Getting married and staying married would help put low-income Americans on the path to upward mobility. Government could take an active, positive role in promoting marriage by removing tax and welfare rules that penalize it. Political scientist James Q. Wilson has called for the "Department of Health and Human Services [to] launch an ambitious program . . . to identify and test marriage promoting programs so that those that work can be widely advertised." What justice means to us is precisely that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge” – thus [the tarantulas] speak to each other. “We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equals we are not” – thus do the tarantula-hearts vow. “And ‘will to equality’ shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we want to raise our clamor!” Envy in Politics gracefully mixes social science with political theory. The writing is elegant and incisive and the analysis penetrating and persuasive. This book proclaims the arrival of a major scholar."—Robert H. Bates, Harvard University These investigations usually involve an interview, with those suspected of transgression asked to adjust their behaviour or face fines. In the short term, wholesale costs look to be heading in one direction. The US imposition of sanctions against countries that import Iranian crude from November could drive up oil, and therefore gas, prices.

Yet, for some reason, the decisions and choices as to how our Government is spending taxpayer money are not being reported on in the same manner. When it really happens that the just man remains just even toward those who have harmed him… when the exalted, clear objectivity, as penetrating as it is mild, of the eye of justice and judging is not dimmed even under the assault of personal injury, derision, and calumny, this is a piece of perfection and supreme mastery on earth… The upshot is that the gap between executives and the rest has exploded. In 1965, the gap between what a US chief executive earned and the average worker’s pay was 20 to one. Data last week showed that ratio is now 312 to one. The bosses running the top 350 companies are not only pulling away from their employees: they are also pulling away from the 0.1% of top earners.You’ve got something I want. I can’t have it, so I’m going to destroy what you have. I don’t want anyone to have it unless I can have it.”

Those who use the media, social or otherwise, must be clear about any commercial interest behind their promotion of a product. The problem is less about regulation than with the blurring of lines between the person and their brand. Hundreds of thousands of energy bill payers have been told they could be hit with yet another price rise this year, as if two already weren’t bad enough. What they don’t mention is most people are virtually guaranteed to see their energy bills climb even higher, despite the cap and regardless of whether they switch. As Ed Miliband has noted repeatedly, a price cap is not the same as his price freeze. The cap is reviewed twice a year by Ofgem and, if costs facing suppliers are up, up goes the cap. The regulator did exactly that recently with its specialist “safeguard” tariff. However, as Aquinas immediately goes on to note , this needs qualification. Not every kind of sorrow at another’s good amounts to envy. Suppose someone who means to harm you or your loved ones gains power by which he might do so. For example, it might be a rival at work who gains a position of influence by which he might get you fired. Such a position is a kind of good, and naturally, you grieve that he has achieved it. But that is not envy. Rather, it is a perfectly healthy concern for your own well-being and that of your loved ones. Third, envious persons’ desire to see the envied person harmed and stripped of the good he possesses is thereby made to appear as if it were merely a matter of wanting to set things right. “What they desire,” says Nietzsche, “they call, not retaliation, but ‘the triumph of justice ’; what they hate is not their enemy, no! they hate ‘injustice’” (p. 48). In this way, “a display of grand words and postures,” “noble eloquence,” and“mendaciousness [are] employed to disguise that [their] hatred is hatred” (p. 122).Ever since John Howard’s “battlers” and now Scott Morrison’s “aspirationals”, the Australian public have been groomed to think they “deserve” to keep the money they “earn”. Our fascination with rising income inequality as a public policy dilemma provides a political justification for encouraging envy. Reducing income inequality through redistributive policies aims to punish the "haves" as much as it claims to help the "have-nots." Focusing on relative disparities suggests that people have the right to resent others’ good fortune, hard work, or income. As philosophy professor David E. Cooper articulates in his essay "Equality and Envy," "The idea that some should have less because others have less is an extraordinary idea—yet it is entailed by the egalitarian idea." In The Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant defined envy as a propensity to view the well-being of others with distress, even though it does not detract from one’s own. [It is] a reluctance to see our own wellbeing overshadowed by another’s because the standard we use to see how well off we are is not the intrinsic worth of our own well-being but how it compares with that of others. [Envy] aims, at least in terms of one’s wishes, at destroying others’ good fortune.

Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful… Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! … [W]hen they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had – power… Our culture wants to destroy those we used to hail as heroes. This is a further step of envy. Not only does it drive us to destroy those around us who are great, it also tries to convince us that those we used to hail as heroes had no goodness in them at all. If we are to combat envy, however, we must look to heroes. Alexander, Caesar, NapoleonOverall, this excellent, eclectic, and thought-provoking book is sure to inspire intense discussion and significant follow-up research."—M.R. Michelson, Choice Thanks to globalization and stores like Wal-Mart, goods bought by the poor have become relatively less expensive when compared to goods bought by the rich. Why do governments underspend on policies that would make their constituents better off? Why do people participate in contentious politics when they could reap benefits if they were to abstain? In Envy in Politics, Gwyneth McClendon contends that if we want to understand these and other forms of puzzling political behavior, we should pay attention to envy, spite, and the pursuit of admiration—all manifestations of our desire to maintain or enhance our status within groups. Drawing together insights from political philosophy, behavioral economics, psychology, and anthropology, McClendon explores how and under what conditions status motivations influence politics. That there is a natural inequality between angelic excellence and divine excellence, and that the former could not be made even to approximate the latter except by the help of the one who is more excellent, is intolerable to the demons. It is the inequity as such that pains them as an affront to their pride. So deep does this resentment go that, according to Aquinas , “when the devil tempts us to envy, he is enticing us to that which has its chief place in his heart.” The most troubling thing about this is that many of our fellow citizens (and non-citizens) agree with this way of thinking. We have almost reached the point where the takers outnumber the donors. This is a shame not only for the donors, because the takers are losing their souls, and don’t even realize it. An envious man cannot move ahead in a positive way – he is frozen – and therefore has robbed himself of the self-satisfaction that the successful man knows very well.

Now, I’m no economist and not great at mathematics, but even I know that poorer people spend every single dollar they get in their community. Which is good for the economy, particularly small business. So, raising Newstart would not only give these people some dignity, allow them to have a roof over their head and feed themselves, it would also give them the opportunity to probably update their wardrobes to try to get that job or get out of the trap they are in to move elsewhere for better job opportunities. It would be a win for the Government and the economy. Repeatedly being told that one is not keeping up with the Joneses makes one more inclined to embrace materialism to establish an illusion of wealth.All of this is part of that other fairytale: meritocracy. If we were a meritocratic society, we would do away with private education tomorrow, because we would trust our children to be able to get on in the world. Instead, we have this very peculiar roleplay, where the rich and powerful present themselves as being victims of the class system. It’s not easy being posh. You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue. Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy – perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers – erupt from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge… There is little reason, however, to believe that reducing income inequality would improve the welfare of the poor. We only validate envy by concentrating on relative income differences and breed resentment when we blame the enviable. Instead, our focus should be on advocating measures that will advance the absolute well-being of the working poor.