A Matter of Degree
earners by promising to despoil capitalists, to form alliances with ethnic, economic, social, and even criminal groups that can "deliver the vote." His release from the social sanctions of the small community makes of him an entrepreneur in power.
His business, however, cannot flourish without resources, and his resources are determined by what he can extract from producers. In the smaller community the producers, being relatively few, can scrutinize his expenditures closely and make their opposition to taxes felt. In the larger community, consisting of a number of self-centered pressure groups, this surveillance of his operations tends to disappear; people are too busy with their private affairs to pay much attention to the complexity of public affairs. The tendency then is to identify public affairs with their own interests or with the interests of the group to which they adhere. Under the circumstances, the political person is able to draw up a convincing bill of particulars which he calls the "need of social services" but which on examination becomes a list of expenditures from which various dominant groups or individuals in the community hope to improve their own circumstances. The opposition to expenditures and taxes is thus weakened, and his opportunity improves.
Every budget is a compromise of interests. Every tax bill, even in the smaller cities, contains a promise to levy with a heavier hand on one group of citizens than another, with the implied intention of favoring some of the citizenry at the expense of others. In the rhetoric of politics there is no more compelling peroration than "ability to pay"; it is compelling because it touches to the quick the very common sin of covetousness, because it appeals to the envy and jealousy that few men are rid of. To be sure, the insinuation of "ability to pay"
