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Wealthy and poor
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Many wealthy Americans believe that dysfunctional behavior causes poverty. Their own success, they would insist, derives from good character and a strict work ethic. But they would be missing some of the facts. Ample evidence exists to show a correlation between wealth and unethical behavior, and between wealth and a lack of empathy for others, and between wealth and unproductiveness.

    1. The Poor Don't Cheat As Much
    2. The Poor Care More About Other People
    3. The Rich Focus on Me, Me, Me
    4. The Poor Give a Greater Percentage of Their Money to Others
    5. Entrepreneurs are in the Sinking Middle Class

    http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-ways-poor-are-more-ethical-rich

  • 3 Replies sorted by
  • aae991aae991

    This is a sad commentary on wealth, but my experience shows it to be true with many people. I do know some wealthy people who are not like this, but they seem to be in the minority. Human history shows this type of income disparity cycle building time and time again - and then it comes crashing down. Then we repeat the same mistakes again... Human evolution has a long way to go.

  • AzoAzo

    @aae991 +1 Human evolution has a long way to go indeed...

  • karlkarl

    I can believe the correlation, but correlations don't easily reveal what is "cause" and what is "effect".

    From my observation, most of the named symptoms are "effects" on people living wealthy for some time, not the cause for their wealth. And consistently, formerly poor people who become wealthy for whatever reason start to expose those same symptoms.

    And I think much of this is kind of easy to explain:

    1. Poor people have less opportunities to cheat, because they usually live and work under more restricted conditions and supervision. Plus they are threatened by more existential risks if caught cheating.

    2. Poor people know and feel how dependent they are on the sympathy of others - especially when they need help in a crisis situation. Wealthy people can just buy relevant services, thus they don't need to "care for you so you'll care for me".

    3. Rich people are often surrounded by people who address them with unreasonable amounts of flattery - because those people expect this to gain them a certain share of money. But when a person gets told every day many times how great and important he/she is, he/she will finally start to believe the whole world is spinning around them. Also, the relatively high ratio of people that a rich person will experience to be ultimately interested in them only because of their money will generally raise their suspicion (up to the level of paranoia) that everyone is just after their money.

    4. Is just trivial math: A small percentage of money from a poor person is next to nothing, so when a poor person wants somebody to actually benefit from their money, they need to give away some significant percentage. Wealthy people on the other hand often feel (true or not) that they already give away a lot of money to the underprivileged by means of paying taxes. (I can tell you that I am paying > 40% of my gross income in taxes, and that is most certainly a larger percentage than the average poor person gives away either voluntarily or via taxes. I am not complaining, here.)

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