You and most people around you are likely to be in the wealthiest 1% who have ever lived.

Life is great, so why doesn’t it feel that way?

Comparonomics explains why life is much better than you think it is. It offers some unexpected reasons why many of us feel bad about our lives, and the state of the world, and introduces some surprisingly simple tools to make us feel a lot better.

Written by Akaroa-based Grant Ryan, an economist and successful entrepreneur renown for thinking outside the box, Comparonomics is a panacea for our times. Written in a fun and very accessible way, Grant explains just how wrong conventional economics is about progress.

“We are consistently told by economists that many of us are no better off than 50 years ago. This is wrong and it’s easy to explain why. Understanding this is not some academic nicety. It causes major upheavals like Brexit and Trump’s Make America Great Again (*spoiler alert – life was not better 50 years ago.) We need to accurately know how we are getting on in order to make good decisions and to feel better about life,” says Grant.

The ideas in Comparonomics are so simple, you’ll wonder why they haven’t been thought of earlier. It’s is a book full of ah-ha moments that help us see how we’re much better off than we think we are. It demonstrates that the things many of us are aiming for – like more money, higher social status, or even more equality – don’t impact on the fact that we feel bad about our lives.

The book is in three parts:

• How are we doing? A novel new tool allows you to run your own thought experiments to better understand your place in the world. This shows we are better off than Kings in the past and are all in the top 1% wealthiest people to have ever lived.
• How do we think we are doing? The way we think about things can be at odds with reality. The book explains different information, thinking and social biases that tend to make us feel gloomier than we should.
• How can we do better? Surprisingly common things we do to make life better are investigated to show why they may not help much. We are introduced to novel solutions that can help us feel more satisfied with life.

Grant asserts that the preoccupation many of us have with status has a significant impact on our level of happiness. Coining the phrase ‘statusism’ he contends judging people by what they do is akin to racism and sexism. Statusism, Grant says is the next big ‘ism’ that needs to be tackled if we want to progress as humans. “Learning not to bow down to or look down at anyone is incredibly freeing and could lead to significant economic benefits.”

There’s a lot to Comparonomics. Behind its simplicity, there is eight years of research and thinking as a counter argument to current economic theories that claim to be measuring progress. Readers can benefit from going online and using the fun tools Grant has created to compare their life now with someone living 50 years ago or in time of King Louis XVIs.

Written in a similar style to Freakonomics, Comparonomics will appeal to anyone interested in the world around them. Those who enjoy books like Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari; and writers like Stephen Pinker, Daniel Kahneman will get a lot out of it.

At a time of polarised politics, climate anxiety and COVID, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Comparanomics will help you understand you have more control of what really matters than you thought.

“Hugely original and thought provoking. It is also beautifully written in simple easy to follow format,”

– Dr Garth Carnaby former chair, Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi

“It’s a great idea, well executed. It’s a great addition to the wider global conversation around human progress,” – Dr Angus Hervey, FutureCrunch

Grant Ryan is the son of an Invercargill chicken farmer who ended up a hopelessly addicted inventor. He has founded several technology companies in the area of internet search, social networking, personal electric transport and eco-tourism. For the past few years, he has been working on a non-profit opensource project to protect New Zealand native species (cacophony.org.nz). He has worked as an advisor to the New Zealand Government in venture capital and science and technology policy. Grant has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Ecological Economics

Comparonomics: Why life is better than you think, and how to make it even better by Grant Ryan | Big Idea Publishing Company |  $29.99

For interviews, Q+As, exclusive articles, author talk enquiries, review copies and more information contact: Penny Hartill – director hPR, 021 721 424, penny@hartillpr.co.nz