It?s a question left-leaning liberals must ask themselves continually, since they?ve not been able to secure ironclad political majorities for policies that soak the rich in order to redistribute those riches to others.
William Voegeli takes a stab at answering the question in an article for the latest Commentary (not yet posted online):
I have an unproven, untested, and perhaps untestable hypothesis for why so many middle- and working-class Americans confound liberals by siding, often angrily, with the Stinking Rich against the Beneficent Reformers. It is that [a] version of the trickle-down theory, in which tax increases supposed to be confined to the prosperous are going to wind up imposed on the precarious, is more broadly applicable and resonant. In this view, the ?principle? that rich people should be forced to surrender some of their wealth, just because they are deemed to have too much, is eventually going to justify policies that force non-rich people to surrender some of their wealth, just because. ?
Every redistributive scheme ? rests on the planted axiom that private property is only provisionally and transiently private. It wasn?t the ?dream factor? that caused pathetically deluded factory workers and clerks, imagining they might win the lottery, to oppose George McGovern?s plan to confiscate inheritances he considered too large. It was small-r republican disdain for the idea that government should be empowered to confiscate wealth lawfully acquired and held. And it was the companion fear that if asserting that some people have too much money is the justification for such confiscation, other pretexts targeting other citizens will be waiting in the wings. Call it the nightmare factor.
