This is why happiness can only be reached by learning to appreciate what you have. You're much better off pondering how lucky you are to have, and how miserable you'd be without, the things you already have, rather than how happy you'd be with things you don't. The latter is an illusion.
The human psyche has its pluses and minuses. The fact is, humans are never satisfied with what they have, they always want more.
This is good when it comes to driving progress. We’d never have gone to the moon if we were satisfied with just colonizing the earth.
At the same time, it’s the root of a lot of unhappiness. People have grand expectations for their life - and fall into depression if they never reach them, despite the fact their life is far richer than most people experience.
That is excellent advice on an individual basis, but I don't think that is the point when the goal is to try and establish a broader perspective and evaluate a societal shift.
I mean that is exactly what a manager tells you when they cut hours, increase work, and dumpster workplace morale. They have very obvious financial incentive to provide less for the same output and there is no determinable metric of what is "reasonable". You're much better off in this case in actively searching for a better job if it is affecting your day to day life negatively.
People seem to forget that consistently throughout history that the societal shift has fallen so far negatively that it has resulted in the final resort of being solved by violent revolution.
