5 ms·

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 h

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

russdill 3y ago
"This is only a scenario of the future, by no means an outright prediction of what is to come. We can be reasonably confident of the continuation of certain trends. Much of the long boom's technology is already in motion and almost inevitably will appear within that span. Asia is ascendant whether we like it or not. Barring some bizarre catastrophe, that large portion of the world will continue to boom. But there are many unknowns, all kinds of critical uncertainties. Will Europe summon the political will to make the transition to the new economy? Will Russia avoid a nationalist retrenchment and establish a healthy market economy - let alone democracy? Will China fully embrace capitalism and avoid causing a new cold - or hot - war? Will a rise in terrorism cause the world to pull back in constant fear? It's not technology or economics that pose the biggest challenges to the long boom. It's political factors, the ones dependent on strong leadership."
- alanbernstein 3y ago
  If only the pandemic hadn't happened in early 2020, we'd have probably gotten those four astronauts to mars by the end of that year...
harry8 3y ago
> We are riding the early waves of a 25-year run of a greatly expanding economy... 1997.
somenameforme 3y ago
Agreed. This is one of the most well informed, across a vast spectrum of info, articles I've ever read. And.. in Wired? Unsurprisingly it seems this was a segment/paraphrasing from a book he wrote. Here [1] is his Wiki page, which includes published works and the like. 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. --- 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schwartz_(futurist) [2] - https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-Love-and-75K.aspx https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-...
- opo 3y ago
  >...It was just $75k. There were no meaningful gains in measures of happiness beyond that magic number. 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-wealth-happiness-study/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/03/08/money-wea...
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    It should also vary a lot with age. $75K would make me a very happy late teen, but wouldn’t pay my bills now, and that’s not because of inflation - it’s because now I have a family, a mortgage, and a lot of sizeable expenses.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    The first thing I tend to do when finding a study reporting in a way that seems counter-intuitive, to say nothing of one that contradicts previous findings, is to go to their methods. There are quite frequently some pretty glaring differences, and that's certainly the case here [1]. 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 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120#sec-3 [2] - https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/gallup-global-emotions-report.aspx https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/gallup-global-emotio...

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

russdill 3y ago

"This is only a scenario of the future, by no means an outright prediction of what is to come. We can be reasonably confident of the continuation of certain trends. Much of the long boom's technology is already in motion and almost inevitably will appear within that span. Asia is ascendant whether we like it or not. Barring some bizarre catastrophe, that large portion of the world will continue to boom. But there are many unknowns, all kinds of critical uncertainties. Will Europe summon the political will to make the transition to the new economy? Will Russia avoid a nationalist retrenchment and establish a healthy market economy - let alone democracy? Will China fully embrace capitalism and avoid causing a new cold - or hot - war? Will a rise in terrorism cause the world to pull back in constant fear? It's not technology or economics that pose the biggest challenges to the long boom. It's political factors, the ones dependent on strong leadership."

alanbernstein 3y ago
If only the pandemic hadn't happened in early 2020, we'd have probably gotten those four astronauts to mars by the end of that year...

harry8 3y ago

> We are riding the early waves of a 25-year run of a greatly expanding economy... 1997.

somenameforme 3y ago

Agreed. This is one of the most well informed, across a vast spectrum of info, articles I've ever read. And.. in Wired? Unsurprisingly it seems this was a segment/paraphrasing from a book he wrote. Here [1] is his Wiki page, which includes published works and the like. 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. --- 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schwartz_(futurist) [2] - https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-Love-and-75K.aspx https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/Happiness-Is-...

opo 3y ago
>...It was just $75k. There were no meaningful gains in measures of happiness beyond that magic number. 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-wealth-happiness-study/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/03/08/money-wea...
- rbanffy 3y ago
  It should also vary a lot with age. $75K would make me a very happy late teen, but wouldn’t pay my bills now, and that’s not because of inflation - it’s because now I have a family, a mortgage, and a lot of sizeable expenses.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  The first thing I tend to do when finding a study reporting in a way that seems counter-intuitive, to say nothing of one that contradicts previous findings, is to go to their methods. There are quite frequently some pretty glaring differences, and that's certainly the case here [1]. 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 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120#sec-3 [2] - https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/gallup-global-emotions-report.aspx https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/gallup-global-emotio...