via Gerri Willis, FoxBusiness.com
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
Many of those, the statistical lies that is, seem to pop up in academic studies.
Some of them on view this weekend in a Boston Globe story called, “Why It Matters that Our Politicians Are Rich.”
The story tries to make a connection between the political views of the GOP Presidential field and their wallets concluding “people with that much money are not like the rest of us at all. As a mounting body of research is showing, wealth can actually change how we think and behave, and not for the better…Rich people have a harder time connecting with others, showing less empathy to the extent of dehumanizing those who are different from them. They are less charitable and generous.”
In other words, according to no less an expert than the Boston Globe, you have to be poor to be nice.
Among the studies presented as evidence, a study from the University of Minnesota in which subjects were given subliminal suggestions to think about money (some sat at computers with a screensaver that was a dollar bill, others saw a sheaf of Monopoly money on the table they sat at).
They were then questioned about their attitudes toward money and work, and those who didn’t see the screensaver or the Monopoly bills scored as more generous than those that did.
Likewise, those that saw the money were less likely to help a clumsy lab assistant pick up pencils.
See, says the story’s author, just the suggestion of money made people meaner.
I say poppycock!
How can you draw conclusions like that? And that’s just the problem with this research. It leaps to conclusions jumping right over conventional wisdom, and leaving rationality behind.
Remember, even the greed-head GOP candidates have given more than the average person to charity. Mitt Romney gave 14% of his income to charity in 2010.
Meanwhile, Warren Buffett gave a cool $42 million to charities in the second half of last year.
Just six months.
That’s pretty nice.
And consider this: more than half or 56% of total charitable giving comes from people earning $200 thousand or more a year.
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the problem with rich folks is, they think they are right all the time. for that i say,”dont be right, be kind”.
Your counter examples don’t really go to the point of the study. “less charitable” reflects a broad range of behavior, not just what shows up (or doesn’t…) on IRS returns. The study has been cited in other places too. Worth looking at it directly, rather than just through the Fox lens.
You are nuts. It’s all about your values, not the dough you have. Try correlating with church/synagogue/mosque attendance, for example. You will find the most generous people are those who are taught to be so. Civilization is a learned exercise.
So be a good damned example!
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I took a ski vacation in Vail one winter and got thrown in with a bunch of really rich people. The richest bunch I’ve ever spent a fair amount of time with. They were also the nicest bunch of folks I’ve ever been around. These studies are crap. Someone dropping pencils? Conclusions drawn from that?
That’s because they thought you were rich too. It’s a club thing, dontchaknow?
😉
If you don’t have to worry about where next week’s grocery tariff is going to come from, yours is a far less stressful existance. It only makes sense that such folk would begin to think outside themselves.
In truth, the meanest (in the sense of penuriousness) folks are generally those who’ve grown up poor, and don’t know that it’s okay to let loose the purse after a certain point. Again, good behaviour has to be modeled, and then assimilated.
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most people have asshole managers who work for even bigger asshole managers who work for CEOs that have pressure to get results and are also assholes…
So most people’s experience with “rich” people are limited to high paid employees, and they have to kiss their asses all the time to get ahead while secretly harboring and hiding contempt. Most people have been at a job or two where they don’t like their boss and/or were fired. It’s no surprise that most people hate the rich, but their perspective is very narrow on the rich. If they would see the rich in a non business environment, and/or really get to know them, I’m sure there wouldn’t be this bullshit antirich Nazism going around