In view of what they hear from the experts, the people cannot be blamed for
their ignorance and their helpless confusion. If an average housewife struggles
with her incomprehensibly shrinking budget and sees a tycoon in a resplendent
limousine, she might well think that just one of his diamond cuff links would
solve all her problems. She has no way of knowing that if all the personal
luxuries of all the tycoons were expropriated, it would not feed her
family—and millions of other, similar families—for one week; and that the
entire country would starve on the first morning of the week to follow . . . .
How would she know it, if all the voices she hears are telling her that we must
soak the rich?
No one tells her that higher taxes imposed on the rich (and the semi-rich) will
not come out of their consumption expenditures, but out of their investment
capital (i.e., their savings); that such taxes will mean less investment, i.e.,
less production, fewer jobs, higher prices for scarcer goods; and that by the
time the rich have to lower their standard of living, hers will be gone, along
with her savings and her husband’s job—and no power in the world (no
economic power) will be able to revive the dead industries (there will be no
such power left).