NO! ... This is NOT what success and happiness looks like !!!!
Maybe there are some that think this way ... but most people would prefer something that they can realistically participate in;
• Impressive mansion ... but the owners probably only spend a few days in the place each year;
• The yachts are likely used even less, and their cost of upkeep is astronomical;
• A private jet may have more utility, but only justified by being in motion;
• And really ... does a Hermes handbag really have to cost $50,000.
The really big question is, of course, where has the wealth actually come from?
This is an important question and studiously avoided by all of those who have the wealth and power AND a large community of people who benefit from the operation of the socio-enviro-economic system as it is and do not want to see any disruption to the status-quo.
In the 1970s, 80s and 90s there were massive disruptions in the prevailing economic system as it transitioned from the post WWII industrial economy dominated by North America and Europe to a more globally distributed indstrial economy and an emerging digital information economy.
This transition was very profitable for some investors and owners, while at the same time dramatically reducing the earning potential of nearly everyone in the middle class unless they were well educated and in increasingly computer literate.
Economic statistics like GDP suggest that the economy has been doing better and better over the past 40 years, but this metric is a poor indicator of quality of life within the population as a whole. The GDP does not explain that while it grows, so also do things like homelessness, unaddressed medical conditions, child malnutrition, hopelessness and drug addiction, and more.
It really is quite simple ... more and more of the benefit of productivity has been given to investors and owners, and less and less to the rest of the population.
Very little has been done to address this problem for the last 40 years !!!!!!!!!
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