How little is too little?

A co-worker was reflecting on human nature with me yesterday.  We were discussing the use of correlation in trying to understand the world, and as could be expected of tired old me, the issue of correlation between social inequality and social problems came up.  Neither one of us made any claim about the causality of such a correlation, indeed we were both bewailing how difficult it is to prove.  In other words, neither one of us claimed that social problems such as high crime rates are caused by inequality.  Conversely we did not claim that high crime rates cause inequality.  We understood that even someone in the world did know the causality, we didn't know which it was.  We merely agreed that there is correlation.

When considering the possibility that inequality is a cause of increased social woe, my colleague expressed disappointment that people who are clearly much better off than they were 100 years ago cannot just be happy with what they have despite what other people have.

I'm certainly not trying to impune my colleague here, so far in conversation I've found him to be really a rather thoughtful fellow.  The idea that people should be satisfied with "a rising tide lifts all boats" is not a novel one.  Assuming that a rising tide does indeed lift all boats, but an uneven rising tide causes tsunamis (heh... as indeed a literal uneven rising tide would) I find myself disappointed in the other part of the human nature equation.

I'm disappointed that those at the top of the tide are not so willing to share their gains.

I feel a similar inversion come on when people respond to the idea of an income limits with things like "how much is too much?"  Almost never does one ask "how much is too little?"  Fortunately, there is such a thing as minimum wage, so technically that question does get answered.