If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years
there would be a shortage of sand.
Attributed to
Milton Friedman That is a comment on Socialism, rather than Envy.
The Politics Of Envy And Other Useful Phrases
QUOTE
Aspiration! That’s a good thing, right? But envy, that’s a bad thing. Of
course one could become confused because how does one aspire unless one sees
something worth aspiring to. Now I do realise that there’s a big difference. In the case of envy you
may merely want to bring the other person down, while aspirational people
work hard and always brush their teeth. Aspirational people don’t get upset
because some successful people pay little or no income tax. Aspirational
people want to become so rich that they can have little or no taxable
income.
And it’s thanks to people like that, Australia has the economy it has
today. Lots and lots of successful people who managed to own several
properties and businesses while earning almost nothing. Or at least, nothing
that needs to go to the wasteful government…
UNQUOTE
Sensible?
Envy
ex Wikipedia
Envy (from Latin
invidia)
is an
emotion which "occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality,
achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other
lacked it".[1]
Aristotle defined envy as pain at the sight of another’s good fortune, stirred by “those who have what we ought to have.”[2] Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.[3] Not only is the envious person rendered unhappy by his or her envy, Russell explained, but that person may also wish to inflict misfortune on others, in forms of emotional abuse and violent acts of criminality. Although envy is generally seen as something negative, Russell also believed that envy was a driving force behind the movement of economies and must be endured to achieve the "keep up with Jones" system. He believed this is what helps to maintain democracy, a system where no one can achieve more than anyone else.
The English Flag Flies In Strood
It was at the home of an honest English Working
Man. He was sneered at by
Emily Thornberry,
a fat ugly arrogant lump of lard who has never done an honest day's work but
wormed her way into the Labour Party because
she is greedy for power. Her attitude to the little people? Hatred &
contempt. That's the reality of Labour politicians.
What have they go to do with politics? Not a lot but they do cause envy, desire,
lechery, lust, whatever. They are English too. Well, maybe not all. The one in the
middle might be Chinese.
Politics Of Envy ex
Hoover Institute
Sensible and boring.
Nick Clegg's 'Politics
Of Envy' A Brief History - ex Guardian
The
Guardian complains about Right Wingers
using the term. But alleging that anyone not left of
Labour is a Far Right extremist is the kind
of lie they like. NB the writer is a surly looking rogue.
Politics Of
Envy ex The Catholic Vote
QUOTE
As progressive politicians rediscover that envy can be a path to power, they
are trying to outdo each other in their promises to punish those they have
defined as the “super-rich.” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed a
“wealth tax” on those with over $50 million in assets.
Warren calls the rich “freeloaders” because she believes they are not paying their “fair share” and warns that there would be no escape from her proposed tax. She promises a one-time tax penalty of $50 million on those who try to renounce their U. S. citizenship, and dramatic increases in funding for the IRS to conduct annual audits on the “super rich.”
The tragedy of this emotional appeal to the envious is that the “wealth tax” guarantees that there will be less wealth as people will find ways to avoid paying that tax. Winston Churchill warned of exactly that in a speech to the House of Commons on October 22, 1945, when he declared that “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” For Churchill, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”
For the truly envious, the equal sharing of miseries is a small price to pay for the satisfaction of bringing down the rich. In “When Did Everyone Become a Socialist? ” a recent cover story in New York Magazine, the author, Simon van Zuylen-Wood described a gathering of the Democratic Socialists of America where people call each other “comrade” and when someone brought up the topic of the triumph of “banishing” the Amazon headquarters from the City, those gathered celebrated the ability to “build something ungodly in Queens.” When asked what they might build, a guillotine was one of the responses.
The guillotine has a special significance for socialists because it brings to mind the ultimate revenge that was exacted by the poor against the rich during France’s bloody Reign of Terror in 1793 when the Jacobins executed nobles, priests and wealthy landowners because they were viewed as “enemies of the Revolution.” In keeping with the French Revolution theme, this month’s print issue of the socialist magazine Jacobin, contains a cover story on Bernie Sanders entitled “I, President: And How I Ended Poverty” and an essay on “How to Win Socialism in America.”
In addition to the print version, there is an online Jacobin blog with
articles on “The Lives the Free Market Took,” and another on “The Paranoid,
Reactionary Dreams of Ronald Reagan,” which suggests that President Reagan’s
“hyper-nationalist worldview grew out of the paranoid jingoism of postwar
America.”
The late-President Reagan is becoming a target of hate for the current crop of Democratic Socialists. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), tapped into the envious resentment of her constituents in the 14th District of Queens and the Bronx last November when she ran on a socialist platform and defeated ten-term Representative Joseph Crowley.
Now that she has a national audience, Ocasio-Cortez has escalated her attempts to use envy to divide the country, suggesting that former President Ronald Reagan was a racist who “pitted white working-class Americans against brown and black working-class Americans to screw over all working-class Americans.” Ocasio-Cortez promises a federal job to every resident who wants to work, adequate housing, healthy food and “access to nature.” She has perfected the appeal to envy that promises to punish the rich and empower the poor.
Ocasio-Cortez has surrounded herself with like-minded resentful aides like legislative assistant Dan Riffle who goes by the Twitter handle: “Every Billionaire is a Policy Failure.” In a profile piece in the Washington Post, Riffle was described as having been “raised by a single mother in trailer parks and public housing in eastern Tennessee becoming an avowed foe of the ultrawealthy.” He told reporters that when he first started working on Capitol Hill, he thought Democratic aides would be activists and idealists. However, he found that they were people who grew up on the Upper West Side and went to Ivy League schools: “These are people who don’t think big and aren’t here to change the world. They only conceive of the world as it is, and work within that frame. They don’t think, “Here’s the system; it sucks and we should burn it down.”
As Zuylen-Wood points out in her New York Magazine article, today’s new
socialists are not just incremental welfare statists. Like the
resentful Dan Riffle, they are working in government to “burn it down.”
Envy is driving this movement—just as it has always driven the move to socialism. While most campuses have resisted much of this, it is likely that as the 2020 primary season begins, the revolution will again reach the campus. Young graduates, saddled with student debt and resentful to find that the high paying jobs they were promised may not materialize, have created a resentful and envious Millennial generation.
This is true even for some of the graduates of the Ivy League as Simon van Zuylen-Wood’s New York cover story notes that: “Democratic Socialists of America can feel like a never-ending Brown University reunion.” Envy is driving much of this.
Societies flourish when the people find ways to control envy, this most destructive emotion. But, as wealth grows, inequality grows with it and there is always the seductive appeal of revengeful revolution. Because envy is ever-present—and powerful when aroused—a society’s ability to achieve greatness depends on its ability to control this highly destructive emotion.
As the presidential primary season begins, progressive politicians will
pander to envy, promising to remove envy’s evil effects by removing its
targets. They are already promising to destroy the rich. But, because
envy creates its own targets no matter how equal the society, there will
always be something to envy.
UNQUOTE
True or false?