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The Progress Paradox
- How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century—and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Why this is so and what we should do about it is the subject of this book.
Between contemporary emphasis on grievances and the fears engendered by 9/11, today it is common to hear it said that life has started downhill, or that our parents had it better. But objectively, almost everyone in today’s United States or European Union lives better than his or her parents did.
Still, studies show that the percentage of the population that is happy has not increased in fifty years, while depression and stress have become ever more prevalent. The Progress Paradox explores why ever-higher living standards don’t seem to make us any happier. Detailing the emerging science of “positive psychology,” which seeks to understand what causes a person’s sense of well-being, Easterbrook offers an alternative to our culture of crisis and complaint. He makes a Compelling case that optimism, gratitude, and acts of forgiveness not only make modern life more fulfilling but are actually in our self-interest. Seemingly insoluble problems of the past, such as crime in New York City and smog in Los Angeles, have proved more tractable than they were thought to be. Likewise, today’s “impossible” problems, such as global warming and Islamic terrorism, can be tackled too.
Like The Tipping Point, this book offers an affirming and constructive way of seeing the world anew. The Progress Paradox will change the way you think about your place in the world, and about our collective ability to make it better.
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Story
In his controversial study of America's giving habits, Arthur C. Brooks shatters stereotypes about charity in America - including the myth that the political Left is more compassionate than the Right. Brooks, a preeminent public policy expert, spent years researching giving trends in America, and even he was surprised by what he found. In Who Really Cares, he identifies the forces behind American charity.
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Let's talk truth!
- By Jeff on 09-02-12
By: Arthur C. Brooks
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The 9.9 Percent
- The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture
- By: Matthew Stewart
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 21st century America, the top 0.1 percent of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90 percent have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9 percent that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country - and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system.
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Fantastic
- By Davena on 01-05-23
By: Matthew Stewart
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Coming Apart
- The State of White America, 1960–2010
- By: Charles Murray
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.
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Brilliant & Flawed
- By Douglas C. Bates on 05-15-12
By: Charles Murray
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Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
- By: Anne Case, Angus Deaton
- Narrated by: Kate Harper
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row - a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year - and they're still rising. Case and Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class.
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So many words, so little insight
- By Trebla on 03-22-20
By: Anne Case, and others
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Arguing with Idiots
- How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government
- By: Glenn Beck
- Narrated by: Glenn Beck, Pat Gray, Steve "Stu" Burguiere
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Idiots can't be identified through voting records, they can be found only by looking for people who hide behind stereotypes, embrace partisanship, and believe that bumper-sticker slogans are a substitute for common sense. If you know someone who fits the bill, then Arguing with Idiots will help you silence them once and for all with the ultimate weapon: the truth.
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Great Book
- By Stacy on 09-22-09
By: Glenn Beck
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This Noble Land
- My Vision For America
- By: James A. Michener
- Narrated by: Arthur Addison
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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This Noble Land is Michener's most personal statement about America, an examination of the issues that threaten to fragment and undermine the nation - racial conflict, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the decline of education, the inadequacies of our health care system - as well as a thought-provoking prescription for sustaining our "outstanding success". First published shortly before Michener's death, This Noble Land stands as a wake-up call for a troubled era, infused with the wisdom and passion of a lifetime.
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A startling realization
- By Amazon Customer on 08-15-15
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How Much is Enough?
- Money and the Good Life
- By: Edward Skidelsky
- Narrated by: Clay Teunis
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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What constitutes the good life? What is the true value of money? Why do we work such long hours merely to acquire greater wealth? These are some of the questions that many asked themselves when the financial system crashed in 2008. This book tackles such questions head-on.The authors begin with the great economist John Maynard Keynes. In 1930 Keynes predicted that, within a century, per capita income would steadily rise, people’s basic needs would be met, and no one would have to work more than fifteen hours a week.
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Not what I expected at all!
- By Chi on 05-22-23
By: Edward Skidelsky
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Upside
- Profiting from the Profound Demographic Shifts Ahead
- By: Kenneth W. Gronbach, M.J. Moye, John Zogby - foreword
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Demographics not only define who we are, where we live, and how our numbers change. For those who can read beyond the raw figures, they open up hidden business opportunities that lie ahead. What will happen when retiring Boomers free up jobs? How will Generation Y alter supermarkets? Which states will have the most dynamic workforces? Will American manufacturing rebound as Asia's population declines? Upside puts this powerful yet little-understood science to work finding answers.
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Needs rework to become an audio-book
- By Kristofer Jarl on 11-18-20
By: Kenneth W. Gronbach, and others
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Success and Luck
- Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
- By: Robert H. Frank
- Narrated by: Robert H. Frank
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine.
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Not what is advertised
- By Andre on 04-18-17
By: Robert H. Frank
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Arguing with Socialists
- By: Glenn Beck
- Narrated by: Glenn Beck, Jeremy Lowell
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In Arguing with Socialists, New York Times best-selling author Glenn Beck arms listeners to the teeth with information necessary to debunk the socialist arguments that have once again become popular, and proves that the free market is the only way to go. With his trademark humor, Beck lampoons the resurgence of this bankrupt leftist philosophy with thousands of stories, facts, and arguments for anyone who is willing to ask the hard questions.
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Its great...whatever
- By Jon on 04-08-20
By: Glenn Beck
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Eurotrash
- Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent
- By: David Harsanyi
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Europe has been declining under the weight of its antiquated institutions, economic fatigue, moral anemia, and cultural surrender. Yet American politicians, technocrats, academics, and pundits argue, with increasing popularity, that Americans should look across the Atlantic for solutions to the nation’s problems, including on issues like health care, the welfare state, immigration, and a bloated bureaucracy.
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Details on many ways Europe is lacking
- By Alicia B. on 11-15-21
By: David Harsanyi
What listeners say about The Progress Paradox
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Joe
- 11-10-04
Good Statistics, Bad Conclusion
The argument is thourough and compelling as it summarizes how much better off we are today for Western society, yet contradicts itself by noting how horrible it is for everyone else. The fact remains that everyone is better off today than 100 years ago with regard to material things. Whether that should be the standard is debateable. So everyone is better off, yet people are depressed. Easterbrook's solution involves telling people that they don't need all that money when people are starving. Although I agree there was criminal behavior from some top executives in the past decade, that doesn't support the argument that the extremely rich don't "need" certain things. It is like saying the author of this book doesn't need the money he gets from it. No one in America "needs" all they have. We are a society of excess- but we can produce some good from it. The good Easterbrook suggests is universal healthcare, minimum wage and other socialist programs, while, at the same time, he condems Fascism and Communism. This contradiction was too much for me- especially since he never supports his socialist ideas with any logic except for, "sure it may bring down the wealth of the very rich and make all of your consumer goods more expensive..." Doesn't he see that those socialist programs would hurt the people they're trying to benefit as well as everyone else? Try to follow this: Minimum wage goes up so that Jose can feed his 10 kids >> Price of McDonald's food goes up >> Demand for food goes up >> all food prices go up >> It's more expensive for Jose to feed his kids. That's a real simplistic overview of what would happen, but that is the case generally speaking. Easterbrook doesn't address this.
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Overall
- Michael Carrato
- 06-29-04
Not
Those who label this book as "liberal" are doing it a disservice. Easterbrook's advice is logical and pragmatic, not political. I generally lean to the right of center and I found this book to be a compelling read (listen). As for "veer(ing) off into a socialist agenda advocating class warfare against the rich" (as one reviewer wrote), I don't see it. Easterbrook's main complaint is against CEOs who manipulate the system to award themselves obscene salaries and bonuses.
Is it "liberal" to say that awarding tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to executives, while low end workers are laid off, is wrong? I don't think so. Maybe if your definition of "liberal" is "not conservative".
Some of his arguments about living wages and the like might be considered liberal views. But he balances it with a good dose of pragmatism when it comes to things like the environment.
The audio presentation is excellent, one of the best I've heard.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Robert L.
- 04-02-04
Good start , then faulty analysis, hidden politics
The Progress Paradox starts off with an interesting review of why, despite things being better, people seem unhappy. It's an interesting topic and the book raises some good points and observations.
Having built a solid foundation demonstrating how well market economies have provided a higher standard of living and discussing the unexpected angst that has resulted, the book then veers off into a socialist agenda advocating class warfare against the rich, government control of markets, and massive government programs. All of this is hidden under a false flag of "fairness" improvements to the market system. While the early material in the book is well supported with studies and facts, the veiled political views are hyped with false analogies, hysterical language, hidden assumptions, and outright ignorance of basic economic principles.
You could get the book and just throw it away after you've read the first half, but picking up a copy of P J O'Rourkes "Holidays in Hell" will provide a better read and a lot more insight into how the world really works.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- John
- 07-14-04
Stop Listening at the 60% mark.
The first half of so of the book is an interesting tour of social, health and economic improvements of the last century. The balance is an unsubstantiated political discussion that blurs many topics together. Especially annoying to non-Americans will be the equation of the US with the free world and assumption that every country to wants to be like the US in its heart of hearts. Also some thinly disguised racism.
The back end of the book also calls into question the statistics and viewpoints expressed in the first sections.
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Overall
- Lee Lukehart
- 09-21-05
Get off the soapbox, please!
I wish I would have read the other reader reviews first. It would have saved me the sad experience of wading through the extended opening of statistical recitation only to get harangued by the author's personal viewpoints. It's not that I necessarily disagree with the author's sense of morality--but I certainly did not buy the book to be subjected to an accusational political diatribe. Stay away from this book, unless you like being preached to.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Christopher
- 06-15-04
Quickly turned left into liberal waters
I cannot recommend this book. I was expecting objective analysis but was myself subjected to an agenda driven piece favoring big-government, liberal solutions to all of humanity's problems. Read the reviews of the unabridged book before buying this one.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-11-13
Simplistic
Enjoyed his take down of CEO's although examples are from the Enron era, bit out of date, but his solutions are terribly naive.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- reggie p
- 09-29-04
Everyone should read this
This is a book everyone should read. So many people say the world is getting worse but never really think about how good things really are. They either don't know any history or just believe what they hear without really thinking about their actual situation. This book lists many of the ways in which the world is better than ever and why so many of us still feel so bad. Hopefully it will change the way people think and make everyone more grateful. The author seems to digress into how we could make things better for everyone with some intriguing ideas, but it is all very interesting. I didn't think any of the content was political at all.
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Overall
- Anonymous Professor
- 06-20-05
Stop the insanity, read this book
You know, I read other people's reviews on this book. Why is it that some people assume that because someone's conclusions happen to be more similar to a particular viewpoint means the person is liberal? What if its simply obvious observations that people today work harder for less? How is that liberal? Its only biased if the method at arriving at the particularly conclusion was biased. If the observations are made in an empirical manner and the conclusions happen to be more consistent with "liberal" views does not mean the book is biased.
So basically some of the other people who reviewed this book were annoyed because some of the conclusions involved utilitarianism. So who is really biased, the writer or the readers who dislike anything that disagrees with their viewpoint?
By the way, I encourage anyone who wants ideas for having a less stressful life to read this book. Do you know people in this country work more hours for less results than most other "postindustrial" countries? Well, wake up, I hope this book helps you.
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