Buh?

[infrogmation]

Sociological/Economic Experiment Result of the Day:

People willing to make themselves poorer in order to destroy some of the money of those more wealthy.

Comments

[dragonflysister]

I heard this on NPR last evening. The scientist wants to do this study in the U.S. where he's certain us good folks of America would never behave this way.

[davidgrenier]

The odd part about this is that the experiment had no positive reason to reduce other people's earnings.

For example, in the real world, the less my boss pays me, the more my boss makes. They get rewarded for being jerks.

Of course, the results aren't too surprising. Also unsurprising is the fact that the article frames it in terms of "envy" (one of the few emotions conservatives have, I guess). But economists tend to be completely divorced from the real, actual world, and economic "laws" tend to pre-suppose too much about exisiting conditions. When those conditions don't exist, what seem like "rational" decisions are often irrational, and what seem like "irrational" decisions are often rational.

There's a fairly young field of study that marries cognative psychology, sociology, and economics to get a better "real world" understanding of how economics works. I had a roommate who was getting her PhD in the subject at Carnegie Mellon, and would talk to me about these sorts of things all the time.

[lots42]

Oh conservatives do have emotions. They're just Vulcan like in how they let them affect their lives.

P.S. If this appears twice, I apologize.

[ex_corax898]

Spiteful people will always exist...

Yes, but

[vardissakheli]

this is not just a few spiteful people, this is 3 out of every 5.

I, too, am Not Surprised.