How can we possibly be 100 times happier? It's ridiculous, isn't it?

But what if happiness levels have been falling very slowly for a very long time, and so we have no memory of how happy we humans were a long long time ago? What if we simply, naturally assume that levels of happiness have always been about the same?
You can make a community, in which everyone works and produces plenty, very unhappy, without destruction of workproducts, just by super-extreme misdistribution. Everyone working, more or less equally, unequally within a very small range, and most getting very little, a few getting most. There is the unhappiness of doing the work creating the workproducts, and getting a fraction of the workproducts. And there is the unhappiness of the violence. And the unhappiness of the pay injustice and violence ever-increasing. The violence will increase as both sides try to prevail, with ever-bigger weapons. And the violence [war, crime and weaponry] will increase as the inequality increases.

We have super-super-extreme inequality and violence now, after 3000 years or more of them growing. so the good news is that we can be super-super-extremely happier.
If liberty and justice for all, equal pay for equal work, no one overpaid for their work, and no one underpaid for their work, was a swimming pool one metre deep, our pool is now 98% up in a thin needle of water going up 100,000 metres, and 90% of the pool is between 1cm and 10th of 1mm deep. Pay from 100,000 times average, to 10,000th of average. And violence and unhappiness proportional. A billion times as much pay, a billionth as much pay, for the same work, the same wealth production.
And pay buying everything, virtually, and also being power.

99% of people being underpaid. The world average pay being US$40 an hour, for every working person in the world, including housewives and students. Imagine a world in which every working person was being paid US$40 an hour. Not only would the 99% who are at the moment getting less than this be happier financially, but the 1% overpaid would also be far happier too!

Why is that? Because having overpay and therefore being surrounded by 99% of people underpaid means being under seige. If one person has the property of 1000 people, he has 1, merely 1000 times more than he can use and 2, 1000 enemies instead of 1000 friends. Overpay is maintained only with ceaseless vigilance, exhausting labour and defensiveness. And one is cut off from the 1000, one is isolated. And mixing freely, safey with the human tribe is one of the great determinants of happiness. The overpaid gain nothing, because of the limitation of desires, and they lose an enormous amount, in the isolation, fear, distrust, danger, labour. Inequality, pay injustice, divides the human tribe, separates it by enmity and fear, instead of uniting it in mutual protection and support. Instead of being like a gorilla group, united against the world, the human tribe has become divided against itself. Every heap of wealth in history has been broken down, every empire has fallen, every plutocracy has been crushed. Naturally, because they have so much, and others, working harder, have so little. Wealth is power, but only the second greatest power, the power of the underpaid has always proven to be greater. And overwealth, having more than you have earned by your own work, is only having 3000 pairs of shoes for two feet, is only having 1000 rooms for one body, is only having a feast for one stomach. The overpaid cannot consume more sex, drugs and rock and roll than the fairpaid, who get US$40 an hour, which is $100,000 a year, and $200,000 a year per family without student. Which is enough for plenty of shoes, rooms, etc etc.
Studies have concluded that the effect of money on happiness declines to zero somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 a year per family. It is called decreasing marginal utility. 20 pairs of shoes cost twice as much, but add perhaps only 10% extra happiness, if that. For someone like Ceausescu of Rumania, with a palace 5 times the size of Versailles palace in France, and Rumanians standing in bread queues all day, the added danger and labour of trying to protect himself far outweighs the added pleasure of having 1000 rooms. The pressure of the underpay around him was so great, that even with the secret police of a whole nation to protect him, he was shot. And so it has been always in history. The late Roman Emperors, when overpay-underpay was extreme, were lasting weeks or days on the throne.

Since overpay-underpay is good for neither underpaid or overpaid, it is clear which way happiness lies: in liberty and justice for all, equal pay for equal work, taking out as much as you put in, plenty for everyone and peace with everyone. Overpay is theft, and thieves make themselves vulnerable.

Most people are happy to work and get a reasonable pay, and enjoy life. But there have, of course, always been a few who have to be on the top, who are madly infected by need to have more, to have most, who have such great pride, they must be top. So they have spent their lives fighting with the others who want to be on top. And to get more power to get or stay on top, they have used their power to steal from the underpaid. So inequality has grown and grown for 1000s of years, and weaponry has grown and grown.

So reversing this, aiming for pay justice, no overpower-underpower, tyranny-slavery, underwork-overwork, will take us back to the beginning, to happiness as it can be, humanity united by absence of theft.

The people who are just, who do not want more than they earn, who do not want to rob others, enslave others, oppress others, are in the majority. The underpaid are 99%. The underpaid gain by getting all their earnings, not part, and gain by loss of the super-super-extreme violence and danger. The overpaid gain by losing the extreme danger of overpay amid underpay. The overpaid do not lose any satisfaction, because fairpay satisfies all desires.

It is only a matter of teaching simple sanity, of waking people from a bad dream in which they are scratching their own faces. There is no selfsacrifice, there is only extremely large gain for everyone.

The amount of gain is proportional to the extremeness of the inequality. We have super-super-extreme inequality, so we can be super-super-extremely happier.

This enormously beneficial change can be effected very simply, by making everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates. The private heir has done nothing to make that money, everyone has done everything to make the goods that that money buys and represents, so such a law is just. The ceaseless drift of money from all workers to few is like wind piling up sand against a seawall. We don't need to try to stop the wind, we just need to introduce regular respreading of the sand over the beach. Then inequality and violence are limited, and no longer evergrowing.

Instead of the money being up in a needle going up 100,000 metres, and most of the pool less than 1cm deep, the needle of water is forced to shower down back into the pool. And then overpaid and underpaid can both swim. Liberty and justice for all.