Saifedean Ammous on his recent Lex Fridman appearance talked quite a bit about "Time Preference", and how it shifted once we got off a gold standard. I agree with the basic premise that since we can't reliably save for the future, long term thinking gets discouraged. We've reached the point where only the very wealthy can think practically in terms of passing things off to future generations.
Time preference is a function of wealth. If you are rich your time preference is already low because you can pay for all your immediate needs without flinching. Cutting spending to $300k from $700k is much easier than raising your income to $1 million. As you earn more the money that you don't have to spend at all grows bigger and makes it look like your psychological behaviour is different when you most likely are unable to spend your wealth. There are a lot of enjoyable activities that don't cost a lot of money but occupy your time.
