HL Mencken said "Happiness is making $5k more a year than your wife's sister's husband." He was hardly the first to suggest that happiness is relative but he was one of the more colorful ones.

There have been ample studies demonstrating that happiness is relative and that knowing you're doing just a little better than the Joneses matters far more than knowing you're doing many times better than a family on the street in Calcutta.

The article argues that socially, we peg our relative level of happiness to where the out groups in our society are. In other words, so long as someone's picking on the Furries, the LARPers feel better about themselves.

Fundamentally, the argument is being made that as people become more equal, those with latent racist sentiments will express them in a number of ways. It's not that Barack Obama is a secret muslim, it's that he's black. It's not that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster or some shit, it's that she's a woman. And it's not that the EU was draining the NHS, it's that those darkies with their chip shops are sending their kids to the same school you are.