{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":14,"pdf_page":22,"physical_index":22,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"cf6994fbddf54062bdf48d591d0e79780b11543d50efaa3d9d01f0cd55f7467c"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"1.1. Consumption, Work-Time, and Well-Being\n\nAvner Ofer (2006), Tibor Scitovsky (1992), and Fred Block (1990), among many others, have made compelling arguments, on both theoretical and empirical grounds, that the notion that increasing material accumulation necessarily leads to increasing well-being is questionable. This is especially so in the case of afluent societies, because, as any basic economics textbook informs us, increasing consumption, ceteris paribus, yields diminishing marginal utility.2 While, to be sure, not all of the axioms and theoretical postulates of economics are plausible, the idea that, other things being equal, the benefit of each additional dollar of spent income (and of the consumption that it afords) decreases as income increases seems uncontroversial. It informs the moral logic of progressive taxation, can be derived from hierarchical models of need such as A. H. Maslow’s (1943), and is also implicit in the more sophisticated capabilities approach to welfare developed by Amartya Sen (1988, [1985] 1999).3 As will be seen, there is a good amount of empirical support, based on comparative analysis of diferent countries, for the proposition that the welfare produced by income decreases as income increases (Easterlin 1974, 2003; Layard 2005; Ofer 2006; Layard and Mayraz 2008; Kahneman and Deaton 2010). Indeed, the evidence suggests that the rate at which marginal utility of income (measured by subjective well-being) drops of is more rapid than would be the case if marginal added utility was, as predicted by utility theorists from Daniel Bernoulli onward, inversely proportional to increasing income (Layard and Mayraz 2008; Bernoulli [1738] 1954).4\n\n14\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":null,"next_page":15}