A
specter is haunting America. It is rooted in something called the
“Money-Empathy Gap.” This gap besets the left as well as the right. It besets
Democrats (with the exception of Bernie Sanders) as well as Republicans.
The
most dramatic recent manifestation of that gap was the GOP Presidential Debate.
That proved to be only a low form of political theater (which caused me,
literally, to drowse off repeatedly). It was a spectacle that never made
a spectacular point.
Few
of the main stage debaters spoke much, fewer spoke either with specificity or
authenticity, about what’s really on the voters’ mind. We are beset by mediocre
economic growth. The economic doldrums, and worse, has persisted under
presidencies of both parties, over 15 years. Voter prosperity has plunged
dramatically below trend-line. Belt-tightening persists to this day.
Virtually
all of the candidates in the debate violated what should be known as Carville’s
Law: It’s the economy, stupid! As Bob Shrum recorded in his memoir No Excuses:
I was
on the phone with Carville one day when he said he had to hang up; the road was
calling in. He was agitated when we talked a little while later. Somewhere in
the Midwest, he said, Clinton had suddenly launched into a soliloquy on nuclear
nonproliferation. There wasn’t one goddamn vote in it, Carville shouted at me—a
warning he had delivered, a little more respectfully, to his contrite
candidate. When James put up his famous sign in the war room—“It’s the economy,
stupid!”— it was not just an admonition to the strategists and to the staff,
but to one very smart former Rhodes Scholar named Bill Clinton. He’d never won
one of those fancy scholarships, Carville told me on vacation after the
campaign, but it didn’t take a genius to know what this election was about.
With
a record 24 million people watching the GOP debate, one would think there would
have been a lot more time spent on the most important issue of the day: the
economy. Look at any poll. Jobs and the economy are always at the top of the
list. But there was barely a mention of this on Thursday night. … The Republican
Party is not going to win this election unless it persuades the electorate that
its primary principles of low marginal tax rates, lighter regulation, free
trade, and a sound dollar are the best path to growth. Call it free-market
capitalism. Call it supply-side. Call it entrepreneurship. Call it take-home
pay. But the endgame is growth and prosperity.
Are
the candidates paying attention? What we got in the first GOP debate did
not focus on restoring opportunity and raising our economic well being through
hard work. It was political theater which Elspeth Reeve writing at The New Republic likened to professional wrestling. Pro wrestling
was a cognate to which I too, recently and briefly, recently alluded. America deserves
better.
Many
voters consider America to be on the wrong track. CNN reports “just 30% of registered voters nationwide say they feel their
views are well represented by the government in Washington, while 40% say they
are not represented well at all. That figure spikes among Republican and
Republican-leaning voters.” Spectacles don’t change tracks.
So
much obliviousness by so many candidates is mystifying. What could be
causing it?
In
July 2012, Lisa Miller wrote, in New York Magazine, a defining article
by the title The Money-Empathy Gap: New research suggests that
more money makes people act less human, or at least less humane. It reported on the research of genius, and enfant terrible,
Prof. Paul Piff, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social
Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. Miller:
Earlier
this year, Piff, who is 30, published a paper in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences that made him semi-famous. Titled “Higher
Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” it showed … that living
high on the socioeconomic ladder can, colloquially speaking, dehumanize people.
It can make them less ethical, more selfish, more insular, and less
compassionate than other people. … It makes them more likely to exhibit
characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes.”
These
findings, in combination with a researcher eager to promote them, reverberated
online. On message boards, detractors accused Piff of using his lab to promote
a leftist agenda…. It is easy to see Piff’s research as ideologically motivated.
The point is to “shed light on some of the consequences of social class,” he
says. But whatever his goal, the “results are apolitical,” he says, and the
data point in a clear direction.
This
research is not intended to prosecute the one percent, those families with an
average net worth of $14 million. Nor does it attempt to apply its conclusions
about the selfishness and solipsism of a broad social stratum to every member
within it: Gateses and Carnegies have obviously saved lives and edified generations,
and one of the biggest predictors of a person’s inclination to donate to
charity is how much money he has. But when the top fifth of American families
have seen their incomes rise by 45 percent since 1979, whereas the bottom fifth
has seen a decline of almost 11 percent, these researchers want to explore a
timely question: How does living in an environment defined by individual
achievement—measured by money, privilege, and status—alter a person’s mental
machinery to the point where he begins to see the people around him only as
aids or obstacles to his own ambitions? Piff won’t name a tipping point after
which the personality transformation kicks in, only that his studies of ethical
behavior indicate a strong correlation between high socioeconomic status and
interpersonal disregard. …I agree with Piff. His results are
apolitical.
Progressives
are at least as guilty as conservatives. Emulating empathy may have supplanted
patriotism as the last refuge of scoundrels. Progressives use promises of government
largess to raise their own social status to Santa Claus levels, thereby
exploiting rather than resolving areas of social misery. (Which by no means
exonerates Republicans or conservatives who are finding themselves blinded by
the same elite light.)
The
Money-Empathy Gap is the prime suspect in driving America onto the wrong
track. This gap strangely disconnects candidates from the interests (and
often values) of the voters.
What
is most missing from this election is a credible focus on restoring equitably
prosperity. Nothing in the first GOP Debate, as meticulously inventoried by
Kudlow, came close to establishing the GOP’s bona fides, either by way
of emphasis or by way of core principles as to how to restore 4% growth across-the-board.
Kudlow
inventoried all of the prime debaters stands on things like taxes, regulation,
and trade, and, for the most part, found them wanting. Then he applied the coup
de grace:
No
one talked about the dollar and monetary policy, which are incredibly
important. A collapsing dollar value such as occurred in the 1970s and 2000s
will doom the economy. But a reliably hard dollar not only keeps inflation low,
it gives America a leg up in the global race for capital.
All
the candidates, of both parties, however humble their roots, however modest
their current income, are very high indeed on the “socioeconomic ladder.” This
seems to be badly distorting their political judgment both as to their
priorities and proposed solutions. The Money-Empathy Gap is haunting
America.
America
knows what it needs. We just are waiting for one or more candidates to
hone in, credibly, on the central issue of the 2016 race.
Hint
to the presidential candidates. Carville’s Law remains in effect. It’s the economy, stupid!
http://affluentinvestor.com/2015/08/the-real-reason-why-all-of-washington-is-out-of-touch-the-money-empathy-gap/
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