Can you put what you are saying in 25 words or less?

In 25 words or less:
Commit pay justice and reap vast benefits: pull humanity out of the nosedive to selfextinction soon, and chop down the great tree of problems permanently.

In a few more words:
Imagine a community in which everyone works and plenty is produced. How can you make that community very unhappy without destroying the workproducts, the plenty? Just by extreme maldistribution. For instance, giving all the property to one, as in communism. Or giving 98% of income earnings to 1%, as in the world today.

Can we be literally 100 times happier? At first it seems not. We have been searching for happiness for 1000s of years and it is unlikely we have missed anything that big.

But consider these points. One, we routinely ignore problems, so we underestimate how unhappy we are. We get used to the level of happiness-unhappiness that is around, and consider it natural, normal and inevitable. And two, happiness could have declined, imperceptibly slowly, for 1000s of years, and we would not have any memory or record of happiness levels of 1000s of years ago to compare with our present state.

Inequality causes unhappiness. Inequality causes violence, which causes unhappiness. Inequality is higher and lower pay for equal work, which is unjust, which is injury. Inequality is the greatest injury, because money is the joker good, good for almost all things, including necessities and desires. So the theft of money, pay, is the theft of almost everything, causing the greatest violence. Inequality has been growing for 1000s of years. Inequality is now at the super-super-extreme level of an inequality factor of one billion: that is, the ratio of highest to lowest pay for equal work is one billion. Income for a year's work ranges from $10 to $10 billion. Super-extreme violence [relative to what we would ahve without the inequality].

Violence is not caused by human nature, because violence has increased and human nature hasn't changed, so there is no correlation between violence and human nature. So we can change violence.

1000s of years ago, such inequality was not possible. People mostly produced for themselves and consumed for themselves. That is, they were fully paid for their work. With job specialisation [division of labour] workproducts were in effect pooled, so people could throw the products of their specialised work into the pool, and take from the pool the great variety of things they wanted and needed. Ideally, everyone took out as much as they put in. That is, they got out goods that contained as much work in them as went into the goods they made. The purpose of trade was just to give everyone the mix of goods they needed. The market sprang up, so that things could be traded, that is, remixed after being separated by job specialisation.

But this pooling created the possibility of taking out more than one had put in, leaving others in the position of taking out less than they put in. Indeed, this was inevitable, because the exact workvalue of anything cannnot be determined. In every trade, the amount of work gone into the two things exchanged could hardly be equal. In general, there would be some difference in workvalue in the two things exchanged. That is, one person would go away from the exchange with something with an undetectably small bit less work in it than the thing they brought to the exchange, and the other would go away with a bit more. This is clear from the real stories of people trading up frrom a $2 item to a house in 100 trades. The accumulation of little gains in each trade would sometimes accumulate to something far more valuable. This is legal theft.

This was the seed of inequality. And this seed grew. This seed would inevitably grow, with every transaction. Slowly, imperceptibly, inequality would grow ceaselessly. When the inequality became noticeable, there would be resentment, and this resentment would grow as inequality grew. So, out of the necessity of trade, out of job specialisation, started growing inequality, which produced ever-growing anger and violence, which produced evergrowing weaponry and evergrowing unhappiness.

Money is a power, the second greatest, so inequality is inequality of power, which is tyranny and slavery. Tyranny extends its sway, gathers more wealth, more slaves, more power. This creates deeper poverty and slavery, which eventually bits hard enough for the poor to rebel, and there is a revolution or fall of empire, and then inequality starts building again. So violence gets to everyone, tyrant and slave. People escape to other shores, but inequality starts building again. The bigger the heap of wealth, the more the attacks and erosions on it. And so the costs of defending the heap grow with the heap. And the attacks are endless, so the fall of the heap is inevitable in time. And the heap is maintained, for a limited time, only with great effort. So it has been in every case in history. It happened to Rome, it happened to Holland, Spain, Britain, and it is happening now with America. And it will happen with every heap of wealth. Where today is Spanish Inca plunder? The wealth attracted thieves, other nations, and it was eaten away in plunder and the costs of protecting it. Every heap of wealth is finite, the attacks on it are endless, so fall is inevitable, and only after ceaseless endeavour to retain.

So it seems that unhappiness has grown imperceptibly slowly for 1000s of years. And we have got used to each new slightly lower level, since we have no way of remembering or recording the level of happiness of past times to compare it with our own level.

Misery exercises such a paralyzing effect over the nature of people, that no class is ever conscious of its own suffering, Leo Tolstoy.

This applies to the rich as well as to the poor. We ignore, as much as possible, the bad things in our lives. We ignore them so well we forget them. And we accept what seems inevitable, unavoidable. We do not often enquire whether the bad thing can in fact be removed. We do not often enquire deeply to find the cause of the bad thing. We jump to the conclusion that the bad thing is inevitable, unavoidable. Since we believe, too quickly, that we cannot change it, we put it out of mind. Since we do not look at the problem, we do not see a solution when it comes along. We had given up looking out for it, and so the bus goes past. As time passes, and we never catch the bus, we are more and more confirmed in our opinion that there is no bus, and so the more we ignore things that might in fact be solutions. Our opinion that there is no solution closes the door on solutions.

In fact, the solution has been sitting there forever.

Instead of acting to remove the inequality, we have worked within it, trying to reach the top, or trying to reach a comfortable spot within it, or bearing it, or walking away from it. Too few voices have said: let's get rid of the inequality, and too few have heard those voices.

America was founded on the principle of preventing limitless wealth concentration, and this was mostly ignored or unknown. Pay for 10 day's work ranged from $1 to $1,000,000 in the 1880s. Sew-ers got 10c a day, Jay Gould got $10,000 an hour. An inequality factor of one million. Efforts to counter the evergrowing inequality and loss of quality of life were of slight effectiveness.

The full return to the equality of 1000s of years ago, before job specialisation and trade, with its drop of inequality which grew, where everyone was paid for all their work because they mostly consumed all they produced, was never in sight. Globally, the range of pay/year is $10 to $10 billion, an inequality factor of one billion. A violence, danger, unhappiness, disorder and problems factor of one billion.

There are 1000 [1,000,000,000] who hack at the branches of the tree of problems for every one who strikes at the root, Henry Thoreau.

We have been hacking at the million branches for 1000s of years, and the tree has grown faster than we have hacked. And it is approaching the time when the tree crashes down under its own weight, with us in it. But the tree of problems has a weak spot: it gathers itself in the trunk.

Consider what would happen if a government committed the super-extreme pay injustice of taking 90% of aftertax income off 90% of citizens and giving it to 1% of the people.

There would first be the loss of 81% of national happiness in the loss of 90% of income for 90% of people. 90% x 90% is 81%. Then, on top of that would be the super-extreme violence, which would affect the happiness of everyone, and the great destruction of property and people, and the great loss of productivity. These extra factors could well raise the loss of happiness from 81% to 99%. 99% of happiness would be destroyed. Everyone will readily agree with this.

Therefore the reversal of that mad policy will increase happiness 100-fold. The 81% will be restored, the violence will disappear, the productivity will rise again, the waste of property and lives will greatly decline.

And we have far greater inequality than this super-extreme, mad example. In the example, the 1% get 82 times. In reality, the 1% overpaid get up to 100,000 times. In the example, the 90% get 10th. In reality the 90% get 100th to 10,000th. In the example, the 9% in the middle get what they were getting before. In the real world, the 9% get between average and 100th of average.

So it seems that everyone with logic will readily agree that we can be, literally, conservatively, 100 times happier, with far less violence, danger, tragedies, horrors, fears, crises and unsafety, and far more liberty, equality and fraternity [friendliness, community, social trust, amity, togetherness, goodfeeling, confidence in others].

It doesn't seem hard to understand. It only takes people being willing to put aside their opinions long enough to consider and study the facts without prejudice.

Many more points can be made, and have been made at happinessfinneganswake.blogspot.com, which only strengthen the case.

And it is not hard to spread the word. If everyone who learns it tells just two people, every adult in the world will learn it in just 31 times the time to tell two. Just by word of mouth. You can light four billion candles from one candle in just 31 times the time to light two if everyone who gets their candle lit lights just two candles. There are 3 billion adults to reach, but there are 3 billion adults to reach them, with all their energies and resources. It just needs people to allow their supreme confidence that there is no solution to be eroded, and replaced with a realistic assessment of reality. We are standing on the brink of self-extinction and of a golden age.

The underpaid are certainly unhappier, and the overpaid are miserable too, trapped in a boxing ring, forced into fighting off all comers endlessly till they fall with exhaustion, and isolated from the human tribe, perpetually at bay. Like Hitler, Ceausescu, Caesar, Stalin, every empire, and today, America. And overpay is just 3000 pairs of shoes for two feet, 1000 rooms for one body. So inequality is lose-lose, equality is win-win.

We just have to dig out a deeply rooted erroneous mindset. We have to open our minds. We have to step back from our struggling, desperate position in the mad heap and see the heap for what it is, hell [compared to what we could have]. The bus is waiting.

It is easy to conclude you are happy by ignoring all the bad stuff, by not comparing it with possibility. Free from pride, people would eagerly compare the happiness of other countries, and compete in happiness-pursuit. So what is pride, friend or foe?

Equality can be attained easily, in two generations, without making destructive waves in the economy, by making everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates. The private heir has done nothing to make that superwealth, and everyone has done everything to make the things that moeny represents and buys, so such an act is just. Or [or and] by giving everyone in the world equal shares in a 1%-a-month increase in the money supply. Inflation is not bad when everyone gets the added money. These methods do not require a large suffocating bureaucracy, they allow us greatly to reduce bureaucracy and increase freedom from being buried in petty regulation and its vast costs.

But we are 98% genetically identical to chimpanzees, and we are loaded by nature with powerful instincts which are good in nature but disastrous in dealing with the complications of society.

It is only by heroic mental effort that we can hope to get free from our natural mental limitations and correctly 'read' our social reality. Only the people who see the big picture are awake, Heraclitus. It is easier for people to see small things than big things, Plato. Good things are hard, Plato.

Test everything, Bible. Like the railway engineer, who regularly tests the wheels. If your ideas are sound, testing them will increase your confidence in them. If they are not, testing them will save you a crash. So testing has no downside. We come closest to truth when we hear all opinions. And happiness is totally dependent on realism. And happiness is your everything. The human tendency to hold hard onto opinions without testing them honestly against other opinions is selfdestructive.

Reality is merciless, it won't even flinch in sympathy when you bark your shins against the coffee table you thought wasn't there. And part of the picture is nothing like the picture. Compare a jigsaw puzzle piece with the complete picture.

Restrained by custom, and the ridiculous prejudices of the world, we go with the crowd, and it is late in life before we dare to think, Frances Brookes. Economic truth emerges only when things are considered whole, John Galbraith ['Dean of economists'].

The plane of human being is in a nosedive, close to crashing. Weaponry at 60 times PDC [planet death capability] and a violence factor of one billion, rising. And reality won't even flinch when we culminate our big mistake.

A 500-page book in bitesize sections is free at www.globalhappiness.org [not an org], and the globalhappiness site will soon have a new, somewhat annoyingly-written but invaluable book. People say it [or at least the first chapter] is 'teachy'. Putting up with its annoyances can be your penance for hurting yourselves unnecessarily, enormously, for 1000s of years. As mothers say: Serves you right.