Anthony Randazzo: Are Demographics Destiny?
Self-interest, sex, snakes, and the making of our political preferences
Rich people hate taxes, right? Or at least that's what a rudimentary understanding of self-interest would suggest. But the story immediately gets more complicated when Warren Buffett and Bill Gates start arguing that their tax rates should be higher, even as the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce cries out in opposition. And according to data from the U.S. General Social Survey, the owners of manufacturing plants and retail stores are more likely than lawyers and stockbrokers to oppose a tax increase. What's going on here?
The Pennsylvania Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology psychologists Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban believe they have the answer: a more robust understanding of what constitutes a person's self-interest, according to Anthony Randazzo.