The Wonder Years Are Over
By Tyler Durden
Authored by Bill Bonner of Bonner & Partners, annotated by Acting-Man's Pater Tenebrarum,
Everybody Is Unhappy
PARIS – “France?”
We were in a cab on the way from Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday. We had innocently asked our cab driver how things were going in the country. He had some thoughts…
French president Francois Hollande: against all odds, he managed to attain the most powerful position in French society. And yet, even he is unhappy.
“France is a mess. We have 5 million people unemployed. And because the employment laws are so strict, nobody wants to hire anyone.
“The authorities noticed, for example, that employers use short-term contracts to avoid hiring permanent employees. So the government’s going to tax the short-term contracts. As though making it even more expensive to hire someone will somehow increase employment!”
“There’s no way to do anything about it. We have to wait until the whole thing melts down. In the meantime, everybody’s unhappy…but nobody really wants to change.”
“Yes, that’s the strange thing,” Elizabeth added later. “I was reading a social commentary from France in the 19th century. People dreamed of having a country like today’s France. Back then, they didn’t have enough food to eat or clothes to wear or a place to live. They couldn’t imagine not being happy if they had those things.
“In today’s France, everybody has those things. It’s a worker’s paradise. If you don’t have a job, they give you money… and an apartment. And if you have a job, you almost can’t be fired. And yet, nobody is happy. Why not?”
Helmut Schoeck wrote a marvelous book in the 1966 titled Envy. He explained why happiness is never just a matter of material wants or needs. We humans are wired to compare what we have to what others have… and to always try to find ways get one up on our neighbors.
Helmut Schoeck explains the politics of envy – and he’s hitting the nail on the head (a pdf version is available here).
If we earn more than the guy next door, we are tempted to try to make him feel bad by flaunting it. If he earns more than we do, we will want to take something away from him… to bring him down a peg.
That is the emotional foundation, says Schoeck, underlying socialist politics – envy, dressed up as social justice. But there’s more…
Wonder Years
The trouble with taking something away from your neighbor is that then he tries to take something away from you. Pretty soon, you are both spending so much of your time trying to enact rules and regulations that penalize one group and reward another that neither of you is producing more wealth.
One group gets a subsidy for its products. Another gets a government contract. Another gets medical coverage, paid for by “the government.” And still another gets a tax credit.
Then, they stand on tiptoes and look over the fence at the …read more
Source: The Wonder Years Are Over
