People feel happier when they feel secure. We have nicer gadgets now but life is also more stressful because finding a stable long-term career is more difficult.
Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
21–30 of 264 posts
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#22The title is a little out of date. Prosperity has been increasing in the 20th century, but has not increased for a few decades. Sure, crap like gadgets is now cheaper, but buying a house, giving your kids an education, and so on have increased. In the 40s and 50s a middle class household could get by just fine (and the house be bought) by a single income earner. Such a house now would be on the verge of bankruptcy. A…
Unfortunately you’re right. Nowadays, many people here in Germany can afford a house or an apartment in the big cities only if they get some money from their (grand)parents. I think one major reason for this is the free flow of capital globally.
The effect in its extreme form: people get evicted, buildings get built/renovated (“Luxusbeton”), int’l investors buy hoping for ever increasing prices, apts stay empty. Insane
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#23The article cites income increase but doesn't talk about the necessary factors even if you're only talking numbers: 1) real inflation (ie, cost of living has skyrocketed due to rent/medical) outweighs any income increases. 2) overall wealth was not accounted for - in fact many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, probably far more than at any corresponding postwar period in the US. In short "prosperity" != inco…
Well said, and the easiest metric you could look at w/r/t cost-of-living is the average income : house price ratio. What was once withing reach for most educated workers is now often a fantasy for the rich. Unfortunately it is also what the lion's share of paychecks is often spent on.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#24Humans are social animals. One of the primary drives of most social animals is to get as high up in the status/dominance hierarchy as possible, since this improves an organism's access to mates. Status and dominance are relative to other members of the species and, thus, unrelated to the absolute level of an organism's access to food and other resources.
Humans are also security focused rational animals, and if we can believe that there really is enough for us and no one will take it away, then happiness might be for all. Perhaps UBI will make us all happy
UBI will make us a huge proportion of people serfs unless it is accompanied by wealth transfer. It is at best a temporary (on the order of 100-200 years) solution.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#25The title is a little out of date. Prosperity has been increasing in the 20th century, but has not increased for a few decades. Sure, crap like gadgets is now cheaper, but buying a house, giving your kids an education, and so on have increased. In the 40s and 50s a middle class household could get by just fine (and the house be bought) by a single income earner. Such a house now would be on the verge of bankruptcy. A…
It looks like now that we've had our basic needs met, our desires are for human contact, and not just stuff. Along comes Baumol's cost disease and makes things involving physically present people (like traditional education) much more expensive than things that don't (like chinese smartphones).
Unfortunately without a change of economic system it doesn't seem like this trend will change course.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#26It would be weird for happiness to increase with prosperity. Think how much more stuff we have than people in the stone age. We should all be delirious with joy, all the time, if we expected happiness to increase with material wealth.
Any description of happiness that makes sense would have to say that it's some sort of local comparison, across various axes: how am I doing compared to previously/expectations/other people?
This is why when you acquire some new gadget, you say you're happy. You can now mow your lawn, which you couldn't before. Going forward, you expect to be able to mow your lawn. If your lawnmower breaks, you're sad. If it doesn't, a working lawnmower was already priced in.
This is why billionaires like Elon can be unhappy, too. Otherwise they would be bouncing off the walls giddy with joy all the time.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#27This also ignores increases in costs of living, such as housing, and the destruction of concepts like 'career paths' where someone would be with a company for a long time and build economic and social value within a given area.
Indeed, claims for increase in prosperity seem pretty illusionary. Headline: Most Americans are one paycheck away from the street Subheading: Some 63% of people can’t deal with a $500 emergency The website is CBS Market, fairly respectable, draws on several plausible studies. Link: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-pay...
This has largely been debunked -- the questions asked were not about their access to sufficient funds. For example, the median American household has $1000 per month in disposable income ("beer money") after all typical living expenses. This fact alone should immediately raise questions about the assertion that the majority of households can't afford $500 in one-time cost, emergency or not.
The major source for this assertion is that most American's don't have $500 in savings accounts. Which is true. What is also true is that a large percentage of Americans with plenty of emergency cash don't even have a savings account -- it is an anachronism from a bygone era. Most Americans no longer own savings bonds either.
My emergency cash is in a checking account, like many Americans, so by the measure used in this article, I am completely broke.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#28The title is a little out of date. Prosperity has been increasing in the 20th century, but has not increased for a few decades. Sure, crap like gadgets is now cheaper, but buying a house, giving your kids an education, and so on have increased. In the 40s and 50s a middle class household could get by just fine (and the house be bought) by a single income earner. Such a house now would be on the verge of bankruptcy. A…
Ever compare a 1940s middle-class house to a middle-class house of today? They're tiny. They probably have one bathroom. The bedrooms will be small. The garage, if there is one, is probably not attached to the house. The household probably had one car. Maybe had a phone, maybe not. Such a lifestyle could still be afforded buy a single income earner if they would really live the way a 1940s family lived.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#29Prosperity is a proxy for consumption. We measure it and then we pursue it. We are so convinced that we've shortened financial wealth down to wealth, and have completely forgotten there are different type of wealth. For example, spiritual wealth.
Happiness is subjective. And if the science is correct, it's independent of consumption. Western culture and power structure is wired to create financial wealth, not dismiss it.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#30People feel happier when they feel secure. We have nicer gadgets now but life is also more stressful because finding a stable long-term career is more difficult.
Indeed, thinking about my own life, I hoard wealth because of the risk of an event such as a medical emergency, unemployment, or my kids not being able to launch their own careers.