Are We Unhappy Despite Our Wealth—or Because of It?

It's time to confront the "agony of abundance" and the pessimistic media narratives the fuel apocalyptic politics.

Agony of Abundance, cave art style, generated by DALL-E

The Agony of Abundance (w/ Nick Gillespie)

Earlier this week, I appeared on

Uncertain Things

, the wonderful podcast hosted right here on Substack by

Adaam James Levin-Areddy

and

Vanessa Quirk

. We covered a lot of ground—from media misdirection to housing policy to psychedelics. Click above or scroll down to listen via Apple or Spotify and to check out their intro text and topics list.

The starting point of the conversation is a recent talk I gave that’s titled “The Agony of Abundance: How unprecedented material wealth is making us all unhappy and what to do about it.” I hope to write up a version of it soon, but the gist is that virtually everyone in the United States and, increasingly, on the planet has their material needs more than covered, triggering something like a mass global existentialist crisis in which the search for meaning has thankfully replaced the search for basic food, clothing, and shelter. As Homi Kharas and Kristofer Hamel reported for the Brookings Institution in 2018, ‘just over 50 percent of the world’s population, or some 3.8 billion people, live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered “middle class” or “rich.”’ (Kharas’ book-length treatment of the topic is The Rise of the Global Middle Class.)

If past societal struggles were over access to resources and opportunities, I argue, today’s are fights over symbolic meaning and the efficacy of liberal tolerance and pluralism as a structuring foundation for everyday life. This doesn’t mean things are fine and there are no political, economic social reforms needed. Far from it. But until we start taking better account of material reality and progress, we’ll be stuck in media-and-politics-generated doom loops that lead to terrible policy and cultural outcomes. In America, at least, we are clustered at the top rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (not a pyramid!), where the search for self-generated and endlessly revised meaning takes center stage.

In the opening section of the Uncertain Things podcast, I mention a statistic that might at first blush seem insane: Spending on housing really hasn’t increased as a percentage of overall income since the mid 1980s. In fact, according to economist

Jeremy Horpedahl

, who teaches at the University of Central Arkansas, that percentage is down slightly for virtually every age group and in every region. “Are Americans spending more of their income on housing than in the past?,” writes Horpedahl at the excellent blog, Economist Writing Every Day. “Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey back to 1984, the answer is pretty clear: no. In fact, it has declined mildly.”

Here are some of his charts:

Jeremy Horpedahl, Economist Writing Every Day

Jeremy Horpedahl, Economist Writing Every Day

Jeremy Horpedahl, Economist Writing Every Day

Read his particular entry on housing costs and check out his archive at Economist Writing Every Day. And if you’re interested in the larger topic of misleading narratives about decline, check out my short 2021 Reason video, 3 Myths about American Decline.

And now, on to my podcast on Uncertain Things:

Nick Gillespie — editor at large at the libertarian institution that is Reason Magazine (and host of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie) — comes on the pod for an IRL conversation about 'The Agony of Abundance,' the paradoxical state in which we’re more prosperous, yet more dissatisfied, than ever. We discuss the negative narratives peddled by the media — a misdirection that’s untethering us from reality — and debate the limitations libertarianism and liberal thinking in an ever-more tribal world. And, before we go, we dive into psychedelics and whether they’re really worth all the fuss.

On the agenda:

-00:00 Housing Preamble

-00:00 Housing Preamble

-04:12 Welcome to Uncertain Things

-06:01 Our Negative Perceptions vs. Reality

-23:39 Mass Misdirection

-33:28 Trust and the U.S. and Israeli Governments

-41:05 Liberalism vs. Tribalism

-01:08:57 On Generating a Liberal Revival

-01:24:08 Debating Psychedelics

Mentioned in this episode:

-The Economic Theory That Explains Why Americans Are So Mad - Ezra Klein Show

-The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture - Amazon

-Big Tech Panic (w/ Shoshana Weissmann) - Uncertain Things

-What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster - Amazon

-‘They Aren’t Who You Think They Are’: The inside story of how Kanakuk—one of America’s largest Christian camps—enabled horrific abuse. - The Dispatch

-In Praise of Privilege - Uncertain

-Psychedelic Libertarianism with Nick Gillespie - Coleman’s Corner

-The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less - Amazon

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.

If you like this Substack, please check out my archive at Reason, the magazine of "Free Minds and Free Markets.” And subscribe to the print and/or online edition of Reason.