1. Photos of skyscrapers in different cities in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Wealthy and middle class Brazilians often live in highrise apartments in their city’s downtown area. The effect of this is that even smaller Brazilian cities often have beautiful skylines. The posts on this forum thread have a lot of cool pictures of modern Brazilian cities in São Paulo, Brazil (Brazil’s richest state). I’ve been to a lot of these places — pretty cool!

2. We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers. “More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.”

3. What Drives Views on Government Redistribution and Anti-Capitalism: Envy or a Desire for Social Dominance? . The author of this paper compares people who support redistribution of income with people who don’t support income redistribution (IE, they instead support capitalism). Among his results, he finds that

strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues. Similarly, anti-redistributionists had about two to four times higher odds of reporting being happy or at ease. Not only do redistributionists report more anger, but they report that their anger lasts longer. When asked about the last time they were angry, strong redistributionists were more than twice as likely as strong opponents of leveling to admit that they responded to their anger by plotting revenge. Last, both redistributionists and anti-capitalists expressed lower overall happiness, less happy marriages, and lower satisfaction with their financial situations and with their jobs or housework.

Further, in the 2002 and 2004 General Social Surveys anti-redistributionists were generally more likely to report altruistic behavior. In particular, those who opposed more government redistribution of income were much more likely to donate money to charities, religious organizations, and political candidates. The one sort of altruistic behavior that the redistributionists were more likely to engage in was giving money to a homeless person on the street.

4. Fear water. Hydro-electric power has killed far more people than nuclear power.