An Appeal to the Republican-Supporting Plutocrats of America

OK. It appears likely that you will “win” this round. It appears more likely than not that the tax “reform“ bill will pass, and thus that you will redistribute an extra 0.5 percent of national income from the bottom 90% to your 0.1%-0.01%—depending on how exclusively you define yourselves—selves. That will move your share of America’s resources devoted to satisfying your desires up to 5-10%, from a baseline of back in the 1970s of 1.5-3%.

Nearly all of your children will be fellow plutocrats. Many of your grandchildren will be plutocrats. But odds are more than half of your great grandchildren will not.

Since, as far as your needs and desires are concerned, your money is simply a way of keeping score, shouldn’t you be focusing more of your energy and attention on making a better America for those of your great grandchildren who will not be plutocrats to live it? Yes. And you are doing a very lousy job of that.

Moreover, you are also doing a profoundly lousy job at creating America in which your grandchildren those of your great grandchildren who will be plutocrats will be secure. Respect for the rule of law and confidence that the distribution of property is not grossly unfair and grossly rigged are essential protective supports for wealth. In their absence, the only protection for wealth is political influence. And political influence is always evanescent.

In the America the politicians you support are building, it may well become the case that one day your grandchildren are in the center of a web of political influence, and the next day they will find themselves not: Some of them will be involuntary guests at the Wichita Ritz-Carlton, The rest will try to make a run for it in the Learjet, or in the rubber boat.

So is it really wisdom on your part to want to win this round?

To be blunt: a social democratic middle-class society is much better society in which to have a large stock of entrepreneurial, inherited, or rent-derived wealth than is a communist society. But it is also a much friendlier society to the wealthy than is a fascist society. And social democracy and fascism—hard or, if you are lucky, soft—are the only options the future will allow: tertium non datur.

The political descendants of the politicians today you support who lead chants of “lock her up“ will be the greatest threat to the liberty, the wealth, and perhaps even the lives of those of your grandchildren and great grandchildren who are plutocrats. Look ahead into the future a little bit. Do not focus on the pile of moolah under your nose.

It did not take long for the breakdown of elite political norms provoked by the desire of the political military plutocrats of the Roman Republic to aggrandize the benefits of the post Hannibal creation of the empire to lead the vultures home to roost. In Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica led a mob of senators into the street, shouting "Now that the consul has betrayed the state, let every man who wishes to uphold the laws follow me!” to murder the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and annul the Lex Sempronia Agraria as too great a distribution of the profits of empire away from the oligarchy. Ten years later Lucius Opimius armed himself with the legal figleaf of the Senatus Consultum Ultimum before murdering Tiberius's brother Gaius and 3000 of Gaius’s affinity. Thus was the Roman Republic set on to the “why speak of laws? we carry swords” road of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Caesar, and Octavian—and that road ended at a place where the wealthy found themselves attainted and executed at the pleasure of the princeps in order to fund bribes to praetorians.

You do not have to continue to support forces increasing the chances of such a future for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Think about it. Think about the Ritz-Carlton Riyadh today.