Roosevelt said that "comparison is the thief of joy".

I suspect the modern media doesn't help, it is full of people appearing to live richer lives than are attainable by the majority.

Perhaps we need to impose some real hardship on ourselves now and then to remind us how good we have it.

Explanations based on evolutionary psychology tend to neglect the social or psychological adaptations that are responsible for complex society. The validity of the claim that we would be happier as hunter gatherers, for example, is really difficult to assess from the perspective of someone embedded in modern human society. The high level of interdependence (sometimes called organic solidarity) changes everything.

The tendency of evolutionary psychology to assert that life is governed by primal instincts established in harsher times isn't politically neutral.

Sure, you can dress up most any argument in some plausible sounding evolutionary psychology argument.

But "people really care about social status" does not rest primarily on that at all. I just threw that in to sound a little Malcolm Gladwell.

PS The tendency to deny evolutionary psychology isn't politically neutral :)