It’s dangerous for a republic to operate on the basis of the lower classes voting themselves a larger share of the earnings of the upper classes. It’s one thing to appeal to a sense of noblesse oblige and quite another to treat others’ wealth as a piggy bank to be raided at will.
Which brings to mind this quote from Alexis de Tocqueville’s still-relevant Democracy in America 
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
And this quote which has been attributed to Scottish lawyer Alexander Fraser Tyler:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
Update: As Kip notes, the de Tocqueville quote is disputed. There are also doubts about the Tyler quote. James Joyner’s quote, though, is genuine.
March 9th, 2009 at 3:06 am
Dammit Doug, don’t go confusin’ good folks by quotin’ that queer Frenchman or some dude who wore a skirt.
They both lost — the French to Euro-socialism and the Scots to western tradition.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:01 am
That’s a negatory on de Tocqueville:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville#Misattributed
(I almost fell into the same trap with the purported “Tytler quote” a few days ago.)