So happiness and poverty are relative. Isn't that obvious to anyone who has ever traveled, studied other cultures, or even our own culture? I know that's not the norm, but it's a fairly obvious observation. Many of the people in America's ghettos have, in absolute terms, much more wealth than much of the developed and developing world, yet they are much less happy than many of the latter people. Each cohort is comparing themselves with the people around them, not with people in far away countries. In America, poor people are surrounded by hate and cruelty, constantly in fear for their lives and livelihood. This is usually not the case in places where people are happy yet make much less in absolute terms (although sometimes it is even there). There's much more to life than money, especially when money is tight.
Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
131–140 of 264 posts
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#132Earlier 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?
But they have, and then some. The datum you're referencing misses out on compensation as a whole. Compensation includes a wide array of factors such as insurance, paid time off, sick leave, and various other perks and benefits. This [1] is the graph you should be considering. That is Nonfarm Business Sector: Real Compensation Per Hour. And just to be completely clear "real" means that that graph is indeed inflation adjusted.
"Nonfarm Business Sector" is defined as "a subset of the domestic economy and excludes the economic activities of the following: general government, private households, nonprofit organizations serving individuals, and farms. The nonfarm business sector accounted for about 77 percent of the value of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000."
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#133One 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…
I am pretty sure everyone, except for the 1%, struggle to get daycare, medical care, and education.
Think outside your US bubble please. What you say is not even remotely true in most European countries.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#134Earlier 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.…
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…
Meanwhile, in the fifties all the houses were new and all the school districts were better than average.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#135Earlier 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…
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 a…
I thoroughly reject whatever it is you are suggesting. There is nothing immoral about wanting to enjoy a high standard of living.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#136Earlier 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…
Your “median earner with a spouse and 2 kids” is quite different from the median household. The (gross) income in a median household is $59k.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#137It 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 pe…
> 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. I don’t see how the second sentence follows from the first. Can you explain? What rate of increase are you assuming?
Say there is some function connecting some measure of wealth to some measure of happiness. And the function would be monotonically increasing.
Well, the measure of wealth in the modern era ought to be orders of magnitude bigger than it was in the stone age. Back then people had control over something like 10 items. There were no property laws to ensure you kept them, either. If you got a minor cut it could get infected and kill you, there was no modern medicine. Your wife had a massive 5% chance of dying each time she gave birth, and that was a lot of times.
Whatever you thought the function was, the value ought to be much, much higher now than then.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#138Earlier 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…
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 a…
I agree with your core thesis, but it could probably have been expressed better. In the USA there's a moral system that some people have that equates wealth to virtue. In my experience, it leads to conclusions that are generally dehumanizing and unempathetic of others, which is definitely not a long term sustainable foundation for a free society.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#139Earlier 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…
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:-)
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#140Earlier 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…
> 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 appreciate all this.