But perhaps this is also an age of jealousy. I'm certainly feeling a bit green.
The Lib Dems' sainted reader of the economic runes, Vince Cable, says we should have a tax on million-pound mansions and I immediately think hooray, yes, let's bleed the rich. Why should such well-minted incomers such as Roman Abramovich and Lakshmi Mittal, with their £30m mansions, pay the same as ordinary folk to have their bins collected? Let's do something to make the nouveau riche of Alderley Edge a bit less riche.
Wasn't the explosion in property prices, upon which so much of our former feelgood factor was based, just a delusion - a pyramid-selling scheme in which those at the bottom were left with blighted hope and negative equity while those at the top netted unearned fortunes? Why not carve a bit of that equity off for the greater good? A pox, and a tax, on all their houses.
Modesty
For the first time, people would be falling over themselves to be modest about how much their home was worth. As one cartoonist wryly observed, it would be boom times for those who install tasteless crazy paving and value-reducing Jack and Vera Duckworth-style stone cladding. Mansion-owners would have modesty forced upon them because ostentatiousness would cost.
What a shame it will never happen.
Also exercising my jealousy bone this week is Jonathan Ross. Even in happier economic times, Ross's £18m three-year deal with the BBC seemed just plain wrong. As the nation tries to heave itself out of recession, he begins to look ever more like the cat who got the cream and is now licking himself all over while grinning widely, watched by a giggling Ricky Gervais.
Who says Ross is overpaid? None other than Radio 4 Today presenter John Humphrys who says "nobody at the BBC should earn that kind of money, full stop". He's right, of course, but what sense of perspective, what kind of new wave of austerity can we expect from BBC director general Mark Thompson, salary £834,000?
We have increasingly seeing public servants like Thompson reap the kind of rewards once reserved for successful entrepreneurs, but without the risk factor to the job. We have seen our upstanding MPs lining their pockets, having moats cleaned from the public purse while most of us struggled to pay the mortgage.
The bankers' bonuses have not gone away. And executive pay continues ever skywards. Between 2000 and 2008, the pay of FTSE 100 executives went up 80 per cent, as company fortunes dived. The banking crisis and recession didn't end the old capitalist order. It just made the inequalities yet starker. It meant that some of those high-earners have to pretend, at least for now, to be a bit ashamed of their wealth, while we formerly aspirational pawns get more envious and resentful.
That's one way to achieve longevity
POP anoraks will be intrigued to note that, with the departure of Keisha Buchanan, Sugababes are now an entirely different group.
They started in 1998 as Keisha, Mutya Buena and Siobhan Donaghy, but they now consist of Heidi Range, Amelle Berrabah and Jade Ewen.
Managing to replace all the original personnel says either a great deal for the strength of the Sugababes' songbook, or very little for the individual talents of those former Sugababes.
At this rate, there is no reason why the Sugababes cannot, with regular personnel refreshment, go on until the end of time.
And there is a precedent for this revolving door policy.
When all four of the Drifters quit in protest at their pitiful wages in 1958 just before a prestigious slot at New York's Apollo Theatre, their manager George Treadwell simply hired a vocal harmony group called The Crowns from further down the same bill and re-christened them The Drifters.
Treadwell had bought the rights to the group's name in 1954, hiring and firing at will. To date, there have been over 60 different fully-fledged members of the Drifters.
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So say an 80 year old couple bought a house decades back, and now find it's worth over a million pounds. Where are they supposed to get the money from to pay this Envy Tax? Sell their house? Drive them out of their home? How very humanitarian!
As for paying fairly - it's called paying for what you use, which I'm all for as long as it's applied equally. That means the single mother with three screaming kids from different fathers will be paying a lot more than me. Now that's fair - or are people to pay based on what they can afford? Back to the politics of envy, where you redefine 'fair' to mean whatever you like.
Crabs in a barrel.
So say an 80 year old couple bought a house decades back, and now find it's worth over a million pounds. Where are they supposed to get the money from to pay this Envy Tax? Sell their house? Drive them out of their home? How very humanitarian!
As for paying fairly - it's called paying for what you use, which I'm all for as long as it's applied equally. That means the single mother with three screaming kids from different fathers will be paying a lot more than me. Now that's fair - or are people to pay based on what they can afford? Back to the politics of envy, where you redefine 'fair' to mean whatever you like.
Crabs in a barrel.
Ran Droid, Manchester
You may be singing a different tune if you lived in a council flat in Salford where the bins were rarely emptied, the police rarely ever seen and most other public services hard to imagine - and then find that for the privelege you are in the highest tax band, paying the same no doubt as Richard Branson.
Aldi and Lidl have far superior delicatessen offerings than the mainstream supermarkets. If you look at the vehicles in their car parks you will realise that the "middle Englanders" are not flocking there because of a need for austerity.
Salfordrat, how exactly would taxing people more solve that? Under Labour the tax burden has increased, yet service has decreased? Seems that there isn't a correlation between tax income and services.
Perhaps the problem there isn't the amount of tax being collected, but what those charged with distributing it are doing with it? Use your vote if you want to change that, spiteful taxation won't work.
The rich have NEVER paid their way - if they did they wouldn't be rich would they? Get 'em soaked!
Any salary over £100K is pretty difficult to justify in ANY job, particularly when the PM & top military staff barely earn that sort of dough with MUCH more responsibility than your average so-called 'director' will ever have.
Salfordrat, how exactly would taxing people more solve that? Under Labour the tax burden has increased, yet service has decreased? Seems that there isn't a correlation between tax income and services.
Perhaps the problem there isn't the amount of tax being collected, but what those charged with distributing it are doing with it? Use your vote if you want to change that, spiteful taxation won't work.
Ran Droid, Manchester
I am not talking about solving anything Ran. I am talking about levelling the playingfield. And I think you are insane if you are of the opinion that a person on 13k a year should be paying the same tax for less service as a multi multi multi millionaire. Do you think that if I vote in another gang of multi millionaires, waving a different colour hanky, they are going to make everything right and good for the working man/woman? If so you are off your onion mate.