Growing prosperity seems to give an ever-wider range of people a sense of power and independence. It encourages a special form of self-esteem that comes when people recognize themselves as central causes of the particular lives they are living – rather than being in any way the ward of others, no matter how well meaning, other-regarding or wise those others might be. In many countries, citizens are increasingly resentful about having economic decision-making power taken from them by the planners of the social-democratic state. In ways that are difficult fully to understand, prosperity makes the personal exercise of economic liberty more rather than less valuable to many liberal citizens.

John Tomasi (2012). Free Market Fairness, p. 61