When I was a student, a friend of mine fantasised about earning £100 a day. It felt like an incomprehensibly large sum of money; he simply could not conceive of spending enough to exhaust such riches. This was almost 30 years ago — the equivalent fantasy today would be more than £200 a day. My friend, who lived with his parents, was simultaneously naive and wise. His dream income is about twice the average UK salary, several times the global average, and about a hundred times more than the global poverty line. How much does anyone truly need?
Economists have offered various answers over the years. In his famous essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes argued that, if incomes increased eightfold from 1930s levels, “the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution”. Incomes have increased much as he anticipated, and yet no solution is in sight. That may be because, as Keynes also noted, there is an insatiable desire for needs which make us “feel superior to . . . our fellows”.
