The Biden administration has embarked on a crusade against the unrelentingly bleak excesses of the capitalist enterprise. It vows to confront a feature of the marketplace imposed on us by avaricious pirates in control of the economy’s commanding heights: the scourge of fees associated with luxury goods.
“Biden says U.S. capitalism treats workers, consumers like ‘suckers,’” Reuters declared this week. That was how the outlet characterized what it described as President Joe Biden’s “attacks on corporate greed and power.” More specifically, the imposition of “junk fees” on consumers in the market for discretionary indulgences has captured the Democratic Party’s attention. “I’ve said before,” Biden said again, “capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation.”
Pairing the uncompromising Marxian flourishes of Slavoj Žižek with the effete tastes of the party’s donor class, Democrats are waging war on the hidden charges that producers tack onto premium goods and services. They are the champions of the frequent flier for whom fees and delays are a dreadful inconvenience. They serve as tribune for the vacationers who find themselves gouged at the hotel checkout counter. Indeed, they “aren’t even resorts,” Biden complained. The gall.
This White House and its Democratic allies have styled themselves advocates for America’s downtrodden concertgoers. “Fans are incredibly frustrated by how hard it has become to buy event tickets,” said Illinois representative Jan Schakowsky in support of a Biden administration effort to impose transparency on ticket vendors. “With every ticketing debacle, from Beyoncé to Taylor Swift, and so many more, their frustration grows.” Indeed, the simmering rage of the “Beyhive” portends a reckoning the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since the Rodeo Drive riots of 2020.
These initiatives provide Democrats with the opportunity to show off their proletarian instincts, according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “When you’re a longtime politician, and you’re in office, people think you get out of touch with their lives, you don’t have any commonsense,” she said of the anti-fee campaign. “This shows, ‘Hey, I am in touch. I do have commonsense.’” Rather, what it illustrates is the Democratic Party’s devolution from coherent political program to high-end lifestyle brand.
Bemoaning the hidden costs in air travel, hotel accommodations, and A-list concerts is the battle cry of the matriculated, beating out Gramscian missives on their iPhones from the backseat of an Uber. The president and his party are self-consciously ornamenting their crusades against the irritations that vex the disposable-income class with the language of the revolutionary vanguard. It would be a bizarre phenomenon in isolation. But in the context of other faddish left-wing causes, progressivism’s evolution into a luxury brand becomes difficult to ignore.
So many of the Left’s remedies for supposed modern maladies involve increasing the costs for consumers with jejune tastes. What else explains the effort to force you into purchasing reusable shopping bags? Certainly not the alleged environmental benefits, which are worse than negligible. The attack on cost-effective home appliances is emotionally manipulative: As all right-thinking people know, the cost of contributing to social virtue is a contemptibly small-minded consideration. It’s not the atmosphere that benefits most when your dark-blue municipality compels you to ditch your gasoline-powered lawn equipment but your neighbors, who can finally hear the ambient Mozart in the air over the roar of combustive efficiency.
The costs of their lifestyle choices present you with a barrier to entry — it’s the price of admission into the upper echelons. But those costs cannot be so high that they become obstacles to adopting the political program their lifestyles afford them. By contrast, the cost of everyone else’s day-to-day existence must grow lest the lifestyles of the hidebound hill folk appear too attractive.
This is increasingly the core message of the Democratic Party. It is the Christian Audigier limited-edition Che Guevara T-shirt, the Rage Against the Machine show brought to you by Capital One bank. It is the secret handshake that offers absolution to those of means — the enlightened embourgeoisement of paranoid class-consciousness.
“Americans are tired of being played for suckers,” the president insists. Nonsense. If the Democratic Party’s bet on the psychology of its voters is any indication, the marketplace for suckers is far from tapped.