Great point Jeff! Most of us here are very lucky people—to be born humans, in rich countries with an upbringing that provides us outstanding opportunities to influence the world. This motivates me all the more to go out and help others who weren’t born as fortunate as me.
“Someone at the poverty line in the US has more than 90% of people in the world … This is not to minimize the suffering of people in the US, along any dimension”
Something to keep in mind here is that wealth can only go so far, so you would expect that a rich country would still have plenty of unhappy people in it for non-material welfare related reasons. The thing is we know more about how to easily fix extreme poverty than we do about how to solve e.g. serious mental health problems or unhappy marriages.
Great point Jeff! Most of us here are very lucky people—to be born humans, in rich countries with an upbringing that provides us outstanding opportunities to influence the world. This motivates me all the more to go out and help others who weren’t born as fortunate as me.
“Someone at the poverty line in the US has more than 90% of people in the world … This is not to minimize the suffering of people in the US, along any dimension”
Something to keep in mind here is that wealth can only go so far, so you would expect that a rich country would still have plenty of unhappy people in it for non-material welfare related reasons. The thing is we know more about how to easily fix extreme poverty than we do about how to solve e.g. serious mental health problems or unhappy marriages.
Surprising fact I recently learned: depressive disorders have the second-highest DALY burden according to the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study.
Great post Jeff