Moneyball and the "Occupy" movement

I recently finished reading Moneyball (I haven't gotten around to watching the movie yet). I'm not a baseball fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I really enjoyed this book. It is a David-and-Goliath story about how the nerdy-but-cheap Oakland A's used their knowledge of stats to outsmart the baseball establishment.

Reading Moneyball, I couldn't help but think about the "Occupy" movement. I empathize with the protestors to some extent — it's difficult to comprehend how the "one per cent" can make so much more money tha everyone else, especially when times are tough for many people right now.

Dalai Lama blames inequality for suffering

His Holiness the Dalai Lama tweeted a thought-provoking sentence on Twitter yesterday: "Economic inequality, especially that between developed and developing nations, remains the greatest source of suffering on this planet."

It's a loaded statement for 140 characters or less, and I was left pondering whether the Dalai Lama is correct. Certainly it's easy to accept that poverty — a lack of being able to afford basic necessities — can cause suffering. But it's not clear to me that economic inequality — a big variance in individual incomes — also causes suffering. I decided to try and test the Dalai Lama's theory.