I think I was 10 or 11 when I realized that things can only make the tiniest and most temporary changes in one's level of happiness. (No kidding; it's not an e

I think I was 10 or 11 when I realized that things can only make the tiniest and most temporary changes in one's level of happiness. (No kidding; it's not an especially novel idea.) Anytime you're dealing with "doomsayers", you can almost bet that that person actually wants their variant of doom to occur, often for the tremendous corrections required. The effect of a real economic collapse would be: 1. A great reduction in "things" (read: toys) available. 2. A greater day-to-day struggle for necessities. 3. A replacement of humanity's highly variable yet trivial problems with one big, common problem. There's every reason to believe that the above three things, if not taken too far, are actually a prescription for happiness. There's a forth one, of course: 4. A fundamental change in the ruling class. That, of course, could be bad or good, but it explains why the government is happy to spend 100s of billions to fight every dip.