Jonathan Chait versus Objectivism

Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at The New Republic, just wrote the best kind of book review: one which uses the book(s) it ostensibly reviews to talk about bigger ideas.  In this case, the deserving victim is Ayn Rand.  It’s possible that Chait’s review is a collection of facts entirely gleaned from the two books he reviews, though it is unclear how much of the review is and how much represents original research.

The whole review is worth a read, especially its clear linkage of Objectivism and modern Republicans’ fear of taxes.  Rand’s fait accompli, according to Chait, is that she linked the economic and the moral: money is good as a means to an end, therefore it is good as an end in itself.  Reducing an individual’s money (through stealing, e.g. taxes) is therefore unequivocally immoral.      (Her real accomplishment was convincing normal people of views that were products of an experience, the Bolshevik Revolution coupled with withholding parents, unavailable to her most Americans.)  Money quote:

The final feature of Randian thought that has come to dominate the right is its apocalyptic thinking about redistribution. Rand taught hysteria. The expressions of terror at the “confiscation” and “looting” of wealth, and the loose talk of the rich going on strike, stands in sharp contrast to the decidedly non-Bolshevik measures that they claim to describe. The reality of the contemporary United States is that, even as income inequality has exploded, the average tax rate paid by the top 1 percent has fallen by about one-third over the last twenty-five years. Again: it has fallen. The rich have gotten unimaginably richer, and at the same time their tax burden has dropped significantly. And yet conservatives routinely describe this state of affairs as intolerably oppressive to the rich. Since the share of the national income accruing to the rich has grown faster than their average tax rate has shrunk, they have paid an ever-rising share of the federal tax burden. This is the fact that so vexes the right.