How Wealthy Are You?

Probably wealthier than you think. A new video from the Fund for American Studies asks the question, “How much would someone have to pay you to give up the Internet for the rest of your life?” Most of the respondents answer in the tens of millions, billions, or refuse to put a dollar amount on what they’ll value the Internet over the remainder of their lives.

SMU economist Michael Cox rejects the popular measure of prosperity as wealth measured in some relative dollar amount between two people or households. What really matters is standard of living. When the first cellular telephones were introduced in the 1980s, they were priced at $4,000 and service was poor. Now virtually anyone of modest means in the United States can afford a top-of-the-line smart phone, “phones” that have far more functionality and computing power than the best PCs had in the 1980s.

Watch the video here: