Survival of the Richest

In the polarized debate over government’s proper role in the economy, Robert H. Frank wants to rally American citizens to one important home truth: that all patterns of consumption and taxation are relative. The way that we dispose of our incomes and nourish collective social goods is not the fixed zero-sum proposition that partisans of the libertarian right imagine such choices to be. Rather, Frank—a Cornell University professor of economics who also writes the “Economic View” column for The New York Times—argues in The Darwin Economy that all perceived economic gains and losses are relative to each individual’s comparative standing amid equivalently consuming peers. It thus stands to reason that the pains and gains we typically assign to decisions such as taxing a given socially harmful behavior, or permitting the Bush-era tax cuts on the highest class of earners to expire, are also relative deliberative propositions, and not the confiscatory government boondoggles of libertarian fancy. After all, as Frank explained in a 2010 Times piece outlining the irrational character of anti-tax rhetoric when it’s laid alongside the actual behavior of high-earning Americans springing for top-of-the-line sports cars or potlatch-style coming-out parties for their offspring, “When others in your circle spend a lot, you must spend accordingly or else live with the disappointment that results from unmet expectations.”