Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

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> A growing problem I see is desire to persecute the wealthy, or lump them all into one "evil" class.

I don't see this happening in any substantial way but most importantly, I don't know. What I am sure of is that we need some data indicating a problem exists before we start thinking about its cause and consequences; otherwise it's just speculation built upon the foundation of more speculation about something that may not exist, and if it does exist it may be completely different than what we imagine.

I can think of a story where it doesn't exist, FWIW: Americans love success and praise the wealthy. Many working class people support the Republican Party, whose policies generally are aimed at helping the wealthy (e.g., reduced tax burdens), and its current billionaire presidential candidate who openly celebrates his wealth. A famous book from a few years ago was "What's the Matter with Kansas?", asking why these people apparently vote against their economic self-interest.

I haven't read that book but the voting pattern the American working class exhibits is widespread, and so is unlikely to stem from its unusual love of success alone. This quote from a now-defunct Telegraph blog by Ed West captures the core of the matter (in a somewhat inflammatory style):

>Liberals are baffled and infuriated that poor whites vote Republican, yet voting on tribal grounds is a feature of all multi-ethnic democracies, whether it's Northern Ireland, Lebanon or Iraq. The more a majority becomes a minority the more tribal its voting becomes, so that increasingly the Republicans have become the "white party"; making this point indelicately got Pat Buchanan the sack, but many others make it too. ...

>The Economist recently asked if the Tories had a “race problem”, but it may just be that democracy has a race problem.

I think it happens in equal parts, although on the media side you will rarely, if ever, see critiques of the wealthy. But fish through reddit, youtube, twitter, and facebook, and you won't have a hard time finding people that hate successful people for no good reason (Markus Persson is a good example; I remember the day he bought his house, someone commented "respect lost"), and almost daily you see pointless negativity towards his success on Twitter.

You made the claims before, but can you back them up? The fact that somewhere on Reddit, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook you can find it happening isn't data or evidence, or even a meaningful anecdote. You can find anything and everything expressed in those massive forums.

Isn't a common occurrence meaningful evidence (regardless if someone says it on reddit or in a conversation at a bar)? I am kind of surprised that there are people who have seemingly not encountered this attitude.

I don't have an academic study on it or anything, but maybe someone has done that. A quick google reveals stuff like: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-hate-rich-people

> Isn't a common occurrence meaningful evidence

We have no idea on how common it is. Common, in your experience is just an anecdote (and humans, including me, are bad at subjectively judging things like that).

Ah, I see :) Yes, I have no measurements or anything like that, just a gut feeling based on how frequently I have seen it, which could easily be biased.

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