Kenneth Rogoff Quotes

We are bred to compare ourselves to the next person, to what they have and what they have accomplished.

There is always going to be someone more successful, richer, better looking, or with a nicer car.

People would rather earn 60 grand in an area where their neighbours earn 40, than earn 80 in an area where their neighbours earn a hundred.

No one likes the house next door to look worse or a lot better than his own.

Happiness needs one-upmanship.

At some point, extra incomes don't go to sate desires but to attempt to buy status through 'positional goods' - like the hottest car on the block. The problem is that there can only be one hottest car on the block.

We live in a world of communication - everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don't just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It's the crime of humiliation.

There's always going to be someone with a bigger toy than yours.

The level of real income is not what determines whether they are happy or not. It’s their relative place in the pecking order.

I think with social media and Instagram, people are able to see what's over the fence of everyone else, and it all seems within reach.

Richness, the ideas of having plenty of money, is not ... an absolute state. Richness is about the amount of money you have compared to the people you see around you. It is about where you are in relation to others, and where they are in relation to you ... and whether you can have the things you want and other people have.

as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

To be among people who are smothered in furs when one hasn't any oneself makes one want to break most of the Commandments.

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

My mama couldn't give me what I wanted. I had all right clothes, but the people I was with had better clothes. I felt that I had to have better clothes.

The amount of people that I feel like... I'm not being self-demeaning, but I actually feel like I'm not as cool as them, you know what I mean?

The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have.

Missing out on some opportunity never bothers us. What's wrong with someone getting a little richer than you? It's crazy to worry about this.

I mean people -- people don't get -- they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things, you know, and he's getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing -- pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots.

The poor yield to the rich, the common people to the upper ten, the servants to their masters, the ignorant to the scholars; but there is nobody who does not imagine that he is really better than others.

You can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is and he's doing these things and he's getting rich.

I have never been able to understand the compelling phrase, 'keeping up with the Joneses.' It does not matter very much whether I keep up with Tom Jones or anybody else; what is important is to keep up with myself by making my today a little better than my yesterday.

So there I was, with the two hottest girls on campus, having lunch. I was "the man", the envy of every other guy in our school. Buddy, I was miserable." -Bryce Loski