How to be a guilty millionaire?

How to be a guilty millionaire?
Financial Times

President George W. Bush knew from the start that his tax cut plan might face some opposition. What he probably did not expect was that the charge against him would be led by America's multimillionaires, a group he thought he was helping. Last week a number of these multimillionaires launched their battle against the president by publicly assaulting an obscure and relatively unimportant corner of his programme: the abolition of America's inheritance tax, the estate tax. The most outspoken of the group was that emblem of free market virtue, Warren Buffett himself. While the attackers are concentrating on blocking estate tax abolition, it is already clear that their campaign may jeopardise other, more significant changes, such as the president's across-the-board rate cut.

That the anti-wealth hostility would be so strong, and that it would emanate from this particular group, may seem somewhat surprising. After all, Americans today are generally more comfortable with the idea of wealth than they were in other periods.

The nation's best-seller lists are replete with how to books on money accumulation. The best known of these is The Millionaire Next Door, the thesis of which is that anyone can become a millionaire, if he emulates millionaires' habits (invest: do not waste cash on flashy cars). Society has elevated Mr Buffett and other entrepreneurs to the level of national icons.

So why is the animus so strong? The answer lies in America's 1990s prosperity. It has been so sustained as to change Americans' attitudes towards money, giving rise to what may be called the new guilt culture.

The new guilt predominates among people who have done well and now feel compelled to pay society back, both through philanthropy and by offering political support for economic redistribution.

The culture abhors classic Republican free market thinking as unfair, extreme and declasse. The newly guilty find great appeal in the idea of ``dying broke'', they want to purge themselves and their children of the sin of money. Even though they themselves have benefited from the social utility of the private sector, they feel their legacy will be most socially useful in public and collective hands.

American has always had its share of guilty wealthy. Recall the ``limousine liberals'' of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Many of this well to do crowd were heirs. Some of their hostility was psychological. They wanted to avenge themselves upon their parents, or at least show them up.

The new guilt culture is a bit different. Its members start out as middle class children. They tend to divide their lives. They devote the first stage of their careers to making money in the most exemplary and aggressive fashion. Then, in mid-life, they enter a second stage, repudiating or ignoring their own shark like behaviour.

The lottery-style mood of the internet boom helped to fortify the new guilt culture. Many of the newly wealthy accumulated their wealth in months, or years. It did not take them the lifetime that was the norm for fortune-building. They fear they do not deserve their money.

In last year's elections, the new guilt culture buoyed the Democrats, giving them victories in former Republican strongholds such as California. They were even a few explicit new guilt candidates -- self-made millionaires who spent their money to campaign for less capitalism and more redistribution. The popular victory of Vice-President Gore was to some extent a new guilt phenomenon: the newly guilty liked his focus on ``doing our share''....

Excerpted from `The guilty conscience of America's millionaires', by Amity Shales; `The Financial Times' February 20