Happiness happens when one can live in a stress-free environment.
Nowadays, we have a lot of stress, because the requirements an individual has to fulfil in order to survive have skyrocketed.
Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
171–180 of 264 posts
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#172Earlier 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…
You will find that the full-time median income is much closer to $50,000 though.
That's household income, not per-capita. It is heavily skewed by two-income households.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#173Earlier 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…
Knowing things exist and not having them and them not existing in the first place are two very different things.
It's like the difference between prosperity and happiness.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#174Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#175The title is a little out of date.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.…
> Rule of thumb says you shouldn't spend more than three times your income on housing
Is this a rural rule of thumb? Looking around me, I see people routinely paying 5-10 times their annual income to get a crappy city apartment and spending the majority of their income making mortgage payments. The alternatives, spending the majority of their income on rent or moving to an area where the majority of the income would vanish, do not seem better.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we peg the 1970s as when things changed, that is about the time that Bretton Woods/the gold standard ended and growth in GDP growth stopped being a proxy for per capita growth of energy use. Hard to know if that was cause or effect though, it seems unlikely that the monetary system changed because everything was going well. It does suggest the modern monetary system is a bit of a lemon. EDIT scratch that, it is ma…
I'm hardly an expert so I'll welcome someone who is to correct my mistakes. However, the main problem with the gold standard was that it's too easy to corner the market in gold. As new economies gain traction, they have to purchase gold to back up their currencies. However, at the time the liquidity in gold was very, very low because everybody was hording it. This caused the price to spike. Occasionally large amounts…
Just an FYI, the Bretton Woods system was the gold tied system that lasted until the 70's and was discarded for a fully fiat system. From context it seems you're using the reference incorrectly to mean this post gold standard system.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#177Earlier 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…
Knowing things exist and not having them and them not existing in the first place are two very different things.
Exactly, failing to keep up with the Jones has real impact on happiness. Absolute vs relative prosperity is like buying a top of the line new computer in 1995 or a used computer today built in 2010 that is vastly more powerful yet can’t run a lot of current software well.
One issue is we are constantly bombarded with things we don’t have. Basic cable has far more channels than existed in 1960 but the menu constantly shows every channel you don’t have while making menus harder to use.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Maybe the person paying for the house needs one car to get to work. Why do you need two cars? Sure, assuming the family doesn't have kids, the other person will never need to leave the house for errands, etc. (Or, you know, they don't want to be cooped up in the house all day.)
During the 40s and 50s the use of a car, even in rural areas , was normally reserved for a special trip once a week to run errands and get out of the house, if you were able to afford a car at all. The average family at the time wouldn't dream of wasting money on a second car, let alone the first one, to 'frivolously' get out of the house on a daily basis for pleasure. That money was needed to pay for the house. It i…
Lets be real the second car is so the spouse can get a job too because otherwise the bank is taking the house.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#179Earlier 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…
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.
The point was that one worker can't effectively pay for a household anymore.
Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Parents were talking about kings, not about service people.