Economic equality equals happiness.

[n2doc]

The Happiness Equation

9/9/2011 4:39:37 PM
by Margret Aldrich

Economic equality equals happiness. So suggests a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science. In order for Americans to be truly blissed out, it finds, we need to close the gap between our wealthiest and poorest citizens.

“In 1980, the average American CEO’s income was 40 times higher than that of the average worker. Today, it is well over 300 times higher,” writes Carmen Sobczak in YES! Magazine. “Over the past four decades, according to the study, the American people have been the least happy in years when there was the widest gap between rich and poor.”

The study, lead by Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia, took into account economic and psychological factors when examining data taken from 50,000 individuals between 1972 and 2008. Not surprisingly it was the lower-income participants—those in the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population—who expressed reduced happiness during periods of greater economic disparity, but their reasons for dissatisfaction were unexpected. Expains Sobczak:

People weren’t unhappy just because their income was lower. Instead, the authors’ analysis revealed that greater inequality was linked to reductions in trust and perceived fairness—and it was drops in those attitudes that made people feel less happy.... Oishi and his colleagues argue that their results may explain why economic growth has not been accompanied by increases in happiness in the United States, unlike in other developed nations. The problem, they suggest, is that gains in national wealth in the U.S. haven’t been distributed equally, and this inequality has caused Americans’ happiness to suffer.

Oishi offers this lucent formula to fix our happiness dilemma: “If the ultimate goal of society is to make its citizens happy, then it is desirable to consider policies that produce more income equality, fairness, and general trust.”

http://www.utne.com/The-Sweet-Pursuit/Happiness-Equation-Economic-Equality.aspx

[sam11111]

1. "work up, wage up".. is what one expects. But "work up, wage down" is our reality in a RW economy

Higher production's wealth has not caused wage raises. The study above is accurate. Thanks for posting.

Poverty ruptures so many relationships. "Here come the poor relatives" is just one awkwardness that doesn't happen in an equal society.
The stress of personal loans is another.

Poverty increases how often merchants think they can cheat one... So the poor stop trusting them.

Merchants are really a cruel group IMHO, from what my three poor epals in Oregon tell me. "Selling used as new is a favorite tactic" one says.

My background in the middle class had given me a false impression.

I no longer respect most small businesses. Some perhaps. Only some. I'm sure some are honorable.

[n2doc]

2. kick n/t

[Overseas]

3. Supports the evidence being charted by The Equality Trust in the UK too.

They are studying the effects of income inequality on various social factors, finding that where income inequality is lower, societies are happier and healthier.

Overview http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/mental-health

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/violence

[bemildred]

4. “Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, as if it were possible,

by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbors pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately on the need or desire he has for it, – and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor poor.” – John Ruskin “Unto the Last”

[trackfan]

5. Pretty much what Marx said:

A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small, it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.

...

Thus, although the enjoyments of the worker have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker...Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.

- Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital

[Nikia]

6. I think many people feel permanently locked out of the American dream

Neither education nor hard work gurantees a wage that buys little more than the necessities of life. It can be rather depressing.

[Trillo]

7. How does one create economic equality with the big corporations?

By law, corporations are considered persons. Do we all get to be the financial equivalent of Apple or Microsoft or Monsanto or Shell? I'm just curious. How does that work? Will we all get glass encircled caves towering to the seeming heavens, just like they have?