Well, this is a shocker

[conuly]

Here's a study showing that wealthier people are more likely to cheat in every part of life.

Oh, wow, who could ever have seen this coming?

Gosh, it's not like we already knew they give a smaller percentage of their income to charity or anything!

All this selfish behavior can't be good for them psychologically or spiritually. When, when, when are we going to tax them more so they can learn to be better people? It's truly for their own good! (Especially the ones who profess to be Christian. Don't want to keep them out of heaven or anything like that!)

Comments

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

You know what I find odd? The assumption that all rich people are motivated by greed (which presumably got them rich in the first place). I mean, that's what the article states. Surely that's a bit too simplistic?

And some of the 'experiments'/thought games... I dunno. There's so much bias working into things there. For instance, if you ask "one of the 99%" to imagine they were of higher status and THEN ask them to take candy out of the glass, you have someone who believes that the rich are always greedy being greedy in order to roleplay being rich (after all, roleplaying works best when you follow the cliché...). What exactly does that prove about the actual behaviour of rich people? Is the person who took more candy motivated by actual (objective) observation, or rather by something they assume to be the case?
Or the car thing. Don't know how it is in the state, but in Germany, very often the nicest, poshest cars belong to retired people, i.e. the elderly, i.e. people who a) learned driving at a time when rules may have been different (yes, they should keep themselves updated, but hardly anyone really does that - even I wouldn't be able to swear that our traffic rules are still exactly the same as they were when I got my driving license, and I'm only 28!); b) tend to get a bit slower, physically and mentally, which may result in (for instance) not noticing someone else having the right of way (yes, they should hand in their license when they can no longer guarantee that they're safe drivers, but again, too few people do that) -- anyway, there are other factors than just "Rich = ME! ME! ME!" that may be at work here.

Of course, the taxation issue remains. (I assume. I can't pretend I know the first thing about the American tax system. I know that over here, the middle income groups are pretty heavily taxed while the really filthy rich get off (comparably) easy, though, so I assume there's some similarly unfair system at work for you.)
But I kind of hate that such a simplistic, generalising study presumably will be quoted as "proof that the rich are all greedy meanies". Bah.