Jealousy causes more widespread misery than anything else.
An old Russian joke tells about a poor peasant whose better-off neighbor has just gotten a cow. In his anguish, the peasant cries out to God for relief from his distress. When God replies and asks him what he wants him to do, the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.”
One of the most consistent findings of behavioral economics is that we gauge our own economic well-being by comparing ourselves with our neighbors. Studies have found that, given a choice between making 25 percent more than their neighbors or making 25 percent less, people will choose the former even when the latter amount is more money.
Not only is envy irrational, it’s socially and personally corrosive. In his wonderful book, The Seven Deadly Sins, the late Henry Fairlie called envy the “nastiest, the most grim, the meanest” of the seven deadly sins. Sneering, sly, vicious. According to Fairlie, “the face of envy is never lovely. It is never even faintly pleasant.”
It could hardly be otherwise. Loving your neighbor, or even working alongside him, is next to impossible when you regard his gains as a personal loss.
The problem is this -— We have actually ELECTED many ENVIOUS people into office who actually REFLECT our own character.
It's also evil, as in 'satanic'; the old testament bans it by commandment the new one very clearly spells out the importance not bitchin' about 'equal pay scales'. imho America's past greatness has been a direct result of the choice of piety before pretention, and we risk a lot by electing advocates for class hatred.