Brooks: The Downside of Inciting Envy

"Fomenting bitterness over income differences may be powerful politics," writes Arthur Brooks, "but it injures our nation."

Envy has never really been part of the American psyche, argues Brooks, citing Alexis de Tocqueville—who long ago "marveled at Americans' ability to keep envy at bay, and see others' success as portends of good times for all"—and the Irish singer Bono:

“In the United States,” he explained, “you look at the guy that lives in the mansion on the hill, and you think, you know, one day, if I work really hard, I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look up at the guy in the mansion on the hill and go, one day, I’m going to get that bastard.”

"A national shift toward envy would be toxic for American culture," argues Brooks, and that shift seems to be occurring today.

The root cause of increasing envy is a belief that opportunity is in decline. ... People who believe that hard work brings success do not begrudge others their prosperity. But if the game looks rigged, envy and a desire for redistribution will follow.

This is the direction we’re heading. According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who feel that “most people who want to get ahead” can do so through hard work has dropped by 14 points since about 2000. As recently as 2007, Gallup found that 70 percent were satisfied with their opportunities to get ahead by working hard; only 29 percent were dissatisfied. Today, that gap has shrunk to 54 percent satisfied, and 45 percent dissatisfied. In just a few years, we have gone from seeing our economy as a real meritocracy to viewing it as something closer to a coin flip.

Brooks suggests two things to "break the back of envy and rebuild the optimism that made American the marvel of the world."

1. Build a radical opportunity agenda—"That means education reform that empowers parents through choice, and rewards teachers for innovation. It means regulatory and tax reform tailored to spark hiring and entrepreneurship at all levels, especially the bottom of the income scale. It means recalibrating the safety net to ensure that work always pays — such as an expansion of the earned-income tax credit — while never disdaining the so-called dead-end jobs that represent a crucial first step for many marginalized people."
2. Seek out aspirational leaders who never "vilify the rich or give up on the poor."—"Only a shared, joyful mission of freedom, opportunity and enterprise for all will cure us of envy and remind us who we truly are."

Stephens: Obama's Envy Problem

"As he came to the end of his awful year Barack Obama gave an awful speech," writes Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal. "The president thinks America has inequality issues. What it has—what he has—is an envy problem."

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville noticed what might be called the paradox of equality: As social conditions become more equal, the more people resent the inequalities that remain.

"Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy," Tocqueville wrote. "This complete equality eludes the grasp of the people at the very moment they think they have grasped it . . . the people are excited in the pursuit of an advantage, which is more precious because it is not sufficiently remote to be unknown or sufficiently near to be enjoyed."

One result: "Democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy." Another: "A depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom."

That is the background by which the current hand-wringing over inequality must be judged. Inequality is not a problem simply because the rich get richer faster than the poor get richer. It's a problem only when the rich get richer at the expense of the poor [emphasis added].

Stephens argues that Mr. Obama's numbers (comparing present-day income with that of 1979) are simply wrong:

Greed Meets Envy

Tired of hearing about 'greed' from liberals? Change the subject to 'envy'.  Envy, unlike greed, is always personally and societally destructive, argues attorney David McGinley, and the Left owns and thrives on envy!

Covetousness (or envy), meaning the possession of a strong desire for what another has, does not get the attention that its close relation "greed" gets. ... Why? Greed is not always destructive, while envy is. Greed is the desire to have more and, depending how that desire is acted upon, can be beneficial or detrimental. The profit motive has made the United States the most prosperous nation in history; but, conversely, the abuse of that motive was greatly responsible for the September 2008 financial collapse. When envy, on the other hand, is acted upon, there is no good, only bad. At its worst, it leads to mass theft and murder.