Envy and Resentment Often Lurk Just Below the Surface

October 28, 2012 by

Envy is one of the most pervasive human emotions, yet it’s rare that you find someone who admits to it. But someone just did. In a WSJ article the author, Lee Siegel, compares the rise of Asian-Americans with that of Jewish-Americans. He writes,

Some of the more vehement attacks on Amy Chua’s deliberately provocative 2011 memoir of child rearing, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” were perhaps fueled by resentment of Asian-American ascendancy, especially in the context of raising “perfect” children. Confession: I was one of the book’s more vocal detractors. Was I, a Jewish-American writer, driven to pique, in part, by a member of a group that threatens Jewish-American cultural domination, just as American Jews once threatened the WASP mandarinate? Well, maybe.

Wow. Thank you Mr. Siegel for your honesty in admitting that your earlier criticism of Amy Chua’s style of child-rearing was partly fueled by a resentment (i.e. envy) of Asian-American ascendancy. (And it’s a bit ironic that this is coming from someone who’s part of a group that often itself is a target of envy and resentment.)

This is so revealing – and not just in Siegel’s case. One extrapolates that many opinions and observations that one comes across in the media and elsewhere actually derive from selfish and petty human foibles, rather than from substance. It shows that everything should be taken with a grain of salt. The next time one comes across a scathing criticism of Mitt Romney or whoever, one should ask whether the person doing the criticizing has too much envy running through his or her veins.

* * * *

On another but related subject, the article points out that Asian-Americans, to their credit, enjoy the highest incomes of any racial group in the United States. And as well they should, thanks to their admirable focus on education and hard work. (One example is that, in my local area and I’m sure elsewhere, Asian-Americans far more than Americans of other extractions send their children to academics-focused summer school. And that makes perfect  sense. Three months of summer vacation is an anachronism – based on the desire to let children work on the farms back when we primarily were an agricultural society. America never fixed that, and now it’s practically impossible because the teachers unions would be so resistant. Even though they mostly enjoy good salaries for working only nine months of the year — like Chicago where they earn $75K — were we to propose a 10 or 11 month school year, the unions would of course demand a big salary increase to compensate for it. And that would be too expensive so it’s unlikely that it ever would fly.)

The statistic in the article that Asian-Americans enjoy the highest incomes reminded me of a class-warfare-laden “infographic” about a year ago in LiveScience focusing on the top 1 percent (yes, it was class warfare in what should be a science-focused publication), which I wrote about previously. It included a bar graph of average incomes of racial groups in America: white, black, and Hispanic. It showed that whites had the highest incomes – and the tone of the graphs did not put people with high incomes in a favorable light. But it conspicuously left out average incomes of Asian-Americans.

That no doubt was because the writers and editors of the publication wanted to convey the impression that the inequality and other ills of America stem from the actions of upper-income white Americans. In the context of that infographic, it would have been very politically incorrect to show that a minority group actually has higher average incomes than those of European extraction. So they simply left out that inconvenient fact. It was one of the most blatant examples of journalist malpractice I had ever seen.

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Romney/Ryan the “True Progressives”?

October 17, 2012 by

The Economist magazine has an article on how to reduce inequality while maintaining economic growth. They call it “True Progressivism”. Among their prescriptions are:

* Eliminating tax subsidies for the wealthy like the mortgage interest deduction
* Means testing of entitlements, which Republicans always propose but Democrats always shoot down
* Cracking down on teachers unions
* Ending government bailouts of big companies

Wow – who would have thought Romney/Ryan are the “True Progressives”?

Not unexpectedly, in the article The Economist doesn’t t admit that the above prescriptions are much closer to the Romney agenda than the Obama agenda – in fact they’re anathema to the Obama agenda.

What’s wrong Economist? Can’t you bring yourself to say that in order for these things to have a shot at happening, Romney/Ryan are the way to go?

Waiting with baited breath to find out who The Economist endorses this time.
Update: Wouldn’t ya have guessed it: they endorsed Obama.

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Why the Status-Conscious Would Want to Tax the Rich

September 23, 2012 by

Three common reasons for wanting to raise taxes on the rich include: 1) that’s where the money is, 2) envy, and 3) envy-avoidance.

A fourth reason for wanting to raise taxes on the rich: to boost one’s social status. Or more accurately, to mitigate one’s (perceived) inferior social status.

Lots of people are status-conscious. They strive for more and better material goods (and services) and/or higher pay in an effort to gain more respect and feel good about where they stand in relation to others. “Money often translates into the respect of others and high social status, and so even those who don’t want many worldly goods may want a high income for the respect it brings,” write Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener in their book Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth.

In a study, Harvard economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick asked respondents if they would rather earn $50,000 a year in a society where others are making $25,000, or earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000. Fifty-six percent chose the former – i.e. being relatively poorer at $50,000 a year, only because of the higher social status that would entail.

This implies that lots of people no doubt hate it when other people earn more than them, not necessarily because of envy, but because it means they feel less respected than the person earning more. It’s a type of inferiority complex. In order to gain more respect – or more accurately, in order to feel less disrespected – they’d really like to bring those wealthier persons down a notch or two.

What better way to do that than to – you guessed it – raise taxes on the rich?

My hypothesis is that this is another reason why you find a lot of wealthy Democrats: because even though they’re wealthy or upper-middle class, there are still a lot of folks wealthier than them. And they may desire higher taxes on the rich particularly if their taxes would stay the same or wouldn’t rise as much. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all wealthy Democrats, but it likely applies to some of them. They’re just like the people in they study who wouldn’t like to be earning $100k while others are earning $200k.

Another implication: while the left would have you believe that left-leaning people don’t care as much about wealth or materialism or staying ahead of the Joneses, a lot of them surely do. The more you care about such things, the more likely you are to be status-conscious, and therefore the more likely you are to want to reduce the higher status of others in order to gain more (perceived) respect for yourself.

Of course, in addition to wanting to raise taxes on the rich because of envy, this “status inferiority complex” as I call it would be a selfish, shallow, and immature reason for wanting to do so. That’s why I suspect that testing this hypothesis would be difficult: few people would admit to it. But it still could be possible, perhaps by surveying psychologists based on what they’ve gleaned in therapy sessions, or by surveying people themselves with the hope that some of them would be brutally honest in their answers. This is a long shot but hey reader, if you’ve ever felt that way, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

On the flip side, if the above is true, then it’s plausible that some wealthy folks resist higher taxes on them due to a status superiority complex, a.k.a. snobbery. And they likely would harbor both a status superiority complex and a status inferiority complex simultaneously, assuming there are still people richer than them. But if raising taxes on the rich is bad policy anyway – which it usually is because it disincentivizes production thereby harming economic growth and thus harming everyone – then the societal consequences of a status superiority complex aren’t near as harmful as a status inferiority complex.

Meanwhile, in the first paragraph of this article you’ll note that I didn’t include “reducing inequality” in the list as to why people want to raise taxes on the rich. This is because it’s implied in the other items in the list.

Surely inequality would be bad if we lived in a zero-sum society where the rich get richer through wealth coercion – i.e. stealing from the poor and middle class and thereby making the poor poorer. But we live in a positive-sum society where the vast majority of those who are rich got that way through wealth creation, not wealth coercion. The history of America is the story of the rich getting richer and the poor and middle class getting richer. (Of course there have been some years where the poor have gotten poorer, like now during the Obama years, but it’s certainly not because of wealth coercion by the rich, but because of a relative lack of wealth creation.)

So regarding inequality, who cares if the rich get richer as long as everyone else gets richer as well?

I’ll tell you who cares: the envious, the envy-avoiders, and the status-conscious.

Filed Under: Envy, Inequality/Top 1%, Psychology 1 Comment

OWS Hits Freddie Mac. Only 10 Show Up.

February 28, 2012 by

Good news and bad news for Occupy Wall Streeters.

The good news is that they’re still hangin’ on. Today they protested in front of Freddie Mac. The bad news is that, according to my source, only about ten of them showed up.

But there were a couple of police cars there and that made it seem like it was a bigger thing than it really was, says my source.

Apart from that, I’m kinda surprised it was OWS that made noises outside of Freddie Mac, and not their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum, the Tea Partiers. Freddie Mac seems a much more appropriate target for Tea Partiers than OWSers. I guess the latter’s beef is the envy factor, over bonuses. The Tea Partiers should have been there protesting more legitimate issues, like these.

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Further Insight on Why the Rich Get Richer

November 13, 2011 by

You’ll never believe who presented a good explanation of why the top 1 percent’s income has risen faster than that of other groups: Bill Moyers.

Moyers cited one Dieter Braeuninger, who points out that rapid technological change is resulting in a shift to more technology-intensive production methods, i.e. automation, and thus higher demand – and higher pay – for for highly-skilled workers who are able to operate such technology. Those smart enough to invest in such technology enjoy a higher payoff as well. Braeuninger adds, “The supply of basic labor has increased enormously… As long as less-skilled workers cannot shift to more productive tasks, increasing income inequality remains a threat.”

In other words, it’s differences in education levels, and an oversupply of low-skilled labor, that explain inequality, not sinister plots by the rich.

And even then, in the U.S. the lower-income groups’ incomes have risen over the past few decades – just not as fast as the higher-income groups. If people are all bent out of shape over the poor getting richer while the rich get richer faster, then your problem is an oversupply of envy. The solution isn’t taxation, but education – not only educating people to acquire the skills of the modern technological world, but also educating the enviers on why they should let go of such a destructive and useless emotion.

Moreover, the rich have been getting richer at least since the dawn of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago. Since then, and especially in the past few hundred years, humans have been continuously adopting more technology-intensive methods requiring higher skill levels. We’ve gone from hunter-gatherer societies where people’s incomes were more equal than today – and equally poverty-stricken – to a highly complex economy requiring an immense differentiation of tasks and skill levels (and thus pay levels).

That said, Moyers also turned to a usual suspect, Robert Reich, who preposterously implied that the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else – by taking away the money of the nonrich. Reich writes, “Now, when they’re taking home that much, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy growing.” Of course he doesn’t explain how such a process would work. The absence of such explanations is a common occurrence among the left. It’s one of the things the prompted me to abandon them long ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Acumen Courtesy of Thomas Sowell

November 13, 2011 by

From “Democracy Vs. Mob Rule”

“Greed” says how much you want. But you can become the greediest person on earth and that will not increase your pay in the slightest. It is what other people pay you that increases your income.

…Maybe some of the bankers or financiers should have turned down the millions and billions that politicians were offering them. But sainthood is no more common in Wall Street than on Pennsylvania Avenue — or in the media or academia, for that matter.

Actually, some banks did try to refuse the government bailout money, to avoid the interference with their business that they knew would come with it. But the feds insisted — and federal regulators’ power to create big financial problems for banks made it hard to say no. The feds made them an offer they couldn’t refuse…

…As for the “top one percent” in income that attract so much attention, angst and denunciation, there is always going to be a top one percent, unless everybody has the same income. That top one percent has no more monopoly on sainthood or villainy than people in any other bracket…

Moreover, this is not an enduring class of people. Nor are people in other income brackets. Most of the people in the top one percent at any given time are there for only one year. Anyone who sells an average home in San Francisco can get into the top one percent in income — for that year. Other one-time spikes in income account for most of the people in that top one percent.

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You May Be In the Top 1 Percent of the World

November 8, 2011 by

I have a confession to make.

If you’re a fan of Occupy Wall Street, I hope you’ll cut me some slack, once you learn of my status.

Here goes (takes a deep breath):

I’m in the top 1 percent of income earners – of the world.

Yes, we’re talking about the big leagues, here. When I set my sights on something, I aim for the world. None of this USA-only stuff.

I bet you’re thinking, “Tax the hell out of that bastard.”

But actually, you may be a 1 percenter, too.

You definitely are, if you take into account all the people who’ve ever lived.

For the scoop, click here.

 

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The New Demagogues

November 1, 2011 by

Have you ever come across people who trumpet statistics saying that Jews have a disproportionate share of the wealth? Those statistics may be right, but usually the person spouting them is prejudiced against Jews.

What they do is tout certain statistics without providing the right context or explanation, such as the fact that Jewish parents really emphasize education more so than people of other religions, resulting in their children having higher incomes when they become adults. They should be admired, not vilified. It’s a similar situation with Asian-Americans.

Now, media outlets, as well as President Obama and many others, are trumpeting statistics showing that in recent decades, the top 1 percent’s income has risen much faster than that of the other 99 percent.

To tout statistics like this without providing the right context is like anti-Semitic people touting statistics showing that Jews have a disproportionate share of the wealth. The people in the media and the President are prejudiced against the rich.

Just as the demagogues of old whipped up envy, prejudice, and hate against the Jews, President Obama and his enablers are doing the same against the rich.

(For context regarding the top 1 percent statistics, click here.)

 

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The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Richer

November 1, 2011 by

Here’s a comment I posted in response to an article in The Economist, “The 99 Percent”:

It’s surprising, and encouraging, to see that the income of even the lowest quintile rose over the past 30 years. You’d think with the millions of low-skilled, non-English-speaking immigrants pouring in, the income of the lowest quintile would have declined, since income inequality is mainly a function of differences in education/skill level. The question is, will rising incomes of even the lowest quintile be a thing of the future, as it was of the past?

If it doesn’t last, it certainly wouldn’t be the fault of the top 1 percent. If wages of the lowest-income groups decline, the culprit would be an oversupply of low-skilled (many of whom are non-English-speaking) labor.

Meantime, if everyone’s incomes go up – as has happened over the past 30 years – then that’s a good thing. Only the envious are troubled by the fact that the incomes of the rich have risen faster than everyone else.

If you earn $20,000 a year, and your real income goes up to $25,000 a year, that’s good, right? But what if you hear that someone else’s income goes from $100K to $150K? If you’re the envious and resentful type, you’d be troubled. If you’re emotionally mature, you wouldn’t be troubled.

Moreover, rising incomes of the rich isn’t happening at the expense of everyone else (except perhaps in the case of those who get their wealth through wealth coercion as opposed to wealth creation, such as certain members of the legal profession). It isn’t a zero-sum economy. It’s a positive-sum economy where many wealth creators get rich themselves, and in the process make everyone else’s life better through life-enhancing products (software, electronics, appliances, foods, etc.) and services. So the top 1 percent not only provide the jobs to the 99 percent, but also the life-enhancing products.

Factors causing the 1 percent to get richer faster include globalization, where markets are now much bigger than they were in the past and where one can therefore sell many more products than before. Another factor is population growth – now there are 7 billion of us. If you make an inexpensive product costing $1 and sell it to just one-seventh of the population, you’re a multi-millionaire, perhaps a billionaire if your costs are low.

Is it the top 1 percent’s fault that powerful forces such as globalization and population growth are changing the income dynamics?

The enviers want to raise taxes on the rich in order to try reverse the income inequality statistics. But the rich provide the jobs. They provide the products that enhance our lives. They provide the money so that we can get loans to by cars, homes, and education.

Punish the rich, and you punish us all.

For more on this topic, click here.

 

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LiveScience Should Examine the Science of Envy, Using Itself as a Research Subject

October 20, 2011 by

Here’s a comment I wrote in response to a LiveScience article titled “5 Facts about the Wealthiest 1 Percent”:

“Hey LiveScience, have you ever thought about writing an article about the science of envy?

For manifestations of envy, you could point to this very article. It plays on people’s envy. It clearly implies and assumes that rich people getting richer is an inherently bad thing. But what if the rich get richer while the lower-income groups get richer as well (which by and large was happening until the Obama years)? That’s a good thing. Only the envious would think it’s a bad thing. And envy is an immature and destructive emotion; one should not base public policy on it.

And by the way, it is probably true that wealth inequality is rising. But wealth inequality is mainly a function of inequality of education. Our educational system is breaking down and our dropout rate is high, resulting in millions of uneducated, unemployable, and low-income people. And our lax immigration policies are resulting in millions upon millions of uneducated people arriving here from the third world who can’t even speak English. Do you expect them to be instantly rich or middle-class as soon as they cross the border? Of course not.

So you should have discussed the main factor that is causing rising income inequality, namely inequality of skill levels.

The ironic thing is that people on the left wail the loudest about inequality, yet it is they, through their support of near-open borders, of education-stifling teachers’ unions, and of job-destroying anti-business policies that give rise to worsening inequality in the first place.

Meantime, hey Natalie Wolchover (author of the article). I’m curious. Are you an envier? From the tone of this article, it appears so.”

And here’s a comment I posted in response to another LiveScience article titled, “Who Has the Money and Power?”

“Hey LiveScience, you should run an article on the science of envy. For manifestations thereof, you could point to your own articles such as this one, which really play on people’s sense of envy. The material here conveys the false impression that the rich are sinister and conspiring to hold the rest of us down. The graphs are really biased, too. Did you know that the top 1 percent’s income has actually substantially declined during the last few years, during the anemic economy? Nah – that wouldn’t jibe with the agenda you want to promote.

It’s also telling that in your race chart, you left out Asians, who have the highest income and net worth. I guess that would have been politically incorrect, eh? After all, you want to make it look like the evil white folks have all the money and power. Not that there’s anything wrong with Asians being the wealthiest race — they should be admired for that.”

Filed Under: Envy, Inequality/Top 1%, Media Bias Tagged With: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Top 1 Percent Demonization, and Nobel Prize Devaluation

May 20, 2011 by

For an account of one of the most clear-cut cases of demagoguery in recent times, click here.  The demagogue scapegoats and demonizes a group of people without providing any evidence whatsoever. He doesn’t just say that what they’re doing is resulting in bad things (which isn’t happening). He indicates that they fully intend to do the bad things. Tragically, the demagogue is a Nobel Prize recipient – named Joseph Stiglitz.

That tells you something about the caliber of certain Nobel Prize recipients these days. In other words, when you hear that someone is a Nobel Prize recipient, don’t ooh and ahh. Instead, say, “yea, so?”

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Punishing the Wealthy Punishes Us All

October 20, 2009 by

(A previous version of this article appeared in The Christian Science Monitor.)

Lest there be any confusion about the overarching philosophy of Barack Obama, his presidential campaign and his policy proposals thus far have cleared that up: income redistribution and penalization of the rich. Though emotionally appealing to many, this philosophy hurts all Americans in the long run.

Pre-presidency, from his remarks on using the Supreme Court to redistribute wealth, to his “spread the wealth” comment to Joe the Plumber, to his plans to cut taxes on all but the top 5 percent of workers, Obama’s strongest and most consistent campaign message was that the rich aren’t taxed enough. His actions – and inactions – as president have borne this out. They include attempts to reduce a tax deduction for charitable contributions by high-income taxpayers, increase various taxes on various industries and on large estates, allow the top two income tax rates rise to 36 and 39.6 percent respectively in 2011 when the Bush tax cuts expire, and lower the already-modest amount of taxes the bottom 50 percent of income earners pay, and increase subsidies to them.

The most alarming proposal is in the latest health care bill, which phases out health benefits as one’s income goes up. When combined with other tax policies, it would amount to an estimated 70 percent marginal tax rate – i.e. for each additional dollar you earn, 70 cents of it is taxed away.

This is a true class warfare-style strategy: punishing the rich and rewarding the non-rich. It would be terrible for our economy and hurt the rich, poor, and middle class alike.

The reason America’s standard of living is high – and why our poor would be considered middle class in the majority of other countries – is because we produce so many goods and services per person. Monetary rewards, and/or a desire to break out of one’s current economic class, are largely what motivate us to produce those goods and services.

Raising taxes on the rich reduces those monetary rewards, which in turn lowers the incentive to work harder or smarter. That’s bad enough. To raise taxes on the rich while reducing them on the middle class – and increasing subsidies to the middle class – reduces that incentive even more.

It’s akin to your boss cutting your pay if you put in longer hours, and raising your pay if you work shorter hours.

Actually, lowering taxes on the middle class and raising them on the rich harms economic growth even more than leaving middle-class tax rates in tact while raising them on the wealthy. It results in a higher marginal tax rate – the tax rate on what you earn above a certain dollar amount. It is marginal tax rates – not overall tax rates – that so affect our incentive to produce. Why put in extra work if the extra income that comes with it is going to be taxed higher?

As the Wall Street Journal noted, “small-business people – and the number of small businesses – live or die by marginal rate changes.”

A study by Martin Feldstein and Daniel Feenberg of the National Bureau of Economic Research found that following the 1993 tax increases, high-income taxpayers reported 8.5 percent less taxable income that year than they would have if their tax rates had not increased. This is largely because, along with shifting compensation from taxable cash to untaxed fringe benefits, people such as the self-employed and senior executives can reduce their taxable earnings by a combination of working fewer hours and taking more vacations – i.e., fewer goods and services produced.

The ill effects of slower economic growth particularly play out over the long term. Europe, with its high marginal tax rates, serves as a good example. In 1973, per-capita income for the United States was about 26 percent higher than that of Germany. After three and a half decades of slower growth in Germany, the gap had widened to 32 percent. The numbers for France are similar.

Per-capita income of Germany and France is about the same as that of our least-wealthy state, Mississippi. A study by Edward Prescott of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis concludes that Europe’s higher taxes account for almost all the difference in labor force participation rates between Europe and the United States. As taxes have risen over the past three decades, European workers have responded by working less.

There are plenty of other good reasons not to penalize rich people. They are by far the biggest savers. Were it not for their savings, there would be little money available for the rest of us for housing loans, education loans, or car loans. Funds for productive investment by businesses also would be scarce. And most people owe their jobs to a rich person – the owner of the business they work for. (Though many business owners certainly are not rich.)

It’s not as if the rich are undertaxed. According to 2007 figures – the latest year of available data – the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all individual income taxes. The left lambasted the Bush tax cuts because the top 1 percent’s taxes were reduced along with those of everyone else who pay taxes. Well of course – if you cut taxes on everyone, people paying most of the taxes will be affected.

Barack Obama’s message is loud and clear: penalize the wealthy, and reduce the incentive to become wealthy. That would harm the long-term well-being of Americans of all stripes.

Patrick Chisholm is editor of PolicyDynamics.

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Envy Management

September 15, 2009 by

(A previous version of this article appeared in The Christian Science Monitor.)

The top 1 percent. Tax cuts for the rich. Wealth and privilege. Those are powerful phrases. Powerful because they appeal to one of the most prevalent and universal of all human emotions: envy.

The politics of class warfare will always be with us because envy will always be with us. Though no one ever admits it, this emotion is undoubtedly a factor behind some people’s support for higher taxes on the rich. Taken to extremes, it in large part gave rise to degenerative ideologies such as communism and even anti-Semitism. It is also the basis of many wrongs, small and large, that people commit in their everyday lives.

Where did envy come from in the evolutionary scheme of things? My initial conjecture was that it is so prevalent today because humans are not biologically “programmed” for industrialized societies, in which specialization and the division of labor necessitate differences in incomes. Millions of years of evolution designed us to live in hunter-gather societies, where everyone generally was in the same boat economically.

But that conjecture was wrong. Helmut Schoeck’s classic Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior makes clear that unchecked envy was actually far more common in pre-affluent societies. There are plenty of things other than economic status to get envious about, such as someone’s leadership position, hunting skills, social skills, or access to members of the opposite sex.

And in fact, envy based on economic differences was very pronounced in such societies. Small differences in incomes rather than large ones actually are more often a cause of envy. Within a given group, whenever someone accumulated a disproportionate amount of assets based on skill or hard work (or luck), that person often would be ostracized and/or his possessions confiscated. It is one reason why primitive societies stayed primitive; no one was permitted to get ahead economically. “No one dares to show anything that might lead people to think he was better off,” writes Schoeck. “Innovations are unlikely. Agricultural methods remain traditional and primitive, to the detriment of the whole village, because every deviation from previous practice comes up against the limitations set by envy.”

Among the Mambwe, an African tribe, achieving success brought accusations of sorcery. Villagers were convinced that that if someone regularly produced a better crop than his neighbors, it was not the result of better cultivation methods, but of sorcery. Successful people were looked upon as sinister, supernatural, and dangerous.

Sound familiar? In our society, those who become rich through working hard and producing things of value are often suspected of getting where they are through devious means.

A comment by the actor Ethan Hawke, brought up by a “socially conscious” mother, is telling: “I was raised to have a general mistrust of anybody who was wealthy,” he told an interviewer.

Only in societies where enough people hold their envy in check can economic advancement take place. Ours is one such society. In fact, I would venture to guess that envy is less prevalent in the United States than in any other society, which is one reason why we’ve been so economically successful.

Of course, Americans are still subject to the same laws of human emotion as everyone else, so one does not have to look hard to find manifestations of envy. Politicians exploit that emotion all the time. Notable was Al Gore’s “top 1 percent” mantra during his presidential campaign, presidential candidate John Edwards and his “two Americas” rhetoric – “one privileged, the other burdened,” and President Barrack Obama’s plans to raise taxes on the top five percent.

One may ask, how could Gore, Edwards, and Obama, who are wealthy themselves, be envious?

First, they may not be, but exploit the fact that plenty of other people are. Second, maybe it’s guilt. Many wealthy people engage in class-warfare-style thinking because they feel ashamed about their possessions, or don’t want to be the object of envy, according to Schoeck. Third, the rich can be envious of those who are even richer. A Fortune magazine cover a few years ago playfully betrayed this sentiment. It featured business magnate Richard Branson with the sub-headline: “The Money. The Family. The Island. (Damn him.)”

The great conundrum is how the emotion of envy ever got programmed into our brains during the course of evolution. “What adaptive value could envy have had in the prehistoric past?” asks author and psychiatrist Willard Gaylin. “None that I can imagine, for it never brings gratification.” Envy represents a vicious and hateful resentment of people, he writes, that is independent of their actual encroachment on one’s pleasures.

Thoughtfulness and reason can do much to counter the emotion of envy. It is useful to realize, for example, that rich people are the ones responsible for providing most of the rest of us with jobs, products, and (through their savings) loan money to buy a house or go to college.

Those feeling the pangs of envy coming on should ignore it. Laugh it off. Lie down until the feeling goes away. Recognize it as a useless emotion that never produces any benefits, and that causes untold woes.

Patrick Chisholm is editor of PolicyDynamics.

 

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