From the Department of Duh: Maybe we can add this to the studies showing the upper classes don't have empathy for poor people and arrive at some kind of explanation for our present plight. Because I just keep scatching my head over how poisoning the air, land, water, economy and media dialogue makes sense to our political elites:

Maybe, as the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested, the rich really are different. They’re more likely to behave badly, according to seven experiments that weighed the ethics of hundreds of people.

The “upper class,” as defined by the study, were more likely to break the law while driving, take candy from children, lie in negotiation, cheat to increase their odds of winning a prize and endorse unethical behavior at work, researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Taken together, the experiments suggest at least some wealthier people “perceive greed as positive and beneficial,” probably as a result of education, personal independence and the resources they have to deal with potentially negative consequences, the authors wrote.

While the tests measured only “minor infractions,” that factor made the results “even more surprising,” said Paul Piff, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a study author.

More details here:

The team's findings suggest that privilege promotes dishonesty. For example, upper-class subjects were more likely to cheat. After five apparently random rolls of a computerized die for a chance to win an online gift certificate, three times as many upper-class players reported totals higher than 12—even though, unbeknownst to them, the game was rigged so that 12 was the highest possible score.

When participants were manipulated into thinking of themselves as belonging to a higher class than they did, the poorer ones, too, began to behave unethically. In one test, subjects were asked to compare themselves with people at the top or the bottom of the social scale (Donald Trump or a homeless person, for example.) They were then permitted to take candies from a jar ostensibly meant for a group of children in a nearby lab. Subjects whose role-playing raised their status in their own eyes took twice as many candies as those who compared themselves to "The Donald," the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

DOWNLOADS: (403)

PLAYS: (1414)

Embed

I can't help wondering why Franklin Graham isn't preaching an Easter Sunday revival instead of showing up on Christiane Amanpour's show to make political statements, or to be more accurate, pronouncements. Some pronouncements, however, should not be allowed to stand unchallenged, and the following is one of them.

AMANPOUR: We in this country and around the world are living in very dire times right now. Dire financial times, economic crisis, the gap between rich and poor is growing, not only here, but all over the world.

What can the church do to fill that gap and to step into that gap?

GRAHAM: Christiane, a hundred years ago, the safety net, the social safety net in the country was provided by the church.

If you didn't have a job, you'd go to your local church and ask the pastor if he know somebody that could hire him. If you were hungry, you went to the local church and told them, "I can't feed my family." And the church would help you. And that's not being done.

But the government took that. And took it away from the church. And they had more money to give and more programs to give, and pretty soon, the churches just backed off.

And as a result, now you have generation after generation of pastors in churches that have not done that. And you would have to teach them again how to do it.

Well, Reverend Graham, that is somewhat true but mostly not, because of course, churches rely upon the gifts of their congregation. Churches, like everyone else, suffered the effects. Many had debt obligations on their church buildings and were forced into default as offerings fell away, causing them to have to close the doors entirely.

Continue reading »

As Krugman points out, not only are they rich, they whine that they're not richer:

Digby finds another hard-working, wealth-creating salt of the earth type complaining about the possibility of higher taxes: Ben Stein. I think I need a drink.

But being the nerd I am, this is what caught my eye in the Stein rant:

I worked for almost every dollar I have, except for a small percentage my parents left me by virtue of hard work and Spartan living, and most of that was taken by the federal estate tax.

OK, the late, great — and I mean that — Herbert Stein died in 1999. At that time the first $650,000 of an estate was tax-free — $1.3 million for a couple, provided it did what CBO calls “minimally competent estate planning” — with a 55% tax on the amount above that.

So either Ben Stein inherited several million dollars — which, although this may be news to him, is not the experience of most Americans — or he’s just making stuff up.