"These people have grown fat and lazy on Social Security. Let's cut it." (Shutterstock)

So I was reading this story about water restrictions imposed in the wake of California's horrible drought, and how wealthy people are reacting to them, and it reminded me that rich people are kind of jerks. That's one big reason lots of solvable social problems aren't getting solved.

The policy preferences of jerks
Lest we draw overly broad conclusions from one story — maybe the rich are just jerks about water? — let's take a broader look at the policy preferences of the rich. (Note: when I say "rich," I mean the 1 percent and above.)

This is of more than academic interest. Recent research from political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page concludes that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

So the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of the rich have outsize effects not only in terms of their direct dispensation of resources, which is enormous in itself, but even more in terms of their disproportionate influence over public policy, which affects millions.

So what are their preferences? A few years ago, Page, along with fellow political scientists Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright, published a study of the political habits and inclinations of the 1 percent. One thing they found is that the rich are extremely politically active — far more likely to have personal contacts with policymakers, donate money, attend meetings, follow the news, and vote — which (along with, y'know, the money) helps explain why their preferences have such impact.

As to the 1 percent's policy preferences, the folks at Campaign for America's Future took the numbers from Page's study and compared them with past polls, to get a sense of how the preferences of the rich diverge from the general public's. And oh, do they diverge.

I had Vox's ace graphics team pretty up the comparison. Here's how the rich rate things relative to the rest of us:


(Campaign for America's Future)
Of particular note is the passion of rich people for cutting social programs, which puts them at odds with their fellow Americans:


Page et al. conclude:

... if one accepts, at least for the sake of argument, the notion that the wealthy exert substantial political power, our findings may shed some light on the current state of American politics. For example, the contemporary emphasis in Washington on reducing the federal budget deficit addresses what is, by far, the most important public problem in the minds of wealthy Americans—though not of the American public as a whole. The willingness of many policy makers to cut popular social welfare programs, and their reluctance to increase taxes on people with high incomes, may be explained in part by the fact that social welfare programs and increased taxes on the rich are much less popular among wealthy people than among ordinary citizens. And the turn away from economic regulation in recent decades—a turn that left exotic financial derivatives unregulated before the 2008–09 financial crash in which they played such a prominent part, and that left Washington surprisingly inhospitable to more rigorous banking regulation even after that crash—may be attributable, in part, to the distinctive antipathy of wealthy citizens to government regulation of the economy.

[The paper] showed through quizzes, online games, questionnaires, in-lab manipulations, and field studies 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 can make them more likely, as Piff demonstrated in one of his experiments, to take candy from a bowl of sweets designated for children. "While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything," Piff says, "the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes them more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes."

"I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world," said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.

"It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture," Butler said. "What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?"

"I call it the war on suburbia," said Brett Barbre, who lives in the Orange County community of Yorba City, another exceptionally wealthy Zip code.