Envy Takes a Holiday

There is a reason the Coldplay song “Viva la Vida” is inescapable these days. It is the soundtrack to our current downturn: “I used to rule the world / Seas would rise when I gave the word / Now in the morning I sleep alone / Sweep the streets I used to own.” Times are tough, to be sure. And yet the dark cloud of this economy does have a silver lining, at least for those fortunate enough to still have a job: the end, or at least the suspension, of envy.

It’s hard keeping up with the Joneses in exuberant times. During the dotcom bubble, it seemed like every ne’er-do-well you went to college with had become a megamillionaire in some illogical initial public offering. It was bad enough that you had to read about the hundreds of millions of dollars reaped by the twentysomething who’d devised a website to help people organize their sock drawers. But then you also had to read about how that sock-drawer-organizing tycoon had tweaked his business model to allow sock enthusiasts to create their own virtual communities! It was truly maddening. All you could do was put down the newspaper and mutter to yourself, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Paradoxically, this is not unlike the experience of following business news these days--albeit for very different reasons.

Americans don’t resent the success of others when it seems deserved. Class warfare is a famous nonstarter in this country. We don’t begrudge Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, or Tiger Woods their fortunes. We aren’t offended that the sharp, hardworking law-firm partner or doctor down the street makes far more than we do. We are, rather, offended by the notion that there should be limits to how far people’s talent and hard work can carry them; the deserved success of others doesn’t threaten our own sense of worth. But the key word in that phrase is deserved. The trouble with frothy markets is not that there are people earning more than you by their labor and talent; it’s the sense that you are the only village dweller not to have won the lottery.

As the dust settles, we find ourselves in a rough place. There is real pain, but also an offsetting hope that maybe now things will be priced according to their actual worth, with people living within their means, supported by their wages--not their wagers. At least until the next bubble comes along, we can go about our business unmolested by thoughts that we missed out on the obvious get-rich-quick scheme embraced by all our neighbors.

At the risk of sounding like Andrew Mellon, the callous Treasury secretary who welcomed the Great Depression by exulting that it would “purge the rottenness out of the system,” bring down “costs of living and high living,” and adjust values, I daresay there is something refreshing about a downturn’s eat-your-spinach ethos. President Obama captured the spirit of this sentiment when he called on us in his inaugural address to “set aside childish things.”

Is it just me, or are people refocusing on what really matters? It seems like those stocks known as friendship, love, and children tend to appreciate in value in a bear market. Conversations at dinner parties, high-school reunions, and the office watercooler are more about how we’re all doing--“You hangin’ in there?”--than about the trappings of success. When NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams asked viewers to send in positive stories, he was inundated with thousands of responses. There’s even a new media and e-commerce site, Tonic.com, which reports only uplifting news.

Of course, old habits do die hard. Amid all this egalitarianism, there’s a subtle new type of envy taking root. It’s the feeling you get when your tone-deaf neighbors start boasting of their foresight and good fortune in shorting the market in late 2007 or early 2008.It’s the reaction you identify as “bailout envy” when you hear about the government’s energetic interventions in the economy. Renters wonder why overextended homeowners are getting a break; prudent homeowners complain about aid provided to homeowners who got themselves further into a hole after lavish redecorating; Detroit looks enviously at the lifeboats thrown Wall Street’s way; and in Europe, Hungarians cry out for their rescue package.

So while we are making progress toward our better selves, the downturn isn’t a cure-all. It turns out that we’re still pursuing that elusive equilibrium between corrosive envy and its absence--at least until we become distracted by the next speculative bubble that will again promise to change everything except, alas, human nature.