Henny Youngman once said:

“What good is happiness? It can’t buy money.”

Here is an insightful review of Gregg Easterbrook’s new The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. Why is it that we are wealthier than ever before, but not much happier?

The reviewer, drawing on Easterbrook’s text, suggests a few answers. Bad news sells, and progress always brings new problems. People will always envy their neighbors and compare their lot in relative terms. The bottom line?:

“We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones,” evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright has written.

I’ll blog more about this book when my copy arrives.