We’ll start with an elegant mathematical response which will satisfy nobody, then try to address the emotional impact.

If the average serf would have rated his condition 3/10, we should be at 6/10.

You can just keep making people happier and happier by giving them more income, maybe forever. It just takes a lot of cash.

All of the great policies above in Finland/Israel/etc can only buy 0.5 - 1 extra point over the countries that screw them up or pursue the exact opposite policies. Meanwhile, economic growth has earned us three whole points since medieval times. And these are stable; no opposite-party administration can take them away. So long as technological civilization continues to function, we can keep rising and rising, until in 300 years we approach the 10/10 barrier and have to get a new chart. We can say with confidence that we are giving our children and grandchildren better lives.

people who are doing something extremely different from normal society can be anywhere. Hunter-gatherers are somewhere between 6 and 8 despite their apparent poverty.

money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.