Poll: Do you think stealing from the poor is worst than stealing from the rich?

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I think it comes down to agency, as someone once said.

If you stole a dollar from each, I don't think they would notice it that much. Unless the poor man only had 10 dollars in his account. Even then, he might just think "Huh, bank fees".

What we're actually talking about is ability to recover. If you took 9 dollars from the person who only has ten, and took 900,000 from a man who has a million... Both are screwed.

Why? Because that man with a Million dollars isn't living the same way as the Poor man. It's not like they are in the same apartment with the millionaire saying "Well, I guess I can pay for food and rent with this for only five more years." More likely than not, the millionaire's standard of living via bills coming in will wipe that remaining money out pretty quickly. Not as quickly as the poor man, but what will the Millionaire have to give up, sell off, and change about his life to keep him from being out on the street?

 

[Lightknight]

FYI, "worse" is what the OP should have used. Using the word "worst" in that way is worse than punching kittens and is probably the very worst way to use it.

I only bring that up because the OP even bolded the term in the poll question and emphasized it all over the main post.

Key word here is worst

No, the keyword is 'worsE'. As in "better or worsE", as opposed to "best or worst".

And, it depends on what you're stealing... If you're stealing a loaf of bread, then it doesn't really matter who you steal it from. Sure, the "rich" might have a better quality bread, but at the end of the day you don't starve.

Good, someone already pointed it out.

I'd like to point out that nearly all the posters here also used the term properly in response. Pretty cool.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I'm kind of curious, honestly. What is it and The Escapist suddenly turning into the favorite boudoir for the cod philosophers of the Internet? All that's missing is a couple plush dressing gowns, some fezzes, a few mounted elk heads and one snazzy fireplace.

Oh, and cigars.

To answer the question, though, I'd say our ages-old morality plays and fairy tales sum it up fairly simply. Steal from the poor and you're a dirtbag. Steal from the rich and you're still a dirtbag, because society doesn't value people who don't put in honest work to earn their coin.

Steal from the rich and divvy up the proceeds, however, and you earn yourself a half-hearted round of moral support. We all cheer when we hear about your average Ponzi scheme-handling idiot faceplanting and landing himself in court and there's nothing we like more than seeing gormless one-percenters be ridiculed for their lack of basic class or human decency - or else monstrosities like "The Jersey Shore" wouldn't have caught on. Being a decent person seems to matter a lot more than whether or not you're wealthy, honestly. Otherwise, Western culture wouldn't love its Disneyfied wealthy father figures with a heart of gold or a whimsical disposition. We do still have a thing for the archetypal Robin Hood myth, however.

As a rule of thumb, we're brought up to think that stealing from Friar Tuck's coinpurse is terribad, while scampering off with Prince John's ill-gotten fortune warrants a Fist Pump of Victory.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

IMO It's worse to steal from the poor because if you steal from the rich, they become less rich, but have more cushion to absorb the blow. If you steal from the poor, depending on exactly how poor they are, you have a very likely chance of ruining their entire life.

And if the crime is about stealing it all (no penny left behind)? To which one would be worse?

Then you look at their capability of bouncing back. If the rich person has theft insurance, they should be okay. Very poor people generally can't afford insurance of any kind. Even if they don't have theft insurance, assuming the rich person didn't lose their source of income, they have the potential of making a good portion of it back, maybe not quickly but certainly much quicker than the poor person, who may not be able to bounce back at all.

That being said, if the rich person takes such a blow that they lose even their source of income (say the company they own goes down) and they need to declare bankruptcy and suddenly find themselves a poor person, that would be tragic.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Very poor people generally can't afford insurance of any kind.

Isn't that rather ironic in the most disgusting and depressing way imaginable?

"Oh, hey! I see you've got stuff you're attached to and that you depend on to secure your livelihood! Pay me X amount of money on a Y-based frequency, and I'll build you a nest egg to help you out in case you lose it all!

Oh, what's that? You can't afford it? SUX2BU, KTHNXBAI!"

 

[EternallyBored]

Seriously?

From a legal point of view they're equal, of course. But when you steal $1000 from a guy with $100,000 in his bank, he'll still have $99,000 to buy food, clothes, pay bills and rent, and whatever else necessities they might have. Steal $1000 from a guy with $1000 in his bank, he'll have nothing. Which one potentially causes greater harm? Of course rich people don't deserve to get robbed (unless we're talking Jordan Belfort levels of scamming here) but they can obviously sustain greater economic damage than the poor.

They actually aren't even equal from a legal point of view either, moral situations like this are why extenuating circumstances exist, and why we give judges the leeway to determine sentencing rather than just assigning a mandatory punishment for every crime no matter the circumstances. A judge is much more likely to reduce punishment for someone stealing food to survive, versus someone who just wanted a new T.V.

By the same token, if you steal $100 from a poor and rich person, you are more likely to receive harsher punishment based on the level of harm, i.e. a judge is likely going to go much harder on the thief that took from the poor person, if that poor person can step up and demonstrate the loss of money caused them more suffering, especially in a civil case, the poor victim will likely receive a larger sum in return than the rich victim to compensate for the greater level of suffering.

OT: It depends, in almost all cases of petty theft, the poor person is hurt more, stealing from the rich person is still wrong, but you are doing more damage to the poor person. It is like getting in a fist fight with a 200 pound adult male, versus getting in a fist fight with a 60 pound 10 year old child, in both cases, if you initiate the assault, you are in the wrong and have committed a crime, but punching the child carries an extra level of harm and risk that punching the adult generally does not. Both things are wrong, one is just more wrong than the other.

In hypothetical cases, it is possible to cause more harm by stealing from the rich person, if your theft is so large that it causes harm to more than a single person or family. For example, if I embezzle enough money out of something like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I haven't bankrupted Bill gates or personally harmed him in any major way, but I have potentially harmed a lot of other people that organization was helping, likewise, if I take enough money away from a rich person that they can no longer run their business, I have potentially harmed a lot of people at the same time. This is hypothetical though, as theft of that kind of money is generally impossible as, despite what some people may think, most rich people and organizations don't keep that kind of money in liquid assets readily available where it can be stolen, so such cases are either impossible or almost impossible without other crimes being committed on top of the theft, which kind of invalidates the comparison.

TL;DR: Don't steal from anyone, depending on the circumstances, one may be morally worse than the other, but you still shouldn't be stealing anything outside of very extreme scenarios anyway.

 

[Lightknight]

Eh, i'm a bit torn.

On one hand, of course you pose a much bigger threat to someone's standard of living stealing from a poor person, stealing from a poor person could easily come down to something drastic, like living in a shelter, loosing their home and not being able to afford another one, or even being put on the street.

On the other hand, i absolutely can't stand the "occupy wallstreet" mentality that if someone is rich they deserve whatever they get. It's very much still a REALLY shitty thing to do to steal from someone, and still very much a crime, and morally abhorrent, even if they're rich, even if you're doing some robin hood bullshit. Being rich isn't a mortal sin, as some people would have you believe. Plus, it's not like rich people have money just sitting doing nothing. It's likely not liquid, not just sitting in some bank doing nothing, it's likely invested in something. This means to "bounce back" they're going to loose even more money, since they will need money now, and that means untying it from whatever it was doing at an inopportune time. Plus, if you steal something like they're car, they could loose their job for shit like that, or at least get dropped down the corporate latter a bit. Point is, i think people are REALLY overestimating how well rich people could "bounce back", and the overall hostility towards rich people is a bit absurd, not necessarily here, just in general.

The best way to think about it is that in both scenarios the action of theft is still wrong as theft. But stealing from the poor carries with it an additional level of harming someone that is particularly vulnerable. So it's not that the theft itself is worse so much as the additional issue of the moral implications of kicking someone who is already down.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

After reading replies and pondering it for a bit I'd go with it's worse to steal from the poor generally, which was my initial thought.

The thing is money does not have some intrinsic value so why should it be worse to steal $1000 over $10? Thinking about it, why should we view stealing as wrong? In my opinion the answer is because of the harm it causes to others. Now as far as law goes it's hard to make sich a distinction beyond mostly looking at the amount of money. But we're not just talking law here we're talking morality so we don't need to be quite as pragmatic. And if stealing is wrong because of how it harms others then it makes sense that it is worse the more harm it causes. And stealing from the poor tends to cause them more harm. Even if you were to steal half a rich man's money and force him to leave a cheaper lifestyle, the guy is still probably not at risk of even missing a meal.

So essentially, I believe stealing is wrong based on harm, not on monetary value as monetary value is not some objective value of worth. So the more harm it causes, the worse it is imo. That may correlate with monetary value often but it does not always.

 

[K12]

Yes without any doubt. They're both bad from the point of view of law and rights but stealing from the poor will (usually) have far more negative consequences. Morality is about much more than just following the law.

You don't have to hate rich people to recognise that a millionaire is going to bounce back from a robbery more easily than someone on minimum wage. The millionaire has no real chance of being out on the street because they can't pay their rent

The psychological trauma of being robbed will probably be the same for both. It could arguably be worse for the rich person because they're having their feelings of safety and privilege shattered where as the poor person probably already knows that they vulnerable.

It's hard to argue this point though seeing as it's basically saying that poor people are already used to tough times so their misfortune is less significant i.e. kick the guy who's already on the floor, his ribs are broken already.

 

[CaitSeith]

IMO It's worse to steal from the poor because if you steal from the rich, they become less rich, but have more cushion to absorb the blow. If you steal from the poor, depending on exactly how poor they are, you have a very likely chance of ruining their entire life.

And if the crime is about stealing it all (no penny left behind)? To which one would be worse?

Then you look at their capability of bouncing back. If the rich person has theft insurance, they should be okay. Very poor people generally can't afford insurance of any kind. Even if they don't have theft insurance, assuming the rich person didn't lose their source of income, they have the potential of making a good portion of it back, maybe not quickly but certainly much quicker than the poor person, who may not be able to bounce back at all.

That being said, if the rich person takes such a blow that they lose even their source of income (say the company they own goes down) and they need to declare bankruptcy and suddenly find themselves a poor person, that would be tragic.

Then we are beginning to make generalizations. Suppositions like the rich having a good and stable source of income, instead of being rich because of winning the Lottery or saving money from a middle-class job for years.

 

[CaitSeith]

A rich person may not even notice if they are, by definition, rich.

And what's the definition of rich? Unless they got rich by accident, they'll pretty much notice when $100 are missing. Because if they don't notice that, probably they won't notice when they are overspending either (and they'll stop being rich eventually if they keep living like that).

 

[snekadid]

Of course its worse to steal from the poor. 2 reasons:

Practical: If you're stealing from the poor, then you get less money for robbing them at the same risk of jail time.

Logical: If you clean out a bank account of a poor person, you are likely taking close to 100% of their current money. If you clean out a bank account of a rich person, the percentage is no where near as high since there is a limit on how much you can have in a bank account and have it be insured(I think its like 10k) so a rich person would have multiple accounts.

So the moral of the story kids is rob rich people. It just makes more sense.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Then we are beginning to make generalizations. Suppositions like the rich having a good and stable source of income, instead of being rich because of winning the Lottery or saving money from a middle-class job for years.

Yes I gave a general answer to a general question. If given a specific scenario my answer may and probably will change as with your examples above.

 

[Callate]

Is it worse to hit someone in the head with a hammer who is wearing a helmet, or someone whose head is bare?

Well, the person whose head is bare risks bruises, concussion, or cranial fracture, whereas the person wearing the helmet is probably going to say, "Hey, knock it off!"

Similarly, stealing from someone who is poor is worse than stealing from someone who is rich, for allegorically the same reason: cushioning.

If you're stealing from a wealthy person, there's a pretty good chance they have other resources to draw upon, especially in this day and age: credit cards, investment portfolios, etc. Whereas if you're stealing from a poor person, you may be denying them food, or heat, or rent; such a theft could much more easily snowball and ruin someone's life.

The rich person's funds are also much more likely to be protected by insurance and security; a bank will rush to protect the assets and even cover the losses of the rich person for fear of losing their custom, whereas if this happens for the poor person at all, it's likely to be a long, drawn out process... during which that shortfall can continue to do long-term damage to their finances and credit.

None of this is to say that stealing from the rich person is an inherently good thing. But it's the difference between inflicting a scratch and a mortal wound.

 

[Frankster]

Theft is theft but by definition rich people got the means to easily replace what is stolen.

Poor people are already struggling to make ends mean by definition.

Which is why it's so parodoxical that irl it's the rich that ends up stealing from everyone xD

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Meet the American income tax system (probably similar to the UK and Canada). If you have more money than other people, then you don't need it as much as they do. I used to really feel that way, but the older I get, the more ridiculous it sounds. You don't get a lesser charge for stealing a car from a dealership than from an individual. Bank robbers get much larger sentences than muggers or con artists. When it comes to the justice system (in America anyways), if you steal a little bit of money from a wealthy person or a business, you're going to jail. If you steal all of a homeless person's money, you'll probably never be caught and would face a minimal charge if you were.

On a personal ethical level, it's best just to fall back to "stealing is wrong" and stop there. If you try to steal from the rich, you'll get your ass handed to you because they have the power, and if you try to steal from the poor, they will suffer because of it because they have no power.

 

[mlbslugger06]

Premises most seem to assume are true.
A1) All humans are in possession of basic human rights which ought to be protected.
A2) Violation of basic humans rights is immoral.
TF1) Some actions are moral which makes some others immoral. (naturally neutral actions would also exist)
B1) Harming others through the theft of money or property can infringe on these human rights.
TF2) Stealing is immoral.
C1) There can be varying degrees when violating basic human rights. (starving a man from a single meal vs starving a man for weeks)
C2) Theft of property and/or money is a greater violation of these rights on those with less property and/or money.
TF) It is more immoral to steal from the poor than the rich.

I disagree with A1, A2, TF1 which means I naturally find the rest of it completely incoherent. Stealing from the poor is not any more wrong than stealing from the rich, just as killing a man is not any more wrong than running over a cat in a video game. There is no moral factor in this question.