Trying times on Easy Street

The multibillionaire Warren Buffett, a folk hero of the age of affluence, once reminded disciples of his hugely successful investment techniques that ‘money can’t change how many people love you’. Avner Offer’s potent analysis of 50 years of socio-economic data makes a similar point in less folksy style: ‘Affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines well-being.’

As Oxford’s Chichele Professor of Economic History and a fellow of All Souls, Offer is scrupulous about defining terms. ‘Affluence,’ he says, is ‘a relentless flow of new and cheaper opportunities’; ‘impatience’ refers to the tendency of affluent societies and individuals to exercise this dazzling freedom of choice in ‘myopic’ ways that satisfy short-term desires rather than ‘prudent’, long-term needs. Half a century of rising prosperity in Britain and America has brought better nutrition, housing, education, health and leisure, less harsh working conditions and greater freedom for women; yet it has also brought increases in family breakdown, addiction, mental disorder, obesity, insecurity, violence and crime.