According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, evolution accounts for a lot of our strange ideas about finances. Most people would rather earn $50,000 a year while people around them made $25,000, than earn $100,000 a year while people around them earned $250,000. Irrational, but in this case, relative social ranking trumps absolute financial status. Thousands of experiments in behavioral economics, neuroeconomics and evolutionary economics conclusively demonstrate that we are every...