The down side / dark side of living here in the Land Of Opportunity is that aside from growing up with a sense of optimism about taking hold of our own destiny, and striking out to tame the next frontier, and to leave our mark in the history books, blah blah blah - aside from all that good worldly wholesomeness, we end up saddled with a spiritual deficit that some will struggle in vain to fill with a new car, or the cool vacation in the islands, or a growing investment portfolio, or whatever.
It's never enough. And eventually, if we stay in the race long enough, it turns us all into greedy little grubbers.
The graphic above is a fairly recent iteration of a famous survey - I can't remember the name of or who did it - that asked a few basic questions:
- How are you fixed now?
- Are you satisfied with it?
- What would it take for you the be more satisfied?
No matter how they answered the first two questions, every respondent - regardless of where they fell in the wealth or earnings percentiles - they all answered #3 with: "If I had just a little more - maybe 10 or 15 or 20% more - things would be so much better for me."
And here's a kind of side effect:
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
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