Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” is a cautionary and satirical tale warning about the imagined future excesses of radical egalitarianism and attacks on individualism and personal excellence carried to absurd and coercive extremes.
The classic story, inducted in 2019 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, suddenly seems as relevant as recent headlines about state and federal efforts to impose unprecedented confiscatory taxation on wealthier people.
Challenging the view that everything is or should become property of the State, NR Online writer Andrew Stuttaford invokes Vonnegut’s themes in a perceptive column.
Broadening his analysis to explain how feudalism and millenarianism embraced the same false concept, Stuttaford skewers current proposals as authoritarian, counterproductive, harmful to the eco
nomy and to many millions of less-wealthy Americans and delusional in its goals.
Here’s an excerpt, framing and introducing Stuttaford’s apt reference to “Harrison Bergeron”:
“Under the “classic” feudalism introduced in England by the Normans after their hostile takeover in 1066, ownership of land and anything built upon it ultimately belonged to the crown. Movable property was a different matter. What was yours was essentially yours, if subject to levies at awkward moments. That probably means that Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks of Willian the Conqueror as having been a soft touch. Should her Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act pass (and be found to be constitutional), everything, however contingently, will become property of the state. As of late March, ten senators and 39 congresspeople had co-sponsored Warren’s bill….
“Some leftist leaders may really believe they are working toward a fairer world: Millenarianism is a seductive psychosis. However radiant (to some) this vision of the future, its promise of a preceding purge of the supposedly sinful is also part of its appeal. The spite and the jealousy displayed by wealth tax activists toward the “rich” is no less genuine for being strategically useful. They, one part of the elite (or would-be elite), see what another part has, and they crave it for themselves. They are enraged at the thought that they have been left behind by people they see as money-grubbing moral inferiors. Their egalitarianism is a tool to create a system in which they and their acolytes take the spoils.
“And then there’s “limitarianism,” the name that Belgo-Dutch philosopher Ingrid Robeyns uses for her plan to cap “the amount of wealth any one person can have.” Robeyns maintains (as related by The Atlantic’s Christine Emba in 2024) that the superrich “would be better off morally and psychologically” without their wealth. For Robeyns to appoint herself both priestess and psychiatrist is presumptuous, but it takes presumption to put a lid on the aspiration of millions.
“At this point, the ghost of Harrison Bergeron leaps into view, hotly pursued by Diana Moon Glampers, Kurt Vonnegut’s handicapper general, a job that Robeyns would relish.”
Stuttaford makes quite a few points – both empirical and philosophical – in his wide-ranging essay “Warren’s Wealth Tax and the Return of Feudalism,” which is worth reading in full on the National Review website.
But here’s one more quote from the story that highlights the dangerous inversion of American and libertarian principles of self-ownership and individual rights under a policy that basically makes citizens into feudal near-slaves:
“The extent to which such a tax would downgrade American citizens to American subjects is only underlined by the measures proposed to ensure that the “ultra millionaires” cannot escape its grip. One reason many similar taxes elsewhere have been abandoned is that they have led to exoduses of wealth and talent. But American federal taxes follow citizenship, not residence, a principle followed by no other country other than, to an extremely limited extent, Eritrea,” Stuttafort writes.
“While very few—absent savage inflation—will have to worry for now about being caught within Warren’s net, the fact that this tax is not only targeted at billionaires already sends a message. It will not be long before the definition of ultra-wealthy is defined further down, and more and more citizens find themselves caught in a tightening net.
“To start, Warren’s assertion that the tax would raise $6.2 trillion over ten years essentially rests on the assumption that those paying it would not change their behavior in response to the raid on their finances. According to research prepared by the University of Pennsylvania in 2019, the actual amount raised would be far less than Warren then claimed. The people at UPenn were not the only analysts who found that Warren’s estimates were too high, and the same is likely true today. The tax will supposedly fund “universal, affordable” childcare, expand the Child Tax Credit, lower the Medicare eligibility age to 55, establish tuition-free community college, and pay for much more besides. If revenues disappoint, will spending be cut or will taxes be increased?
“Yes, that is a rhetorical question.
“And the economic implications of Warren’s current proposal are bad enough as it is. The Wharton researchers estimated that the tax would reduce GDP growth, private capital formation, and wages. That the victims of this tax would include those that it is (nominally) meant to help will not unduly concern Warren and her team. For all the pretty talk about fighting poverty, improving education, and all the rest, wealth taxes are about power. The political rewards they deliver will be what counts. Demonizing and dehumanizing the “rich” is designed to harness populist support to the ambitions of the progressive intelligentsia, a task that may be made easier if AI wreaks havoc in the labor market.”
As the Prometheus Blog appreciation of Vonnegut’s timeless cautionary tale notes, “the genius of Vonnegut lies in his vivid scenario revealing the true horrors that materialize when ruthless and unchecked government power, reinforced by an insidious prevailing ideology, literally destroys people’s talents and lives.”
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