Good, thought-provoking book

[muck]

I read this ==> Lots that lefties, righties, centrists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, agnostics, athiests, etc. could get from this (imo) while sick over the last few days; lots of thought-provoking stuff in there.

 

Originally published in the mid 1990s.

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

That looks slightly more exciting than one of wiegie's econ papers he likes to link to.

[muck]

That looks slightly more exciting than one of wiegie's econ papers he likes to link to.

 

If I get some time, I may drop a few quotes from it here...

[muck]

Before giving you some quotes / passages, here is a bit about this author:

 

Michael Novak is a theologian and former US ambassador who currently (as of 1998) the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He is the 1994 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, and the author of over 25 books on philosophy, theology, politics, economics and culture.

 

NOTE: The Templeton Prize is sort of like a Nobel Prize in Religion.

 

****************************

 

"There are two powerful arguments in favor of capitalism over its historical alternatives: (1) capitalism better helps the poor to escape from poverty than any other system and (2) capitalism is a necessary condition for the success of democracy." (page 84)

 

****************************

 

"It is not wrong to want to be rich. It may be foolish -- the rich are not notably happier than the nonrich -- but it is not wrong. Getting anything you wish any time you wish is often deadly to happiness -- and also to achievement. ... Being rich can be its own punishment. ... Being rich is not a condition to be envied. ... It may be a self-condemnation, since the rich are so often empty and unhappy, but it is no sin. ... Being rich can take away crucial human challenges. ... People who talk much about the "greed" of the rich, whether the latter's wealth is personally earned or merely inherited, are sometimes expressing the sour feelings of their own envy. But they misunderstand reality. As my father taought me, the rich should not be envied; we should feel sorry for them and pray for them." (pages 55-57)

 

****************************

 

"Why do republics so regularly fail? Which passion kills them? Envy, it turns out, is the most destructive social passion -- more so than hatred. Hatred is at least visible and universally recognized as evil. Envy seldom operates under its own name. It chooses a lovlier name to hide behind and prefers to do its work invisibly." (page 90)

 

****************************

 

"Why did the founders choose as their social foundation a class, and an activity, universally regarded by philosophers, religious leaders, and poets as lowly and ignoble? Why did they choose crass commerce? Lowly, servile, mercantile industry? ... Two reasons: First, when every person in the republic, especially the able bodied poor, sees that his or her material conditions are improving from year to year, they are led to compare where they are today with where they would like to be tomorrow. They stop comparing themselves with their neighbors, because their personal goals are not the same as those of their neighbors. They seek their own goals, at their own pace, to their own satisfaction. ... The second reason the framers chose commerce and industry as the economic foundation for this nation is to defeat another great threat to republic institutions: the tyranny of a majority. ... It is in the nature of commerce and industry that they focus the interests of citizens in many different directions. ... In summary, commerce nad industry are a necessary condition for the success of republican government because they (1) defeat envy, through open economic opportunity and economic growth, and (2) defeat the tyranny of a majority, through splitting up economic interests into many different factions." (pages 91-93)

 

****************************

 

"...the history of the twenty-first century may be bloodier than the twentieth. Liberty does not come with a guarantee. Its price, our founders remind us, is everlasting vigilance. Liberty is in some ways the least stable of regimes; it dependds on fidelity to key ideas. Any one generation at any moment may surrender liberty, give up on it, thrust it back to the giver. ... The greatest threat to liberty lies in the human heart." (page 95)

 

****************************

 

"Business has a vested interest in virtue. ... business is dependent on the moral and cultural institutionas of the free society: families especially, schools, and public civic life. A nation's moral culture is even more fundamental than its physical ecoology. ... In free societies, in brief, the language of virtue and character is indespensable -- so indespensable as to be prosaic. How can a people profess to be capable of self-government in public life if they cannot govern their passions in private life? How can a people govern a whole society that cannot, each of them, govern themselves? In the free socieity, virtue is a sine qua non. Where there is no virtue, the free society perishes, and the very idea of liberty becomes chimerical." (page 115 and 116)

 

****************************

 

"At the very heart of capitalism ... is the habit of creative enterprise. Enterprise is, in its first moment, the inclination to notice, the habit of discerning, the tendency to discover what other people don't yet see. It is also the capacity to act on insight, so as to bring into reality things not before seen. It is the ability to foresee both the needs of others and the combinations of productive forces most adapted to satisfying those needs. This habit of intellect constitutes an important source of weath in modern society. ... And no wonder; it participates from afar in the source of all knowledge, the Creator. Sharing in God's creativity, so to speak, the principal resource of humans is their own inventiveness. ... It is no accident that a capitalist economy grew up first in the part of the world deeply influenced by Judaism and Christianity. Millions of people over many centuries learned from Judiasm and Christianity not to regard the earth as a realm merely to accept, never to investigate or experiment with; but, rather, as a place in which to exercise human powers of inquiry, creativity and invention. ... Man the discoverer is made in the image of God. To be creative, to cooperate in bringing creation itself to its perfection is an important element of the human vocation. This belief that each human being is imago Dei -- made in the image of God -- was bound to lead, in an evolutionary and experimental way, to the development of an economic system whose first premise is that the principal cause of wealth is human creativity." (pages 120 - 125)

 

****************************

 

Seven responsibilities internal to a business (pages 139-145):

1. To satisfy customers with goods and services of real value.

 

2. Make a reasonable return on the funds entrusted to the business corporation by its investors.

 

3. To create new wealth.

 

4. To create new jobs.

 

5. To defeat envy through generating upward mobility and putting empirical ground under the conviction that hard work and talent are fairly rewarded. ... Envy is so pervasive among the human race that in the Ten Commandments, under the name "covetousness," God forbade it seven times. If a republic is to have a long life, it must defeat envy. ... Businesses should avoid formenting envy; the ycan do so by supplying employees with opportunities and incentives. In additoin, people in business should avoid some things that are otherwise innocient in themselves. Conspicuous privelege, ostentation, and other forms of behavior, even when not necessarily wrong, typically provoke envy. Unusually large salaries or bonuses, even if justified by competition in a free and open market (since high talent of certain kinds is extremely rare), may offer demagogues fertile ground on which to scatter the seeds of envy. It is wise to take precautions against these eventualities.

 

6. To promote invention, ingenuity, and in general, "progress in the arts and useful sciences" (Article I, Section 8, US Constitution). Pope John Paul II puts it well: "Indeed, besides the earth, man's principal resource is man himself. Today the decisive factor is increasingly man himself; that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others, and to satisfy them." Firms that blunt the creative edge of their employees violate the image of God in them -- and stultify themselves.

 

7. To diversify the interest of the republic.

 

****************************

 

Seven responsibilities external to a business (pages 146-151):

 

1. To establish within the firm a sense of community and respect for the dignity of persons.

 

2. To protect the political soil of liberty.

 

3. To exemplify respect for the law.

 

4. Social justice.

 

5. To commuicate often and fully with their investors, shareholders, pensioners, customers and employees.

 

6. To contribute to making its own habitat, the surrounding society, a better place. The business corporation cannot take primary responsibility in this area; it is not, in itself, a welfare organization. ... Government is not the enemy of business or of the citizens. On the other hand, historically, it has been a fertile source of tyranny, corruption, the abuse of rights, and plain arrogance of power. The alternative to excessive reliance on the state is self-government: sustained and systematic voluntary activiites. This capacity for self-government is precisely what "the republican experiment" of the United States is testing: Can it take the pressure -- or must the nation relapse, like others, into statism?

 

7. To protect the moral ecology of freedom.

 

****************************

 

"Yet this characteristic worldliness is tame compared to the aggressive animal-like sexuality and brutal violence that form the lure of television's excitement and innuendo. By their products, the creators of the television world would seem to do their work with a constant leer. Naturally, the public is susceptible to this constant playing to their prurient interests. It assaults us in our own homes; it is amiable; it is free; and part of our nature does respond to it -- the least noble, most beastly part of our nature. We often consent to it even when cheapened by it. "Giving hte public what it wants" is here no boasting matter. It is, in fact, a form of prostitution. ... All around the world, the major existing threat to free markets and democracy at the end of the twentieth century springs from the systematic corruption of popular culture. Systemic more decline undermines the capacity of peoples for self-government." (pages152-153)

 

****************************

 

"The dynamism driving a capitalis forward, we have seen, is the virtue of creative initiative. The other side of that virtue is the responsibilities that it imposes. Implicit in that dynamism is a committment to make things better. The assumption behind it is that the Creator did not make the world finished but to be finished. His purpose in making women and men in his image was to draw them into his own creative work as co-creators. To be sure, humans are not creators in the same sense as God is; we do not make things out of nothing. If we had not first received, we would be unable to create in any sense. Given the unformed, evolving, and ever-changing world of nature and history and given the talents, abilities, and vocations endowed in us by the Creator -- and only then becuase we have first received -- we can lend ourselves to the Creator's service, so that he might act throug us as he wills. "Be done to me according to thy will" is the fundamental form of prayer, work and action fo Jews, Christians and Muslims. We open ourselves so that he might act through us. This means, among other things, that we must always be looking around at the world in which we find ourselves, in order to discern ways in which God's will might be better done. The world, as we find it, is full of faults and incompleteness. It constantly beckons us with more yet to be done, better ways to found, faults and evils to be corrected."

[Jimmy Neutron]

Good stuff, Muck - thanks for the effort of sharing.

[muck]

Good stuff, Muck - thanks for the effort of sharing.

 

Go get the book; I left a bunch of stuff out.

[Perchoutofwater]

Another book to add to my list. Thanks Muck.

[Jimmy Neutron]

Go get the book; I left a bunch of stuff out.

 

I added it to my actual list - thanks.

[Chavez]

Being rich can be its own punishment. ... Being rich is not a condition to be envied. ... It may be a self-condemnation, since the rich are so often empty and unhappy, but it is no sin. ... Being rich can take away crucial human challenges. ... People who talk much about the "greed" of the rich, whether the latter's wealth is personally earned or merely inherited, are sometimes expressing the sour feelings of their own envy. But they misunderstand reality. As my father taought me, the rich should not be envied; we should feel sorry for them and pray for them." (pages 55-57)

 

Ah, the po' li'l rich folk.

 

 

"Why do republics so regularly fail? Which passion kills them? Envy, it turns out, is the most destructive social passion -- more so than hatred. Hatred is at least visible and universally recognized as evil. Envy seldom operates under its own name. It chooses a lovlier name to hide behind and prefers to do its work invisibly." (page 90)

 

I just recently read this book and Gregg Easterbrook's Sonic Boom, both of which make the case that it is less envy and more gross inequality of income. Both were fairly interesting reads. It Could Happen Here is a bit more leftist slant but the points it makes are still interesting.

[muck]

I just recently read this book and Gregg Easterbrook's Sonic Boom, both of which make the case that it is less envy and more gross inequality of income. Both were fairly interesting reads. It Could Happen Here is a bit more leftist slant but the points it makes are still interesting.

 

It seems to me that if everyone is happy about their spot in life, even if there is gross inequality of income, then the republic stands. However, it's only when envy rises and I say, "Why do you have so much stuff and I have so little? I'm pissed. Gimme some of that!" that the republic is on shaky ground.

 

So, I guess I don't get how a simple inequality of income does it ... it's got to be about one class of people being pitted against another, and the only way people are pitted against one another is when either (i) one envies the other to a great enough extent that they try to take the other groups stuff or (ii) one is trying to take away the liberties of the other.

 

PS - I couldn't open the link to the book you reference.

Edited March 14, 2010 by muck

[Chavez]

It seems to me that if everyone is happy about their spot in life, even if there is gross inequality of income, then the republic stands. However, it's only when envy rises and I say, "Why do you have so much stuff and I have so little? I'm pissed. Gimme some of that!" that the republic is on shaky ground.

 

So, I guess I don't get how a simple inequality of income does it ... it's got to be about one class of people being pitted against another, and the only way people are pitted against one another is when either (i) one envies the other to a great enough extent that they try to take the other groups stuff or (ii) one is trying to take away the liberties of the other.

Easterbrook and Sutton both make the case that it is less about envy and more about fairness. There is a school of thought that the reason a communist/socialist revolution didn't occur early in the 20th Century is that the oligarchs were willing to accede to union demands, which resulted in the creation of the American middle class, with fair wages, health care, etc.

 

The American middle class is being evaporated and the income/assets of the upper 1% are getting way out of skew with that of the average person.

 

PS - I couldn't open the link to the book you reference.

It Could Happen Here by Bruce Sutton.

[muck]

Right, but who decides what is fair but each of us in our own hearts.

 

And, if in our hearts, we decide that something isn't fair, we have envy.

 

However, if I look at your situation and decide for you that you are not receiving a fair deal, even if you disagree with me and are fully content in your situation, what does it matter ... it seems that it only matters when you decide in your heart that you envy someone elses situation. And, if your envy takes on financial terms (rather than relational / familial terms), then that creates the seeds for class warfare and revolution, destabilizing the republic.

 

Or, so it seems to me.

[Rebellab]

What I wanna know is will it help me pick up chicks at a pizza joint in my crocs?

[Chavez]

Right, but who decides what is fair but each of us in our own hearts.

 

And, if in our hearts, we decide that something isn't fair, we have envy.

 

However, if I look at your situation and decide for you that you are not receiving a fair deal, even if you disagree with me and are fully content in your situation, what does it matter ... it seems that it only matters when you decide in your heart that you envy someone elses situation. And, if your envy takes on financial terms (rather than relational / familial terms), then that creates the seeds for class warfare and revolution, destabilizing the republic.

 

Or, so it seems to me.

Saying that injustice is merely envy, due to perception smacks of moral relativism.

[muck]

Saying that injustice is merely envy, due to perception smacks of moral relativism.

 

Not sure I follow...

[BeeR]

Being rich can be its own punishment. ... Being rich is not a condition to be envied. ... It may be a self-condemnation, since the rich are so often empty and unhappy, but it is no sin. ... Being rich can take away crucial human challenges. ... People who talk much about the "greed" of the rich, whether the latter's wealth is personally earned or merely inherited, are sometimes expressing the sour feelings of their own envy. But they misunderstand reality. As my father taought me, the rich should not be envied; we should feel sorry for them and pray for them."

I will give this props - I think extremely few people get this or even want to try, because our society is so obsessed/hypnotized by the flash and glitter of material things; we're like a nation of friggin crows. We see those who have a lot more than us and we are envious, as we're stupid enough to think money is the answer to happiness, more or less...even those of us who know better (or say so) still have that always-present feeling that somehow it would solve all (or nearly all) of our problems.

 

Also we see rich people and assume they are just like us, except with a lot more money. But they aren't. There are a lot of rich people out there who are not at all fulfilled or happy and for any of a wide variety reasons....ie ways in which they are actually much "poorer" than many of us, like parents so wrapped up in their careers (which made them that money) that they don't have a closeness in the family, which is only about a billion times more valuable than money. Also it's harder to make true friends, because there are always plenty of people who want to be "friends" with rich people because they're rich. And don't even get started on relationships....

 

Compounding this is knowing that they're "supposed" to be happy because they're rich.....yet aren't. Further, no matter how miserable they may be, nobody is about to give them any sympathy - after all, they're rich! How could they possibly be unhappy? So they get envy at best, but also scorn or contempt or whatever, the ungrateful brats. (etc etc)

 

Yeah I know, we should be so unfortunate. And sure there are happy rich people. But I think there are a lot more unhappy ones than most realize who in the end found it all very hollow and found that it created as many problems as it solved.

[Azazello1313]

Easterbrook and Sutton both make the case that it is less about envy and more about fairness. There is a school of thought that the reason a communist/socialist revolution didn't occur early in the 20th Century is that the oligarchs were willing to accede to union demands, which resulted in the creation of the American middle class, with fair wages, health care, etc.

 

The American middle class is being evaporated and the income/assets of the upper 1% are getting way out of skew with that of the average person.

 

man, that is all just such nonsense.

 

the expansion of the middle class was due to productivity gains.

[Azazello1313]

"It is not wrong to want to be rich. It may be foolish -- the rich are not notably happier than the nonrich -- but it is not wrong. Getting anything you wish any time you wish is often deadly to happiness -- and also to achievement. ... Being rich can be its own punishment. ... Being rich is not a condition to be envied. ... It may be a self-condemnation, since the rich are so often empty and unhappy, but it is no sin. ... Being rich can take away crucial human challenges. ... People who talk much about the "greed" of the rich, whether the latter's wealth is personally earned or merely inherited, are sometimes expressing the sour feelings of their own envy. But they misunderstand reality. As my father taought me, the rich should not be envied; we should feel sorry for them and pray for them." (pages 55-57)

 

I can't decide whether I agree with this or not. I mean, I do to a large degree, but it strikes me, at a root level, as trying to get at a sort of a moralistic (christian) justification of materialism, which always makes me uncomfortable. it becomes more explicit here:

 

"At the very heart of capitalism ... is the habit of creative enterprise. Enterprise is, in its first moment, the inclination to notice, the habit of discerning, the tendency to discover what other people don't yet see. It is also the capacity to act on insight, so as to bring into reality things not before seen. It is the ability to foresee both the needs of others and the combinations of productive forces most adapted to satisfying those needs. This habit of intellect constitutes an important source of weath in modern society. ... And no wonder; it participates from afar in the source of all knowledge, the Creator. Sharing in God's creativity, so to speak, the principal resource of humans is their own inventiveness. ... It is no accident that a capitalist economy grew up first in the part of the world deeply influenced by Judaism and Christianity. Millions of people over many centuries learned from Judiasm and Christianity not to regard the earth as a realm merely to accept, never to investigate or experiment with; but, rather, as a place in which to exercise human powers of inquiry, creativity and invention. ... Man the discoverer is made in the image of God. To be creative, to cooperate in bringing creation itself to its perfection is an important element of the human vocation. This belief that each human being is imago Dei -- made in the image of God -- was bound to lead, in an evolutionary and experimental way, to the development of an economic system whose first premise is that the principal cause of wealth is human creativity." (pages 120 - 125)

 

put me down as one who strongly believes that the judeo-christian ethic does NOT endorse any one economic system over another. my views on liberty and such are pretty well known here, and many of you also probably know I try to be a christian -- but one thing I adamantly resist is trying to use one to justify the other, because I just don't think it does justice to either, but particularly to my christianity. politics and economics are worldly matters, their goals are worldly goals. I do believe that the freer people are, the more they mutually prosper, the greater the conditions for cultivating personal spiritual growth, and so on. and I am also glad for many reform movements born of spiritual urgency (abolition, civil rights, etc.). there are clearly areas of overlap, I just draw that circle a lot narrower than many. Jesus was not a communist or a libertarian or a progressive or a social conservative. He frowns on your politics, no matter what they are. He doesn't begrudge us rendering unto caesar what is caesar's, and engaging in that realm of worldly affair. but my sense is that he'd rather we just leave it at that, and not ask for his sanction in doing it.

[Ursa Majoris]

It seems to me that if everyone is happy about their spot in life, even if there is gross inequality of income, then the republic stands. However, it's only when envy rises and I say, "Why do you have so much stuff and I have so little? I'm pissed. Gimme some of that!" that the republic is on shaky ground.

 

So, I guess I don't get how a simple inequality of income does it ... it's got to be about one class of people being pitted against another, and the only way people are pitted against one another is when either (i) one envies the other to a great enough extent that they try to take the other groups stuff or (ii) one is trying to take away the liberties of the other.

 

PS - I couldn't open the link to the book you reference.

I don't know if you deliberately or accidentally left out the third and most obvious circumstance - the situation where more and more of the national wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands through a deliberate effort to make it so by those who can.

 

Democracy and capitalism stand when they benefit the majority. Envy is the word bandied about by those that are either already in the elite or think they will be. The rest of us call it things like greed. And it is, as your author points out in his seven points for internal running of a business.

[Ursa Majoris]

man, that is all just such nonsense.

 

the expansion of the middle class was due to productivity gains.

It was also due to the rewards from the increased productivity being spread as wide as possible.

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

It was also due to the rewards from the increased productivity being spread as wide as possible.

 

See China.

[muck]

I don't know if you deliberately or accidentally left out the third and most obvious circumstance - the situation where more and more of the national wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands through a deliberate effort to make it so by those who can.

 

Democracy and capitalism stand when they benefit the majority. Envy is the word bandied about by those that are either already in the elite or think they will be. The rest of us call it things like greed. And it is, as your author points out in his seven points for internal running of a business.

 

If I make $50k / yr am I envious of the guy who makes $5 mil / yr? What about the guy who makes $75k?

 

If I make $50k / yr, do I think the guy who makes $5 mil / yr is greedy? What about the guy who makes $75k ... is he greedy? Do either of those guys think I'm envious (even if I'm not)?

 

I don't think that "envy" is a word only used by people who are "on top" (or expect to be) and I don't think that "greed" is a word only used by those "on the bottom" (or expect to be there in the near future).

 

Those words, imo, are words that apply to each of us on an individual level and only when we are honest with ourselves. I'd bet that Larry Ellison is envious of Bill Gates's net worth, but I'm not particularly envious of either of their checkbooks. Right now, frankly, if I'm honest with myself, I'm more envious of the guys who are 100% debt free and living in a modest 3br/2ba house free-and-clear and are consistently getting home at 5:30pm to see their family.

[Perchoutofwater]

If I make $50k / yr am I envious of the guy who makes $5 mil / yr? What about the guy who makes $75k?

 

If I make $50k / yr, do I think the guy who makes $5 mil / yr is greedy? What about the guy who makes $75k ... is he greedy? Do either of those guys think I'm envious (even if I'm not)?

 

I don't think that "envy" is a word only used by people who are "on top" (or expect to be) and I don't think that "greed" is a word only used by those "on the bottom" (or expect to be there in the near future).

 

Those words, imo, are words that apply to each of us on an individual level and only when we are honest with ourselves. I'd bet that Larry Ellison is envious of Bill Gates's net worth, but I'm not particularly envious of either of their checkbooks. Right now, frankly, if I'm honest with myself, I'm more envious of the guys who are 100% debt free and living in a modest 3br/2ba house free-and-clear and are consistently getting home at 5:30pm to see their family.

 

A big +1.

[Ursa Majoris]

If I make $50k / yr am I envious of the guy who makes $5 mil / yr? What about the guy who makes $75k?

 

If I make $50k / yr, do I think the guy who makes $5 mil / yr is greedy? What about the guy who makes $75k ... is he greedy? Do either of those guys think I'm envious (even if I'm not)?

 

I don't think that "envy" is a word only used by people who are "on top" (or expect to be) and I don't think that "greed" is a word only used by those "on the bottom" (or expect to be there in the near future).

 

Those words, imo, are words that apply to each of us on an individual level and only when we are honest with ourselves. I'd bet that Larry Ellison is envious of Bill Gates's net worth, but I'm not particularly envious of either of their checkbooks. Right now, frankly, if I'm honest with myself, I'm more envious of the guys who are 100% debt free and living in a modest 3br/2ba house free-and-clear and are consistently getting home at 5:30pm to see their family.

Two things:

 

You avoided my point. There IS a third option and it doesn't involve envy nor does it involve the removal of liberty - it is concern that the historical supports of capitalist success since the Gilded Age are being whittled away in a deliberate and self-serving fashion. If capitalism does not support and elevate the majority, then what is the point? It is not envy to believe that any political / commercial system must exist in order to provide the maximum benefits for the maximum number. In capitalism, those benefits will always be skewed towards an "elite" of entrepreneurs and sought-after talent and rightly so. It is the proportion of skew that is the danger.

 

The difference between the circumstance of the "non-elite" person not being elevated by capitalism's rewards and your stated issues is simple - the former is not voluntary. The diffusion of said rewards are not within the purview of the "non-elite" to change.

[muck]

Two things:

 

You avoided my point. There IS a third option and it doesn't involve envy nor does it involve the removal of liberty - it is concern that the historical supports of capitalist success since the Gilded Age are being whittled away in a deliberate and self-serving fashion. If capitalism does not support and elevate the majority, then what is the point? It is not envy to believe that any political / commercial system must exist in order to provide the maximum benefits for the maximum number. In capitalism, those benefits will always be skewed towards an "elite" of entrepreneurs and sought-after talent and rightly so. It is the proportion of skew that is the danger.

 

The difference between the circumstance of the "non-elite" person not being elevated by capitalism's rewards and your stated issues is simple - the former is not voluntary. The diffusion of said rewards are not within the purview of the "non-elite" to change.

 

First, I believe that's one thing, not two.

 

Second, my impression is that if I make $50k this year and made $48k last year and was making $40k five years ago, that I may be feeling sorta ok about this whole "capitalism thing" ... regardless of whether or not someone else has gone from $100k to $5 million in the same amount of time.

 

That said, I do get your point about an increasingly high percentage of the nations wealth being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and the possibility that that leads to envy those people and the situation they've managed to bring about ... but, as long as my situation is getting better consistently and/or I believe it will continue to get better down the road, how much should I care about someone elses even better financial situation?