Calling out envy for what it is raises a valid point: where a motive exists to tilt the table in your favor, it's reasonable to double-check whether what you propose will really be just or fair for everyone.

Calling out envy for what it is raises a valid point: where a motive exists to tilt the table in your favor, it's reasonable to double-check whether what you propose will really be just or fair for everyone.

All questions are answered within!

It must be a REALLY LONG paper!

Both of them study inequality a lot. In any case, by subjective happiness measures– the same sorts of things that Matt is praising in his post, women's happiness in USA has gone down dramatically since the 1970s. It used to be higher than that of men, now it is lower. Very strange that this would have happened after women's liberation.

I suspect that the paper may cause some to reject reliance on subjective happiness measures.

The problem is, meritocrats so often have a naive or outright incorrect view on whether something is the product of merit or of other factors.

Envy and ambition at times motivate people to make something of themselves. The key word is “motivate”. Who makes something of him or herself without motivation?

The stock market keeps going higher

dow 14000 soon according to experts

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ajgUp7xQIn6c&refer=home

The stock market keeps going higher

dow 14000 soon according to experts

<a

href=”http://iamned.com/blog/”>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ajgUp7xQI

n6c&refer=home

Someone should write a song for their children to sing: Gloriously: NY
bankers pass their debt onto the common and slink away from defense of
capitalism, during crisis periods, when capitalism might need a
defender. NY banks then want to privatize their profits. Privatize their gains during the good years. Have one bad year in the cycling of
capitalism and there is Paulson as their front man, to unload their
debt onto others.

Chorus: In a hurry to offload their debt obligations, and in a hurry
to be private again.

Dow 14000 soon??

perhaps the financial crisis has been fixed according to various indicators such as libor and yield curves as written in more detail http://iamned.com/blog/ very compelling

The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say, “I’m as good as you.”

[Y]ou thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that this statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist-measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says, “I’m as good as you” believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce…. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners… “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I – it must be a vile, upstate, lah-di-dah affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs – thinks himself too good for them no doubt…. If they were the right sort of chaps they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.”
* * *
Under the influence of this incantation ["undemocratic"] those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever to pull down everyone else to their own level…. Under the same influence, those who come, or could come, nearer to a full humanity, actually draw back from it for fear of being UNDEMOCRATIC…. To accept [their unique gifts] might make them Different, might offend against the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals.

Screwtape, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (1959)