Thread: The age of entitlement: how wealth breeds narcissism

Just came across this; although it's a few years old, I think it still rings true. And although the context is Australia, I would guess that it applies worldwide.

As we ponder Joe Hockey’s budget and his division of the world into "leaners" and "lifters", as we learn from Oxfam that the richest 1% of Australians now own the same wealth as the bottom 60%, we would do well to consider the implications of Piff’s studies. He found that as people grow wealthier, they are more likely to feel entitled, to become meaner and be more likely to exploit others, even to cheat.
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Fascinated by these results, Piff and his colleagues then looked at what created these impulses to bad behaviour. In their laboratory, the richest students were more likely to consider "stealing or benefiting from things to which they were not entitled" than those from a middle-class or lower-class background. Even people simply primed to feel rich helped themselves to more sweets meant for children in a lab next door than those primed to feel disadvantaged.
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The reason, it turns out, is that even thoughts of being wealthy can create a feeling of increased entitlement — you start to feel superior to everyone else and thus more deserving: something at the centre of narcissism. They found this was true of people who were, in real life, better off. Wealthier people were more likely to agree with statements like "I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than other people" and place themselves higher on a self-assessed "class ladder" that indicated increasing levels of income, education and job prestige. This had straightforward and clearly measurable effects on behaviour.
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As Piff says, this goes way beyond the individual, to noxious social attitudes – like being punitive towards the poor while living the "because I’m worth it" lifestyle. As a society becomes wealthier, it can get more narcissistic, less empathetic and unwilling to look after the vulnerable. A majority of Republicans in a recent poll said they thought the poor in America had it easy. Greater feelings of entitlement might also lead to a tax revolt by the upper classes. It is the logic of "I’ve earned it", "It’s mine", and, "Why should I have to use my hard-earned cash for those inferior scroungers, the poor?"
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Well-off people were less likely to help a person who entered the laboratory in distress, unless they had just watched a video about child poverty. In a series of controlled experiments, lower-income people and those who identified themselves as being on a relatively low social rung were consistently more generous with limited goods than upper-class participants were.
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Outside the lab, Piff found that the rich donated a smaller percentage of their wealth than poorer people. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans, those with earnings in the top 20%, contributed 1.3% of their income to charity, while those in the bottom 20% donated 3.2% of their income. The trend to meanness was worst in plush suburbs where everyone had a high income, and never laid eyes on a poor person. Insulation from people in need, Piff concluded, dampened charitable impulses.
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Poorer people were also more likely to give to those charities servicing the genuinely needy. The rich gave to high-status institutions such as already well-endowed art galleries, museums and universities, while Feeding America, which deals with the nation’s poorest, got nothing. https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...eds-narcissism

My impression of Americans is that they often have a starry eyed impression of rich people who have "made it", especially if those are business leaders. Some of them think that everyone who doesn't share their impression is a marxist or socialist. Especially if they somehow disbelieve the validity of "trickle-down economics".