A good person never bargains with his kindness. We are all rightly disgusted by quid pro quo corruption. “If you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll approve that zoning change you’ve been asking for.” Such behavior, though common, is reprehensible. That’s why when it goes on, it does so in private. Even the corrupt know that it is wrong.
So what are we to make of the rich folks I wrote about yesterday? These are the people who publicly and proudly tell us that we’d better keep their taxes low or they won’t create any more jobs. This isn’t even corruption; this is outright extortion. Even with all my cynicism, it is amazing that our society puts up with such things. After all, such statements are made by people who are doing very well. And far from public excoriation, most of our society simply cowers in fear while the minions of the rich dutifully lower their taxes.
I recently came upon a great article from two years ago, Understanding Our National Empathy Deficit. It discusses the fact that the rich are less empathetic than the poor. Of course, the public perception is just the opposite. This is because the rich get so much credit for the opera houses they build—they demand it! But let’s be clear: my occasional donation of a dollar to a stranded high school student sets me about a proportionally to a billionaires million dollar gift to his alma mater.
Three social scientists are the University of California tested whether the rich really do have less empathy than the poor. They had groups of rich and poor people play games that involved giving away real money. And regardless of the format of the games, the rich always gave away notably less. It’s all about learned behavior:
People from wealthy households, by contrast, don’t have to depend nearly as much on others. Their wealth and “higher station in life” give them the luxury of focusing much more single-mindedly on self. They have less need to understand what other people are feeling. Over time, they feel and show less empathy.
I really like that take on it because it shows that the rich are not necessarily bad people,[1] but the social environments affect how they behave. And the scientists understand what this means to public policy. “This dynamic, observes [co-author] Keltner, has clear implications for trickle-down public policy approaches that expect the rich to demonstrate a hefty dose of nobless oblige. That expectation, he notes bluntly, rates as ‘improbable, psychologically.'”
What I think is that all the self-congratulations and extortion of the rich when calling themselves “job creators” was enough to demonstrate their lack of empathy. But I’m glad to see that actual lab evidence backs it up. Now if we could just get policy makers to act on this information. Or at least get the public to understand the myth of the job creator.
[1] I still believe that lacking empathy helps in business success, so I don’t think this is entirely environmental.
