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the less you have the more strident the penalties if caught and the less protection you receive for yourself in the legal system. Now a study of our justice system and its correlation to income status would be equally valuable.

wealthy people face fewer consequences for their actions, which is also why the wealthy are more likely to get involved in illegal drugs

a middle class person gets pee tested and loses their job, the george bushes become president of the usa if they can't get a real job, it is just not the same consequences

what to us would be a serious life fuck-up (getting caught w. drugs, getting caught w. somebody else's wife) is just something they can make go away w. money, you have to be WAY wealthy these days to afford multiple divorces and marriages

if the guy studying this shit thought the results were "surprising" he must be one clueless kitten! all women know that the wealthier man is much more likely to cheat!

the richer the guy the more he screws around on his wife because 1) she has to put up w. more bullshit because she's getting paid more, and 2) even if she does decide to walk out, he has more ability to support two households after divorce, divorce is just absolutely devastating to a middle class lifestyle and can make it impossible, while it's still maybe cheap at the price for the wealthy man (think tiger woods, losing $750 million to divorce ain't gonna cramp his lifestyle and maybe improved it, because he can spend his other billions more freely now w.out worrying about hiding reality from wifey)

Maybe they're wealthy BECAUSE they cheat, rather than cheating because they're wealthy?

i think the wealth comes first, from their family background, inheritance, daddyfare, etc.

when you know that daddy's money will pick you up when you fall, you can be a lot bolder, for instance, the kids in college who pay others to take their courses...the ones i knew well to start with obviously they had to have the money to afford to do that!

the ones who got arrested for drugs yet the arrest went away, again, there is some way that rich people can afford to pay to have their kids' records or their own records' expunged, while that stuff is part of the permanent record of people who don't have big bucks

the rich guys i know who have serial marriages, yes, they can afford to keep getting remarried and starting new families...but they are not wealthier because of this bullshit, they would have millions more if they had not cheated and they stuck w. their first family

it costs money to make legal problems go away, and the wealthy would have even MORE wealth if they didn't have to spend money in that area, if they were just honest to begin with, but it's easier to push the envelope if you have money and lawyers as your backup plan

i could be wrong, but i don't see how being a liar and a cheat is an advantage in business, i think it does pull you down and cost you some jobs when it becomes known you're a liar/cheat/don't really know your stuff...it's just that if you're wealthy or your dad is wealthy, it matters less about the job/money you lost because of a lie, you can get another one, whereas the middle class person will never overcome the lost income because of being fired over a lie or poor qualifications or cheating on some exam

so i do think the wealth came first and allows them to behave badly

a person with little money can't make ANY mistakes or they fall down forever

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which was apparently littered with "evidence" that wealthy/successful/upper-crusters were considerably more morally upstanding, less likely to divorce, more committed to their faith, etc., than the rest of us "great unwashed 99%ers"?

Now why would David Brooks possibly be lying?

Last edited Mon Feb 27, 2012, 07:03 PM - Edit history (1)

by being dishonest? Which is the chicken, and which is the egg?

Now that I've read the article a little more carefully, it would appear that being rich tends to make people less sensitive. And once you've turned into an insensitive, rich douche, your continuing insensitivity, greed and dishonesty helps you get even richer, which makes you into an even bigger douche. And so it goes.

Exhibit A: Mitt Romney.

I'm seeing the "who needs ethics when you're rich" mentality from their participant pool.