So doesn't it just seem to you like the 1% just don't give a damn about anyone else?

That they lack basic empathy and compassion?

This week, for example - Bank of America got hit with a $335 million settlement for preying on minority home buyers.

Their subsidiary - Countrywide - systematically screwed over blacks and Latinos - people who just walked in - looking to buy a home - and walked out with a subprime exploding mortgage - even though they qualified for the non-exploding normal mortgages that white people were getting.

Banksters looked at these prospective home buyers - mostly minorities - not as customers - not as fellow Americans - not as neighbors or friends - but instead as suckers - people they could con into a crooked mortgage and walk away with extra fees.

Where's the compassion for your fellow man?

Meanwhile - in the House of Representatives - nearly half of whom are millionaires - have spent most of this week fighting an extension of the payroll tax cut and extended unemployment benefits for the jobless.

They just don't care about what a thousand dollar tax increase on 160 million Americans might mean. To many of them - like Darryl Issa - the second richest man in Congress - that's just pocket change.

They don't understand what getting cut off from an unemployment check can do to a family.

So they sit on their hands - or they call unemployed people lazy - and they tell the uninsured, 'take more responsibility for yourself'.

Where's the empathy?

And on Wall Street - banksters at the seven biggest banks in the country are about to rake in $156 billion - yes, billion with a b - in pay and bonuses - with little regard to the 1.6 million children who are homeless in America right now as we speak thanks to the fraud - in large part to the fraud - perpetrated by those very same banks.

Where's the humility?

And on the campaign trail - you have millionaires like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich pledging to repeal Obamacare and take away insurance from millions of Americans.

Do these people just not understand what it's like to NOT have seven zeros in their bank account?

Why is that?

Well...new research out of the University of California at Berkeley actually might provide us an answer to that question which is not a rhetorical question.

A new study suggests that wealthy people are far less empathetic than poor people.

Based on three experiments on hundreds of ethnically diverse young adults - lower-economic-class individuals felt greater levels of compassion when watching emotionally charged videos - and were better able to pick up distress signals during mock interviews, than were rich people.

As Jennifer Stellar - the lead author of the study - noted about the wealthy people they studied:

They may just not be as adept at recognizing the cues and signals of suffering [as are poorer people] because they haven’t had to deal with as many obstacles in their lives.

I think that's because the wealthier someone gets - the farther removed they are from the community - they no longer live in the "We" society with the rest of us.

In poorer neighborhoods, people depend on each other more.

When nearby families can't afford childcare - they take turns looking after each other's kids.

Food is shared, people carpool.

And most of these transactions between neighbors are not done through money, but through sharing favors.

That builds community.

But the rich in America - by and large - don't live that life - and they're not encouraged to either.

They aren't asked to give back to their community by paying their fair share in taxes.

They aren't asked to do what's best for their community by hiring local workers - or by taking precautions about where they dump their waste - or by even paying their employees a fair, living wage.

Heck - they aren't even asked to NOT screw over their neighbors with bogus home mortgages.

They just keep making as much money as possible.

And with each additional dollar they make - the farther and farther they get from the community - and the less empathetic they become.

And Republicans today call these people job creators - and they say these people can regulate themselves - that we don't need government regulations?

Is that really the case?

Why on earth would we as a nation, as a community trust the LEAST empathetic among us - to look out for all of our best interests?

Why would we trust the compassionless oil barons to not dump toxins in our water?

Or the compassionless CEO to not ship our jobs overseas?

Why would we trust the compassionless millionaire politician to help the unemployed?

We can't trust them - as they've proven time and time again on Wall Street - on the Gulf Coast - and on Capitol Hill.

This is why we need regulation - this is why we need a democracy that's not bought and sold by the rich.

Because the majority of us still live in the WE society - the society that's being highlighted by the 99% movement - the society that encourages empathy and compassion.

You know, before the Reagan tax cuts, America was a far more equal society - and frankly a far more humane society.

The rich weren't as rich, and the poor weren't as desperately poor, or as numerous.

Thirty years of Reaganomics have brought us a coarser society and a $13 trillion national debt.

It's time to roll back the Reagan tax cuts, and repudiate the entire notion of Reaganomics.

Tell a friend and pass it on.

That's The Big Picture.