Must Be Funny
by Ryan Sproull
Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.Surprisingly — stunningly, in fact — research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?
If we “assume the price of goods and services will stay the same”, it essentially means that people would rather control twice as much wealth as others than control twice as much wealth as they currently do and control less than half of what others do. Imagine the total available goods and services in the world is variable for the different options.
I read and comprehended the article, but the example that you quote seems counter-intuitive. Of course you’d want to earn twice as much as everyone else, because the cost of goods and services wouldn’t stay the same.
As you well know, money is a fiction, where value is set relative to the costs of production and the ability of purchasers to pay. One can’t, as that article suggests, adjust all incomes but not any prices. That’s just stupid.
Still, it must be fun trading pieces of apple with monkeys.