Wolfers (video) discusses the error of the Easterlin Paradox: There is nothing on the planet that improves the life of people more than increasing income. Money quote: "A 10% rise in income improves happiness by a fixed amount, regardless of your start point".
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There is nothing on the planet that improves the life of people more than increasing income.
Okay, but there seems to be a bit of a battle between the income creators and the income destroyers. I'm not sure who is going to own the long bond.
RSF,
This is the killer problem.
Mancur Olson has a very line that suggest that in all known individual societies...income destroyers (mostly government regulation) win....by adding regs that prevent dynamism:
Anti-foreign trade, guild, licensing, "fairness" laws, etc.
Hence...my over-riding interest in maintaining the engine of growth, which in 1 word is dynamism... against the engines of stasis.
Will Growth win? It might still win for another couple thousand years. But the engines of control all oppose it...and so it's non-obvious. OTOH, Singapore, Dubai, Switzerland, and the new Honduran Free Cities are all elements which suggest a positive outlook.
"another couple thousand years"
That is optimistic in my book. The manned space program ended last year, and gov't funded or not, I find that a bit of a bright line in the battle with our ship burning Mandarins.
RSF,
1. My grandpa worked on the Apollo program. However, I personally think of the US Space program as a low-value spectacle that mostly served to delay private efforts by 40 years. Furthermore, I think we're in the intermediate 10 years. In 10 years, we'll have private folks in space, and in 40, it will be clear HOW silly the USG involvement with space was.
2. I wasn't suggesting we've got an easy path to 2000 years of growth. 2000 years seems to me to be near the outer limit of the possible. I'm of the opinion that governments are constantly working to try to make the growth stop tomorrow...and eternal vigilance is necessary to get to 2020 on a growth-path.
"A 10% rise in income improves happiness by a fixed amount, regardless of your start point"
This is true of a 10% rise of real income, but you can of course have any nominal income growth that amounts to decreased happiness if the purchasing power of the currency decreases at a faster rate than the nominal income growth. All fairly evident, but overlooked WAY too often.
Also, regarding your comment about the grandfather working in the Apollo program, your comment reminded me of what I've been thinking a lot lately about the massive subsidy to car manufacturers and trucking companies that government funding of roads & highways represent.
Considering the technological components all already exist, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that, without the government artificially hiding the cost of automobiles, and by extension lowering the demand for an alternative, to think the R&D would have been put in by now to lower the manufacturing costs of everything needed to make computer guided, personal ultralight aircraft.
As awesome as recent technological developments have been, how much cooler would life be if you could enter a destination in a terminal, hop in your "flying car" & read a book while in transit, without possibility of traffic slowing you down, until arriving safe & sound @ your destination?
ghost,
Well said. Both points. And welcome to the blog.
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