Are we progressing?

• Why is that we humans are always running on a treadmill whose minimum speed is ever increasing?
• Why is that we feel the life of a jet-setting, hot shot millionaire business executive is more meaningfull, more successfull than a poor farmer tilling his land in some remote village of a developing/underdeveloped country?
• Has all the technological progress made so far enabled mankind to remove all the miseries of life ?
  
• Will technology ever have the capacity to rid humans of their miseries?
  
• Are we really more happy, leading more meaningfull life than people, say 3000 years back?