Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

388 ENVY AS TAX COLLECTOR
to confiscation of property. Such measures are usually introduced by
socialist governments in response to the express wishes of intellectuals
(e.g., proponents such as Harold J. Laski and Sidney and Beatrice
Webb), but also in the belief that they correspond to the insatiable
emotional need of the electorate at large. In this way, very similar
taxation rates were applied in both Great Britain and the United States,
in spite of the fact that the observable envy in lower-income groups in the
United States, as we now know, was hardly comparable with that in Great
Britain, and even less so after 1950.
In democracies such as the United States, Western Germany and
Switzerland progression of income tax has now become less harsh; this
is not so in Great Britain, Austria or Sweden. In the former countries at
least, it is no longer a main subject of controversy, though there, too, it
represents consideration of presumed envy in the majority, and not any
fiscal necessity. Had national income tax in Sweden (1960) been limited
to 25 per cent, the exchequer would have lost only 2 per cent of all tax
revenues. A top rate of 45 per cent-instead of the existing 65 per
cent-would have entailed a loss of only 45 million kroner (out of a total
revenue of 16.5 thousand million). In the United States (1962),
progressive income tax over 30 per cent brought in only 6.4 per cent,
over 50 per cent only 1.9 per cent and over 65 per cent a mere 0.6 per cent
of the total revenue. Rates of 75 per cent to 91 per cent yielded only 0.2
per cent. Yet not even conservative governments, when they succeed a
left-wing administration, are able as a rule to do much towards dismantling
this steep progression. They are too afraid of the envy they
suppose this would arouse in the electorate.
If proponents of extreme progression are asked for their reasons, most
of them will as often as not actually admit that it is fiscally meaningless.
The reason for steep tax rates is said to be the ideal of equality, which has
to be pursued, if only symbolically. If this argument is demolished (by
reference to the steady demand for certain luxury goods and to the
similar consumer habits in the middle and upper classes which is very
apparent at least in the United States), the invariable retort is that
extreme progression militates against unequal distribution of power. For
it is wrong that one citizen should have at his sole disposal the power that
goes with considerable property. In this, the egalitarian naturally overlooks
the fact that the moderately paid Member of Parliament, official or