Star Trek Econ 201: Utopia, the Final Frontier

This writer captures the common belief that our current economic system isn’t working very well. The reality is quite the opposite: In America today, and much of the world, we all have way, way, way, more stuff than any humans have had at any time in history: more food, shelter, clothing, medicine, information, education, etc. Even the poorest of us today have way more than the richest did just 200 years ago: live longer, know more, are more mobile, etc. A few years back, the University of Michigan economics department released a study that found the average person on welfare in this country today enjoys an economic lifestyle equal to someone in the middle class in 1965. And for the first time in recorded history, one of the biggest problems in America today—at every economic level—is obesity: which pretty much says it all.

How, then, is it that we collectively have come to believe just the opposite?  Some of it may be the media’s penchant for selling crises, but I suspect the real problem is deeper than that. As a culture, we seem to have the mass belief that the key to happiness is having more stuff. But as mountains of research has shown (and like many older folks, I’ve come to realize), happiness doesn’t come from having more stuff. Sure, we might be happier for a little while, but then we just go back to being unhappy that we don’t have even more stuff.

As I wrote in my July column in Investment Advisor, Endorphinomics: Working on Happiness, in his new book “Endorphonomics,” Steve Moeller cited a University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center report. It found that since 1957, the purchasing power of Americans nearly tripled, from about $12,000 a year to about $33,000 in 2011 (in inflation-adjusted dollars). However, during that same period, “the percentage of people responding that they were ‘very happy’ declined from 35% to 29%.” More stuff, less happiness.

As for the Star Trek economic model, I suspect a “replicator” (the device that can create any physical item we want, anytime we want it, out of pure energy) would only fuel this misplaced desire: taking us to new heights of excess and greed. We don’t need to get more stuff: we need to change the way we view ourselves, and the world around us. That’s where the real “utopia” lies. 

Back in 1996, Denver financial planner Jim Schwartz, one of the founders of NAPFA, said as much in his book, aptly titled: “Enough.” In it, he suggests that a financial planner’s job is not to fuel his/her clients’ drive for ever-larger portfolios. Rather, planners can help clients reach a higher level of happiness by working with them to understand what they need to be truly happy, and to focus on attaining that, and no more.

Schwartz’s vision seems more important today than ever—and the good news is that advisors don’t need a “replicator” or a starship to reach it.