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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

#191

Post by wccrawford »

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…

People adjust.

In 100 years, people will look back and say things like, "How did they survive 100 years ago? Some countries didn't even have decent governments, let alone proper healthcare for everyone. Some people lived on the streets. People could just walk up to you and kill you! Bang! You're dead.

Now that we've got personal electron shields and everyone is guaranteed food and medical care, people should be a lot happier than back then."

But in the end, it's all relative. We look at what we have and what we didn't have, we're thankful for it, and we go on. People in third-world countries are happy, too, despite not having all the modern conveniences.

And there are plenty of miserable people because people are people, in the end.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#192

Post by ForHackernews »

laurieg wrote: post #140
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. 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…

Reportedly Boris Yeltsin was so floored by a random American supermarket that it help spur him to end the Cold War: https://penetrate.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-randalls-grocery-...

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#193

Post by nickpp »

phil21 wrote: post #90
ams6110 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My father's house was built in the 1940's and is as you described. It's now going for over $225k in a flyover state. He bought the place in the 80's for $72k on a $40k/yr salary - and the job he held to pay for it pays $44k/yr today. The exact same house is out of each for the exact same job today. Housing has skyrocketed by all available metrics. The one that matters most of course is % of after tax income spent, an…

Have you adjusted for inflation?

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#194

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

ams6110 wrote: post #94
phil21 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father's house was built in the 1940's and is as you described. It's now going for over $225k in a flyover state. He bought the place in the 80's for $72k on a $40k/yr salary - and the job he held to pay for it pays $44k/yr today. The exact same house is out of each for the exact same job today. Housing has skyrocketed by all available metrics. The one that matters most of course is % of after tax income spent, an…

The other thing people were more willing to do in the 1940s was move to where they could afford to live.

It was much easier to find places like that, though.

The rust belt was booming then. There were more options. Now for the best opportunity you have to take a risk and live in the major cities with astronomical housing prices or long commutes.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#195

Post by icc97 »

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…

I think this is the relevant graph [0] for what you're speaking about - price changes of selected US goods and services from 1997-2017.

[0]: https://imgur.com/a/JVjIQ8r

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#196

Post by kgwgk »

michaelmrose wrote: post #179
kgwgk wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many earners are part-time earners nowadays. If you want to make that point, you may want to look at the median income for full-time jobs ($50k for men).

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#197

Post by scarface74 »

todd8 wrote: post #181
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…

I was in college in the 70s, so yeah, it was a fun time for me when I think back on it. Who wouldn’t want to hear Aerosmith live in a club with maybe 80 people there before their first album. But I walked to class cold and wet on many days. Gortex hadn’t been invented and I couldn’t afford a car. When I got my first real job I bought a car, but I carried a toolbox in the trunk. Cars broke down frequently and with no…

Ubiquitous discrimination, bigotry, and prejudice made it harder for many to be middle class like I was.

When I hear my parents talk about growing up in the segregated south in the 50s, there is nothing about it that makes me think - "wow life was so much better back then".

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#198

Post by scarface74 »

Retric wrote: post #177
austhrow743 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly, failing to keep up with the Jones has real impact on happiness. Absolute vs relative prosperity is like buying a to 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.

A computer you bought in 2010 would be more than capable of running most modern non game software well.

https://www.computerhope.com/history/2010.htm

In fact, I was using a Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell (circa 2009) running Windows 10 as my Plex Server until last week. It was only slow when trying to do something interactively while Plex was transcoding. It also ran PlexConnect to serve a Plex client to my 3rd gen AppleTV.

The 1st gen iPad was also released that year. I still have one (not my main iPad). I reset it last year. It can still be used for most of the streaming services - Netflix, Hulu, etc.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#199

Post by pixl97 »

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…

Can part of the increase of leisure time be explained by a drop in the number of children per family?

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#200

Post by scarface74 »

hueving wrote: post #141
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ugh, poor money management skills have nothing to do with morals. It's fine to say someone has poor money management skills just like it's fine to say someone has poor C++ coding skills. Creating a budget and sticking to it requires behavioral changes that take time to sink in. It's extremely unlikely that you make the perfect amount of money to cover your exact needs that result in you being broke. It's much more li…

I think you and the original poster are in violent agreement Reread his post all of the way through.
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