It's Sunday. Let's talk about Envy.

… let’s start with what it is not. It’s not admiring what someone else has and wanting some good stuff also. This desire will make you get off your butt in the morning and get busy. It is good to crave; a man’s appetite will make him work. Where envy differs from admiration/emulation is that envy is “sorrow at another’s good” (said Thomas Aquinas). Someone who is centered can watch another person, party, or nation prosper and not grow hateful because of it.

http://townhall.com/columnists/douggile ... ls_it_envy

Good article.

I found that very interesting as well. Thanks Swampfish.

So what's the correct word for being peed off that someone who has a lot more than you got it through rigging the system against you and others like you?

AspenValley wrote: So what's the correct word for being peed off that someone who has a lot more than you got it through rigging the system against you and others like you?

Apoplexy?

swampfish wrote:

AspenValley wrote: So what's the correct word for being peed off that someone who has a lot more than you got it through rigging the system against you and others like you?

Apoplexy?

I'd describe it more along the lines of righteous indignation.

We could use a lot more righteous action and a lot less righteous indignation in this country (and I don't think OWS is righteous action). I think daring to vote for the right guy for president (or attempting to, again) and pestering our state and national reps non-stop with our demands is the way to go. And long as any one of us attempts to profit from the same rigged system - buying more than we can afford and paying less than we really owe, or not paying the fair price for what something is truly worth - then we're agreeing to the terms of the rigging, and have nothing to complain about when others are more successful in their dishonesty.

swampfish wrote: And long as any one of us attempts to profit from the same rigged system - buying more than we can afford and paying less than we really owe, or not paying the fair price for what something is truly worth - then we're agreeing to the terms of the rigging, and have nothing to complain about when others are more successful in their dishonesty.

I don't think most of us do any of those things. Are you seriously suggesting that because some idiots took out mortgages for more than they could or would pay back that I have no right to be honked off that the banksters created and exploited the chance to profit enormously by pushing such stupid mortgages even knowing they would end up in default?

AspenValley wrote:

swampfish wrote: And long as any one of us attempts to profit from the same rigged system - buying more than we can afford and paying less than we really owe, or not paying the fair price for what something is truly worth - then we're agreeing to the terms of the rigging, and have nothing to complain about when others are more successful in their dishonesty.

I don't think most of us do any of those things. Are you seriously suggesting that because some idiots took out mortgages for more than they could or would pay back that I have no right to be honked off that the banksters created and exploited the chance to profit enormously by pushing such stupid mortgages even knowing they would end up in default?

And those helping the banksters were getting their kickbacks, too.

"I recalled a piece I wrote in this column on January 29, 2009, just after Obama took office. It was headlined: “This is the sub-prime house that Barack Obama built”. As a rising young Chicago politician in 1995, no one campaigned more actively than Mr Obama for an amendment to the US Community Reinvestment Act, legally requiring banks to lend huge sums to millions of poor, mainly black Americans, guaranteed by the two giant mortgage associations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was this Act, above all, which let the US housing bubble blow up, far beyond the point where it was obvious that hundreds of thousands of homeowners would be likely to default. Yet, in 2005, no one more actively opposed moves to halt these reckless guarantees than Senator Obama, who received more donations from Fannie Mae than any other US politician (although Senator Hillary Clinton ran him close)."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu ... Obama.html

You are spot on, Mary Scott... which is why I advocate pestering our state and federal reps non-stop for government reform, and we can start with demanding that the federal government get out of private enterprise - running GSAs (government-sponsored agencies) like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, which created the housing debacle that sunk our economy; and the Sallie Mae, creating the high tuition fiasco, wherein the government decided to loan anyone any amount of funding for higher education and the schools turned right around and raised their rates to profit as much as possible by the government's decision.

We're in the economic mess we're in for two reasons: greed among the citizens and lust for power among the bureaucrats. Too many of us want too many handouts without thinking about where all the money really comes from (every federal dollar out there came out of an American taxpayer's pocket; contrary to popular belief, the Federal Government does not generate any income whatsoever). The same people taking the handouts gave no thought to how their actions might affect their neighbor next door and their community. And too many of us (bankers and higher education administrators for starters) acted without conscience to suck up the flow of federal tax dollars heading out to fund bad housing purchases and overpriced degree programs - and lots of other government-funded and consequently overpriced federal 'help' programs, for that matter.

The second reason we're in the economic mess we're in is because these same dumb-assed federal decisions to lend to anyone in whatever amount for a great house or a first-class education - diluted the worth of the American dollar in the private marketplace and put a much larger sector of the American public under the spell of the feds as they participate in one entitlement program or another. Well done, Washington. You've got the economy on its knees, the citizenry divided and the whole country turning to you in one way or another for the answers and/or money. That is serious power.