In Praise of Rich Liberals

Some Republicans are making detailed lists of Nancy Pelosi's assets -- the resort property, the vineyard, the South Sea Tahitian pearls -- to note that she is a "rich liberal." Rich liberals, according to the rap, are "out of touch" with the ordinary folk they profess to serve. Representing hyper-liberal San Francisco, the new House speaker is used to getting the same guff from the left. How can she help working people, the hostile question goes, while inhabiting a private world of pampered wealth?

Well, how did FDR? Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on an estate and taught by private tutors. He later attended Groton, a fancy prep school, then Harvard. Not only did he marry within his class, he married within his family. His voice was the song of upper-class privilege.

No one imagined Roosevelt to be "of the people." What mattered to Depression-era Americans was that he was "for" the people. His New Deal made jobs, created the Social Security program and raised taxes on the wealthy. Was FDR a rich liberal? Yes, and by lifting the poor from their despair, he saved the capitalists, as well.

The right often labels rich liberals as hypocrites for beating up on their affluent neighbors while enjoying the high life themselves. Yes, some rich liberals make fools of themselves, spouting silly slogans of the trendy left. But the good ones are quite sophisticated: They don't criticize wealthy people for being rich. They criticize them for not sharing.

Many rich people become liberals -- unlike right-wing serfs brainwashed to believe that were it not for taxes, they'd all be millionaires -- because they understand where the money really comes from. Great wealth often relies on luck, an inheritance or lobbying Washington for special deals.

The enlightened rich know that their good fortune wasn't a one-man show, but a big production built on a cast of millions. They must thank not only their workers, but the soldiers defending their interests abroad, teachers, farmers and all who keep the American enterprise going.

"I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned," investment genius Warren Buffet said in a television interview. "If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you'll find out how much this talent is going to produce," which is not much.

Buffet manfully paid his taxes and still had billions left. In 1993, when his company, Berkshire Hathaway, had to pay nearly $400 million in taxes, he said, "I have absolutely no complaints." And he later expressed contempt for investment-tax cuts that had him paying a smaller portion of his income in taxes than his secretary.

Robert Rubin, the Goldman Sachs exec who became Clinton's treasury secretary, understood that what investors really needed was assurance that America planned to pay its bills. So in 1993 he backed the tax hike on the top 1 percent of earners. That 1 percent did wonderfully well in the boom that followed.

Republicans like to attribute the '90s bull market to the investment tax cuts they pushed through in 1997. In fact, between 1993 and the passage of the investor tax break, the Dow had already more than doubled.

Nancy Pelosi clearly enjoys the best in tailoring and dentistry. Rich liberals like having money as much as anyone else. They just don't need to have all of it. Go ahead and call Pelosi an elitist divorced from the lives of working people. Working people obviously didn't see it that way last November, and her legislative agenda for the first 100 hours should not change their minds.