Are people hard-wired for income redistribution?

mid says:

01:16pm | 02/03/10

Oh god, talk about can of worms. Now we just wait for the “Leftie Hippie Communist Scientists are at it again with their Trotskyite world government serving research” and the “Facsist Pig bastard Right-Wing conservatives are obviously all wired wrong” etc… comments to start.

Tim says:

01:36pm | 02/03/10

That’s all well and good.
But i notice the study says:
“People who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money,”

What would the results have been if the extra money given to the poor people came from the rich person’s money.

Sure we’re all for equality as long as it’s someone else’s money, but when you’re the one doing the paying its a different story.

Fleeced says:

01:52pm | 02/03/10

Bit of a difference between money given and money earned, I suspect… and if the money being given (to someone else) was taken from someone who had earned it (rather than merely received it), I think the response might be different.

Anthony says:

02:00pm | 02/03/10

I hope Rudd doesn’t see this and use it for evidence-based policy.

There is a big difference between equal distribution and re-distribution.  Especially if someone else decides it’s your money that needs redistributing.

DG says:

02:12pm | 02/03/10

So people who have enough are quite happy for people who don’t have enough to get more. There’s a shock.

It would have been interesting to see how the participants reacted when they had to “earn” the money by some means then part of that money was taken from them and given to someone who hadn’t earned it.

Not only this - the research was based on a small amount of money and the definition of “rich/poor” was a difference of $50 given at the start of the “game”. Not people who had been struggling to get a feed versus people who had plenty and had been living the high life for years.

I wonder just how useful that research is in the context of the real world reward for achievement over a much longer time line.

I also wonder how the research allowed for the fact that some test subjects, while financially comfortable in the real world, would have drawn the “poor” ball. And how much $50 actually meant to each participant in the context of their private lives.

Kim says:

04:13pm | 02/03/10

Paul, have you tried doing a “useful” experiment?

Browy says:

06:34pm | 02/03/10

Labor likes to re-distribute wealth and make the middle class poor.

alan cotterell says:

06:06am | 03/03/10

Labor likes to re-distribute wealth and make the middle class poor.

Is that why the health insurance rebate is to be means tested? Haven’t they heard of the ‘trickle down effect of wealth’ ?

fehowarthth says:

11:10am | 03/03/10

The Opposition likes to take from the undeserving poor to give the deserving rich.  This they do with great gusto.

David C says:

11:17am | 03/03/10

You dont make the poor richer by making the rich poorer

Nathan H says:

11:32am | 03/03/10

Hard-wired for income-redistribution? Hardly. The original press release contains two crucial quotes: http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13327

Q1) “People who started out poor had a stronger brain reaction to things that gave them money, and essentially no reaction to money going to another person,”

Q2) “In the experiment, people who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money,”

That’s a far cry from the implication that Marx was right. I could just as easily read it as an avertisement for free market capitalism and trickle-down economics.

1) Rich people, enjoy charity (trickle trickle trickle). In fact, the 288th richest man in the world started a foundation that funded this very research (more trickle).
2) Poor people like money as much as the next guy, in fact, even more(Gordon Gekko was right!)
3) Poor people are not jealous of other people’s good fortune (this must be disappointing news for Karl Marx & the ALP).

I’d like to see how their brains react when they see someone taking by force another person’s money. I’m sure even the poor would view with displeasure, the real meaning of income-redistribution.