Poverty may be miserable. But being able to feel a bit better-off than someone else makes it a bit more bearable. Economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggest that people near the bottom end of financial inequity are less likely to be in favour of programs that will help increase their income if those programs will also help those lower on the scale than they are.

...the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and informed about the “income distribution” that resulted. They were then given another $2, which they could give either to the person directly above or below them in the distribution. The people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them..

This may also explain why Warren Buffet's cry to stop coddling the rich (previously) will continue to fall on deaf ears.
posted by asnider on Aug 16, 2011 - 137 comments

The World Top Incomes Database (click on "Graphics" and select countries, years and other variables) (via)
posted by vidur on Jun 7, 2011 - 5 comments

9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes - "4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all: Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero... 9. Other countries do it better: no one in Germany or the rest of the modern world goes broke because of accident or illness" (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Apr 18, 2011 - 191 comments

Over at Slate magazine, Timothy Noah is doing a multi-part examination of America's growing income gap. The Great Divergence.
posted by Trochanter on Sep 17, 2010 - 6 comments

Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: a November 2005 statistical analysis [PDF] and presentation [PDF] on the the relationship between income and voting. Republicans are richer than Democrats, "blue states" are richer than "red states," and income matters more in "red states." Recent writeup by E.J. Dionne, with a response by the paper's authors. Discussed earlier at the Washington Monthly.
posted by kirkaracha on Mar 15, 2006 - 11 comments