6 percent without a job.
There is almost no chance, at any time, than any given American not already belonging to the privileged classes with estates large enough to owe estate taxes will ever even get close to joining that 0.24 percent.
And yet, according to Gallup, the abolition of the estate tax is widely viewed as a higher priority than the survival of more than 10 million people for whom jobs do not exist.
This notion of priority cannot be the result of self-interest. Nor is it the product of altruism. No moral framework I am familiar with will produce such a response. It does not arise from any coherent idea of justice, or fair play, or equal treatment or prudence.
So where does such a response come from?
He argues that this self-destructive, harmful-of-others, crabs-in-a-bucket behavior is best explained by "Friedrich Nietzsche in his role as psychologist of human ressentiment":
Nietzsche talked about the losers — or rather, about those who thought they were the losers. He looked at those who saw themselves as week and poor — rather than strong and rich — and saw trouble. "Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment," he wrote. It drives us to madness.
Think of that when you consider this: The U.S. unemployment rate is stubbornly high, yet aid from a federal government that can borrow at unbelievably good terms could allow states to maintain their levels of public employment, and those public workers would then spend their incomes and so boost the number of private-sector jobs as well. But the voters are against that. No, they say. We have lost our jobs. It is only fair that those who work for the government lose their jobs as well — never mind that each public-sector job lost triggers the destruction of yet another private-sector job. It's the underlying logic that has led to a wave of austerity across Europe that is now headed for America's shores. And it's the same logic that says, "It is only fair that homeowners lose their money" — never mind that everyone's home prices will suffer. What does not kill me makes me stronger.
Because some are unemployed, unemployment is good — we need more of it. Because some have lost their wealth, wealth destruction is good — we need more of it. That is a psychology that Friedrich Nietzsche would have understood all too well.
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