Tag Archives: richard layard

Mark Pack

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 …

Continue reading »
Posted in Books | Also tagged , , and | Leave a comment
Advert

Recent Comments

  • David Sparrow
    Interesting and thoughtful article in the Guardian online, I agree now is not the time the only beneficiaries will be the Tories and Labour but Ed does need to ...
  • Peter Davies
    The Labour Party has been remarkably unsuccessful at excluding the middle class. They have the second most middle class membership of any major party (The Green...
  • Tristan Ward
    @ Jason Conner "But there are some very wealthy upper middle class people on this site by the looks of things and I am not one of them. " Are you suggesti...
  • Tristan Ward
    @ David Raw Historically, Tristan, when the party moved to the right (2010-15) the consequence was that the number of Lib Dem M.P.’s dropped from 57 in 201...
  • Jason Connor
    But who would you replace Ed Davey with? The most obvious candidate, Christine Jardine, is stepping down at the next GE. I don't think there's been hardly any s...