Every once in a while Reihan Salam writes something so weird that I’m not sure what to make of it. Is it simply ridiculous on its face? Or is it actually a penetrating insight that merely strikes me as ridiculous because I haven’t given it enough thought? I dunno. But today, I report, you decide. Here is Reihan talking about the fact that lots of rich Danes live in other countries in order to escape Denmark’s high tax rates:
My guess is that it is somewhat less common for income-maximizing U.S. born individuals to spend the bulk of their prime-age years working in countries with a lower tax burden. And my guess is that this is beneficial in its own way, e.g., agglomerations of rich people might improve the quality of high-end consumption, driving the creation of novel experiences, enabling artists and other creative professionals to make a living doing highly specialized work (e.g., trapeze artists, experimental fiction writers, etc.).
I often think of the U.S. as creating cultural public goods for the world. Our agglomerations of the rich are a big part of it. London deserves credit as well on this front. None of this is to suggest that we
shouldn’t have more distribution. My skepticism towards dramatically increasing the amount of redistribution we engage rests on other arguments. But it is something to think about, and, I’d suggest, something we should be proud of.
Seriously? The insane wealth of socially worthless Wall Street zillionaires helps provide a living for trapeze artists and experimental fiction writers? That doesn’t even strike me as “high-end consumption,” for starters. Do rich people really go to Cirque du Soleil and read Michael Ondaatje? I suspect that better examples would be gold-plated bathroom fixtures and Damien Hirst artworks. Both of which, frankly, the world could do without pretty easily. Especially the Damien Hirst monstrosities.
Maybe this is just class envy talking, but America’s wealthy class doesn’t strike me as much like the Medicis of old, at least when it comes to support of great art. For the most part, it also doesn’t strike me that support of great art requires dense agglomerations of rich people anyway. Those agglomerations probably help support great museums and great opera houses, but that’s about it. And in any case, all that great art would still exist somewhere even if MOMA and the Met monopolized less of it.
But maybe I’m wrong! Maybe stratospheric wealth — as opposed to merely titanic wealth — really does improve high culture for everyone. Anyone want to take a crack at making a more detailed defense of this thesis?
