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Social Studies skills: Difference between revisions
→Tocqueville effect
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>> todo: bring in Mancur Olson and Theory of Groups >> see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson wiki entry Mancur Olson] about how interests tend to coalesce over time and focus on protection of gains, stifling innovation... organizations become "congealed" (from "How Phil Falcone Was LightSnared" WSJ, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. 2/18/2012) and resist competition and protect the status quo. | >> todo: bring in Mancur Olson and Theory of Groups >> see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson wiki entry Mancur Olson] about how interests tend to coalesce over time and focus on protection of gains, stifling innovation... organizations become "congealed" (from "How Phil Falcone Was LightSnared" WSJ, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. 2/18/2012) and resist competition and protect the status quo. | ||
==== Easterlin paradox ==== | |||
* similarly to Tocqueville's observations, in 1974 Univ Penn Professor Richard Easterlin noted that the growth in (gross, or overall, national) happiness tends to diverge from growth in economic wealth. Whereas overall growth in happiness parallels economic growth in initial stages, as | |||
* an explanation for the effect is "social comparison," which states that people take a relativistic and not absolute view of their individual wealth or position in society: | |||
** i.e., people do not view their personal wealth in terms of what it actually is ("absolute") | |||
** and instead view is in comparison to others ("relative") | |||
=== Economic disparity === | === Economic disparity === | ||