Wealth Makes People Less Generous – Security Boulevard

Does anyone still believe the odd mythology of Ronald Reagan’s racist “trickle” economics? The latest science of behavior has been the more you earn the less you give.

…wealth and happiness are not positively correlated, according to the Harvard Business Review. One reason, for instance, is that wealth appears to make people less generous. In a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, participants playing a game of Monopoly grew progressively meaner as their wealth grew, by talking down to their poorer competitors and assuming more dominant positions. Most egregiously, they also consumed a larger portion of a bowl of pretzels meant to be shared equally. Similarly, another study found that when participants were given $10 and told they could contribute some or all of it to another person, the wealthier subjects contributed about 44% less. In the real world, researchers have discovered that rich people give proportionally less of their income to philanthropic causes.

An obvious way people are made happier is when they have the trust to build connections and be more social (even misery enjoys company).

That nugget of wisdom is perhaps why it’s important to flag when a small group of people attempt to get rich by building deceptive and isolating social platforms. The Germans had a specific phrase for a small group promising freedom to others while locking them up instead: “Arbeit Macht Frei”.

Abuse of trust digital social networks is akin to people attempting to grab power by fomenting a coup as a social exercise, as I’ve presented and written about here for at least a decade now.

Think about someone completely isolated, angry and miserable (due to wealth accumulation) using high-speed unregulated technology communications with others by convincing them to join a political movement to destroy the government. It’s like discussing a suicide cult, as they would be destroying the very thing that enables them to be happy in the first place (the stability to start and join a political movement).

“Giving” is said to be another route to happiness, but as I’ve written here before it doesn’t necessarily absolve a person of unethical enrichment schemes.

While trusted social networks are the route to being happy, wealth feeds isolationism.

While trusted social networks feed generosity and giving, an even bigger route to being happy, wealth feeds selfishness.

Selfish isolationism (the KKK platform of “America First“) is a dangerous yet dominant theme. It manifests out of American history as a caste system of wealth generation, as described by the Journal of the National Archives in 1977.

The richest one percent owned forty-four percent of Milwaukee’s wealth and …….

Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2022/05/wealth-makes-people-less-generous/