This is not a new thought to me or my gen x /millennial cohort. However, it made some amorphous thoughts crystalise.
Economics doesn't understand Maslow's pyramid.
I don't give a snotty fuck if stonk go up or we have more iphones than our parents. They're cherry-picking data. Maslow's pyramid is a useful model; GDP is meretricious puffery.
Pyramid delta is a bigger factor in a generation's zeitgeist than position.
Self-actualisation was, generally, off the table for
the greatest generation. For most people, their lives were mapped out at birth. OTOH, hunger was a recent memory, so they made progress up the pyramid.
Boomers were the first generation for whom self-actualisation was within reach. You didn't have to give up housing to be a beat poet.
We were brought up to believe that self-actualisation was available to us, too. But in practice, you risk housing. I have personally been through a full cycle of this. I'm infinitely richer than when I was 20, but I'm back where I was on the pyramid. I still have a long runway to chase self-actualisation, but I'll ultimately go back to being a wage slave for a company I don't give a shit about.
So, when economists compile charts of numbers going up, and politicians crow that the economy is growing, you'll excuse me for dithering between prozac and axe murder.
This is not a new thought to me or my gen x /millennial cohort. However, it made some amorphous thoughts crystalise.
Economics doesn't understand Maslow's pyramid.
I don't give a snotty fuck if stonk go up or we have more iphones than our parents. They're cherry-picking data. Maslow's pyramid is a useful model; GDP is meretricious puffery.
Pyramid delta is a bigger factor in a generation's zeitgeist than position.
Self-actualisation was, generally, off the table for the greatest generation. For most people, their lives were mapped out at birth. OTOH, hunger was a recent memory, so they made progress up the pyramid.
Boomers were the first generation for whom self-actualisation was within reach. You didn't have to give up housing to be a beat poet.
We were brought up to believe that self-actualisation was available to us, too. But in practice, you risk housing. I have personally been through a full cycle of this. I'm infinitely richer than when I was 20, but I'm back where I was on the pyramid. I still have a long runway to chase self-actualisation, but I'll ultimately go back to being a wage slave for a company I don't give a shit about.
So, when economists compile charts of numbers going up, and politicians crow that the economy is growing, you'll excuse me for dithering between prozac and axe murder.