Today, dweebs and lawyers run the world. I’m a marginal dweeb. Put me in Medieval society, and I’d be very ordinary. Not strong. Can’t make stuff. If the Vikings attacked my town, I’d be one of the villagers killed while running toward the forest, an arrow in my back. I’d be one of the nameless millions starved under Stalin or Mao. But as it is, because of what our current society values, I have a good place, and Google knows my name.
I think of the minions toiling in construction, logging, and in steel factories–able-bodied men, big, rough-hewn. In centuries past, they would be the warriors, the hunters–important people. Mountain Men. They didn’t need to be smart or articulate. They just needed to be big and fit. I look at some of the people in my church struggling to find a job, and with no education to put on a resume. Some of them might have made excellent Vikings.
Warren Buffet made this point to Barack Obama several years ago.
After becoming a senator, Barack Obama was summoned to Omaha by Buffet. The billionaire wanted to talk about tax policy–specifically, why Washington kept cutting his taxes. He told Obama, “If there’s class warfare going on in America, then my class is winning.”
Obama writes about the visit in The Audacity of Hope.
Buffet told him he’d done some calculations. “I’ll pay a lower effective tax rate this year than my receptionist….And if the President has his way, I’ll be paying even less.”
“Effective rate” has to do with deriving most of your income from dividends and capital gains, which Bush reduced in 2003 to a mere 15% rate. Meanwhile, the receptionist was taxed at nearly twice that rate.
Since Reagan, tax policy has increasingly favored the wealthy. It’s something Jesus would condemn, but most Christians seem okay with that, since it’s a Republican policy.
“It just makes sense that those of us who’ve benefited most from the market should pay a bigger share,” Buffet said.
And then came this wonderful insight:
I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner.
But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing–and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.
