More wealth, same old struggles (Heath & Potter)
November 26th, 2007 | Published in Progress, Productivity, Work, Economics, History, Quotes
Factory automation and labor-saving appliances were supposed to have all but eliminated the need to work. Yet in the past twenty years there has been an increase in the average number of hours worked in North America. Increased productivity was supposed to create universal affluence, to eliminate poverty as we know it. Yet despite the fact that GDP in Canada has doubled since the ‘70s, the level of “basic needs” poverty has remained unchanged. And what about those flying Jetson cars, or at least clean high-speed trains? Commuting has become a nightmare for most city-dwellers. And far from being clean, the average fuel efficiency of vehicles in North America has dropped.
Who could seriously have predicted, thirty years ago, that this is how things would play out? How is it that we can produce so much more wealth and yet fail to secure any measurable improvement in satisfaction?
–Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (UK Edition, 2004), pp. 100-1