Rewriting the Wealth of Nations, One Happy Person at a Time

Quod satis est cui contigit, nihil amplius optet.
(“Let him who has enough ask for nothing more.”)

-Horace

What do we really need?

Given that there are roughly 6 billion people on Earth, there are probably 18 billion different answers to this question.  But it is, we believe, a question that is not asked nearly often enough.  It is certainly not asked often enough in what so many radical activists in the developing world refer to as “the decadent West”.

 A little perspective might help to show the uncomfortable justice in this charge which so many of us find alien and a little off-putting:

There are approximately 300 million people living in the United States.  That means that roughly 1 in 20 folk in the entire world are Americans.  All but the poorest Americans are in the wealthiest 10% of people in the world.  The vast majority of Americans, in fact, are in the top 1%  of the world’s wealthy.  The poverty line in the United States for a family of four in 2012 was $23,492.  The median income across 131 countries in 2012 was $9733.  That means that poor Americans in 2012 earned almost 2 ½ times as much as the middle-of-the-road earner worldwide.

Almost half the world – over three billion people – survive on less than $2.50 a day.  The World Bank sets the global poverty line at less than $2.00 a day.  Median income in the U.S. in 2012 was $51,017, meaning that the typical family of four in the U.S. makes about $140 a day… 70 times as much as the global poverty standard.

What do all these statistics really mean, though?

The typical American philosophical response (leaving aside the cretins who simply don’t care about the fates of others) is to wonder what we can do to help raise others out of their poverty.  This is a natural response – how do we help them get what we have?  There are several different approaches within the framework of this basic understanding of “the problem”… ranging from wealth redistribution schemes on the socialist end of the spectrum to sending economic missionaries to teach classes on free enterprise on the libertarian/free market economics end of the spectrum.

We believe they have both misunderstood the problem.

Measuring wealth in terms of monetary income is natural; the meaningful unit of economic exchanges has always been money – in fact, reading, writing and arithmetic, the sine qua non of civilization, were largely invented in order to deal with the problem of measuring wealth in just such terms. 

However… measuring wealth in terms of money ignores the more fundamental reality that genuine wealth can only truly be understood in terms of contentment.  And while the two different ways of looking at economic prosperity (or lack thereof) often mirror one another… there is a point of diminishing returns on wealth, a point beyond which more money brings only unhappiness, discontent, and a spiritual cancer – frequently to others, but almost always to oneself.

There are obvious benefits to “having enough”:  adequate food, clothing and shelter formed the holy trinity of wealth for early humans on the plains of the Serengeti, whose chief concerns lay in getting enough to eat, staying out of the sun and rain, and keeping clear of saber-toothed tigers.  Many of the same concerns still abound today, added to a few others with a more modern feel – adequate drinking water, access to education for one’s children, good health care, sufficient law and order to protect whatever possessions one does have from the marauding of one’s fellow humans.

In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow’s paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” laid out a hierarchy of needs which has been the roadmap for much of the discussion on contentment that has taken place ever since.  According to Maslow, human ambition climbs as each level of need is attained – once basic physical needs are met, one can focus on security; once security is obtained, one can seek emotional fulfillment, and so on.  His levels are as follows:

Level One	Physiological	Air, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion
Level Two	Safety	Security of body, of employment, of resources, of the family, of health, of property
Level Three	Love/Belonging	Friendship, family, sexual intimacy
Level Four	Esteem	Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others
Level Five	Self-actualization	Morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts

In context of a discussion of wealth, one thing becomes readily apparent almost immediately when attempting to apply the hierarchy to individual human economies – practically everyone everywhere will have a different way of meeting virtually everything on this list of needs.  At the very base of the hierarchy… it costs more money to get clean air, food, water, etc. in some places than others. 

A hermit on a hillside farm in Bhutan may have plenty of clean air to breathe, plenty of food and water… a single mother in Nairobi may have to wear a kerchief over her nose if smog descends, and she may need to boil her water to kill microbes, and unless she grows her own food in bags of soil hung from the balcony of her apartment building, or in an abandoned alleyway, she will have to buy what her family needs from a local market. 

And the market from which someone in Beijing buys produce may have a different nutritional value than the equivalent market in Darfur, or Sao Palo, or Quebec, or Los Angeles, or Quito.

We cannot even begin climbing the pyramid of needs, in other words, without encountering differences in economic status throughout the world’s populations.

That having been said… taking a deeper look at the hierarchy… no matter what the cost of each item may be, it is possible locally to meet that cost.  The question then becomes, once you’ve met your needs, now what?

It is helpful in answering that question to step back from whatever striving we may be doing in terms of seeking wealth to ask… what would we do with it if we had it?  A quick look around at the kinds of things the typical American family does with what they have (and often, with credit… or put another way, with money they don’t have…) shows that a lot of things we buy with our comparative wealth don’t appear on the hierarchy of needs anywhere.

Television?  Vacations?  Movies?  Electronic gadgets?  Fancy clothes?  Where exactly do all these things fit?

It turns out luxury is an attempt to satisfy unmet needs, too.  We seek the comfort of luxuries because they satisfy our desires for things we cannot directly purchase, and may otherwise feel powerless to acquire – how often, for example, do we spend money to participate in group events as a part of our attempts to find friendship?  At first, the mind rebels against this charge (and make no mistake, it is an accusation), but a simple thought experiment demonstrates the truth of this idea.

Imagine a parent playing happily with their child in the park.  Their child is laughing uproariously over some silly joke they have just told, and is enjoying the kind of frolic one associates with a happy-go-lucky kind of day being enjoyed by a happy-go-lucky family.  Would either the parent or the child want to trade that experience for a new pair of designer jeans?  Would they want to trade that experience for two hours at a movie theater watching a shoot-em-up?  Remember, you’re trading that experience.  Would you give up the good feelings associated with an interpersonal relationship (enjoyed for the staggering economic sum of zero dollars) for any amount of purchased goods or services?

Life is not always so simple as that, of course, but unless we stop to consider a cut-and-dried example, we may not fully appreciate the distinction between emotional satisfaction and the means by which emotional satisfaction is achieved.  And if we don’t see that distinction, we invariably seek the wrong things.

There have been innumerable movements with countless gurus preaching more or less the same thing we are discussing here; whether you call it “Simple Living”, or “Back to Basics” or “Satyagraha” or “The Franciscan Order” the benefits are palpable and real.  Satisfaction comes from gratefulness, and gratefulness is the beginning of not just the humility central to the spiritual teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and countless other gurus and rabbis, but also the beginning of emotional and physical health and well-being.

We have often noted that there is some selection bias involved in any nutritional study – those who eat truly healthy diets tend to live longer and have fewer health problems.  However… those who eat truly healthy diets tend to live more simply and intentionally, as well.  They frequently have more money than they need, not because they make so much money, but because they make so much more money than they have any desire to spend.

Much the same dynamic plays out on every other step of Maslow’s pyramid – once a person satisfies a need, if they are paying attention and being sensible, they find they need less than their fears foretold.  And the more grateful they are for what they have, the more physical, spiritual and emotional capital they have to spend in moving on to the next step.  Ultimately, physical, spiritual and emotional capital are more valuable – in attaining what we need – than financial capital ever could be. 

When American ears, therefore, process the idea of $2 a day being typical for over half the world’s population, we are more staggered than we ought to be.  We can’t imagine either how we ourselves could live that way, or how we could ever assuage our guilt for the suffering of those who do live that way because the overwhelming numbers seem impossible to surmount.

We don’t need to make them financially wealthy in our terms, though.  Yes, there are plenty of people in the world who need more money than they currently have.  And yes, access to food, clean water, health care, and education are huge issues which need to be resolved.

But the real poverty crisis is the poverty of spirit which is felt every bit as much (and often more) in the “wealthy” decadent West as it is in the underdeveloped nations of the world.  The bumper sticker slogan has got it wrong – all too often we say “Live simply, that others may simply live.”  It would be more meaningful to say “Live simply, for cryin’ out loud – if you’re not happy now, you’re not going to be happy after your next million dollars, either.”

A little land, a chair to sit on, some chickens to scratch around... we're good.

Happy farming!