we’ve grown used to belittling things
that don’t happen to be important to us
right now with a powerful term first
world problem so when your partner is
moaning that their jobs of it boring
it’s tempting to say that this is a
first world problem just as they might
have told you that you had a first world
problem when you complain that the
shopping mall looks a bit ugly or that
you don’t like your in-laws this kind of
tough-minded response is understandable
but a bit counterproductive
just because an issue isn’t connected to
life or death doesn’t mean it doesn’t
cause genuine pain or isn’t worth
thinking about a problem can be
important without being life-threatening
moreover we should be excited by trying
to solve the most advanced problems out
there the problems of rich countries are
for the most part that complicated and
serious they’re the ones that everyone
is going to face in about 300 years time
the issues that people have in
Switzerland and Norway Australia and the
Netherlands these are the problems that
all humanity will have in about 20 to 50
first world problems aren’t an
unnecessary oddity they’re a form of
time travel they’re a glimpse into what
will one day all have to worry about
there are currently 25 countries on this
planet that qualify as first world you
probably live in one of them in these
rich countries people don’t starve life
expectancy is high and child mortality
is low but there are a lot of other
problems not sob stories of the
well-to-do begging sympathy because the
wine isn’t properly chilled they are
central issues of philosophy and
politics because every day we’re
fighting to get richer and so we need to
understand the problems that come with
or undermine that struggle you’d think
people in the rich world felt they had
enough material things the average
Australian is more blessed in material
terms than the kings of medieval Europe
ever were but something very odd and
troubling about human nature has come to
light
it seems we don’t decide whether we have
enough by asking ourselves what we need
or comparing our material possessions
with those that our parents or
grandparents had and we certainly don’t
think of people in the poorest country
in the world the Democratic Republic of
the Congo we ask whether we have enough
by looking at other people around us in
the immediate vicinity
especially people we see on TV our
happiness is comparative and relative by
nature this sets up a devilish problem
because driven by advertising there’s
always more that we could have and that
some other people around us already do
that’s an enormous part of why rich
countries are not as happy as they’re
supposed to be in 1975 economist Richard
Easterlin identified the average level
of happiness in the US as 2.2 on a
famous happiness scale that he devised
at that point per capita GDP was $22,000
now GDP per capita in the u.s. is
$54,000 but extraordinarily the
happiness level is exactly the same 2.2
it’s a deeply shocking result like going
to the gym every day for years and
discovering that you’re no happier with
your body than when you started
wealth does matter to happiness but only
up to a point
research suggests that every dollar you
earn up to twenty thousand dollars per
head makes you happier but thereafter
you need a lot of other things to make
you content rich countries are rich
because their economies are enormous
leap productive economists and
manufacturers love productivity but it’s
also responsible for one of the oddest
the most pervasive causes of modern
unhappiness what we now call being
stressed the United States the world’s
most productive economy is also by far
and away the most stressed place you
could live in we’re buying our wealth at
a very high price indeed we work hard
partly because we’re afraid
thanks to recessions the rise of service
jobs and rising global competition the
typical job tenure in the 20 richest
countries is now only 15 months no
wonder we’re stressed everything in
which countries becomes cheaper year by
year except for one thing which matters
far more than TVs or mobile phones your
house house inflation averaged out
across the capital cities of the rich
countries has been running at an annual
rate of 20% per annum for the last two
decades this has had an enormous impact
on everything but one thing in
particular commuting times commuting is
globally the least light part of the
working day
but we’re doing ever more of it because
when a place is rich the distances
between work and affordable homes
increases painfully and exponentially in
Ireland you might spend 26 minutes a day
commuting in South Korea it’s a full 55
minutes
insane commuting times is a small
incidental but deeply telling symptom of
a wealthy but very unhappy society
partly as a result of stress and
commuting we are collectively exhausted
one-fifth of people in Japan suffer from
insomnia in the UK 51% of the population
believe they don’t get enough sleep
tiredness brings other issues we get too
tired to cook in the UK the huge
pre-made meal industry is growing at 6%
a year which means that by 2037 every
single meal consumed in the British
Isles will by current trends have been
made in a factory with too tired to read
on average Americans spent seven minutes
a day reading for pleasure eighty-nine
percent say they’d like that to be more
if they weren’t so tired and we’re too
tired to exercise 21 and a half minutes
a day is the recommended amount of
exercise to keep oneself in shape but
that’s beyond the reach of more than 80%
of everyone in the top richest 20
countries it doesn’t help that we drink
in the UK the average man will drink a
thousand 100 pints of beer a year
alcohol is the leading relaxant we watch
online porn 42% of all downloads of
pornographic 10% of adults admit
internet porn addiction however these
statistics don’t capture the most
significant aspect of the problem
78% of users of porn say that their very
or highly disappointed by the quality of
their real relationships relationships
are crucial to happiness for what’s been
discovered is the disastrous alignment
of wealth creation and relationship
troubles divorce rates are very high in
which countries 53 percent in the USA 55
percent in France 60 percent in
Luxembourg and there’s a huge hinterland
of the unhappy under forced in the u.s.
of people who stay together 70 percent
have seriously thought of leaving but
fear separation would be
even worse they’re not necessarily wrong
one-third of people in the u.s. say
they’re very or desperately lonely in
France four million people admit to
having no real friends loneliness as a
side effect of wealth creation in poor
countries you can’t easily survive on
your own as countries get richer people
move for work the economic unit ceases
to be the family the workplace takes
over then the workplace lets you down
the rich world is far better at tearing
up natural habitats and turning them
into enormous soul as frightening lis
ugly cities at the moment 3.5 billion
people live in urban areas it will be 6
billion by 2050 there will be nearly as
much urban construction in the next 50
years as there has been in the whole of
human history up till now the quality of
the environment is among the top three
concerns of people in the rich countries
we’re so good at complaining about our
lack of income we have as yet found no
convincing collective way of
articulating how much beauty matters to
us and how sad the omnipresent ugliness
has made us the things that make us
unhappy in rich countries give us a
poignant picture of unmet needs for
relationships meaning beauty and a sense
of purpose there’s an enormous task
ahead of us the solutions are not
primarily financial they’re about
psychology and ideas at present we
measure a lot of things like the GDP
inflation and unemployment these are all
attempts to get what we really want to
know are our lives getting better but
for all our expertise we don’t have big
authoritative indices around the quality
of relationships national stress levels
the incidence of envy the amount of hugs
people give each other the number of
random acts of kindness but this is what
we need to be announced on The Daily
News to focus our collective efforts we
need indicators that measure our
psychological rather than merely
financial well-being news industries
make their money from frightening and
exciting us the news constantly makes us
imagine a world more violent more filled
disaster more politically unstable than
it really is
and at the same time more inhabited by
talented beautiful smart and sexy people
than it is this provides a staggeringly
poor starting point for grasping our own
needs we’re likely to feel ourselves
craving greater and greater degrees of
protection and security and in need of
much more money excitement and
stimulation better media would provide
us with a more realistic starting point
and so lessen the anxieties which we
look to money to soothe traditionally
religion has had the function of giving
authority and glamour to non material
values if money and power were
represented by a lion then Christianity
once saw itself as worshiping the meek
and gentle lamb Christianity told the
Mighty
The Barrens the generals the warlords to
be kind it taught them to recognize the
importance of spiritual values that
otherwise would have had no currency and
through magnificent works of art it
preached the final superiority of the
spiritual to the material today we can’t
rely on organized religion to do this
though they continue to make the attempt
but the need remains a good society
needs to have people who celebrate money
but also just as many people ready to
celebrate non material things a kindness
forgiveness and the importance of going
on country walks we require a new system
of education to promote psychological
wisdom if we work backwards from life
it’s clear that schools fail all but a
tiny portion of their students trouble
around work and relationships remains
very widespread indeed we need to learn
not just maths and history but also far
more importantly how to live and die
well the kinds of cities we live in has
vast implications for the quality of our
lives but at present our collective
aspirations are undeveloped we need to
construct tight compact cities with the
elegance of Edinburgh San Francisco or
Heidelberg and somehow cap house prices
to a level affordable by an average
citizen this is only the beginning of
the list what is clear is that trying to
make societies ever richer isn’t the
answer given the standard of living in
the rich countries it isn’t a lack of
money that’s the real problem it is
broadly speaking a
of wisdom and that’s a challenge for all of us now
that don’t happen to be important to us
right now with a powerful term first
world problem so when your partner is
moaning that their jobs of it boring
it’s tempting to say that this is a
first world problem just as they might
have told you that you had a first world
problem when you complain that the
shopping mall looks a bit ugly or that
you don’t like your in-laws this kind of
tough-minded response is understandable
but a bit counterproductive
just because an issue isn’t connected to
life or death doesn’t mean it doesn’t
cause genuine pain or isn’t worth
thinking about a problem can be
important without being life-threatening
moreover we should be excited by trying
to solve the most advanced problems out
there the problems of rich countries are
for the most part that complicated and
serious they’re the ones that everyone
is going to face in about 300 years time
the issues that people have in
Switzerland and Norway Australia and the
Netherlands these are the problems that
all humanity will have in about 20 to 50
first world problems aren’t an
unnecessary oddity they’re a form of
time travel they’re a glimpse into what
will one day all have to worry about
there are currently 25 countries on this
planet that qualify as first world you
probably live in one of them in these
rich countries people don’t starve life
expectancy is high and child mortality
is low but there are a lot of other
problems not sob stories of the
well-to-do begging sympathy because the
wine isn’t properly chilled they are
central issues of philosophy and
politics because every day we’re
fighting to get richer and so we need to
understand the problems that come with
or undermine that struggle you’d think
people in the rich world felt they had
enough material things the average
Australian is more blessed in material
terms than the kings of medieval Europe
ever were but something very odd and
troubling about human nature has come to
light
it seems we don’t decide whether we have
enough by asking ourselves what we need
or comparing our material possessions
with those that our parents or
grandparents had and we certainly don’t
think of people in the poorest country
in the world the Democratic Republic of
the Congo we ask whether we have enough
by looking at other people around us in
the immediate vicinity
especially people we see on TV our
happiness is comparative and relative by
nature this sets up a devilish problem
because driven by advertising there’s
always more that we could have and that
some other people around us already do
that’s an enormous part of why rich
countries are not as happy as they’re
supposed to be in 1975 economist Richard
Easterlin identified the average level
of happiness in the US as 2.2 on a
famous happiness scale that he devised
at that point per capita GDP was $22,000
now GDP per capita in the u.s. is
$54,000 but extraordinarily the
happiness level is exactly the same 2.2
it’s a deeply shocking result like going
to the gym every day for years and
discovering that you’re no happier with
your body than when you started
wealth does matter to happiness but only
up to a point
research suggests that every dollar you
earn up to twenty thousand dollars per
head makes you happier but thereafter
you need a lot of other things to make
you content rich countries are rich
because their economies are enormous
leap productive economists and
manufacturers love productivity but it’s
also responsible for one of the oddest
the most pervasive causes of modern
unhappiness what we now call being
stressed the United States the world’s
most productive economy is also by far
and away the most stressed place you
could live in we’re buying our wealth at
a very high price indeed we work hard
partly because we’re afraid
thanks to recessions the rise of service
jobs and rising global competition the
typical job tenure in the 20 richest
countries is now only 15 months no
wonder we’re stressed everything in
which countries becomes cheaper year by
year except for one thing which matters
far more than TVs or mobile phones your
house house inflation averaged out
across the capital cities of the rich
countries has been running at an annual
rate of 20% per annum for the last two
decades this has had an enormous impact
on everything but one thing in
particular commuting times commuting is
globally the least light part of the
working day
but we’re doing ever more of it because
when a place is rich the distances
between work and affordable homes
increases painfully and exponentially in
Ireland you might spend 26 minutes a day
commuting in South Korea it’s a full 55
minutes
insane commuting times is a small
incidental but deeply telling symptom of
a wealthy but very unhappy society
partly as a result of stress and
commuting we are collectively exhausted
one-fifth of people in Japan suffer from
insomnia in the UK 51% of the population
believe they don’t get enough sleep
tiredness brings other issues we get too
tired to cook in the UK the huge
pre-made meal industry is growing at 6%
a year which means that by 2037 every
single meal consumed in the British
Isles will by current trends have been
made in a factory with too tired to read
on average Americans spent seven minutes
a day reading for pleasure eighty-nine
percent say they’d like that to be more
if they weren’t so tired and we’re too
tired to exercise 21 and a half minutes
a day is the recommended amount of
exercise to keep oneself in shape but
that’s beyond the reach of more than 80%
of everyone in the top richest 20
countries it doesn’t help that we drink
in the UK the average man will drink a
thousand 100 pints of beer a year
alcohol is the leading relaxant we watch
online porn 42% of all downloads of
pornographic 10% of adults admit
internet porn addiction however these
statistics don’t capture the most
significant aspect of the problem
78% of users of porn say that their very
or highly disappointed by the quality of
their real relationships relationships
are crucial to happiness for what’s been
discovered is the disastrous alignment
of wealth creation and relationship
troubles divorce rates are very high in
which countries 53 percent in the USA 55
percent in France 60 percent in
Luxembourg and there’s a huge hinterland
of the unhappy under forced in the u.s.
of people who stay together 70 percent
have seriously thought of leaving but
fear separation would be
even worse they’re not necessarily wrong
one-third of people in the u.s. say
they’re very or desperately lonely in
France four million people admit to
having no real friends loneliness as a
side effect of wealth creation in poor
countries you can’t easily survive on
your own as countries get richer people
move for work the economic unit ceases
to be the family the workplace takes
over then the workplace lets you down
the rich world is far better at tearing
up natural habitats and turning them
into enormous soul as frightening lis
ugly cities at the moment 3.5 billion
people live in urban areas it will be 6
billion by 2050 there will be nearly as
much urban construction in the next 50
years as there has been in the whole of
human history up till now the quality of
the environment is among the top three
concerns of people in the rich countries
we’re so good at complaining about our
lack of income we have as yet found no
convincing collective way of
articulating how much beauty matters to
us and how sad the omnipresent ugliness
has made us the things that make us
unhappy in rich countries give us a
poignant picture of unmet needs for
relationships meaning beauty and a sense
of purpose there’s an enormous task
ahead of us the solutions are not
primarily financial they’re about
psychology and ideas at present we
measure a lot of things like the GDP
inflation and unemployment these are all
attempts to get what we really want to
know are our lives getting better but
for all our expertise we don’t have big
authoritative indices around the quality
of relationships national stress levels
the incidence of envy the amount of hugs
people give each other the number of
random acts of kindness but this is what
we need to be announced on The Daily
News to focus our collective efforts we
need indicators that measure our
psychological rather than merely
financial well-being news industries
make their money from frightening and
exciting us the news constantly makes us
imagine a world more violent more filled
disaster more politically unstable than
it really is
and at the same time more inhabited by
talented beautiful smart and sexy people
than it is this provides a staggeringly
poor starting point for grasping our own
needs we’re likely to feel ourselves
craving greater and greater degrees of
protection and security and in need of
much more money excitement and
stimulation better media would provide
us with a more realistic starting point
and so lessen the anxieties which we
look to money to soothe traditionally
religion has had the function of giving
authority and glamour to non material
values if money and power were
represented by a lion then Christianity
once saw itself as worshiping the meek
and gentle lamb Christianity told the
Mighty
The Barrens the generals the warlords to
be kind it taught them to recognize the
importance of spiritual values that
otherwise would have had no currency and
through magnificent works of art it
preached the final superiority of the
spiritual to the material today we can’t
rely on organized religion to do this
though they continue to make the attempt
but the need remains a good society
needs to have people who celebrate money
but also just as many people ready to
celebrate non material things a kindness
forgiveness and the importance of going
on country walks we require a new system
of education to promote psychological
wisdom if we work backwards from life
it’s clear that schools fail all but a
tiny portion of their students trouble
around work and relationships remains
very widespread indeed we need to learn
not just maths and history but also far
more importantly how to live and die
well the kinds of cities we live in has
vast implications for the quality of our
lives but at present our collective
aspirations are undeveloped we need to
construct tight compact cities with the
elegance of Edinburgh San Francisco or
Heidelberg and somehow cap house prices
to a level affordable by an average
citizen this is only the beginning of
the list what is clear is that trying to
make societies ever richer isn’t the
answer given the standard of living in
the rich countries it isn’t a lack of
money that’s the real problem it is
broadly speaking a
of wisdom and that’s a challenge for all of us now
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