The Rich in Public Opinion What We Think When We Think about Wealth

by Zitelmann, Rainer

• ISBN13: 9781948647670
• ISBN10: 1948647672
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2020-04-10
• Publisher: Cato Institute
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Summary

What do people in the United States and Europe think about the rich?

There are several thousand books and articles on stereotypes and prejudices directed at countless different social groups. In contrast, there has only been sporadic research into stereotypes about the rich and no published comprehensive, scientific study on the topic—until now. Negative prejudices and stereotypes have repeatedly been used to justify the exclusion, expulsion, persecution, and murder of minorities who have been scapegoated at times of social crises. The 20th century is full of examples of wealthy people, including capitalists, kulaks, and other groups, who were victims of deadly persecution. These were exceptional situations but, even in moderate forms, prejudice against social groups harms society as a whole—not just the rich—through economic or physical destruction and declining prosperity.

In The Rich in Public Opinion: What We Think When We Think about Wealth, historian and sociologist Rainer Zitelmann examines attitudes about wealth and the wealthy in four industrialized Western countries: Germany, the United States, France, and Great Britain. Consisting of three parts, this book first surveys the literature about stereotypes and prejudices. Zitelmann then reports on never‐​before‐​seen data commissioned by the polling firm Ipsos MORI and from the Allensbach Institute, which conducted identical surveys of residents of the four countries regarding various aspects of their attitudes toward wealth. Lastly, The Rich in Public Opinion looks at the portrayal of the rich in media and film.

People often admire the wealthy, but Zitelmann shows that people can also envy them—a sometimes toxic envy that can put lives at risk. This book aims to examine how we think about a minority that, while undeniably powerful, can still be the subject of scapegoating—often with dire effects for us all.

Author Biography

Dr. Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he worked at the Central Institute for Social Science Research at the Free University of Berlin. He was then appointed section head at the leading German daily newspaper “Die Welt”. In 2000, he founded a real estate public relations company. Zitelmann is the author of 22 books, which have been very successful in Europe and Asia. His two most recent books are The Wealth Elite (2018) and The Power of Capitalism (2019).

Table of Contents

PART I: The Rich and Prejudice Research

1. What Are Prejudices and Stereotypes?

2. What is Classism?

3. Warm or Competent? The Stereotype Content Model

4. Findings of Academic Research on Envy

5. Zero-Sum Beliefs: Your Gain is My Loss

6. The Psychology of Scapegoating

7. Why We Vilify High Status Groups

8. Explaining Success: Individual Ability or External Circumstances?

9. The Rich: An Admired but Mistrusted Minority

Part II: What Americans, British, French and Germans think of the rich

10. How Germans See the Rich

11. How Americans See the Rich

12. How the French See the Rich

13. How the British See the Rich

14. Four Nations in Comparison

Part III: Portrayals of the rich in the media

15. The Rich in the News

16. “To Hell with the Rich”: The Panama and Paradise Papers

17. The Rich as Seen from the Comments Section

18. The rich in Hollywood Movies

Conclusion

Appendix: The Questionnaire