molliemao愛的小小羊圈。

lTolerance means accepting the fact that other people's values might be very different from your own.

 lPluralism means eschewing the use of political power as a means for "correcting" those values.

lThe idea of tolerating intolerance sounds suspiciously paradoxical, but so do a lot of other good ideas--like freedom of speech for advocates of censorship. In fact, freedom of speech has a lot in common with tolerance: Neither of them means a thing unless it applies equally to those we applaud and those who offend us most viscerally.

lTolerance is ennobling, which is why we should teach it to our children. Pluralism is insurance against tyranny, which is why we should demand it of our government. To speak up for even the most despised minorities is both morally right and politically prudent.

How to bring the idea: Fairness into our children?

lEconomics is about facing difficult choices .

lThere is no single best way to resolve such choices.

lEconomics is the science of tolerance.

lEconomics breeds not just tolerance but compassion.

lEconomics is about more than just individual choices. It's also about social choices: rewarding initiative versus promoting equality; preserving freedom versus preserving order; providing opportunities for the masses versus providing a safety net for the least fortunate.

 Why should anyone care about aggregate wealth statistics?

lWealth is somehow related to happiness.

lIndeed, however, a qualified agnosticism: “We don’t know whether economic progress brings happiness, but we strongly suspect that the absence of it brings misery.”

lRobert Frank’s hypothesis (old one): it's more fun to be rich when your neighbors are poor.

If you view general economic progress as good news, then you are a living repudiation of Frank’s position.

lIf Frank is right, you might want to root for future economic progress, because the fun of getting richer outweighs the pain of seeing everyone else get richer too.

l But—still assuming Frank is right—you’ll always be dismayed to learn of past economic progress, because you already know about your own good fortune, and you can only be sorry to learn that your neighbors have shared it.

  Robert Frank’s hypothesis :

lFirst he says we want to consume more than our neighbors; then before long he says we want to earn more income than our neighbors.

lFrank is at his most incoherent when he asks the question of “Why now?” That is, “Why should we believe that the struggle for relative position is a more powerful determinant of economic behavior now than in the past?”

  lAs far as we can piece together his argument, it seems to go as follows: Concern for relative position kicks in only above a certain threshold level of income; rising income inequality has thrust a record number of Americans above that threshold (Mr. Frank is still searching for it; therefore, concern for relative position has become a more potent economic force.)

  lFrank’s hypothesis is that people care about consuming more than their neighbors—or maybe about earning more than their neighbors—and this desire kicks in when one becomes an assistant professor, or perhaps a  multimillionaire, and it is becoming more important because of limited opportunities to succeed in a world where opportunities are less limited than ever before.

  Although he keeps changing his story, Frank is at least steadfast about its moral: Concern for relative position leads to wasteful “arms races” with everyone trying to get ahead of everyone else, even though we’d all be better off if only we could all agree to kick back and relax a little more. In Frank’s vision of the world, we all work hard to afford 4,000-square-foot houses, even though we’d all be happier working less and living in 3,000-square-foot houses.