Kalex's Tome

Reshared post from +Christa Laser

Does Wealth Divide or Do People Divide?

I noticed in some comments on +Mitt Romney's recent posts that there is quite a bit of animosity toward his wealth, especially after he made a few wealth-related unfortunate comments: the $10,000 bet, saying "I like to fire people," and saying he is "not concerned about the very poor." It is not these slip-ups that cause people to make fun of him for his wealth; it is because he is a politician, and people care intimately about his popularity, making his differences from others a natural target for teasing.

He is not the wealthiest person, but he gets teased for his wealth more often. This indicates that people care more about his social position than they do about his amount of wealth. If they cared about wealth alone, they would be making fun of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Teasing is a social tool that, anthropologically, is used to decrease the social standing of the victim and to decrease the social value of the victim's differentiating characteristic. We don't think about it that way when we tease– perhaps we just find it funny– but we care and laugh because that person's social standing and the social value of the characteristic that we tease matters to us. In particular, we are more likely to tease if we can find an audience who devalues the characteristic (which often occurs in a group that does not have that characteristic) and is willing to devalue that individual (people who don't like the person enough to risk their popularity to stand up for them). Politicians become easy targets because lives will be affected by whether others find that person popular. Wealth is not the reason that people tease Romney for his comments; people tease him because there is an audience eager to bond over his social devaluation and because the lack of wealth is something that many people in the audience share.

Wealth itself has no impact on the ability to govern. It is a unique perspective that may decrease our ability to understand those different from us and increase our ability to understand those similar to us, just as poverty or any other characteristic will do, but it can be cured with empathy, and it is not something that dictates personality. It certainly does not dictate ability. The kindest way to approach a concern that a popular figure is too wealthy is to say, "Your wealth makes me concerned that you lack an understanding of how poverty happens, so I don't want you in a position of social power." Demonizing wealth itself is probably not what you really mean when you tease someone like +Mitt Romney. Doing so only serves to socially isolate the wealthy, which is not the answer if we want to build an integrated American culture despite differences. Socio-economic position, like race and gender and religion, should not be a point of division between people; people are people, whether they are rich or poor, black or white, man or woman, whether they like red hats or green hats. Focus on the issues, people, not the meaningless differences.

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