Word: paradox
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...Administration leaders are worried almost as much about the mood of business as businessmen are worried about them. Says Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal: "We confront a troubling paradox: on the one hand, good economic recovery in 1977 and reasonably good prospects for 1978; and on the other, the lowest level of business confidence in a long time...
...ECONOMIST, the phenomenon is a paradox. Modern societies have become increasingly concerned with distribution--with dividing the pie--when it is clear that the great majority of people can raise their living standard only by producing a larger pie. Certainly, this development seems to contradict the basic economic precept that people desire to simply increase the amount of material goods they possess as their primary economic motivation...
...Social Limits To Growth, economist Fred Hirsh contends that this paradox illustrates a profound change. In a modern affluent society, biological needs for life-sustaining food, shelter and clothing are easily met. People instead become preoccupied with status. Incentives, Hirsch, claims, become social, not material, in nature...
Hirsch's argument brings to mind the ultimate paradox of the man who, in a larger crowd at the circus, decides to stand on his tiptoes to get a better view of the show. Soon, everyone is standing on tiptoes too. Nobody is any happier as a result. (In fact, people are probably less comfortable having to stand on their tiptoes...
...personal welfare becomes the ability to stay ahead of the crowd. Generalized growth increases the crunch by increasing expectation. Social scarcity tightens its grip. What they get, in the growing sphere of social scarcity, depends to an increasing extent on their position in the social hierarchy. Hence, the paradox of affluence...