29 Feb 2012 - Rich people more likely to lie, cheat and steal

I read in The Age online today that a study was completed, by the University of California in Berkeley, that concluded that richer people were more likely to lie, cheat and take things that are meant for others, aka steal. When I stop to think about this, I realised that I was not surprised that this was the finding. If you take for instance Hollywood, over the years many movies have come out of Hollywood where rich people are the villains. Cruella de Vil  in '101 Dalmatians' was a rich person who stole people's puppies in order to get what she wanted, a Dalmatian fur coat. Goldie Hawn played a rich woman in 'Overboard', who ruthlessly pushed a poor carpenter off her boat and refused to pay him even though it was her fault that his work was not what she wanted. There are a number of other movies where the rich people are the villains and this can't be because people have vivid imaginations, most people who write do so drawing from their own or other's experience, so if we are finding many characters in movies who are rich and who lie, cheat or steal from poorer characters, then this is probably because people in real life have had similar experiences.

Now I am not suggesting that all rich people lie cheat and steal, and the study didn't conclude this, it only concluded that they were more likely to commit these offences than poorer people. I do however find it interesting that public perception of poorer people is that they are likely to lie, cheat and steal. I mean in Australia, we have the concept of a 'dole bludger', who cheats their way through life, rorting our government assistance programs. People on these government allowances make very little money per week, and by restricting the system to reduce the amount of dole bludgers, we make it harder for the genuinely poor people to get a break in life. I find it interesting they we don't have a similar term for those rich people who avoid paying taxes that would benefit out nation. I would say, obviously with no specific facts just a feeling, that if we looked we would find that of the percentage of dole bludgers in our country is a much smaller proportion that the percentage of tax avoiders. Also it seems to me, that we go to greater lengths in terms of legislation and process to restrict the dole bludgers than we do to minimise the tax avoiders. However we probably stand to gain more from making the tax avoiders contribute, than from restricting the poorer people on government allowances.

The original article was on The Age online.