Now, a couple of reactions to your piece:(posted 8758 days ago)1. I like your points, and I of course agree that material wealth is a lot higher than it was in 1890. I think your top three items (health care, utilities, information goods) are particularly important, and they increase my utility. However, in some sense I'm not sure people are *happier* than they were 110 years ago, and I wonder if economics has anything to say about this.
Certainly we see lots of people complaining that they don't have enough time, that the rat race is overwhelming them, and that families don't manage enough "quality time" with each other. I feel there must be some truth there... but maybe I'm jaded by my perspective as an assistant professor who's spent the last several years worrying about whether I'm going to be able to write enough clever papers to get tenure.
2. I disagree with your assessment of _Looking Backward_. I read it just last year, and really enjoyed it. I didn't think it was poorly written. I agree that it was really fun to note the ironies such as the music-distribution system. It's true that some problems have been solved way beyond Bellamy's imagination, but other problems of the human condition (poverty, underprovision of public goods) remain as bad as they were back then.
Oh, and I think you misnamed the author... Wasn't it "Edward" rather than Robert Bellamy?
Thanks for an interesting piece. I look Contributed by David Lucking-Reiley (reiley@vanderbilt.edu) on March 17, 2000.