Some interesting findings in the association between ideology and things that make people happy, from Peter Schweitzer on his new book Makers and Takers:
Most surprising of all is reputable research showing those on the Left are more interested in money than Right-wingers.
Both the World Values Survey and the General Social Survey reveal Left-wingers are more likely to rate 'high income' as an important factor in choosing a job, more likely to say 'after good health, money is the most important thing', and agree with the statement 'there are no right or wrong ways to make money'.
You don't need to explain that to Doug Urbanski, the former business manager for Left-wing firebrand and documentary-maker Michael Moore. 'He [Moore] is more money-obsessed than anyone I have known - and that's saying a lot,' claims Urbanski.
How is it possible that those who seem to renounce the money culture are more interested in money?
One might suggest those on the Left are simply being more honest when they answer such questions. The problem is that there is no evidence to support this.
Instead, I believe the results have more to do with the powerful appeal of progressive thinking.
Many on the Left apparently believe that espousing liberal ideals is a 'get out of jail free' card that inoculates them from the evils of the money culture.
Cherie Blair, for example, never lets her self-proclaimed socialist attitudes stop her making money. She is even willing to be paid (as she was in Australia) to appear at charity events.
Such progressives, sure that they are not overly interested in money and possessions, believe they are then free to acquire them.
The article also notes some research by co-conspirator Jim Lindgren.
Via Powerline, which also has audio of a recent Schweitzer radio segment.
This story happened to catch my eye because one of the prevailing hypotheses about the demographic imbalance between "liberal" and "conservative" professors in the academy is that conservatives are "greedier," or place a higher value on money than do liberals, who are said to place a higher value on non-material goals. It is argued that this may explain why "conservatives" self-select out of academia. That hypothesis has never seemed exceedingly plausible to me and while this research doesn't answer the question directly, it sheds some light on the motivations of liberals and conservatives.
It also goes without saying that one can accept Schweizer's statistical findings without necessarily accepting his explanation as to what might explain it. Indeed, I don't find his hypothesis that this is a "get out of jail card" to be particularly plausible in many situations.
Without belaboring the point, my instinct is that attitudes with respect to the relationship between money and happiness are endogenous to broader worldviews about the existence of transcendent moral order and inherent notions of "the good" versus more relativist and materialist worldviews. Let me emphasize that I'm not suggesting one or the other view is right or wrong, I'm just observing that from a broader perspective I'm not as surprised by this finding as Schweizer, especially when read in the context of Schweizer's larger observations (which I think are actually not inconsistent with my intutions).
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.
"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."
Schweitzer made no statistical findings. He took a few things from some surveys and leapt wildly to a bunch of unjustified and silly conclusions.
I suppose it's a good excuse to launch one the standard VC threads - "Let's Bash Liberals With a Bunch of Idiotic Generalizations," but beyond that I fail to see the value of this post.
For it's only just a phase,
For it's money, money, money makes the world go 'round.
I would hate to interfere with anyone taking a gratuitous shot at Michael Moore - but doesn't he give a large percentage of his income from films to charity?
If there is no wrong way to make money, and if there is no difference between earning money and receiving it from others as plunder, then there is little reason to oppose redistribution schemes.
If this survey did not distinguish between having money and earning money, the results are unsurprising.
I am curious about how people view money. I know a lot of people who view it as a status symbol or a way to have power over others, and a lot of people who view it as a means to pay their mortgage, provide for their families, and enjoy their lives.
Whit: and blood. Don't forget that conservatives give more blood than liberals.
Yeah, bad pun, but if fits.
I've just not seen a lot "Liberals are happier" / "Conservatives care more about money" / "Conservatives more likely to lock doors in rough neighborhood" studies bandied about on liberal blogs.
It could be happening though. As I said, I don't read a lot of liberal blogs. Examples? Anyone?
I will say this: I am almost always annoyed when I see these types of posts on Volokh.
If one also believes that the government should try to minimize suffering, then one will tend to support government policies that redistribute wealth to the poor, unhappy masses.
My own personal experience indicates that there is some sort of very, very weak correlation between wealth and happiness (possibly magnified at the extremes). So I don't spend a ton of time worrying about accumulating money...and I don't believe in the massive redistribution of wealth.
I remember this very blog cited research showing that young conservatives grew up worse than young liberals and picked apart the methodology. Well, if that's the standard, pick apart the methodology of this research and don't glibly cite the conclusions.
In the excellent movie The Kite Runner, the protagonist explains to his young son that theft, not money, is the root of all evil. A subtle difference: money is simply an object used for accounting. Theft is a deliberate behavior.
to be rich is good if you get it with the purpose to help the less fortunate. but selfishly putting money before more important values is the stereotypical sin or "root of evil" illustrated by the story of Judas betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
Consider, for example, trade unions. They're generally thought to be leftist, and one of the main things they do is negotiate pay rises. (Of course, they also negotiate on other issues, like unsafe working conditions, unfair dismissal etc).
Campaigning about discrimination - another leftist cause - is often focussed on unequal pay (e.g. women being paid less then men, or African Americans less than whites, for the same work). (Though there are other anti-discrimination issues, such as gay marriage)
So I'd say that much of the left sees shortage of money as being the big issue for the people it claims to be helping. Hence redistribution of wealth via taxes, welfare, etc. etc.
the definition of poor is-not having money.
it would seem to me that, if you have little money, money becomes more important. an extra thousand dollars in salary when you make 20k might be the diffrencei n paying your stundet loans off five years or ten years from now.
if you make a lot of money-a thousand dollars inst that much.
now-if you spend you time looking at the world from the perspective of the poor-you will start to believe that money is much more important than if you look at it from the perspective of the rich.
now-i would think this obvious-but being obvious doesn't necessarily mean it will be mentioned as a possible explanation by intellectuals anymore.
the more novel and counterintuitive your solution-the more enticing it is these days
It is vital we continue research like this. The left keeps calling the right evil, and vise-versa. Only Science can render an objective answer to the question of which side is the evil one.
I am very amused.
Yeah, but it's mostly other peoples' blood.
The claims you are looking for are "liberals are smarter/better informed/less authoritarian/better adjusted."
As I recall, he gave some tiny percentage of his millions to create a foundation for aspiring film-makers. After the last presidential campaign, I looked up his political contributions 2000-2004, as I recall, and found a single donation to a Senate campaign a few years back.
But do we know what Judas wanted the 30 pieces for?
Caring more about having money doesn't imply that you're more able to earn it.
> One would think that people become wealthier in part because they care more about money and are thus inclined to do things that make them more likely to get it.
No. They become wealthier because they do things that other people actually value. They don't do things that other people "should" value but don't. (I'm ignoring subsidy farmers here.)
The "giving blood" was a reference to blood donations.
Of course, the quip was wrong anyway. The left is far more "generous" when it comes to mass killing by govt action, even if you misattribute the Holocaust.
I cannot believe anyone who professes to be a serious intellectual would take this stuff, well, seriously!
My "intuitions" tell me that moderates are more likely to go to heaven, that their pets are more contented, and that they tend to eat more ice cream without gaining more weight. This is why everyone should reject partisan idiocy and join me in middle of the road! Also, free drinks!
it's funny you should ask that. i spend a fair amount of time on far left/progressive sites like democraticunderground.com (which makes dailykos seem rightwing), and
1) the far lefties take it as a given that they are WAY more virtuous than repukes and conservatives aka fascists. they don't seek studies. they are true believers. it is simply incoceivable that there is even such a thing AS a virtuous conservative. conservatives are either incredibly stupid (thus voting against their interests and not understanding the truth), or just plain EVIL. although "evil" is of course not a valid concept, except when talking about conservatives
2) when they were discussing the recent study that showed that conservatives donate far more to charity than libs, the amount of cognitive dissonance, rationalization, etc. was simply stunning. when far lefties are confronted with uncomfortable evidence about themselves, their level of illogic etc. makes intelligent design proponents look like frigging hard headed scientists.
I'd guess that this was true 50 years ago. Is it still? I don't know, but I'd like to see data. I remember a few years back that the only California counties that voted to keep Davis as governor were the wealthiest, and, on the whole, the states the Democrats can count on seem rich on the average (though they have a lot of poor people, too): e.g. NY &California. I suppose the very poor tend to vote Democratic, when they vote. After that, though, query. Just asking.
and i think everyone is capable of succumbing to another fallacy: that our policy preferences accurately reflect our souls.
thanks to @one of many for your thoughtful response. i genuinely didn't know whether liberal blogs mirrored an interest in these kind of surveys/studies.
I wondered about that, too. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Pinch Sulzberger, Sergey Brin, Pierre Omidyar, George Soros, and Mark Cuban come immediatley to mind. Liberals all [or in the case of Soros, much worse]. And there are plenty of others. Where are the conservative billionaires?Looks like the researchers are onto something.
Wow! There sure was a lot of hate in that rant you posted. I realize it is not your own, you merely copied someone else's work--but that person appears to have little if any grip on reality.
mrshl, there was a "study" written up in Slate magazine which "demonstrated" that liberals are smarter than conservatives. The study consisted of typing letters that appeared on a computer screen, with various deviations from strict patterns. Liberals were better at noting the deviations and typing the correct letter, and hence "smarter".
And yes, these types of things are annoying.
Sincerely,
Corkie the Dog
dave, my blockquote skills (tm) are not very 3l33t. that was actually THREE posts but they kind of run together. i need to work on that.
democraticunderground is a frigging blast. and yes, those posts are VERY representative.
A couple points:
1. A bunch of people have already pointed out that how rich you are is definitely going to effect your answers to these questions: e.g., if you're a billionaire, it makes much less sense to choose your job based on making a higher salary. And political beliefs are clearly (in ways that are at least a bit more complicated than "conservatives are richer") importantly effected by wealth. In fact, I would say that if this study didn't make a pretty serious attempt to make sure it was comparing equally wealthy people, its results are basically worthless. Did it make such an attempt?
2. Something people really need to consider more than they do in this and similar surveys is the difference between "caring more/less about money" and "saying you care more/less about money on a survey." Caring about money is something people have varying degrees of shame about, and are more or less willing to admit to. Also, of course, people may set the bar in different places for saying something is "important."
So basically, unless there's more to this than posted here, I don't think this survey is worth the thought that's been devoted to it here.
the correlation between wealth and income is actually pretty weak.despite the fact that that seems logical that it be stong) its not the case in reality.
people tend to vote more on values/race then their money apparently
http://people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=114
indeed-looking at this tax prof site you might conclude that its actually the poor who tend to be republican
And yes Dearieme, Christian Bible, Timothy somewhere, love of money is the root of all evils - not money itself.
Maybe not, but if you go to your local bookstore you'll find many books that try to prove liberals are simply smarter than conservatives, or that conservatives are somehow mentally disabled.
Greed is one of the 7 Cardinal Sins of human nature [Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Anger, Pride and Envy]. We each have at least one of these as a major fault, which must be controlled throughout our lives.
Therefore, if greed [an intense, selfish desire] is your dark motivation, it will be with you for your entire life, rich or poor, and you will always feel that you must have more money. Self control is essential. Same with each of the other sins of human nature.
We are not limited to a single vice, although one generally predominates. If someone [or a group possessing the same vices] is afflicted with, say, greed and envy, it is easy to see where that will lead.
Oh, that's nothing. I once saw someone complain to a manager in a store about a rude clerk, even though the rudeness of the clerk cost the customer no money at all, and would take zero seconds to earn. Not only that, even in nonmonetary terms, the bad service probably wasted less of their effort than complaining to a manager did.
Also, consider this analysis: giving someone grief for charging you too much is beneficial to society, since it increases the likelihood of people not being cheated in the future. In fact, since most of this benefit goes to future customers, who aren't the complainer, complaining that you were cheated out of a couple of cents is actually altruistic.
the customer who complained about rudeness obviously felt civility was more valuable than their time. I'm not certain what the point is though, a variety of people have a variety of values sure but is that in dispute?
I like your argument about griefing those who cheat their customers being a public good, but how does that apply to those who complain in order to cheat the vendor out of reasonable reimbursement for goods and services provided? The joy some rich people get from being able to browbeat some poor sod into giving them more than they are paying for is obscene.