[Vision2020] This won't surprise any of us -

[Rosemary Huskey]

A Plutocracy Ruled by Self-Centered Jerks?


August 27, 2013

by Joshua Holland <http://billmoyers.com/author/hollandj/> 

 
<http://cdn.billmoyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/AP100715021885_size.jp
g> Hassan Nemazee, the wealthy Manhattan investment banker, steps over a
security chain as he leaves federal court in Manhattan after being sentenced
to 12 years in prison for bank fraud. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)

Hassan Nemazee, the wealthy Manhattan investment banker, steps over a
security chain as he leaves federal court in Manhattan after being sentenced
to 12 years in prison for bank fraud. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)

Two studies released last week confirmed what most of us already knew: the
ultra-wealthy tend to be narcissistic and have a greater sense of
entitlement than the rest of us, and Congress only pays attention to their
interests. Both studies are consistent with earlier research.

In the first study
<http://psp.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/08/19/0146167213501699.full#aff-1
> , published in the current Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
Paul Piff of UC Berkeley conducted five experiments which demonstrated that
"higher social class is associated with increased entitlement and
narcissism." Given the opportunity, Piff also found that they were more
likely to check themselves out in a mirror than were those of lesser means.

Piff looked at how participants scored on a standard scale of "psychological
entitlement," and found that those of a high social class - based on income
levels, education and occupational prestige - were more likely to say "I
honestly feel I'm just more deserving than others," while people further
down the social ladder were likelier to respond, "I do not necessarily
deserve special treatment." 

In an earlier study
<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/21/1118373109.full.pdf+html> ,
published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Piff and four researchers from the University of Toronto conducted a series
of experiments which found that "upper-class individuals behave more
unethically than lower-class individuals." This included being more likely
to "display unethical decision-making," steal, lie during a negotiation and
cheat in order to win a contest.

In one telling experiment, the researchers observed a busy intersection, and
found that drivers of luxury cars were more likely to cut off other drivers
and less likely to stop for pedestrians crossing the street than those
behind the wheels of more modest vehicles.  "In our crosswalk study, none of
the cars in the beater-car category drove through the crosswalk," Piff told
The New York Times
<http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/the-rich-drive-differently-a-stu
dy-suggests/?_r=0> . "But you see this huge boost in a driver's likelihood
to commit infractions in more expensive cars." He added: "BMW drivers are
the worst."

Summing up previous research on the topic, Piff notes that upper-class
individuals also "showed reduced sensitivity to others' suffering" as
compared with working- and middle-class people.

Lower-class individuals are more likely to spend time taking care of others,
and they are more embedded in social networks that depend on mutual aid. By
contrast, upper-class individuals prioritize independence from others: They
are less motivated than lower-class individuals to build social
relationships and instead seek to differentiate themselves from others.

These findings may appear to represent a bit of psychological trivia, but a
study
<http://prq.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/10/04/1065912912459567.abstract?p
apetoc>  to be published in Political Science Quarterly by Thomas Hayes, a
scholar at Trinity University, finds that U.S. senators respond almost
exclusively to the interests of their wealthiest constituents - those more
likely to be unethical and less sensitive to the suffering of others,
according to Piff.

Hayes took data from the Annenberg Election Survey - a massive database of
public opinion representing the views of 90,000 voters - and compared them
with their senators' voting records from 2001 through 2010. From 2007
through 2010, U.S. senators were somewhat responsive to the interests of the
middle class, but hadn't been for the first 6 years Hayes studied. The views
of the poor didn't factor into legislators' voting tendencies at all.

As Eric Dolan noted for
<http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/19/oligarchic-tendencies-study-finds-onl
y-the-wealthy-get-represented-in-the-senate/> The Raw Story, "The neglect of
lower income groups was a bipartisan affair. Democrats were not any more
responsive to the poor than Republicans." Hayes wrote that his analysis
"suggests oligarchic tendencies in the American system, a finding echoed in
other research."

Hayes' study is consistent with earlier research, including Princeton
University scholar Larry Bartels' 2005 study
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ebartels/economic.pdf>  of "Economic Inequality
and Political Representation."

There are a few of ways of looking at these findings. They could be the
result of genuinely held ideological beliefs which happen to justify
inequality and privilege.

According to OpenSecrets <http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/averages.php> ,
the average net worth of senators in 2011 was $11.9 million, so it could be
a matter of legislators advancing their own interests and those of the
people with whom they socialize and associate.

But MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, who co-authored
<http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8> Why
Nations Fail with Harvard's James Robinson, says that this kind of political
inequality is a product of widening economic disparities. "It's a general
pattern throughout history," he told Think Progress
<http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/23/451166/acemoglu-income-inequali
ty-political-powe/> . "When economic inequality increases, the people who
have become economically more powerful will often attempt to use that power
in order to gain even more political power. And once they are able to
monopolize political power, they will start using that for changing the
rules in their favor. And that sort of political inequality is the real
danger that's facing the United States."

 

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