I’m very careful not to wear my fancy watch or alligator belt when I visit the Banker & Tradesman newsroom.

Sometimes, I’m so entranced by the hum of the Big City Newsroom that I come all decked out. But when the editor sees my fancy accessories, he lowers my fee even further – threatening my ability to pay the trailer park rent and buy the occasional ostentatious timepiece.

I’m not sure this end result works out well for anybody. If I’m discouraged from writing ever-more-extraordinary columns, in a futile effort to raise my modest compensation, so that I can buy the occasional bauble; and if the rest of the staff becomes discouraged by my lack of showy success, despite the extraordinary columns; we will descend into a depressive vicious circle of despair and writer’s block.

Whether it be envy or motivation or inspiration or copy-cat aspiration, there is a healthy benefit to the collective "we" when signs of success point us in the direction of hard work and creativity. The Tea Party nonsense to the contrary, Americans as a whole don’t despise the rich and successful, except for Big Pharma and Big Banking and Big Newspaper Publishing. The successful are a sign of that age-old "American Dream," even as bedraggled as it might be in the current economic sluggishness.

The tension between cheering the inspiration of the wildly successful and sustaining the lives of the desperately poor has always been with us – in recent years, with the enthusiasm for "welfare reform" that offered up the checks, but required earnest job-seeking or educational efforts in return.

The economists and financial services types have long known the slippery slope of "moral hazard," where social and financial "safety nets" can encourage bad behavior.

Can the good example (or, even, the occasional flawed, unethical example) of the successful inspire the downtrodden and bedraggled to success? Can every kid grow up thinking he can be President of the United States? On the micro-level, at least, we’re still struggling with that.

Income Cops

Consider the current campaign by the Worcester Housing Authority to prowl the public housing parking lots, looking for cars and boats which might suggest income levels (and presumed societal success) above and beyond the income eligibility for the joys of public housing.

This just reeks of earnest sociology class debate.

Are the overly successful (the housing authority has found nine villains, thus far) refugees from the mean streets of Boston, where high-end rents have exploded to the point where the snobby are prepared to share public space with poor folks? It seems unlikely.

Are the housing cheaters victims of their own success – pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, vanquishing poverty, and finding gainful employment somewhere other than a newspaper? That happens with some frequency.

A popular and successful housing authority director in an urban-nightmare locale in another New England state confessed to me many years ago that he often allowed the overly successful to remain in public housing – both because he didn’t want to punish them for success, and because they set a good example for their neighbors.

In fact, public housing is often a laboratory for giving stern lessons to the poor folks, in the hopes that they will see the light and become more successful. From forbidding creepy boyfriends from living in (or even visiting) the apartments, to prohibiting Evil Demon Tobacco and Rum from the premises, housing authority bureaucrats across the country have tried various forms of modification therapy. This includes the occasional looking-the-other-way when a successful tenant exceeds the requirements to be considered a pathetic victim.

The perverse incentive that can come from punishing the successful in public housing is more than theoretical speculation. A 262-page federal research report commissioned in 2005 found that public-housing residents were more likely to seek out higher-paying jobs, if the end result wasn’t being penalized by higher rents.

Perhaps the Worcester income-cops are rooting out the selfish and undeserving, but there is a danger of sending a message that striving for success is frowned upon – a confirmation of that old adage that we fear the things we want the most.