And yet nations, and especially ours, focus on money. Should we focus on happiness instead? Our founding fathers had it closer with "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". What do we have now "work, legalism, and the pursuit of money"?
This isn't a new notion, and in fact there is a lot of work that has been done in Europe and around the world, including of course some in the US. As is usual, my perusal has been less than scientific, but I have a few issues with what I read so far.
Unsurprisingly, one concern is the lexicon -- it's easier to discuss if we use precise terms. A good bit of writing talks about "gross national happiness", which of course echoes the common "gross national product". If we're just talking informally then we can be fine with that, but if we're talking economics, then "gross national product" is distinct from "gross domestic product". The distinction, at least as far as I've read, is that "national" in this sense means "controlled or owned by the nation" while "domestic" means "in the country". So, GDP is the economic activity here in the US (including foreign companies here), while GNP includes economic activity of US companies overseas (but not foreign companies here). So, the better parallel term would seem to be "Gross Domestic Happiness".
Do we even want happiness, or some less fluffy state? Some talk about "well being", which seems like a good term.
But is GDW - Gross Domestic Happiness -- what we really mean -- we want to promote lots of happiness activity and industry? I guess that's not a bad thing, but if we each want happiness, is it something you get by doing happiness related stuff (including mostly for others, one would presume) in GDW, or is it collecting for yourself as something more akin to wealth? Is well-being absolute or relative -- can you have inappropriate well-being disparity, as you can with income? To answer all of this, maybe we need to figure out what really makes people happy?
Fortunately, a lot of work has been done on this, and for a long time. Most people recall Maslow and his heirarchy, and to me that seems like a good starting point. But of course, that's obvious, so a lot of work has been done.
To have well-being, you'd have to gain happiness or something similar, and of course that varies by person. Handily, somebody decided to do work on the marginal utility of well-being, and sure enough, there are ways to measure it. Well Being
A reasonable premise is that basic economics is important for the most basic wants, but as you climb Maslow's hierarchy the economics is less applicable, and from a policy perspective we need something more than basic economic measures alone. Like these folks say:
"We argue that economic indicators were extremely important in
the early stages of economic development, when the fulfillmentof basic needs was the main issue. As societies grow wealthy,however, differences in well-being are less frequently due toincome, and are more frequently due to factors such as socialrelationships and enjoyment at work."
What if we made well-being a goal for economic activity? Could we skew policy to maximize well-being, which would help those at the bottom of Maslow's ladder to gain security, while helping those at the top to self-actualize? Is it reasonable to encourage people to aid those around them, or is well-being a rational self-interest driver with competition and rules like supply-and-demand?
I think this is important enough that each of us should think about what makes us happy, and well. Many of us don't write down financial goals, and struggle to attain what we want in part because of this. I suspect almost all of us fail to analyze and record happiness goals. How much stress, struggle, and suffering could we eliminate if we not only determined our own lists, and put some effort into understanding and facilitating the desires of those around us?
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