Letter: Letter to the editor: Democrats do not ‘hate’ successful people

<p><strong>To the editor:</strong></p><p>A letter appeared in the Feb. 18 Daily Journal maintaining that Democratic candidates “hate” and “loath successful individuals.” Democratic candidates do not “hate” and “loath” successful people (defined by the author primarily as “successful entrepreneurs” and those who “achieved millionaire status.”) They call upon them to return a fair portion of their profits to the workers and institutions who contributed to their success.</p><p>The author’s central premise is that everyone’s “individual life trajectory [is] a direct reflection of their own personal decisions.” I was reminded of social scientist Paul Piff’s experiment where 100 pairs of strangers play Monopoly, aware that the game is blatantly rigged. One player in each pair is assigned by coin toss to get twice as much money from the bank at the start of the game, collect twice as much money for passing Go and roll two dice to his/her opponent’s one.</p><p>As the games unfold and the advantaged players accumulate wealth, they show increasing displays of power behavior (smacking their playing pieces hard when they move around the board, etc.). Asked after the game why they had won, they describe their skill and what they had done to earn their success.</p><p>The obvious lesson? Humans are wired to overlook the coin tosses that give us advantages in life, and to credit our successes entirely to our own actions. It is our task to learn empathy and “judge not.” In reality, how far we “climb the ladder” is determined by a combination of factors, including personal work and effort, native abilities, good and bad luck (starting with the family we “decide” to be born or adopted into) and the rung we start on.</p><p><p><strong>Norma Blake</strong></p><p><p><strong>Greenwood</strong></p>