The World's Single Most Destructive Thought

I ran into this post on a blog called I Luv SA. When I read the opening sentence, I realized that the blogger had perfectly encapsulated a specific worldview. "I am poor because you are rich."

This is a worldview that is gaining increasing currency in American politics and policy today. Whenever I read about concerns over increasing income inequality, and how the top 10% is grabbing all the economic gains, this destructive thought is underlying those concerns.

In college I took a seminar in Comparative Economics, taught by Franco Modigliano, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. If I had known he was going to win the Nobel Prize, I probably wouldn't have cut class as often as I did.

Anyway, in one of the class sessions I did attend, he spent most of the time demolishing Marx's economic theories. He showed how, over the last century, various economists had pointed out how wrong Marx's theories were.

Most of the arguments against Marx were fairly technical, and to tell you the truth, I don't remember a one of them. But the class did make an immpact on me. After spending most of the class knocking down Marxism, Professor Modigliano then provided the insight that has stuck with me over the last thirty years: "The important thing about Marxism is not that it is correct. The important thing is that every generation has to prove it false all over again."

"I am poor because you are rich." It is a wonderfully seductive idea. It absolves me of all responsibility, justifies any actions I take against you.

It just happens to be completely wrong.