All this—with some ifs and buts—is just to say that human happiness, in these countries, is being decoupled from money and other material wealth. Stop a moment to consider the implications of that. Use of natural resources and technology: Another way of looking at it is that material resources are very efficient for creating happiness when the population is poor, but then becomes less efficient once you reach the level of a wealthy, liberal democracy. So increasing economic output gets lower payoff in terms of human happiness, once modern industrial society is established to a certain degree.
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