It would be so much more useful to hold happiness or quality of life constant instead. I really don't think it's a meaningful improvement to have ten times as much material wealth if that goes along with a fifteenfold increase in the amount of material wealth you think you "need", especially if that goes along with increased workload, stress, responsibility, etc., and decreased leisure time, time with family, health, etc. To most westerners it seems obvious that a nice house and your pick of hundreds of mates will make you happier, but that's just because it's how we grew up. If we packed it up and tried to go hunter-gatherer tomorrow, we would fail miserably and be miserable doing it -- but that's what exactly happens when hunter-gatherer societies and agricultural societies suddenly go western. Either way it takes several generations to adjust, so the fact that you wouldn't feel comfortable living as a hunter-gatherer, now that you've already been raised in this culture, doesn't have anything at all to do with which lifestyle is better. Even your "objective" measurement made a value judgment that meshes with industrial, not hunter-gatherer, societies. Of course an industrial society will do better by industrial standards.

Being a hunter-gatherer born in a stable hunter-gatherer society is not at all the same as being a homeless person in the industrialized world. For the most part hunter-gatherers in a hunter-gatherer society aren't ostracized or looked down on by everyone they know, criminalized/shamed for living (finding "acceptable" opportunities to sleep, eat, piss, etc, are much more difficult for a homeless person), or surrounded by messages that a person's worth is measured by whether they own the right things. Being able to comfortably meet biological needs, having meaningful social connections, retaining dignity and self-respect -- these things mean a lot.'N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman' is an interesting documentary about a woman whose life took a dramatic turn for the worse after the introduction of western culture, even though she probably ended up being the richest person in her tribe.

AFAICT more technology has nearly always led to us taking up different kinds of work to fill up that time, not more leisure. When modern household appliances were introduced, the result was higher standards for housekeeping. Women in the 70's spent slightly more time doing housework than women in the 20's did despite all the new "conveniences". Were houses in the 20's disgustingly filthy? No. Did the increase in cleanliness make society as a whole happier or better off? I doubt it. If anything, I suspect the obsession with cleanliness has just contributed to increased rates in allergies, weaker immune systems, etc. Technically, access to these appliances are considered a standard of living increase, but all it really did was make us pickier about what an "acceptable" living is. Now people who can't afford those conveniences have to work harder to keep up or be shamed by others for having a "dirty" house.

People comparing themselves to others is very relevant, because those comparisons have a huge impact on happiness and quality of life, and it is generally assumed that a higher standard of living correlates with those things. (If you disagree, can you explain why having a higher standard of living is a good thing? Why is it rising? Why do we even care about it?) If that's a wrong assumption it needs to be challenged because from what I can tell it's basically a cornerstone of western civilization right now.