One of the most basic
tenets of Republican policy – from populist Trump to old world McConnell – is a
stubborn adherence to the notion that de-taxing and de-regulating the rich
frees up capital which they instantly deploy to create good jobs. It is called “supply-side”
or “trickle-down” economics, sometimes stimulating the “job creators,” and I
have repeated blogged how that theory has never, never worked. From the left,
you get the expected rejection of the theory – from economist Paul Krugman to
Pope Francis himself. And from the right, you get staunch supporters of that
theory who get badly burned when that act on it. The most recent example is
Kansas governor Sam Brownback, whose recent massive state tax cuts in Kansas
not only did not produce new solid jobs, they have virtually bankrupted the
state and slashed the public school budget into oblivion.
We know that rich people,
unless they just inherited their wealth and live without working, do not take
newfound cash and just start hiring. They didn’t get rich by being stupid; if
there is no business reason to hire new workers or launch new enterprises, they
don’t. It’s not about how much money they have; it’s how much more money they
expect to get! Duh! Sure there are very rich people with so much money that
they start giving away billions and billions because they cannot spend even a
small amount of their wealth on themselves or their families. They have policy
beliefs and the money to control their implementation. And sure, many of them
have altruism at their core.
But when you hear down
and dirty GOP dogma, there is very little empathy for those who have not made
it through bad neighborhoods with worse schools, those who have fallen on hard
times, displaced by global competition and automation or simple obsolescence.
Whether they believe in Darwin’s “theory” of evolution, many do believe that
nature has selected those at the bottom… out. The GOP notion is that that
charity should always be voluntary; governmental social safety nets need to be
repealed.
To them, it’s raw
capitalism at work, supply and demand. Wrong choices and misfortune are the
product of any society, any country. It’s called “history,” and there are
winners and losers. The rich are the winners, and those seeking to ride their
backs for unnecessary jobs or taxation for social programs are whiners and
losers. Life is hard, but except for voluntary charity, why should rich people
have the slightest responsibility for the less fortunate? Really, Peter, you’re
saying that too many well-heeled elites lack empathy? Yup! That’s exactly what
I am saying.
“There’s a growing body
of research showing how having money changes the way people see—or are
oblivious to—others and their problems. The latest is a paper published in the
journal Psychological Science in which psychologists at New York University
show that wealthy people unconsciously pay less attention to passersby on the
street.
“In the paper, the
researchers describe experiments they conducted to measure the effects of
social class on what’s called the ‘motivational relevance’ of other human
beings. According to some schools of psychological thought, we’re motivated to
pay attention to something when we assign more value to it, whether because it
threatens us or offers the potential for some kind of reward.” QZ.com, October
23rd. Simply put, those with money don’t even see those at the periphery of
their economic world… literally. They are invisible. To me, on political terms,
the GOP notion is that that charity should always be voluntary; governmental
social safety nets need to be repealed.
The above-noted report,
Social Class and the Motivational Relevance of Other Human Beings - Evidence
From Visual Attention (compiled and analyzed by Pia Dietz and Eric D. Knowles
from New York University’s Psychology Department) examined, through a series of
detailed experiments, what rich and non-rich people actually saw in their
environment. Published October 3rd in Psychological Science,here is their
summary abstract:
“We theorize that
people’s social class affects their appraisals of others’ motivational
relevance—the degree to which others are seen as potentially rewarding,
threatening, or otherwise worth attending to. Supporting this account, three
studies indicate that social classes differ in the amount of attention their
members direct toward other human beings. In Study 1, wearable technology was
used to film the visual fields of pedestrians on city streets; higher-class
participants looked less at other people than did lower-class participants. In
Studies 2a and 2b, participants’ eye movements were tracked while they viewed
street scenes; higher class was associated with reduced attention to people in
the images. In Study 3, a change-detection procedure assessed the degree to
which human faces spontaneously attract visual attention; faces proved less
effective at drawing the attention of high-class than low-class participants,
which implies that class affects spontaneous relevance appraisals. The
measurement and conceptualization of social class are discussed.”
This report is hardly an
isolated observation. “Past studies have investigated the myriad ways the rich
interact differently with their community, and the results have not been
pretty.
“For instance, in a
series of studies published in 2012, psychologists from University of
California, Berkeley, had college students watch two videos—one of a man
explaining how to build a patio, and another depicting the lives of children
with cancer—and found the wealthier participants were less likely to report
feeling compassion for the children and their families in the second video.
(The researchers controlled for factors like ethnicity, spiritual beliefs and
gender, all of which also influence compassion.) As they watched the videos,
all of the participants also wore heart monitors, because research has shown
that our heart rate will slow down when we’re tuning into the feelings of
another person. This reaction was noted in the less wealthy participants as
they watched the second film, but not the wealthier subjects.
“An earlier study
published in Psychological Sciences, and led by a University of California, San
Francisco psychologist, found that people of a higher socioeconomic status are
not as adept at reading other people’s emotions accurately, compared to less
affluent peers. What’s more, in a 2009 study, college students of a higher
socioeconomic status tended to pay less attention to a stranger with whom they
were paired to speak for few minutes, even if the conversation partner was
equally affluent. The wealthy, psychologists believe, pay less attention to
everyone, regardless of status, which may affect their relationships with
friends and family.” QZ.com.
The lesson here is that
if you really want to support those who simple are too old, too disabled,
mentally inadequate, addicted, or simply have not figured out how to prepare
themselves for life, the notion of cutting the social safety nets does not
result in massive charitable support. They just suffer and die. So if we care
as a society, if the notion is “there but for the grace of God go I,” then
corrected for fraud and those who just do not like to work but can (for which
even I have little sympathy), if we believe we are an empathetic or sympathetic
society, we need to care and support that with tax dollars wisely spent.
I’m
Peter Dekom, and if we cannot take care of our own, what does that say about
our character as a people?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment