Das Sein bestimmt das Bewußtsein - auch empirisch

Auch wenn man es sowieso schon angenommen hat:

Das Sein bestimmt das Bewußtsein - auch empirisch 

wie Lottogewinner ihr politisches Bewußtsein verändern, eine Untersuchung,
aufgegriffen und kommentiert von P Krugman in seinem Blog bei der New York Times.

Die Quelle, aus der Kruman schöpft:

Money makes people right-wing and inegalitarian 
....
Andrew J Oswald, Nattavudh Powdthavee, 13 February 2014

http://www.voxeu.org/article/money-makes-people-right-wing-and-inegalitarian

Kommentar dazu aus: Paul Krugmans Blog in der NYT - The conscience  of a Liberal

February 13, 2014, 11:58 am
80 Comments

Vox Anti-Populi

Right now the online current-policy economics journal VoxEU — edited by my old student Richard Baldwin — has two fantastic pieces on inequality.

First up, Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee test the effect of wealth on political attitudes by looking at people who got richer, not through their efforts or inheritance, but by winning the lottery. Sure enough, lottery winners become more right-wing. Maybe that’s not surprising, but in case you had any doubts about whether to be a cynic, this should dispel them.

Even more interesting is the effect on political attitudes: lottery winners also became more likely to praise the current, unequal distribution of income:

(This is just the top line of the table; a number of other variables are included as controls).

Think about that for a minute. You might imagine that a self-made man, reasoning from his own experience, might come to the conclusion that people get what they deserve. But here are people who demonstrably, by design, got rich(er) through pure chance, having nothing to do with their talents or efforts. Yet their increased wealth nonetheless convinces them that society is fair. Presumably a big enough lottery win would turn them into Tom Perkins.

In the second piece, Davide Furceri and Prakash Loungani use an event-study framework — looking at what happens on average after clear changes in policy — to assess the effects of “neoliberal” policy changes (although they don’t put it that way) on inequality. Sure enough, they find that both fiscal austerity and liberalization of international capital movements are followed by noticeable rises in income inequality.

So, if you were a ranting leftist, you might say that political attitudes are shaped by class, and that ideological justifications for high inequality are just a veil for class interest. You might also say that “sound” economic policies are really just policies that redistribute income upwards. And it turns out that the econometric evidence more or less supports your rant.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/vox-anti-populi/?_php=true&_type=blogs&module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=0