Why doesn’t the bottom 51% of a democracy simply expropriate the rich?, Eric Falkenstein asks:
A bottom 51% coalition isn’t effective because they are not as skillful at political activity: someone has to write the speeches, write initial checks, and those people usually are above average in economic standing. The top 51% would be a good coalition, but as the top 10% make so much money they are ripe for expropriating. Thus the most logical coalition in [Milton] Friedman’s argument is from the lower middle class to the upper middle class, feeding off the the very rich and very poor.
As depressing as Friedman’s argument may be, there are worse things than tyranny of the middle class: a coalition of the elites with the lowest classes. We have legislators bestowing all sorts of sinecures, pensions, and welfare on the masses, creating a coalition of the unproductive, and they grow in popularity and power by granting more entitlements. The end game is bankruptcy.
We have replaced Say’s Law — that supply creates its own demand — with the Liberal’s Law — that demand creates its own supply.
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If you read Roman history, you see the constant struggles between the patricians, equestrians, and plebeians, questions about who is considered a citizen, and finally the apotheosis of the Emperor. There was a general trend from an aristocracy that built the Republic, to the end where a god-like emperor ruled with the support of the masses who were placated with free grain and big coliseum events. It was a barbell strategy, and was unstable, always extending.
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So, perhaps every society has a different optimal coalition at various times, and currently I don’t see what will keep it from bringing everything down to the coalition of a few elites, sincerely deluded as to their belief in the virtue of government spending, combined with a vast entitlement mob at the bottom, all literally feeding off the middle class. It sounds a lot like South America.
The 51% isn’t stable. If you look at the difference between the (say) 40% and 60%, there’s not really that much difference. The 40% is as likely to associate himself with the 60% as with the 20%.
IOW, his political loyalty will be suspect. He’s a kulak.
Where the dynamics change is when people begin to thing that mobility is likely to be downwards, not upwards. There’s some hint that this is becoming more widespread, but the reaction is more likely to be rage and scorn at an incompetent elite as it is as the 60% guy.