This isn't wishful thinking. It's simply recognition of the fact that feeling materially superior to others is only one of many routes to happiness.

If income doubles for the poor and quadruples for the rich (Cowen's postulated mechanism of increasing inequality), the poor have many new sources of happiness. For example, currently only 38% of the poor have a Playstation or XBox [1]. If the income of the poor doubles, probably every poor person could gain some happiness from video games.

[1] https://explore.data.gov/Energy-and-Utilities/Residential-En...

Could you link to some data on this? Ideally something other than "The Spirit Level", which basically just observes that many negative traits are correlated and then puts inequality on the x-axis.

* A general literature survey as of 1995, of the evidence on whether increasing the incomes of everyone (with no change in relative incomes) improves overall happiness: http://ibe.eller.arizona.edu/docs/2010/Martinsson/easterlin9...

* Income inequality and happiness 1972-2008 in the U.S. and causal hypotheses: http://inside.bard.edu/~luka/documents/Oishi-Kesebir-Diener-...

* Relationship between regional inequality, happiness, and confounding factors in Japan: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953610...

* Empirical alignment of utilitarian happiness-maximization and other desiderata often seen as opposed: http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22129/JHS_11_2010_605.pdf

The ones based on happiness surveys are even worse, since there is no way to know whether a score of 7 happiness points (on a scale of 1 to 10, or whatever the scale of the survey is) for someone in Denmark in 1976 is comparable to a score of 7 happiness points for someone in Japan in 1996.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Effects_of_...

Unfortunately, women tend to be attracted to relatively rich men, which can result in a lower "supply" for relatively poor men if a rich man can attract several women (for instance, by using serial monogamy). It's been suggested that this leads to a larger amount of violence in poor neighborhoods (due to increased competition among men).

Which leads to another problem: Being relatively poor may not be a problem, provided the level of wealth is secure. Due to the lack and inefficiency of social safety nets in the US, however, being relatively poor can always turn into being poorer still.

Since being relatively poor often means living in a relatively poor neighborhood with a higher prevalence of violence, there's a good reason for feeling insecure all the time. Your son may get killed in a drive-by shooting, while your daughter may get raped. Meanwhile, you may get robbed.

Even if one's situation is not as critical, it's always possible to become critical. For instance, one may simply loose one's job, and thus the means to provide for a family. Or one becomes ill. The number one reason for declaring personal bankruptcy in the US are medical bills. A large percentage of these people were health insured, by the way.

These are just a few examples on the top of my head.

Today people without money are not happy because life itself requires resources, that many people do not have, to be happy and healthy.

Tomorrow people without money could be happy and healthy because many of the things that make them so will require less resources to access. One example given in the interview I heard is that eventually you'll be able to get a good education for free from the Internet. Once people accept that premise, then spending big money on a college education isn't as necessary.

But then, it's the future so who knows what will happen since the future doesn't exist yet.

These tend to be in decline or under attack, sometimes with good reason. But there's no impetus to replace them with anything.

Brazil may be our future. The low end goes very low there.