I like how there's a list of 10 things that could ruin his prediction and basically all of them happened
It's amazing that he got so much right including how he's wrong
It's amazing that he got so much right including how he's wrong
All that said, I think there's one big miss he made, and did not consider. While so much of what he said came true, I think many people would love to reset society back to 1997. And I don't think it's just because of the misses. It simply seems that economic prosperity is not increasing personal contentedness, which seems a much more meaningful metric than 'happiness'.
If anything contentedness and prosperity seem to run into conflict, beyond a certain point. Obviously an area in Africa with a genuinely high food insecurity rate needs more prosperity. But going from relatively rich, in terms of economy, as we were in 1997, to absurdly rich as we are today, does not seem to have brought the corresponding changes one would have expected. If anything, it seems that more prosperity just drives people to want even more, with all notions of contentedness collapsing.
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Yeah, in searching on this topic I bumped into this. [2] Apparently $75k (2011) is peak 'happiness', though again what a myopic metric contrasted against contentedness. The odd thing is that it was $75k period. Whether in Bodunk where $75k means you're rich, or NYC where $75k means you're living far from comfortably. It was just $75k. There were no meaningful gains in measures of happiness beyond that magic number.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schwartz_(futurist)
[2] - https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-...
That was contradicted by later research:
>...But in 2021, Killingsworth, a happiness researcher and senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, found that happiness does not plateau after $75,000, and that “experienced well-being” can continue to rise with income well beyond $200,000.
Killingsworth than worked with Kahneman to do a more complete survey:
>...The study reached two big conclusions: First, that “happiness continues to rise with income even in the high range of incomes” for the majority of people, showing that for many of us, on average having more money can make us increasingly happier.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/03/08/money-wea...
The original study was carried out by directly surveying people, and measuring their subjective perspectives. Their answers were then contrasted against their income. The later study was carried out with a smartphone app, which participants opted into at their discretion, asked at a frequency completely up to the participants, and then asked them about their experiences just prior to the notification. I'm not really sure what that's measuring, but it seems fairly safe to say that it's something quite different.
For instance ask a grossly obese man how he feels at any given point in time and it's probably pretty good. He's likely relaxing, eating, and otherwise engaging in various forms of self indulgent behavior. But gauge him on his overall life satisfaction and it's likely to be abysmal. Vice versa, query a mother who's raising 4 young children and, at any given point in time, and they're often not going to be having the best of times. Yet, nonetheless their overall life satisfaction is likely to be quite high.
Basically look at any poll on various forms of contentedness, Gallup carries out an annual one here. [2] And you'll find the results are nothing like what you'd expect, even more so if one thinks money can provide anything beyond what one can buy. The 'most positive' places are in Latin America - Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Columbia, Mexico, etc. The 'least negative' places are in Eastern Europe and Asia: China, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam, Estonia, Poland, Kazakhstan, etc. These results don't leave much room for money doing anything beyond ensuring ones base needs can be comfortably met.
[1] - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120#sec-3
[2] - https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/gallup-global-emotio...
There's actually even historical precedent for this. One of the hypothesized factors for the fall of Rome was the rise of Christianity. You went from a nation massively dedicated to product in pursuit of glorification of the Gods, alongside an emperor holding a pseudo-deistic role, to one where you have 'the meek shall inherit the Earth', 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God', and so on. It was probably just a minor factor but it almost certainly played at least some real role.
That said, a few more dollars are indeed irrelevant to happiness beyond a certain level, but orders of magnitude might not be.
1997.