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Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#81

Post by thedufer »

petermcneeley wrote: post #67
thedufer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first post in this thread explicitly compares the present to the 40s. It seems somewhat unreasonable to expect ams6110 to foresee you moving the goalposts.

The original post refers to the golden era as well and its decline. "Prosperity has been increasing in the 20th century, but has not increased for a few decades." No goalposts are changing.

> 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.

I dunno, it feels like responding to that with a comparison of a household in the 40s to one today is fair.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#82

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #78
slv77 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Households today spend more on cell phones and communication but also spend less on fine china, dress clothes and food. When you net out all the pluses and minuses households today spend much more on housing, healthcare, daycare, transportation (two cars, for two jobs) and education. When you look closely the two bed, two bath detached home it’s likely in a school district that is underperforming and while the home m…

gp actually answered that with "especially if you want to live like it is the 1940s". There is a quiet denial about how luxurious modern living is. People just flat-out underestimate how much work it takes to keep the infrastructure of the modern world in place and humming - traditional infrastructure, IT grids, distribution of goods and services (particularly maintaining an enormous fleet of wheeled vehicles). I kno…

[deleted]

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#83

Post by randomdata »

michaelmrose wrote: post #75
randomdata wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 40s and 50s a middle class household could get by just fine (and the house be bought) by a single income earner. Has that really changed? A manufacturing business in my area is currently hiring everyone who shows up to an interview. They pay they are offering isn't wonderful (at least if you concept of money has been warped by the IT industry), but you should expect to make around $40,000 per year to start.…

If we are to compare eras and discover what's different I would suggest we ought to compare broad numbers not anecdotes. Even your example is suspect. The real median income at present in the US is 31k meaning half make less. 45k puts you at the 59th percentile better than almost 2/3 of people. Clearly not everyone who wants to is earning 45k. A median earner with a spouse and 2 kids is liable to take home less than…

> The real median income at present in the US is 31k meaning half make less.

You will find that the full-time median income is much closer to $50,000 though.

> Clearly not everyone who wants to is earning 45k.

But, in fact, as this is a full-time job, you are actually below the median. When you add in high school students working part time, then you're right, but that's not particularly meaningful.

> Median rent is almost 900 a month.

Seems high for the area in question, but regardless, since you are buying a home, I'm not sure why you would also pay rent to someone else?

> 2 crappy cars maybe 400 a month.

Maybe the person paying for the house needs one car to get to work. Why do you need two cars?

> Communications at least another 100.

A landline phone where the house is located is $23.50/month. Another $35/month if you want internet service. That's a long way from $100 and already way more than someone in 1940 would have. If you really want the 1940s house-buying experience, you don't need internet service.

> Incidentally areas where you can buy a three bedroom house outside of the crime ridden hood tend not to have a huge number of jobs so everyone go and move to Ohio isn't a tenable solution for the present economic situation.

I don't know about the economic situation in Ohio, but the place in question has exceptionally low unemployment and substantial job growth. That's why businesses like the one I mentioned have to hire everyone who shows up. If they didn't, they wouldn't have any employees.

I don't think anyone expects that you should be able to throw at dart at a map and be able to afford a home anywhere it lands. Not even people in the 40s and 50s could do that. They had to be quite discerning about where they settled in order to do so. That much remains true today.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#84

Post by dang »

tapatio wrote: post #5
toasterlovin wrote: post #3

Humans 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.

Shout out to Jordan Peterson.

Please don't do this here.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#85

Post by technobabble »

ianai wrote: post #45
technobabble wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To further your analogy, it sometimes feels that the Maslow's hierarchy of needs is "hollowed out" at the bottom of the pyramid, and to keep the hollowing out disguised, companies and advertisers divert attention to the top of the pyramid i.e. "look how everything's awesome! Take your complimentary beer".

I’m confused by “hollowed out Maslows pyramid of needs”

I see the confusion. Based on Maslow's hierarchy (pyramid) of needs, one needs to start at the bottom (physiological) and build up from there like a foundation. Because factors, both internal and external to ones lives, erode at access to basic needs, ones life loses stability, hence the "hollowing" out part. A better metaphor would be turning Maslow's hierarchy/pyramid instead into a tower.

(in retrospect this wasn't one of my best thoughts)

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#86

Post by CodeWriter23 »

baxtr wrote: post #22
coldtea wrote: post #14

The 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. Insa…

As I walk around my Los Angeles neighborhood, I see about a dozen houses that appear to be completely unoccupied.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#87

Post by randomdata »

thunder_clap wrote: post #80
randomdata wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 40s and 50s a middle class household could get by just fine (and the house be bought) by a single income earner. Has that really changed? A manufacturing business in my area is currently hiring everyone who shows up to an interview. They pay they are offering isn't wonderful (at least if you concept of money has been warped by the IT industry), but you should expect to make around $40,000 per year to start.…

Living in Sydney Australia spending three times my income or less would be impossible. Didn't think it would be possible within decent travel of any city hub.

I'm sure there are places where housing is unaffordable, but that was also true in the 40s and 50s. The people in that time couldn't just live anywhere they felt like. They did have to move to specific places to find that housing that was affordable, just as is true today.

It's interesting how we are so quick to ignore the uncomfortable details about what home ownership in the 40s and 50s entailed, only focusing on the fact that it was possible, then thinking we can apply that to our ideal living situation in 2018.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#88

Post by modells »

Prosperity may have increased a lot for those at the top, but there's never been so many people living on freeway on-ramps until now. For the low end, it keeps getting worse-and-worse in the real world while academic happy-clappy about how "great" everything is. UBI or French Revolution 2.0, so far the majority of rich have chosen social upheaval, Holocene exinction and climate obliteration.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#89

Post by cc439 »

randomdata wrote: post #49
coldtea wrote: post #14

The 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…

> In the 40s and 50s a middle class household could get by just fine (and the house be bought) by a single income earner. Has that really changed? A manufacturing business in my area is currently hiring everyone who shows up to an interview. They pay they are offering isn't wonderful (at least if you concept of money has been warped by the IT industry), but you should expect to make around $40,000 per year to start.…

>A manufacturing business

That alone cuts out nearly half the country. The skilled labor economy has been hollowed out and is nearly extinct in most places. You and I live in similar places and the dream remains alive here, but it is long dead in the corner of the country in which I was raised.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#90

Post by phil21 »

ams6110 wrote: post #28
coldtea wrote: post #14

The 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.

My father's house was built in the 1940's and is as you described.

It's now going for over $225k in a flyover state. He bought the place in the 80's for $72k on a $40k/yr salary - and the job he held to pay for it pays $44k/yr today. The exact same house is out of each for the exact same job today.

Housing has skyrocketed by all available metrics. The one that matters most of course is % of after tax income spent, and it's never been higher.

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