This undercuts the quality of relationships (manifested in a distrust of strangers and status anxiety, for example). The resulting stress, in turn, is a major determinant of illness and chronic health problems.

the world is governed not by abstract forces, but by people who plot their own course.

The bottom line is that wealth can be concentrated somewhere, but that doesn’t also mean that’s where it’s being created. This is just as true for your former feudal landowner as it is for the current CEO of Goldman Sachs.

The scenario of radical inequality that is taking shape in the U.S. is not our only option. The alternative is that at some point during this century, we reject the dogma that you have to work for a living. The richer we as a society become, the less effectively the labor market will be at distributing prosperity. If we want to hold onto the

instead of anticipating and adapting, we’d be focusing on steering and creating.

In fact, simple rankings consistently conceal more than they reveal. A high score on the UN’s Human Development Index or the OECD’s Better Life Index may be something we should applaud, but not if we don’t know what is being measured.

In other words, the fact that something is difficult does not automatically make it valuable.

Yet this apparent precision is an illusion. The GDP is not a clearly defined object just waiting around to be “measured.” To measure GDP is to seek to measure an idea.

By the standard of the GDP,” says the writer Jonathan Rowe, “the worst families in America are those that actually function as families – that cook their own meals, take walks after dinner and talk together instead of just farming the kids out to the commercial culture.”