One reason that might motivate a worker to accept a riskier job at higher pay, for example, would be that doing so would enable him to bid more effectively for a house in a better school district. But if other workers did likewise, none would achieve the goal they were striving for.
Many decry rising inequality because it makes those who've fallen behind feel impoverished. But it's done much more than cause hurt feelings. It has also raised the real cost to middle-income families of achieving many basic goals. The process begins with the completely unremarkable fact that top earners have been spending at a substantially higher rate than before. They've been building bigger mansions, staging more elaborate weddings and coming-of-age parties for their kids, buying more and better of everything.
The private sector is first of all much larger than the public sector. The waste we see in that sector does not result from the fact that people spend their money carelessly. Mostly, it occurs because what one family must spend to achieve its goals often depends heavily on what other families spend.
All parents want to send their children to the best possible schools. But because a good school is a relative concept, a family cannot achieve its goal unless it outbids similar families for a house in a neighborhood served by such a school. Failure to do so often means having to send your kids to a school with metal detectors at the front entrance and students who score in the 20th percentile in reading and math. Most families will do everything possible to avoid having to send their kids to a school like that. But because of the logic of musical chairs, they're inevitably frustrated.
When people bump up against one another in the course of pursuing their goals, it is in everyone's interest to resolve any resulting problems in the least costly ways possible.
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