December 27, 2015

The internet is a marvel. Search engines allow us to pull up an incredible range of material in seconds and, even more mysteriously, someone has made that information available to our searches. Recently I was musing about elitism, and the phrase "a real superiority of mind" drifted into my memory. As my gray matter is not as organized or agile as it once was, I could not place the words, apart from remembering that some character was justifying himself through them. I decided to google the phrase and, after I typed it into the search box, the program inserted "where there is" in front of it. One click immediately provided numerous references to the source, Mr. Darcy replying to Elizabeth Bennett, who had suggested that pride might be a failing: "Where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation." I should have remembered, but it’s good to know that the system will do it for me when I fail.

Our supposedly democratic society increasingly is dominated by an elite, not one of birth or of class in the usual sense, but of wealth. Actually, that isn’t quite accurate, because many who are wealthy have become that way because we have already decided that they are of the elite, and accordingly reward them generously. Film actors are examples, and athletes’ salaries are especially absurd, but there is some aspect of competition for unusual talent in those fields. The puzzle, to me, is our attitude toward and valuation of executives. Their salaries are ridiculously large, and collusion on boards of directors doesn’t explain the phenomenon, which is found in public as well as private employment. Often it has little relationship to results and can’t be explained by assuming that there is a small pool of qualified individuals. We simply have created a new nobility. 

There is much complaint, legitimately, about the increasing disparity of wealth, but so long as we continue to encourage huge paychecks, we won’t do anything about it. A broad cultural change isn’t likely, at least in the short term, so a way to ameliorate this, as well as a step toward balancing the budget, is a return to a fair, democratic income tax. Real progressivity is one requirement; another is elimination of various loopholes which favor the wealthy. However, any such change, unfortunately, also requires a species of cultural change: the election of progressives. But running on a platform of raising taxes often is fatal because people have been taught to believe that any increase in taxes, even directed toward someone else, somehow will injure them — don’t punish job-creators! — and, of course, government is evil. No matter where we try to attack the problem, changing attitudes is necessary. In terms of the election, Senator Sanders looks the most likely to accomplish that.