The Agitator linked to this Drew Carey video about the conditions of America’s middle class. I was unsatisfied with how the video explained the decline in morale among the economically thriving middle class. It seems to blame the media – misery sells. I thought it was worth the time to summarize John Nye’s explanation that I heard at this past summer’s IHS Social Change Workshop. I put the following comment up at the Agitator:
John Nye has one of the most compelling explanations for the paradox of happiness. At one point in time the wealthier people report higher levels of happiness than the poorer, but over time despite being wealthier, people in general report less happiness. We seem to yearn for the good ol’ days. This is different from being barraged by pessimistic news stories. Nye claims that the relative prices of the most luxurious or “positionary” goods have gotten more expensive. Yes general items are more accessible to everyone, but there’s only so much land space in Maui or Beverly Hills to go around. Some portion of the economy is subject to scarcity inherently more than the rest. These are positionary goods, goods whose value is held high specifically because they are scarce. When we are young we can think about how cheap buying a car will be by the time we are fifty, but we fail to realize how much more we may have to pay for the beach house of our dreams because so many other people can afford it too.