What is progress? | Rory Sutherland, Angus Deaton, Arlie Hochschild

What is progress? | Rory Sutherland, Angus Deaton, Arlie Hochschild | The tears of the West

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Arlie Hochschild, Angus Deaton and Rory Sutherland debate whether the current state of the post-industrial West really looks like progress.
But is there a danger that economic pessimism discourages workers from making demands?
Watch the full debate at iai.tv/video/the-tears-of-the...
Once we believed in progress, and saw ourselves at the leading edge of culture and life as improving. Now we are more likely to see the negatives in both in society and in our future. 75% of millennials think they will be worse off than their parents. But some argue there is a risk this outlook is not only mistaken but bad for our health and society. The Swedish statistician Hans Rosling argued that we are systematically far more negative about ourselves and the world than is justified by the data. Despite a much higher standard of living we are more pessimistic than those in China, India, Russia and Brazil. Furthermore a recent study of 160,000 people showed pessimism negatively effects health with the most optimistic living 11-15% longer than the most pessimistic.
Have we lost faith in our culture and is our self-criticism at risk of becoming self-fulfilling? Do we need to identify and celebrate our strengths and our successes to build a brighter more positive future? Or should we see our self-criticism as rightly identifying injustice that urgently needs to be addressed?
#west #globalisation #postindustrial
Columnist at the Spectator and Marketing Executive at Ogilvy & Mather Rory Sutherland joins Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California Berkeley Arlie Hochschild. Roger Hearing, former news presenter for the BBC World Service, hosts.
00:00 Introduction
00:26 Rory Sutherland: Life is materially better
03:11 Arlie Hochschild: The social logic of downward social mobility
05:08 Angus Deaton: Deaths of despair
07:18: Rory Sutherland: A bleak economic prognosis pushes downward pressure on wages
08:50 Arlie Hochschild: The American Dream is broken
11:39 Angus Deaton: We have stagnated since the financial crash
14:18 Rory Sutherland: Georgism explained
15:27 Should we draw optimism from our comparative progress?
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Пікірлер: 22

@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas Ай бұрын

Should we be more optimistic about post-industrial Western societies? Leave your thoughts in the comments. To watch the full debate, head to iai.tv/video/the-tears-of-the-west?KZfaq&

@seanhewitt603 Ай бұрын

I get unreasonably frustrated when I watch discussions like this, knowing people for what they are, and listening to apologists try to justify not acting against the ultra wealthy, just to avoid rocking the boat, I say tip it over !, start fresh, because, at this rate, chaos is an empty belly away.

@rileyhoffman6629 Ай бұрын

The answer depends on one's socioeconomic status. Progress to most of us isn't the growth of corporations; it's their greed that controls society. Telling us 'good news' will only underwrite the lie and exacerbate the fundamental problem.

@mikehoffler4097 Ай бұрын

With due respect, and acknowledging that mindset plays a role, there's a distinct difference between being in a position of relative comfort, at some remove, and commenting on the socioeconomic reality, and living it. It is that bad, only the further removed you are from the impact point (i.e. the more money you have) the more abstract it is.

@reiddickson 24 күн бұрын

I've heard some convincing arguments that one of the largest problems of modern Western economies is how ownership is distributed. Certain European countries have their own economic problems -- the lack of per-capita GDP growth in the UK and France, for example, are obviously concerning. That said, in the US, we've seen steady per-capita GDP growth yet the economic prospects of many Americans haven't improved at nearly the same rate at per-capita GDP. Regarding how ownership is distributed, just 18-20% of workers have access to some form of employee ownership, and this is at a time when the percentage of businesses owned by private equity has dramatically increased while the number of publicly-traded companies has plummeted relative to population & economic growth. And to be clear, employee ownership doesn't have to mean that employees have control of a company -- ownership can range from full control (i.e. a workers' cooperative) to a seat at the table (much like what is common in Germany, albeit without ownership) to no meaningful control (what we often see in mature tech companies). When employees have some form of ownership, an event like an acquisition by a private equity firm can generate significant capital gains even for lower-level employees. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own approximately 90% of company shares -- why don't we implement policies to help balance this out a bit more, particularly if we're going to keep capital gains in such a tax-advantaged status? Market economies work exceptionally well for creating wealth. Now we just need to figure out how to distribute that wealth creation more equally in a way that doesn't dampen economic growth, and I suspect encouraging employee ownership across the wealth & income spectrum is one of the best ways to do this. I'd also say market economies don't function properly if pricing isn't as accurate as possible, and on this topic, what Arlie Hochschild brought up about plastic pollution is one area of the economy grossly underpriced. Carbon emissions aren't priced accurately, lots of destructive land use activities aren't priced accurately (i.e. cattle ranching), plastics aren't priced accurately (they prices would be substantially higher if the costs of their pollution had to be involved), on and on.

@charlesackman892 Ай бұрын

This video made me feel good. I have come to hate money. I take one shower a week and a I have a bag that I take to the store in order to place all my items into. And this all came about after I gave up sex. What a horrible vice.