Vandalism And America’s Anti-Business Climate – OpEd |
When people talk about America’s “anti-business climate,” they frame it as a policy problem, centered on high taxes, suffocating regulations, and labor mandates. But America’s anti-business climate is also a cultural disposition. Long before any legislation passes, a deeper attitude takes hold that frames wealth producers as, at best, lucky beneficiaries of an unfair system, and at worst, moral wrongdoers who have taken more than they deserve. Once that premise is accepted, a troubling chain reaction follows. If success is illegitimate, then harms committed against successful people and businesses begin to feel justified. Vandalism becomes “punching up”; theft becomes “redistribution”; and other street-level maladies are similarly rationalized.
Whether this mindset originates in culture and seeps into politics, or vice versa, is a chicken-and-egg question. In practice, the two reinforce each other. Political rhetoric demonizes wealth, cultural resentment intensifies, and politicians respond to that resentment, resulting in disorder.
No state better embodies this dynamic than California.
At a policy level, California checks every box associated with hostility toward business. The state has a tough regulatory regime, and the highest top marginal income tax rate in the nation. Now there is a ballot measure that proposes a “wealth tax” of 5% on anyone worth $1 billion or more, which has already caused several billionaires, including