Wealthy people pay a far lower part of the riches in taxes than do most middle-class or lower-class people, There is possibly a few serious psychological distress involved in giving to the destitute. It calls for acknowledging the necessary injustice of life.
It isn’t reports any longer, however, it’s still a shock: the needy tend to be more generous than the wealthy. “For many years, surveys have shown that upper income People are particularly ordinary as givers when compared with the destitute, lower income Americans give proportionally more of the incomes to charity than do upper income Americans.”
A PhD candidate at Berkeley, Paul Piff, recently repeated that finding and more: “lower income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism.”
It’s tempting to think that the rich are richer because they are more selfish or single-mindedly focused on their own advancement, but Piff’s research suggests otherwise. His experiment primed subjects by showing sympathy inducing videos and encouraging them to imagine themselves in different financial circumstances. That changed their reactions for both sets of subjects. In other words, the poor, imagining themselves rich, became less altruistic. The rich, imagining themselves poor, became more generous to the destitute and ill. Piff concluded: “Empathy and compassion appeared to be the key ingredients” in the generosity of the destitute.
If we think of this in group terms, it makes perfect sense. Members of each group will identify with other members of the group to which they belong. Their issues will resonate more deeply. The rich will find it easier to give to the cultural institutions they and their friends patronize as well as the colleges and universities they attended. The destitute will give to the neighbors suffering from the same problems they are struggling with or to the causes closer to home.
As the gap between the rich and destitute in our society grows as it has been growing this divide will only get greater. Crossing over will not only be more difficult to accomplish economically, it will be harder for us to project ourselves imaginatively across it. The rich will not get the point of extending unemployment insurance, and could even easily talk themselves into believing that such a helping hand might make workers lazy. The destitute will get bitter about the tax cuts the rich keep insisting will trickle down benefits for all.
In other words, the psychological effects of group process will intensify our communal harms and help it become more hard for us to function politically like a whole. It’s already on the fringe of impossible.
Rich people love to tell themselves that they deserve what they own, that they worked hard for it. Of course, this implies that the destitute don’t work hard and somehow deserve their destiny in life. Liberality needs us to face just how fortunate we are and to accept that it really is fortune, not our greater moral qualities that led to our success.
It isn’t reports any longer, however, it’s still a shock: the needy tend to be more generous than the wealthy. “For many years, surveys have shown that upper income People are particularly ordinary as givers when compared with the destitute, lower income Americans give proportionally more of the incomes to charity than do upper income Americans.”
A PhD candidate at Berkeley, Paul Piff, recently repeated that finding and more: “lower income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism.”
It’s tempting to think that the rich are richer because they are more selfish or single-mindedly focused on their own advancement, but Piff’s research suggests otherwise. His experiment primed subjects by showing sympathy inducing videos and encouraging them to imagine themselves in different financial circumstances. That changed their reactions for both sets of subjects. In other words, the poor, imagining themselves rich, became less altruistic. The rich, imagining themselves poor, became more generous to the destitute and ill. Piff concluded: “Empathy and compassion appeared to be the key ingredients” in the generosity of the destitute.
If we think of this in group terms, it makes perfect sense. Members of each group will identify with other members of the group to which they belong. Their issues will resonate more deeply. The rich will find it easier to give to the cultural institutions they and their friends patronize as well as the colleges and universities they attended. The destitute will give to the neighbors suffering from the same problems they are struggling with or to the causes closer to home.
As the gap between the rich and destitute in our society grows as it has been growing this divide will only get greater. Crossing over will not only be more difficult to accomplish economically, it will be harder for us to project ourselves imaginatively across it. The rich will not get the point of extending unemployment insurance, and could even easily talk themselves into believing that such a helping hand might make workers lazy. The destitute will get bitter about the tax cuts the rich keep insisting will trickle down benefits for all.
In other words, the psychological effects of group process will intensify our communal harms and help it become more hard for us to function politically like a whole. It’s already on the fringe of impossible.
Rich people love to tell themselves that they deserve what they own, that they worked hard for it. Of course, this implies that the destitute don’t work hard and somehow deserve their destiny in life. Liberality needs us to face just how fortunate we are and to accept that it really is fortune, not our greater moral qualities that led to our success.
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