A Strange Money Attitude
By Steve Gillman
There is a strange money attitude that many people have--many
more than you might expect. It is the desire that one's neighbors
make less money. Well, to be generous we could say that the desire
is to make more money than one's neighbors, but that would be
quite the truth, at least according to the research done.
You see, it may seem strange, and like many people we might
deny this feeling, but most people would rather be richer than
the people around them than have more money themselves. This
requires a short explanation that start with a question: Which
situation would you rather have for yourself, an income of $50,000
per year while everyone around you made $25,000, or $100,000
annual income with everyone around you making $250,000? For the
sake of these hypothetical examples we assume that the prices
of products and services are the same in both scenarios.
Here is the amazing truth: When researchers in the field of
behavioral economics ask this question, most people prefer the
first option over the second. In case you didn't get that, most
humans would prefer being poorer as long as their neighbors were
even poorer than them. What are we to make of this?
To myself--and I assume to any objective observer--this is
entirely irrational. The science, however, suggests that it is
very human. There is even an explanation of the phenomenon from
the field of evolutionary economics. There is a certain logic
to humans desiring to have more relative power over others (which
is in part what money buys), even if that means less actual wealth,
since in our ancient history this provided more chances for survival.
What is fascinating about this is that--in my speculative
judgment--most people who feel this way would not change their
peculiar money attitude even after understanding the evolutionary/biological/psychological
basis of it. Our rational mind so rarely is able to overrule
out instincts, even when the former are on a very conscious level.
Most people will read this and think it is relatively unimportant--especially
compared with continuing the pursuit of more apparent power relative
to their neighbors and peers. I happen to think it's very good
evidence of the dangers inherent in a race that has only evolved
far enough to see the evolutionary forces that mislead us, but
without the conscious power to turn to a better path.
There is another psychological inclination at work here that
is just as dark. We call it envy, and although few people will
acknowledge it in themselves, it is very common. Envy is not
the same as jealousy, which is mostly just a feeling of wanting
what others have. Envy is wanting those who have more than us
to have less, or to actually suffer. I think this is the real
basis for the rationalizations of those who want to hurt the
rich through confiscatory plans that have never been shown to
raise the poor to a higher standard of living.
It is one thing to acknowledge that the rich should pay more
in taxes, since they do gain far more from the system
that protects their rights. But it quite another to punish success
and so punish all in an economy--including the poor. It is as
if we are saying that we would rather have more equality as at
a much lower level than have the poor much richer but with the
rich even richer yet. This seems like insanity to me. If the
poor could be wealthy by way of a system that allows the rich
to be 100 times wealthier, what possible argument could there
be against this other than one based on a strange money attitude
that comes straight from envy and deeply non-rational evolutionary
forces?
|
