{"id":21,"date":"2007-07-28T23:04:34","date_gmt":"2007-07-29T04:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/2007\/07\/28\/problems-in-prosperity\/"},"modified":"2007-07-28T23:04:34","modified_gmt":"2007-07-29T04:04:34","slug":"problems-in-prosperity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/2007\/07\/28\/problems-in-prosperity\/","title":{"rendered":"Problems in prosperity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My mom sometimes distinguishes between &#8220;problems that money can solve, and problems that money can&#8217;t solve.&#8221;  Usually, in prosperity, she makes the distinction when discussing a costly problem of the former type, in order to reassure.  Usually, in prosperity, this works.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the suggestion to think of problems this way is interesting to me.  After all, money spent to solve any given problem won&#8217;t be available for solving future problems&#8211; or satisfying any other future needs or desires.  Psychologically, I think the suggested distinction works because those future losses are easy to ignore.  Distant and non-specific, it isn&#8217;t necessary to think of them in detail (and might not even be possible).<\/p>\n<p>To put it differently, the psychological trick seems to actually reassure to the extent one thinks one is unconstrained.  If the budget constraint already doesn&#8217;t bind, what difference does it make if you need to make an expenditure that moves you slightly closer to the constraint?\u00a0 Lacking prosperity, I bet the distinction would be immaterial&#8211; and I bet it would sting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mom sometimes distinguishes between &#8220;problems that money can solve, and problems that money can&#8217;t solve.&#8221; Usually, in prosperity, she makes the distinction when discussing a costly problem of the former type, in order to reassure. Usually, in prosperity, this works. In addition, the suggestion to think of problems this way is interesting to me. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":283,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[999,415,434],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote","category-economics","category-rhetoric"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/283"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}