Discontentment in the New Gilded Age

All around are the signs of a new Gilded Age, as people are starting to call our present. VH1 has a show called "The Fabulous Life of...", which dives weekly into the extravagance of one celebrity after another. Internet start-ups continue to make more and more money for their founders, some serving the purpose of only rating strangers' attractiveness. Of the 30 riches Americans, most made their fortunes either during the last Gilded Age or before, with the three exceptions being the contemporary billionaires Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Sam Walton.

But what has this newly re-found extravagance brought the United States? All of our money is not making us happier, we rank 150 out of 178 in the Happy Planet Index. Its income inequality is comparable to Ghana and Turkmenistan. Our popular culture may depict the United States as a glamorous, wonderful place to be, yet it seems that our large, ever increasing incomes leave us wanting more.

And many people are asking themselves why they aren't happy with their large quantities of cash. (To learn more about the lack of contentment among the wealthy, see the NYTimes series "Age of Riches".) And why is this? The easiest answer is something everyone knows: money can't buy you love. But that is too simple. Money cannot buy love, or happiness, but it can buy just about everything else. One of the first things I learned about Economics is that currency is just a proxy for happiness, something to use as a model of utility and not actually utility itself. And although money cannot actual buy the feeling of being happy, I think they should be at least positively correlated.

So why are we not content in this new Gilded Age of glamor and extravagance? Does the income inequality force most of the population out of the celebrations gained by the wealthy? Yet, not even the wealthy are content, and are driven to work to fill up their lives.

And I don't know the answers to those questions. I have not seen enough of America, or talked with diverse enough amounts of people to determine what is plaguing our nation, if anything is at all. Are we morally bankrupt? Has our culture been hijacked by a small group of corporate executives? Is it really the end of history, and have we forgotten we once had one?

I do think that many people in this country have forgotten the common sense maxim of money cannot buy love. Accumulation of currency does not equate to instant satisfaction, though that is what I expect most people assume, even if they won't admit it. What does actually create happiness is something much more complicated and something people cannot leave up to their bank accounts to determine.