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Income inequality in America has been growing rapidly, and is expected to increase [PDF]. While the widening wealth gap is a hot topic in the media and on the campaign trail, there's quite a disconnect between the perceptions of economists and those of the general public.
For instance, surveys show people tend to underestimate the income disparity between the top and bottom 20% of Americans, and overestimate the opportunity for poor individuals to climb the social ladder. Additionally, a majority of adults believe that corporations conduct business fairly despite evidence to the contrary and that the government should not act to reduce income inequality.
Even though inequality is increasing, Americans seem to believe that our social and economic systems work exactly as they should. This perspective has intrigued social scientists for decades. My colleague Andrei Cimpian and I have demonstrated in our recent research that these beliefs that our society is fair and just may take root in the first years of life, stemming from our fundamental desire to explain the world around us.
http://theconversation.com/lifes-not-fair-so-why-do-we-assume-it-is-45981
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday September 10 2015, @10:58PM
Ah, here's somebody who understands the just world axiom, and the supporting theory of karma and reincarnation! Read all about it in Matheson's What Dreams May Come (don't be confused by the movie of the same name and watch that instead, not that it's a bad movie).
Basic synopsis: souls reborn in 3rd world hell-holes had it coming to them. They were probably lazy or violent in a past life. They're probably murderers or traitors like that (trigger warning!) Chelsea Manning. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!
So, after several lives of hard work, eventually a position will open up in the 0.1%. You get something of a choice most of the time. Do you want to be somebody like Brianna Wu and use your hard-earned karma to work to expose the evils of all assigned males except herself? Do you want to be somebody like Notch, strike it rich by selling a game that people like for the wrong reasons, and experience the anguish of a $70 million dollar mansion with silence in the halls? There are more conventional routes that might involve actually being good at something. Take the Trump for instance or Bill Gates. Want to be a part of the new aristocracy with your hard-earned karma? Look no further than Chelsea Clinton, surely a modern day princess merely awaiting her coronation after her mother's reign, or Paris Hilton, the more vapid kind of aristocrat.
So, citizen, keep your nose to the grindstone. Work harder, save up that karma, and just choose better parents next time!
(Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 11 2015, @03:50AM
Is this what you believe, or is it a sarcasm bomb? Not being snarky here, genuinely wondering.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 11 2015, @10:53PM
Thanks for asking. I do have a vague belief in reincarnation and enlightenment (not going to pretend I have a shred of evidence), but the rest of the post is pure snark and a misrepresentation of what Matheson postulates in What Dreams May Come about the nature of death, existence after death, and reincarnation. If anything, I'd wouldn't be surprised if most of the people I named are in for a rude spiritual wake-up call in a 3rd world hellhole next life. Even if that's the case and one would extrapolate that and conclude (using the just world axiom again) that people born in 3rd world hellholes deserve what they get for being greedy assholes in their previous life, we would still fail for being equally lacking in the compassion department compared to the greedy assholes and and we would completely miss the point of the cycle of death and rebirth (if there is a point).
That's also assuming individuality is preserved on the journey to the other side during death. The alternative is seeing death as being dumped back into some life stream after the container (the living body) is no longer able to function as a container and birth is the process of dipping a freshly made container into the stream of life. Maybe who one has a lot of the same life-stuff as somebody who had just died, say, minutes before one was born (who knows if that means conceived or delivered), or maybe one has the mixed and matched life-stuff from hundreds of others, like something out of Dark City [imdb.com]. (See also the representation in The Matrix of the power plant, especially when they beat us over the head with the metaphor in Revolutions—love it or hate it—when we learn the manager of the powerplant is a program called Rama-Kandra who's married to an “interactive software” programmer program called Kamala!)
I've haven't made a formal study of Buddhism, but if I understand the legend, Prince Siddhartha achieved enlightenment despite being born vastly privileged (and it may be possible that enlightenment may only be found when tempted at that level to be attached to the material world), not because of it.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 11 2015, @11:03PM
Please forgive the typos! Should have used the preview button!