Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#121

Post by TangoTrotFox » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:01 AM UTC

panopticon wrote: post #46

jandrewrogers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A Bankrate[1] survey found that only 37% of respondents could cover a Given that, I'd say a large percentage of Americans do not have plenty of emergency cash. That's not to say most of America is "one paycheck away from the street" like the parent comment quoted... [1]: https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/survey-how-american...

Like the other study, you're mixing up the phrasing. The question they asked was 'How would you pay for an unexpected expense'? It was not, 'Could you for an unexpected expense using just your savings'?

I'd be in the 'reduce spending' camp since I try to avoid touching my savings.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#122

Post by TangoTrotFox » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

modells wrote: post #88

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.

What is your view based on? I'd have assumed that absolute number of homeless would increase over time, but the rate of homelessness would be declining. I was surprised to see that, at least from this [1] research, that we are progressing fast enough that even the absolute number of homeless are also declining! Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from those data is that though absolute homelessness is decreasing, the number of homeless people moving to shelters is increasing. This means data that uses shelters alone as a metric could easily be quite misleading.

You also have to keep in mind that areas such as California have some of the highest homeless rates in the entire nation, so if your perception happens to be based on areas such as this - it's going to be skewed. It'd be like gauging prosperity by looking at what's happening in Monaco.

[1] - https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/health-ca...

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#123

Post by FranzFerdiNaN » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

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…

Ah yes. The poor are poor because of poor morals, instead of you, who is of good moral standing.

The poor are poor due to lack of money. This is caused by increasing costs of healthcare, education and houses, you know those basic things needed to live. And by a capitalistic class taking about 95% of all gains from productivity increases. Saying millions of people are poor because because of bad morals is disgusting and completely false.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#124

Post by groby_b » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:16 AM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #64

groby_b wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that pretty much no social animal with dominance hierarchy has a ranking function as simple as "status=mates". Most animals track the cost(e.g. more stress, higher metabolic rate) of high status vs the rewards. Which means that in an environment of abundance, the cost often exceeds the rewards. There's also the phenomenon of reverse hierarchies (essentially, lower ranking members band together to keep anybody…

> Which means that in an environment of abundance, the cost often exceeds the rewards. The problem is that environments of abundance basically do not exist, because the population of a species quickly grows to consume any excess. The situation that humans in the developed world face is novel. We are not evolved to deal with abundance because abundance has only ever occurred during the brief gap between when we invent…

Uh, yes, they do exist. The example of human cultures that comes to mind are Melanesians which IIRC had relative abundance of natural resources. In the animal kingdom, Bonobos are probably the prime example.

And IIRC, in both cases the reaction to abundance wasn't overpopulation, but the development of a sharing trait. (Because it reduces the cost incurred by unnecessary competition)

In the case of Melanesians, they were at some point taken over by relatively resource-poor Polynesians. (Inequality will cause trouble). Bonobos escaped that problem since they have no competitors in their natural habitat, and they evolved a somewhat interesting mechanism to cope with any of the smaller conflicts that might pop up. (E.g. access to favorite food instead of just normal food). If you're not familiar with it, I recommend reading up on it :)

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#125

Post by ngngngng » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:16 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #115

opportune wrote: post #4

One usually-not-mentioned premise is that even though goods’ costs have typically been going down over time as physical product technology improves, many services (the majority of developed economies) are relatively unaffected by improvements in technology because they rely almost exclusively on labor. Rising inequality will make services more expensive to those on the poorer end. Poor people don’t struggle to get sm…

There was an interview I listened to once by a lady that grew up in the early 20th century. One of the things she said was, "I never dreamed I would be rich enough to own a car, or poor enough that I couldn't afford a servant" Labor has become vastly more expensive than it traditionally was, while physical goods have gotten much cheaper. (Housing excluded, obviously)

How is this the case while the average wage has not even kept up with inflation?

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#126

Post by tjr225 » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

anoncoward111 wrote: post #112

_ptgt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think the housing price expectations discrepancy is probably a function of where you live vs where the GP lives. Inflation-adjusted housing prices haven't actually risen all that much outside top-tier cities. http://www.realestatedecoded.com/case-shiller/ Given that a relatively small percentage of people live in these places, I get the feeling the perception of a housing price crisis is larger than the r…

Millions of people live in top tier cities and millions of people live in Nowhere, USA where housing is still ludicrously expensive in proportion to job prospects

This hits really close for me. I am a Seattle IT guy and looking at houses back near family in Michigan. Sure, houses are 2-4x more expensive here...but I will most certainly make 1/2 as much in the areas in Michigan that I would like to live...which is as far away from the Detroit metro as possible. And even if I can make that much I will be lucky to find a job. Here in Seattle people come to me to hire me!

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#127

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:25 AM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #83

michaelmrose wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

[deleted]

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#128

Post by st26 » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

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.

Of course the plots generally seem to have been much larger. None of this sixteenth of an acre stuff.

And that's where all your money is going, to buy that sixteenth of an acre. The house itself is only a very small part of the cost in many of the metro areas beset by housing crisis.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#129

Post by st26 » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:35 AM UTC

ngngngng wrote: post #125

war1025 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interview I listened to once by a lady that grew up in the early 20th century. One of the things she said was, "I never dreamed I would be rich enough to own a car, or poor enough that I couldn't afford a servant" Labor has become vastly more expensive than it traditionally was, while physical goods have gotten much cheaper. (Housing excluded, obviously)

How is this the case while the average wage has not even kept up with inflation?

Well, consider you pay the dealership $80-120/hr for the mechanic's time, but the mechanic gets only $30-40 of that.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#130

Post by TangoTrotFox » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 5:40 AM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #72

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> if we can believe that there really is enough for us What I am saying is that humans are not wired for the concept of "enough". We have already had something similar to UBI in the form of fossil fuels and the abundant energy they provide, which have tremendously lowered the cost of the bare essentials in the developed world in the last 100 years. You can go into any super market in the US and buy a days worth of ca…

Star Trek is interesting to consider. Most see it as a sort of utopia, one that people could only dream of. And it's certainly portrayed as such. Yet "poor" is not really a measure of what you have, but a measure of what you don't have. In our Star Trek society imagine the state of mind and affairs for the hoards of Star Fleet officers unable to find promotion and instead left to meaningless toil while somebody else calls all the shots.

Well actually that's hardly even touching on the issue. Consider those that can't even get into Star Fleet! There'd be entire movements from these "poor" individuals indignant at the inequities in society. Star Trek rarely tackled this issue as it was always intended to be an optimistic, not necessarily realistic, view of the future. However, it did indirectly delve into these issues in one episode - Tapestry. A brief clip of it. [1] A longer cut of the ending scene there. [2]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHoPLhpw2g4

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGvUDvZ7KyU