… is from page 113 of Richard Posner’s 2001 volume, Frontiers of Legal Theory:
If envy depends on empathy, it may be more acute when differences in income are small than when they are large, because it is easier to empathize, whether positively or negatively, with people who are like us. Certainly the behavior of academics suggests that envy is not a function of large differences in income. Tocqueville opined that “greater equality tends to produce envious comparisons: as they become more equal, individuals find their inequality harder and harder to bear.”
