A recent article on the BBC website reports that discovering income disparities with peers causes unhappiness.  Other studies of national levels of happiness indicate that nations with low disparities of wealth are happier, overall, than nations with large wealth disparities.  Denmark in particular, is often cited as home to the happiest people on earth and the highest tax rate, a tax rate that insures low wealth disparity.  What is it about us humans that makes us happier when there is more uniformity, more collective ownership, and less disparity of rewards for our efforts? As the saying goes, is this nature or nurture?

The answer may be found in Man's Best Friend.  A scientist in Vienna ran some behavioral experiments and discovered that dogs stopped cooperating with researchers and began to show signs of distress if they were not offered the same tasty rewards given to other dogs.  While typically happy and engaged when all dogs received similar rewards for their efforts, once the rewards were altered to show levels of disparity, the dogs who received less would show bouts of envy, aggression towards other dogs, and would sometimes simply withdraw from the pack.  In other words, high levels of wealth disparity with dogs results in an unhappy pack.  Some scientists believe a sense of justice could be crucial for social animals and may have played a role in the evolution of cooperation.

Could it be that we humans share this same bit of DNA and that is why we are sad, angry, and sometimes violent when faced with vast disparities of wealth?  Do we, like our canine friends, have a deep seated instinct that acknowledges our vulnerability as individuals and our strength as a pack? Should we, as a people, employ measures to insure less wealth disparity in the interests of national happiness and well being? 

In the USA, we belive in "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", but given the realities of the economic model that began with Reagan and continues into today where billionares are bailed out, workers are discarded, and corporate profits are seen as the measure of our sucess, is the pursuit of happiness in America more like the pursuit of fortune in Las Vegas, all image and no substance for the majority with the real fortunes going to the connected insiders?  

The wealthy in Ameica will tell you that they worked hard for their money and I have no doubt that they did, in most cases.  I will also tell you the some of the hardest working people I know are poor, and yet, they are not getting their fair share of the rewards this country has to offer.  This social injustice is causing the same levels of  anger, agression, and withdrawl the scientists saw in dogs and there should be no doubt that if we are to bring our nation back to the health, we need to realize that we are a social being and return to an economic model that more justly rewards all who work each day, no matter their rank in the pack.