The Rich ARE Different: They lie, cheat and steal more

Princess Diana may be one of the few rich people who actually felt--and showed--compassion. Here, dancing at the White House with John Travolta. (Wiki Commons)

Quite a number of years ago, I was at pains to convince my young nephew that rich people were just as nice as the rest of us. I took him to the riding academy where I kept my very modest pleasure horse, and introduced him to a top jumper rider who had more valuable horses on board there than I would ever see in my life. That rider was a nice guy, and talked basketball with my nephew for quite a while. My lesson was a success. And apparently it was wrong.

Rich people are unethical

A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that rich people “are more likely to take candy from children, lie, cheat, endorse unethical behavior at work, and cut off pedestrians while driving…,” according to a report in Huffington Post.

The Greatest Generation=The Biggest Pigs

It noted their feelings of entitlement and inattention to consequences of their actions on others. Indeed, it appeara to me that while rich people of any age may engage in such attitudes and behaviors, those attitudes and behaviors are ingrained in the so-called Greatest Generation, the one that grabbed all the goodies while the grabbing was good, tossed its own kids―the Baby Boom―into the quagmire of Vietnam, and  the snake pit of fierce competition for education and jobs and housing caused by the enormous number of boomers who didn’t screw themselves into existence, but were selfishly mass-produced by greedy WWIIers. 

Here is just one hint that the study applies to the “Greatest Generation” as well as those identified as wealthy:

In another study, nearly half of all drivers of expensive cars cut off pedestrians at crosswalks, while no drivers of the cheapest cars and about 30 percent of drivers of cheaper cars did the same thing.” 

These days, an awful lot of boomers are driving cheaper and cheapest cars―as are their own kids whom they have been unable to save from the cascading debacle caused by, to begin, Reagan and enhanced mightily by the Bushes, I and II (and heaven forfend, don’t give us No. III.) No wonder my 36-year-old friend recently FBed about the “old farts” cutting off on the roads, honking at her for turning a corner and assorted other ills all in one short shopping trip on the day well-off local oldsters get their rather redundant benefit checks in the mail.

Bush: A Generational Throwback to the "Greatest Generation"

The same HuffPo article did, however, go a long way to explaining how the Shrub, despite being a nominal boomer (the cohort that never experienced the widespread wealth and security of its parents’ generation, the one that grabbed most of it) could do the reprehensible things he did, from approving waterboarding to destroying nations. HuffPo noted that “report from researchers at the University of California-Berkeley released in December came to a similar conclusion: That rich people are less likely to feel empathy.”

How the Greatest Generation silenced the baby boom

Boomers have gotten a raw deal; it isn’t BOOMERS who have destroyed the nation. It is the wealthy. But it’s Boomers who get the blame, for the simple reason that the wealthy control the media and therefore can put the blame off on whomever they want. Who did they choose? Boomers…just as they have done since 1964, when the boomers first noticed they were getting a raw deal. Overcrowded colleges and no jobs thereafter. Vietnam (misery, maybe death) or protest (jail, maybe death: Kent State). The wealthy and the WWII Generation had to ensure boomer silence. They did it the first time by making it necessary for every family to have to breadwinners to live less well than the WWII Generation did on one, and then blaming the boomers for the breakdown of the family. The fact that the WWII Generation voted itself increases in social benefits year in and year out didn’t seem to track for the boomers. It's not hard to see why boomers also have a corner on increasing suicide rates.

It should now. Because of what they extracted from us, we have little for ourselves and nothing for our children. Because of the inflation caused in part by funding both the Greediest Generation's increasing appetite for stuff, and our own children's upbringing, we have saved little. Add that to the diminished pensions (virtually no corporate ones) and diminishing Social Security/Medicare benefits, and the boomers are in the worst position of any generation to weather the current socio-political financial storm.

Who is the greediest generation?
Are we boomers the greediest generation, as so many have alleged? Not by half. Look at the WWII Generation (NOT the greatest in anything except greed) and the tiny Brokaw cohort that enabled the WWIIers. They’ve already gotten theirs, paid directly from boomers' increasing FICA (it's a transfer payment, folks, not an "account" in your name), and from companies that funded their retirements but made boomers pay their own via 401Ks and IRAs. 

That’s your answer.