Four Who’s the Fairest of Them All? - More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg #èbelloesserebelli? #inefficienzadellarmrace #economianeoclassicaeinvidia #control'invidia:lacampagnadeipolitici #controlinvidia:rischioepiacere #controlinvidia:lostipendiodeimikebongiorno #controlinvidia:megliocompeteresullaricchezza #diseguaglianzeafisarmonicaeinvidia
Four Who’s the Fairest of Them All?Read more at location 648
Note: Invidiosi o egoisti? Nel primo caso esisterebbero molte esternalità da tassare. Ma x' i politici dicono allora che "va tutto bene"? Perchè x la ricchezza dovrebbe valere ciò che non vale x rischio e tempo libero? X' i lavoratori di vertice nn sono sottopagati? In fondo ricevono già un compenso stando al vertice! Edit
“I know what wages beauty gives,” declared the poet William Butler Yeats.Read more at location 649
Beautiful people get the best jobs, the best mates, and the most attention, leaving the dregs for you and me. On the other hand, beautiful people are sure nice to look at.Read more at location 717
In the end, other people’s beauty could be either a blessing or a curse.Read more at location 719
Veronica’s self-beautification efforts might either cleanse or pollute the communal stream.Read more at location 721
Subsidies or taxes? The answer depends partly on what men care about,Read more at location 724
With costs and benefits flying off in every direction, it’s hard to judge what the right policy should be.Read more at location 738
If beauty can fuel a destructive arms race then so, perhaps, can wealth, or conspicuous displays thereof.Read more at location 739
If people care about wealth for its own sake, there are no communal-stream issues;Read more at location 743
But if people care about their place in the pecking order, then your hard work and mine tend to cancel out—justRead more at location 744
Most—but not all—economists have traditionally assumed that absolute wealth is of absolute importance and relative position is relatively insignificant. Noneconomists have traditionally scoffed at those assumptions.Read more at location 749
Incumbent politicians like to boast that the economy is doing great—presumably because voters consider a rising tide to be a good thing, even when it lifts all boats.Read more at location 763
To put this another way: if people care so much about relative wealth, why do politicians spend so much energy boasting about what they’ve done for absolute wealth?Read more at location 764
Indeed, if people really cared about relative wealth, I’d expect incumbents to run around saying “Vote for me! I’ve been in office for four years and times are really bad!”Read more at location 766
The fact that no politician campaigns that way is evidence against the theory that relative position matters.*Read more at location 770
Another reason to doubt that relative wealth matters very much is that nobody subscribes to analogous theories about either leisure or risk. Do you care about the length of your vacation, or about whether your vacation is longer than your neighbor’s? Do you care about how well your air bag works, or about whether you’ve got the best air bag in the neighborhood?Read more at location 771
Cornell University’s Robert Frank is one economist who nevertheless believes that relative wealth matters, and he’s written a whole book called Luxury Fever to argue his case.Read more at location 775
the least productive must be overpaid (otherwise they wouldn’t stick around) and the most productive must be under-paid (because they’re already receiving a part of their income in the form of status).Read more at location 780
Like Professor Frank, CMP hypothesize that people care about relative position. Better yet, they tell a coherent story about why people care: a high relative position allows you to attract a better mate.Read more at location 788
competition for mates drives most people to save too much, not (as Professor Frank believes) too little. Young people oversave in an effort to improve their own prospects, and old people oversave in an attempt to improve their children’s prospects.Read more at location 790
CMP theory suggests that income inequality should grow over time. But if inequality becomes so great that people lose all hope of changing their relative positions, then the incentive to oversave disappears, and the inequality could begin to shrink.Read more at location 794
in Upper Slobbovia, you attract your mate by wealth, while in Lower Slobbovia, you attract your mate by inherited status. Both traditions can be self-reinforcing and persist forever. But living standards in the two societies will diverge dramaticallyRead more at location 807
Note: MEGLIO COMPETERE SULLA RICCHEZZA
