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May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: 'Noodles,' Asian style is a carb sub, sure. But they are also amazingly delicious and colorful

April 19, 2013

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: When violence seems the only answer

Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy

Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Harvard Health Letters: Can you die of a broken heart?

Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds

Nora Schultz: Oxytocin helps beat booze cravings

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: Middle Eastern cuisine meets Italian delicious with this lentil and eggplant pastitsio

April 17, 2013

Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom

Geoffrey Mohan: Can computers decode dreams? Researchers take a first step

Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 heart-healthy eating tips help cut saturated fat but not taste

Michael Craig Miller, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Told your child has sensory processing disorder? Seek a second opinion

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Corn and Curry Add Zing to Chilled Soup

April 15, 2013

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Death of Education?

Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral

Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators

Kristin Ohlson : The loneliest fight

The Kosher Gourmet by Dana Velden: A tasty, rich dish that hints at spring's arrival while still anchored in a favorite winter staple


Jewish World Review Oct. 24, 2006 / 2 Mar-Cheshvan, 5767

Envy is bad economics

By Paul Johnson


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In London the media have been foaming at the mouth over the fact that the average chief executive in Britain's top 100 companies is paid 127 times more than the average wage earner. Such high pay has been widely denounced as "excessive," with business leaders joining in the hue and cry. Such indignation is misconceived and pointless. If remuneration at 127 times the average wage is wrong, what is right? One hundred times? Fifty? Twenty? Twice? Who's to say? The market determines these things. If you don't like the market's decisions, the alternative is wage controls, with bureaucrats fixing the scales. Who wants that? And when has it ever worked?


Pay is best seen in terms of spending power or the relative ability to live well. As such, there have always been huge differences throughout history. In England the Domesday survey of 1086 was the first ever undertaken of individual assets in a country. It reveals a bottomless gap between the nobles, bishops and abbots (about 100 men) at the top of society and the serfs at the bottom. The ratio was probably 1,000-to-1 or more.


However, these wealthy men were obligated to supply the crown with what was called knight service, a specific number of fully armored and mounted men, trained for battle and able to serve the crown for 40 to 60 days each year. The number of men so supplied was determined by the amount of land the noble or churchman held. This system led to endless rows and legal actions between the wealthy and the crown, which sometimes fueled rebellions. The rich claimed they were being "ruined" by the tax. One example of a universal truth: There are hidden disadvantages to being really wealthy.


During the Renaissance the head of the Medici bank in Florence had, no doubt, an annual income that was at least 1,000 times the spending power of the average Italian peasant. To defend his assets the banker had to go into expensive civic politics, build fortresslike city houses and fortified country villas and maintain a large contingent of armed horsemen. Moreover, he was expected to devote huge sums of money to the glory of God and the splendor of his family by building and endowing churches or private chapels in cathedrals and embellishing them with altarpieces created by the day's leading Tuscan and Flemish painters.


This art patronage was highly competitive and expensive. A Florentine banker might pay heavily to have a painter such as Hans Memling in Bruges produce a major (9-foot-wide) multipaneled work and then have it transported to Antwerp, shipped to Italy and carted overland to Florence, where, once there, it required ten porters just to carry it across the city.


In every age the rich have had inescapable obligations concerning their wealth. I've just been reading David Cannadine's biography of Andrew Mellon, the Pittsburgh entrepreneur and banker who founded some of America's greatest businesses and then served as Treasury Secretary for 11 years (1921 — 32). During the last years of his long life Mellon was rewarded for his public service by being prosecuted for imaginary tax evasion by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man who, though a lifelong recipient of unearned income, seems to have believed that creating great wealth is somehow immoral. Mellon seems to have spent little of his wealth in self-indulgence of any kind, instead using it to buy works of art that he eventually presented to the nation when founding the glorious National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.


I don't believe people earning average incomes are as envious of the rich as media commentary supposes. The kind of relativity people care about is that their incomes rise, their assets are greater than their parents' and their children do even better than they've done.


Such progress is certainly taking place, especially in countries like the U.S. and Britain that run relatively unshackled market economies. In the Oct. 2 issue of FORBES I learned that in the five years since the attack on the Twin Towers, America's GDP has increased by $3 trillion. This increase alone is roughly equivalent to the entire output of the world's fastest-growing economy, China. Clearly, scores of millions of Americans are doing better than ever before. That being so, the astronomical sums earned by a few on Wall Street are of small importance. In my observation great wealth brings more worries than happiness: several different homes to maintain and protect from thieves, squabbles with servants, the terror of a litigious divorce and fights with demanding children, as well as the fear of the wealth and all its trappings vanishing like fairy gold.

When a Difference Matters
Of course, huge differentials between countries present real problems. Average incomes in the richest countries can easily be as high as 100 times those in the poorest. This wouldn't matter as much if the really poor countries were slowly improving. But, because of bad government and internal wars, these countries are growing poorer, both relatively and absolutely.


At the same time China and India — once the world's two poorest big countries — are making giant strides toward affluence, each year pulling tens of millions of their citizens into the lighted circle of the good life. I believe that in due course the really wretched parts of the world will learn more from the India-China experience than they have ever been able to absorb from the West. The once poor can teach the still poor. I take an optimistic view of these things.


Envy is a foolish and self-destructive emotion. It is also thoroughly bad economics.

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Previously:

10/11/06: Better to Borrow or Lend? Rethinking conventional wisdom
08/22/06: Don't practice legal terrorism
08/08/06: A summer rhapsody for a pedal-bike
08/03/06: Why is there no workable philosophy of music?
07/11/06: Historically speaking, energy crisis is America's opportunity
07/06/06: The misleading dimensions of persons and lives
06/06/06: First editions are not gold
05/23/06: A downright ugly man need never despair of attracting women, even pretty ones
04/25/06: Was Washington right about political parties?
04/12/06: Let's Have More Babies!
04/05/06: For the love of trains
03/29/06: Lincoln and the Compensation Culture
03/22/06: Bottle-beauties and the globalised blond beast
03/15/06: Europe's utopian hangover
03/08/06: Kindly write on only one side of the paper
02/28/06: Creators versus critics
02/21/06: The Rhino Principle

© 2006, Paul Johnson

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