The Economics of Happiness

Economics is like all social sciences in that it goes through trends and periods of re-evaluation. The current fashion is Happiness economics, where the central question is: how come, if we are so much richer than we were, we are no happier? Well, quite. Seems to me I should really try and find out more about this.

So, I have just ordered a book about the economics of happiness off Amazon. Oh yeah, I really mean this. It's by the esteemed economist Richard Layard, whom I last saw on Newsnight during the hour-long wring of hands that followed the release of the UNICEF report into the wellbeing of children in rich countries, the one that said that children in the UK were the least happy, most distrusting and among the poorest, relatively speaking .

It's always worth knowing a bit more about esteemed economists before reading their books, so I had a look for a biog, trying not to rely on wikipedia. Turns out he's from the LSE, and did a lot of work on things like the New Deal, and other very NewLabour policies. If I was some razor sharp satirist I would insert a joke in here about him directly causing the unhappiness of others, but I'm not so I won't. Instead, it's worth looking at this article , critiquing the whole concept of happiness, by Daniel Ben-Ami, a guy who has a blog with the exceptional title "Ferraris for all". Ferraris for all is his provocative way of saying the only way you can ensure welfare is through economic growth - the only economic aim should be to grow the economy, and this can be counted in percentage increases in GDP, not measures of happiness.

This second blog is interesting because, firstly, he seems to be rather defensive of the fact that he thinks economic growth is the only thing worth aiming for, as if this were a minority view, and not the way the whole capitalist system were set up. Secondly, and this is a bit off topic, he thinks anti corruption is a bad idea . I thought anti-corruption would be one of those causes everyone would agree on, like anti-murder, or pro-a nice sit down. Huh.