.Rich People Agree That Life Is Unfair

 Rich People Agree That Life Is Unfair

By Harry Cheadle  Jan 10 2020,

They are concerned about inequality, according to a new survey, but don't ask them to pay more in taxes.

Huge numbers of Americans understand that life in their country is fundamentally unfair. Even many of those in households making more than $500,000—the literal top 1 percent of earners—think that they are unfairly privileged in areas of life ranging from college admissions to housing, and believe the richest of the rich should pay more in taxes.

But when those high earners are asked if the merely rich, i.e. them, should have to chip in more, they balk. Oh, reducing inequality and making the world nicer means that I, personally, might have less stuff? No thank you.

That's one of the takeaways of a new report from NPR, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which jointly conducted a telephone survey of 1,885 adults.

In the most no-s* finding of all time, 1 percenters were found to have "near-universal life satisfaction," with 90 percent of that group saying they were "completely" or "very" satisfied with their lives, compared to just 44 percent of respondents in households earning less than $35,000.

Only 8 percent of those high earners reported having a serious problem paying for medical bills, while 57 percent of those making under $35,000 did. Even fewer of the rich said they had problems paying off debt, finding an affordable place to live, or paying for food or housing, which are routine and often crushing problems for those at the bottom of the income pyramid.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7jb9m/the-1-percent-cares-about-inequality-but-not-taxes

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