Argumentum ad lazarum

An 1886 painting of Lazarus at the rich man's gate by Fyodor Bronnikov

Argumentum ad lazarum or appeal to poverty is the informal fallacy of thinking a conclusion is correct solely because the speaker is poor, or it is incorrect because the speaker is rich. It is named after Lazarus, a beggar in a New Testament parable who receives his reward in the afterlife. A common summary of the fallacy is "Poor, but honest".

The opposite is the argumentum ad crumenam.

Some experimental evidence supports the appeal to poverty. A 2017 study by Igor Grossmann and Justin Brienza at the University of Waterloo in Canada found that when "wisdom" is defined as the ability to consider opposing perspectives and find a compromise that defuses an interpersonal dispute, poor and working-class people are more likely to show such an ability than are those in higher socioeconomic classes.^[1][2] As with all fallacies though, the tendency is not absolute.

Examples

• "Family farms are struggling to get by so when they say we need to protect them, they must be on to something."
• "The homeless tell us it's hard to find housing. Thus it must be."
• "The monks have forsworn all material possessions. They must have achieved enlightenment."
• "All you need to know about the civil war in that country is that the rebels live in mud huts, while the general who sends troops against them sits in a luxurious, air-conditioned office."

References

1. Michael Price. "The lower your social class, the 'wiser' you are, suggests new study". Science, 2017-12-20. doi:10.1126/science.aar8218
2. Justin P. Brienza, Igor Grossmann. "Social class and wise reasoning about interpersonal conflicts across regions, persons and situations". Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2017-12-20. Accessed 2017-12-23. doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.1870