Tempnotes

4/19/2011

Chapter 3: Should Policy Makers Use Happiness Research?

Some arguments about making happiness an aim of public policy.

• Might seem easy to support: Happiness is all good, connected to prosocial aims, what people say they want.

• Arguments against making happiness a goal of government.

• Many people don't define their goals in terms of happiness, but viture, devotion to God, etc.
• Goverment supposed to be neutral to diverse views of the good life.
• Libertarian conceptions of goverment. - gov't's job to protect liberty, not likely to be good at happiness.

• (Might be example of differing time horizons: Welfare state focuses on short time horizon, libertarian on longer time horizon (future self-reliance))

• Still, hard to say "liberty" is the only aim of government. Consensus position isn't there.
• Brave New World objection. Research suggests alot of variation in approaches to happiness. Government is likely to get that wrong, ala Aldous Huxley. 48-49

Some might argue for the value of unhappiness to creation, but this is overstated. Still, some evidence that happiest 10% not the highest achievers. --Problem of the Happy Child--

Can't be done. Johnson: "How small, of all that human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

• Lyken & Tellegen research, qualified by empirical evidence of changes -- Danes, Soviets, East Germans, maybe more like 50/50...

Arguments against making happiness the ONLY goal of public policy.

• Enforcing the 1st Ammendment often causes unhappiness.
• Focusing only on happiness might lead you to legitimate the "happy poor" --just because people can be happy in some circumstance, doesn't mean they should be (false happiness -- one of our early concepts).
• Preventing "Slavery, false imprisonment, and fraud" are legit. government concerns, even if people don't ranking them highly.

Suppose you decide to use happiness research in publich policy. You still have these problems:

• What do you do when research shows that people's preferences are mistaken or irrational? Override? Cites some history on issue of "dual duties" of elected officials in US-pol system. Seems to justify some weight to happiness research.
• Limits: Policy can't be driven by research in any automatic way. Example of taxing smokers. Open question how you've affected balance of happiness. (consider additional variables such as changing social attitudes).
• Examples of positive uses: (61): might shift resources to youth on basis of findings that old folks are happy. Research favors democracy as a happiness maker. Might be good to empirically test claims of current policies that well being has been improved. At the end: educational opportunities, relief of anxiety about health care, remove distress of mental illness and unemployment. (Presumably some other follow on the principles implicit here.)

Chapter 4: The Question of Growth

• Reviews evidence about the weight we give to economic growth as an indicator of national well being.
• Problem of Global environmental impacts from economic growth.
• Debate over Easterlin paradox. 67
• Argument: we need growth for the poor. Reply: Assumes we're not already rich enough to help them. (Conservative could reply...)
• Economic growth can be defended by citing the obj. improvements in life for the poorest in US.
• Friedman argument: growth fosters prosocial goods. 68 -lots of doubt on this 69
• In the end, Bok treats resisting growth like tilting at windmills. In no growth enviroment, suddenly everything is a zero sum. (good point.)
• In any case, you can't actually stop growth without a draconian political effort.
• Discussion at End: Will American's change their minds? evidence that we traded leisure time for television, less socializing, when evidence shows that's not a great happiness trade-off. Maybe cultural ideas will drive change...