'Happiness' as Government Policy?

To move our ethics/policy conversation along further, let's cut to the chase and talk about 'happiness'. Here is some background reading (from debatingmatters.com). What caught my attention today, however, was this from Mark Thoma (Economist's View):

Should We be Happy with Research on Happiness?

What does research on happiness tell us?:

Don’t ask the state for happiness, by Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod, Commentary, Financial Times: The idea that government policy should be focused more explicitly on promoting happiness has been gaining support. Proponents of this view argue that happiness indicators, based on surveys that purport to measure how happy people feel, have stagnated over decades. An important reason is that governments have aimed to maximise ... gross national product, rather than a more holistic indicator of welfare based on happiness.

This premise is clearly false. Politicians have always sought to achieve many things that are not designed to increase GNP. The most recent public service agreements on the British Treasury website, for example, spell out government commitments to ... increase participation in the arts...

A decades-long flat happiness trend could be showing that government policies in general fail... But this would be a depressing conclusion. Instead, happiness advocates make a scapegoat out of GNP and argue that economic growth is irrelevant or detrimental to happiness.

The alternative view is that the happiness data over time contain little or no genuine information. ... Indeed, they show no correlation with a whole range of factors that might reasonably be thought to improve well-being, such as a massive increase in leisure time, a tendency to live longer and a decline in gender inequality.

Income inequality is often claimed to be a strong determinant of happiness, and this “fact” used to argue for more progressive taxation. Yet we do not see any change in recorded happiness when inequality goes up or down. ...

Government attempts to increase measured happiness, rather than making life better for us, may well do the opposite: create arbitrary objectives that divert civil service energies from core responsibilities; give many people the message that happiness emanates from national policy rather than our own efforts; and create pressure for government to appear to increase an indicator that has never before shifted systematically in response to any policy or socioeconomic change. These are exactly the mistakes of the target-driven mentality that now pervades the British public sector. ...

More sinisterly, the happiness view of the world has tendencies that are inherently anti-democratic. The expert with his or her clipboard and regressions knows better than ordinary people themselves what makes them happy. So local democratic or individual decisions can be overridden with a clean conscience. ...

Government does not fail because it does not measure happiness; it fails when its energies are misdirected on the basis of poor quality information.

Should these data be used to draw conclusions such as government intervention may not improve well-being and may actually make things worse? John Quiggin at Crooked Timber has written about the data used to make these assessments:

What’s wrong with happiness measurement?, by by John Quiggin, Crooked Timber …

A quick Google search turned up The pursuit of happiness is so problematic by Stephen King. I think my sentiments lie pretty much with King: The pursuit of happiness is indeed problematic! We are not going to get there by attempting to add it up. Better, I think, to work it out as we go about our culture-forming (institutions) and our personal and family and community decision-making, which too can not be reduced to formulae.

Continuing with the theme of "problematic", let me conclude with these quotes on happiness which help us understand the paradoxes embedded in the term. Better to base one's life on kindness methinks, than happiness. Perhaps a rule of thumb might be: kindness through service begets happiness, but kindness/service alone is not enough. There are other things that come into play, like "purpose," "integrity" …

Happiness:

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it.
Al Batt

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
C. P. Snow (1905 - 1980)

Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.
Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)

Sometimes it's hard to avoid the happiness of others.
David Assael

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
Eddie Cantor (1892 - 1964)

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns (1896 - 1996)

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us least live so as to deserve it.
Immanuel Hermann Fichte

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
James Oppenheim

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.
Kin Hubbard (1868 - 1930)

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness.
Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

I've grown to realize the joy that comes from little victories is preferable to the fun that comes from ease and the pursuit of pleasure.
Lawana Blackwell

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Very little is needed to make a happy life.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD), Meditations

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972)

No man is happy who does not think himself so.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination.
Roy M. Goodman

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.
Storm Jameson

Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance.
The laws of Manu

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Les Miserables, 1862

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
William Cowper (1731 - 1800)

Kindness:

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC)

Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

There is no duty more obligatory than the repayment of kindness.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
George Sand (1804 - 1876)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
The Dalai Lama (1935 - )

That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC)

Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

There is no duty more obligatory than the repayment of kindness.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
George Sand (1804 - 1876)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
The Dalai Lama (1935 - )

That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

Comments

[c!]

I've been out of town and need to catch up, but I will!

[Rolf Norfolk]

An interesting area. I watched the TV series to which the following link relates, and I think there are indeed immediate, practical things you can do to improve your happiness. No doubt there's more that can be done collectively or politically, but why wait?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4436482.stm

[Dave Iverson]

A friend of mine had lunch recently with Karl Weick (Managing the Unexpected, Making Sense of the Organization, and more). Weick commented, as passed on to me, that "Pessimism is under-rated in our society." So too with "gloominess" or whatever is the opposite of happiness: "unhappiness", "sadness"?

Joseph Campbell suggested that we "follow our bliss." I suspect that in a sense, focusing on "happiness" is similar. But in the universe in which we live, all is the stuff of opposities: to appreciate happiness we must know sadness. "So it goes", as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was prone to say.

[c!]

There's no way I can do all of the reading, but these two lines:

"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so" (Mill)

"[Happiness] is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose" (Keller)

seem to ring true for me. It's interesting that you make a post like this, because I've long been in a period of my life where I don't feel happy, yet I can't say that I'm unhappy. I just don't know. Some time ago, I came up with a saying that "happiness is a discipline," or that happiness is not found but made, but I'm beginning to think that this is actually recursive: happiness is what emerges when we go through the process of creating happiness. Does this make any sense?

To get to the government question: I'm not quite sure that one can find good happiness metrics (see the Mill quote), but a focus on GNP is not the best idea, whether that happens in practice or not. I think there are better metrics: how many people are unemployed, and why? How many people are dying prematurely? Etc. Here, I would agree that "[p]oliticians have always sought to achieve many things that are not designed to increase GNP," and it's my hope that GNP doesn't become any more of a target metric than it already is.

[Seth Baum]

Another interesting read is "Should We Maximize National Happiness?"
http://www.iew.unizh.ch/wp/iewwp306.pdf
The authors are more optimistic about the validity of happiness surveys than I am (and I am more so than the 'mainstream' economists), but they provide some strong arguments about focusing government policy on raising happiness survey results.

That said, it seems reasonable to recommend our governments to factor in the insights these surveys provide into their thinking. However, even on strict utilitarian grounds, I wouldn't want 'happiness' however measured to be the main focus of policy. More on that later...

Great quote list by the way!