Reversal of Fortune - Mother Jones Magazine
By Bill Mckibben
Thanks to Ash for this.
Well worth printing out and reading, the article covers a tremendous spectrum of the global economy's ever accelerating growth and how we continue to innovate to keep that growth on track. Simultaneously, consideration of a happiness index of the society that makes up the economies are considered. It is found that the most significant increases of average social happiness are found as folks transition from dirt poor to around the $10,000 mark. After that, the happiness rate is about the same. In essence, money certainly doesn't bring happiness. Further considered is how relationships and friendships increase one's happiness index, but as a family becomes more wealthy, larger and larger homes naturally separate family members, with a sisters play room in one wing and a brother's in another.
Perhaps the moral is to focus on building your happiness index while harnessing, to some extent, the inertia of the growing economy.
Bill Mckibben has also written a book, Deep Economy which surly provides deeper treatment to all of this. I imagine a cross between David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Malcolm Gladwell, Steven D. Levitt.
