The Wealth Re-distributor

Don't ask me why I'm still talking about Obama and the election, I swear I really don't think about it all that much now that he's won, it just seems like campaigns offer so many interesting social psychological concepts to draw on. Maybe I was also primed by the JFK quote on page 287.

Public goods dilemmas (Olson, 1965) are when everyone in a group must contribute to a common resource pool in order to keep some kind of service or benefit going. Individuals must struggle between what is good for them immediately (keeping what they have instead of contributing) with what may be good for them in the long run, which is cooperating and contributing.

Taxes are a perfect example. Towards the end of the election, right after the Joe the Plumber craze McCain sparked, the republicans began to attack Obama for a comment he made during a debate as the "Wealth Re-distributor". Once again, blue collar voters were outraged at the idea. They wanted to keep what was theirs (even though Obama said nothing about taking anything away from them). McCain argued that Obama was focused on redistributing wealth and not in creating more wealth, or growing the economy. The ironic thing is that any new wealth that is created would most likely go to the wealthy. We've seen in this country that the richer get richer and the poorer poorer.

Anyway, the people value individual property and individual gain in this country. It stems from the fact that we idealize capitalism as 'the way to go'. Why? Because anyone can become anything, even rich, in one's lifetime, no matter how poor you are born. Nowadays we can even fix looks. The point is, that the number of people who break those kinds of boundaries number about as many as win a lottery, while the rest of the people must find ways to live with the current situation of health care, mortgages, insurance, etc. What is clearly in everyone's best interest is if we re-distribute wealth, we who aren't rich aren't going to see too much more wealth period. Especially if we kept going down the path of de-regulation, lobbying, etc.

But the thing which makes a capitalist economy run is competition. Cooperation is not valued, in fact is too foreign to conceive as a plausible option. I remember hearing somewhere someone tell me that an Asian speaker once asked where in our values (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) did cooperation and harmony come in.

I guess many blue collar voters have decided it doesn't, even though the current system is what has brought them all their troubles.


Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.