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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsScience Explains Why The Rich Are Calling Everyone Nazis
It turns out F. Scott Fitzgerald was right about the very rich: Science confirms that they really are different from you and me.
That difference has been on uncomfortable display lately, with billionaires declaring themselves an oppressed but superheroic minority being pummeled and picked on, despite their incomes having grown exponentially over the past few decades, leaving the rest of us far behind.
Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California-Berkeley, is not surprised by these rich-guy outbursts, which have included offensive comparisons to Nazi persecution. His research shows that large gobs of money often make people drift away from the reality the rest of us know. So if some of those millionaires and billionaires seem to be completely out-of-touch rich guys lacking sympathy for their fellow man, that's because they are.
Extreme wealth in our lab makes people less compassionate, they care less about the suffering of others, theyre less empathetic, he told the Huffington Post in an interview. They tend to think that they have their tons of money because they have a stronger genetic profile. You put that together, and you get jackasses.
Studies by Keltner and others have shown that rich people are less likely to share money with a partner or feel empathy for starving children. They are more likely to take candy from a baby.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/rich-clueless-science_n_4855098.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics
question everything
(47,487 posts)until... they lose it all.
People who are sick or poor have done something wrong or, worse, deserve it.
Mr.Bill
(24,303 posts)is that they think they got rich by working harder than everyone else. If hard work always resulted in wealth, agricultural workers would be the 1%.
mikeysnot
(4,757 posts)that inherited their wealth. Didn't earn shit, born in the penthouse feeling entitled to everything.
Kock Bros
Trump
etc...
rwsanders
(2,606 posts)And if you can find a copy (netflix had it for a while) and can avoid gagging, watch the documentary "The One Percent" by one of the heirs. The ultra-wealthy are as clueless about real life as the skit someone posted a while back from Monty Python called "upperclass twit of the year"
mikeysnot
(4,757 posts)Saw it when it came out directed by Jodi Johnson... yes recommended. The scene at the golf course sticks in my head...
at least one child of privilege saw the light and new this greed was unsustainable.
7962
(11,841 posts)Working "hard", to me anyway, has a physical sound to it, which would be like farming as you mention. But I guess if you stay at the office 12 hrs a day it could be said you're working "harder" than the guy who only spends 8....
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)was his finding that the wealth is antecedent to the piggish, Romneyesque worldview. Previously-poor people tend to become entitled assholes when wealth is bestowed upon them. Thus, the wealth carries its own curse.
This whole thing strikes me as counterintuitive; I would have thought that the previously-poor would retain empathy when money is dumped on them.
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)What do you do when you have people you have never met claiming that they are a distant relative and you "owe" them a cut? If you give enough away you end up broke, and poor again. And unless you want to be poor and broke again you have to help a few people, and learn to say "Sorry, no" harden your heart against the rest.
Quote from The Wolf of Wall Street:
Let me tell you something. There's no nobility in poverty. I've been a poor man, and I've been a rich man. And I choose rich every fucking time.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)on the stock market, money they earn by buying and then using loopholes that working people cannot use, money they keep because they earn it on their money and not from their work. That would help a lot.
There's no nobility in living in wealth and not bearing a share for paying a fair share of your money for the many amenities your enjoy. If you earn 300 times the money that other people earn, you should pay the taxes that the poor who earn so little they can barely have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs would be paying if you shared a little more.
Sharing is a social skill. A rich person would be ashamed to sit at a table with a hungry poor person, order a huge, expensive meal and then sit and eat it in front of the poor person who is hungry. But he is not ashamed to live in a gated or guarded community, run his business so as to pollute the environment in places like Tennessee, West Virginia, etc. where poorer people live and then enjoy his country estate with its clean air and water.
And keeping the water and air clean requires government regulation or more conscientious management of industrial plants. The rich don't have to live on an average family income of $50,000 per year. They just should pay for the damage they do and to cover the needs of others a bit. It's called sharing. It's called taking responsibility for the damage you cause to others in your pursuit of wealth.
Think about the situation in the West Virginian chemical spill. Here we have Freedom Industries spilling poison into the water of huge numbers of people who are not wealthy. Freedom Industries was responsible whether they were negligent or not. But those who owned the facility from which the poison spilled will hide behind a corporate entity to avoid taking responsibility and paying for the damage they did. Just wait and see. The people who owned Freedom Industry and those who sold them the company shortly before the spill should have to make good the damage they did.
But they will externalize the cost of repairing the damage (assuming it can be repaired) and make the government pay for it. That's what they will do. That is why the "rich" are not so popular nowadays as they were in more innocent times. We can now see clearly and measure the havoc they cause in our world. The havoc they cause and then, like hit-and-run drivers, rush away from.
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)I'm talking about the poor person who suddenly becomes wealthy because they won the Lottery, and becomes fearful they will become poor again. Because that has happened to Lottery winners who pissed all their money away. Sorry, I did not clarify my OP.
7962
(11,841 posts)I personally know a man who won 100K on a scratchoff ticket a few yrs ago. It was the end of September. After taxes, he got 68K. He lived in a trailer park run by another guy I know. There were women and cars at his trailer EVERY day and night. Shortly after New Years, my other friend who runs the park drove in and only saw one car at the guys home. He joked to his wife, "I guess the money ran out, there arent any women there". A week later the guys mom came in to pay his lot rent for him. 68K was gone in just over 3 months. And I live in an area where you can live a pretty decent life on 35k a year.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)The biggest reason most lottery winners end up broke is that the first thing they typically do is to turn to the professional mosey extractors for advice on what they should do with their new-found wealth.
Like Vegas, there is no amount of money in the world that Wall Street can't steal. At least with Vegas you will end up with a good story and one helluva hangover.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)I think that is what Jesus was trying to get at when he said the meek will inherit the earth.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)can't do the same thing. They fail to see the luck involved and focus more on their hard work and intelligence or education. In their eyes, if everyone worked as hard as they did they wouldn't be poor or homeless.
My Good Babushka
(2,710 posts)That is why, in fairy tales and folk tales, there is almost no difference between rich men, kings, and monsters. Fairy tales belong to the poor and to the narrative of social justice.
That's what I've been thinking, anyway.
Amonester
(11,541 posts)Filthy-rich Aristrocrats having no empathy for anyone but other filthy-rich Aristocrats.
Same sh!t, different centuries.
That Revolution was no fairy tale.
Nor was the Romanian Revolution against Caucescu's more recently.
The point is, the super rich never learn anything from the lessons of History.
They always think their excessive money renders them so powerful, nothing bad will ever happen to them.
That's what is so depressing.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)FSogol
(45,488 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)i almost spit my pipe out when I read that.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)tea and oranges
(396 posts)born in 1917 always said: Give a guy a buck & he becomes a Republican.
okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)tea and oranges
(396 posts)He was a brilliant man. He & my mother were progressives. I'm forever grateful to have been a pink diaper baby.
Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)Then he started his own business and was very successful. Of course then he became a Nixon Republican and died as on... never fails.
tea and oranges
(396 posts)Irv made some money through investments, but remained a progressive to the end. The story goes that when I learned to walk he was all smiles, but warned me it was something to never do across a picket line.
I'm glad, as a long time Floridian, he died before the Bush recount or the election of the criminal Rick Scott. It would have concerned him greatly.
deafskeptic
(463 posts)VA_Jill
(9,983 posts)They are looking in the mirror and talking about the guys they see.
pansypoo53219
(20,981 posts)FuzzyRabbit
(1,967 posts)and so are nearly all congressmen and senators.
And so we get more billions of government subsidies for the wealthiest and cuts in food stamps and unemployment benefits for the poorest.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)But he had polio as a child and was disabled even while serving as president. He understood how unfair life can be. That may be why he was both rich and compassionate. He married a very compassionate woman too.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)Roosevelt didn't get polio until he was nearly 40. But yes, although it doesn't change everyone, I think in Roosevelt's case this dramatic shift in his life opened his eyes to the challenges many people are faced with involuntarily. And you're absolutely correct about Eleanor. She was hugely compassionate and relentless in her pursuit of social justice.
I still think of myself as a Roosevelt Democrat, an Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)She was speaking before the ninth annual Congress on the Cause and Cure of War:
How deadly stupid we are that we can study history and live through what we live through, and complacently allow the same causes to put us through the same thing again!
Later that same year in a speech that was broadcast nationally, she lashed out against racial discrimination. In addition, she personally (and relentlessly) lobbied her husband to publicly endorse the Wagner-Costigan Anti-Lynching Bill. And, of course, most famously, in 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let African-American contralto Marian Anderson perform at Constitution Hall, Eleanor publicly blasted the decision, resigned as a DAR member, and then arranged it so Anderson could give an open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The result was an unforgettable performance and a watershed event in 20th century American civil rights history.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)Which is why even poor Republicans are a-holes.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)until he married Eleanor. She in turn, was a brilliant scion of vast wealth that was constrained by the times she had the misfortune to be born in.
Most of the adulation we pile on Franklin is due to Eleanor.
Rex
(65,616 posts)He just takes orders from them. Congress does to...they are NOT part of the Ownership class.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Add to that his net worth, which is in the millions, and he is very comfortably within what is called "the one percent."
Rex
(65,616 posts)Yes he is rich, but he is not a Koch level rich person. Nor near as powerful. He is not part of the Ownership society, but gets his orders from their proxies.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)The President is a vassal doing as he's instructed to do. Deal with it.
uponit7771
(90,347 posts)mopinko
(70,127 posts)obama is one of the very wealthy? please. he does have a couple mill from his books, mostly.
why would you say something untrue like that?
tridim
(45,358 posts)DERP.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Last edited Thu Feb 27, 2014, 07:11 AM - Edit history (1)
wholly inadequate to almost entirely inadequate, where's my victory drum?
$440 a week. Gross pay before withholding of course! We should all be in the streets forming spontaneous parades to exalt the awesomeness that is our savior and chief!
tomp
(9,512 posts)SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)FDR comes to mind. And that millionaires group that calls for higher taxes on themselves: patrioticmillionaires.org
They are by far the exception to the rule, sadly.
Initech
(100,080 posts)RainDog
(28,784 posts)based upon people's fear they will lose what they have
tclambert
(11,087 posts)In that, we instinctively think the world has some justice built into it, that karma rewards goodness and punishes badness. So we think someone with wealth must have somehow earned it. Psychology studies show people start to believe this even when a flip of the coin determines who gets the unfair advantages in playing a game of Monopoly.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)A better tax code might do the trick.
Jamaal510
(10,893 posts)is people being very rich that's a disease, but instead, selfishness and contempt for the common good that are the diseases here. The owners of Ben and Jerry are pretty wealthy, but they're not messed up like that. Same thing with Warren Buffet. Even he has come out in favor of higher top taxes.
For the sake of the entire country, we definitely do need to have the tax code changed.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had all the advantages that you've had." -Nick Carraway
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)In fact, I'd suggest erecting a small plaster of paris statue on the mall for each taxpayer who pays $1m in taxes. The statues should be an inch taller for every additional million paid in taxes. Make it a competition!
The statues should look like this;
?v=1
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)Number23
(24,544 posts)okaawhatever
(9,462 posts)MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)Gothmog
(145,321 posts)This study does explain a great deal about the super rich
Lunacee_2013
(529 posts)Really? They're just joking, right?
On edit: I read the other link in the link you posted and apparently, it's true.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/rich-people-_n_1305008.html
The hell is wrong with some people?
reformist2
(9,841 posts)By the time you get into the multi-millionaire level, managing your money becomes a 24/7 obsession. Any concern for the poor at that point is likely to be for show - or worse, a way to help you make even more money for your business.
mopinko
(70,127 posts)how can you make someone rich in a lab? c'mon. he gets people to act like they are rich, and they act like they think rich people act.
pseudoscience at it's worst, imho.
niyad
(113,343 posts)that he "rose from the ghetto"--except that his father was a lawyer and his mother a teacher in suburban new jersey.