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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

#161

Post by dabbledash »

watwut wrote: post #156
JASchilz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you’re missing your parent comment’s point. Women who were not working for wages were usually still working in the home.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#162

Post by wutbrodo »

lordnacho wrote: post #26

It 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…

> We should all be delirious with joy, all the time, if we expected happiness to increase with material wealth.

I actually do think it's plausible for happiness to increase with material wealth, but not because we're delirious with joy now, but rather because life was really, really, _really_ fucking horrible for the vast majority of human history (by our standards today).

Significantly, we can't actually measure happiness, and have to rely on "reported happiness", which is pretty much by definition anchored to expectations and thus not appropriate for long-term comparisons. Your point applies here: you wouldn't expect reported happiness to change directionally, on average.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#164

Post by wutbrodo »

tapatio wrote: post #6
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…

I am pretty sure everyone, except for the 1%, struggle to get daycare, medical care, and education.

Probably more like the top 10%.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#165

Post by taway_1212 »

close04 wrote: post #159
MarkMc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

> No, prosperity is "financial success" and that's related to the people around you and to some basic standard

If that's the case, then prosperity is purely relative term (as I suspect the "basic standard" will be redefined every decade or so) and hence can never improve. To me, what you're describing sounds more like inequality than prosperity.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#166

Post by another-cuppa »

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…

So who does the work at home now? Both partners after they get home from work? That doesn't sound like a better deal to me.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#167

Post by lotsofpulp »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #120

It's easy to understand why people may not believe that prosperity has increased across the board. I also used to believe this, but after looking at the data I'm not entirely sure what it is that drives our perception. This [1] paper from the urban institute is something I found precisely when looking to put specific numbers to the hollowing out of the middle class and the overall decline, or at least stagnation, of…

I wouldn't define $100k for a family of 3 as upper middle class. And a big part of what defined class is how much control you have in your life. If you have to work 80 hours a week and get $100k that's far different than working 40 hours a week and getting $100k. Another thing is how secure your position is. Are you at risk of being outsourced? Is your job going to be automated? Are you in construction with temporary employment that can disappear at any time? Do you live in an area where you have other employment prospects and your children have the opportunity to have a good education and make good friends?

All of these are more important for the class discussion than a snapshot of income, in my opinion. What is probably happening is that long term wealth is building in certain zip codes, where the chances of success are larger and larger compared to other zip codes, also why it costs so much more to live in a handful of urban areas than other places. The competition for these high performing places causes quite a bit of insecurity.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#168

Post by ForHackernews »

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…

I would absolutely consider that offer. I get cheap housing, healthcare, and education and as an added bonus I get rid of social media and my nagging smartphone?

(Btw, TV was in color by the 70s and literal gramophones were long gone)

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#169

Post by tremon »

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.…

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?

Yes. From http://www.mybudget360.com/the-magical-2-housing-ratio-betwe...:

> Back in 1950 the median home price cost a little above 2 times the annual median household income [2.2]

> in 1970 the ratio became more favorable to US households [1.7]

> After this point[..] prices remained fairly stable only because of the two income household, until 2000 [2.3]

> After this point, things went haywire. Even today after the [subprime mortgage crisis] the ratio is still out of sync with 50 years of data [3.3]

Keep in mind that this data is comparing housing prices to household income, not per-capita income.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#170

Post by austhrow743 »

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…

Knowing things exist and not having them and them not existing in the first place are two very different things.
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