Does economical prosperity benefit you, or society as a whole?

It sounds like a really silly question, to which most people would reply "of course it does!". Well, why wouldn't it? If something is good for your country's economy - or even global economy - it must be good for your country's society, and by an extension, you as well, right?

Tough it seems to intuitive, the reality is possibly the opposite. Economical prosperity might actually be hurting you. Why? How? Let's dissect it!

"The economy is doing better than ever! Our nation's gross domestic product is rising! Unemployment is down! More job opportunities than ever!"

• "The economy is doing better than ever!" - What does that even mean? Better than what? Better by what standards or whose standards? Better in comparison to its past state? Better in comparison to another nation's economy? What does it even mean for an economy to be "good" or "bad"? What are we comparing here? GDP, national debt, unemployment, citizens' spending, or what? The statements "the economy is doing good" and "the economy is doing badly" are meaningless without any further elaboration on what are a supposedly good and bad state of an economy supposed to entail.

• GDP. It's a cute little number, but it doesn't tell us much. High GDP per capita doesn't necessarily mean that a country has high standards of living or a happy population - it's literally a country's GDP divided by the amount of people who live in it. In a hypothetical extreme scenario, you could have a tyrannical state mega-rich in precious resources, making a ton of money by selling said resources (which means high GDP), but the citizens might still be starving. Unless we are given some insight into the degree of wealth disparity and social stratification within a country, GDP (whether per capita or not) serves as a very poor indicator of the happiness or standards of living of a country's citizens. My Hungary has a GDP per capita roughly equivalent to that Uruguay, and is higher than that of Mexico, but the average Hungarian is depressed, while the average Uruguayan and Mexican are, at the very least, not depressed. GDP per capita doesn't even account for costs of living, inflation, etc.

• "Unemployment is down! More job opportunities than ever!" - Yay, more diverse flavours of wageslavery available to the masses, yaaayy.....

Now, I don't make a secret out of the fact, that I don't like working. If I had a million dollars, I would retire immediately, because less than half a million dollars - 398 508 US Dollars to be exact - would be equivalent to earning my monthly wage for 50 years. Belle Delphine made 10 million pounds by selling her bathwater - roughly 13.781 million USD. If she retired right now, and rationed her money wisely, she would never have to spend another day of her life working - at least in Hungary.... where was I going again?

Oh yeah, so I really, really hate work, and am actively looking for viable alternatives to having a day job. What does that mean in this context? It means that the whole "Unemployment is down! More job opportunities than ever!" means nothing to me. If you are unemployed and desperate, sure, it may be good news that fills you with hope (not really, and I'll get into that in the next paragraph), but if you already have a job you're semi-satisfied with, or are a lazy and spoiled potato like me who doesn't even want to work (or rather, wouldn't work if it wasn't de facto mandated by the current economical system), this isn't really news of interest for you, let alone good news.

As a matter of fact, I dare to say that "good" news like this are secretly more hurtful to those who are down, than bad news. Statements like "The economy is doing great!", "Unemployment is down!" and "Job opportunities in all-time high supply!" blind ordinary people with euphoria, blinding them to the very real suffering of those, who don't get to enjoy any of the benefits of the supposedly good state of the economy. If the economy is doing "great" - whatever that's supposed to mean - it means that people get complacent, and at best, they'll acknowledge the existence of the economically disadvantaged as tragedies, and at worst they will outright ignore them. The economy doing "great" means there being no incentive, no desire for reform, no matter how necessary reform is in reality.

If the economy is doing so great, why am I still forced to trade eight hours of all my weekdays to survive? If the economy is doing so great, why do I still hate my job? Yeah, plenty of job opportunities, and every single one of them involve you giving up the lion's share of your day to earn your daily bread. Yes, I know, that's what a job is supposed to be, but I think all readers are seeing where I'm getting with this.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

The economy is like the banks. If banks are doing great, you're not going to feel any advantages of it, unless you're a multi-billionaire hedge fund manager. But if the banks are doing badly, you're definitely going to feel it, potentially losing your job, your house, etc. The economy is the same. If the economy is doing badly, a large number of people get unemployed, lose their houses, lose their livelihoods, lose their life savings, etc. - but if the economy is doing "good".... the effects for ordinary people are... meh? Or not even meh, because I just wrote like ten paragraphs about why the economy doing "good" is actually secretly bad for you.

Human suffering as a catalyst for positive change

When people are blinded by euphoria caused by buzzwords and meaningless statements like "the economy is doing awesome!", no one cares about those who are down. If you are homeless, unemployed or just poor during a time of supposed economical prosperity, your existence might be acknowledged as a tragedy at best, if not outright ignored. People only start paying attention, when things are going downhill as a whole. When - quite ironically - you become a statistic. A million may be a statistic, but it definitely does a better job at convincing those in charge that reforms are needed, than a single person's or family's sob story.

For my beloved Universal Basic Income to become a reality, a large enough number of people - a critical mass - needs to be rendered unemployable, to convince society as a whole that this whole work-or-die system is outdated. But even if UBI is not your thing, and you want the opposite - a small government with no more red tape - you still need a critical mass of people to be negatively affected by the current system and its policies.

As harsh as it sounds, mass human suffering is the best catalyst for positive change. In this war of attrition against an exploitative system that leaves half of the population knee-deep in the debt, and the other half dissatisfied with their jobs and lives as a whole, the only way to win is to increase the number of people screaming.

I am a vocal critic of Socialism, so normally I am against wealth redistribution of any kind (unless it's Universal Basic Income, which is totally awesome), so I am just going to play the Devil's Advocate for Socialists: if you want the state to give you housing for free, you need to increase the number of homeless people to a critical mass, to the point where everyone is demanding the state's intervention. It doesn't matter what kind of changes do you wish to achieve: human suffering is the best catalyst for reforms and change.

The goal is to render the current system unmaintainable, to the point where the powers that be give up on trying to maintain it at all costs. Either the ones in power will get up to fix their system, or their system will crumble, and from its ashes a new, better system will be built. It's a war of attrition.