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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

#151

Post by wutbrodo »

coldtea wrote: post #142
roenxi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There is a quiet denial about how luxurious modern living is There's also a big denial about how luxurious 1940s living was compared to 1840s or the palaeolithic ages... ...and that's just as well, because it's not really relevant. Living standards and necessities are determined socially, in comparison with what others of the same era have (and expect people to have), not with comparison to the past. Someone that l…

Leaving aside how arguable it is, this definition of living standards is not relevant to this subthread, which is about the claim that prosperity has not been increasing for decades, followed by an unfavorable comparison to the 40s/50s. By such a useless definition, the claim is tautological: of course prosperity can't have increased of living standards are defined as being eternally static. Incidentally, it's a subthread you started and a claim you made, so it's a little bizarre to see the goalposts being moved so dramatically.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#152

Post by SimplyUnknown »

dmitriy_ko wrote: post #139
kgwgk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, in the fifties all the houses were new and all the school districts were better than average.

"all the school districts were better than average" That might be a statistical impossibility:-)

Depends. Suppose you take those new-fangled school districts just built in the fifties. Are they better than the global average? Likely. Are they better than the average school district in America? Possibly. Are they better than the average school in your state? Maybe. Are they better than all those new school districts? Definitely not.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#153

Post by ggm »

Aspirational marketing works. We have stuff, we just all want more stuff a notch above the stuff we have. The glamour advertising for watches feeds belief were entitled to a $20,000 Chopard.

It doesn't help that the disparity in pay board to shop floor is wider than back in the day of servants.

Redirecting mental effort to no material life is hard. Plus the economy tanks when we don't spend.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#154

Post by wutbrodo »

eric_h wrote: post #110
randomdata wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would you factor it in then? "Disposable income is total personal income minus personal current taxes" [1] Where else would the money come from? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_and_discretionary_i...

Huh. I'd always considered the definition of disposable income as the income that I would literally consider to be disposable, e.g. the money left over after I've covered everything I need (including housing, clothing, food and taxes) that I could set on fire and not change my current condition. Per the wikipedia article of disposable income, I could afford a Ferrari (on a payment plan), but I would generally say I d…

> after I've covered everything I need (including housing, clothing, food and taxes) that I could set on fire and not change my current condition.

Housing and taxes make sense because they're generally inflexible costs, but how does clothing fit into this? Unless you're sewing smocks out of burlap, the majority of most people's clothing expenses is fully discretionary in every sense of the word (even including work clothes, for those unfortunate enough to have their employer force them to dress a certain way). That isn't to say it's a waste of money, but it's discretionary in the same way that eating at nice restaurants or going to concerts is: something you spend not to survive, but to improve your quality of life in some way.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#155

Post by MarkMc »

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…

Person A says prosperity not increased for the middle-class since the 1970's, person B says it has.

Do they have to rely on historical data, or is there some experiment they could perform to determine who is right? For example, suppose I offered 10 people the opportunity to live like people lived in the 1970's. I would subsidise their housing and education costs, but they would pay more for clothes and food and air travel and phone calls. They would not have the internet and would only have a black-and-white TV with 4 stations and a gramophone record player for entertainment. If nobody accepted such an offer, would that settle the argument?

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#156

Post by watwut »

JASchilz wrote: post #73
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…

You make a few substantial points, but any use of the "single income earner" argument is incomplete if it doesn't acknowledge that _women were also working at home_ while their husbands were doing income-earning work. It's not only income-earning work that counts against prosperity: it's all work. Studies indicate that men and women gained 6-8 hours of leisure from 1965-2003. There are probably caveats and addenda to…

Labor force participation of women in 1950 was 33.9 while males 86.4. So while males worked much more, the framing that makes it sound like women did not worked at all is false.

Upper and middle class women did not worked, poorer women (significant part of population) did and had to work.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#157

Post by watwut »

coldtea wrote: post #144
laurieg wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a quiet denial about how luxurious modern living is. Absolutely! I genuinely marvel every time I go into a supermarket. I can buy a huge variety of delicious foods from all the corners of the globe. 200 years ago a king couldn't eat this well. Also, I have literal robots doing my housework! A robot cleans the floor. A robot cleans the dishes. A robot cleans my clothes. It's nice to take a step back and app…

> 200 years ago a king couldn't eat this well A kind 200 years ago couldn't eat this variety. But they could eat very much better -- all free-range, well made, top quality cuts (not hastily made, lower tier BS, with all kinds of additives to increase self-life or make it appear more appealing in the shelves), made fresh on their own premises or bought from the best artisans. And of course all prepared at their whim b…

> And of course all prepared at their whim by their army of personal chefs, and served by an army of servers.

Math says that majority of people were among army of personal chefs and servers not among those being served. So, you are arguing by outliers.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#158

Post by piterdevries »

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…

God bless coldtea, I almost went batshit crazy when I read the article. Do not be fooled, we are in the worst growth period in recorded history. Just think about it, the WW1 and WW2 periods were better. Bullshit article.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#159

Post by close04 »

MarkMc wrote: post #155
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…

Person A says prosperity not increased for the middle-class since the 1970's, person B says it has. Do they have to rely on historical data, or is there some experiment they could perform to determine who is right? For example, suppose I offered 10 people the opportunity to live like people lived in the 1970's. I would subsidise their housing and education costs, but they would pay more for clothes and food and air t…

Pretty sure you couldn't convince a teenager to give up Snapstagram or Instabook or whatever is the next thing. Must be that these bring prosperity to their lives :).

I think we have to go to even more basic questions: what do people think about when they say prosperity? Having more money? But is it having more money than today's average or having more money than they used to have?

One thing's for sure, I wouldn't say more tech = more prosperity. By this definition alone almost every person is the world lives a more prosperous life by virtue of having a $20 burner phone that they didn't have in the '80s.

No, prosperity is "financial success" and that's related to the people around you and to some basic standard, a baseline of the times you're living in.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#160

Post by enraged_camel »

orangecat wrote: post #111
panopticon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

A Bankrate[1] survey found that only 37% of respondents could cover a The exact wording of the question is going to have a significant impact on the results and what they mean. In the real world, if I incur an unexpected $500 expense I'd put it on my credit card, which would get automatically paid from my checking account at the next billing cycle. It's not clear if that would incorrectly categorize me as not being a…

Certain types of expenses cannot be put on credit card though.
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