Ever since the advent of the Great Recession in 2007/8, the rising income inequality in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world has become a prominent political issue discussed by politicians, pundits, and posters on forums such as these. Most of the discussion has focused on the purely economic aspects of this problem but many studies have also been done on the social consequences of this. For example in Freakonomics, Levitt and Dunbar refers to a bagel salesman in the suburbs of Washington who conducted an experiment over the decades to examine how much he was compensated by people for the bagels he delivered and found that people in upper level positions compensated him less than others. Similarly, there are articles such as this one in the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/why-the-rich-dont-give/309254/) which find that the wealthy give less of their income in terms of percentage than the poor. Perhaps the most intriguing example of this is that the wealthy (defined as 400%+ of the average income) get far higher rates of abortion than any other income group as noted on Vox (http://www.vox.com/2015/2/27/8118411/unintended-pregnancy-income-contraceptives). While one might be tempted to chalk this up simply to the lack of abortion access among the poor, the other brackets do not smoothly grow in terms of abortion rates as incomes go up (for example the abortion rate shoots up to 16.2% for the 200-300% income bracket before going down to 8% for the 300-400% bracket) and the 400%+ bracket is far higher than any other at almost 32%. Is this perhaps indicative of the wealthy placing the virtue of convenience above that of other ones such as duty or a more generalized cultural norm removing reservations against terminating inconvenient pregnancies? Does the current modern class of the wealthy lack a sense of noblesse oblige that characterized other wealthy classes int the past?
It’s possible that stingy attitudes got them rich in the first place. A cost-cutting, ruthless attitude might have catapulted them to wealth; unfortunate if so.
Or, rich people, even if originally compassionate, might be very jaded from people constantly asking them for donations or handouts.
Dunno, charity supports say 1% of Americans. Corporations support the other 99%, and a lot better to boot. So in terms of social impact, using excess cash to create business is a greater social good than charity.
What a wonderful excuse not to be charitable! Look at me! I’m a Job Creator ™! I don’t have to be good! Olly Olly Oxen Free!
When you have money, it’s easy to forget what it’s like not having any. You lose sight of how fortunate you are. I know it happened to my parents. They were lifetime liberals, and willed their expensive house to charity, but sometimes forgot it was like living paycheck to paycheck. I’m trying to make sure I don’t forget.
Their money was not inherited btw, my dad earned it himself.
Cites for:
- Charity is good
- Job creation is not good
- Asset allocation to charity is better than job creation
- Charity is best managed by the individual, rather than by the government
Charity supports roughly 0% of North Koreans. Private industry supports, say, 1% of North Koreans. The government supports the other 99%. So in terms of social impact, using excess cash to make the government bigger is a greater social good than either capitalism or charity.
That would only be a reasonable argument if I hadn’t mentioned quality: “and a lot better to boot”. So unless you hold that the quality of life of your average North Koreans ranks higher than employed Americans (or even Americans living on charity), I’m not seeing the parallel.
The more compassion one feels, the more likely they are likely to experience feelings of guilt and shame.
First of all, I didn’t mean for my argument in #7 to be reasonable. I meant it to be seen as absurdity than might lead someone to think that the somewhat similar sentence it quoted was equally absurd.
As for “a lot better to boot,” I have no idea whether Americans “living on charity” make more than those employed by corporations.
Ivy League professors holding endowed chairs (AKA living on charity) make a lot more than WalMart clerks. On the other hand, CEO’s make more than Salvation Army accountants. I suspect that neither of us know how it all averages out.
Whether the average person living on charity (or working for the government) makes as much as the average corporate wage earner is an absurd way to judge charitable giving.
That’s certainly better stated. I’d say it’s disingenuous to call government workers “charity cases”, since on the whole they are still expected to work for a living and will be sacked if not.
And I find it hard to see how judging the aparatus of supporting someone would be based on anything other than the quality of life it gives them. What other metric would you use to judge?
This. As a poor bloke, I can say no rather easily. I can’t help out in as many places as I’d like.
But for the rich bloke, who can help out in more places, he still can’t help everyone, so he, too, has to say no. Often. It makes him appear mean and miserly and stingy, but, really, he’s getting asked far more often than I am. He has to say no more often.
Rich people really do donate a hell of a lot to charities, and also give a lot to immediate beneficiaries, like friends and family. “Money is like manure; you got to spread it around for it to do any good.”
What duty? A duty to bring an unwanted pregnancy to term? That doesn’t exist. Removing reservations against terminating unwanted pregnancies is a good thing.
Even if that’s true (and you’d have to provide evidence of this supposed generosity of old-timey rich people), why shouldn’t they? Western governments provide various social-safety-net programs. No one depends on begging some tycoon for a handout to avoid starvation anymore, thank goodness.
It is possible that people who are status obsessed, narcissistic, psychopathic, materialistic, compensating for some deeply held trauma, etc. are the ones most drawn to careers that are very lucrative socially and financially (entertainment, law, medicine, business, etc). The incidence of psychopathy is 400% higher among CEOs than among the general population. I’m guessing the same would hold for other disorders that damage empathy like NPD.
Plus (I don’t know what this psychological trick is called) but when someone has it good in life, it is tempting to assume the reason you have it good is because you are morally superior in some way. If you are rich it is because you are a better person than less rich people. So that would sap empathy too.
Self-serving bias, which leads people to attribute their failures to external factors, and other peoples’ failures to internal factors (laziness, etc).
The rich are less compassionate, yes.
It’s also possible that giving someone who is living on the street a few dollars is just helping to finance an addiction that’s making their lives miserable and is undercutting the programs that the government has in place to try and help them out. And yet, despite us all having voted for just such social programs and willingly giving up a percentage of our income to those programs, some continue to give out money to beggars because fundamentally it has nothing to do with helping people, it’s about feeling good about yourself. Cognitive dissonance just prevents people from thinking about what happens after the “charitable” act.
Whereas, someone who works for one of these is tracking data, trying out different strategies, and thinking about just what exactly the effect of their actions will be every day. And, I might note, getting paid to do it by you, me, and lots of rich people, all of whom together elected a group of representatives who deemed it wise to create just such programs, supported by the profits of business and the wages of workers.
According to Scientific American, the rich are less compassionate:
It cites several reasons:
Wealth frees you from having to rely on others. And the less you rely on others, the less you have to care about their feelings.
Wealthy are more likely to adopt a “greed is good” mentality and use that to justify behaving in an unethical manner.
Yes, of course it is better to have people working and producing than simply paying them not to work.
The nice thing about rich people is that they always provide encouragement to the poor people to take the jobs that they themselves would never do!
First of all, one doesn’t need an “excuse” to be charitable or not to be charitable.
Second, a job creator is indeed helping society, assuming the work is of societal value.
Is this an indication of the rich being less compassionate, or those rich in the Washington DC area being less compassionate ?
I am not being snarky here, just asking the question I wondered when I read this. I have a strong personal belief that those in Washington DC area are not a fair example to characterize the rest of the country.