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I hate to break it to the author but peole lie about pretty much everything. People will lie about their incomes on anonymous surveys. People lie in anonymous

by jmyeet 5y ago

I hate to break it to the author but peole lie about pretty much everything. People will lie about their incomes on anonymous surveys. People lie in anonymous polls about their voting intent. You can boil this down to: 1. People lying to themselves and then reflecting that lie to others. A common one I see here is, for example, "it only takes me 30 minutes on the bus to get from SF to work". At 1am on a Tuesday with a tailwind maybe. It's a form of cognitive dissonance; and 2. People lying to others. This is for personal gain and because the person cares about how they're perceived by others. So if you take an example from the post (eg working class family background) it could be either. I've known people who really believe they're working class heroes but they're clearly middle class. It can be woven into their identity. It can just be virtue signaling. It can be to fit in. It can be aspirational. The 2000 election had Al Gore vilify the "top 1%". A survey at the time found that 19% of people thought they were the top 1% and another 20% thought they would be some day. So with this lie they've told themselves (knowingly or not) you've dended up alienating 39% of voters. Ultimately though a lot of these lies can be reduced to people feeling good about themselves even if that means making other people look bad. A lot of social media is built on such "flexing". Instagram in particular. Even Tiktok has all these videos where people post these "how am I so amazing?" videos. You just need to realize it's pretty much all lies. Oh and as for this specific example from the post (ie fetishization of a working-class background in the UK) this is interesting because my experience in the UK was there's a lot of value in signaling your upper class background, how you went to Oxford, Cambridge or Eton, the BBC accent (now this is really the modern RP accent) and so on. The UK is still quite classist (IME). Up until 20-30 years ago, university applications asked your father's occupation.

brimble 5y ago
> People lie in anonymous polls about their voting intent. Political scientists have had to develop a separate category, along with methods to identify its members, in order to capture actual "swing voters", for related reasons. Lots of folks like to classify themselves as "centrist" or "independent" or "on the fence" or what have you, while in fact voting party line every single time just as reliably as someone who self-identifies as being highly partisan. Actual swing voters are a tiny minority of the people who identify as such (which is why "get out the vote" is, not-so-secretly, far more important than courting those voters—lots of seemingly odd behavior by politicians makes way more sense when this is factored in) Bad political reporting (which is lots of political reporting) won't bother to make the distinction, which results in misleading coverage, graphs, et c.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
> it only takes me 30 minutes on the bus to get from SF to work This is interesting. There is nothing I can think of people lie about more rampantly than how long it takes them to get places. Are there any studies on this? I wonder if it's just people being optimistic, or if they're actually trying to signal that they're better than everyone else because they can get places faster than everyone else (even when they can't).
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  It's probably easier to lie to yourself about it than admit you made a poor choice of where to live or work.
haihaibye 5y ago
> 20% thought they would be [top 1%] some day Over 11 percent of Americans will be counted among the top 1 percent of income-earners for at least one year. https://www.humanprogress.org/high-turnover-among-americas-rich/ https://www.humanprogress.org/high-turnover-among-americas-r...
- edot 5y ago
  I'm having trouble believing that figure. I read the article, not the study, so shame on me for that. 11% of Americans will make, at some point, over $300k per year? That is an obscene amount of money. I cannot believe that 1 in 10 people will make that much in a year for at least one year in their life times. Maybe amongst computer science grads from good schools, where 1 in 10 gets into a FAANG, but amongst the general populace?
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    I guess having a high "yearly income" in one year includes things like inheritances and house sales, which would make it more believable.
  - lozenge 5y ago
    Keep in mind this is from the Cato Institute and similar. "People feel it's a fixed club and no one else can get in, but that's not the case," said Mark Perry, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Once you get there, it's not easy to stay there." Hmm, the figures show that 1.1% of the population get to spend 10 years in the top 1% of income, while another 2.2% only spend 5-9 years there and another 11.1% spend 1-4 years there. It's easy to "stay there" for some... The flipside is, a higher income tax would affect 11.1% of people just a few years (times), and 1.1% of people would be affected many more years (times).
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > 11% of Americans will make, at some point, over $300k per year? That is an obscene amount of money. I cannot believe that 1 in 10 people will make that much in a year for at least one year in their life times. I can. Especially if the period the stats were collected over includes the period around and immediately following the Great Recession. Why? (1) People work in fields with irregular income; a book might take years to write, but most of the income for it may be received in a much shorter window. (2) Lots of things (lots of them misfortune) produce income spikes besides work with irregular returns. Short sell a house for $200,000 less than the mortgage balance, with the rest forgiven by lender? That's $200,000 in income that year. Forced to liquidate your tax-deferred retirement savings early to pay for unexpected (say, medical) expense? Again, big one-time income spike. Of course, this doesn't mean what writers from a right-wing propaganda mill want to make it mean.

by jmyeet 5y ago

brimble 5y ago

> People lie in anonymous polls about their voting intent. Political scientists have had to develop a separate category, along with methods to identify its members, in order to capture actual "swing voters", for related reasons. Lots of folks like to classify themselves as "centrist" or "independent" or "on the fence" or what have you, while in fact voting party line every single time just as reliably as someone who self-identifies as being highly partisan. Actual swing voters are a tiny minority of the people who identify as such (which is why "get out the vote" is, not-so-secretly, far more important than courting those voters—lots of seemingly odd behavior by politicians makes way more sense when this is factored in) Bad political reporting (which is lots of political reporting) won't bother to make the distinction, which results in misleading coverage, graphs, et c.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

> it only takes me 30 minutes on the bus to get from SF to work This is interesting. There is nothing I can think of people lie about more rampantly than how long it takes them to get places. Are there any studies on this? I wonder if it's just people being optimistic, or if they're actually trying to signal that they're better than everyone else because they can get places faster than everyone else (even when they can't).

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
It's probably easier to lie to yourself about it than admit you made a poor choice of where to live or work.

haihaibye 5y ago

> 20% thought they would be [top 1%] some day Over 11 percent of Americans will be counted among the top 1 percent of income-earners for at least one year. https://www.humanprogress.org/high-turnover-among-americas-rich/ https://www.humanprogress.org/high-turnover-among-americas-r...

edot 5y ago
I'm having trouble believing that figure. I read the article, not the study, so shame on me for that. 11% of Americans will make, at some point, over $300k per year? That is an obscene amount of money. I cannot believe that 1 in 10 people will make that much in a year for at least one year in their life times. Maybe amongst computer science grads from good schools, where 1 in 10 gets into a FAANG, but amongst the general populace?
- Joeboy 5y ago
  I guess having a high "yearly income" in one year includes things like inheritances and house sales, which would make it more believable.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Keep in mind this is from the Cato Institute and similar. "People feel it's a fixed club and no one else can get in, but that's not the case," said Mark Perry, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Once you get there, it's not easy to stay there." Hmm, the figures show that 1.1% of the population get to spend 10 years in the top 1% of income, while another 2.2% only spend 5-9 years there and another 11.1% spend 1-4 years there. It's easy to "stay there" for some... The flipside is, a higher income tax would affect 11.1% of people just a few years (times), and 1.1% of people would be affected many more years (times).
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > 11% of Americans will make, at some point, over $300k per year? That is an obscene amount of money. I cannot believe that 1 in 10 people will make that much in a year for at least one year in their life times. I can. Especially if the period the stats were collected over includes the period around and immediately following the Great Recession. Why? (1) People work in fields with irregular income; a book might take years to write, but most of the income for it may be received in a much shorter window. (2) Lots of things (lots of them misfortune) produce income spikes besides work with irregular returns. Short sell a house for $200,000 less than the mortgage balance, with the rest forgiven by lender? That's $200,000 in income that year. Forced to liquidate your tax-deferred retirement savings early to pay for unexpected (say, medical) expense? Again, big one-time income spike. Of course, this doesn't mean what writers from a right-wing propaganda mill want to make it mean.