Unusual People at this time get pleasure from a residing customary that might have awed kings for many of human historical past.
We dwell in houses conditioned to our superb temperature in any season; drive autos that pack the facility of 250 horses right into a 100-square-foot metallic body; carry six-ounce rectangles that provide immediate entry to just about any cherished one, e book, track, reality, or pornography; inhale gases that take the ache out of any surgical procedure; substitute our worn-out hips with titanium; glide 40,000 ft above the Earth in pressurized aluminum tubes; and eat floor beef wrapped in tacos product of Doritos.
However we don’t appear that jazzed about it.
• Rich nations have been getting richer — with out getting happier — for many years, in response to some research.
• Consumerism usually features like a zero-sum standing competitors, during which folks should purchase extra stuff simply to retain their social rank (aka “sustain with the Joneses”).
• Given this, some environmentalists argue that we are able to shrink rich economies with out sacrificing human well-being. However that is mistaken.
Since 1996, America’s median family revenue (adjusted for inflation) has risen by 26 p.c, enabling us to afford extra flights, smartphones, and Gordita Supremes than ever earlier than. And but, over that very same interval, the share of People who described themselves as “not too completely happy” within the Basic Social Survey rose by 9 share factors, whereas the phase calling themselves “very completely happy” shrank by greater than 9.4 factors.
In the meantime, measures of People’ financial confidence and client sentiment each declined. And in 2025, the proportion of People who have been “very glad” with their private lives hit an all-time low in Gallup’s polling.
This disconnect between America’s rising prosperity and sagging spirits has grown extra conspicuous in recent times. Because the center of 2023 — when inflation returned to regular ranges following the post-pandemic value spike — People’ actual wages and web worths have ticked up. However the public’s temper has scarcely improved.
Pundits dubbed this improvement “the vibecession” and proffered myriad believable explanations for its emergence (folks nonetheless haven’t adjusted psychologically to the new value degree; housing stays unaffordable; residing by means of a mass loss of life occasion is an actual bummer; Covid-19 turned too many people into hermits; the children have to get off their dang telephones, and so forth).
But to some economists and social theorists, the “vibecession” is much less a brand new phenomenon than the rich world’s default situation. Of their account, folks in developed nations have been getting richer — with out getting happier — for greater than half a century.
That may appear bleak. For anti-growth environmentalists, nonetheless, it’s truly a supply of hope.
The “degrowth” motion believes that humanity is quickly exhausting the Earth’s assets. Thus, to stop ecological collapse — with out condemning the worldwide poor to everlasting penury — the motion has known as on wealthy nations to throttle their use of vitality and materials assets.
If financial progress had been making rich nations happier over the previous 50 years, this might be a tall order. In that state of affairs, there can be a tragic battle between the near-term well-being of the “first world” and the sustainability of the planet’s ecosystems.
However this battle is illusory, in response to degrowth proponents just like the thinker Tim Jackson and the anthropologist Jason Hickel. Of their view, the rich world has been burning huge assets on a zero-sum standing competitors — during which staff should perpetually enhance their consumption simply to “sustain with the Joneses.” By abandoning such spiritually corrosive consumerism — and embracing extra egalitarian and communal methods of life — wealthy nations can downsize their economies and uplift their folks concurrently.
Some features of this narrative are believable. Progress might yield diminishing returns to well-being, and standing issues do loom bigger in wealthy societies.
Nevertheless it doesn’t comply with that rich nations can dramatically cut back financial manufacturing with out harming their residents’ welfare. Optimizing the American economic system for human happiness would require altering what we produce — however it nearly actually gained’t entail producing much less.
Can cash purchase happiness — or solely hire it?
At first brush, the analysis on cash and happiness can look puzzling. On the one hand, inside nations, revenue and well-being are extremely correlated: The bigger an individual’s paycheck, the happier they are usually. And this similar relationship holds between nations as properly — nations with greater incomes report larger well-being than these with decrease ones.
When one appears to be like at happiness traits in wealthy nations over time, nonetheless, the correlation between revenue and happiness weakens — or, in some research, disappears.
There’s a well-liked rationalization for these paradoxical findings: As soon as individuals are already prosperous, their sense of fabric well-being is set much less by their absolute residing customary than by their relative place in a rustic’s financial hierarchy.
In any case, standing is a zero-sum sport: One individual can’t be within the “higher” middle-class until another person is within the decrease one.
On this account, there are some issues that people strongly need for their very own sake, akin to meals, shelter, clothes, water, medical care, sanitation, and just a little leisure. When an individual ceases to be too poor to afford these items, she tends to change into happier as a direct outcome of her greater residing customary: A well-fed individual is often extra content material than a malnourished one, no matter their society’s prevailing norms or their very own diploma of social standing.
Against this, the need to improve from a 55-inch TV to a 75-inch one, or from a Toyota to a Lexus, or from an iPhone 16 to an iPhone 17 isn’t etched that deeply into the human coronary heart. An prosperous American’s eager for the latter objects is socially contingent. His present TV wouldn’t appear small if he had not seen his brother-in-law’s 75-inch, 8K sensible TV at Thanksgiving.
When this hypothetical American — let’s name him Tim — will get a increase and buys a brand new house theater, automobile, and smartphone, his sense of well-being may enhance. However this acquire in happiness can have much less to do with the intrinsic qualities of his new client gadgets than with the shrinking hole between his residing customary and that of his wealthier friends. It’s the alleviation of relative deprivation — reasonably than absolutely the selection — that accounts for the majority of his newfound contentment.
That’s the idea, anyway. And a few research lend it credence. For instance, in a 2023 paper, researchers on the College of California Riverside examined surveys that requested the identical People about their incomes and self-reported well-being at a number of deadlines. They discovered that respondents tended to report larger happiness when their relative revenue elevated — which is to say, after they ascended to a better percentile of the revenue distribution — even when their absolute revenue had barely modified.
Against this, when a respondent noticed their earnings rise whereas their place within the socioeconomic hierarchy stagnated or fell, they sometimes grew to become no happier.
If cash can purchase People happiness — however solely by buying them greater standing — then the information on progress and well-being is sensible: In a wealthy society, we’d anticipate folks with greater incomes to be happier than these with low ones, for the reason that former get pleasure from larger relative standing. However as that nation will get wealthier over time, we wouldn’t anticipate its common happiness to budge.
In any case, standing is a zero-sum sport: One individual can’t be within the “higher” middle-class until another person is within the decrease one. Tim’s new TV may make him really feel higher about his social rank. However when his cousin Rick comes over to observe the Tremendous Bowl, that enormous Samsung might make him really feel worse about his financial place, as now his personal 42-inch Roku TV could appear pathetically small.
It isn’t laborious to see why this idea appeals to many environmentalists. If People are consuming increasingly more assets — simply to maintain up in a zero-sum standing sport — then the human prices of degrowth are negligible.
From this vantage level, the wealthy world’s center lessons are successfully locked in a fruitless arms race: Tim works just a little tougher to purchase nicer issues than his cousin Rick, as a way to enhance his relative standing and sense of well-being. Then Rick works just a little tougher in order that he should purchase the identical issues as Tim. Now, each are again to the identical standing place they began with — however needed to carry out extra labor simply to get there.
Degrowthers see this primary course of taking part in out at a nationwide scale. They usually insist that it isn’t inevitable; people aren’t innately programmed to jockey endlessly for place. Somewhat, degrowthers contend that company and political elites perpetuate this tradition of aggressive consumption. In Jackson’s telling, it requires the mixed propagandizing of “politicians and policy-makers and bankers and financiers and advertisers” simply to maintain the general public’s urge for food for extra stuff.
If we embraced a much less materialistic politics and extra egalitarian financial system, the pondering goes, then we might finish this lose-lose cycle of aggressive consumption. In such a world, folks might get pleasure from extra leisure time with out worrying about falling behind “the Joneses.” And wealthy nations might produce extra of the issues that truly enhance well-being — akin to well being care, schooling, and clear vitality — whereas consuming fewer materials assets total, thereby remaining inside ecological limits.
In a well-planned, post-capitalist economic system, in different phrases, much less might really be extra.
It’s doable, nonetheless, that the foundational assumption of this whole narrative — and, to an extent, this text — is fallacious: Some research recommend that greater financial progress is related to larger happiness over time, even when taking a look at wealthy nations.
In the meantime, many analysts query whether or not well-being surveys are a dependable gauge of nationwide happiness. An American in 1980 — and an equally completely happy American in 2025 — might reply ballot questions in another way, merely because of shifting cultural norms. (Now we have arguably seen this phenomenon in survey analysis about psychological sickness, the place destigmatization and broadening conceptions of “nervousness” and “despair” might have boosted charges of self-reported psychological misery in recent times).
If these have been the one issues with degrowthers’ argument, it is likely to be salvageable. Some research lower in opposition to their interpretation of well-being traits. However some assist it. One can subsequently fairly consider that wealthy nations haven’t been getting happier as their economies have grown.
Nevertheless it doesn’t comply with that rich nations can dramatically shrink their economies, for gratis to their folks’s well-being.
In relation to progress, dimension issues
For one factor, this conclusion requires wildly overreading what the well-being knowledge truly inform us. America is plausibly no happier at this time than it was in 1996, regardless of important financial progress. However quite a lot of dangerous issues have occurred in the US over the previous 30 years, lots of which aren’t clearly a operate of rising GDP — together with the opioid epidemic, 9/11, deepening political polarization, a world-historic pandemic, and rising charges of social isolation, amongst many different issues.
It’s doable then that financial progress elevated People’ well-being over the previous three a long time — however that this profit was merely outweighed by different, adversarial social traits.
Certainly, one interpretation of the information on nationwide happiness is that the magnitude of progress issues. The everyday American family earns about 26 p.c extra at this time than it did in 1996. Against this, that trendy US family earns over 2,000 p.c greater than a typical household in Bangladesh. And whereas at this time’s median American isn’t a lot happier than her barely poorer predecessor was within the Nineties, the previous has a lot greater life satisfaction than her dramatically poorer Bangladeshi counterpart, in response to the World Values Survey.
Maybe, modest GDP positive factors don’t reliably enhance well-being in wealthy nations. Nevertheless it doesn’t comply with that no quantity of financial progress could make an already-rich nation happier.
A greenback misplaced is a greenback mourned
For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let’s stipulate that growing a rich nation’s revenue doesn’t enhance its well-being. That also wouldn’t imply that you would be able to shrink a wealthy nation’s revenue with out diminishing its happiness.
As a long time of behavioral analysis has proven, individuals are “loss-averse” — which implies they react extra strongly to losses than to equal positive factors. Because of this, even when People derived little well-being from latest financial progress, they could nonetheless change into unhappier have been their incomes to abruptly drop.
And, in reality, that is precisely what occurred amid the post-Covid surge in inflation. Throughout that interval, People out of the blue discovered themselves unable to afford as many items and companies as they used to, since their actual wages declined. On the similar time, revenue inequality truly fell. Thus, by one metric, the median US employee’s relative place truly improved.
But People’ financial confidence and life satisfaction plunged, anyway. This implies that shedding absolute revenue makes People unhappier, even when they don’t concurrently fall down the financial ladder.
Additional, the general public’s discontent on this entrance can scarcely be attributed to political elites’ consumerist propaganda. On the contrary, the Biden administration tried to influence People that the inflationary economic system was high quality. Three years later, when People remained dissatisfied with how a lot stuff they may afford to purchase, the Trump White Home truly implored them to care much less about consumption. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared in March that “entry to low-cost items just isn’t the essence of the American dream,” whereas Trump has advised People, “You don’t want 37 dolls in your daughter. Two or three is good, however you don’t want 37 dolls.”
However, People’ need for cheaper items endured.
To make sure, this doesn’t show that People wouldn’t be happier underneath degrowth socialism. Hickel and Jackson by no means argued that individuals might get pleasure from larger well-being on decrease incomes within the current financial system, solely that this might be true in an egalitarian, post-growth financial order.
My level is that this argument rests on pure hypothesis; knowledge on happiness and progress in non-imaginary nations doesn’t truly validate degrowthers’ instinct. It’s inconceivable to know with certainty how folks would assume and really feel in financial circumstances that humanity has by no means witnessed. However we do know that, thus far, no nation has ever grown happier whereas enduring a big and sustained decline in materials consumption.
There aren’t any MRIs with out mineral mines
Probably the most elementary downside with the degrowth narrative, nonetheless, is that it doesn’t work by itself phrases.
An economic system tailor-made to People’ true wants would produce extra issues that stretch life, cut back struggling, and mitigate loneliness — and fewer that induce dependancy and standing nervousness.
Hickel and Jackson acknowledge that growing some types of manufacturing improves well-being, even in wealthy societies. Nobody thinks that People buy most cancers screenings or defibrillators or dialysis merely to “sustain with the Joneses.” So long as sickness exists, boosting medical output and innovation is prone to make folks higher off. And far the identical might be stated of different items and companies that save lives or alleviate bodily struggling, akin to clear vitality applied sciences that curb air air pollution or self-driving vehicles that cut back visitors deaths.
This undercuts the notion that wealthy nations can abandon progress with out sacrificing well-being. Maybe, America’s particular strategy to increasing GDP hasn’t been making folks happier. But when we produced fewer issues that plausibly cut back welfare (akin to social media platforms and sports activities betting apps) and extra that enhance it (akin to photo voltaic panels or Ozempic), certainly we might make ourselves higher off than we’d be in a drastically smaller economic system.
Hickel tries to preempt this objection. In his e book, Much less Is Extra, he means that degrowth actually simply means deciding “what sorts of issues we need to develop (sectors like clear vitality, public well being care, important companies, regenerative agriculture — you identify it), and what sectors have to radically degrow (issues like fossil fuels, personal jets, arms and SUVs).”
This proposal raises some apparent political challenges (by all appearances, the American public needs the SUV sector to develop). However bracketing the entire “how can we get everybody on-board with eco-communism?” query, the extra primary difficulty is that Hickel’s imaginative and prescient nearly actually can’t work, purely as a technical matter.
In his view, the US should cut back its use of fabric assets — metals, minerals, land, fossil fuels, timber, crops, cement, and the like — by 75 p.c.
That is plainly incompatible with maximizing People’ welfare, even when one went additional than Hickel — and stipulated that solely the well being care sector enhances well-being.
Degrowthers usually check with the medical trade as if it have been a resource-light, service sector composed largely of individuals, buildings, and some machines. And that is how medical doctors’ places of work can typically seem. But each encounter with a clinician is the tip of an unlimited industrial iceberg.
A single MRI machine requires superconducting magnets product of niobium-titanium alloys, liquid helium produced by means of pure fuel extraction, high-purity copper wiring, cryogenic refrigeration programs, uncommon earth parts, and large quantities of electrical energy, amongst different inputs.
Drug manufacturing, in the meantime, continuously calls for starter molecules extracted from oil or pure fuel, giant volumes of chemical solvents, climate-controlled reactors, drying ovens, and myriad different energy-intensive areas and elements. Dialysis consumes a whole lot of liters of ultrapure water per session and myriad single-use plastics.
Thus, the concept we are able to develop the well being care sector — whereas slashing our economic system’s useful resource use by 75 p.c — is far-fetched on its face. And it turns into all of the extra implausible when one considers the essential mechanics of business innovation and provide chains.
In his e book, Hickel means that gutting frivolous client industries will liberate sufficient assets to concurrently develop the well being care sector and shrink America’s materials footprint.
However this ignores medical know-how’s dependence on atypical client markets. To understand that dependence, take into account chipmaking. Creating superior semiconductors entailed the development of a whole lot of fabrication services worldwide, every costing as much as $20 billion; the formation of dense networks of suppliers for instruments, chemical substances, and ultrapure supplies; and a few years of studying by doing.
Hospitals want chips to energy varied gadgets. However the medical sector nonetheless accounts for a tiny fraction of semiconductor gross sales. It was demand for smartphones, private computer systems, and different client electronics that enabled the chip trade to soak up the exorbitant prices of its progress and innovation. And absent that innovation, trendy medical imaging can be much less correct and extra folks would perish from undetected infirmities.
One can inform the same story about lithium-ion batteries, which company labs perfected to energy camcorders and cellphones — however which at the moment are indispensable to each trendy drugs and the inexperienced vitality transition.
In different phrases, with out giant and various markets for client novelties, the provision chains and technical know-how required for extra important merchandise wouldn’t exist.
It’s subsequently implausible that wealthy nations might radically contract client markets — to the purpose that useful resource use falls by 75 p.c — and nonetheless maintain the well being care and vitality applied sciences that Hickel admires, a lot much less, enhance upon them.
In fact, none of this might matter a lot if degrowthers’ apocalyptic environmental assumptions have been right. If financial progress is bodily unsustainable — and humanity should select between regularly degrowing the worldwide economic system or having it chaotically contract amid ecological collapse — then the previous is clearly preferable.
I believe degrowthers’ catastrophism is unfounded (though the perils of local weather change are fairly actual). However even when we’re certainly racing towards oblivion, that also wouldn’t make Hickel and Jackson’s claims about progress and happiness right. Maybe, wealthy nations have to slash their manufacturing and consumption. However there isn’t any good cause to consider that they will do that with out undermining their folks’s well-being. The degrowth imaginative and prescient is subsequently a lot bleaker than its proponents want to acknowledge.
This isn’t to say that critics of consumerism are fallacious on all counts. There’s little query that growing GDP doesn’t robotically improve well-being. And aggressive consumption is definitely an actual phenomenon, which might be collectively self-defeating. Many People can be happier in the event that they traded a bit of buying energy for extra time with their family and friends. And policymakers might assist staff avail themselves of extra leisure time — with out worrying about falling behind — by mandating paid trip days, as many European nations do.
It’s clear that cash isn’t shopping for the US as a lot happiness because it ought to. An economic system tailor-made to People’ true wants would produce extra issues that stretch life, cut back struggling, and mitigate loneliness — and fewer that induce dependancy and standing nervousness. However such an economic system wouldn’t be smaller than our present one. So lengthy illness and drudgery exist, much less will all the time be much less.
This sequence was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures. Vox had full discretion over the content material of this reporting.
