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So that explains it. People
really do want others to be poorer.
Much has been written about the harms of wealth inequality,
mainly as it relates to health. Generally
writers of a socialist bent, having failed to show that capitalism makes the
poor poorer, have turned to arguing that, although the poor may be a bit richer
under capitalism, they would be better off still, even without the extra wealth
so long as the rich were poorer too and everyone was more equal. I can understand why politicians, and those hangers on who
expect to gain jobs and prestige from state redistribution might buy this
argument, but it is difficult to see why the poor would.
Would a poor person really prefer to be absolutely poorer just so long as
everyone else was a lot poorer? Sure,
envy is a powerful emotion. Sure, I
can understand people stealing from the rich.
But, poor people paying just to make others poorer … ?
Hmmm. However, the inequity argument must mean this.
If socialism made the poor richer, as socialists used to claim, there
would be no need to use the equity argument to justify redistribution. That’s why a paper in the February 2002 issue of Annales
d’Economie et de Statistique is interesting.
“Are people willing to pay to reduce others incomes?” is written by
by Daniel Zizzo from Oxford and Andrew Oswald from Warwick.
These two economists studied people playing a gambling game where players
won or lost by chance but where some players were then given extra “unfair
winnings”. All players were offered the chance to spend some of their
winnings to reduce others winnings, and told that if they did so they would gain
nothing for themselves. It was
emphasised clearly and repeatedly that they would lose whatever they paid out.
According to conventional economic theory, and common sense, rational
subjects should not spend their money that way. Amazingly no less than 62% of participants would pay to
reduce the other person’s winnings. The
amount they were prepared to pay was substantial. Overall the subjects paid about 20 percent of their
winnings to reduce (“burn”) the wealth of others. Although subjects were gambling and paying with an artificial currency, at the end of the experiment their winnings or losses were paid out in real money, and the subjects knew that would happen when they started. This means we cannot dismiss the findings as just a
verbally expressed preference, which is discordant with a real preference
expressed by action. It’s
not like the person who says they want to give money to charity, but do not
actually do so. The subjects
of the experiment, who paid to impoverish others, went away at the end of the
experiment with less money as a result of their choice. It appears that impoverishing others really does have
value. Extraordinary. If 62 percent of the population value that, it is not
surprising that socialism has such a hold on the world.
Those of us, who rejoice to see others get richer, have much
work to do. Jim Thornton Leeds 3 March 2002 |
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