What is progress? | Rory Sutherland, Angus Deaton, Arlie Hochschild | The tears of the West
59Arlie 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 https://iai.tv/video/the-tears-of-the-west?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=description
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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