The Rational Optimist (P.S.)

by Matt Ridley

go on striving to get richer long after the point where it is having much effect on their happiness – they are after all endowed with instincts for ‘rivalrous competition’ descended from hunter-gatherers whose relative, not absolute, status determined their sexual rewards. For this reason a tax on consumption to encourage saving for investment instead is not necessarily a bad idea. However, this does not mean that anybody would be necessarily happier if poorer – to be well off and unhappy is surely better than to be poor and unhappy. Of course, some people will be unhappy however rich they are, while others manage to bounce back cheerful even in poverty: psychologists find people to have fairly constant levels of happiness to which they return after elation or disaster. Besides, a million years of natural selection shaped human nature to be ambitious to rear successful children, not to settle for contentment: people are programmed to desire, not to appreciate.