That was a great and thought-provoking article. It reminds me of a John Paul Getty quote which goes something like this: If you took all the money in the world, and divided it equally between every single individual living, in 90 days it would be distributed approximately the same as it is today.
In fact, let me see if I can find the exact quote, because he said it better....
Here it is:
If all the money and property in the world were divided up equally at, say, 3 o’clock in the afternoon, by 3.30pm there would already be notable differences in the financial conditions of the recipients. Within that first 30 minutes, some adults would have lost their share. Some would have gambled theirs away and some would have been swindled or cheated out of their portion (thereby making some others richer).
The disparity would increase with growing momentum as time went on. After 90 days, the differences would be staggering. And, I’m willing to wager that, within a year or two at the most, the distribution of wealth would conform to patterns almost identical with those that had previously prevailed.
John Paul Getty
Your Getty example is more about ability and values than envy.
It basically says that it’s the individual’s values and abilities that determine his wealth not how much money they start off with.
Of course envious people have a solution for equalizing abilities and values too, as this essay by Kurt Vonnegut dramatizes...
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html