These “Patriotic Millionaires” are surely the most insufferable people on the planet. They regularly take out adverts, sign letters, and sponsor campaigns urging their governments to tax them more, thus indulging in a uniquely hideous blend of conspicuous consumption and virtue-signaling. “Look at me! I am both very rich and a public-spirited soul!”
Like so many movements, good and bad, this one started in the United States and spread to the rest of the Anglosphere. Founded in 2010 to campaign, in effect, against the Bush tax cuts, it soon picked up support from publicity-hungry celebs, guilt-ridden nepo babies, and CEOs who wanted to improve their images. Now it has inspired a chapter of equivalent half-wits in Britain, led by the former soccer player Gary Lineker, who made a lot of money as a commentator.
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“We can afford it,” they smugly declared in a letter published on Thursday. OK, chaps, good for you. So why not pay now? Britain has a mechanism that allows taxpayers to chip in extra if they wish. Yet these self-righteous nincompoops would rather tell us than they want to pay more than actually, you know, pay more.
The same is true in the U.S. Under federal law (31 U.S.C. § 3113), the Treasury may accept unconditional gifts to reduce the public debt. They are known as Gifts to the United States, and people can make them publicly or anonymously. Perhaps some of the Patriotic Millionaires do quietly make these payments. Perhaps Morris Pearl, Erica Payne, Abigail Disney, and John Driscoll are cheerfully topping up the Treasury without letting anyone know. But the sanctimonious tone of their public utterances makes me doubt it.
As a rule, I urge rich people — and, indeed, anyone else — to support good causes of their own choice rather than handing their resources over to an inert state bureaucracy. With the exceptions of defense and criminal justice, which, by their nature, need to be administered on a national basis, almost every function that the modern state has taken on is discharged better by the private or charitable sectors: health, education, the relief of poverty, culture, transport, you name it.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, put it well in a sermon in 1789: “Get all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” Unlike the preening plutocrats who sign these letters, he wanted results. He urged his followers to be moral rather than moralistic, to do the right thing ourselves rather than ostentatiously nag others.
These days, such thinking is almost incomprehensible. Since the spread of smartphones from around 2012, holding the right opinions has counted for vastly more than doing the right thing. You can be forgiven for cheating on your spouse or underpaying your taxes. You can come back from committing a serious crime after serving your sentence. But woe betide you if you say the wrong thing about, say, race relations.
In a largely post-religious age, the idea that words count for more than deeds has itself taken on a certain superstitious force. You might give to charity. You might work in a soup kitchen. You might volunteer to teach English to poor immigrants. But express the wrong opinion on the hot-button issue of the day — it could be the role of multinationals, the status of transgender people, or anything else — and none of this will count. Even using the wrong word will damn you in the eyes of a world that no longer recognizes ethical behavior.
How should governments respond to the Patriotic Millionaires? What, more broadly, should they do about the actors and sports stars and other flaneurs who airily tell us that higher taxes — as if taxes were not already at a level that previous generations would have regarded as impossible — will make everyone happier?
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I have an idea. Governments should impose a special “fame tax”. The tax would apply to anyone with an enviably cool job: movie stars, TV anchors, pop singers — anyone, basically, who gets paid for doing what the rest of us would regard as having fun. The tax would be high, perhaps 50% of all earnings from the cool job. It would, however, be wholly voluntary. The only thing that the celebrities would need to do in order not to pay it is to sign a public declaration declaring that they were choosing to opt out. That might make them think twice before telling the world that they are not taxed enough.
Oh, and for anyone who has signed one of these Patriotic Millionaires declarations, there should be a surplus charge of, say, a million dollars a year. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your patriotism.
