Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 264 posts

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#221

Post by barrow-rider »

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The title is a little out of date.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…

> outside of IT which still has it good

I don't know if I'd say IT has it good. IT just doesn't have it bad the way the rest of workforce does.

This assumes IT as a technical/business role, not just "tech" in general that includes software devs and hardware engineers. The python gurus and embedded systems analysts are doing okay, it's the cable monkeys and tier 1-2 support folks feeling the pinch.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#222

Post by barrow-rider »

scarface74 wrote: post #198
Retric wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.ht…

Bingo. I have a 2009 Thinkpad that's still kicking; both it refurb'd. Does everything just fine for day-to-day purposes, and runs Alpha Centauri in WINE/DosBox like a boss.

For a couple years it was a dedicated seedbox. It's mostly by BTC-trade-only box these days, but if my desktop died I could re-image it and use it for 95% of my life without issue.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#223

Post by barrow-rider »

tjr225 wrote: post #126
anoncoward111 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people live in top tier cities and millions of people live in Nowhere, USA where housing is still ludicrously expensive in proportion to job prospects

This hits really close for me. I am a Seattle IT guy and looking at houses back near family in Michigan. Sure, houses are 2-4x more expensive here...but I will most certainly make 1/2 as much in the areas in Michigan that I would like to live...which is as far away from the Detroit metro as possible. And even if I can make that much I will be lucky to find a job. Here in Seattle people come to me to hire me!

Amen... but with Washington DC. Northern VA has literally the richest counties per capita in the US. Then I look at Eastern WA or Idaho and lose my shit. Montana, too, though the culture is terrible.

If only I could get a job there that didn't pay poor salaries...

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#224

Post by randomdata »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #112
_ptgt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think the housing price expectations discrepancy is probably a function of where you live vs where the GP lives. Inflation-adjusted housing prices haven't actually risen all that much outside top-tier cities. http://www.realestatedecoded.com/case-shiller/ Given that a relatively small percentage of people live in these places, I get the feeling the perception of a housing price crisis is larger than the r…

Millions of people live in top tier cities and millions of people live in Nowhere, USA where housing is still ludicrously expensive in proportion to job prospects

You know, I've always heard that and thought it seemed reasonable, but when I actually started looking through the data I noticed that the top tier cities often have significantly lower median incomes.

The top tier cities also have higher mean incomes. The top tier cities tend to attract the outliers. If you are Mark Zuckerberg, you probably live in a top tier city. But almost nobody is able to say they are earning like Mark Zuckerberg. And if you are earning like Mark Zuckerberg, the cost of housing is the least of your concerns.

It seems for the normal every day average person, they actually make less money in a top tier city.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#225

Post by rjkennedy98 »

ridewinter wrote: post #209
wozniacki wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the deficit of happiness can be better explained by one of Peter Thiel's most excellent reductionist observations: The countercultural in the '60s was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country. [1][2] Perhaps, for too long, the left has engulfed and held…

Those hippies brought us Apple computer and the Internet. What have conservatives contributed other than environmental destruction? Legit question.

I'm very far to the left, but the military made almost all the major inventions that silicon valley has packaged up for consumer use. The iPhone is nothing but a collection of technologies designed for war. GPS, small cameras, the internet, ect were all designed by the military not by Silicon Valley.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#226

Post by chiefalchemist »

aylmao wrote: post #102
chiefalchemist wrote: post #29

Prosperity is a proxy for consumption. We measure it and then we pursue it. We are so convinced that we've shortened financial wealth down to wealth, and have completely forgotten there are different type of wealth. For example, spiritual wealth. Happiness is subjective. And if the science is correct, it's independent of consumption. Western culture and power structure is wired to create financial wealth, not dismiss…

> Happiness is subjective. And if the science is correct, it's independent of consumption. This is true after a certain point. It's independent of consumption, but there's an amount of wealth we need to attain to meet a baseline of material needs that's are simply necessary. As the grandkid of a woman who couldn't afford shoes, a living space or sometimes even food when she was young, I can attest that my grandma's (…

No doubt there's a baseline. There's also a point of diminishing return. Few have a lot. A lot have little. And both camps are less and less happy. This can't go on forever.

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#227

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#228

Post by blanderman »

wozniacki wrote: post #187
todd8 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps the deficit of happiness can be better explained by one of Peter Thiel's most excellent reductionist observations: The countercultural in the '60s was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country. [1][2] Perhaps, for too long, the left has engulfed and held…

It's odd to me how the president from 1969 to 1977 and 1981 to 1993 was a republican, but the argument is that 'hippies' took over?

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#229

Post by wilsonnb3 »

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…

Unless you've already accounted for inflation, that $72k house (assuming it was bought in 1985) actually cost about $172,000 in 2018 dollars.

That means the house's value increased by about 30% over the past 33 years. I don't know the specifics of the situation, but some of that 30% is probably from increased economic development in the area it's in. Some may also be from improvements made to the house.

Regardless, phrasing it as "house used to cost $72K and now costs three times that" is inaccurate and misleading.

The other part of the problem is that the income for the same job has only increased by $4,000/year in the past thirty years, while it should have increased by about $50,000 over the same time to keep pace with inflation.

That's a much more serious problem than increased housing costs.

Disclaimer: I am not an economist so my understanding of the situation might be horribly flawed. Please correct me if that's the case.

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Re: Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not

#230

Post by randomdata »

ForHackernews wrote: post #192
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…

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-...

If you find that interesting, in a similar vein, a walk through corn and soybean fields in Canada lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-walk-that-changed-t...

Post reply on HN