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February 23, 2004

Another cause could be Republican extremists

A Paradox of Progress: Stepped-Up Stress
Even as the modern world has dramatically improved our material lives, many of us are feeling increasingly worse.
By Gregg Easterbrook
Gregg Easterbrook's new book is "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" (Random House).

February 23, 2004

By practically every objective measure, American life has been getting better for decades.

Standards of living keep rising, with the typical house now more than twice as large as a generation ago; middle-class income keeps rising, though more slowly than income at the very top; more Americans graduate from college every year; longevity keeps rising; almost all forms of disease, including most cancers, are in decline; crime has dropped spectacularly; pollution, except for greenhouse gases, are in long-term decline; discrimination is down substantially. Yet despite all these positive indicators, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as "happy" has not increased since the early 1950s, while incidence of depression keeps rising — and was doing so long before the morning of Sept. 11.

This is the progress paradox: Life gets better while people feel worse. Many explanations suggest themselves. One is the depressing effect of excess materialism, which I call "the revenge of the credit card." Another is fear that Western society will break down, which might be called "collapse anxiety." A third is the uneasy feeling that accompanies actually getting what you dreamed of. Today, tens of millions of Americans have things their parents or grandparents could only dream of — nice houses, college educations. Though that is obviously good, Americans are finding that merely possessing the good life does not ensure happiness. This may tell us there is a "revolution of satisfied expectations" — that general prosperity brings with it an empty feeling.

Posted by P6 at February 23, 2004 08:11 AM
Trackback URL: http://www.niggerati.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/528
Comments

How exactly is this related to "Republicans"? You are starting to sound like all the bigot's I've ever met -- you just trade "Republican" for "Nigger".

Posted by Phelps at February 23, 2004 02:05 PM

Get used to it. You got at least eight more months of it.

Posted by P6 at February 23, 2004 03:15 PM

Nope. If that is what I can expect, I'll tune out for a year or so.

Posted by Phelps at February 23, 2004 03:19 PM

Your option. You knew I was partisan from day one.

Posted by P6 at February 23, 2004 04:01 PM

Being partisan is one thing. Being a pig is another.

Posted by Phelps at February 23, 2004 04:55 PM

Are you perchance calling me a pig?

Posted by P6 at February 23, 2004 05:02 PM

Never mind. I've stopped personal attacks on people I don't agree with. What makes you think I'll accept attacks on me?

I've invoked your option.

Posted by P6 at February 23, 2004 05:05 PM

Serious, I have a lot of hope riding on Republicans this year. My entire family is extremely conservative, and my father has a tormented look in his eyes when he broaches the subject of politics. He seems to feel like somewhere his principles aren't being upheld, and since I share a lot of those principles, I simply frame my replies therewith. My brother just makes snarky remarks about Clinton that don't even parse; but Clinton isn't running this year.

Hint: minimizing the state requires strategy, planning, and a little bit of patience. These are hardly wild ideas.

Calpundit posted about this--he's amazed that Mr. Easterbrook thinks it's an original observation. Tolstoy, in a short story, mentioned that relative hardship was what was intolerable, and Henry George facetiously lamented to his readers that universal weath was impossible if by "wealth" we meant "exceptional wealth."

Phelps, I know the distinction between "conservative" and "libertarian" is an important one to you but in Southern California the ideas have always been very close to synonyms. Certainly the conclusions Hayek draws in "The Road to Serfdom" are very congenial to both, and I confess when I was on the [extreme] political right I tended to think those were the important ones. IMO it has more to do with a style of reasoning than ultimate goals.

But it's a good idea to know when P6 is twirling his mustache. Earthlings seem to be deficient in detecting irony if they don't have a mustache to twirl. Is that true?

Posted by James R MacLean at February 23, 2004 09:28 PM

BTW, Phelps, you notice P6 said "Republican extremists." Are you an extremist? Isn't extremist a self-selecting group, and is that not an all-important distinction to you?

Posted by James R MacLean at February 23, 2004 10:03 PM