The Economics of Envy: A blind spot? Or the dog whistle of the bourgeoisie?

At Marquette University’s On the Issues forum last Monday, Mike Gousha, without throwing a hardball, asked Congressman Ryan to explain, and maybe defend, his comments on the “economics of envy.” And a very peculiar defense he made.

The first thing he said is clearly wrong: the “envious” classes do not drive and did not invent class conflict – and the latter certainly not lately. Class conflict is an historical feature of every civil society, from the time when class structures were primarily social, though modern times, when they became primarily economic. Only primitive societies have social roles without having stratified social classes. Naturally, people being what they are, conflict has run unabated during that whole time, though it is less noticeable in times of prosperity or national emergency. But it takes two to tangle: no one class started it.

Next, why ascribe bad emotions to the class thus singled out as driving the conflict? If you wanted to use a loaded e-word, you could call it the “economics of exploitation” instead. And if you wanted to better express the emotion the working poor feel, you would call it the “economics of oppression,” not envy.  

That’s because people who work for a living don’t necessarily envy, to use Mr. Ryan’s example, Craig Culver. They don’t want that kind of responsibility; they know their own limitations. For the most part, they just want to work for a fair wage and go home to their families at the end of the day. You don’t have to use an emotionally loaded word at all; you can use a morally loaded word and call it the economics of injustice. A living minimum wage, that enables workers to help pay for their children’s college education and save for their own retirement, is an issue of social justice, not bad emotions.

Finally, I’m not suggesting that equality of opportunity is not a good thing or that it does not, in large measure, exist in our society. What people like the working poor, and those who sympathize with them, are saying, is that by itself it’s not enough.

This is Mr. Ryan’s blind spot. Plainly he’s out of sympathy with a class of society he can bad-mouth so plausibly. It goes with the Republican territory. Likewise, to use one of columnist Eugene Kane’s expressions, the term “economics of envy” is a dog whistle audible only to the bourgeoisie. It causes them to think of people who really are shiftless, and lump those people with people who do want to work and will work for almost any wage they are forced to accept. That makes it easier to ignore injustices to the latter.