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The Morality of Money: American Attitudes Toward Wealth and the Income Tax

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The Morality of Money: American Attitudes Toward Wealth and the Income Tax Indiana Law Journal Volume 70 Issue 1 Article 5 Winter 1994 The Morality Of Money: American Attitudes Toward Wealth and the Income Tax Marjorie E. Kornhauser Tulane Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj Part of the Taxation-Federal Commons, and the Tax Law Commons Recommended Citation Kornhauser, Marjorie E. (1994) "The Morality Of Money: American Attitudes Toward Wealth and the Income Tax," Indiana Law Journal: Vol. 70 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol70/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Law Journal by an authorized editor of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Morality Of Money: American Attitudes Toward Wealth and the Income Taxt MARJORIE E. KORNHAUSER* Wealth fascinates Americans. Alexis de Tocqueville said in 1835: "'The love of wealth is... at the bottom of all that the Americans do. "" In reality, American feelings about wealth are much more complex and ambiguous than Tocqueville claims. Americans fear and disdain wealth as well as love it.' We differentiate types of money and wealth, despite the economists' claims that all money is fungible. In particular, Americans imbue earned income with an aura of morality and virtuousness that unearned income, particularly inherited income, does not have.' Consequently, we Americans admire the person who acquires her wealth by means of her own talent and industry, while at the t Q 1993 by Marjorie E. Komhauser. * Professor of Law, Tulane Law School. I would like to thank Professors Keith Werhan and James Wilson and my research assistants Ramsen Betfarhad and Wayne Ussery. Thanks also to Tulane Law School for a research grant which supported tis research. 1. KEvIN PHiLiPS, THE PoLITICS OF THE RICH AND POOR: WEALTH AND THE AMERuCAN ELECTORATE IN THE REAGAN APTERmATH 36 (1990) (quoting a Tocqueville observation of American culture). 2. American society's ambivalent attitude is reflected in various adages: "Money isn't everything"; "It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one"; "The best things in life are free"; "Wealth means power, it means leisure; it means ability"; and "Money is the root of all evil." Many of these adages and others are cited in A DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN PROVERBS (Wolfgang Mieder ed., 1992). This anthology contains more than three pages of proverbs indexed under "money," id. at 415-18, more than one page indexed under "penny," id at 457-58, and more than one page indexed under "wealth." Id at 645-46. 3. "Earned" income is income obtained through personal effort. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 911(dX2) (Supp. V 1993). The effort may be difficult or easy; mental, physical, or mindless; skilled or unskilled; highbrow or lowbrow, but in all events, the effort is a critical element in the production of the income. Earned income is a return on a person's human capital. "Unearned" income, in contrast, is a return on our nonhuman capital: stock, bonds, savings accounts, and real and personal property. Income may be a mixture of the earned and the unearned; it may be the product of labor and capital intertwined; or it may be the result (in whole or in part) of luck-a windfall, in short. The ultimate source of unearned income may in fact be earned income. For example, this year Laurie Liegl receives $800 interest on a $I0,000 bond. This $800 is unearned income even though she purchased the bond with earned income-money she received for performing her job as an attorney. William Wealthy's bond, on the other hand, may have been purchased with unearned income profits from a nonworking oil and gas interest which he owns, but that interest may have been purchased with earned income. Wealthy may have purchased his bond with money he inherited from his grandfather, who inherited it from his grandfather, and so on. Not only is the money used to purchase the bond unearned income for Wealthy, or his grandfather, but it is not even income, in Wealthy's hands, from a tax standpoint Money may be differentiated on other grounds as well. The Swiss prefer their money crisp and clean. "'One of the real pleasures in everyday life is to hold a crisp, new bank note in your hand."' Bhushan Bahree, They Can Tell Themselves They Needn 'tFret About Filthy Lucre, WALL ST. J.,Mar. 30, 1993, at BI (quoting Fritz Blocher, a Zurich social worker). The Swiss maintain this crisp money by having the world's highest replacement rate of money. Id. They maintain a crisp money supply mainly to prevent forgeries, but also for "image" reasons. The central bank's chief cashier states: "'The fust thing you see when you arrive in a country is the money ....It's like a national identity."' Id.; see also Help Wanted: Immaculate Person Needed to Handle Lots of Money, WALL ST. J., July 11, 1994, at BI (noting that San Francisco's Westin St. Francis hotel washes all coins that it gives as change). INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 70:119 same time, we distrust (though perhaps also envy) the idle rich who live off of their clipped coupons. Unearned income, however, also has a positive moral side, particularly when it is the return on earned income that has been saved and invested rather than spent. Frequently, society views saving, as opposed to consuming, as the better choice not just from an economic standpoint, but also from a moral one. The saver is virtuous; the spender a wastrel. The saver's virtuous aura extends to the earnings derived from his saving. The unearned income, the accumula- ted wealth, is a visible sign of his grace. The virtuousness of saving and the saver is frequently contrasted with the profligacy of consumption and the spender. American attitudes about money, spending, and wealth are complicated because money and wealth are not mere commodities. They also signify deep- seated, complex values and beliefs about morality, equality, and the American system of government.4 The basic traditions of the United States extol individualism and the sacred right to property while simultaneously pro- claiming the equality of man and government by and for equals. The former concepts inevitably result in unequal accumulations of wealth, while the latter argue for a more equal distribution. America's cyclical history of periods of intense capitalism (as in the 1920's or 1980's) alternating with periods emphasizing greater equality (as in the New Deal of the 1930's and 1940's) reflects these contradictory attitudes. These attitudes about wealth have profound social and political effects ranging from the determination of popular American heroes to shaping governmental social policies and affecting legal theories. The battleground is everywhere, including the tax system. This Article focuses on the United States' income tax system as it reflects our nation's ambivalence about earned and unearned income, saving and spending, and wealth in general. An ideal comprehensive income tax, the 4. Lewis Lapham states: We like to assign spiritual meanings to the texts of money .... What interests [Lapham] is not so much our vanity and greed (vanity and greed being as common among Baits or the Kurds as among Texans), but the place of money in the American imagination. What do we expect of it, and what do we think it means? How does it come to pass that we can transform a stock market trade into a symbol of salvation or a grocer's bill into "the romance, the poetry of our age"? LEWIS H. LAPHAM MONEY AND CLASS IN AMERICA: NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS ON OUR CIVIL RELIGION 4 (1988). For a fascinating discussion of how Americans personalize and differentiate money, see VIVIANA A. ZELIZER, T)HE SOCIAL MEANIO OF MONEY (1994). Lapham states that foreigners mistakenly think that Americans are greedy materialists. LAPHAM, supra, at 57. To him, America's obsession with money and wealth has nothing to do with consumption for its own sake, but with "what the act of consumption represents; it is the existential correlative that matters, the demonstration of what Thorstein Veblen called 'pecuniary decency' and the proof of belonging to what John Calvin called 'the company of the elect."' let at 58. Money and consumption are how individuals define themselves and their status in a constantly changing world. Id For an examination of books that discuss this fascination with wealth and what it represents, see NELSON W. ALDRICH JR., OLD MONEY (1988) (exploring the psychology of the moneyed class); LucIus BEEBE, THE BIG SPENDERS (1966) (examining classic rich and famous people such as the Vanderbilts in a print version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous). 1994] MORALITY OF MONEY theoretical basis of our present income tax, treats all income equally, regardless of its source or its use. Nevertheless, the current income tax laws do not treat all income equally. For example, the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 ("Code") contains provisions that favor earned income (e.g., section 32, the earned income credit for certain low income taxpayers),' as well as provisions that favor unearned income, (e.g., the preferential capital gains rate).' Similarly, the Code has provisions that favor savings, (e.g., qualified pension plans or like-kind exchanges),7 and provisions that encourage certain types of spending, (e.g., the mortgage interest deduction).8 A close look at the basic structure of the Code-the tax base and the tax rates-reveals contradictory influences.
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