Tag Archives: avner offer

The Challenge of Affluence

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st February 2011 - 10:25 am

Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence starts with certainty and ends with doubt. “Affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines well-being”, states Offer at the start of Chapter 1. That theme runs through the book to his conclusion, but the lessons he draws from it are not as simple or confidently stated: “Well-being is more than having more. It is a balance between our own needs, and those of others, on whose goodwill and approbation our own well-being depends … I present these findings in the hope that they will make our choices appear not simpler and easier, but as …

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Posted in Books | Also tagged jonathon porritt, richard layard, robert putnam and the spirit level | Leave a comment

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Recent Comments

Tim
So glad you are a councillor again. Still miss you here....
Chris Webb
Excellent piece. I really like the "I'm a Liberal because..." idea, and will prod my local association along just those lines....
Mick Taylor
Hi Chris. A brave man to take on a seat on Lambeth. I suspect that the great increase in casework is at least partly caused by the huge cutbacks in Local Govern...
David Raw
@ William Wallace William, what's happened to the party's old policy of partnership and co-ownership ? If I remember correctly, our mutual friend Donald Wad...
William Wallace
Roz: This is exactly what we need to get us all thinking. I would add that we need to rethink our approach to political economy. Liberal democracy is easiest t...