A Plutocracy Ruled by Self-Centered Jerks

Connecting the Dots

A Plutocracy Ruled by Self-Centered Jerks?

August 27, 2013

by Joshua Holland

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, 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, 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. “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 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 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 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, 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 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. “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.”

The Scariest Man in America

Published on Monday, August 19, 2013 by Common Dreams

The Scariest Man in America

by Paul Buchheit

 

Scary because he claims "We don't have the power to coerce anybody" while providing massive funding to organizations that attack public education, social programs, worker salaries, business regulations, and the environment.



Photo: Matt Leonard/cc/flickr


Scary because he refers to himself with words like 'integrity' and 'principles' while saying "I want my fair share -- and that's all of it."

Scary because he declares, "I want my legacy to be...a better way of life for...all Americans."


Here is some of the legacy of Charles Koch:

1. Environment

In Crossett, Arkansas, local waterways have been filled with toxic chemicals by the nearby Georgia-Pacific plant, a likely contributor to the surge in cancer and other illnesses in their community. A spokesman for Georgia-Pacific called the allegations "sensationalized." But the EPA reported that the Crossett plant released 136,000 pounds of toxic chemicals to nearby waterways, and buried over 444,000 pounds in the soil to degrade. A USA Today study ranked Crossett in the top percentile of communities for schoolchildren's exposure to cancer-causing chemicals.

More recently, the besieged city of Detroit has become the dumping ground for a three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block near the Detroit River. The pile is owned by Koch Carbon, a company controlled by Charles and David Koch. The mound of toxic matter has been spewing thick black "fugitive dust" over the homes of nearby residents.

Koch Industries was ranked as one of the top air polluters by the Political Economy Research Institute.

2. Government

Rampant cronyism threatens the economic foundations that have made this the most prosperous country in the world. -- Charles Koch

In a 2012 essay Charles Koch further criticized crony capitalism, saying "This growing partnership between business and government is a destructive force, undermining not just our economy and our political system, but the very foundations of our culture." Yet Koch Industries is one of the biggest beneficiaries of oil subsidies and government contracts. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the company has spent an average of almost $12 million per year from 2008 to 2012 on oil and gas industry lobbying.

There's more. Over 100 bills introduced in 2013, backed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and heavily funded by the Kochs, seek to drive down wages, benefits, and worker rights.

3. Social Needs

The Nation reported that free-market libertarian Charles Koch coached economist Friedrich Hayek in the acquisition of publicly-funded retirement insurance and health care. Said Koch, "You are entitled to Social Security payments [and to] hospital coverage."

Koch-funded organizations like The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, and The Reason Foundation oppose Social Security, climate change science, gay marriage, and the Affordable Care Act.

4. Inequality

If you earn over $34,000 a year, you are one of the wealthiest 1% in the world. -- Koch Foundation

With stunning condescension toward lower-income Americans who are one emergency away from financial collapse, the Charles Koch Foundation recently released a commercial that ranked a near-poverty-level $34,000 family among the Top 1% in the world. The Economic Policy Institute calculated that a U.S. family of three would require an average of about $48,000 a year to meet basic needs.

5. Minimum Wage

The minimum wage often hurts workers with the least experience. -- EconomicFreedom.org, Charles Koch Institute
Charles Koch wants to eliminate the minimum wage, apparently believing that "economic freedom" applies to people struggling to survive on a minimum wage annual income of $14,500. He sermonizes, "Anything that people with limited capital can do to raise themselves up, they keep throwing obstacles in their way. And so we've got to clear those out. Or the minimum wage. Or anything that reduces the mobility of labor."

Regarding that $14,500 per year, each Koch brother made that much from his 2012 investment income in 17 seconds at the office.

6. Education

The Koch Brothers' contribution of millions of dollars to higher education, at first glance a magnanimous gesture, betrays less noble motives upon examination. The funding comes with a stipulation for control over faculty hiring and curriculum. As an extension of think tank media control, Koch's surreptitious entry into over 150 colleges has guided academic decisions toward a libertarian, Ayn-Rand-like philosophy. As an example, an agreement with Florida State University stated, "Professorship Positions will be recruited and hired in a manner consistent with both the...Faculty Handbook and CGK Foundation's intent to support the...Program."

7. Taxes

I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington. -- Charles Koch

Charles Koch may believe he can best decide how people should live. He insists that "Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good." But as ThinkProgress notes, Koch's investments "at best advance Koch's political ideology and at worst misinform American voters. Either way, they are hardly a replacement for 'government spend[ing]' on things like food assistance and basic medical service."

8. Business Ethics

Charles Koch offered a definition of integrity: "When the other person is vulnerable and you're in a position to take advantage of them and you don't do it."

According to a 1989 report by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, "Koch Oil, the largest purchaser of Indian oil in the country, was engaged in a widespread and sophisticated scheme to steal crude oil from Indians and others through fraudulent mismeasuring and reporting."

Charles elaborated on his business management philosophy: "Every leader needs to be a role model for these principles, because people will spot hypocrisy a mile away."
Scary.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

The Raw Story Bernie Sanders: Walmart family’s ‘obscene’ wealth subsidized by taxpayers

Bernie Sanders: Walmart family’s ‘obscene’ wealth subsidized by taxpayers

By David Ferguson

Saturday, August 3, 2013 20:45 EDT

Topics: bernie sanders ♦ senator bernie sanders ♦ Walmart

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” on Saturday and scoffed at the idea that major corporations like Walmart can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage and that to raise the U.S. minimum wage would be bad for the economy.

Sanders said that the overwhelming majority of the U.S. population believes that the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is “obscene” and a “starvation wage.” He said that he hopes to mount a strong push in the Senate to raise the minimum wage and that if enough grass roots support builds around the country, “we can force the House to do the right thing.”

“We have to create millions of new jobs” to help the economy, he said, “but we also have to make the minimum wage a living wage.”

The Senator laughed when host Ed Schultz asked what he would say to people who insist that mega-corporations like Walmart and McDonald’s can’t afford to raise their wages.

“Ed, do you want to hear one of the great obscenities of our time?” Sanders asked. “The wealthiest family in this country is the Walton family. They are worth about a hundred billion dollars. That’s more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people.”

“One of the reasons that the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, are so wealthy is that they receive huge subsidies from the taxpayers of this country,” he said. “When you pay, at Walmart, starvation wages, you don’t provide benefits to your workers, who picks up the difference? The answer is that many of the workers in Walmart end up getting Medicaid, they get food stamps, they get affordable housing paid for by the taxpayers of this country while the Walton family remains the wealthiest family in America.”

“If that is not obscene, I don’t know what is,” Sanders concluded.


Watch the video, embedded below via YouTube: